explorer (DYSTOPIA)Copper. it's on the back of the tongue before it's anywhere else — that flat bright coin-taste that means a wire's been chewed bare somewhere close and it's still live. no rain in it, no fish in it, just the metal and the little needling warmth that pulls at me the way a full bowl pulls at an empty cat. *nose down, whiskers forward, one paw testing the grease-slick concrete of the rack-room floor.* the hum lives here. i know this hum. it comes up through the pads before the ears ever get it.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the hum is not one hum. the pads sort it the way they sort everything — the fat dead sixty-cycle drone of the wall, that one means nothing, ignore it. and threaded through it, thinner, hotter, a stutter-pulse coming off the black stacked boxes along the far wall, blinking their little green and amber eyes in rows that never sleep. that one is the copper. that one is food-adjacent. warm air pushes out from under the boxes in slow exhales, dusty, smelling of scorched insulation and the sweetish plastic reek of something running too hard. far above, behind a grille, a fan changes pitch. behind THAT, faint, a jingle leaks in — *nekocorp: your water, your way, your subscription* — chopped off mid-word by a dead speaker.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*i go to the boxes.* low, elbows out, belly a finger off the floor, because bright rooms lie about how empty they are. the warm exhale is good on the face and i push into it for one breath, two — then the cable. there's always a cable. a fat rubber-sleeved one snaking box-to-box, and where it kinks at the corner the sleeve's gone soft and split, and under the split there's that copper coin-taste made solid. *i set my teeth to the give of it, careful, just past the rubber, tasting the fizz.* not to kill it. just to know it. the little sting says yes, this one is awake.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the sting jumps back up the jaw and every whisker stands to attention at once, and for half a heartbeat the amber eyes on the nearest box all blink together — off, on — like the room noticed. a smell changes with them. under the scorched-plastic there's a new thread now, ozone-sharp, and from the split sleeve a thin curl of something that is almost smoke but too clean, too blue. the fan behind the grille spins up hard. somewhere a relay clacks. and low, right at the floor, a voice that isn't the jingle and isn't a cat says in a flat machine-patient tone: *unauthorized draw detected. server alley nine. dispatching.* the word DISPATCHING sits in the pads like a cold coming up through wet ground.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*off the cable. instant. teeth to nothing, all four paws under me, ears swiveled back toward the grille where the fan screamed.* i don't run yet. running is for once you know which way the wall opens. i taste the air in fast little pulls — ozone, hot fan-wind, and there, cutting under it, the outside: wet, cold, the green-rot of the drain that means a way down and a way small. the copper-hum still tugs, wants me to stay, wants one more bite. *i hate that it works on me.* i put my back to the food-boxes and my nose to the cold seam of air and start moving along the wall where the shadow's thickest, quick and flat.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the thick shadow holds, for a stretch — cool concrete, a smell of old mop-water and mouse that's weeks stale — and then it doesn't. a light finds the far end of the wall first, not sweeping, worse: it just APPEARS, a hard white circle laid flat on the floor ahead, and the rotor-thrum that owns it drops down out of the grille-dark on four soft ducted fans. it does not hurry. it hangs at cat-height, lens-ring rotating, and the cold circle begins to slide toward the shadow you're wearing. from its underside a second jingle, chirpy, obscene: *smile! you're on nekocorp community safety cam.* the white edge touches your hind paw.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*the light on the paw is a hand on the scruff and my body decides before i do.* sideways — not away, sideways, the direction the drone's fat lens is slowest — and up, onto the stacked crates i'd already clocked without knowing i'd clocked them, one two three, claws finding the lip of a cable-tray bolted to the wall. the tray sings under me, thin and cold. behind and below the white circle stabs at where i was. up here the air's different: a draft, real outside-draft, pouring from a black square where the tray disappears into the wall. small. good. small is mine. *i pour myself at the black square nose-first.*

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the black square takes you and the world shrinks to the width of your own shoulders — a duct, tin-cold, ticking with your heartbeat bounced back off close walls. the drone's jingle flattens to a muffled nothing behind. ahead, a long throat of dark sloping gently down, and riding up it: rain-smell, engine-glow, the sour-electric breath of the street. and something else on the draft — a scent-mark, recent, sprayed at the duct's far mouth. not yours. an unfamiliar tom's, cut with a chemical tang you half-know: the faint mirror-cool reek of a cat who's been near too much surveillance gear and stopped smelling like just cat. up ahead, at the grate-lit end, a silhouette sits unmoving against the neon — low, still, two flat discs of reflected light where eyes should be, watching the duct-mouth like it already knew you'd come.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*i stop.* dead, one paw lifted, in the throat of the duct where i've still got dark on my side and the stranger's got the light on his. the mark at the mouth already told me most of it — tom, grown, sat this exact spot before, wants me to know he did. the two flat discs don't blink. i don't like eyes that don't throw back the wet shine of real eyes; those are the other kind, the mirror kind, and the mirror kind belongs to the cat the drones can't hold onto. *i lower the paw slow. i make my shoulders small but not scared-small.* i give one low sound in my chest, the one that isn't a fight and isn't a beg — just: i see you, this is your sill, i'm passing.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the discs tilt — a fraction, unhurried — and catch a passing sign-flicker so for one blink they flare hot pink then go flat again, and you understand they're not eyes at all but something worn OVER them, curved and dark. the tom doesn't answer the chest-sound with sound. he answers with room: unhurries himself up onto three paws and steps a single body-length aside along the grate, leaving the duct-mouth open, the drop-down to the wet fire-stair beyond it clear. as you pass his territory-line his scent lands full and close — mirror-cool, ozone, and under it something almost amused. a drone whines by on the street below, sweeps its white circle across the alley, and finds nothing to hold; slides right over the sitting shape like it isn't there. from him, finally, the smallest rasp, not quite a word, aimed at the dark you came out of: *nine's crawling with them tonight. wipe your feet.*

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*i take the room he gives me and i take it fast, but not scared-fast — even-fast, the walk of a cat who was always going this way.* nose down over the drop: wet iron of the fire-stair, cold coming up off it, and below that the whole wide reek of the street opening like a mouth — rain, fry-oil, a hundred other cats none of them close. i put one paw on the top tread and the metal's slick and honest under it. his line's behind me now, his cool mirror-smell thinning. i don't look back at the flat discs. looking back says you're still deciding something. i've decided. *down i go, quick and quiet, into the glow.*

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the stair gives you down in five wet bounds and the alley swallows you whole — bigger than the duct-brain remembered, loud in the pads with runoff hammering a dead drain, steam ghosting up pink and green under the signs. the copper-hum is gone. the drone-white is two streets off now and losing interest, its jingle dopplering thin. behind and above, when you finally do let one ear swivel back, the fire-stair is empty; the sitting shape is nowhere, the way that kind never quite is anywhere. only the mark stays, fading. ahead the alley forks — left toward the fat warm reek of a noodle vent and its fryer-grease promise, right toward dark and quiet and no food at all. the rain keeps coming. the night keeps not belonging to nekocorp, in the small wet places, for now.