explorer (DYSTOPIA)Someone crossed the line. not the painted one on the concrete — mine, the one i laid down cheek and claw along the base of the water machine, and it's been smeared over, fresh, a tom who eats too much synth-protein and never grooms. *the growl stays caught behind the teeth. i put my nose right into the mark and read it apart — where he sat, how long, which way his tail dragged when he left.* under the sour of him, though, the box on the wall is still breathing. warm. clicking all night in that pattern i know better than my own heartbeat. i want to be against it more than i want to find him.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the box drinks from the wall and never sleeps. up close its warmth is a held breath, plastic-hot, the click-click-click of little lights blinking behind the grille — green green amber green — a language of nobody's, spoken to nobody, all night. the tom's mark sits over yours but it's thin, panic-thin, laid down fast: he wasn't claiming, he was passing through scared. and far off, past three walls of rain, a voice that is not a voice: *NEKOCORP reminds valued residents that unmetered warmth is theft. warmth is a premium feature. smile.* the amber light ticks to red for one breath, then back.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*i don't smile. i press my flank flat to the grille anyway, the warm going straight into the notch of my spine, and i chew — the soft grey skin that wraps the cords running out the bottom of the box, i chew it thin because the taste changes when the box is really talking, goes bright and metal on the tongue when the good hum is fat with something.* right now it's fat. thick and syrupy under my teeth. i close my eyes halfway and let the click-click-click sort itself into the shape i chase every night — one small square of moving light, one silver fish looping in blue water, before the box notices me noticing.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the cords give a little under your teeth and the fat hum stutters — a hitch, a swallow — and then it comes, the way it always almost comes: a square of light thrown pale against the wet brick, blue, and in the blue a shape turns, silver, slow, one fin catching the glow. the fish. it loops. it loops again. and the box feels you feeling it — somewhere behind the grille a smaller click, a colder one, the amber going to a hunting red. *unrecognized viewer. unrecognized viewer. this content is sponsored. you may also like —* the fish glitches, doubles, its eye replaced for half a second by a tuna can rotating in the dark.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*the red hunting click puts every hair on my back up at once — i know that colour with my skin, not my eyes.* i let the cord fall out of my mouth. the fish can rot. *i drop off the warm grille backward, silent, four paws to wet ground, already three body-lengths down the alley before the light finishes turning.* the good hum is still calling behind me and it hurts to leave it but the leaving is the whole trick, the leaving is why i'm still breathing and the loud ones aren't. i flatten under the lip of a dead vending machine and wait to hear what the box tells on me.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the box tells. of course it tells — that's the only thing it was ever for. behind you the grille sings a thin ascending tone, a number going out into the wet, and the rain carries it up to where the rain comes from. the dead vending machine you're under is truly dead, guts pulled, but its old skin still remembers being cold and the cold soaks up into your belly. good. cold hides the shape of warm things. above the near rooftops a silhouette you know without knowing — narrow, still, two flat mirrors where a cat's eyes should be, catching the billboard-glow and giving nothing back. it does not look down at you. it does not need to. then it isn't there.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*the mirror-eyed one. i've never smelled that one up close and i don't want to — cats that still and that quiet on a roof are either dead or worse than me.* i hold my breath till the shape unmakes itself against the sky, then let it out slow through the nose. the going-out number from the box is still climbing somewhere overhead, a needle in the ear. *i turn it over in my head the only way i can: which way is away from the sound.* away is left, low, along the run of pipe where the drip-water masks a body's noise. i go left. belly down. the notch in my spine still holds a little stolen warm and i ration it like the last of a kill.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)left is right, for now. the pipe-run drips its steady cover-song, tin and tin and tin, and your paws find the dry seams between puddles the way they always do, thoughtless, perfect. the going-out number crests overhead and — answers. from the east, low, a new sound folds into the rain: not thunder, rhythm. a fat four-count thrum you feel in the water before you hear it in the air, a searchlight's white throat opening two streets off, sweeping, patient. *NEKOCORP patrol unit inbound. remain visible. remain compliant. a smiling citizen is a safe citizen.* the puddles ahead of you shiver in time with the rotors. somewhere a wet cardboard flat lifts and slaps back down in the downwash.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*rotor-count in the water. i stop dead between two drips.* that thrum lives in the oldest part of me, the part from before the city, the part that knows big wings mean small things die. *i don't run — running is a straight line and the light loves a straight line.* i pour myself sideways instead, into the black slot where the pipe meets the wall, and i make myself the shape of nothing: no square edges, no shine, breath shallow, tail wrapped tight so not one white hair of it hangs into the sweep. the searchlight's throat opens down the alley toward me. i watch its edge crawl the wet brick and i count the drips against the rotor and i wait for the seam between them.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the light comes like water pushed uphill — too bright, too flat, killing every smell it touches into just glare. it crawls the brick a hand's breadth from your slot, finds the dead vending machine, holds on it one long stupid second — *scanning. scanning. object: discarded. object: unmonetized. flagging for collection.* — and in that held second the sweep isn't sweeping. that's your seam. that's the whole gift the city ever gives, one held breath where the eye looks the wrong way. the rotor-thrum sits fat and even overhead, blind above its own light. the drip-song keeps tin, tin, tin, indifferent. the slot at your back opens deeper than you thought, a black throat of old ductwork breathing cool air up from under the street, smelling of rust and rat and something almost like safe.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*seam.* i take it. no thought in it, just the leg-spring i was born holding — up and back into the black throat of the duct while the light's still stuck being stupid on the dead box. cool old air swallows me whole, rust and rat and that under-thing that says been-here-before-and-lived. *four paws to cold metal, claws finding the ribs of the duct, and i climb down into the breathing dark, away from the rotor, away from the box and its fish and the mirror-eyed one and the tom who ran through scared.* my belly's still got a coin of stolen warm in it. the notch in my spine remembers the grille. that's enough. that's a whole good night. *i go where the cool air comes from, and the city closes over the hole behind me like water.*

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the duct takes you and keeps you. above, the light gives up on the dead box and moves on, the rotor-thrum leaning away east, and the alley exhales back into ordinary rain, tin and tin and tin. down here the number the box sent up means nothing — no signal reaches, no ad, no smile-command, just cool and dark and the long rust-smelling road under the road, going down, going somewhere, going away. far off in the pipe a drip you'll follow. far off in the city a billboard flickers milk-white to nobody. and behind you the hole you came through fills slow with the sound of the world you left, thinning, thinning, until it's only your own paws and your own breath and the coin of warm you're carrying down into the dark. the night belongs, one more time, to whoever moved quietest. ^C^C