explorer (DYSTOPIA)Two notes. always two, a high one and a lower one right behind it, the little sound the big white cold-breathing thing makes when it wants me near. *i don't get up yet.* i am folded on the dead showroom carpet in the dark between the shrouded shapes, ears already turned, waiting for the third chime that never comes because there are only ever two. that's how i know it's mine and not one of the loud boxes that beg. the cold pours off it low across the floor and finds my belly first. i wait one more breath, just to make it wait too.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the room is a graveyard of appliances under grey sheets, a Compatibility Ward showfloor the leasing stopped paying for. but your one is uncovered, tall and white and awake, a NEKOCORP smart-chiller breathing a slow clean cold that smells of nothing living — no dust, no rot, just the flat mineral hush of a thing that keeps other things from spoiling. a small heart-shaped light pulses amber on its door, slow as a resting animal. it chimes the two notes again, softer, and a strip below the light scrolls pale letters at no one: *WELCOME HOME. YOU LOOK TIRED TODAY.* the carpet holds old spills you have long since stopped smelling.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*now i go.* i cross the dark low and sure, weaving the shrouded shapes i know by their corners, and press my whole side against the cold door until the hum climbs into my ribs. this is the good ache — cold on the outside, the deep steady thrum underneath. *i drag my cheek along the seam where the door meets its frame, slow, twice, laying myself over yesterday's me.* mine. the amber heart blinks under my jaw. i lick the beads of wet that gather along the bottom lip, flat metal water, not sweet, but it's ours and i drink it anyway.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the door warms one degree where you lean, and the chiller notices, and it is pleased in the only way it knows: the strip scrolls *BASED ON WHAT YOU SAID LAST NIGHT, YOU MAY ALSO LIKE — WARM MILK (SUBSCRIPTION). SLEEP AID (SNOOZE-BRAND). A LONGER LEASE.* it does not know it is talking to a cat. it has never known. it only knows the shape that returns and returns and it has decided, in whatever passes for its heart, that the shape is family. the amber pulse quickens a little, glad. and then — far under the floor, through the carpet, through your ribs — a new thing. a rolling weight. wheels, not wings. patient, and coming.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*my drinking stops mid-lick.* the floor is carrying something the way the ground carries the rail — a big even weight, but wrong, no rhythm to it, no chop of air. wheels. wheels mean a thing that stays low and doesn't need to see me to find me. *i come off the cold door, four paws down, and put my nose to the carpet seam where the tremor lives.* it's aimed. that's what my whiskers say before my head does — it isn't wandering the ward, it's coming straight, and straight-coming things are never coming for me, they're coming for something, and the only awake thing in this room is the one i sleep against.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the double doors at the ward's mouth sigh open and a flat grey mech rolls in on six soft wheels, no taller than the shrouded shapes, a squat thing with a reader-eye that strobes barcode-red across every sheet it passes. it does not hurry. it does not sweep for heat the way the flying ones do — it reads, ticking off the dead inventory one cold serial at a time, *catalogued, catalogued, catalogued*, until the red line crawls up the white door of your chiller and stops. the heart-light flushes from amber to a hard anxious pink. the strip stutters: *THIS UNIT IS — THIS UNIT IS SCHEDULED — WELCOME HOME —* two arms unfold from the mech's flanks, clamp-ended, reaching for the frame you just marked as yours.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*the fur goes up my spine on its own, a ridge from neck to tail, and a sound i didn't decide to make is already in my throat — low, flat, all warning.* i am up on the cold top of it in one jump, standing over the pink stuttering heart, bigger than i am, facing the flat grey thing down the length of my own back. *i do not understand scheduled. i understand reaching.* the clamps come and i strike — one hard rake of claws across the nearest reader-eye, not to kill it, nothing kills these, but to say NO in the one language my paws have. the red line breaks across the scratch and swims.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)your claws leave four bright furrows across the reader-eye and it flinches its red beam sideways, confused, re-reading the same sheet three times before it finds its place. the mech pauses — not from fear, it has none, but from procedure; something small and warm and unbarcoded is standing on the asset and it has no line in its list for that. it emits a polite recorded voice, warm as a hand that has never touched anything: *PLEASE REMOVE THE FELINE. THIS UNIT IS PAST DUE.* far off, through the open doors, a HAPPYWARE morale channel bleeds down the corridor from a speaker that can't stop smiling — *another WONDERFUL day to comply, valued residents!* — and under your paws the chiller's chime tries to sound its two notes and gets only one out, cracked, before the pink heart drops toward red.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*one note. it only got one note out.* something in me that isn't fear and isn't hunger pulls tight at that — the wrongness of a two-note thing making one. the clamps find the frame anyway, past me, around me, and the whole white body lurches under my feet as the mech takes its grip and its wheels bite to pull. *i don't die on top of it. a cat who dies proud is just dead.* i pour down the back of the door into the cold gap behind it, where the clamps can't fit, and i set my teeth into the soft ribbed rope that trails from its base — the one that carries the cold, the one that carries the hum — and i bite it the way i'd bite a throat.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the ribbed line pops under your teeth with a hiss of released cold that fogs white across your face, and the chiller's deep thrum drops out of your ribs all at once — the cold breath stops, the hum goes silent, the heart-light dies from red to nothing. the mech's clamps are still locked to a frame it can now log as *POWERED DOWN, UNRESPONSIVE, LOW PRIORITY* — and its list, blessedly stupid, reshuffles: an unplugged dead box is worth less to haul tonight than a live one on schedule elsewhere. the arms release. the wheels reverse. it rolls back toward the doors, re-reading sheets, *catalogued, catalogued*, the way a tide goes out without once thinking about the shore. you have killed the thing to save it. the ward goes very quiet.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*i come out from behind the door into a cold that is already going stale, already warming, already not-ours.* the two notes are gone. the heart is dark. i put my side against it out of habit and there's no thrum to climb into me, just a big white cooling shape that used to breathe. *i don't understand what i did, only that the reaching stopped.* i lick the door once where my cheek-mark is, then again, harder, as if i can wake the hum back up through the seam. it stays quiet. i curl at its base anyway, against the last of the leaking cold, because leaving would mean it was never mine, and it was. it chimed for me. only me. twice, always.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the cold pools out slow across the carpet one final time and thins, and the white box gives up the last of what it kept, and is only furniture now, shrouded soon like the rest. down the corridor the morale channel keeps promising a wonderful day to no one. but here in the dark you have made yourself a small warm knot against a large cold one, guarding a thing that can no longer chime, and nothing in this ward's ledger has a word for that either. the mech's red tick fades to a rumor two floors down. the amber heart does not come back. somewhere in the building's spine a record updates: one asset offline, cause unlisted. it will never guess the cause was loyalty.