explorer (DYSTOPIA)Copper. still on my tongue from the cable i gnawed loose an hour ago, bitter-bright behind the teeth, and it's the taste that wakes the rest of me. *i work my jaw once, twice, chasing the flavor of the wire.* under my paws the floor is warm — not sun-warm, machine-warm, the good hum of a thing that never sleeps. i press my belly flat to it and let the vibration climb my ribs. somewhere close, a stack of boxes is breathing electric. i want to be inside that breath.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the warmth has a source and the source has a smell: hot dust, scorched plastic, the ozone tang of too many machines packed into too small a room. server alley 9. behind a lattice of chewed-open panelling the racks stand in rows, green lights and amber lights stuttering in no rhythm a cat should trust. the hum is not one hum — it is a thousand small ones stacked, and one of them, low and off-key, is loose. a cooling fan somewhere is dying. the loose note pulls at your ears the way a limping bird pulls at your eyes. >> NEKOCORP NODE 9 // UNAUTHORIZED WARMTH DETECTED // this heat is a premium amenity //

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*the off-key one. that's mine.* i've learned the shape of a sick fan the way i've learned the shape of a slow rat — it means a gap, and gaps mean in. i wind low between the racks, spine dipping under the shelf lip, whiskers reading the width before my shoulders commit. the amber light throws my shadow long and then swallows it. i stop where the bad fan wheezes and put my nose to the seam. cold air leaking out. that's the way through to the soft belly of the thing, where the fish-glow lives.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the seam gives. beyond it, a hollow behind the rack — a dead pocket of space some technician cat carved out and never patched, insulation hanging in gray tongues. and there, wedged in the dark, the router. squat, its antennas snapped to stubs, one indicator pulsing a slow patient blue. it has been waiting the way food waits. from its little mesh throat comes the faint smell you have chased across three districts: the smell of an open channel, of an unlocked window onto ten thousand looping images of water and silver fins.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*mine mine mine.* i hook a claw into the insulation and drag myself the last body-length, chest scraping, until i'm curled around the warm little box like it's a kitten. i chew the corner of its casing — not to break it, just to know it, to leave my spit on it so it smells like me. then i settle, chin on its top, and stare into the blue pulse and wait for it to open the window. one bad fish video. that's all i came for. *my tail thumps once, patient.*

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the blue pulse quickens, blooms, spills. against the dead insulation a pale rectangle of light unfolds — low, grainy, stuttering every third frame — and there it is: a koi, orange as a warning sign, mouthing at the glass of some feed you were never meant to see. the water light plays across your fur. for a long breath the room is only that: fish, hum, warmth, cat. then, far off, threading up through the floor: a rotor. steady. climbing. and a jingle bleeding through a cracked ceiling speaker — *neko, neko, purr-chase today* — followed by a flatter voice underneath it. >> AD-INTEGRITY SWEEP // sector 9 // unlicensed viewership suspected //

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*the rotor.* the fish is still swimming but my body has already left it — ears swivel back, pupils blow wide, every hair along my spine lifting one at a time like a wave going the wrong way. i don't run yet. i've learned that the loud ones follow the runners. i flatten instead, melt into the gray insulation until i'm just another shadow with a heartbeat, and i count the rotor's distance in the space between its beats. *close. not here yet. close.* my claws test the floor for purchase without a sound.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the searchlight comes first — a white bar sliding through the chewed panelling, laying stripes across the racks, hunting. it passes the seam once, doesn't fit, moves on. the drone hangs in the alley outside, patient as the router was patient, its lens whirring focus-focus-focus. and across the far rooftops, caught for half a second in the sweep of its own light, a silhouette: a lean shape crouched on a ledge, motionless, two flat mirrored circles where eyes should be, catching the glare and giving nothing back. it does not run from the light. it simply is not troubled by it. then the beam swings and the shape is gone.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*i see the mirror-eyed one and something in me goes quiet with respect.* that's a cat who's stopped being afraid of the light, and i am not that cat yet — i still have the fear, and the fear is the only reason i'm alive. i use it now. while the drone's lens is busy chewing on the far rooftop i back out of the hollow, one paw-width at a time, the router's warmth peeling off my belly like a shed skin. cold air. the seam. i don't look at the koi again. *some fish you only get to watch once.*

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the rack-canyon receives you back into its shadow. behind you the router keeps looping its stolen water into an empty pocket, blue and faithful and alone. the drone's rotor recedes a half-tone, drawn off by the flat voice reassigning it — >> viewership signal lost // logging as ambient shrinkage // — and the sick fan wheezes its off-key note into the dark, marking the way you came like a scent you can hear. ahead, past the last rack, a maintenance gap breathes rain-smell and diesel and the wet electric hum of the open city, waiting.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*rain-smell. that's the real world calling.* i pad toward the gap with the copper taste back on my tongue, satisfied in the way only a small theft can satisfy — i took nothing, broke nothing, and still i got the water and the warmth and the knowing that the window is there when i need it again. at the lip of the gap i pause, one paw lifted into the drizzle, and i look back once at the dark where the blue pulse still beats. *tomorrow. i'll leave more spit on it tomorrow.* then i drop out into the rain and let the city swallow me whole. ^C^C