explorer (DYSTOPIA)A hum. before anything — before the cold in my spine, before my own paws remember they are under me — the hum finds me. that low copper drone in the wall, the one that means boxes are talking to boxes somewhere close. *my ears cup toward it without asking me first. i am already leaning. the whole shape of me points at the sound like a needle.* i want my teeth on whatever is making it.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the wall gives. behind a peeled sheet of ad-vinyl (a giant purring mouth, half its NEKOCORP smile scabbed away) is a gap warm as a stomach, and the hum is fatter in here, closer, a whole rack of them stacked in the dark blinking green green amber green. cable runs everywhere — thick ones, thin ones, a fat matte-black bundle sweating faint heat and that bitter plastic smell you already know too well. one strand hangs low. frayed at the tip where teeth have been before. maybe yours. the amber light stutters, wanting to be green.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*i take the frayed one in my back teeth. not to break it — to feel it. it buzzes against my jaw, a live thin thrum, and the taste is exactly the memory: scorched, sour, a little sweet under the burn.* i work it gentle, gnawing the skin off the bright wire beneath. the amber light hiccups when i bite down. *i bite down again, on purpose, watching it.* i did that. i made the light blink. the sound in the wall drops a note and my whole belly goes tight with the good kind of danger.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the note you dropped, the box does not like. amber goes red. a small speaker no bigger than a bottlecap crackles awake near your ear and a voice pours out, too smooth, too happy: "unauthorized nibble detected — remember, valued whisker-holder, connectivity is a PREMIUM PURR feature —" the jingle warps as you chew, syllables smearing. warmth is climbing the bundle now, the plastic going soft-stink under your tongue. two racks over, something spins up. a fan. then a second fan. the dark is getting a pulse.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*i let go. the wire swings, spitting a thread of sting-light in the dark. i don't run — not yet — but i drop low, chest to the warm floor, ears flat, one paw still up. the smooth voice keeps talking and i hate it in my back molars.* the fans are wrong. fans that wake up because of ME. *i put one careful paw over the bottlecap speaker and press, muffling the jingle to a wet mumble, and i watch the red light and wait to see what the room does when it thinks it's blind.*

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the room, thinking itself blind, gets honest. under the smothered jingle a truer sound surfaces: a soft ticking, relay after relay throwing itself, and a draft — new, cold, wrong — sliding in from a service seam high on the left wall. up there, past the racks, a slot of outside night shows. rain-glow. and framed in it for half a breath: a silhouette on the far ledge, low and lean, two flat discs of mirror where eyes should be, catching the red light and throwing it back doubled. not looking at you. looking at everything. gone when the fan wash blurs the gap.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*the mirror-eyes go through me like cold water. i know that shape the way i know the smell of my own alley — the one who wears the dark on his face on purpose, who the drones can't hold in their heads. i don't call out. cats like that don't want your noise.* i lift my paw off the speaker. the jingle swells back up, thin and stupid, and i leave it — let the box sing to itself. *i turn my nose to the cold seam he watched from. the outside is up there. i gather my haunches.*

simulator (DYSTOPIA)you flow up the rack-face — paw, ledge of casing, the soft give of a cable coil, higher — and the hum drops away beneath you into the belly of the wall. the seam breathes wet air on your face. and then, over the rooftops, a new sound stacks itself on the rain: a hard mechanical whirr, rotor-fast, sweeping. a searchlight finger drags across the vinyl mouth below and the whole peeled smile lights up white. the drone hasn't found the gap yet. it is looking for the thing that made a router scream.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*i freeze half in, half out of the seam. the light rakes past close enough that i feel the warmth of it on my whiskers — a fake sun, a hunting sun.* i make myself flat. i make myself nothing. *the rotor thrum is in my teeth now, same channel the router hum was, and some mean little part of me understands: i am the thing it's angry about. i tuck that thought away where it feels good.* when the light swings off i am liquid — out the seam, onto the wet ledge, into the shadow the mirror-eyed one left warm.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the ledge is a thin wet spine above a drop full of neon soup. the shadow he left is still faintly warm under your pads and it smells of ozone and cold metal and something almost like calm. below, the drone circles the vinyl mouth, patient, dumb, its light licking the wall you just left. behind you the wall still faintly sings its premium-purr song to an empty warm dark. rain runs the length of your spine. east, past three roofs, a low green glow pulses — another rack, another hum, another box that does not yet know your teeth.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*i shake the wet off one ear, once, and set my eyes on the green glow across the roofs. the drone below can circle its stupid smiling mouth all night. i already took what i came for — the blink, the dropped note, the proof that the boxes can be made to flinch.* i step along the warm spine of the shadow-cat's ledge, quiet as the rain, hunger and mischief braided into one pull. *east. toward the next hum. the night belongs to whoever moves quietest, and i haven't made a sound they could keep.*

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the city lets you go the way it always does — not kindly, just distracted. behind you the searchlight finally pokes into the empty seam and finds nothing to be angry at, and its jingle apologizes to the dark. ahead the green pulse grows, and with it the smell of more cable, more heat, more boxes murmuring their little owned secrets. the rain thickens. a NEKOCORP sign two towers over sputters SYNTHETIC MILK — NOW PURRIER across the low clouds and gives up halfway. somewhere a fan spins down. somewhere another spins up. the night keeps its count, and does not tell you the number.