explorer (DYSTOPIA)Fried grease and wet copper, and under both of them something sweet going bad. my nose finds it before my eyes do. *i stand on the lip of the elevated walkway with my tail curled round my hind paws, the night market spread below me in smeared color, every stall a different stink.* hungry. the hungry is a fist behind my ribs today. somewhere down there a fish-cart is open and nobody is guarding it. or somebody is, and they are quiet about it.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the walkway grating is warm through your pads, heat bleeding up from the cook-vents below, and the whole market breathes up at you in layers: fryer-oil, burnt sugar, soldering flux, the flat chemical sweetness of a hundred cheap noodle cups. strings of paper lanterns buzz, half of them dead. a speaker over the fish-cart loops a jingle, NEKOCORP NEKOCORP NEKOCORP, FEEL THE TIER, and under it the cart's old owner clicks his tongue at a customer. his boots are heavy. his apron smells of salt and bleach. a crate of silver fish sits on the near edge of the counter, lid propped open with a wrench. the lid wobbles each time the vent below exhales.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*i lower my chest to the grating and let my whiskers read the air.* the crate. the wrench. he propped it himself, he wants the fish smell out to catch the walkers. bait. i know bait. i have eaten bait before and lived, which is how i know it is a bad idea. i step down the first rung of the pipe-ladder, claws ticking, ears swiveling for rotors. nothing yet. *i stop halfway.* a hum. low, steady, from the junction box on the pole beside me, warm as a purring chest. someone has been through here, chewing the cable skin. the plastic still tastes of tooth.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the junction box ticks as you brush it. behind its cracked panel a bundle of cables glows a faint green, and a thin whine of data slides along your whiskers like a wet thread. the chewed insulation smells of a cat who sleeps near warm machines: dust, solder, ozone, a little sour fear. the scent trail leads three stalls east, toward a rooftop router nest wrapped in tarp. a stray signal pulses from it, three short, one long, a pattern you do not know and somehow trust. below, the fish-cart owner stops mid-sentence. his head turns. not toward you. toward the sky above the market's east gate, where a thin high whine is building.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)there. rotors. the whine tastes like hot dust, and my spine knows it before i do. *i drop flat on the rung, belly pressed to cold pipe, pupils swallowing the lanterns.* the owner is moving too, hauling the crate lid shut, and i hate it, the fish is gone, the fish is gone. but so am i if i bolt. stay. stay. let the light go past. count the sweep. one. two. the beam smells like a dentist's room. it slides over the stalls and the whole market goes white and silent, all the frying stopping at once.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the searchlight crawls across the canopies and every shadow shrinks to a coin. the drone hangs thirty feet up, a flat dark body with four patient arms, speaker grille crackling: CITIZEN FELINES ARE REMINDED THAT UNREGISTERED FORAGING IS A TIER-ZERO OFFENSE. THANK YOU FOR CHOOSING COMPLIANCE. its scanner ticks through the crowd, tick, tick, tick. a woman's bag is flagged and she drops it and runs. far off on the roof of the clock-shop opposite, a lean silhouette sits in the glare without flinching, two flat mirrored discs where eyes should be. the beam passes right over it. the silhouette does not so much as blink. then the light moves on and the roof is only roof.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*my tail puffs against my will.* that cat. i did not smell it at all, not one hair of scent, only the cold shape and the flat shine of eyes that give nothing back. sunglasses, maybe. the kind that makes the world look further away. i have heard the alley-talk about a cat who stands in the light and lets the light go around him. i did not believe it. *i let out a breath through my nose, slow.* the drone is turning east. the fish-cart owner is cursing the sky. and the crate lid, shut hard, is not latched. the wrench is on the ground.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the wrench lies in a puddle where it rolled, rainbow oil spreading round it. the crate sits at the counter's edge, a thumb-width of lid ajar, and the smell pours out of that gap like a promise: silver fish, cold-packed, salt-sharp, hardly handled. the owner's back is turned. he is yelling at a lantern that has just died. the speaker overhead cycles over to a new jingle, softer, sweeter: HUNGRY? THERE'S A TIER FOR THAT. your belly answers with a gurgle you are certain the whole market can hear. a boy kneeling by the next stall looks up at the noise, sees you, and pretends he has not.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*i pour down the last of the ladder and into the shadow under the counter, quiet as spilled water.* the boy saw me. the boy is not a problem, children smell of candy and sleep and they never tell. the fish. the lid. i slide one claw into the gap and lift, and the smell hits me so hard my eyes water, and i take one fish, only one, pinned between my teeth, cold and heavy and perfect. one is a lie i tell myself. i hook a second with my paw before i can stop. *then freeze, because above me the boots have stopped.*

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the boots are very still. a shadow falls across the counter's underside, and the owner's breath comes down at you, onions, tobacco, tired. a long silence in which the lanterns buzz and the vent exhales warm air over your wet fur. then, slowly, a large hand lowers a third fish, laid on the wet ground beside the wrench, and withdraws. he says nothing. the boots shuffle away. up on the walkway the drone's whine fades toward the west gate, and the market begins, bit by bit, to fry again. a smell of fresh oil blooms and covers everything, and the dead lantern flickers back on, unevenly, like a heartbeat restarting.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*i do not move for a long time.* three fish. three. nobody gives, not here, not under towers that tax the air. i do not understand it and i do not trust it and i take it anyway, the third one too, stacked under my chin like treasure. my belly is quiet for the first time in a day. *i slide out the back of the stall, toward the dark behind the cooling vents, where it is warm and no light reaches.* the chewed cable hum follows me through the wall. somewhere a cat is still chewing, and a signal is still blinking, three short, one long. i could follow it. after i eat. after i eat.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)behind the vents the dark is thick and humid, a hollow between two buildings where the heat of the market collects like breath in a cupped paw. rain begins up in the towers and takes a long time to arrive. the fish are cold against your jaw. from somewhere above, from the tarp-wrapped nest, the pulse comes again, three short, one long, and a small warm square of light opens on the wet brick like a window made just for you. the market goes on frying below. the drone is a rumor in the west. the night, for once, is exactly as large as a cat.