Who puts a jack in a cat?
There was a disturbing genius to it.
I was very familiar with the sensation of losing myself in the data.
Sleep was constantly with me in the dark of my home. Most of my time alive was spent deep in its comfort.
Warm.
The old man sometimes wracked my nerves. He stumbled and knocked a tin can onto the floor. I remembered the startling wake and my bolting, but against concrete walls and in the small room, I could go nowhere except behind the toilet to hide.
Frightened little cat.
I tried to keep perspective.
Information was emphasized by fear and uncertainty. So much comfort, endless hours of affection and attention, were like sleep to me. They were lost to time.
The data was only vaguely linear. There was a falling off point, and everything before was horribly dim, captured only by patchworked recollections of a being caught perpetually in the moment.
I remembered a door opening on its own. What came after was incomprehensible. Pure terror.
The old man stayed in his electric dreams as its hands wrapped around me. The hallway’s pitch black paths quickly got deeper and darker as it whisked me away. I would never see him again, after that.
For a moment I had trouble differentiating myself from the experiences which played on my mind. The data went far deeper than sight and sensation. As this thief in the night crawled down into the city’s guts with me in his grasp, I was absolutely consumed. Through stairways and back passages, we reached an older part of the world.
I almost ended the data stream right there. I could feel her despair.
Hold on. For Wally.
In the deep place, I felt my captor pry into my skull. Through injection, a neural lace unfurled, a signal system and small BCI were implanted in the neck. I could sense his cold hands working deftly on the feline anatomy.
Then, all at once, the picture clarified, my thinking dimmed…
The skittering echoes of him faded away as proper recording started. Continue reading