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In a desolate corner of the Empire, A man walks alone through an empty paved landscape. He enters a remote Gov-com facility. The building is utterly utilitarian. Ultraviolet Light pours out of the doorway when the man enters the building. The inside of the building is white, neat and clean. There is a cat wandering in the facility. Moments later the man enters his office. The cat comes into the office after the man. IT purrs, IT walks through his legs, the man ignores IT. He stands at his desk and looks at the papers individually. The machine wanders out of the office, apparently loosing interest in the bright young scientist. IT cleans itself, and purrs quietly in the hallway.
The man, having browsed through his papers. walks through the antiseptic halls to the door of a freezer. He is soon in a thermal suit of some sophistication. The fabric is not bulky with insulation. It is sleek and modern. When he enters the freezer we see another man is already in the freezer. He wears the same gear. They are walking among frozen bodies. He says to his colleague, “I see you activated that damn cat. How long have you been in here?”
The two men confer. We ponder the likeness of the laboratory cat to the animal that lived at Dwnwrdspyrl. IT looks very similar to Sir. Charles (The Fat Cat). Eventually, with formalities being dispensed, their conversation turns to the business of the day.
The man says, “It was a bad day that damn Cat came back. When are they going to retire IT?” The man knows his colleague can empathize. “We don’t need no more work. Pets.. What will we be doing next... fish?”
“They may age this one, they haven’t made up their weak little minds. People expect to see a cat at the club. It has something to do with the book, you know...Looking Glass.” The man’s face looked blank. His colleague had seen the book by Lewis Caroll in a library once, but had no reason to open it. This meant neither of the men knew the story. It was not a summer blockbuster. The man didn’t waste his time reading children’s books. His colleague never read fiction, let alone surrealist adventure. The two of them were unhappy at the thought of the cat aging. IT meant more work for them. Their work load was increasing all the time; their pay was not increasing. It was a pity, their plight, but their condition was not uncommon.
The men were loading a frozen body onto the forklift. The man continued his lament. “There’s more and more of these every night. I don’t think they are retiring them fast as they should. I say you should explain a disappearance as them getting sick, or hit by a car. Why keep them going? We could help them disappear, you know, like Elvis. Fucking Rock Stars, so eager to work for the man. We should just blow them away in public like the Russians. It’s a simple solution. and the problem is gone, and every freak like them gets a little straighter, a little quieter. Keeps that hair under his hat, or goes to see Sweeny the barber.”
“Come on, man, you bitch about that fat ass Count and the Cat, but I ain’t never heard you bitch about Megan showing up.” His colleague was right, no one at the facility minded deploying a tiny dancer. Watching her begin to breathe, Bringing her a warm cup of coffee to get IT’s metabolism to crank up. Each time was utterly the same. Each time the dancer would start anew, would innocently step into a Brave New World. After the chill wore off, the skin would be moist from condensation. The beautiful wet creature would be confused at first, even a little vulnerable... asking questions, trying to remember. “Why am I so cold?” were always Megan’s first words. Utterly, pathetically, predictably, without change, for ever, and every redeployment would begin the same. IT would be almost scared to begin with - almost like a child. She would then go to the programmers. The man wouldn’t see IT again until IT was cooling off. He thought of the Count getting put back in his coffin, or the cat in its sarcophagus every time he saw IT. He felt uncomfortable thinking about IT, as he witnessed a thousand quiet, cold, and temporary deaths.
“I still think that the cat is bad luck,” The man continued to gripe. “Why couldn’t IT get run over by a car or something?”
“I told you it’s in the book, the one with the mirror and mushrooms,” he snapped. The man’s colleague was tired of the list of grievances his coworker had. This is the reason he came in early. He was so unhappy to be at work with the man, that he came in, and did everything he could do alone, before the man showed up. Loading the forklift was one job he couldn’t do alone; so he cursed it under his breath. He alone had hated seeing the first dancer, this proved he was smarter than the man, because he had a feeling the management was opening another operation, and more dancers would follow. While the man was Star struck, like everyone at the facility, he had only hate for Megan from the start. The ultimate blow up doll created for sin after sin. The company was getting a lot better at making the machines last too. He was not seeing as many retirements as he had in the past. When the facility opened there were mainly General Infantry Medics (GIM’s). They got shot up pretty regularly. Then the opposition politicians began to plagued them, then the politician’s wives showed up, and now dancers and that damn cat. If the men in power were predictable, their children would show up next. Unluckily, the technology could not only duplicate itself, it was always getting smaller. The man was right. The programmers were programming a cat, it was a bad sign. The Egyptians, and their beloved cats, were acquiring immortality at his expense. IT sucked.
“I remember the good old days,” the man’s colleague said. with a false tone of melancholy, and wiping away an imaginary tear. “We’d fry them as often as freezing them. The Governor’s wife was the first machine they artificially aged, and I could see that extended deployments just meant more work for us. They made it so real her daughter never even knew. Even if she knew, she shut the fuck up about it. I keep expecting to see one of her show up. You know she’s a dancer.” He cursed under his breath. “Maybe that’s why they started making dancers?”
