First Draft Created: 2024-07-22 19:20
Updated: 2024-07-23 19:20
I walked over to the wall-length window of my home living-capsule, and gazed out onto buzzing cityscape. Far below me, the buildings of the high-rises fell into the abyss, the ground barely viewable from this height. Almost at eye level, flying cars milled back and forth in the endless flow of traffic one was wont to see if one lived in the heart of the city, our metropolis, our hub.
It was just gone the new year of the year 3055, but my mind was on other things than celebrating. It was on how, at this stage of my life, I had had so many goals that I had not yet fulfilled. Write my first bestselling novel, win an oscar for best ... something... Climb mount Everest - everybody had done THAT nowadays, it was practically a rite of passage, ever since Johnson Corp had released their new youth pills, more effective than many of the brands before, which had given a mere sixty-year-old like me with my baby face no excuse for not getting back out on the hiking trail. But the biggest goal, the most seemingly unattainable so far, had been to get a cat.
Cats were rare to find in this urban plane. Somehow they had gone out of fashion when rat treatment had become more effective, and virtual pets and robot companions had taken over, as a far easier, more portable, more practical and less messy alternative.
But I couldn't help myself. My aspiration had always been to have a real one. Call me old-fashioned, or stuck in the archaic 21st century, back when fleas and ticks and other vile creatures were also a bane of human existence. I shuddered at the thought. I wouldn't even have been young by the standards of those poor ancient people in their darker times.
Suddenly, my teleporter buzzed. Incoming? At this hour?
It wasn't unusual for people to visit each other at all hours, now that we lived under a holographic dome sky which people could customise the filter of from their own pod - outside was dark as I had left my wall windows to reflect the true outside rather than a hologram - and people were aware of my nocturnal hours. However, these days I did not have much of a social life, despite my youth.
I walked over to the illuminated archway and pressed the "receive" button, and my cousin Ember materialised into view.
In her hands was... a real little ginger, white and black cat? A calico, had they called it back then? I had only ever seen pictures of them on ancient websites, in the archives of the First Internet.
"So, I hope this isn't too late. I remembered that you wanted a cat," she greeted me with.
"It's... it's like you read my mind!" I exclaimed. "Right now? I hadn't even told anyone about..."
"Oh, it's no coincidence," she said. "You're going to tell me about it in a week. That's why I'm here now."
Before my face could even fully register confusion she interjected "Shawna finally created a time travel device. Don't tell anyone, obviously. We're not supposed to have the materials. Governments highly regulate them because of the implications. But I went back in time and got you a cat. Fully vaccinated both at the time of its origin and apon re-entry, and it went through our own quarantining and medical scans, before we came back in time to you here, so don't worry about any ancient diseases re-surfacing.
But yeah, uhm... you might not want to let too many people know you have a cat. It might raise suspicions. Particularly as this breed doesn't exist anymore and hasn't for centuries.
I stepped forward and hugged her, gently, as I was also hugging the cat in her arms.
"Thank you," I said. "You don't know what this means to me."
"I do know,' she said. "You do something drastic in a week to get hold of a cat which has global ramifications, and from your prison cell years later you recall an idea you first started to form later tonight and develop further in the ensuing days.
We thought intervening in your loneliness by supporting you as a family would help, but that only created other ripple effects and risked creating a time paradox. Finally we realised that just going back far in time before any of us were born and getting you a cat was a safer solution, since you never leave your habitat anyway.
Why do you think Shawna had to build a time machine?"