First Draft Created: 2024-07-22 19:20
Updated: 2024-07-23 19:20
Last Updated: 2025-01-06 21:57
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 away, stretching deep into the urban abyss, the ground barely viewable from this height.
Just below eye level, flying cars milled back and forth in the endless flow of traffic one was wont to see if one lived in this heart of our city - our metropolis. Our hub.
It was just gone the turn of the new year of 3055, January first, at now 1:35 AM.
The eco-friendly cyber optic sky-lighting the city switched on at this time was beginning to cross-fade out.
They had programmed an excellent display this year, reminiscent of the turn-of-the-2000s-era fireworks that had been lit with combustibles, back when the world was far more destructive, and far less environmentally conscious. City smog and actual nicotine cigarettes had still been a societal problem back then, along with actual fossil-fuel burning for energy - hard to believe. Humans had had a real propensity for combustibles, many even housing fireplaces of real fire, and actual gas stoves in their houses. Piped gas, even! Nostalgia for times past when things were objectively worse certainly was a thing!
I shuddered to think of what life would be like back then. Most cancers weren't even curable!
The cyberlights had been a pleasant semi-distraction, but now they had faded I had to acknowledge the despondency.
In reality, my mind was on other things than celebrating.
With the sudden visual silence came the realisation of why my thoughts turned so far back in time, and why I'd had to remind myself that the Twilight Ages really were times of twilight - not so bright as might be implied by the rosy retrospection from our post-hyper-remodernist (PHRM) recreated period dramas and historical romances implied about the time period.
My nostalgia-prone mind was on how, at this stage of my life, I had had so many goals which I had not yet fulfilled: writing my first bestselling novel, winning an oscar for best ... something... Visit the mount Everest third level sky-escalator...
Well, everybody had done THAT nowadays. It was practically a rite of passage, ever since Johnson Sons' 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 always been to get a cat.
Granted, cats were rare to find in this PHRM era, let alone in this urban jungle. Breeding them had gone out of fashion a millenium ago 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, and real animals tended to be a product of the super wealthy.
But I couldn't help myself. My aspiration had always been to have a real one. Call me old-fashioned, or stuck in that archaic early Second Millenium, back when fleas and ticks and other vile creatures were also a bane of human existence, though I shuddered at the thought of such barely controlled parasites and the chemical pesticides that had been resorted to before human-safe sonic repellents had been invented.
I wouldn't even have been considered young by the standards of those poor ancient people in their darker times of the Twilight Ages.
Still... times of solitude could lead one to contemplate such thoughts as how one could break free from the constraints of PHRM society, that quiet jail we all lived in, do anything to find a companion, to re-live those days where actual warmth and physical contact between family members - including furred family members - was such a social norm, before the logistics of being in-person with another became so expensive and infeasible and leaving one's own pod a luxury.
Back in those darker ages, solitary confinement had been seen as an inhumane punishment, as torture, and now it was just the natural state of living for most humans!
Perhaps it was because my unusual headache symptoms had caused me to neglect to take my psych-balance pills - the ones issued by every government to maintain humanity's mental health and satiation equilibrium - but I had become far less resilient to these naturally evolved feelings within a social species.
Or perhaps the choice had been willing, my writer's curiosity longing to feel what humans of the Twilight Ages had naturally felt without medical wellness assistants, to method-write as if through the eyes of one of my own characters, for the Twilight Ages had become my own favourite time period to craft stories about.
Either way, with the deprival of these pills, I had been starting to feel that I was losing my grip on being able to combat these natural mental vulnerabilities, becoming far less immune to the effects of isolation.
My conscious or unconscious attempts at immersion, and the solitude itself, had been growing, gnawing, and now threatened to engulf me if I did not find a way to resolve it, and soon.
It was becoming enough to drive one to desperation...
And then, suddenly, my teleporter buzzed.
Lights of the livingroom archway illuminated. Someone had paid the heavy toll and was travelling through the direct teleportation system
Visiting me?
At this hour?
I had to remind myself of the purpose of these pods.
Though free-installed in every home by the government, they were unaffordable to most people.
In theory, it wasn't supposed to be 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.
Still, I tended to refrain from this - surprisingly recent despite the age-old technological capabilities - modern custom, and thus outside was dark, as I had left my wall windows to reflect the true outside rather than a hologram, and the few people I kept digital contact with were aware of my nocturnal hours.
They were also aware that these days I did not have much of a social life, despite my youth.
With trepidation, I turned fully to face the illuminated archway. Stepping unnecessarily softly for my own livingroom, I made my way over, and pressed the "receive" button.
My cousin, Ember, materialised into view.
But I could barely even register her presence so much as what immediately hijacked my focus.
In her arms was...
Was...
A cat?
A cat?
A real little ginger, white and black cat?
A calico, they called it back then, something a history buff and cat-enthusiast like myself actually knew.
I had only ever seen pictures of them! Pictures on ancient websites, in the archives of the First Internet!
"So, I hope this isn't too late. I remembered that you always wanted a cat," she greeted me with, her words almost falling over themselves as if she were rushing into a closing warpspeed-market with an urgent late-night request.
"It's... it's like you read my mind!" I exclaimed. "Right now though? I hadn't ... I hadn't even told anyone about... It's a personal... personal thing! How did you know I...?"
My closely-guarded secret!
How had she known?
Had she seen through my shame at longing for companionship of a real creature, at not being satisfied with the technology and for placing myself in the very era I wrote about, as if I knew no better? Was mindreading technology that accurate and affordable now?
"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 at her underground lab. Don't tell anyone, obviously. We're not supposed to have the materials. I'd have told you, but obviously it had to be in person because, you know." She jerked her head towards my standard surveiled cyber-auditory line - the one I'd had modified with a signal jammer because, call me old fashioned, but I hated governments listening in on my daily activities.
"Governments highly regulate them because of the implications, of course," she continued. "But I went back in time and got you a cat. Fully vaccinated both at the time of its origin and apon re-entry via the Twilight Road - I can't tell you their location either, of course, as they could get shut down - 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, even close friends. It might raise suspicions. Particularly as this breed in particular doesn't exist anymore and hasn't for..."
"A millenium," I interjected automatically.
I stepped forward.
I placed my arms around her shoulders and hugged her, gently and gingerly, as I was also hugging the cat in her arms.
"Thank you," I said.
"Thank you. 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 on both world peace and the environment, and from your prison cell five years later you recall an idea you first started to form later tonight and would develop further in the ensuing days. By the way, I am from five years in your future. Which is why I have the haircut."
I hadn't even noticed her punkish haircut, and I was bad at such details. She had a tendency to change her hair every time I saw her, seemingly often, given those were rare occasions that I got to see her in a VR call.
"So anyway," she continued, "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 and more reliable solution and avoided the grandfather paradox risk, and the implications of bringing a cat to the future was itself low-risk, since you never even leave your habitat anyway...
"So yeah, it's been a nightmarish few weeks, and that's why Shawna had to build a time machine. Oh, and keep this cat hidden from my knowledge for the next five years until I bring it up, please, we've taken great care to avoid the repercussions of future-modification so that I only get notified after the events that lead me to get out of the way of my time clone - we really don't need a paradox!"
My mouth dropped open.
"All good? I'm dead on my feet now and I need to take a nap after this. So yeah, see you in five years!"
She waved, stepped backwards into the time arch, slammed her fist backward against the deploy button, and dematerialised with a shimmer.
And here I stand now.
I look downward, in awe, my earlier destructive thoughts now entirely overwhelmed by a growing emotion, tears welling in my eyes and my throat as I realise what just happened.
All of her words will make sense later, but right now...
A soft vibration pulsing from the furry creature in my arms, held close, so close to my chest.
It's... purring!
I bend my face downward, barely aware of the tears now streaming from my eyes, of my now-running nose and of the sobbing coming deep from within my throat and chest, as I gently kiss the top of its beautiful, precious head.
It stirs.
I catch my breath, I freeze, terrified to drop such precious cargo, as it raises itself slightly upward in my arms, as it, too, reflexively lifts its head up against mine, as its head and ears brush my chin and the side of my cheek, and the softness of that precious head and of its little warm body in my arms finally makes the impact of this visit hit home within my psyche.
I have a cat!