First Draft Created: 2024-07-30 18:45
The Threat of New Overlords has really grown on me and I'm hoping to turn it into a longer story. At a writer's meetup, I found a way to turn the theme "shit all over the place" into the start of a new chapter of the story of Steve, Max, the Cat Empire, the subservient humans and the mysterious alien visitors.
The stormwater was rushing, everywhere and anywhere, pouring its way over rooftops, overflowing gutters... The nearby construction site was just a river of mud, some carelessly left cement powder now ruined by builders whose job it clearly wasn't to manage supplies. My shoes squelched, soggy and caked with mud, but at least not with cement. I had had THAT much forethought, even if not enough to bring a rainoat. Or it was just fate.
I wrapped my inadequately waterproof "rain"coat around me, shivering from my sopping hair down to my soaked-through muddy socks.
Curse Steve's informants!
Sure, cats were better than humans at tracking down elusive rodents - and by Steve's argument that there WERE rats involved. Though right now, I was the one doing all the recon work, and Steve's argument, made in front of the nice warm fire as he settled down on all fours and cleaned his whiskers, just didn't seem to hold water.
Sure, he was my cat and master, as assigned to me by our benevolent Overlords of the Cat Empire but even a human could turn, when he was chilled to the bone and glistening with rainwater. And despite the fear of waking up with Steve lying on my chest, sharpening his claws, I had found some pride, some dignity as a man, and reminded him that he, my master, still needed me. He had not like that, but he had restrained himself from violence, choosing instead to withdraw to his shadowy attic, his domain where he knew I feared to tread, and I had watched him go, gratefully.
But now, it seemed, he was sending me on a wild goose chase, knowing my being fearful of cold would torment me and that I could not refuse his command, or even his suggestion, that I be the one to go searching for rodents - the rodents supposedly at the heart of it all.
Though how exactly rats - and Steve had swished his tail and hissed at me when I'd protested, for he was convinced it was rats- were behind potential disinformation being sown between humans and our alien diplomat visitors I could not fathom.
And why Steve, unabashedly, allowed a human to do what he distainfully called a cat's job in tracking down rodents ... well ... "It's a way for you to redeem yourself" he'd said last night. "After your failed meeting with those useless human informants, who couldn't tell you any more than the journalists. Trailing these rats is so simple, even a human could do it. You wouldn't even need the specialised skills of your rat-catchers!" And he could not resist a sneer at this.
I was convinced it was payback for my retort about how, master or none, he needed me, and the Cat Empire, our overlords NEEDED humans. Payback... or maybe just more of his mind games. He was spiteful enough for that. Or...
I paused, huddled beneath the overhand of the building that was to be my destination as the rain poured and pounded around me, still splashing much of my body.
Or. OR. Or perhaps... Steve had actually been unsettled by my uncharacteristic rebellion. Perhaps this was just a test of his power. A test of whether I would still obey him, or whether in fact, he was just setting me up to fail.
That one made sense. The previous Friday, after my meeting with the "useless human informants" as Steve had called them, he had been sure to drill into me just how much the Cat Overlords had done to protect their human slaves. He'd spoken specifically of the Black Death, and how it had been cats who had saved us from the kamikaze infected rats whose kings had ordered them to infect the fabric that would form our linen and be transported via trade routes, for maximum damage to humans with minimal casualties, so that even today our scientists were confused as to how so few rats had caused so many human deaths, even attributing those deaths to human spread.
Steve had made it clear that cats had been our salvation against the rats, that should the alien visitors on their so-called "diplomatic" mission to speak with the World Government be actually hostile invaders, they would not protect us from the rats. Nor would they protect the environment from either human or alien destruction, as still fragile New Environmental Task Force was attempting to do.
A rap at the window I was standing outside, which startled me.
An old man with a beard worthy of Merlin himself was peering out at me.
"Ah!" I said "I see you're here to meet me? I'm max"
"You don't look it," he glared, looking down at me.
"Open up already!" I said, irritably. "STEVE sent me. Do you want the Cat Empire to come after you for keeping me waiting? You know his rank as the..."
"Alright alright!" the man had gone pale and was fumbling for the nearby door, pulling back bolts and chains with haste. Why so much security on this store, even after hours? It was just an old bookshop!
The door yanked open.
"So you're... the owner?"
"No," he said, sombrely, since grumbling at Third Favoured Feline Steve's representative was not an option, "I'm the groundsman. Sir," he added. "Forgive me. I hadn't been informed Steve was the one behind this meeting. They must have escalated the concerns." He looked at me hesitantly, quizzically.
"That's classified," I said, only because I didn't know. Steve didn't tell me anything but what I needed to know, but that was no reason I couldn't pull rank in his absence. Being the sole trusted representative of a high-ranking cat in the Cat Shadow World Government's Covert division had to count for something.
The books caught my attention as soon as I walked in. Piles of shit everywhere. Honestly, this place MUST be a front. No self-respecting bibliophile would treat books this way.
A large portrait and a smaller photograph on the wall caught my attention. It was general Cattus, leader of the unfree world of humans. Of course, those in the know knew that he was actually dead - he had lied about his age when appointed, lied too about an elixir which had kept him young, which of course no human scientists could come close to understanding the technology behind, but what Steve had told me was that it was his son who now ruled the Cat Shadow World Government.
"So," I said to him, "I am here to ask a favour."
"And I will never not grant that favour if it is for a cat," he responded. The password and response we had been assigned by Steve, he was indeed the man I should be speaking to and not an imposter or some goofy middleman.
"Alright then," I proceeded. "So I hear a rodent disinformers are attempting to disrupt the alien visit and cause a war, encourage an alien invasion."
"Sort of," he said.
"Steve told me to tell you that you are a lowly rat and your broken telephone informers will be the death of the mission and that you should listen better next time as he hates to spoonfeed you. And to tell you you can go home now and he'll forgive you for the shitstorm your inept human informers created. And when you get home you can clean the house, he says this is a double punishment, not only for the shit show you caused, but he hopes you will take him seriously this time when he says he is also tired of you leaving your shit all over the place."