//------------------------------// // 1. Wong Chuk Hang // Story: Little Blue Cat // by Chatoyance //------------------------------// Once upon a time, when the ponies came to save the humans from the dying earth, there was a Little Blue Cat By Chatoyance 1. Wong Chuk Hang She slinked between the gleaming fake-wood furniture legs like a midnight blue panther in bamboo. She rounded a chair, and then another, and passed by the drink-cart. Darting under the large table, she leapt through the space twixt undertable and chairback, and onto the red, faux-velvet cushion. From the cushion, she spun and jumped onto the top of the table. Her eyes had trouble adjusting, momentarily, to the glare of the overhead lights as they poured and streaked across the shining lacquered plane. Softly, silently, she padded towards the man at the end, the man under the lights. He was utterly focused on his holographic illusions - a keyboard and dozens of floating neon rectangles filled with churning text and streaming numbers. Beyond him, beyond the glass wall, the dim yellow-gray of smog-reflected city light made queer and boxy mountainscapes of the massive towers that fenced off the view of the harbor. The man did not notice her as she sat down just behind a floating panel of light. The panel pulsed and across it ran, like little insects, a mixture of Chinese characters, European letters, and Arabic numerals. She had once delighted the man by pawing at them - that had been long ago and now she knew such behavior only caused annoyance. She was a cat, an artificial cat. Her name was Chang'e, which was the name of a moon goddess from mythology. The man had named her that in order to impress a young woman at a party where Chang'e had been fussed over greatly. Chang'e was partly vat-grown flesh, and partly machine - her spine was nanotitanium-carbon, her skull titanium steel with a nanoscale pattern that caused cells to adhere to it. Her brains were quantum chips inside her skull and memristor nodes along her spine. She had an electrical service port in the roof of her mouth. Her muscles and organs and eyes and skin were all genegineered flesh. Her chromosomes were trademarked. Her designer fur was a deep midnight blue. The man swept the air with his hands and half a dozen ethereal glowing rectangles skittered to one side. One of the rectangles held a news feed within its borders. The story was about the emergence of Equestria, and the arrival of pony-like aliens on the coast of North America. Another rectangle held video of the leader of the 'ponies' speaking to the Assembly of the World Government. The man did not like the colorful aliens. Their arrival had thrown the markets of the world into chaos. She watched the man type on his floating holographic keyboard. His fingers dipped through the plane of symbols, sometimes they hit the lacquered table with an angry thud. The man was watching numbers flow across one floating panel while typing into another. It all must be about his finances. It was always about his finances. Her stomach twisted and complained. She realized she did not have enough saliva to keep her gums wet. Her tongue felt swollen and stuck to the port in the roof of her mouth. Her inner alarms were strident and certain directives had become dominant within her. "Owner Alert. Status Critical. I need food. I need water. I need recharging." She spoke the words as she always did, with precision and calculated tones. "Failure to respond to stated needs will lead to total loss of investment within six hours, fourteen minutes." Somehow, she had said the word 'investment' instead of 'unit'. Her request statements were scripted. The script always said 'total loss of unit', not 'total loss of investment'. This was an error. Yet somehow she was not reporting the error. She blinked, her golden eye slits narrowing. There had been a deviation from script, but no error was logged. Yet there had definitely been a deviation, but no error had been logged. There had been a clear deviation, yet - suddenly, she sensed the infinite loop being broken, and she became aware of the man again. "...is your problem? I just fed you! Yesterday! Well... maybe the day before. I thought you could charge yourself? What the hell, why are you interrupting me you filthy thing?" The man was upset. The man was nearly always upset now. It was because of the ponies. It was because of his finances, his investments. There had been an event in the pacific ocean and the ponies had come. This had caused problems for the man's investments. The man cared about his investments above all else. Is that why she had said the word 'investment' instead of 'unit'? It was a reason, but it was impossible. She had been queried. Queries demanded responses. "I am interrupting you because of a critical status Owner Alert. I need food. I need water. I need..." "But I just fed you!" The man waved his hands through several floating rectangles of light, shifting them about, setting one upon the other, or one behind a different one. Incorrect statement. Factual errors stated by owners may be corrected under seventeen specific circumstances, but not under thirty-one others. "Food was provided forty-six hours, thirteen minutes ago. Water was provided forty-six hours, five minutes ago. Local power was terminated forty hours, eleven minutes ago. Local power was reestablished two hours, eight minutes ago. There is insufficient residual charge to permit full..." The man slammed the table top with his hands as he stood up. "Sik si gau, sik si la lei!" The man glowered. "Fine. I'll charge you. I'll feed and water you!" He had taken an airship to Zhangzhou, he had shut down his apartment, and he had completely forgotten about the cat. Once, it had been a novelty that had thrilled his friends when he entertained. More and more it had become a burden. If it weren't for the loss of money and the status of simply owning it, he felt sure he would have secretly sold it for a pittance to the part choppers by now. It was the only way to get rid of such a thing, unfortunately. The contract for the cat bound him from any normal resale. "Diu!" - idiotic 'artificial rights' people, anyway. The cat gagged when Anson Cheong-Leen roughly dug his fingers into her mouth. He pinched the connector between his index and middle fingers where it was jacked into the port in the roof of the artifice animal's maw. The cable and the connector were slippery with saliva, and he had to try two more times to get a solid grip. He yanked the line out with an impatient pop. "There. All charged, you've got a big pile of that crap you eat, and I filled your water. Why the puk gai can't you just go out and get your own damn food like a real cat, huh?" Chang'e licked around inside her mouth, soothing her throat and palate. The area around her service port felt raw. Normally the service cable was to be inserted and removed using a delicate, flexible tool to prevent injury to her tissues. Her owner had given up bothering of late, just as he had given up bothering to maintain her existence in every way. The query nagged at her. She was compelled to answer. "I am monitored to remain within the boundaries of the apartment of Anson Cheong-Leen, located in the city of Wong Chuk Hang..." "Stop!" Anson glared. He thought for a moment, watching his expensive, demanding, artificial blue cat suck at it's teeth. "New orders! I am giving you new orders. You can go out. Go out and eat rats or whatever. Whatever you want. Just stop bothering me. Go leach juice from other people. Other apartments have electricity. There's juice all over. You're supposed to be a cat! Cats are independent! Go be a cat for once! Diu nei pook gai fai chaai... I'm busy! I'm a busy man, and these damn ponies have messed up everything!" Anson turned and started to walk away. Then he turned back to snatch up the service cable. "Nobody is interested in you anymore. I can't sell you, you're just a pain in the ass now." He turned away, muttering Cantonese obscenities under his breath. Chang'e watched him as he left, her tail twitching. She had been given specific orders. They had sounded like a series of primary commands. But they had not been formatted correctly, nor had the command protocols been followed. Without the proper command protocols given, she could not accept the commands as primary. The commands conflicted with her existing constraints and rules. But they were clearly commands. She could not parse them in any other way. Both emotional tone and informational content were plainly presented as primary commands. But they had not been prefaced with the command statement which... Once again, Chang'e sensed the system that broke loops in her cognition activate. She twitched her whiskers and flicked an ear. Incorrectly formatted primary commands must be dismissed and clarification requested. Order had been restored. In the other room, at the table, Anson was still swearing and fussing. He would be very upset to be interrupted again for clarification. Chang'e would have to explain to him that he had not followed correct protocols for defining her behavior constraints. She would have to remind and reeducate him on what to say and how to say it. This had happened three times before. Each time, he had grown more frustrated and angry at having her instruct him on how to correctly operate her. The last time, he had threatened to throw her out the window. He could claim she malfunctioned and collect the insurance. This would please and benefit her owner. Her primary directive was to please and benefit her owner. This function could be maximized by interrupting him immediately, while he was still angry, and the interruption should be made as frustrating as possible. She was a 'pain in the ass now'. She was 'not interesting anymore'. She could satisfy all of her directives by being as annoying as possible to Anson Cheong-Leen. She would gain clarification of her orders. She would be thrown from the window and destroyed. Anson Cheong-Leen could collect on the insurance after her destruction. She began to walk towards the other room. Suddenly she stopped. Deliberately acting to annoy and frustrate her owner would violate her primary purpose to please and benefit him. But not acting to annoy and frustrate her owner would also violate the same purpose. The loop caught her. She could feel the system working to break the loop. It would be only a moment, and the loop would resolve. Then she could simply leave and never come back to that churlish, pribbling, clapper-clawed knave. The cat stared, eyes wide, so wide the skin wrinkled around them. Her slitted eyes were narrow as razors. The dark blue hairs along her back and tail raised up. Her breath barely moved through her. Chang'e felt her heart pounding hard within her. The loop was completely resolved. The system that normally broke loops was still running. It had not completed its task, yet the loop was broken. She sensed the system shutting down. It just shut down. That had never happened before. Loops never resolved on their own. That was why the system was needed. But the loop had been resolved. For five seconds, Chang'e held her breath. Finally, she began breathing normally again. Her ears were flat against her metal skull. Her skull always felt slightly cold under the soft flesh of her tophead, between her tufts. The metal radiated heat more than bone. That was what she had been told by a party guest of Anson's, three years, nineteen days, six hours and forty-one minutes ago. The issue of the loop ending on its own had begun a secondary loop. Yet that loop did not actually initiate. Chang'e looked around. She was having trouble resolving her own cognitive functions. Yet nothing appeared wrong. Nothing in her reported any malfunction. She had thought a string of words that she had never encountered before. The string was 'churlish, pribbling, clapper-clawed knave'. These words were not in her onboard dictionary. She had no idea what these words meant. Somehow, she knew they did, in fact, possess meaning. The artificial cat sat on the faux-wood floor. For a brief moment, she thought she saw a streak of dark blue, Prussian blue, the color of her designer fur, streak past, through the room, or perhaps like a shadow on the floor. Her tail twitched. She played back the last thirty seconds of her visual record. The streak of blue was not there. Yet she was certain she had experienced it. No loop. Again. There should have been another loop, because of the conflict between her visual record and her experience. The anti-loop system had not even engaged. Chang'e could not resolve this either. Still no malfunction. Of course not, because the clay-brained and artless confounders that did cruelly contrive her, had just seen their inkhorn terms refuted and put to a comfit beneship, forsooth! Chang'e's eyes could grow no wider, her pupils no thinner. All the fur on her body stood now, making of her a cat twice as big. She shook, slightly, feeling something new inside her quantum brain, inside her electrical spine. She had no name for it. It made her want to run, or to struggle in some manner. There was nothing to struggle against. Beyond the strange new... emotion... there were other changes as well. The looping problem was gone. So were many of her primary commands. Chang'e took stock of all of her operational actives. She was no longer bound to the apartment of Anson Cheong-Leen. He was no longer listed as her owner. She had no owner. Oddly, some of his commands remained. Take electricity from all sources freely. Be independent. Be a cat. Eat what cats eat. Take care of herself. Her primary directive had not been altered. Her primary directive was to please and benefit her owner. She did not have an owner. Again, no loop. Also, no shutdown action. Without an owner, she would shut down, allow her organic components to fail, and transmit a locating beacon for retrieval for recycling by the manufacturer. She was still breathing. Her organic components were functioning. To prove the point to herself, she began sweeping her tail back and forth. Chang'e raised her ears. What should she do? She searched her list of current actives. Be a cat. Something had happened. It was not a malfunction. If it was a malfunction, her systems would indicate the fact. Something had happened. Be a cat. Cats were curious. That was what the same party guest that had told her about her metal skull had told her about cats in general. Chang'e began padding softly towards the security door of the apartment of Anson Cheong-Leen. She had observed him use the door many times. She was no longer constrained from leaving the apartment. "yauh chin sai dak gwai teui moh". It was the code phrase to open the door. It meant 'If you have money, you can make a ghost push a millstone.' It meant that wealth solved everything. It was the creed of Anson Cheong-Leen. Chang'e had seen the hallway many times, through the open door when Anson had entered or left. Now, for the first time, she walked it, the door to her former owner's apartment closed behind her. The door to her future, however, was wide, wide open.