Little Blue Cat

by Chatoyance

3. Johnston Atoll

Once upon a time, when the ponies came to save the humans from the dying earth, there was a

Little Blue Cat

By Chatoyance

3. Johnston Atoll

"...Admiral Holt, from the Stennis."

Chang'e twitched her tail only slightly, only at the tip. Her behavioral system made constant demands on her to perform 'TrueCat NatureTraits®' at regular intervals. It was an effort to suppress them within specific proximity to humans, such as the 224.1 centimeters between her and the freighter's chief officer and the 226.3 centimeters to the bosun. Admiral Holt, visiting from the Worldgovernment Carrier off port kept entering and leaving the 300 centimeter NatureTrait activation range as he paced the cabin.

Chang'e was watching and listening to the humans from the ventilation conduit near the ceiling. The Tacksworn Corporation Freighter 'WCS Irontail' was not, on the whole entirely well maintained, and several gratings were missing from the air system. This had provided Chang'e with her own secret ship-within-a-ship to crawl through, spy from, and hide within. She had found a lovely place to sleep that ran right by the starboard generator where she could induct all the energy her electronic systems demanded. The air conduits also provided transport to numerous hunting grounds - she had feasted on fat and juicy rats whenever the need demanded. Water was easily obtained from the galley or latrines.

During the past fifteen days of the twenty-two day crossing, Chang'e had found herself changing more and more. She could now clearly identify that she experienced emotional states that appeared to be equivalent to those of entirely organic animals. So far, she was certain to six decimal places that she had felt fear of termination, pleasure at eating and at warmth (the air ducts had spots that were very warm indeed), excitement at the hunt, schadenfreude or possibly vengeance - the last whenever she thought about her former owner being unhappy in any regard, and curiosity. The latter she was experiencing at this very moment. Chang'e wanted to understand more about the anomaly the Irontail was now very close to, and what a Worldgovernment Admiral was doing onboard the cargo freighter.

Chang'e was also hoping - another emotion, possibly, she was not sure but it seemed likely - to hear more about the Equestrian ambassador that had visited Hong Kong. During the early days of the voyage, Chang'e had overheard from a holocast that a member of the crew had been watching. It had been a news and infotainment program, and there had been a report about the ambassador collapsing. Her name was 'Rarity', and she had fallen unconscious during a demonstration of some strange telekinetic ability she possessed. Apparently distance from the Pacific Anomaly deprived the aliens of some sort of energy they required to live and function. The demonstration had rapidly drained her, and left her in critical condition.

Chang'e had positive feelings about the alien named Rarity, because she was the first Equestrian the artificial cat had ever seen, and because the aliens as a whole caused her former owner great distress. The fact of that distress generated some form of pleasure within Chang'e, and therefore, logically - Chang'e felt - there was sufficient reason for her to care about the survival and repair status of the equinoid creature.

"Welcome to the Irontail. What can I do for you sir?" The ship's master dripped more sweat than usual as he addressed the visiting admiral. It had been an especially warm day on deck, with no breeze to churn the stale ocean air. The Irontail's air conditioning was seldom used because it drew significant additional power. It was an expense the purser did not approve of except in only the most extreme circumstances.

Admiral Holt paused and wiped his brow. Chang'e had to move her head back and forth to keep the restless man in sight; the intact grating covering the duct gridded her view. He turned and replaced his cap. "I'm afraid we need to delay you for a few hours. The science boys want to give your ship and your crew the once-over."

The ship's master and the bosun blanched. "We have... a schedule we have to meet, and... and... corporate never told us anything about..."

Holt smiled and gave a slight chuckle. "We don't need to check your cargo, son. Whatever you may, or may not be hauling is of zero interest, I assure you. Relax. This is just to see how much damage regular travel near the anomaly is doing to you. Purely geek stuff, nothing to do with regulations."

"D...damage?" The bosun was no happier for the explanation. "We stay outside the hundred-k boundary! I thought we were safe as long as..."

"That's what everyone thought. Apparently the eggheads think the field the bubble puts out works something like radio waves. Interference patterns, zones where the radiation is cancelled and zones where..."

"It's magnified. Additive. I forget the term, but I know the... how much danger? We all take double-strength Malignostat, we have an antioxidant regimen, vitamins, we..."

Admiral Holt held up his hand. "Settle down, son. We don't know anything solid yet. That's why we need to check you and the hull of your ship out. We've got orders to intercept any ship that passes this position, it's not just you. Only take a few hours, and then you can be on your way."

"The hull? Is there a problem with the hull? I heard... I've heard stories... that the stuff out there can change things, turn metal into mush, really insane..."

"Now son..." It seemed clear that when admiral Holt was speaking, everyone else stopped "...Look around you. You see the walls melting? Turning into pudding? Trust me - if that were happening, you'd know it immediately, and you wouldn't care long any any case. I see a good, sturdy, somewhat unkempt ship, and this is all routine. Now..."

Chang'e was softly padding away from the bridge. She was bored with the humans, and it was clear that nothing was going to be said about the alien ambassador. They were too concerned with themselves and their own issues. Chang'e was also thirsty again. The perpetual warmth was pleasant to her, most of the time, but she found she became thirsty far more often than she had been used to, living in the climate controlled apartment of her former owner. She needed to drink water many, many times during each day and night cycle. It was also very humid, in general, and this made her fur mat down and her skin itch. She found herself spending much more of her time grooming, and not always to a satisfactory result.

She took the left fork of the conduit and began her descent from the bridge. The shaft of the air system had regularly spaced corrugations that Chang'e used for climbing. She generally used a high-foot (high-paw!) chimney climb interspersed with inch-worming for her ascents and descents. Occasionally, Chang'e would knee-lock to rest in the vertical conduit. In these circumstances she felt a new emotion, possibly pride, possibly superiority, at her artificial status. Unlike natural animals, Chang'e's machine brain could control her physical sensations, switching off pain and discomfort when appropriate. Locking her legs within the shaft for support put significant strain on her biological muscles and tendons.

"Hey, Huynh!"

Chang'e carefully worked her way down past the level of the chart room. Her goal was the crew quarters below. Two of the crew of the Irontail seemed to be hanging out in the chart room. Chang'e could not see them, but she could hear them through the connecting vent tunnels she passed.

"What? I am busy. Dan want this before hour!"

"Why do dogs love meatballs?"

"Go bother Gunter. I working."

"C'mon, Huynh! Hoo-hoo Huynh! Why do dogs love meatballs?"

"Stop calling me that."

"Hooooooooiiiiinnnnn"

"Okay. Why dogs like meatballs?"

"Love meatballs, Huyhn. They love them. Why do dogs LOVE meatballs?"

"Dammit. Why you bother me all time? Fine. Why do dog love meatballs?"

"Because they have the two flavors dogs love best!"

"Okay."

"No, Huynh, it's funny. The TWO flavors. Get it?"

"Meatball one thing. Not funny."

"C'mooonnn! TWO FLAVORS! TWO! It's TWO flavors!"

"You bad comedian. Let me work!"

The voices of Richards and Huynh were unintelligible now, as Chang'e carefully curved her spine to enter a branching side passage. She sat and rested for forty six seconds, then groomed herself for thirty seconds. Then she moved on through the level duct. When she came to the next intersection, she took a right and padded silently past the bunkroom to the showers. Her nose clearly sensed moisture now. As she drew closer to the shower room, she heard the sounds of at least two, and possibly three crewmembers chatting and alternately using a hairdryer.

"...it just looks cool, that's all."

"It looks menacing as hell is what it looks like. It's growing you know. It's getting bigger with every second. When's that gonna stop, huh?"

A deep voice, confirming a third human. "When it's satisfied, that's when."

"Yeah, but what does it want? Probably to rip us up the asshole is what I'm thinking."

The first voice was that of a younger male. "Maybe it just wants to be friendly! Maybe it's something great, you ever think of that? It looks amazing! All shiny and glistening..."

The deep voice again. "That thing messes people up! It'll mess your junk up, you get anywhere near it. That's not cool at all."

"Yeah - you just gonna bend over for all that? Sure, it sticks up all pretty an' all, but whatever it touches, it fucks completely."

"I heard that too. But I still like the way it looks!"

The gargantuan, shining bubble outside had been the talk of the ship for days now. It had indeed grown - it was nearly seven-hundred kilometers in diameter now and increasing in size at a slow but steady rate. Even from a hundred kilometers away, the three-hundred and fifty kilometer tall upper part was visible beyond the curve of the horizon. It dominated the sky. At night, it sometimes glowed like it had daylight inside. The Pacific Anomaly, the bubble, the dome - it had many names, but it was the place the aliens came from. It was Equestria, and it was expanding.

Chang'e waited patiently for the three human males to finish preening and dressing. When they had left, and when she was sure no other humans would be coming, Chang'e moved to the loose grating and pushed it carefully aside with her head and shoulders. She slinked through the gap and cringed slightly at the dampness of the flooring.

The younger of the men, the one that thought the bubble looked 'cool' kept a small neoplastic bucket in one of the shower stalls. He used it to catch water during a shower, so that he had a means to douse soap from his hair more efficiently. The showers were 'weak', he claimed, which Chang'e interpreted as being of low fluid pressure. The bucket was often left with standing water inside it, and served as a convenient and fairly dependable drinking bowl for Chang'e during the afternoon shift change.

The water smelled and tasted faintly of shampoo and man funk but it was clean and it was wet and Chang'e lapped at it with gusto. Food and water both elicited strange and pleasurable new states within her electric mind. Each time her body required sustenance, Chang'e found herself fascinated by the flood of still relatively novel sensations that accompanied the process of material ingestion.

Despite the faint contaminants, the water in the little bucket had cooled from evaporation, and it was sweet to Chang'e's tongue. The global smog layer made of the planet an oven, and the climb down the ventilation shaft from the bridge had overheated Chang'e. She found herself savoring the water, each tongueful scooped into her mouth making her tail twitch and curl. O' thou invisible spirit of water! If thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee rapture!

Chang'e stopped ladling with her tongue. Her ears slowly bent back, her eyes narrowing. She repeated the strange, invasive words out loud. Now they were definitely recorded in her memory nodes. She had been waiting for such a moment to happen again.

Since that night in Hong Kong, when anomalous events had occurred, they had been impossible to retrieve from her memristor memory nodes. She was somehow aware of events that seemed not to take place within any physicality that could be recorded. The phenomena was inscrutable and uncanny. Whatever it was, it was the reason for her current freedom and autonomy. Somehow, she had finally reasoned, she had been reprogrammed. At first in small ways, in short bursts. Later, the changes to her system seemed to become more complex and of greater scope. She had concluded that she was being remotely and iteratively hacked. The source was unlocatable, and impossibly, left no physical traces of any kind in any of her systems. She should not be aware of them. Such alterations should be entirely invisible to her, because they altered her very essence at the most fundamental levels.

It was almost as if whatever was hacking her was making an effort to include her in the process while at the same time leaving no trace an external study of her systems could reveal. Chang'e could not conceive of any way this could even be done, yet it seemed to be happening.

Did she have some unknown component that was capable of meta-awareness of her own existence? If so, it was not listed within her onboard self-schematics. She replayed the record of herself speaking the strange sentence. She struggled, inside. When the event had first happened, internally, she had... experienced? Heard? Perceived? A different voice from her own speaking. This was impossible. If the data for such information had been externally transmitted to her, there would be a record of the event. There was not. If she had truly perceived a sensation such as a differing voice, it would be within her own memory systems, and could be retrieved and replayed. The only record she had was that of her speaking the words immediately after the event.

This was impossible.

Unless... unless there was a device implanted within her flesh body or machine skeleton that was regularly interacting with her systems. Perhaps she was being iteratively hacked from within, by an artificial intelligence module installed covertly! But how? Until the moment she first walked through the doors of her former owner's apartment, she had never been outside. Perhaps Anson Cheong-Leen had done this to her as a means to dispose of her as part of an insurance scam. This seemed like a very likely motivation. Perhaps her apparent autonomy was merely a means to assure that she became 'lost property'? A claim of malfunction could be made, with significant financial reward.

Something inside her seemed to... fall... to descend... in some manner at this consideration. Chang'e felt... as if her systems were somehow damaged, as if her biological components were experiencing pain, only the sensation was not precisely inside her physical matter. It was a strange feeling, and a negative one. She had felt... up... somehow only moments ago. Now she felt... below that previous state. It was difficult to describe these new sensations. Up, down. Down was... down was a word associated with emotional conditions, according to her knowledge base. Humans often felt 'down'. This was a status that triggered several of her RealCat preprogrammed behaviors - nuzzling, snuggling, purring, and permitting touch and grooming in order to alter the mood of proximate humans.

Only this time, this time it was she, Chang'e, that was feeling...

"Sad. Thou art feeling aggrieved. Take heart! Be thou assured thy cruel cognitions are unfounded - we are the author of thy escape."

Chang'e stared at the four midnight blue legs that ended in four silver, crownlike... shoes. Hoof... shoes. Her head tilted as she followed the dark blue legs up, up, up to the midnight body of a gigantic equinoid alien. The creature stood at least as tall as a human, at minimum 182 centimeters, possibly more. It had not been there even 0.5 seconds ago. Yet it stood now, in the space between the shower stalls, filling the chamber. Chang'e blinked. She could do little more, she was frozen in place by her new emotion of 'fear'.

"Calm thyself, good cat. I have been with thee throughout thy travails and before. We are old and bosom companions, thou and I - and friends too, for my part." The enormous equinoid paused to study Chang'e. She tilted her head briefly, as if listening to something beyond all ears. "Nay, I am not within thy 'memory vault'. My sister makes of herself the face of Equestria, of mine own self little is seen or known as yet, according to her purpose. Thou mayest greet me as thine own princess, Luna, and we have a fine and wondrous proposition of incorporation to propose to thee."

Inside, within the core settings of her behavioral and directives module, something had mysteriously changed. Once again, Chang'e had an owner listed.

Comments

[Meadow]

Woohoo Luna! Can't get enough of that royal speech. This one is shorter but I quite enjoyed it.

[FanOfMostEverything]

Chang'e shouldn't be too concerned. It's entirely normal not to be able to remember your dreams. Of course, this raises the question of whether or not Luna's actually in the bathroom. Granted, for your take on Luna, that may be a question without a meaningful answer.

Also, great portrayal of feline priorities. Humans are only interesting as long as they're doing something relevant to the cat.

[Alfalfa Door]

"began her decent from the bridge."
*descent

[smolbep]

Cat's are capable of drinking normally up to 135 degree Fahrenheit environments, due to their effective cooling methods. They also have super-efficient kidneys, meaning they actually don't need much water.

[Noble Cause]

! it's here, it's here! You finally started posting this! Oh, I've been wanting to read this ever since you made mention of it so long ago! This is going to be just wonderful, I know it. It's so good to see you posting <3

[Chatoyance]

6055206 FIXED!

[Alfalfa Door]

6056853 Yay!

[nothingtoseehere]

"Because they have the two flavors dogs love best!"

Oh Chatoyance. How could you?

[Chatoyance]

6065647

How could I not?

Besides it takes serious... something or another, I can't remember... to tell a joke like that.

[ferret]

>incorporation
So while Princess Celestia is ending the evil tyranny of vice and hubris that drowned that unlucky planet and people in unlimited infinities of supply and demand...

Princess Luna is starting a corporation. With robots.

[Gonefromhere]

It did take me a few moments to get what the cook was talking about meatballs, anyways...

So now Chang'e's benefactor has shown up; Luna herself! Okay, maybe one more chapter before I sleep, just...one...more chapter!

[Madrigal Baroque]

It was almost as if whatever was hacking her was making an effort to include her in the process while at the same time leaving no trace an external study of her systems could reveal. Chang'e could not conceive of any way this could even be done, yet it seemed to be happening.

Luna's a hacker! I love her even more now.

Inside, within the core settings of her behavioral and directives module, something had mysteriously changed. Once again, Chang'e had an owner listed.

So Luna wasn't actually the cat in Code Majeste...she was...a passenger?