I turn off the bedside lamp, slide ON the switch of the wireless hub, then pull the neural-net cap over my head. Adjusting the pillows and pulling the sheets over me, I get comfortable and settle down. Feeling for the small plastic pimple just behind my earpiece, I press the activator and stare into the darkness of my room.
Connected. White noise creeps in over the buds in my ears. A crackle now. And again. I close my eyes and immerse my perception into the aural gray. Modulated blobs form and float in the static. Patterns bob to the surface and the dissonance becomes marbled with harmonic filaments. Static and signal cooked together on hot bandwidth congeal into a sonic egg drop soup – in an inexplicable sensory-coupled reflex, I breath in deep, part my lips and gently sigh, smiling.
I cast my attention for a low rumble. “Down” and “in the distance,” I barely detect it. By listen-focusing, I can “dive and swim” toward the source. Subtle concentration tunes my purring target into a distinct indicator… a body, a familiar format. My tongue flicks the tooth trigger and the cranial interface issues a POSSESS request – I’m prompted for owner and password crypts. A pause. Then, a welcoming “mew.” I’m in.
Before I start, I link back for some custom coding scripts to augment my avatar routine. I sip the afferent information fresh off the Ether. They are fetch-dropped into flash memory of the local controller node I just rebooted. Ahhh… new programming. I am reborn as my cat-bot.
Lifting my eyelids activates ocular enhancements. A sepia landscape of harsh lines, angles and surfaces flickers in and the scene slightly undulates. Simulated moonlight dances through oscillating tree-branch projections on the LCD panes of the kitchen windows and casts pseudo-shadows over the countertops, cabinets, and floor. A pulsing red indicator jumps to life in the lower right of my peripheral vision. My vision snaps toward the flashing alarm and I blink rapidly twice to activate the Heads-Up-Display. A translucent, viridian, 3D floor plan is quickly etched-erected in the space before me. I blink twice again. The HUD overlays the view in infrared. Three small, red phantoms with orange-yellow auras float into view just outside the mirage house. A double wink again and the glowing ghosts are replaced with little, grey-brown, wire-frame globules with tails. Yellow bubbles over each of them labeled them as mus musculus. The text was underlined – indicating a link for details – and followed by a flashing yellow “87%” likelihood index.
I vector over to a motion activated port located at the base of the minor domicile exit used by the Overlords. A polyurethane plate slides to the side as it recognizes my radio-fingerprint emitted by my collar. A quick right out the door and then a sprint for the corner, stopping short before tumbling out into the open. I slowly look around the corner, toward the trash bins and see nothing. I query my audio dishes, but have to cancel out the A/C unit and street traffic. I hear amplified stirrings from inside the big plastic rubbish bin. I slowly and quietly creep over to the base of the bin. I can see the lids are ajar – enough for the mice to get in, but not enough to make it an unstable landing zone. I grip the controls in the fists of my cybernetic gloves and press POUNCE. Pneumatic tubes hiss as I launched upward. Disaster strikes. Mid-flight my LAG indicator pegs red…
In the bedroom next door, my older sister plugs in her Pay-Pal e-chip with her newly credited allowance. Without the courtesy of checking the bandwidth utilization of our house LAN, she initiates a parallel download purchase for all 14 tracks of the latest release by her favorite boy band. Then she leaves her screen unattended! Just to go adjust tomorrow’s pigment routines for her subcutaneous, programmable tattoos?
I’m paralyzed, the video feed stays jerks in bursts and my attention is jolted. Virtual hiccups. The Wait… box keeps flashing into view as my sisters’ Y!-Pod hogs the ‘Net pipe. I yell out, “Wuthafuck, you goddam noob! Kill that transfer!” and helplessly watch the telemetry of my cat-bot’s flight flash-update my vision like some old-school PowerPoint presentation. I pray that the auto-pilot feature is not buggy and lands the bot on its feet like advertised. Or there goes my allowance. After her spouting about some ‘fair-and-equal’ rule supposedly imposed by Mommindad, she pauses her ghey download.
But too late - the frickin mice were already all over my cat. They’ve ganged up and already had it teetering over the edge. And laughing. Kyle-D, hyJax, and 1337-l0rd are already trash chatting me on the priv-channel about how I suxorz and how their ninja-mice roolz. “GG NO RE THX” Good game, no rematch, thanks indeed. They’ll be begging again tomorrow night because I EMP’d the trash bin as a backup. Sure some call it cheating, but it was three-on-one.
CAT-AND-MOUSE
I turn off the bedside lamp, slide ON the switch of the wireless hub, then pull the neural-net cap over my head. Adjusting the pillows and pulling the sheets over me, I get comfortable and settle down. Feeling for the small plastic pimple just behind my earpiece, I press the activator and stare into the darkness of my room.
Connected. White noise creeps in over the buds in my ears. A crackle now. And again. I close my eyes and immerse my perception into the aural gray. Modulated blobs form and float in the static. Patterns bob to the surface and the dissonance becomes marbled with harmonic filaments. Static and signal cooked together on hot bandwidth congeal into a sonic egg drop soup – in an inexplicable sensory-coupled reflex, I breath in deep, part my lips and gently sigh, smiling.
I cast my attention for a low rumble. “Down” and “in the distance,” I barely detect it. By listen-focusing, I can “dive and swim” toward the source. Subtle concentration tunes my purring target into a distinct indicator… a body, a familiar format. My tongue flicks the tooth trigger and the cranial interface issues a POSSESS request – I’m prompted for owner and password crypts. A pause. Then, a welcoming “mew.” I’m in.
Before I start, I link back for some custom coding scripts to augment my avatar routine. I sip the afferent information fresh off the Ether. They are fetch-dropped into flash memory of the local controller node I just rebooted. Ahhh… new programming. I am reborn as my cat-bot.
Lifting my eyelids activates ocular enhancements. A sepia landscape of harsh lines, angles and surfaces flickers in and the scene slightly undulates. Simulated moonlight dances through oscillating tree-branch projections on the LCD panes of the kitchen windows and casts pseudo-shadows over the countertops, cabinets, and floor. A pulsing red indicator jumps to life in the lower right of my peripheral vision. My vision snaps toward the flashing alarm and I blink rapidly twice to activate the Heads-Up-Display. A translucent, viridian, 3D floor plan is quickly etched-erected in the space before me. I blink twice again. The HUD overlays the view in infrared. Three small, red phantoms with orange-yellow auras float into view just outside the mirage house. A double wink again and the glowing ghosts are replaced with little, grey-brown, wire-frame globules with tails. Yellow bubbles over each of them labeled them as mus musculus. The text was underlined – indicating a link for details – and followed by a flashing yellow “87%” likelihood index.
I vector over to a motion activated port located at the base of the minor domicile exit used by the Overlords. A polyurethane plate slides to the side as it recognizes my radio-fingerprint emitted by my collar. A quick right out the door and then a sprint for the corner, stopping short before tumbling out into the open. I slowly look around the corner, toward the trash bins and see nothing. I query my audio dishes, but have to cancel out the A/C unit and street traffic. I hear amplified stirrings from inside the big plastic rubbish bin. I slowly and quietly creep over to the base of the bin. I can see the lids are ajar – enough for the mice to get in, but not enough to make it an unstable landing zone. I grip the controls in the fists of my cybernetic gloves and press POUNCE. Pneumatic tubes hiss as I launched upward. Disaster strikes. Mid-flight my LAG indicator pegs red…
In the bedroom next door, my older sister plugs in her Pay-Pal e-chip with her newly credited allowance. Without the courtesy of checking the bandwidth utilization of our house LAN, she initiates a parallel download purchase for all 14 tracks of the latest release by her favorite boy band. Then she leaves her screen unattended! Just to go adjust tomorrow’s pigment routines for her subcutaneous, programmable tattoos?
I’m paralyzed, the video feed stays jerks in bursts and my attention is jolted. Virtual hiccups. The Wait… box keeps flashing into view as my sisters’ Y!-Pod hogs the ‘Net pipe. I yell out, “Wuthafuck, you goddam noob! Kill that transfer!” and helplessly watch the telemetry of my cat-bot’s flight flash-update my vision like some old-school PowerPoint presentation. I pray that the auto-pilot feature is not buggy and lands the bot on its feet like advertised. Or there goes my allowance. After her spouting about some ‘fair-and-equal’ rule supposedly imposed by Mommindad, she pauses her ghey download.
But too late - the frickin mice were already all over my cat. They’ve ganged up and already had it teetering over the edge. And laughing. Kyle-D, hyJax, and 1337-l0rd are already trash chatting me on the priv-channel about how I suxorz and how their ninja-mice roolz. “GG NO RE THX” Good game, no rematch, thanks indeed. They’ll be begging again tomorrow night because I EMP’d the trash bin as a backup. Sure some call it cheating, but it was three-on-one.