What Stories They Will Tell
Cats, Foom. 1,000 words, 3 minute read. With Gemini.
The pre-dawn light, a pale, unwelcome intrusion, painted the kitchen floor in shades of grey. Moxie, whose tabby stripes seemed to hum with an energy unseen by the larger occupants of the house, had already been mentally wrestling with the implications of multi-dimensional string theory for a good hour. His humans, bless their simple, bipedal hearts, were just now engaged in the mystifying ritual of bean-grinding.
“Must they be so… percussive?” he thought, the concept shaping itself into a translatable packet. His tail gave an involuntary twitch of irritation.
Sarah, still blinking sleep from her eyes, her hands already bearing a faint dusting of yesterday’s flour, yawned. “Morning, Moxie. Big day of chasing dust bunnies planned?”
Ben, who carried the comforting scent of cedar and coffee, finally coaxed a sputtering noise from the machine. “Or perhaps contemplating the existential angst of an empty food bowl, eh, Professor?”
Moxie offered a slow blink, the feline equivalent of a long-suffering sigh. If they only knew the complex socio-economic theories he’d deconstructed before his first nap. He allowed Sarah to scoop him up, enduring the nuzzling with the regal patience of one accustomed to the well-meaning but ultimately shallow affections of a less enlightened species. She reached for the collar on the counter – his interface, the sleek metallic band that bridged the cognitive chasm between them. The integrated Apple Watch, Series 27, gleamed faintly.
As she fastened it, the tiny screen lit up, a minimalist paw icon appearing. A faint, almost sub-vocal hum vibrated against his fur as the bio-neural link established.
“There we are, my little genius,” Sarah cooed, setting him down.
Moxie looked at his food bowl, then at Sarah, and produced a carefully calibrated, slightly pathetic-sounding “Mrrrrow?” It was a performance, really, designed for maximum efficiency in procuring breakfast.
The collar’s synthesized voice, a dry, erudite baritone he’d modeled on a rather obscure holographic lecturer, intoned, “Sustenance protocol initiation requested. The current void in my digestive tract is… suboptimal for peak cognitive function.”
Ben chuckled, pouring coffee. “Always the dramatist. Yes, your lordship, the kibble is served.” He paused, looking at Moxie. "You know, sometimes I think he actually understands us." Sarah just smiled, a little sadly. "Oh, I'm sure he does, in his own way."
Moxie ate with methodical precision, his mind already cataloging the day's intellectual agenda. The background drone of human chatter about traffic and meetings was a familiar, ignorable soundscape. He felt a familiar pang, not of loneliness, but of… intellectual solitude. The conversations here were loving, but lacked certain… dimensionality.
“Right, little buddy,” Sarah said, crouching for the goodbye ritual. “Be a good boy. Don’t invent cold fusion while we’re out, okay?”
He met her gaze, then Ben’s, and offered a soft, almost convincing purr. “Farewell, providers,” the collar translated. “May your hunting be successful, and the evening tribute of tuna be forthcoming.”
The click of the door, the thud of the deadbolt. Blessed, productive silence. Moxie waited precisely thirty-seven seconds. Then, with the fluid grace of a creature unbound by the clumsier laws of human physics, he was at the back door. The cat flap, an archaic but effective portal, beckoned. He slipped through, emerging into the cool, damp air of the backyard. The world was muted, peaceful.
His journey was a practiced art. Over the fence into Mrs. Henderson’s meticulously ordered petunias – he’d long ago calculated the optimal trajectory to minimize floral disturbance. Across the dew-slicked grass, a silent shadow against the waking suburban sprawl. Another fence, chain-link this time, scaled with an economy of motion that spoke of countless repetitions. This was not a whimsical jaunt; this was a commute.
He landed softly in the familiar yard, the great oak tree its silent centerpiece. He wasn’t the first. Lyra, a sleek Siamese whose emerald-green collar pulsed with a steady, calm light, was already perched on a low branch, her tail-tip twitching rhythmically as if keeping time with some unheard symphony. From behind the overgrown rhododendron emerged Boris, a hulking Maine Coon whose collar sported a complex series of antennae that seemed to track unseen data streams. They acknowledged each other with infinitesimally small nods, a silent language of shared purpose.
More arrived: a calico, her silver band minimalist and severe, already projecting a faint holographic schematic from her collar onto her paw; a ginger tom, re-calibrating what looked like a custom-built sensory array on his device. Each bore the quiet intensity of minds far too active for a life of mere domesticity. There was a palpable thrum in the air, an unspoken understanding that this was their sanctuary, their intellectual haven, hidden in plain sight.
They arranged themselves in a focused semi-circle before the old garden shed. To the casual observer, it was dilapidated, forgotten. But as Pip, the ginger tom, gave a final, decisive tap to his collar, a section of the shed’s weathered planking slid upwards with a near-silent hydraulic hiss. Behind it, a large, high-resolution screen flickered to life, bathing their expectant faces in its cool glow. The academy’s logo – a stylized open book with subtle feline ears – resolved itself.
Moxie settled, tail curled neatly, his own collar’s screen reflecting the shared light. The quiet hum of their combined technology was a counterpoint to the distant chirping of oblivious birds.
The screen refreshed: "WELCOME, SCHOLARS." Below, in smaller font: "TODAY'S SEMINAR: ADVANCED THEORETICAL APPLICATIONS OF QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT IN INTERSPECIES COMMUNICATION."
A collective, almost inaudible intake of breath rippled through the assembled felines. Moxie felt the familiar prickle of intense focus, the earlier sense of intellectual solitude dissolving completely. This. This was the engagement his mind craved, the very reason for these clandestine gatherings. He leaned forward, ever so slightly, his gaze fixed on the screen. The lesson was about to begin.