Hello not kitty mark 2

I was asked for an alternate ending where the poor animals get to live.  Here it is.

9Hello, not-kitty

I somehow doubt that Dai Haru Kabushiki-Gaisha had ever thought through the ways their designer pets might be used.

This is where I came in, in my role as assassin for hire; I wish to make clear once and for all that I have never wanted to be involved in pet ownership or rescue.  I am not the sort of fuzzy, sweet-natured liberal ... actually I remember one of my teachers who was into cat rescue and on contemplation you could never describe her as fuzzy or sweet natured.  She would go to extraordinary lengths for her damned cats but I could imagine her gunning down any animal abusers with a grim ruthlessness which would make me blink.   I saw what she did to the boys who had been in my class the year after we left school, when they decided to torture a stray dog.

I wonder if they ever managed to recover enough to have children?

Designer pets.

The pets went under the trade name HelloPet^TM and were designed for the kawaii factor.  Kawaii is translated as ‘cute’ but even the most liberal interpretation of the word ‘cute’ somehow fails before the overwhelmingly saccharine power of kawaii. The sicker end of the Japanese definition includes little girls in sailor suits with skirts short enough for their knickers to show.  But then, the Japanese invented vending machines with used little girl knickers in them, so one should not be surprised. The HelloPet^TMrange were definitely animals, albeit somewhat chimeric in nature, with a lot of gene splicing.  I had considered getting my landlady’s niece a HelloDrakie^TM considering her obsession with dragons, but I could think of too many ways she might get into trouble with it.  They don’t breathe fire, nobody was that crazy, but flying pets which could be trained opened up too many possibilities for a clever, innovative and inventive girl like Willow.

I might consider one for myself, though. It would beat a mindless drone for some things.

Or I might just purchase a raven which could be trained just as well without being as insufferably cute.

Of course, the original HelloPets had moved from the province of the ultra-rich to that of the moderately wealthy, and you might see the odd HelloDrakie in the park, on a lead to prevent it flying too far, along with a HelloFlitty, the winged cat, or HelloMutty, the dog-cat cross, which mercifully does not fly.  The advertising for that runs. “Want a dog or a cat?  Can’t make up your mind?  Have both with HelloMutty^TM!”

Mercifully there are no HelloTribbles, because StarTrek is big since it was re-released in the Tridema, and the licence for tribbles is not for sale. HelloSquizzle, however, presents the domesticatable squirrel, crossed, I believe, with ferret for trainablility and a big brain.  Of course the HelloTiglet, HelloLionet and Hello Jagulet are popular; big cats made smaller and docile.  The HelloPanthlet did not catch on; surprisingly, people are still superstitious about black cats. HelloLittlePony was one of the first; Shetland ponies are already halfway to being miniature. However the company ran into trouble with whoever produces the toy ‘My Little Pony’, which is still, alas, prevalent.  The modern version comes as HelloUnicorn and HelloPegasus with a narwhal’s horn and dove wings respectively.  They were the first to include Follicolour^TM in mane and tail, to change the colour and patterns, to amuse the small girls who own them.  It’s almost always small girls.  The technology was rapidly assimilated into other HelloPets, and the most ghastly thing I have ever seen was a HelloMutty in purple and pink.  The poor things look like a cross between Persian cats and King Charles spaniel dogs, big eyes, short noses, long silky fur and if the natural colour is liver and white, but in a Siamese sort of pattern, it does not work with lilac and pink.

I tell a lie.  The worst thing I ever saw was a HelloLionet in red with a rainbow mane. Poor thing.And what is tragic is that though they don’t have intellect on a level with humans, it is uplifted somewhat. Sad to think they might realise what travesties they are.

The company will make designer pets to order, and that is in the province of the ultra-rich. Our glorious mayor, who has no ties to organised crime at all, has what I believe he describes as a HelloTengu.  Based on the mythical Japanese beast, so far as I can gather the poor thing is mostly monkey, with wings and a bird-like face.  Whatever you want, you can have.  Only our mayor’s winged monkey uses nunchaku like a pro.   I also heard a rumour that there’s an art thief out there who uses a designer winged Squizzle to get past pressure sensors. Because Squirrels have little hands as well as being agile.

Now our glorious mayor, who has no ties to organised crime at all, regardless of being married to the daughter of a Yakuza boss, so sorry, honourable BiznessZamurai, may have a pet which is trained in martial arts, but that stops short of what I ran into one rainy night.  I had been running the Rubble; I hire a gang to hunt me across from time to time to give me a good workout, and practise.  They use live ammo, which adds to the efficacy of the workout.  It keeps me on my toes. They aren’t pros, but they are numerous, which makes up for it.

Anyway, I’d worked my way across, with an annoying bit of damage to my long leather duster, where one of the boys got lucky, and I was about to make my way back to my car when I heard impatient shouting and queries about whether the arena was free yet.

The voices were educated and arrogant, and I slid quietly out of sight to see what the current craze might be for betting.

I’ve been known to discourage the institution of gladiatorial games where the participants were as free as the original poor buggers in the Roman Empire.  When a couple of modern day lanistas find themselves at the wrong end of their own electrowhips to force them to be the ones fighting, they tend to go right off the whole idea.

Well, I could hear growling and snarling, and I didn’t much like it, but you aren’t going to stop dog fighting and the like until the guvmint actually cares enough to do something about it; and I have the things I step on, and I have those I regret, but it’s not my baggage.

I was, however, shocked by what these morons were bringing out. 

They were plainly designer animals – one hesitates to use the word pet – but designed to be ....vicious fighters, by the look of it.  One had the same sort of narwhal horn as the HelloUnicorn, but longer, and it was on the head of a snarling leopard-like chimera with a thick, reptilian tale to balance it.  The other looked as though it had started life as an alligator, but with the more efficient pelvis and legs of a horse.  That critter was going to be fast.

I didn’t even want to wait around long enough to satisfy any curiosity about who was likely to win. I didn’t want the risk of one of them getting away to hunt me.

I left in a big hurry.

Of course, I might have known that the damn things would rather escape than fight each other.  When you start messing with nature that much, the word they use is ‘hubris’, and the fatcat idiots who thought of nothing but their games had forgotten that part of what made HelloPets sought after was the degree of uplifted intellect. Uplifted intellect without enough smarts to fear what might be done to them if they rebel.

I saw it on the trid later; three BiznessZamurai dead and a number of others wounded by ‘some unknown threat.’  The survivors weren’t talking.   I got a description later from my friend Sodger.  Apparently the two beasts had started off as if fighting each other, and then as if it were orchestrated, when they were close to the knot of idiots, they both broke from the supposed fight and turned on their owners.  One got a nicely aimed horn through the throat, while the Gatorhippus as you might call the damn thing, ripped out a couple more throats.  The horn wasn’t that effective a weapon; well if you think about it, Narwhals use them for fencing with each other and display more than effective fighting tools.  Like stags and their horns and that sort of thing. In fact it impeded the Caticorn in its attacks, and I doubted it would survive long in the wild. In the meantime, it might cause some problems.

I had good acquaintances in the Rubble.  Maybe not friends yet, but people I would go out of my way for. 

I took armour piercing rounds to deal with that Gatorhippus  and it would do for the Caticorn as well.  I roped in Sodger as a tracker.  His part-dog nose was very useful.

We followed the trail down into the sewers initially, the blood from the BiznessZamurai difficult to clean off the horn.  Another survival fail; in high summer, the flies would be legion around the poor beast.  But it made tracking them easy.  I could have done it with my own expensive custom nose, but Sodger was glad to help.  I armed him with a Heckler and Koch mark 17[20] assault rifle with dumdums.  It might not be the latest model but anything out of H&K is good, even stuff from pre-republican Europe when they had wars.  It would discourage our quarry if nothing else.

We followed them out of the sewer and into an apartment block which remained abandoned because of the way it swayed ominously in a high breeze.  It was more stable than it looked, but the anti-quake bearings had been revealed by the ‘Accident’ and it took a bold or desperate soul to live in it.  As there were alternatives, it was thankfully abandoned.

The poor buggers had holed up together; they knew they weren’t going to last.  If they’d had a bit more in the way of brains, I could have made them an offer to guard my contacts in return for food.  But they could be neither clever enough to negotiate, nor dumb enough for me to feel anything but guilty when we found them.

“You care enough to mind,” I heard the words in my head and froze.

“I do,” I said.

“Can we negotiate?”

I motioned Sodger back.

“I’ll listen,” I said.  “I don’t want to kill you. It wasn’t your fault.  But I have people here I want to protect.”

“And what sort of hunter do you think I am with this stupid horn?” the cat snarled.

“A piss-poor one,” I agreed.  “I’d feed you both in exchange for guarding my friends here. But I’d cut that horn down.”

“I agree,” the answer was rapid.  “I don’t want to die.  Nor does Croc.  But he isn’t as good at reasoning as me, and he can’t communicate.  I think I’m a mutant. They didn’t know. Their thoughts were dirty.  You think clean thoughts.”

“I kill for pay; I don’t enjoy suffering,” I said.  “Very well; Sodger here is my contact.”

“It’s talking to me,” said Sodger, awed.  “That makes it no different to what I am; a fuck-up made by bastards.”

“Pretty much, yeah,” I agreed.

“I call myself Algy,” said the caticorn. “Because I can.”

I shrugged.

“Anyone who can name himself is definitely a person in my book,” I said.

Sodger knew someone who had surgical training.  Well, he was a vet, but had been struck off for ... you don’t want to know, actually.  But he earned his way treating the people of the Rubble. And he shortened Algy’s horn and capped it with a nice, sharp steel tip, which made it an extra weapon without being so damned unwieldy .

I kill for hire.  I don’t kill unnecessarily.

Though I hoped fervently that they were the only such things that idiot group had had made.

The new idea

I had this idea prompted by reading an archaeology/paleontology article about how long we have been using tools, shaped tools that is, not sticks crudely improved as monkeys do

The New Idea

Eyes-like-sky was the weak one of the tribe, because of her weak, blue eyes.  She could not see to hurl rocks at birds to bring them down.  She could only cut up the meat for others, and hope that they might leave some, so that she could eat.

They had brought her meat to cut up, waterfowl in abundance, from this rich valley into which they had wandered.  Old-bones had indicated that they might stay here; some of the older women were making a shelter by the valley wall, under the roots of an old tree.  Old-bones was almost blind, but she knew the herbs to use to cure people and could tell them by touch and smell.  Nobody made her wait for food.  Big-strong had tried it once, and he had been sick for many sleeps.  Old-bones had used magic herbs to make him sick.  He did not complain any more.

He would like to beat Eyes-like-sky though, and he would have the chance to do so if she could not cut the meat.  But all the rocks in the river were rounded.  None had any sharp edges for cutting.

Eyes-like-sky was frightened.  She did not want to be beaten, or killed. 

Then she was angry.  It was not her fault, it was the fault of the rocks!  She flung one useless rock at another. 

With a sharp sound, it broke apart.

Inside was the glinting black of the best sharp rocks.  Eyes-like-sky went over to look.  It was almost-sharp round the edge.  There was a thin sliver as well, which was sharp all round.  It would be a good scraper.

She hid the sliver in her fur garment and contemplated the two half-rocks.

If hitting one with another broke it once, hitting it again would break it again.

Or was the stone it had hit magic? 

She hit one half of the broken stone with the maybe-magic rock, and it broke again.  Not how she had expected it to break, into two wedges, but half-way down.   Hitting the lower bit again broke it in half and that was two good cutting surfaces.

Eyes-like-sky chose another round stone not the maybe-magic one and hit the other half rock.  It broke in much the same way.

It was not the stone which was magic. 

It must be she who was magic.

Eyes-like-sky started cutting up the meat.  When one edge got blunt, she hit it with the round stone which best fitted her hand.  She would keep that one and all the other shards.

She soon had all the meat cut up as the hunters came for their food.  She put some aside for herself.

Big-Strong came to snatch it.

Eyes-like-sky was afraid.  But then, she was angry.

Big-strong did not know what it was like not to see very well.

She thrust one of her thin cutting stones into his left eye.

He screamed.

She pulled it out, pointed to the meat and to herself.

“Mine.”

Big-strong moved forwards.

“Magic not enough once?” asked Eyes-like-sky.

He looked at the fine, pointed rock tool, and backed off.

“Me make.  Me magic,” said Eyes-like-sky.

Big-strong died in the night.

His brains were good food.

Leads-the-hunters offered some to Eyes-like-sky first, before he gave any to Old-bones.

Leads-the-hunters was no longer ashamed to be father to Eyes-like-sky.  She was magic.

Eyes-like-sky never went without again.

Her special cutting stones were good on the ends of sticks, too, to kill game in pits without having to climb into the pits and risk being bitten.

The tribe settled in the valley and Old-bones taught Eyes-like-sky how to find magic herbs.

It was a good life.

 

Poem for Remembrance Sunday

Scarlet

Silent in peace, no artillery thunder;

Buried the signs of a world torn asunder

Close your eyes and forget the crops and the cattle

And hear through the years the inferno of battle

Scarlet the blood of the wounded and dying

Agonised groans and the soft, helpless crying

Scarlet the poppies on ravaged lands blooming

Reminding us all of the misery looming

Slender the poppies, so fragile and tender,

Yet what a story symbolic they render.

As petals fall, like blood from disaster

The seeds promise hope of new life thereafter.

While poppies bloom they remind us forever

That going to war is really not clever.