Cats Will Play
How easy is it to get involved with a clandestine corporate cleanup operation?
When the world runs on hidden programming to the tune of a numbers game rigged by the plutocracy, it is as easy as being at the right place at the right time for recruitment. No place was more ripe for this kind of recruitment than scholarly institutions. Not only were they bought out from the foundations up to push the facts of history that were worth the investment, but they were filled to the brim with those select individuals that had the privilege to operate with some illusion of choice. It did not matter what the subject of study was if it did not play into the systems that perpetuated the system, but for the prestige of a legacy crest, a laminated piece of paper, and a certified chip, those people paid heftily.
Then there were those who did not have the money, but were willing to risk a venture with loans. They were the cream of the mercenary crop.
Debt: the oldest form of slavery. In order to clear a severe enough debt, a person was willing to try anything at least once. In the era of the Ubermetro, being alive was a debt all its own, much less, pursuing an education that was not mandated.
The operative felt the imperfections of the road rocking the van on its suspension. The squad was on another run. Despite the ever increasing time on the job, this person was still the weak-stomached rookie on the team. This one was out of the ordinary; the objective was to meet with an employer liaison in some nowhere intersection in the city. A quintessential hand-off scenario with the shady benefactors of the job. Layers of people and alibis serving as proxies for some conglomerate grinding their public relations disaster with the axe.
The van turned down the designated street after some time on the road and slowed to a prowling roll. The passengers posted at the windows leered through their protective visors to pinpoint the groupâs contact from the currents of commuters in transit, even at this late hour. The recruit was not one of them. This conscript sat in the rear of the vehicle without a view of the outside, near the cargo doors.
The van came to a halt and the curbside door disengaged from the rest of the vehicleâs frame, before sliding back on its rails. The more seasoned exterminators filed out to talk with the liaison. The recruit stayed in the van. It took a few short minutes for the operatives to send their report up the chain and for the delivery to be made. The exterminators returned to the van just as quickly as they appeared, package in tow, and sped off.
The delivery was fastened down with belts to the floor opposite the inexperienced exterminator. This person stared at the odd metallic box intensely while one of the others went over the spreadsheet of specifications that was handed over with it. A bonafide product manual for respectably large piece of technology. The box itself was a little more than three feet tall, a smidge over a foot wide, and heavy enough that it took a two-person carry to get it into the van.
âThe objectives are being harbored by interfering parties and are finding progressively more problematic places to take refuge in,â the enthused exterminator was reading with a distinctly unenthused drawl. There was more to this block of text. The unhinged person muttered as they skimmed through the bulk of the reading before saying,
âThus, initiative staff are deploying a new companion of our own to aid the hunt.â
The operative was only half-listening to the passage. The student was far from present in the mind. From what little actually worked its way through the mental fog, they gleaned that the squad had been given a robot of some design. A toddler sized machine purpose-built for killing synthetic toddlers that so happened to look like fake horses.
The absolute absurdity of the notion blew all the way past ridiculous and landed squarely back on situation normal. This was reality! A certain quote came to the forefront of the reluctant exterminatorâs thoughts: the difference between nonfiction and fiction was that fiction had to make sense.
âOooh, this is pretty interesting; this AI is based on the feline loci of thought-matrixes from the brain-mapping studies from a few decades back!â the operative shared with energy befitting their usual personality.
This burst of life aided the recruitâs recollection of some trivia theyâd come across through a university course. The loci experiments: scientists successfully created a baseline computer program schema that was capable of advanced machine learning. The program was able to capture the mental development of animals as a proof of concept of theory and application. Dogs, cats, a sampling of bird species, and some exotic examples. The reluctant exterminator felt an uncanny disgust when they pieced together that the relationship between this robot and the things it was meant to destroy was more tightly wound than what one would think.
If some corporation was able to manufacture thinking toys, that same corporation could use that same knowledge to manufacture these killer drones. Drones that thought like their preyâŚ
Uncannily disgusting. The operative held their tongue, though. As the days of part-time service to this sordid cause dragged on, the reluctant exterminator determined that open dissent and unwillingness to comply would prove detrimental to their plans. The best thing to do now was to bide the time and collect the bank deposits.
So, the recruit consigned their self to listening to the others. The rest of the group was discussing the many ways that a catâs mind would be the useful framework for a fluffy hunting robot. The candid descriptions were unnerving.
â⌠Even housecats were ferocious things when you think about it, back when people kept pets like that. They didnât have any other taste buds other than those that react to meat. You canât dissuade them from killing. I read that the bio-domes really struggle with keeping feline-types!â one of the other exterminators pointed out.
Another chimed in, âThey have the taste for it, and they think itâs fun! They take their time mauling mice, and then keep them alive to gift them to their family members so that they can kill them instead. When they canât kill live prey, they need scratching posts and surrogate targets to take out their aggression on!â
âBack in the old days, they would try to teach people how to hunt by dragging anything they can manage to catch back to their owners!â
â⌠Didnât they also follow people into bathrooms? What gives with thatâŚ?â
The operative stared at the box with a growing sense of dread. What kind of monster did they have in there, they wondered. What soulless work went into fabricating the intelligence of an animal, without the affection and personality that made them endearing to mankindâs ancestors millennia ago in the first place? What cruel calculations were done in order to make a machine think with the hunterâs malice of a cat?
The exterminators pulled up to another corridor between steel and glass titans. This time they all left the van for their mission: familiarization. Two of them opened up the cargo doors and pulled the box to the edge of the carrying bay. The straps were undone and securing latches freed. An orange ring on the front plate of the container lit up afterwards, and a white dot circled the ring rapidly as an electronic hum emanated from the storage device.
There was a whirring of motors as the upper portion of the boxy contraption started to come apart in halves. At a certain point, the two sections of the box swung downwards, giving the operatives a proper view of the robotâs visage.
Humanoid. Four red, beady eyes on a boxy head. Silvery metal plating for skin. Black rubberized joints. A display screen integrated into the chest piece, currently blank. Its forearms were still hidden away behind its containment unit. Before anyone could speak, four pin-like lights illuminated in the scarlet bulbs. The screen flickered to life, and hundreds of lines of code scrawled across and scrolled down the display in fractions of a second. The jumble of boot-information was followed by a stylized emblem:
Itself followed by:
Another whirring of servos punctuated the raising of a miniature lift inside of the boxy machine. The small robot was elevated to clear its housing unit, and this was when the exterminators saw their new partner in full. One arm had hand-like graspers at its end. The other had a hybrid assembly of a photo-caster and a bayonet sheathe!
The automaton stepped off of its pedestal. The operatives nearest to it stepped back to give it room. They clamored, âSo cool!â and variations of such sentiments while it dismounted the van. The reluctant one in their number contained their reaction and hoped they were not standing too stiffly as the machine swiveled its neck-piece about the group. No doubt relaying data to its masters via its optical sensors and reading the serial numbers of every piece of issued gear they were wearing.
âSome partner,â thought the operative. âMore like our new manager.â
The uncomfortable knot in the exterminatorâs gut writhed and tightened itself further. It was the slow realization that this machine could, in an instant, report any unwillingness to comply with the mission, should it observe probable cause. That was to say nothing of its own ability to commence the operation â was this a sign that the corporation was taking measures to automate the culling, to cut back on overall expenditures?
âH83, huh? Nice to meet you, buddy!â
âYeah, so cool to have you on the team!â
âYouâre not gonna follow me into the john, are you, bud?â
The other exterminators were all too eager to welcome the machine to the fold, however. Why wouldnât they be excited by this, the reluctant one observed; they had no reason to fear. They were already committed to the task they volunteered for.
âAm I an ingrate? Do I not want this opportunity?â
The robot was now standing directly in front of the operative. It tilted its boxy head backwards to take in the full image of the person from boots to shroud. The person within the protective suit could not help feeling bare in the machineâs sight.
âH-hi there, buddy. Youâre our new friend? HehâŚâ
The operative held out their hand. The machine took it in its graspers, and shook it.
The gesture was disconcerting.
-Authorâs Note-
@Virgil was the one that shared that quote with me. Fiction has to make sense, indeed.
@Chikahiro wrote about how cats can be worse than abusers in July Babies and I â oop.
Itâs now my canon that the AMUs in particular are cruel due to their warped kitty-brains.