Manticore Kitten
Manticore Kitten
It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.
-- Philip K. Dick
I.
My dear audience; my darling, astute, intelligent, tasteful audience. How I love you; without you, this story would not exist; not fully. It would be my pleasure to write it, to be sure, but what pleasure is not amplified when shared?
Let me center you in that pleasure; let me beguile your time.
Should not every story begin this way? Like an Usher song? Like a poppy, offering you the opioid sap that oozes from its delicate neck, now cut?
It is with deepest respect for you, most cherished audience, that we begin this tale at the beginning, for all hell has broken loose at the end.
Here. Let us start here.
II.
To a casual passer-by, little would signal that Emmet had won - perhaps a subtle authority in his stride, or a positive glow in the depths of his eyes.
We find him now running brightly around the lake in Brooklyn's Prospect Park; he is listening to a podcast about Russia positioning nuclear weapons in orbit around the earth; he is shining, he is definite, he is a light-bringer at the frontier of a coiling, seething darkness .
It is dusk. The pale moon, drifting low and on the cusp of fullness, glows tenderly, motherly on the lake & the meadows, which, like children, reflect elements of her beauty, covered in places as they still are with snow from a storm that blew through a few days earlier. The trees tower like statues of a lost and alien civilization as the colossal clouds change in color from tangerine, to pomegranate, to radiant plum. The air is cool, calm, and awash with the high tide of promise; his humiliation has receded and can barely be discerned on the horizon.
Completing his circuit, arriving back where he began, the clearing in the trees where the drummers gathered every Sunday to offer their polyrhythmic music to the divine source, Emmet slows. He slows and he is still a winner. Because nature calls, he walks toward the LeFrak Center where the bathrooms are, usually, in working condition. The music that powers the ice skaters in their acrobatic orbits had stopped and almost everyone had gone home.
He passes benches on which sit a man weeping, his face hidden in his hands; a woman selling books and dolls from a small table – snoozing at her feet is a Dachshund wearing a jacket meant to resemble a hot dog bun; girls in Ugg boots rolling joints and chatting about tax return software; a tiny man, or perhaps a child, wearing a pair of Apple Vision Pro goggles, staring at a tripod upon which rested nothing. He passes this gallery of lost souls and continues on the path that now curves around a small knoll when he hears what seems to be the cry of a kitten, or the cry of a baby impersonating the cry of a kitten.
So distressing does Emmet find this sound that he forgets his importunate bladder and steps over the low chain that separates the slovenly weeds of winter from the regular cobblestones of the path.
Excuse me, coming through, says Emmet, parting the mummified plants that seem to be tugging at his sweatpants like all the beggars in San Francisco.
Emmet finds the place from which the sound emanates – a hole in the roots of a tree. He squats, hovering over the snow. Possessing more curiosity than sense, he puts his hand into the hole and feels needles pierce his skin.
Ouch! he says, jerking his hand out of the hole. Blood wells from a pair of pricks between his thumb and ring finger.
Oh dear! says Emmet. Am I a vampire now?
Then, from out of the hole crawls a creature no bigger than two fists held together. Its body is, adorably, kittenish, but its face, horribly, is that of an old, grumpy, bitter man. Thick red lashes fringe blue eyes that bulge; thin, colorless lips outline a mewling gummy mouth, toothless except for its pair of minute fangs. Deeply furrowed is its forehead, and hollow its ashen cheeks. Its breath is ripe as a sewage vapor. The hair is entirely red and it smells on the whole, Emmet thinks, like gun smoke.
Help me, croaks the little goblin, shivering.
Well, says Emmet. I suppose helping is the Christian thing to do.
Them's the Christian rules for playing the game, he says. You gotta be that hand that catches the feebles that slip through the cracks.
He sizes up the thing and then puts it into the pouch of his sweatshirt.
Please don't pee on me, Benjamin Button, he says.
Help, pleads the helpless voice hidden near Emmet's stomach. Help.
Every now and again Emmet feels the creature's soft claws hook into his stomach.
Ouch, he says. Ouch.
When a body catch a body coming through the rye, he sings softly.
III.
Emmet stood outside a coffee shop in Mountain View, CA, buzzing so hard on caffeine he was projecting himself into the astral plane.
A white van rolled past, miniature satellite dishes revolving on top of it like delightful R2D2s. Here, he thought, is where the animal and mineral kingdoms combine. Alas, poor vegetables. We knew you well.
He was waiting for a cab to take him to the headquarters of the tech company where he and two others were to pitch their idea for a "Make It Happen" competition – an idea to bridge the corporate and non-profit worlds through pro-bono service.
Maybe that's the vegetable, giggled Emmet: cabbage. Cash salad. Green!
How much of the money came from the Department of Defense? Emmet would have liked to know. How much of it is from the CIA? Receipts, show me the receipts!
Moscow, Berlin, Project Paperclip! he said to himself.
At a table close to the door of the coffee shop, a white-haired man wearing khaki shorts and a black t-shirt sat across from a young woman, whom Emmet took to be his daughter, or perhaps his AI experiment.
Her name is Sophia, silly, he muttered. Wake up you moron!
He beamed strong telepathic signals through his eyes, trying to take control of the man's brain.
The sun shone affluently; the skin of the people who came and went from the coffee shop glowed with affluence; was this place then the new Jerusalem, this realm of affluence and ease? Was this the golden evolution of all humankind? This nascent automation divine?
Emmet had taken one too many sips of espresso. One, two. He could smell words, he could touch numbers as if they were twigs on a tree. He could taste the sour bile of algorithms on his tongue.
He missed those losers and chumps who he had called friends in Brooklyn; he missed the moon, the mirror ball turning above the dance floor of the club, the DJ, like a modern-day Cupid, bringing the hornballs together; he missed not feeling as if he were a rabbit in a totally evil experiment.
He missed wheelbarrows and the feel of honest dirt in his gardening hands.
The cab arrived. Emmet opened the door. The cab driver was an older woman. Emmet felt better. Emmet relaxed. Emmet squeezed his hands into fists, then let them relax. He tried not to piss himself.
The cab drove through the dusty late afternoon sunlight that forced all the world it touched into its most perfectly rational form. The hedges were clipped, the trees static, immobile – even the squirrels could, convincingly, be animatronic. He could be convinced of their fakery. Are birds even real? said Emmet, out loud. The older woman did not speak. They approached the gates of the tech company's headquarters. The gates opened. Across the parking lot Emmet could see the castle of the king, gray and corporate, who would reward him for his performance, for his pitch; who would bestow upon him the means of his transformation. It was August. In the old calendars used in Rome, it would be the sixth month; it was, according to the Hebrews, another month entirely, one whose name did not belong to the English language. How did the ancient Celts tell time? With circles of stone? Leaves of an oak grove? For Emmet, it would be the first day of the rest of his life, if he were victorious. If he were a winner, then he would be free.
How old are stories, reader? How old is this story? Will it ever change, or cease to be?
The cab stopped. Emmet stepped out, said thank you. He looked at his watch. Only another hour to go. He checked his phone. His teammates were waiting for him inside. He went inside.
IV.
Silly little Bear belly! said Emmet. Silly billy jelly Bear!
He is playing with the manticore kitten in his living room, which is also his dining room, which is now, also, the manticore kitten's nursery. The kitten, who Emmet has named Bear, leaps gleefully for the fuzzy fly Emmet is dangling above it from a plastic rod. Tears of laughter stream from the kitten's crinkled old man eyes, its wrinkled face broken in a grin, its two sharp fangs exposed. Its crimson fur ripples as if each follicle were alive.
Help, it screams with delight, heeeeelp!
He hasn't quite learned other words, says Emmet to his older brother, Azucar, who has stopped by with his child, The Child, Fontaine.
Not for lack of trying, though!
Azucar sits on Emmet's faded purple couch with a troubled expression on his face; you know the one: lips pursed, brow furrowed, eyes narrowed. Fontaine, a big ol' chubby thing, glows with joy as she watches Bear and Emmet play.
Let her play with it, says Azucar.
What? says Emmet.
I said, let Fontaine play with that thing.
But she might hurt it? says Emmet.
She's just a toddler, says Azucar. What harm can she do?
If you say so, says Emmet.
He picks up the wriggling, wiggling, jolly little Bear, and puts him in Fontaine's outstretched hands.
She's really not a toddler anymore, Az, says Emmet. She's like five now.
Fontain begins to hug Bear, tightly.
Help! help! it squeaks.
Ok, that's enough, says Emmet, and moves to take Bear from Fontaine. Azucar, who is trained in the martial arts, puts Emmet in a hold from which he cannot escape.
Nooo! he wails as Fontaine squeezes Bear to death.
Help, whimpers Bear, dying. Hel.p.
V.
Emmet joins the Air Force; he spends the next twenty years conducting drone strikes against targets foreign and domestic. It's a way to detach.
VI.
Reader, my dear Reader. Do you understand that you, too, are now a character in this story? One who is just as helpless as Emmet; a witness. I should not say sorry, but there is sorrow to be felt here. Consider this broken narrative an initiation. Now you know some of the grammar of grief.
Who knows! Soon "I" shall be an AI, and, perhaps, you too. Won't that be something? Won't that be a relief? To know nothing you consume is human or "real"?
It's all artificial, my friend.
Get out of here. Go walk in the park, or hug someone you love. Go have an adventure. We are only at the beginning, and I have so little to give you that you don't already have.