

### Kitty time travel

By Horia Hulea

Copyright 2015 Horia Hulea

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, places or persons, living or dead is coincidental.

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Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Epilogue

Other books by the same author

Chapter 1

"A stick is the best tool you will ever get!"

The speaker prepares to land ahead a big dramatic pause, so make sure you watch your heads. After the thoughtful break passes, you can raise your heads back up and look at the conclusion shock wave.

"It is... The Best Tool Ever!"

Amazed at the accurate description that sprang from his imagination about the ultimate tool, the speaker feels the need to quickly follow up.

"You can hit heads with a stick. Boing! You can reach stuff with a stick. Boing again! You can shoo noisy furries with a stick. Shoo, noisy furries! Shoo, shoo! Like that! You see?" Dramatic swings of the speaker's arms accompany the _shoo_ to prove the point.

"You can hit big uglies and small uglies and... and big, toothy uglies with a stick. Bang, ugly furry! Bang, bang! See?" He turns around to see if everyone has a good angle on the bang action.

"You can lean on a stick! Like this, you see? This side up, that side down, and then you put your elbow over here!"

A genuine "Whoaaa!" raises from the enraptured audience.

"You can scratch where you can't reach with a stick! Not only that, but if you hit two sticks together, you can make noises!"

The big dramatic pause settles again before the speaker concludes:

"The stick is the best tool ever!"

Didn't he say that already?

"The stick... and a rock!"

These heavy words of wisdom came from the mouth of Mog, son of Mog, who walks around in a show-and-tell meeting holding a stick in one hand and a rock in the other. However, don't let yourself be fooled into thinking that this elaborate presentation was as intelligible and eloquent as I put it on paper.

Because it wasn't.

The words are ingeniously simplified to growls and grunts that make the actual comprehensive vocabulary of a usual caveman. Because Mog is indeed a caveman as genuine as a caveman can be.

Mog, in case you are wondering, was named after his predecessor, and since the dirty humans hadn't yet invented counting or roman numerals, he wasn't Mog XV, or Mog the second. Instead, he was Mog, son of Mog, who in turn was son of another Mog, making our Mog the grandson of Mog—who, in turn, was a grandson of a previous Mog, and so on and so forth.

However, Mog never encountered his grandpa, because his skull got crashed by Trogg, son of Trogg, from the tribe across the river (it seems the noble peaceful savages are present only in modern anthropological studies, and not in actual historical times).

The rain outside the cave seems to be in a never-ending pour while Mog, son of Mog, explained the miracle of the stick. Good thing, this rain: it makes you take a break from hunting and sends you into a cave to keep your hair dry. And it makes you think of stuff. Makes you share wisdom with the other great minds. It gives you a sense of community and purpose. Pondering the life of a caveman in relation to rain sometimes makes me wonder: was it rain or fire that started the human path to thought, literature, and civilization?

Inside the cave, captivated by the tremendous knowhow of their leader, the entire tribe of Mog is sitting in a circle, nodding deeply to his words—that, and also gnawing at some bones which little Mog (son of our Mog) peed all over and made them salty and tasty. You can't watch a presentation on stick use without a little snacking.

As the tribe is enjoying their leisure time together, from one side of the cave entrance (we can't tell which side since the cavemen haven't yet discovered notions like "left" and "right"), some cat simply happens to walk by.

Just like that.

With no meows, no _ta-dum_ , or other sound cue introduction, this fine exhibit of the feline family simply strolls inside and then sits at the cave entrance looking absentmindedly somewhere undefined, like all normal cats do when they are not doing anything interesting. However, what would strike anyone about this stupid cat is the fact that it wants to look like a normal one. Undoubtedly, it looks like a fat cat with an idiot look stuck on its big head. But, to the trained eye, that head is way too big for the size to be blamed on fluffiness alone.

"Now, now!" the cat lovers will wag their finger at me. "Just because the cat is fat and has an idiot look, that doesn't mean it is stupid."

And they will be right.

At this point in time, the cat is smarter than Mog, his son, or any other member of his tribe. In fact, the cat is smarter than Mog and his tribe put together. But, for reasons to be revealed later in the story, the cat is definitely stupid.

As the fur ball is caught up in contemplating what passes as primitive art on the cave walls, ten heads that never had a haircut or experienced one drop of shampoo since birth start turning and tilting, one caveman at a time. One by one, they drop their happy scratching and flea picking and feel their explorer instincts popping at the sight of the oddity.

But not for long, because very soon ten big smiles show ten mouths full of an assortment of yellow and brown teeth. And ten pair of eyes are glinting tiny tingles of curiosity!

What can possibly go through their heads to make those splendid grins so big?

Are these bright human ancestors thinking:

"Why is there a domesticated cat walking thirty-thousand years before the humans actually domesticated the cats?"

Or maybe:

"What is this cat doing on this continent at a time when it hasn't even been introduced here?"

Or perhaps:

"Does this animal make sense in our current world view frame?"

Actually, none of the cavemen are thinking any of the above. I'm sorry to ruin your good impression of the early hominids, but it's not curiosity that tingles in those eyes... but hunger.

As for the cat... it seems to have no sense of danger at all. Doesn't it know that swinging your tail back and forth under the noses of ten dirty hungries is a life-threatening move? Especially when they know how to use a stick! And a rock!

But honestly, I don't think the cat knows anything. Because the cat doesn't look that smart anymore. It looks more like the lazy, stupid companions that the old deaf ladies keep around their house to make themselves feel useful (the old ladies, not the cats).

However, regardless of how stupid or smart the cat appears, in the eyes of Mog's tribe, if something is fat, then that something surely must be yummy.

And this is how ten pairs of hungry eyes, accompanied by a chorus of hungry bellies, are stuck to a lazy bouncing tail thinking of ten ways to prepare lunch. And as the cat stops from bouncing the tail with a "Meow?" and a tilt of the head, ten starving ancestors of the European population jump at a signal and chase the risk-taking kitty.

And chase, chase, chase.

And jump, jump, jump.

Then some zigzagging behind a line of bushes, followed by some more zigzagging on the same line of bushes, all with the tribe of incompetent hunter-gatherers running aimlessly, followed by little Mog roaring fiercely for being left behind.

After one more acrobatic number between their legs, the cat finishes with a climb in the nearest tree

up, up, up to the highest branch! From its perch, it watches the sorry pack of stinking apex predators putting a comedic show of ten dirty, hungry, growling idiots trying to climb up while pulling each other down competitively from their future lunch-to-be.

"OMG! Humanz is soo stoopid," says the cat.

Still, a cat speaking in articulated language still doesn't puzzle the brilliant and intelligent "humanz." Because in a way, it makes perfect sense: if something out of the ordinary doesn't surprise you to begin with, then something even more out of the ordinary will definitely leave you in the same blank place.

One hour has passed since the encounter, and ten hungry morons, all beaten and muddy (surprisingly, more muddy then before) are hanging in the cave, scratching and mumbling, with little Mog absorbed completely in gnawing the salty bones. Little Mog is so full of energy and ideas! He definitely has his father's smarts.

On the same branch from the top of the tree, our cat is going about his business talking with himself, since talking with someone else would require linguistic intelligence on the part of that someone else.

Log entry: "Today I haz encountered humanz. They is smelly and stoopid. Very, very improbubble for humanz to cause ekstinkshun."

Proud to have written his first log with such detailed information on the first live encounter with the humanoids, the kitty looked around making sure he was doing every step by the book, as he had been taught.

"Let's see, let's see... fireflies: done, write log: done, pebble in the ground: done! I haz to jump ten-thousand yearz again."

_Puff!_ In a flash of light, the cat vanishes from the tree in a wondrous halo.

Pity the tribe of humans were too busy picking each other's fleas to witness our furry time traveler. But who could blame them? After all, the fleas were a delicious source of nutrients, when other sources happen to sit too high on a branch. If only they would have bothered to look up and gasp with wonder at the bright halo that illuminated the sky.

Ok, maybe not a full-wonder gasp, but at least a peek—a little, squinty, one-eyed peek.

But no.

Picking fleas proved beyond doubt far more important.

And so it happened that the first encounter with an intelligent species left no trace in human history. Nothing remained of this event in the collective memory. No paintings on a cave wall with a talking kitty, no bone-sculpted statues of cats with big heads, no signs and no proofs to tell the future that once upon a time, in the long distant past, some strange things had happened that nobody was able to explain.

Chapter 2

The personality cult of every normal tyrant has its own special perks. Some rename all the days in the week and all the months in the year after them, including making their year of birth the year zero of history and their birthday the national day because, as every subject of the country knows, history began with the birth of the Leader.

Other tyrants decorate their walls with the heads of the opposition leaders that still have the faces comically frozen in the surprised expression that graced their unexpected death.

Others write inept books like _On Establishing the Great Advancement_ or _The Book of Infinite Wisdom_ or other literary masterpieces in the tyrant couldn't help but lay down in such great details every single law, every single rule of the grand future plans that ever crossed his mind, so that the future generations may witness the beauty of the ultimate wet dream of a control freak. Naturally, these works of genius are required reading all over the land.

Not only that, but every single day, every single person should recite its preface before going to sleep and wake up in the morning mumbling its quotes and phrases.

However, what every single tyrant has in common, proven to be the most certain thing—the absolute must—is to pile up lots and lots of titles for himself.

You can't be a proper self-respecting tyrant if your people don't call you names like: absolute, supreme, father of the nation, great, paramount, eternal, triumphant, glorious... essentially every single pompous and inflated fart sound you can find in a dictionary.

And all these with a "The" in front!

Because any warlord can be a normal eternal leader and a common supreme visionary, but "THE eternal leader"? "THE supreme visionary"? "THE absolute commander"?

That means there is only one of a kind!

Everyone knows you can't beat that!

And if you think that the tyrant himself took a day off for brainstorming all these titles, you will be SO wrong!

Why should you do all the hard work by yourself, when you can have an army of ass-kissers with velvet tongues just waiting to polish those buttocks until they shine like spotless porcelain? That is why every supreme majesty has hordes of spineless cowards coming up with the most idiotic ass-kissing ideas just to earn the privilege of being The Absolute Leader's favorite pet:

\- Building the greatest statue in the most pharaonic temple to match the monumental grandeur of the Extraordinary Ultimate Genius while starving an entire nation and killing millions just to build it in one year? Check!

\- Forcing every single citizen to have the same haircut and the same clothes as The Absolute Supreme Leader and Great Visionary of all the centuries? Check!

\- Punishing by death the simple fact of covering or turning facedown the picture of The Eternal Father of the entire nation? Check!

And you may think that a tyrant's life is nothing but boring executions and useless glorious planning but, once in a while, if the country is rich enough and the technology is advanced enough, you will have a tyrant that is actually interested in questions like:

"Who are we?"

"Where are we going?"

"How it will all end?"

The echo of these questions bounces off the walls of the great Hall of Science, smashing down one by one in the head of the Master Scientist.

"I don't know, oh! Absolute Leader and Ultimate Light of the meowing universe. But we now have the ability to find out!"

The one mechanical eye blinks out of sync with its still-biological counterpart, looking attentively at The Supreme leader and Father of the Nation.

A cat as fat as a bagpipe is sitting belly up, uselessly trying to use his sedentary muscle to roll over and sit up. So much for feline grace and elasticity.

The bagpipe cat finally manages to move and says in a very interested tone, "Please, do tell me again about this new machine."

The Master Scientist explains again how the greatest minds of the nations (obviously, not greater than the mind of The Greatest Leader) managed to force a disturbance in the electromagnetic field, allowing particles to travel faster than light. And the accent is on the word _particles_. Plural. Because it isn't just one particle that they can push through the disturbance; it is many of them! And those said particles (someone's keys, to be more precise) were sent one hour earlier (preventing him from searching for them all over the place), thus achieving time travel after all these years of obstacles and unfortunate accidents.

Small disclosure: In case you do not understand what the Master Scientist means about "obstacles and unfortunate accidents," let me clarify:

You noticed the mechanical stumpy eye that never manages to blink in sync with the normal one? Well, that one was lost in the first stages of the project. A very clumsy accident on the part of the Master Scientist for being stupid enough to correct The Great Leader on the impossibility of building a collider in under one year. And the mechanical paw? Well, another accident, caused by not finishing the plasma core by the deadline The Great Leader had promised to himself. The segmented tail that needs oil every three weeks? Or the rotating ear that never seems to rotate? Well... the results of more and more little, unfortunate accidents that seem to happen all the time. But since nobody wants to lose an irreplaceable head, the glorious vision of The Visionary Leader must keep on marching!

"Your Absolute Highness, more glorious than all the Suns in the universe, after we experimented with the disturbance, we were able to create a portable time machine that allows the wearer to travel to any moment of time. The good news is that we tested on toys, balls, and rats, but the bad news is that every time they reached the time destination, they ended up inconveniently in a mangled puddle of slime."

"Very inconvenient," adds the bagpipe cat, "but I presume all these are minor details? I'm more than sure that you will fix it by the time of my next anniversary. You know how much I like surprises. The nice surprises!"

"Oh yes, glorious sun of the cat universe. Everything is possible under your guidance and infinite wisdom!"

_Three more paws to go, one eye, and one ear_ , thinks the Master Scientist. _That is a good reserve in case some more "accidents" happen._

As the Master Scientist is bowing and retreating, the bagpipe cat resumes his belly up position and starts purring a little line of thought:

_This time travel smells so good! As good as fish fried in butter and then dipped in cream._ Not to say that this was his project idea, conveniently suggested by the Master Scientist, ever since he drowned the previous supreme genius of this nation.

Some people say that controlling the power of the atom is the best power you can have.

Others say that controlling the minds of the subjects and building a system of organized terror is the proper power to have. But the bagpipe cat knows that, one way or the other, these are good enough... for a while.

But controlling time? Now, that is the ultimate power!

Master Scientist had said that this will be "the ultimate weapon of staying in power forever and ever."

Countries? Yes, you can conquer as many as you like.

Subjects? Yes, you can control as many as you can.

But at some point, your time runs out, and some other fat cat will inevitably take your place. At least, that is what the Master Scientist said.

But with the time machine? Every time something or someone threatens his glorious reign through an unfortunate turn of events, all he has to do is go back in time and fix it.

Not only that, but he could travel as far as he wanted in the future, where the solution for immortality would surely be invented, snatch it, and then live forever and ever.

He will be called... The Time Lord!

The emperor closes his eyes and stretches as long as his width.

Oh, he likes this title! And he came up with it all by himself! Or was it the Master Scientist? No, no, he definitely came up with that! (One of the downsides of being a tyrant is that you forget which ideas are yours and which come from your underlings.)

But until then, until the time machine passed all these nasty safety trials, he needs someone to make the first jump—someone not so brilliant to get any ideas or ask any questions. Someone who is stupid enough to test it but smart enough to operate it.

And that someone is surely not the Master Scientist.

Because we don't want a brave soul to go back in time and drown his Lordship when he was just a kitten, now, do we?

Or change some other very important minor thing in the past and then... what do you know? The face of the supreme leader on all the walls and buildings will be a cat with a mechanical eye.

No!

We need a useful idiot!

And to get a useful idiot, we need a time travel narrative concealed in some high and righteous purpose. A purpose to capture the attention of the idiots. Not only that, but we also need this narrative to keep the idiot motivated to come back! Something like a mission... something with a goal... something with grandeur in it!

"Hmm, I think I might have a brilliant idea."

Chapter 3

Ten-thousand planet rotations in the future and precisely on the same day at the same hour, another puff as flashy as the last one happened again, and the exact same stupid-looking cat landed in front of the same charming-looking cave.

How do we know it's the same cave?

Because the same stinking Mog, son of Mog, sits gnawing the bones of some unlucky critter.

But... how come?

The kitty just jumped ten-thousand years in the future!

Did the humans just waste ten-thousand years, doing nothing?

Where are all the scientific discoveries? The technological progress? The spaceships and the galactic airports? Ten-thousand years, and they haven't even bothered to innovate their own names?

Mog, son of Mog... still?

_Really_?

The cat takes another look around, completely puzzled. He tries to determine if the jump in time misfired.

He remembers that the Master Scientist said something about loops and paradigms and how jumping backward is tricky from jumping forward because you have to think that time already moves forward. But he was so sleepy during that lesson, and there were so many, _many_ details with so many long and complicated names...

But not to panic!

He knew he had the keenest spirit of observation (he had the badge of achievement to prove it!) and the bestest special recognition (he had the golden star of achievement for that also!) and the necessary terrain searching intuition (he had the purple medal of valor!). He decides to put all these to good use!

A-ha!

The trees are different!

You can't forget the trees that saved your skin, now can you? Deep sigh of relief right there.

And look! Look! Different rocks!

And... oh, my!

A FIRE!!

So things have started changing around here!

Log entry: "The smart monkeyz make the great fire discovery! And they haz ten more growl-growl in their vocabuhlary!"

This looks encouraging. They're making progress. Maybe we should correct the initial thought: ten-thousand years were not wasted. They're getting somewhere!

That night, a happy kitty sneaks quietly behind the unsuspecting farting humanz and warms itself near the fire. The concert of snores that fills the cave's perfect acoustic arches is slightly enhanced by a warm purr. Barely awake, Mog notices the sound that he has never heard before. Nobody from the tribe has such a peaceful and content snore. That is why he knows he is dreaming and goes back to sleep.

In the morning, strange little fireflies appear from all the corners of the horizon and swarm into the kitty tail, bringing all kinds of data goodies. Then one minute later, with another flash of light followed by another halo, the kitty goes missing for another ten-thousand years.

Chapter 4

Everyone said he was the most stupidest kitty in his school. The most naivest kitty. The most gulliblest kitty. From teachers to little squinty-eyed first graders, they all said that he will never achieve anything in his life, because he is too stupid to notice the obvious!

But he showed them!

He collected all the stamps!

He signed in for all the achievements and worked day and night for all the shiny badges!

He knew all the Leader songs and singed them every morning and knew all the Great Deeds by heart!

He had all the collectible portrets of The Glorious, and he knew all the answers to all the questions and tests on The Glorious Life! And now everyone will see that he didn't waste his nights on achieving all the stages of being a Virtuous Pupil in the eyes of The Glorious!

The Father of the Nation finally noticed him!

The Father of the Nation sent him PERSONNALLY a letter saying that he needs him on the greatest mission that ever missioned in catkind history!

The Father of the Nation, the Glorious Sun of Infinite Wisdom... wrote him personally a letter!!!

The Father of the Nation, the Visionary of Triumph and Excellency of Progress... knows... his... name!

OMG OMG OMG! This was the bestest day in all his kitty life!

Oh, how he could smell the envy of his class from a mile away! He could see all the eyes on him, all the heads turning, all the whiskers whispering, all the tails lowering! No more taking of food from under his nose. No more kicks in the nose every time he asked stupid questions (which in fact were rather smart questions, thank you very much).

When the Master Scientist came in person to see him, he handed him the Star of the Virtuous Pupil in front of the entire school! And he told him that The Glorious would have handed it in person,

but, as everyone knows, The Glorious was absolutely incredibly busy slaving for the greater good of his people.

And when he left with the Master Scientist, everyone had been sorry they were not the chosen ones! You could see it in their eyes! And mom and dad cried tears of happiness. Who wouldn't cry of happiness if their kid was chosen by The Glorious to stand by His side and help Him in His ultimate mission? The mission that will save catkind and ensure the future of the eternal leadership of The Glorious!

He will prove to everyone that he is not the idiot they think he is. He will prove to The Glorious that he was worthy of being chosen!

As the overzealous and overjoyed kitty with his chest covered in tinker badges was stepping behind him, all that the Master Scientist was thinking was: _I have to give it to the leader: he knows how to brainwash the little ones! I know that we, the cats, are not a very risk-taking species. I mean, who wants to risk their precious fur when it comes to jumping at dangerous stuff? Especially if it's a time machine that, in the current stages, transforms everything that enters the test area to goo? That is why the smart cats never step in front and volunteer. For that, you have the stupid ones. I guess that is how natural selection weeded out stupid and the catkind evolved a brain in the first place. In a way, we are all lazy and self-preserving balls of fur. We just had to find the least self-preserving one to risk his hide._

All these programs of null value achievements and pointless steps, the mission to save the zero future, the brave great plan of ineptitudes... all these actually worked!

We managed to find the most inept and idiotic representative of the feline race. And he will blindly jump where the leader points the flashlight!

Keeping his thoughts from his face, the Master Scientist turns grinning to the kitten and says, "Welcome, young pupil, to the Center for the Glorious Future of the Nation! I hope you are prepared to face the challenges ahead."

"I knows all the songs puhraising The Glorious! No challunge in the whole wide worldz can beat meh!"

_You got that right!_ thinks the Master Scientist.

"First and foremost, let me tell you that you are a very special and talented young boy, and you have been selected from a daunting number of other candidates. It was an extremely difficult choice to make... but The Glorious selected YOU!"

But, in his mind, the Master Scientist feels somehow sorry. _Actually, you were the only one stupid enough to collect all of those shitty stamps and badges and achievements and whatnot. But let's continue...._

"You will enter a secret program of training and learning that no other cat before you ever dreamed of taking part. You will meet all the great minds behind this project. And, ultimately, you will meet The Glorious... in person!"

He stops as the kitty freezes in the dreamiest posture.

His eyes are so wide and big that they could put to shame any self-respecting glacial lake.

Chapter 5

Ten-thousand Earth rotations later, and our lovely kitten drops again from the clear blue sky on the same spot as before. And as he lands on all fours, he starts looking curiously around for the long-awaited changes (not long from his perspective, though, because he just came from the past a few seconds ago).

The same charming cave is still there, but other trees are shading the entrance (and also other rocks). There is another Mog, probably still son of Mog, as dumb as the last hundred generations... but this time, they have dogs?

Dogs!?!?

Stupid monkeys!

Stupid! Stupid!

Chase, chase, chase. Jump, jump, jump. Bush, bush, bush, aaaand climb in the nearest tree up, up, up to the highest branch!

You had to domesticate dogs first??

Why not chickens??

Log entry: "Stoopid monkeyz!"

Barely catching his breath and calming his poor little nerves, he continues.

Log entry: "It is da impahssiblest chance for da monkeyz to cause da ekstinkshun!"

How could the professors be so mistaken? Global climate change? Planetary scale catastrophic destructions? All done by humans? Pah! All wrong! They have a language of only grunts and farts, and they can't even come up with other names then Mog and Trog!

Another log entry: "They iz yet to invent da wheel! They iz da worstest stoopid mammals! They livez in caves, they iz stoopid, they has no higiene, they iz stoopid, they iz horrible, horrible, horrible and they nevah wash, they nevah groom, they pee where they sleep and they poo where they eat, they iz stoopid, stoopid, stoopid, too stoopid to cause an event of big magnitude! I haz to jump again and I hopez they did not fart da planet to death!"

Chapter 6

"As you already know from the natural history classes, we are not the first sentient species that has walked on the surface of this planet. Before us, nature evolved the sentient trait in the naked monkeys, around ten-million years ago. However, due to various obvious factors, it seems that that species went extinct. You will hear different theories and different angles from different professors, some brilliant and others not so brilliant (the theories, not the professors).

"Keep them in mind, but you will have to remember: when you re back there in time, most of them will be wrong. So, you just stick to the facts and facts alone. We don't want your opinions on the monkeys or what you think of what they said or what you believe they thought. We simply want the description of what the monkeys did.

"You will be just an observer... so simply observe and record, and we, the brilliant minds of this nation, will draw the conclusions and will come up with the theories."

The little kitty is all ears, and his head is shaking up and down, up and down, up and down, because he has to look knowledgeable. He can't disappoint all these smart professors. That, and the fact that Professor Meowsky is a very scary-looking cat.

"Only facts, no opinions, got it!"

The circle of old scruffy professors that lived their entire agoraphobic lives between too many walls full of treaties and deep studies closes in on the young Virtuous Pupil.

"What we know for a fact is that all the archeological sites from that period had a lot of cow skeletons. And by a lot, I mean a LOT. Everywhere you dig in the human historical layers, cows seem to pop up all over the place. Cow bones, cow DNA, cow skin, cow milk proteins, cow horns, you name it. There is no natural explanation for this kind of cow presence. Cows simply didn't have the ability to demographically explode to such a number on their own. That is why, as a historian, you first have to wonder 'Why there were so many cows? What made them so special?' And what we know is that the increase in cow population happened in sync with the humans. The cow numbers simply exploded just before the great extinction. And that right there is no coincidence!"

Professor Meowsky points to a very important underlined graph.

"From the data—and the data does not lie!—there were billions of cows. Forests the size of continents were simply cleared just to raise food for cows! Endless fields of genetically modified plants were intensively harvested to feed the cows! Armies of humans were dedicated only to making sure that the food and water supply chain remained unbroken for the cows. Think of all the massive investments done by the humans to acquire this kind of knowledge: from chemistry and physics to genetics and engineering. Think of all the resources that went into these planet-scale projects: clearing vast expansions of land, planting intensively vast expansions of crops, modifying genetically all their crops to suit the bovine diet? All, all, all just to keep the cows breeding and feeding!"

Panting and resuming.

"Imagine our shock when we discovered that right before the extinction over 60% of the food of the entire planet was dedicated to feeding the cows while less than 10% was dedicated to directly feeding human. And the puzzling thing is that the cows are... how should I put it more simply? 'Dumb' is not the word I am looking for.... Cows are just big, stupid, lumbering Things. But apparently that didn't prevent the humans from Africa from starving to death so that their crops would go to the cows! Never in the history of the planet Earth has a species used another species to this extent. Just from the raw numbers, the vast majority of a naked monkey life was dedicated directly or indirectly to raising cows. Their entire array of innovations and technology was directed toward increasing the number of cows, to the point where the cattle were the largest population of animals on the entire planet. Cows outnumbered as body mass any species of cold- or warm-blooded animals that ever existed at that point in the entire history of the Earth!"

The silence is eerie, and the kitty begins to feel scared of the big, bad cows.

"Now tell me, what conclusions can be inferred from this?"

Silence. A fly is trying to find its way through a window.

"If one species works tirelessly to serve the other... if one species dedicates its entire time and economy and efforts to raise millions of the other, putting the resources of the entire planet at risk, then there is only one conclusion: the cows had the monkeys as their slaves!"

The Virtuous Pupil makes a face that reads, _A-haaa, that makes perfect sense!_

But the professor continues unabated: "Did the cows have telepathic powers? Did the cows have a special type of pheromones or other chemicals that made humans lose their mind? How did the cows manage to make humans their slaves? Because, from all the data, the monkeys had the technology and the energy sources to be completely independent of the cows! The humans could

live carefree without the cows, but in the end, the cows seem to have doomed the monkeys!"

The professor turns to some doodle graphics on the wall and continues, "Based on these calculations, the monkeys were working themselves literally to death, day and night, to raise the cows and keep them fed, while the cows were growing in number until an entire planet with all its resources was dedicated to one only purpose: COW REARING!"

BAM! The paw strikes the charts with all the numbers and all the percentages.

The conclusion is like an ultimate sentence!

And this is indeed the most accepted theory in the academic circles, simply because the piles of cow skeletons bursting from every archeological site are too obvious to ignore.

"So you see, my young fur ball, you have to go back in time and see what made the monkeys bow to their cow overlords!"

Professor Meowsky retires in the shadows, purring with the satisfaction of delivering such an intelligent and dramatic presentation. He turns his head to look at the other sorry academic-looking bags of fleas with an expression that says, _Let's see if you can beat that!_

And then, from the same shadows, another old cat jumps up, his walking saying, _You just watch me!_

"ALIENS!"

The entire room booms from his voice, and the scared kitty starts looking left and right for a bed to hide.

"No, no. Not in this room," says Professor Purrocious.

"I mean aliens, as in they are the cause of human extinction. It is plain obvious!"

New charts, new graphics, and new pictures are put on the board while the old ones are discarded dramatically on the floor.

"Imagine a race like the humans that achieves a higher level of intelligence. Even if their intelligence was not as high as ours, that race will present a threat to the galactic powers to be. The monkeys would have been able to start conquering space in a matter of centuries. They would have been able to take over the galaxy just like that. Remember, little fur ball, that things like these become a reality especially when you have the technology to make ceramic tooth fillings! Because apart from the cow bones, the other thing that littered the archeological sites are the ceramic tooth fillings. And we all know that those are pretty expensive and hard to make!"

Professor Purrocious looks around to check if anyone is contradicting him.

No?

Then let's continue.

"Imagine that you are the alien civilization and you are enjoying blissfully your newly conquered galaxy, when BAM! The monkeys are all over your planets, claiming their share as the new galactic competitor. That will make any alien very, very angry. So my hypothesis is that the aliens wiped out the monkeys race the moment they invented flight!"

"Flying monkeys! Pff!" sneers a member of the group of scruffy cats.

"Yes, yes, laugh all you want! I know everyone thinks, 'Professor Purrocious only comes up with the crazy stuff,' but if you can make ceramic tooth fillings, then you can invent flying machines! Even if we don't have any proof that the monkeys could fly, the theory of aliens wiping out the humans still stands! From the observations that we have, a lot of strange objects are orbiting our planet. They are as real as it gets, and from the look of it, they are artificial satellites that were put there by a far more advanced civilization than ours. The alien overlords are observing us right now! They are following the level of our evolution, and when we get our paw too deep into the technology jar... BAM! They will get us extinct just like they did with the humans!"

As the dramatic _BAM_ fades, the professor retreats mysteriously into the shadows.

Only to be followed by another fur-patched cat.

"While I agree with the alien hypothesis, I believe my theory is more extraordinary—"

"No, it's not more extraordinary than my theory."

"Can I talk now? Can I talk? You had your presentation time, now let me talk, ok?"

"Yeah, you can talk. But you can't compare your theory with mine."

"I can do whatever I like because it's my theory!"

"Don't let the cat get his tongue. He has stuff to say."

"Thank you! Thank you! The aliens did not wipe the human race out of concern for their expansion. Instead..."

Hold your breath!

"...the aliens tried to colonize this very planet!"

And release breath.

"The most recent archeological diggings that were done last _week_ "—Professor Scratcher raises his paw together with his voice—"indicate that the aliens attempted to build their own colonies right here! The noble humans sacrificed themselves in fighting a continuous war repelling this invasion. They won this war, and they managed to keep the aliens off this planet."

Silence.

Then from the audience:

"Pray tell, what last week evidence have your cats dragged out?"

"My students discovered a site with a high concentration of uranium."

Silence again.

"Uranium that was unmistakably shaped in bars used for construction! We all know that uranium doesn't occur naturally just like that. You need some very advanced technology and expensive methods to get it. And that is alien technology proof!"

"Uranium?"

"Yes. And this was not present only at one site! But several! The aliens managed to build their radioactive habitats in only a very few places before they were repelled. The shape of the radioactive metal is without a doubt the shape of alien construction components for their colonies. My theory is that the humans left this planet! They left in a mass migration! The Earth climate changed dramatically because of the war against alien colonization, and since the humans had the technology to make tooth fillings, they had also built an entire fleet of spaceships and traveled to the next habitable planet! They never went extinct. They left, and never came back!"

"Uranium?" Some whispers are still going about in the shadows.

Somewhere behind the entrance, the Master Scientist watches how the scruffy old cats are arguing in front of a very puzzled kitty.

The human extinction has been a topic of debate for centuries. Even when he was a student, he had been a cow overlords believer. But after a while, it was no longer the theories that had him worried.

Aliens, viruses, climate change, cow farts, they were all nice and had solid evidence to back them up. But what scared him was the suddenness of the extinction. Now you have happy humans doing whatever naked monkeys did, and the next thing you know: _Poof!_ No more monkeys!

None.

Not even a goodbye note.

They looked everywhere for a crater or a trace of an asteroid hitting the Earth. No super volcano erupting. No burst of radiation from a neighboring supernova. No solar flame scorching the planet. Nothing!

But something did happen, and all the monkeys were gone, leaving behind nothing but ceramic teeth and gold rings with diamonds. And lots and lots of cow bones.

It seemed that all the greatest achievements ever done by humans turned to dirt while all the useless crap nobody cared about lasted for eons and remained as proof of our existence. There was absolutely no trace of any of the great metropolitan cities holding the millions of people, no traces of the roads or bridges linking nations.

Everything gone.

Everything except the ceramic tooth fillings, that is!

You would expect a pyramid to survive a million years, or a skyscraper, or an underground nuclear bunker, or a city made of steel and glass, or anything relevant. If only one single hard drive with pictures—just pictures!—of the humans' achievements somehow managed to survive a million years. Just one lousy hard drive... but it seems that one million years is a _lot_ of time.

The skyscrapers crashed, the glass became sand which was blown by eons of wind, the walls crumbled and became pebbles, the metal rusted away into dust, and everything else was taken over by plants, then eaten by millions of hungry mouths—and then pooped by millions of happy asses. Then the waste was washed by rains, and then sucked by placid plants again and again and again, so many times that nobody will ever recognize what was before a phone or a book or a shoe or anything.

But what about the multi-generational bunkers hidden deep in the Earth? What about the long-forgotten tunnels linking islands and drilled into mountains?

Didn't they last?

Surely they will let the future know about the paramount of species, the beacon of intelligence, the most amazing jewel in the crown of animal kingdom that was the _homo sapiens_?

Was there absolutely nothing left behind with the writing "look upon our workings, ye mortals, and despair"?

Well... it seems that in the end every bunker and tunnel and other construction marvel has one mortal nemesis: time. You can insulate and isolate a nuclear bunker for a century, even for a thousand years, but a hundred thousand years? Micro-fissures in the walls become cracks, and after another hundred thousand years, the cracks become holes and cavities—and what do you know? In one million years, everything inside those rooms collapses and turns to mud. Even if a bunker could withstand a nuclear attack and cosmic ray bombardment in its present day, it won't be able to withstand the simple passing of a million years.

That is how, without further ado, all human creation turned eventually to dirt, and all our movies, videos, and sounds became extinct, and all the books, papers, and paintings, all the blogs and the comments that have been ever said on all the forums, all the selfies and group photos, the amazing ass of the most famous singer, and the latest revolutionary physics theories about quantum and strings just vanished away.

All the stuff that is human stops together with the human species, because if human activity stops, the human tracks in history get blown away by the winds of time.

And in one million years, the only things that will remain from us are the tooth fillings, diamond rings, and bathroom ceramic.

And those will serve as proof of technology for the future.

"Hey, look! The humans were able to make ceramic tooth fillings; therefore, they had to have some kind of civilization and advanced technology!"

Chapter 7

"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned."

"I know you did, son. We all do. Some more than the others. The important thing—"

"Yes, yes, Father, I know, I know, but this time I have seen the _signs_! The _end_ is coming! We must repent, Father! You and Mom were dead right about that!"

The priest was starting to feel uncomfortable.

First, because Old Tom never put so much of a toe in this church (or any other church, for that matter). Actually, from the technical point of view, he may have been in this church when he was baptized as a baby. But could someone say for sure if he was even baptized?

And now here he is, all shaky and ready to repent!

Second, because Old Tom, the ultimate unbeliever... Old Tom, who would put to shame any devil with his idiotic rants... Old Tom, with his personal little swarm of flies buzzing around his garlic-smelling head and whose idea of taking a bath and washing his clothes was rolling drunk in the puddles during rain while singing... Old Tom, for whom a separate hell should be created since he would be such a bad influence on all the other sinners... Old Tom, who never read a book, holy or unholy, is here in person mumbling about signs and mystical prophecies. That, and also begging for a confession which Father Albert didn't look forward to hearing.

And third, there is no booze stink in his breath.

Which means Old Tom is in the soberest state that he has ever been in his life. Actually, from the technical point of view, the only time he should have been sober was as a baby. But could someone say for sure he wasn't suckling back then on a bottle of whisky?

However, we digress.

"Tell me what happened... son."

"Father! Father! You won't believe your very ears what I have seen! The Holy Spirit is not a dove, Father. The Holy Spirit is a cat!"

Old Tom stops, waiting for a reaction, but since there is none, he goes on. "I was minding my own business... doing honest and hard work, like the honest and hardworking Christian everyone knows I am... and I was taking back the chickens from old lady McKendrick, the chickens that she owed me—not stealing, taking back! People who say lies about me stealing chickens are liars! Especially when they are so stingy on buying those chickens. You tell to the whole village that I stole them just because you can't even pay a fair price for them? Would it hurt you to put in a bottle of whisky on top?"

"Old lady McKendrick? You stole chickens from old lady McKendrick? That poor soul that comes on every week at every sermon? But what did she do to you?"

"What did she do to meee?" Old Tom gasps for air and wipes his forehead with his sleeve as he goes through the recent memories.

"What she _didn't_ do to me! She sure deserved it, that sneaky old fox. I told her that pleasuring an old widows is hard work, as it is. But, nooo, she wanted three times a week!"

"Old lady McKendrick?"

"And she works me like a slave, Father! She'll break the bed and keep on going! No wonder her husband died so early! And I'm not a young lad anymore!"

"Old lady McKendrick?"

"The one and only, Father! Folks think she a war widow. But she no war widow! She a lust widow! She will suck the life from you like sucking marrow from the bones! She will chase you up the attic and down in the cellar to finish all her dirty business!"

"Old lady McKendrick?"

"She works you day in and day out to the last drop and with nothing to eat in the whole kitchen! I had to fight them pigs for them cabbages in the garden! She didn't pay me my money for a whole four weeks! Four weeks! Three times a week! With no booze, no food, no nothing! That woman has no heart! No heart at all! I had to steal her chickens! The Lord knows justice is on my side!"

A moment of silence, as Father Albert still tries to make sense of the ramblings.

"Old... lady... McKendrick?"

"And while I was getting my fair share of birdies, the skies opened, Father! The very skies opened above me, and the clouds parted, and it was light all around as bright as day! And _behold_!"

The shout echoes so loud in the church that the priest bounces back.

"The Holy Spirit in the form of a cat descended from the heavens carrying the message of the times to come. The cat spoke as clear as you and me, Father, and its voice was the voice of angels, and my heart stood still in wonder! And the truth was clear as whisky as I was right there and then, and I knew that it was all true! _All_ true! The _end_ is upon us, Father! The Holy Cat has spoken! All the kingdoms and nations of people will perish, and all that will remain of us will be the tooth fillings!"

Father Albert was speechless.

He had known this moment would come sooner or later. He had known that, at some point in time, Old Tom, like any self-respecting alcoholic, would either hit his head in a ditch or fall off a roof, and then he would walk around talking to himself and seeing holy cats falling from the heavens.

Oh well, what can I do? Every village has to have an idiot in the end.

Now that honor would be bestowed on good Old Tom.

"One Our Father and three Hail Marys before you go to sleep," he instructs.

"Thank you, Father. Thank you, thank you! I will go and spread the word of the Holy Spirit cat for the ages to come."

The door opens, the door closes, and Old Tom steps triumphantly outside, feeling like a new man. After he recites those Hail Marys, all his years of drinking and cursing will be forgiven, and he will be reborn with a brave new life in front of him.

Chapter 8

"The hardest part in time travel over vast periods is timing the exact date of an event. Take, for example, the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. We have the layer of iridium dust in the planet crust telling us that there was an asteroid impact, we have the crater telling us how big it was... but all we can do to date the impact is estimate it around eighty-million years ago. Now you see where the problem is?"

The Master Scientist turns around to the Virtuous Pupil for a possible answer, but all he receives is the usual blank look. So he turns back to the table and resumes, "This 'around'! Because if you have a time machine and you want to witness the impact, you don't know the exact date and hour of the impact. You don't know if it was 80,436,239 years ago or 79,734,127 years ago. So, the only way for you to witness it is to go back exactly eighty-million years ago, check for missing dinos, and then do another jump in time, forward or backward, looking for the recent signs of an asteroid impact. And you keep doing these smaller and smaller jumps for shorter and shorter periods, closing in every time on the impact event and checking each time: 'Dinos? No? Jump back! Dinos? Yes? Jump forward!' until you are lucky to find that special day. Then you take a spot with a nice view near the future crater and wait the entire day."

"Wait the entire day," the Virtuous Pupil repeats. "Got it!"

The Master Scientist turns around to see if the kitty was paying attention or is just repeating the last words.

"The same problem presents itself with the extinction of humans. We know an extinction happened 'around' ten-million years ago. We know it happened extremely fast, but we don't know the exact date. Some of the professors love the dramatic idea of a cataclysmic, flash extinction, while most of the realistic ones prefer the idea of a long extinction spread over a couple of centuries. But the problem remains the same: the 'around factor!

"Because the distance in time is so long, we don't know the precise time when the extinction started and when it ended; otherwise, we would send you straight to that date. So, you will have to jump forward and backward in time until you will find the period of the extinction."

"Jump forward and backward. Got it!"

The Master Scientist is becoming annoyed by these last words repeats—and his squinty eyes are showing it fully.

"Apart from the actual time travel, you will also have to gather data. And here we came across another problem: how can you send a message into the future, when the time machine can only send a preconfigured matrix of matter: meaning just you and the machine?"

This time, the Master Scientist doesn't turn, since he knows the same blank look will be there, happy as ever. So he continues as before, "And the solution is: you will have to put the actual message in a time capsule that will survive 10 million years, and it will be picked up by us in our present time. You don't have to worry about anything; the time machine will make the time capsule. Everything is automated: from gathering air and bio samples to collecting fluctuations in the temperature and even ocean patterns. Your only real task is to bury the time capsules at these specific locations and simply go about your time traveling business.

"Just for your information: the data gathering is done by these little shiny firefly drones. The message writing is done by this bendy wormy device, and the time capsule will look like this shiny pebble. So, all you have to do is let the fireflies go around and observe. After they return, you write your log; then you put the pebble in the ground, and job done."

"Fireflies, write log, pebble in the ground, job done. Got it!"

Chapter 9

Old Tom was the bestest friend the kitty ever had because Old Tom always paid attention. But kitty never understood why Old Tom acted as if talking cats were a miracle. It was like Old Tom was seeing a talking cat for the first time! Which was weird, since the Master Scientist never mentioned that.

Old Tom showed him all the humans' great temples and great accomplishments! He saw the great temple of widow empress McKendrick, which was bigger than even the Glorious Palace itself—and it had a roof so high, higher than a tree!

And Old Tom showed him mirrors with another kitty inside that looked just like him, only stupider because it always did what he did at the same time.

And Old Tom told him... mythology, which he learned was like the monkeys' system of beliefs. He told him the holy story of the virgin cat that talked with a pigeon, but she didn't eat the pigeon because it was a talking pigeon, but that was not the point, and then the Holy Cat got pregnant miraculously, or at least that's what she said, and then the kitty Jesus got to be the savior. Savior from what? Old Tom didn't say, but the kitty Jesus gave fishes to all the peoples, which was good, and then Old Tom said that this was all he remembered for reason of his becoming atheistic.

But the thing he liked most about Old Tom was not the fact he was giving him all the fish and milk every day, but the fact that Old Tom listened to every word he was saying. Back in cat time, nobody listened to kitty. They all told him to do this and that, and all the time they were looking at him like he was stupid: "Put that thingie back! Don't touch this thingie! Don't touch that thingie! Stop standing in the way!" They made him repeat what they said and definitely did not tuck him into bed at night.

But not Old Tom!

He listened and wrote EVERYTHING kitty said in a big-big book.

Old Tom called him the Holy Spirit! And the big book was called _The Codex of the Holy Spirit Cat_.

Can you imagine? A book written about him! I wonder what the Master Scientist would think about that! Maybe the professors back home will make a theory on this.

"Maybe they won't," a little voice in his head snaps.

"Or maybe they will! Because this is the greatest mission of imperative knowledge to advance The Glorious and catkind! Everyone back home is going to sleep thinking of me and waiting with great curiosity to listen to my adventures."

"Oh please, after one week of hearing you thinking, I can guess how much they care about you and your mission."

The kitty startles. He had never known this voice in his head.

"Are you me?"

"No silly, I can't be you because I'm smarter than you."

"Then what are you doing in my head?"

"I'm a telepath," says the voice. "Look down."

And the cat looks down from his fluffy royal cushion that Old Tom stole from widow McKendrick, to a big-headed rat that is just standing there.

"A telepath rat?" says the cat.

"Oh, I'm sorry! You can have talking cats, but a telepath rat is out of the question, right?"

The rat has actually a good point. Should we allow the rodent to just intrude in the story like that? Or do we need to warm up the plot and let the rat make a proper entrance? Giving her a little

background.., or maybe giving her a name?

But that won't be very fair to the kitty, since we didn't give him a name also.

Oh well, let's just continue.

As the time traveling kitty tried to make sense of all this, the rat wobbles her way to the cushion.

"Such a nice resting place you have here. My, my! And fishes and milkies—all you can eat! Sorry to barge in like this, but it's not every day you get to meet a member of an extinct species."

"You mean... humans?"

"No, stupid, I mean you!"

_Munch-munch-munch_ , and the whole fish is gone like in a disappearance magic act. The rat licks her paws and resumes the conversation.

"What? You think you are the only time traveler around here?"

_Slurp-slurp-slurp_ , and the whole milk vanishes, just like the fish, in part two of the same magic act.

"Sorry, but this big telepath brain needs lots and lots of proteins. _Burp!_ And to think we never thought you were sentient at all."

"Who? The humans?"

"No, stupid, you! You, the cat species! You, the ones that came ten-million years after the hominids. We truly believed that the cat fossils had big heads just to store all the extra fat for hibernation."

"Hibernation?"

"Yea, Yea, hibernation. Because you do seem to sleep a lot. And you do have big heads that never seem to have smart thoughts. So, hibernation was the best theory that fit the pattern. I can't wait to bring the news back to my time. Imagine the surprise on Doctor Ratonstick's face when he learns that there was another sentient species between us and the hominids."

"Another species? What other sentient species?"

"You, stupid! Yooou! Gaaaaaah!!"

The little paw thumps on her rodent face and pauses for a while.

Then the rat regains her composure and starts to slowly tell a simple narrative fit for a child's comprehension. The story is simple, as children's stories go, and the kitty understands the horrible, horrible truth:

Catkind does not live forever and ever, as The Glorious has promised. Not only that, but catkind was never regarded as being intelligent or highly evolved to begin with—and that is because they do not leave a mass extinction behind as proof of their civilization (unlike the brilliant, brilliant humans). That alone is reason enough to think that catkind was full of lazy, hibernating creatures. Catkind didn't alter their environment to catastrophic outcomes, they didn't cause any climate change or continental shift, and most importantly they didn't leave any ceramic tooth fillings behind.

Apparently, in the highest circles of rat academia, causing a planetary scale destruction is proof of advanced civilization—and an extinction is a sure sign of higher intelligence.

But not with the kitties.

Apparently, catkind didn't cause any mess because all the oil was already gone, the uranium and plutonium already mined, and in the end there wasn't much left to cause another great extinction. That's why, when catkind disappeared for one reason or another, all traces of their existence went extinct as well.

But not to despair! Nature followed its course, and after some thirty-million years, the good old sentience came back again as a genetic treat, but this time in rats.

And surprisingly, ratkind thought of themselves as the paramount of species, the beacon of intelligence, the highest, bestest, awesomest mammal on four paws that ever walked on the face of the planet. But when they started digging the good old rocks and studying the good old planet history, they stumbled on the good old extinction that happened during hominids' time.

And, like any self-respecting species that calls itself top of the animal pyramid and triumph of evolution, they had to come up with a wave of theories, each more mind blowing than the last, to explain how the hominids went _poof_!

And catkind?

Well, they discarded them as fat, lazy creatures with big heads to store fat.

"But... but... but that can't be true! It is we who are the awesomest and bestest species on four paws that ever walked the Earth! And The Glorious... nothing matches The Glorious. He is forever in history!"

"Your catkind is dead! Kaput! Your presence in the fossil records lasts for two million years, and after that _poof_! Bye-bye, kitty! Nothing left for posterity except dry bones and claws. No Glorious, no glorious glory, no nothing!"

"But—"

"Bones and claws!"

... _bones and claws..._

The echo of those words resounds in the mind of the Virtuous Pupil.

Bones and claws are all that is left.

The little kitty's eyes are as wide as can be in a state of shock and awe. And words seem no longer to matter.

Chapter 10

"Is that the Holy Spirit cat, Tommy Boy? The one that everyone talks about?" says Jonesy in a miracle-stricken voice, barely holding his laughter.

"Laugh all you want, you sorry miserable wretches, for you have no tooth fillings and your name shall be forgotten for eons to come! The Holy Cat has foreseen the rise and fall of your fate! Your kin will turn to dust, and their memory will be blown in the wind!"

"Foreseen, you say? Such fancy words on Old Tom. My, my! Truly a miracle! Let us bow to the talking cat! Bow, Jimmy boy! Bow! Maybe it will bless us too with all those fancy words!"

Jonesy's buddy, Jimmy, bows deeply, laughing all the way down.

"But why doesn't it speak, Tommy Boy? Did the cat get its tongue? Hur, hur, hur."

"It doesn't speak now for reason of being deep in thought!"

"Knees-deep in thought! Like we are in this cow shit, ha, Tom? Hur, hur, hur."

The kitty hadn't spoken so much as a word ever since the beady-eyed rat had brought the news of catkind's doom.

Old Tom tries to make him happy with spinning toys and spoon feeding him the most delicious delicatessen and carrying him with great honor and introducing him to all the important people of the present times (that meant Old Lady McKendrick... and that's about it).

But all these things don't cheer the kitty, not for one little bit. For the revelation of inevitable doom sank in like a big, big stone crushing any happy, happy stars in his little soul. And everything that the poor little kitty feels is drifting alone in an ocean of pointlessness.

Everyone he knows will be dead!

Not now-now, since catkind hasn't been born yet, but after-after.

The entire triumphant nation with The Glorious at its eternal helm will be dead and gone, just like the stupid monkeys! And the rats will be laughing at them, saying, "Look at the stupid kitties. They had big heads, and they slept all day, and they couldn't cause a climate change!"

Which is not true!

Maybe the other nations of cats with their great leaders are stupid, but The Glorious works day and night for the progress of greater achievement!

What is left to do?

"The future is already written." That was what the Master Scientist had said. "Everything that you see happening has already happened. You will make no difference. No difference at all...."

And all of a sudden something catches the corner of his eyes, and—

OMG! What is that?

As it grows closer and closer, the Virtuous Pupil cannot believe his eyes. All the pictures with their reconstructions covered with feathers and scales from Professor Meowsky had not done it justice... but he can't mistake the animal in front of him!

It is... a COW!

As the little kitty stands there gasping in awe at the cow overlord in all its glory, the lumbering ruminant impassibly chews the grass and ignores completely the enraptured fur ball.

So all the stories are true after all!

The cow indeed has unquestionable power over all the humans. _Just look at all these monkeys bringing food right under its nose, so the overlord won't waste any effort going after it! Or the other monkeys, who were cleaning and scrubbing its hide... or that one over there shoveling the cow's shit without any sign of revolt._

"I wish someone would clean up the poo after me like that," sighs the kitty.

"What's that you say, Tom?" Jonesy raises his head, smelling an excuse for getting physical with Old Tom.

This will definitely go into the log records of the shiny pebbles! The monkey slaves are working tirelessly around the magnificent animal, while the noble creature doesn't even look at those lowly servants. Not only that, but the lowly servants are chasing Old Tom up and down the road for insulting the overlord cow. Truly dedicated monkeys, fighting for the bovine noble ego.

The little kitty knows right there and then that, if he can find the cause of the human extinction, he can prevent the demise of catkind! And he will go back to The Glorious, and he will be a First Class Hero of the Nation!

Chapter 11

The Master Scientist is calmly swinging his metallic tail while having one of his many conversations with himself in his little inner forum.

He had known this day would come.

He had known it the moment he'd been promoted to Master Scientist.

If someone would have told him all those years ago that his IQ would be serving the delusions of an megalomaniac idiot, he would have laughed with big fat echoes rolling through the Great Halls of Progress.

Back then, his young self had dreamed of big innovations and breakthroughs and great scientific revolutions.

Back then, he'd had enthusiasm and all his parts had been 100% original and organic.

Back then....

But he hadn't laughed one bit after the former Master Scientist had bestowed the "honor" of being his successor upon him and let him in on all the little secrets and all the little advices that every Master Scientist passed from one generation to another.

Oh, how the world changed after that talk.

From the murkiest historical times that were preserved in ancient paw scratches, it seemed that catkind is doomed to be a continuous cycle of power-greedy, close-minded overlords, killing one another in succession. Each one living in their dysfunctional reality where they are the greatest thing that ever purred on this Earth, while at the same time spreading happy illusions mixed with fabulous, wondrous stories of triumph and achievements to every wide-eyed kitten nation.

And nobody questions anything.

It is simply natural that the ruler is the most imaginative leader, the most gifted musician, the most illustrious tactician, master in this and that! (Such hoarders of titles, these rulers. They reach a point where you couldn't find one single, lousy branch of catkind achievement where they weren't a master already.)

And nobody questioned anything...

Always The Glorious is the smartest, brightest, and all the other superlatives. Always The Glorious is entitled to all decision. Always it makes absolute and perfect sense for all to listen to him, since The Glorious is the self-proclaimed leader of all kitties, and it is absolutely normal for everyone else to do his most outrageous claims.

And nobody questions anything....

And the saddest part is that all the other nations of catkind are the same. Each one with its own special fat cat tyrant, each one with its own kind of dystopian regime and dysfunctional society. All of them dreaming gloriously of triumphant progress while not being able to build a working sewer or fix a lousy bridge!

Each tyrant shitting in gold litters while the masses starve, dreaming of fishes.

Is catkind forever trapped in this cycle? Is cat society ever going to move forward?

I mean, look at our leader of morons! He's not even able to scratch his own ass. Thus, he came up with an entire branch of government for this purpose alone. That is what those cats will do their entire career: scratch The Glorious Ass. Their lives depend on it, their promotions and pay raises, their future in the hierarchy and status symbol.

And nobody questions anything....

Why doesn't anyone find all this absurd? Why isn't anyone questioning all this? Why does everyone listen to him? Can't you see he's just a fat cat who's not even able to move? You bring his food already chewed and collect his poop from his ass in golden trails... just because! All you have to do is put a fish bone in his food, and he will choke to death... and nothing will matter.

He just sits there meowing, and everyone listens blindly to what he says. And eventually he will be drowned by his successor, and not even a lame tear will be shed after him.

Instead, they will all rejoice and bow to the next Glorious.

It's as if it simply doesn't matter who sits on that throne. The ruler can be the most incompetent and incapable raving lunatic... and people will follow him. It's as if they don't even bow to the cat; they bow to the Role. A Role that is eternal, and it does not matter who is playing that Role. A rock can sit on the throne, and all the cats will simply bow, because it has the leader Role.

Everyone listens to The Glorious not because he is the most ferocious, fastest, and powerful predator pouncing on his subjects. Everyone listens to him solely because he fills the Role.

As simple as that!

Just look at him! He's not doing anything!

_He has no authority. There_ is _no authority. There are only people who listen to orders._

He is not the greatest fighter or the best lover. He has no telepathic powers or some magic hold on everyone. He's not even able to turn around and look at you when he speaks. He's just the current idiot that happens to fill the Role.

And that Role is not the only one. Every other cat seems to fill their own unbreakable Role. The Roles of servants, the Roles of workers, the Roles of scientists....

Kill The Glorious, and another Glorious will take his place. Kill every cat in this social class, and other cats will take their place, all falling into the same templates forged hundreds of generations ago. It's like the king, the elites, the army, the merchants, the workers, and you name it are just eternal Roles! Untouchable, eternal Roles that only change actors.

Catkind's entire recorded history is set in stone and has not moved for thousands of years.

And the future won't move either.

That is why the Master Scientist invented the Time Machine.

That is why he sent the little kitty to see _how_ an entire species can go extinct.

Chapter 12

"Well, well, well... look who's back from observing the 'humanz'," said the rat with her mouth full.

"We has to continue the mishun. We has to go to da future ten-thousand years."

"Why, aren't we the smartest kitty in the whole wide world?" _Munch,_ _munch, munch_. "Which is actually true, since there are no other of your species in present times?" _Burp_. "Pray, tell me why ten-thousand years?"

"Because we must jump back and forward, back and forward, and then wait a whole day! Master Scientist said so, and he is da...master... of sciences."

"In case you didn't notice—and you didn't!—the 'humanz' have accelerated their rate of advance. Apparently in the last five-thousand years, they raised so fast from cave dwellers to actually building ships and houses with roof tiles and all that stuff that has civilization written all over it. Not only that, but apparently they have domesticated all the animals they previously hunted and ate just so they won't run out of animals to hunt and eat! Smart, right? I just checked their very tasty books, and it's all very, very interesting. However, I couldn't find any trace of the ceramic filling technology." _Munch, munch, and gulp_. "Which means they are not there yet! Soooo, since I am the really smart one, I just made a statistical extrapolation, and the jump we need to do to catch the extinction is"—drumrolls with her little paws—"356 years."

"What about Old Tom?"

"Ooow, making friends already? Well, go say goodbye to him, mister, and tell him you'll be back in 356 years."

And so it happens that the same evening one more shiny pebble is put in the ground, for the future catkind to learn of the great monkeys' advancement in building ships and houses with roof tiles and all the other stuff that says civilization... but which unfortunately won't last for a million years.

_Whoaaam!_ The flash of light ends in a bright halo, and here they are: a cat and a rat, staring at a skyscraper. Five days ago, here was a cave with Mog, son of Mog, picking his nose and comparing boogers with his son, Mog. And yesterday here was a wooden house where Old Tom was writing his codex with religious fever.

And now, the cat is almost run over by a car.

A car!

Where are the houses and the mud roads? Where are the bridges and buildings with roof tiles on top? No wonder these monkeys left nothing for posterity. They were too busy destroying their own evidence by themselves.

"Uh-oh! Too many hominids around!" the telepath rat thinks to the cat. "Quickly, grab me by the scruff and trod your way out!"

Open spaces with nowhere to hide are a bad sign for a big rodent. Especially when lots of giant feet are ready to stump on your fragile, tender tail. So the rat takes a very convenient lift in the cat's mouth, swinging and humming happy like a toddler until one menacing shadow blocks their way with dark intentions.

"Oh, what a brave little kitty! Did you catch that ugly, ugly rat all by yourself?" asks the nice little lady that appears out of nowhere

"Meow!" says the kitty, pulling out of his pocket the biggest, most innocent kitty eyes and putting them on a face as cuddly as you can get.

"I bet it took you a lot of courage to hunt it, you little predator, you!"

The little predator drops the "dead" rat and starts pawing on her head as if playing with it.

_Oh, please, can this be even more embarrassing?_ thinks the "dead" rat.

"Meow!" The cat plunks the rat.

The old lady kneels and starts petting the kitty, talking as if cats could understand her.

"Oh, the poor, poor little kitty, all lost by itself in this big city! Nobody to take care of you and having to eat filthy sewer rats. Poor, poor you."

_Yea, poor, poor kitty_ , the rat continues with her mental talk. _And I'm not filthy, lady! I just happen to have a very fashionable fur! Patches like these are the latest trend to come in forty-million years! But what do you know? You'll be extinct by then, ha!_

But the kitty ignores any rats that are supposed to be dead and, like any devious little feline, picks its two deadly weapons: the feet rubbing and the soul-warming purr.

And what do you know? The feline charms work and win in an instant the good-hearted human. One hour later, the nice little lady is taking home her newly adopted pet, not forgetting to pass first by the pet store to buy the best food a kitty can dream.

Can the kitty say no to such kindness? Who is he to refuse such a good-hearted woman? You can't just disappoint nice people that offer you yummies, can you? All that time traveling business sure makes you hungry and tired.

But what about the filthy sewer rat? Wasn't the kitty supposed to take his best time travel buddy along?

Well... no use in carrying a dead sewer-dwelling rodent after you, is there?

Chapter 13

"I want all these statues removed, smashed to pieces, and replaced with a statue of myself. For posterity, of course!"

"Yes, mister President!" meows the entire herd of administrator cats.

"And I want all the previous posters removed and replaced with posters of me. For posterity! Make absolutely sure my face is tilted like this and the light comes from this angle!"

"Yes, mister President!" the choir meows again.

A croaky voice creeps from behind the scribbling cats, like the creak of a ghostly door.

"My humble guess is that you also want all the streets with the former Glorious name replaced with your name also?"

"Brilliant idea! Brilliant! You! What is your name?"

The faces of all the administrator cats turn at once to the source of the brilliant idea. After a long moment of silence, one of them turns back in surprise.

"He is... the Master Scientist?" says the administrator cat, amazed that he still has the memory of the long-forgotten title.

"We are still trying to replace him, but we can't find someone smart enough... yet," said another, looking inquiringly to see the source of the miracle that kept the ancient feline breathing.

The old scruffy cat called the Master Scientist is a sad and poor shadow of his former self. A mangle of fur and rusted metal, he rocks slowly back and forward on all four mechanical paws.

He looks curiously at the new tyrant that prefers the titles of "President" and "Father of the Revolution."

The Master Scientist isn't used with just two titles, but he knows the others will all come in good time. Just give the new tyrant a couple of months to accommodate himself with the Role.

They are all so shy at the beginning... not used to all these powers and benefits.

But they all come around, no worries, and in one month or so you will see a "Great" or a "Wise" growing near that "President." Nothing fancy. Just something simple for a start. The Roles are already set, and "President" or not, he will follow the same path all the tyrants have followed for ages.

The Master Scientist is staring absently, reciting in his mind all the things that are to come:

Soon the President will announce his glorious ten-year dream where he will triumphantly bring the nation's economy to the top ten economies in the world. And the crowd will applaud ecstatically. And how better to do that than by building first and foremost a grandiose symbol matching his ambitions—the greatest palace in the world that ever existed at all times? A mere shack costing half of the country's PIB, barely matching the true unequalled kittiness of his greatness.

The plans are already laid in front of the Father of the Revolution, and the herd of cat administrators are all raving with awe at the Master Builder President.

One thousand chambers just for the use of his Excellency alone!

One thousand too little!

And then some mean kitties will start meowing dissent and telling the outside world that the President's best buddies are cutting out power nationwide just to force the population to pay more. Or that the people have no place to live while The President has a thousand rooms to spare. And guess what the Great President of the most advanced democracy in the world will do? He will make glorious laws throwing in jail all these meowing rebel cats that dare question the absolute genius of the Presidential kitty!

And then, The Glorious Astral President will say that his kitty buddies have the right to arrest any kitty just for squinting a mean look at him. And every kitty in the land will rejoice at the brilliant genius, since the genius of The Glorious Magnificent President is unrivalled.

"This is the greatest democracy with the most brilliant president in the world," he will say.

Why? Because he said so.

And what else will he say?

"Honestly, when my friends and I are looking at other cat states, we see how backwards they are, and that makes us very, very sad."

Advanced and superior, kitty land is enlightened every time the President wakes up in the morning and generously spreads visionary laws. And all the kitties look in awe and complete amazement at the selfless genius (matched only by his modesty!) that sacrifices himself for the good of the country.

The Master Scientist stands there absentmindedly, envisioning the future story in his head, without noticing how the time and cats are passing around him. Like any other old cat, when he is caught up in memories or stories inside his head, his eyes stare into the void and the world outside doesn't seem to matter anymore.

But that doesn't bother the little fly that bumps into his nose.

Bump!

And the Master Scientist startles, looking around.

"Where did everyone go? Oh, is it evening already?"

Slowly, he stretches his rusty legs and begins shuffling back to work.

He feels tired.

So tired.

Tired of everything.

He failed to end the Roles or catkind or the never-ending story.

He failed to break the circle.

The time traveling kitty never made it back.

He waited and waited with one paw after another being lost for breaking one unfortunate promise after another. Lucky for him that the old Glorious got drowned before he run out of stuff to cut!

And after that, the time travel budget turned invisible with the coming of the next Glorious.

That one was a statues fan, and nothing was wasted if it wasn't about statues. And the next Glorious eliminated all funding for the sciences, since he thought poetry and philosophy with his name on it deserved more consideration. And the next one... what did the next one do? Fuzzy faces of former Gloriouses came to his mind, but none seemed to be focused.

Who cares anymore? Their memory always gets smashed and burned in the next cycle.

All he remembers now is that he was kept around the court because he is the only one who knows how water pressure works. His knowledge is priceless for fixing the toilets. It seems that Glorious leaders always need toilets. What's the point of having a golden-plated toilet if it gets clogged or remains without water?

The Master Scientist stops and giggles at the irony: _In the end, this is what science is good for: making the shit go away._

The former Hall of Science, now converted into the Hall of Presidential Patriotism, echoes the truth bouncing on the walls.

Nobody even remembers that catkind had time travel technology.

Nobody will even remember catkind.

Chapter 14

Arthur is completely absorbed in a feverish search for something under the table of incantations.

His entire room is a mess of stuff—and, by stuff, I mean Stuff, not objects. Because objects are something concrete with defined proprieties that can be classified and put in neat separate groups where you can draw arrows and put relations between them. The stuff in his room looks as if a cataclysmic earthquake happened for days in a row and crushed and tossed things from one wall to another, followed by a tornado that scattered and threw everything everywhere (including the ceiling), followed by a flood that washed it and mixed it all in a blender as big as the room, after which it receded, leaving everything in a primordial state.

And in the ruins of that cataclysm, rummaging like some rodent digging a burrow, is Arthur the Alchemist.

Oh, you didn't know he is an alchemist? Now you do.

At thirty years of age, Arthur is truly the greatest alchemist of his time!

Probably because he is the only one.

But I digress.

Just look at him! He has to be a great man!

Why?

Because he is certain he followed everything described in the books he's read: _The Lives of Geniuses_ and _Ten Steps to Becoming a Visionary_ and every other cheap sensational material on the great men and their successful stories!

Geniuses dropped out of school to start history-turning changes; therefore, he dropped out of school!

Geniuses never had jobs because they had visions to pursue and create revolutions; therefore, he considered having a job to be beneath him.

Geniuses never bothered with simple things like cleaning and social interactions so all their time could be spend on building great ventures; therefore, he never, ever dedicated one single precious second to cleaning or social interactions.

That is why Arthur _has_ to be a genius! He just ticked all of the ten steps on the visionary genius list.

What had started as a childhood game, playing a wizard and superhero, turned gradually into something of an idiotic escape from reality. All the other kids that used to play with him when he was little now have careers and families. But Arthur, Mommy's little treasure, who fancies himself a mystical master of occult arts, is still stuck in his little world.

It started innocently enough when he noticed that Mom wouldn't bother him if he acted busy:

"Mooom, can't you see I'm busy?" and his mom would let the dear little treasure do the important stuff he was doing.

"Mooom, you can't tell me you can't buy this! This is very, very important for me!" and mom would buy anything the little treasure cried for, so that it would end up sooner or later in the pile of discarded junk from the house basement.

"Mooom, you can't tell me what to do! I am bizaaayy!!" and mom would never criticize the little treasure on anything. Instead, she cleans the dreadful room and pays all his game subscriptions and washes and feeds the little genius for life.

And good old mom never notices that Arthur the Incapable, Arthur the Incompetent is busy all the time but never seems to finish anything—and not because he doesn't have time or money (because if he doesn't, his mom has both), but because anything that needed finishing was too hard.

And as he grew up from being a kid, all that stuff like projects and homework and labs and exams became harder and harder. Then later in life, all these grown-up things like finding a job, looking for a place to live, and taking care of himself were next to impossible!

That is why sleeping until the afternoon and eating what Mom makes every day is his only viable alternative. And after dropping out of school (in Arthur's world, it was the school that didn't deserve any more of his precious time wasted because he realized he was so much cooler than all the institutions that had nothing left to teach him), he started his spiritual adventures investigating all the religions from all the corners of the world.

But not the mainstream ones!

Oh, no!

Those were for the masses, for the sheepie consumers, while he, Arthur, Mom's smartest little boy, couldn't lower himself wasting time on those. So, his room ended up carpeted with posters written in the mystical, made-up languages of some sect from the thirteenth century. The floors were littered with piles and piles of the most obscure books from no-name authors that starved to death waiting for someone to buy their only printed edition. The walls were stacked with all the manuscripts written by people that never made a living from selling said manuscripts. All the special nut cases who completed their masterpieces in an asylum, all the discarded works of art from various self-proclaimed "artists" that dwelled in their parents' basements a century ago, every worthless piece of junk with no historic value ever printed in past history was sure to find its place in Arthur's room.

And because the piles and piles of useless crap books were not enough, the food scraps and dirty clothes filled the room, just to make the picture a holistic mess, together with the dead spiders that hanged themselves from witnessing the daily proof of Arthur's incompetence.

These intense studies of the scribblings of ancient "masters" took such a toll on poor Arthur, Mommy's sweetest boy, that he reached thirty years still living with his mother (the accurate description would be "making a living on his mother"), still a virgin (technically, he wouldn't admit to that, since he counts watching porn as sexual experiences), and with no prospects of ever having a girlfriend, a job, or a life. But that did not stop Arthur, _petit cherie_ , from fancying himself as being extremely intelligent and awesome because Mom told him so every time since he began babbling the spoken language.

For someone who has perfected for decades his technique of being incapable at doing anything of relevance and significance, he is an expert in running away from any responsibilities or taking any.

That is why he discovered alchemy in the age of chemistry!

Finally, something that will keep him busy for life, while having nothing to show for it. Good thing his mom never seemed to get sick or die; otherwise, the neighbors would have found him starved to death on a pile of unwashed clothes.

And life went so well and everything went so smooth and dandy until three days ago.

That is when Mom brought that cursed kitty home.

That is when all hell broke loose.

Arthur, _petit tresor_ , found with horror that he was no longer the center of attention. He was no longer the black hole into which the maternal affection was sucked with no escape.

The little stupid kitty was gobbling all of his Mommy's attention to the point where there was nothing left for him!

He realized that, for the first time in his life, he had to... actually make sandwiches for himself... actually open bottles of drink for himself... _actually wipe his ass for himself._

His entire life has turned upside down in just three days.

And this isn't even the most annoying part!

The most annoying part is that he knew that he had seen that kitty somewhere! And it wasn't in the porn movies!

That is why Arthur, master of dabbling in the occult arts, is now furiously searching his entire collection of useless junk, mumbling and very, very annoyed. He has been tossing this salad of papers, socks, manuscripts, and molded scraps of food since early morning. But despair no more, because after backbreaking hours spent in this almost impossible quest, he manages to pull the smelliest manuscript from the deepest pile of underwear.

A manuscript that seems to have its own personal little swarm of flies flying around. A manuscript whose faded title he can still read: _The Codex of the Holy Spirit Cat._

This is it!

The forgotten prophecy of Thomas McKendrick. With cat pictures included!

Look, look! He knew he had seen that cat somewhere! The same spot on the ear, the same spot on the paw, the big, big head, and the adorable, overflowing cuteness nobody can resist.

The cat is back—356 years counted and measured right down to the last day! A full 356 years have passed since its ascendence, and now it has returned!

For it was the Holy Spirit Cat, without a trace of a doubt, downstairs, licking his balls! Just as Thomas the Prophet predicted! Not the ball-licking—that, he did not predict—but the return of the

holiest of embodiments!

"The forgotten prophecy is happening!" Arthur cries, smitten by the realization that the very cat that had taken over his Mom's affection was the same cat that Thomas the Prophet had prophesied.

Everything was true! The cat messiah, the tooth fillings vision, the cow overlords, the movement started by Thomas three centuries ago, all... ALL were real!

He feels like the sky is falling on him over and over again, and he just wants to scream until his lungs exploded!

But first things first!

With rocket-like propulsion, Arthur the Finder of the Lost Prophecy storms down the stairs, tripping and crashing and almost breaking his neck (though we are not that lucky).

"Moooom! MOOOOOM!!!"

Arthur the Seeker is so high on his revelation that he's almost flying sideways across the living room, feet barely touching the ground.

"MOOAAAAAM!!!!!!"

He is dying to rub it in her face!

Where is that pesky Mom when you needed her?

Oh, great! She's gone shopping for food!

When it comes to nosing around and checking if he cleaned up his room and catching him wanking, she is there! But when he needs her to show how stupid she is, she's gone!

But the cat is here!

Oh, yes!

Let's see how you will cough up all those shiny prophecies now, mister Holy Spirit Cat!

Daddy needs his lottery numbers!

Chapter 15

The rat is munching amazed at the floating graphics (amazed by what she is munching and not by the graphics). The data is not lying—and that is what makes it funny.

"Wow! Let's drill for natural gas if the oil runs out! _Very_ smart! That will definitely solve the climate change problem."

Munch, munch, munch.

"Yes, people, let's all invest billions in fantasy ways to store carbon, when spending one-tenth of that on planting trees does the same thing. Hellooo?? Trees are carbon-storing machines already? Damn, this cheese is good."

Munch, munch, munch.

"And what is this? News coverage about how the stupid hominids just announced they passed the point of no return? Hey, look, guys—point of no return! Let's not worry about it. What's a 'point of no return', anyway? Just semantics, right? Ooh, this one has walnuts in it! Love it, love it, mmmhmmm!"

The pockets of her mouth are now so full that the points and columns of data are scrolling before the wiggly nose with only munching as comments.

And those numbers showed that you didn't need sarcasm to see what ratkind already knows: humanity blissfully passed the point of no return... humanity did too little and too late to save themselves... humanity sleepwalked into extinction baited by the sweet smell of greed, stupidity, and self-delusion.

And at the end of the info slide, when the rat has finished all the cheese and is delightfully licking her paws, the conclusion is simple: "Yep! It wasn't the cows!"

But maybe the smart rat is wrong. Maybe those projections showing her these conclusions are low on battery or broken. We all know how technology gets unreliable if rats get their hands on it.

But in this case, it wasn't.

We, humans, have this false sense of security, this reassuring feeling of being in a safe spot just because we can dig up fossils and watch from a high point the entire history of the past millions of years.

We have this high and mighty impression of ourselves when we draw conclusions and point to errors of how this and that species died, of how this and that extinction happened, or how this and that adaptation solved some problem.

Just like the war reporter that thinks, if he's filming a live assault with shootings and bombings, then no bullets will touch him because... he has the camera.

But we never asked ourselves: what would happen with us a million years from now?

We know that 99.9% of the total species that ever inhabited the Earth are now extinct. And the 0.01% that survived are mostly unicellular organisms and extremophiles that simply do not care if an asteroid hits the Earth or a climate change settles comfortably on this planet.

But we?

We SHOULD care!

Because at some point, whether we like it or not, our species will go extinct. All that we were and are will simply be sand in the wind and water through the bladder of other animals.

Like death on an individual level, we think death on the species level is something so remote that it will never happen to us. But in the end, death on any level is the most certain thing that will happen.

It HAS to happen.

Some say that one-million years in the future is too far to have a picture, that we should think in five- or ten-year steps, so we can get more accurate predictions.

But willy-nilly that million of years will pass. Willy-nilly the Earth will go around the sun a million times, and _voila_! The alarm clock of the universe will start beeping, and the million-year Santa will come knocking on the door with a surprise present in his bag.

The seconds will pass, the days will pass, the years will pass, and when the million years dings, there won't be any English language to be spoken, no self-evident notions to be upheld, no great minds to be remembered, no current human stories to be told, no nothing but the roaches and beetles and ants and other things that will surely survive.

The continents will move, the seas will change, and the only evidence of our being the crown jewel of species will be a tooth crown made of ceramic alloy.

But this conclusion is what the rat already knows, since ratkind—like humankind—currently feels secure in the safe spot of the mighty observer.

"Oh, well, answer found," says the smart rat, sighing. "Now to find the moron, so we can go home."

Chapter 16

"Who's right now, Mom? _Who's right now_?" Arthur the Chosen One is talking to himself while rummaging around the alchemist table—a table that has in the center the baffled kitty all tied up in a very undignified posture.

One by one, all kinds of strange and ancient alchemist devices start to line up around him, each creepier then the last, making him question their source or their purpose.

"Where did I put it? WHERE? Where is the stupid shit when you need it?"

The ensuing hysterical laugh makes the kitty's hair stand up.

Arthur the Master of the Occult has found it! The water sprinkler for diluting the alchemist solutions!

"Go get a job, this! Go get a life, that! 'Why can't you do something with your future?' I'll show you what I can do with my future! Everyone thinks I'm a loser! They will see who the loser is when I will fly on thundering clouds and I will walk on water! Who will be the loser then, huh?!"

With one grip on the cat and the other on the sinister device, Arthur the Grand Mystic rages.

"Talk! Talk, you stupid cat! TALK! The codex says you can talk! Why don't you talk? I need the prophecies for the next years! I need the powers of creation! All, all, I need it ALL!"

But the kitty doesn't seem to be doing anything of what a Holy Spirit Cat usually does.

And for one moment, just a tiny-winy moment, Arthur thinks that this is ridiculous and he is going crazy.

But just for one moment!

Because the next moment, the hysterical laugh bursts forth in a flood.

"Oh, I know what I will do! I will sublime you in the oven together with the _aqua regia_ , and I will have your essence! Then I will drink it, and _I_ will be the Holy Spirit myself!"

As he resumes his hysterical laugh that constantly cuts in between his sentences, a strange thing happens out of nowhere: a shuffle of tiny little feet _whooshes_ across the room, followed by a

_Waash!_ and a _Bang!_ and a _Crack!_

And what do you know?

The last thing Arthur the Fallen remembers is falling down like a log with a big, cheese-smelling rat on top of him.

Then blackout follows.

Chapter 17

"Pssst!"

The wounded kitty shows no response.

"Pssst! You lazy, stupid cat!"

It isn't enough that she has to save this incompetent individual of a soon-to-be-extinct race, but she has to drag him by his tail all the way down to the backyard.

Nonetheless, she does enjoy seeing his head thumping on each and every step of the stairs.

The kitty's left ear jumps up and turns toward the source of noise.

"Not there, stupid! I'm in your head! Telepath, remember?"

The kitty wakes up lazily and stretches every joint in his body.

Sometimes life is so good, and then rats come and spoil it for you.

"I found out why the humanoids went extinct," says the rat, shoving in the cat's face the screen with the floating graphics. The cat stares and stares at the strange things written in the rat language and realizes he doesn't have to understand them anyway since the pictures are so nice.

But he has to look smart.

"So, we was right!"

"I was right! I, not we!"

"We would has missed it and landed after extinshun."

"You would have missed it, not me!"

But the cat can't be bothered with ownership rights for ideas. He is looking at the colored pictures: forests were gone, oceans were filled with floating islands of garbage the size of continents, cute-looking species were going extinct, and humans were having a wonderful time watching reality shows.

"Do the monkeys have no brains?"

"Oh, look who's talking! You went extinct, and we didn't even know if you were sentient at all. We thought you disappeared because there were too many dogs around!"

The kitty squints at the rat.

But the rat doesn't give a rat's ass.

One hour later, all the images and data start settling one layer after another like snow compressing into ice, until they reach the full size of a pebble—the last shiny pebble with the final conclusions of the monkeys' civilization. The last message crystallized for the future species to come.

And as the kitty looks sighing at the pebble, a raven up in the tree watches, also sighing but in amusement.

"Well, well, well, if it isn't the amazing cat and its pebbles...."

Both the cat and the rat look up at the curious raven.

Yes, it seems that, apart from a cat and a telepath rat, the story also has a talking raven.

"So it was you, not the humans who made the pebbles...."

The cat looks puzzled at the rat while the rat, being smart as she is, realizes that the raven must be another traveler from the future. But, if there was no trace of smart ravens discovered in the fossil layer, that means... the raven comes from an even further time in the future. Which leads her to the next step in the inevitable logic: ratkind is dead! Kaput! You know, nothing left for posterity except bones and claws and all that.

"Ok, not claws, but incisive teeth, since we're rodents" she couldn't help correcting herself.

The rat throws a shocked look at the raven, while the bird shrugs a "What can you do?" (as much as a raven can shrug).

Since we can't let the raven pop out of nowhere just like that, let's give him the chance to introduce himself—and what better way to do that than with a monologue?

So, back in the backyard, mister raven clears his throat and starts pacing left and right on his branch, telling the long story of the mysterious pebbles:

"Long, long time ago, in ravenkind time, a time that is yet to come, the greatest of our ancestors, the Raven King discovered one day a shiny special pebble. And since ravens love both shinies and pebbles, he named it the Stone of Wisdom and made it the one true stone to be held by his line of kings and revered (don't ask why he named it that, because that's an even longer story). And so it happens that the pebble was passed down religiously from one generation to another until modern raven times, when they realized that the holiest of the holy, the sacredest of the sacred, the Stone of Wisdom was no regular pebble.

"For one, it could withstand millions of years without a scratch.

"For two, no natural process could have made it.

"For three, a great discovery left everyone cawless when a second pebble was brought to the surface. And it looked like the first.

"Ages have passed, and more pebbles followed as ravenkind held its breath, watching the hunt of the blue stones of wisdom across the whole globe. And what do you know, twelve pebbles were found in the end, and no more!

"Each one full of magic and mystery.

"All of them made and put in the ground precisely— _precisely—_ seventy-three-million years ago. And what happened precisely, _precisely_ at that time? The great human extinction!

"Mystery, mystery, mystery!

"But mystery no more since after some time another great discovery was made; the pebbles sang when enchanted magnets danced around them. Not only that, but they were all found in these special places as if someone took great care to put them there for the future generations to be found.

But the strangest thing of all? It was not that they were flowing with oh, so detailed stories of planet climate and snapshots of the biosphere and many more things, but they had recordings of a stupid-looking cat meowing and meowing for hours and hours in what seemed to be a language.

"Who or why would humans record the stupid-looking, one-eared, spotted cat? And most of all, how could the humans record this very peculiar cat, when its species appeared on the evolutionary scale... ten-million years later?

"And since ravens don't believe in coincidences, they thought of the only explanation that made perfect sense: the humans, at the peak of their civilization, had tested the wonders of time leaping... into the future. And who else should be fit enough to test the ship other than lowly, stupid mammals? And what such mammal do we know who just happens to be uselessly lying around?

"You guessed it!

"The cats!

"All ravenkind knows that the cats had no other purpose to begin with.

"However, the humans couldn't use the normal ones they had in their time. Not if they wanted to succeed in time travel. So they specially bred and fed a brave new species of genetically modified smart cats who had the brains to operate a ship. Smart enough to operate it, but stupid enough to take the risk of testing it!

"Pebbles were recorded before the ship was launched into the future, and great celebrations were done to mark the event.

"And the cats were off.

"Off to the unknown!"

"Wow," the rat says, mystified by the story," and I thought the cow theory was idiotic."

The raven continues, undisturbed:

"Imagine the surprise that the crew of super-intelligent cats had when they opened the hatch and the humans were not waiting to give them their promised reward of milk and cookies. Ten-million years into the future, and nobody around to pet them and scratch them. And right there, right then the cats decided to give birth to a new dominant species."

"Yea, yea, all very nice and rosy... but what about ratkind? What happened to ratkind! We weren't supposed to go extinct! We are TECHNOCRATS! We are TELEPATHS! You know what that is? No other species in the history of the planet had the genes for it! You know why? Because we designed it! You understand the height of the level that we have achieved? We designed the genes for TELEPATHY!"

"Oh, you mean you WERE telepaths?" said the raven. "Funny that you mention ratkind. To be honest, when we dug up the fifty-million-year-old fossils of big-headed rats, telepathy wasn't even on the list. We thought it was just a cavity filled up with air so you could make mating noises."

The rat is so furious that she's choking for air. "Mating noises?!? US?!?"

She takes one deep breath and resumes her dignified posture, the posture of the only telepath species to bless the history of the planet.

"No, no, NO! WE are the paramount of the sentient species! OUR civilization surpassed anything known to rat! WE don't think we are the most intelligent of all species that ever walked the Earth, WE KNOW WE ARE!!"

But the kitty is laughing out loud, rolling belly up. "Cavity for mating noises. Hahaha!"

The rat is all tensed and ready to burst. There has to be some explanation. Ratkind couldn't just go extinct like that. Ratkind couldn't just disappear from history like the two stupid species before them. It was impossible! Not ratkind!

"Unbelievable! So, you would rather assume that rats had a skull filled with air rather than a skull filled with brain?"

"Well, not as unbelievable as thinking the cats had big heads to keep all the extra fat for hibernation. So, no reason to be surprised there, miss rat," continues the raven, resuming his story.

"Ravenkind thought the humans were the only sentient species that truly had the most advanced technology compared with the cat and the rat—"

"Let me guess! Because of the tooth fillings, right?" the angry rat snaps again.

"Actually, no!"

"No?"

"Ravenkind, being a flight species—as you surely have noticed—we weren't by nature afraid of heights. And this culminated one day with the great, great achievement of reaching the moon. And there we found the strangest things a raven could imagine: a flying device from seventy-three-million years ago, untouched and unmoved by anything before. It simply stood there with the moon as a museum, waiting patiently for its ravenkind visit. The great raven achievement was doubled by the great raven discovery of the human machine, a machine that told us the exact, precise time when it was made, and when it had landed, and how the lost humankind had achieved it."

"The stupid monkeys went to the moon?!" cry both the rat and the cat in outrage.

"They did, my little friends. And this is how we knew when to go in the past. And while other ravens more lucky then I were sent back to see how the true wonders of technology were achieved, I was sent to sit here and wait in this boring spot where the last of the twelve pebbles was buried. So, I waited and waited and waited some more... and behold! A cat and a rat eventually showed up. This is truly marvelous."

"But this doesn't make sense. If this is the last pebble you ravens discover, that means no other pebble was made...," the rat observes, "which is curious, since knowing what we know now, the moron next to me should have definitely made another pebble with warnings to his catkind. And if he failed to do that, which is no surprise, then most definitely I should have traveled back and warned my species that they will go extinct."

"Well, well, well, just look at you intelligent species making all intelligent deductions. Then let me continue it for you... there is only one conclusion: you both die before you get to send anything."

The cat and the rat look at each other as they both understand that the raven is right. And as if on a signal, they both try to dash, but the strangest thing keeps them pinned down.

"Oh, don't bother! Don't you see? Even if you do return home, nothing will change," the raven explains. "The history has already been written. No more and no less than twelve pebbles are found... and nothing close to a smart rat is living in ravenkind times."

The raven jumps down from his branch and stretches its wings in a wondering fashion.

"Who knows how many sentient species will come and go on the face of the Earth? Who knows what would have happened if this and that extinction would not have happened? Human extinction, dinosaur extinction, catkind extinction... all part of the nature of life, am I right? Did you ever wonder what would have happened if there were no extinctions? What would have happened if we all just went back to the primordial times when all those trilobites were lurking happily holding claws and stopped all extinctions that are to come?

"Remember the trilobites? The funny-looking, mud-munching guys that were so successful that roamed all the oceans and ruled the early planet? Have you ever wondered what happened to them and where all those nice fellows have gone? They were so many and had such a good run. But after that? Poof! Extinction! And then they were nicely replaced by this and that species.

"What if, let's presume for a moment, there was no more Poof! Extinction! and the trilobites would have made it.

"They would have eventually populated the dry land, and all the nice lines of amphibians and reptiles and dinosaurs would have never happened. The trilobites, or better said the species derived from them, would have easily ruled the Earth simply because there was no event to wipe them. Just because they weren't prepared for one nasty Poof! that didn't mean they were bad at everything else. They actually had better protection than amphibians, better eye structure, better digestive system... but Poof! Extinction... and all those advantages counted for nothing.

"And if that extinction had never happened, then nature wouldn't have lost all those millions of years of setback. No need for mommy nature to start all over again with some bottom-of-the-food-chain organism and push them to a brighter future. It would be just the trilobites evolving without obstacles. And by the time the dinosaur asteroid would have come, maybe they would have had their chance at sentience.

"But we know that never happened, right? We know they went Poof! And after them the dinosaurs came along spreading to all the corners of the Earth until Poof again! The asteroid hit, and then the empty land was taken over by the mammals and birds, and the history continued with more and more Poof!

"Did you ever wonder how would the Earth would have looked like if that asteroid had missed the Earth by just sixty minutes? Just sixty minutes later, and this planet would have been millions of miles further away from crossing the crash orbit, spinning merrily along.

"Then nothing would have stopped the dinosaurs.

"And they had plenty of candidates! They had so many smart raptors and so many intelligent and social herbivores. Give them thirty-million years more and an extra pound of brain might have proved more useful than any sharper claw or other thicker hide. Then the world would have been different indeed. Instead of human artificial caves called houses and buildings, we would have had artificial sand burrows and nests. And instead of technology made and used by hands with opposable thumbs, we would have had stuff made for fine claws.

"But it didn't.

"They all died with nobody crying at their grave. Nobody shed a tear for the trilobites or the dinosaurs or the big-headed monkeys.

"Just like the cats. And also the rats.

"Species come and go, my dearest, and every time another undeniable triumph of evolution comes along, it will find soon its proper place in the Hall of Extinction.

"Every time another peak of sentience arises, it starts singing the same song: 'We are the paramount of species, and this time will be different! The laws of nature will not apply to us. We are too smart and too advanced to disappear without a trace. Nothing will rise to prove too challenging for us, for we are truly the most amazing ones.''

The raven seems to like monologuing too much. Which, if you sit and ask yourself, is more than obvious since he waited so much time on that branch, all alone, day and night, summer and winter, sun and rain... preparing his speech and running it over and over again in his head, until finally someone came and put that damn pebble in the ground (so much for the excitement and adventure promised when he joined the Temporal Division).

But right now, he is looking happily at the two frozen buddies, because he is serving them the dessert of any monologue: the ultimate fatal conclusion!

"You probably realized by now that you didn't send the message because I didn't let you. You see, I can't let you stop what has already happened.

"If the humans warn their future selves, they will prevent their extinction, and there won't be any smart cats.

"If the cats prevent their extinction, there won't be any smart rats.

"If the rats prevent their extinction, there won't be any smart ravens.

"Ravenkind has to make sure that nothing comes in the way of its existence, and thus each of your kind has to go. Just like we had to make sure the trilobites were gone and the asteroid wasn't delayed sixty minutes...."

As the raven concludes with a voice full of drama, the frozen little kitty is thinking that Professor Purrocious was right all along. Aliens did cause the extinction... by simply allowing it to run its course.

But those aliens were not from another planet.

They are just from another time.

Epilogue

"The truth has revealed itself, and the Holy Spirit Cat showed me the way! The one and only thing left is... to start my own religion!" cries Arthur the Redeemed, with the sudden revelation striking at his head.

After all, he has been in the presence of the Holy Spirit Cat!

Quickly, quickly! He needs to grow a serious and important face! You can't start a religion without having a serious face and a low, deep voice.

He heard that if you chew a lot of rubber then your jaw will grow square and everyone will look at you with envy and will say, "This man knows what he wants! He has a square jaw!"

Imagine! Just imagine! All the people will come flocking from distant lands to follow his prophecies, and young acolyte girls will beg him to share his secrets in alchemy.

"I can be a prophet!" Another sudden realization makes its way through the same head.

Quickly, quickly! He needs to grow a beard! Because all the prophets have a beard. A beard makes the words feel heavy, and it loads ideas with importance.

And it makes you a real man!

And he needs a staff! And a robe! Because all the prophets have a robe.

With the same furious dedication, he starts digging again through the piles and piles of stuff to finally pull something that he saved for a long, long time: a robe with purple bunnies! He wanted a robe with shiny stars for more grandeur and importance, but apparently that was too expensive and Mom didn't agree with paying so much money without him doing the dishes... and doing the dishes is very hard work; everyone knows that! I mean, Arthur the Robe Seeker is willing to make sacrifices, but any real man has a hardcore limit! So instead, he'd compromised for a robe with cute purple bunnies.

And so it happens, that one hour later, on the platform of metro line 8 in front of all the busy people, a fat, grown man in worn-out pajamas that definitely looked unwashed for months (not that the owner was cleaner himself) is pacing up and down wrapped in a robe, with a clumsy painted beard and chewing what seems to be a piece of bicycle tire.

"Obey, you slaves! For I am the prophet of the Holy Spirit Cat!"

Other books by the same author

The Amazing Adventures Of The Human Bob In The Galactic Zoo

"Welcome to the Galactic Sapiens Zoo, home of over 30 cognitive species from all over the universe. We have your normal mentoids and bertiens and also the very rare humans (not the brightest of their kind it seems). Please don't feed them any more chocolate, since we don't want them on a diet again. And please don't pay so much attention to the one in front of the window. He is trying to escape."
