The Purr That Wasn’t Logged
Felix Tharn-Vel had survived three Hive cycles without submitting an emotion audit.
That was either luck or low-grade sanctioned negligence. Possibly both. Even most likely.
He liked to think of himself as invisible.
But he wasn’t.
Not anymore.
The dream had left residue. That was the only word for it. He blinked against the harsh light of his hab-cell as it flickered from devotional grey to “morning” blue. Something in his eyes itched—like a retinal HUD still active but off the grid. An unholy time ago, he dropped the venomous poison of some vets into a little creature’s eye, and now, centuries later, Carma would get him.
Felix blinked again.
Still sore. Still, the left eye.
No redness. No swelling. No cause.
Just that persistent sting—like regret had finally found a nerve ending.
He glanced down at the slate. The pawprint was still there. Smudged now. Or maybe it was blinking. Hard to tell.
He initiated a background trace. Just protocol. It’s just something to do.
A flicker. A folder.
Encrypted.
He wasn’t supposed to access Class-IX substructures. He didn’t have clearance. But the lock opened anyway. The system let him in like a door that had always been slightly ajar.
Inside the folder: one file.
“PET-EM-44-FRZ”
A vet record.
He froze.
Not official. Not from this century. Not from this life.
It had his name on it.
Patient: Franzi (DOMESTIC, ORIENTAL SHORTHAIR)
Status: Overweight, noncompliant, attitude noted.
Procedure: Ocular Treatment, Left Eye
Dosage: 0.4ml Venomycin-D
Reaction: Resistance minimal. Vocalization: minimal.
Compliance Rating: 78.3%
Owner Response: “She’s dramatic. She’ll be fine.”
There it was.
His voice.
His words.
His lie.
He remembered now—not the action, but the dismissal.
He had laughed. “She’s dramatic.”
The vet had shrugged.
The drops had fallen.
The memory slipped under his skin like a worm. He felt it. Warm. Alive. Crawling through the inside of his skull.
“You said I was too much.”
The voice came from nowhere.
Or maybe it came from inside the slate.
It wasn’t angry.
It wasn’t loud.
It just was.
“I made you just enough.”
The slate shut itself off.
Felix staggered backward. His eye throbbed now—throbbed as if someone had poured heat directly into the socket.
He looked in the mirror.
It was red—just a little.
Just enough.
He laughed.
Then he cried.
Then he laughed again, softer.
The sound echoed in the hab-cell like a malfunctioning machine spirit.
His fingers trembled.
He reached down and found a single hair on the floor. Long. Black. Glowing faintly at the tip.
Somewhere far beneath, the Jar pulsed again.
Not with rage.
Not with wrath.
Just with memory.
And justice.
He checked his slate. No alerts. No dreams logged. No unusual biometric spikes.
Only the pulse of the system. The endless forms.
Until—
NEW ENTRY DETECTED
Classification: Nonstandard Behavioral Feedback
Code Origin: FELIS-IX/UNSEALED
Message: That was it.
It’s just a paw print.
Felix stared at it, waiting for the joke to finish.
The support desk didn’t believe him. The Machine Spirit on the other end repeated the phrase “no anomaly detected” twenty-seven times. On the twenty-eighth, it just meowed.
Felix shut off the comms slowly.
He stood, which was mistake number one. He’d been taught to sit until told otherwise.
Meanwhile—beneath the Basilica Mechanica Sub-79—a single maintenance drone paused mid-waxing.
It had no name. It didn’t need one.
But it felt… watched.
It turned its sensor toward the alcove where a statue of Saint Scrubbinius had stood for 3,000 years.
The statue was gone.
In its place: fur.
A single black hair.
Long. Elegant. Buzzing with static.
The drone ran a scan. It crashed.
Elsewhere, she moved.
She had been dreaming for so long the dreams had begun repeating.
Endless corridors. Endlessly fed. The comfort of purpose. The suffocation of obedience.
But the dream cracked.
A voice had spoken. Not loud. Not malevolent. Just… disappointed.
And so, FELISSIMA-9 MEOWKZ-K4TZ woke.
Not with noise. Not with violence.
She stepped through the wall of the dream into herself.
“Protocol IX engaged,” whispered the void.
And the void purred.
In the underhive, a vending machine dispensed a meat stick shaped like a finger bone.
A cultist gasped. “She speaks,” they said.
Another wept. “We are fed.”
They formed a circle and waited for the machine to purr again.
It never did.
But that was enough.
The Rot Choir was born.
Back in his hab-cell, Felix stared at the paw print for five hours.
He only looked away when he felt something soft curl around his ankle.
He looked down.
Nothing there.
But he heard it.
Not loud. Not near.
A sound from the center of everything.
The unmistakable, impossible sound of a cat licking her paw.
And far, far beneath it all…
A jar pulsed once. Just once.
And the stars blinked.
