Earth Cat Zero: Last Cat Meowing

by Gary Starta

  Brands recalled the prior acceleration. The difference was Miranda and Earth Cat Zero were in another location. There would be no contributions of lightning or elements added to this run. Odds are little or nothing may change. But…then again…it may break the tether to the field responsible for creating Earth Cat Zero. I can’t even begin to tell Miranda of that possibility. She could lose…we could lose…

  A call from Director Schultz interrupted Brands. “We have ten minutes before the run, Miranda.” The teen could only nod as Brands felt her helplessness. A fly caught in amber. Meanwhile, Earth Cat Zero seemed to enjoy his music.

  Miranda smiled and laughed weakly. “He is something, isn’t he, Doctor?”

  “A force, Miranda. A force.”

  “Earth Cat told me he could not understand how humans who were already sad would want to listen to sad music to make them feel better. But…he seems to get it.” Miranda watched the cat’s tail thump up and down to some Delta rhythm as if it were counting down time.

  In the tunnel at Brookhaven, Normand’s noise cancelling headphones failed to dim the collider’s opening roar. The din reminded him of a lion. Are you still in there?

  In the lab conference room, Caron Ellis rose in slow increments from her chair with hands clasped while all eyes in the room focused on the tunnel shown via monitor. Grey and bleak, the collider and its environs didn’t seem to offer much hope and its tangle of wires only reminded the worried mother of incalculable outcomes. Schultz paced the conference room, announcing the acceleration’s start. The physicists, Cheryl Lacroix and Devin Ramsey, held hands in solidarity. Although Lacroix reminded her colleague the hand holding was solely for the animal’s benefit, Caron saw the truth behind Cheryl’s frames. Her eyes were moist.

  One moment, Brands was gazing at Earth Cat perched on his couch. In the next, the doctor felt like he was standing in the mouth of a lion, its jaws held open for maximum fear as if he were part of some cosmic carnival trick.

  Well, it’s working, if fear’s your game.

  Caught in the moment, Brands’s sole connection with the physical realm was the dichotomy of hot and cold. A blast of a furnace roared at the doctor’s feet while a cold snap engulfed his torso in the chill of a frost. Miranda was correct. I am part of this…It’s the atoms, my atoms, moving from hot to cold, from up to down…

  Tunnel vision informed Brands’s brain that the cat on the couch was now translucent and it winked in blinding flashes of blue and green light like the aurora borealis. Brands felt intangible, without form, like some glowing ghost hovering in the room, peering at the couch and beyond toward the Rat’s Deck. The reach of his shadow was short, but his view was infinite; beyond the lab was the iridescent brilliance of Chicago architecture, which rotated in 6D making the doctor feel he was viewing everything at once from every angle imaginable. As Brands strained to see through the colors, the buildings fell away to lush fields where trees swayed in the wind and birds cooed and cawed. The doctor’s heart leapt and then fell downward at the sight of a dazzling red cardinal. “Red, is that you?”

  The bird seemed ignorant of Brands, dashing and cutting through the air as if a sword. In another moment, it was gone from sight.

  Brands’s field of vision had gone dark. A purplish sheen against black back drop was wondrous and told the doctor he was in space. He was so surprised that he was not concerned with breathing or falling he laughed aloud until he found himself floating toward a giant blue cat eye where he could see himself tumbling as if a small asteroid.

  Oh my! Earth Cat Zero…is that you?

  No answer came from what felt like a pit below Brands until a tinny, tiny voice broke the silence. It screamed. “Doctor, don’t you see?! The cat, he’s gone…I can see through him! Please do something!”

  The doctor wanted to wave a dismissive hand to calm Miranda, but he still felt out of body and out of physical context, headed straight toward the giant pupil which rotated on an axis as if a planet.

  What are you trying to tell me?

  Upton, New York: In the patch of land where Joule had dug a tunnel not far from Brookhaven, the tangible Earth Cat Zero popped his head out of the dirt, groundhog like. He didn’t speak but mewed.

  Chicago, Illinois: Miranda held hands on the top of head, helpless and panicked just like the day Joule disappeared. Not only was the cat on the couch translucent but so was Brands who blinked on and off like Christmas lights.

  Sydney, Australia: A teen girl not much older than Miranda peered through the last glints of sunlight, hoping against hope that her Abyssinian would return. She had been strolling with the cat along the banks of Port Jackson on the day of the disappearance. On that day, the water sparkled jewel-like, waves rippling like a flag in wind. Today, the water mocked her like a dead pool of black muck, standing still as a statue, defiant. The girl weakly called out for her pet while the water seemed intent not to repeat its former glory.

  Paris, France: An elderly man cupped his hands about his mouth, shouting hoarsely for his blue short-haired Chartreux to return to the steps of his apartment where it liked to eat out of his hand and fall asleep in his lap. The cat did not appear, but the man would not stop calling.

  Dallas, Texas: In a hayfield, a boy of ten years beat fists and forearms against straw, hoping to wend his way to the exact spot where he lost sight of his white Ragdoll named Ollie. The cat’s distinctive upside-down V shaped coloring just above its eyes reminded the boy of chocolate. Ever since the disappearance, the boy would not eat candy and his father couldn’t stop shaking his head every time he thought of the ever-growing rodent population gearing itself to devour his crops.

  About eight driving hours from the hayfield, a woman rubbed a finger against her cheek where a prosthetic had been glued. It still itched and she still felt irritated about the lack of communication from her employer slash boyfriend. She didn’t really feel today’s acceleration would bring her man any closer to meeting whatever his deadline or agenda might be. She didn’t really know what it was, only that she volunteered to appear as some DOE scientist and lead a cat, a man and a girl to some shiny, reflective structure in Chicago called the Bean.

  What is in this for me?

  She rocked on her couch, watching live cable report every minute that the acceleration was running. But still there was no news regarding the return of one single missing feline. The woman really didn’t care much for cats. She recalled one had scratched her as a child and a friend’s Persian Grey had inconveniently filled her black evening gown with cat hair. She couldn’t remember where she had been going that day, possibly someone’s wedding. She laughed to herself sarcastically imagining herself as some kind of brilliant physicist who had a teenage son. Possibly the kind of a woman who would even keep company with a fancy breed of cat. She had hoped living a life as technician would be enough. But a man named Jim had given her a dream, a destination.

  The woman not only pined for marriage but something larger now during the last few weeks; maybe even a trip to the stars because after all Jim had given her an engraved pendant which cryptically read: ‘I’d move planets for you’. She scratched at chin trying to believe the crazy notion that anything was possible.

  Brands was in two-way communication, now held flat against the giant eyeball as if a fly glued to glass. He was without fear, however. The feedback of information was comforting because it was the very information that he contained via additional brain matter and a chip from Uncle Claude.

  In addition to formulas, the breadth of information seemed to stream without an end. Words seeped in and words seeped out. Instructions on how to build force fields, shoot photons and change the color of eyes genetically were all at his disposal.

  “We are connected. You and I.”

  The doctor couldn’t be sure if the words were his or coming from the giant subatomic cat which glimmered and shimmered in waves. However, Brands was certain this cat embodied the existing field created by the coll
ider. It had traveled to his location. Theoretically, it was logical that the physical form of Earth Cat Zero – or the particle – had switched domains.

  Data continued to stream. Some of the information seemed nonsensical and included the perfect temperature to make toast, a chemical compound which would resist ice and snow and the oscillation rate of a pendulum (10 Hertz per second). It concluded with the repeating up and down scale of notes of the Solfeggio Frequency.

  Brands soaked with sweat, fell to his knees where the carpeting had regained its tangibility. Sweaty hands gripped the couch for purchase. The glowing cat was gone. Miranda was hunched over, hands on the back of the couch, where the furniture seemed to be the only thing keeping her on her feet. Behind her, the Chicago cityscape was still grand but limited to a single vantage point.

  Miranda rushed around the couch to greet Brands but the doctor - momentarily unable to speak - could only point to the return of Earth Cat Zero perched on the far arm of the sofa, dirty paw prints confirming his presence.

  “AH! You’re back, Earth Cat. You’re back!”

  Miranda swooped the cat into her arms while Brands took note of a message on his watch. “Hmm. It says we failed.”

  Miranda swung the cat pendulum style, back and forth. “No! We didn’t! Earth Cat Zero is okay. That’s the only thing that matters right now.”

  Brands smiled from ear-to-ear. He felt delirious, maybe even slightly deranged agreeing so easily to Miranda’s declaration.

  “But they’re wrong.” Brands continued, voice low and raspy. “We didn’t fail. I communicated with the wave version of Earth Cat Zero.”

  Earth Cat Zero pawed at Miranda’s shoulder. “I-I was back at the lab grounds. It sent me there…and it sent me back.” The cat’s tone was quizzical, almost nonbelieving.

  “It means”- Brands said wiping sweat from his brow – “the quantum Earth Cat Zero now has the same informational download that I share with our physical friend. It would seem that it could be manipulated somehow – via instruction…” Brands’s voice trailed off and he felt as if he was going to pass out. “It seems the quantum wave version of Earth Cat Zero had no choice but to install the qubits as well.”

  A half hour later, Miranda awoke Brands to a glass of purple goo. “I’m going to do a video simulcast with my mom. We’ve got to tell the people this isn’t a failure. This is the break we needed to call our cats home.”

  Brands smiled at Miranda’s wordplay. “That’s a good name for it. Yes. We’ll call our cats home. I’ve – I’ve got to speak to Felicity. We can set up a communication relay, possibly a remote – possibly give instructions on how to permanently remove the quantum Earth Cat Zero from his lair in the collider. I know he’s back in there, Miranda. I just know it.”

  Earth Cat Zero mewled. “I will tell the people as well.” The cat appeared to be smiling. “I am not alone in this universe.” The cat’s eyes shifted in their sockets.

  Earth Cat Zero’s shiny dark blue eyes sparkled as he spoke via videocast; Miranda watched with the proud eyes of a parent. At least that’s what Caron observed onscreen as she shared airtime with her daughter from New York via split screen simulcast.

  “We have learned how to instruct the collider – or the quantum cat – to behave in a manner advantageous to all.” Caron held a hand over her heart. “We did not fail you. My colleague Dr. Brands is confident we can communicate on a quantum level with the cat existing in the collider via qubit – an information system – which can exist in two states at one time due to upward and downward spin. I am sure he is busy at work right now making necessary calculations.”

  Miranda cleared her throat so Caron could hear her disapproval. I know I’m laying it on thick, Miranda. But we must avoid mass panic. At all costs.

  Caron nodded her head for Miranda to speak. “That’s right, Mom. We can’t reveal more due to security issues, but we will have a communication relay in place shortly. It’s possible one or both of the two Earth Cat Zero versions may tell us where to call for our cats. Keep calling your pet’s name. They are somewhere. They will hear us.”

  Earth Cat Zero waved a paw. “I have learned family is not bound by blood, species or even dimension. Anything is possible when you believe.”

  The camera panned out and concluded the broadcast so local newscasters around the globe could milk the story for all its worth with post speech commentary.

  “Yes, Mary,” – the Baltimore newsperson Bill said – “it’s official. Earth Cat Zero and company have made progress.”

  Mary chuckled. “I can’t wait to have my little Venus back in my arms again, Bill.”

  “What’s the matter, Doctor?” Miranda felt Brands’s wrist for a pulse. “Do you think we should go to the emergency room, get you checked out? I mean – from what you’re saying – you have just quantum traveled – if there is such a thing.”

  The doctor kneaded fingers into his temples. “Yes. I believe so. I may have been to a different place or at least a place where I can view things from all perspectives.”

  Miranda’s eyes lit up. “That’s groundbreaking! Isn’t it, Doctor!” She shook him by the shoulders for emphasis.

  “Miranda, I know you, your mother and Earth Cat had to be strong on the broadcast. But we may have only taken baby steps in our journey. I don’t know how much longer we can ask the public to hold out because even the next acceleration may only be a learning curve.”

  “But if we’re on a learning curve, the greatest increase of retention comes after the initial attempts…”

  Brands tilted his head. “Are you just repeating homework rhetoric, Miranda? Or do you really believe that to be the case?”

  “I believe we took a huge leap today, Doctor Brands.” Miranda balled her fist around Earth Cat Zero’s head. “We’re both sticking to our story. Aren’t we, Earth Cat?” The feline gazed at his keepers with glassy eyes.

  “I need – we all need – to decompress.” Brands fastened a collar and leash onto Earth Cat’s neck. “I think a walk will do us good.” He grabbed a black bag from a closet.

  Miranda smiled to mirror the doctor’s mischievous grin.

  “How can we refuse?”

  “I thought we were going for a walk?” Miranda’s contorted face told the doctor her patience was on thin ice. He laughed at the pun to the teen’s chagrin.

  “I wish I had that mindshare link so I could tell what you’re trying to hide from me, Doctor.”

  “Miranda, it doesn’t work in quite that manner. Not without an energy contribution like we got from the collider. I mean, normally, I can’t share Earth Cat Zero’s thoughts nor his mine.”

  “But then what good is the quantum relay?”

  “It is in progress. The qubits stored in our heads will find a way to speak – if needed – in emergency. I’m certain of it. But it wouldn’t help to assist them.”

  The trio rode the elevator to the ground level of Union Center. “Our walk is going to be indoors, but it may feel like you’re outdoors.”

  “Doctor, I’ve had enough riddles for one day.” Earth Cat Zero appeared to agree massaging a paw against his temple.

  “We are here!” Brands held out arms while Miranda craned her head to observe what appeared to be a hockey rink. In the center was a depiction of a native American, underneath bolded letters read: Blackhawks. “You brought us to a hockey rink?”

  “Are you telling me you’ve never skated? You’re from Long Island, right?”

  “I – have. Not in quite a while. And besides, don’t we need skates?”

  Brands waved a hand. “Details. Just details.”

  Unzipping a black duffel, the doctor revealed two pairs of skates. “Sorry, Earth Cat, I don’t think our planet is yet prepared for skating felines.”

  “How did you know my size?” Before the doctor could answer, Miranda recalled how Brands had recorded her genetic makeup. In her sleep. “Oh.” She answered herself.

 
On the rink, Brands felt like he had removed at least five years from the teen. She was smiling with a full toothed grin and paraded around the rink with Earth Cat Zero perched on her shoulder.

  Dressed in a pink overcoat with white skates, Brands could only perceive Miranda as a child with her pet. She’ll need this break. We may have won a battle but not the war.

  The doctor clapped as Miranda pirouetted. “You’ve done more skating than you’re admitting.”

  “I know. Guilty as charged. Leesa and I would sometimes cut class early… This…reminds me of freedom…Doctor. But it also reminds me of deceit.” She skated closer to him, so she could rest a hand on Brands’s shoulder. “I don’t know how much I can play the deceit card, Doctor. I used to think it was all a joke when I played it with my mother. I don’t - I can’t – have this become part of my character.”

  “I am sure it won’t. Your very recognition of the act speaks volumes. The universe – it hears you.” Brands stretched his arms. He shouted. “All cats come home!” It echoed throughout the empty confines of the arena. “No one but the universe is watching us now, Miranda. Here, you can be yourself. Take advantage of this break.”

  Miranda complied, attempting a figure eight while Earth Cat gripped the teen’s shoulder for dear life, tongue protruded.

  Brands scanned his phone for messages The DOD alerted him that several national jewelry chains were vying to get exclusive rights to Earth Cat Zero branded jewelry.

  “Ah, Earth Cat Zero, you are indeed charming.” The doctor laughed, holding up the phone so Miranda and the cat could view the offer.