The Zygote Crystal

by Ashley Thomas

  Anyway, as the chair settled on the floor Joosthava reared backwards so that her face moved to a metre or so away from mine. At the same time her hair flailed back and up several metres. As it came down again towards me it formed itself into multiple separate thick strands, almost like wavy skewers. As these wavy skewers headed towards me I could sense the hardness in them and indeed, heard the hardness, as several thudded past each side of my body and into and through the cushioned surface of the chair. Suddenly I felt my chest pulled tight to the chair as these same ‘hair skewers’ came back through the chair and wound around my chest. The tightness was almost unbearable and was made worse by the fact that, as the skewers contracted, Joosthava’s body was drawn tightly to mine. All my eyes could see were blue teeth. It seemed strange, but at that very moment all I could think was whether they were naturally blue or not. Weird. What was wrong with me and what was happening? This was certainly different to her previous appearances and shocks to my life.

  Before I could say anything, she spoke. “We must get out of here. Hold on.”

  “Hold on to what exactly. And, where are we going you daft blue toothed weirdo thing woman. We’re just taking off and I can tell you this is not standard take-off procedure,” I responded loudly.

  With those words barely out of my mouth, suddenly it felt like my mind was in my fingernails and my voice felt like it was coming out of my toes. The sensations were not too dissimilar to Fastmove via eMDaDD only about a gazillion times worse. I had a sense that I had vomited violently as I felt ‘crackly fuzziness’ all around me. It was as if I were an aircast that couldn’t quite tune in. I could discern nothing for what felt like hours. I wondered what the heck was going on? Was I Fastmoving? If I was, when I materialised would I be whole or was something going wrong and was that why it was feeling this way? My mind envisioned my molecules being mixed up with vomit. Crikey, I could be a real reconstituted mess if I ever did materialise. I tried to scream ‘Help Cat’, but found that I couldn’t. Then just as my bladder, wherever it currently was, started to flex its muscles as it normally did at times like this, it was over.

  Back on the ground

  I opened my eyes and looked straight up at a clear blue sky. The surface I was laying on was cold and hard. I lifted my head a little. I could move and as I looked down my body I realised I was whole, with the right number of visible bits anyway. Phew. I looked slightly to my right and there was Joosthava sitting up on the ground a few feet from me. She looked to be covered in sick. I guess that confirmed that I must have vomited and that hopefully all the vomit was on her rather than now making up parts of my molecular structure. As I sat further up, I realised we were outside of the mission control building and on the ground very near to where my lightship had taken off. I looked further over to my right and to my surprise, in the near distance, saw what looked like my lightship rising into the sky.

  I looked at Joosthava and demanded “Why did you Fastmove me off the lightship?”

  “I didn’t Fastmove you off the lightship. I moved us both through space and time using my natural shifting capabilities. That’s not the same as Fastmoving using an eMDaDD. It was a struggle but I managed to get you off in time. I am sorry I couldn’t get Mr Cat off too. That’s your lightship taking off over there with Mr. Cat still on board.”

  “It may not be Fastmoving, but whatever it is, it has still made me feel very, very sick!” I said.

  I noticed as I spoke that she was clearly trying not to breathe in, presumably because of the vomit that covered most of her upper body. I refused to feel sorry for her though and further demanded why she was mucking about like this and moving my molecules around without my permission.

  “I had to,” she said. “I had no choice. I saw the explosion when I was reconnoitering the enemy.”

  I sighed loudly, walked over to her and handed her a hanky to help clean off the vomit, though she probably needed something the size of a blanket really. Boy I’d upped a lot of my lunch that’s for sure.

  “Saw what explosion?” I asked.

  Before she could say anything in response, I was blown back to the ground by what turned out to be the aftershock of a mega-explosion. Instantly she was back on top of me and I was encased, as she was, by masses of hardened strands of her blue hair which she had wrapped around our once more conjoined bodies. I was cocooned and protected, as I found out later, from falling debris from the devastated lightship. Due to the ‘conjoined cocooning’ of our bodies I was also now covered in my own vomit that up to now had only been covering her. All in all, I determined I was really not having a great day.

  Eventually her hair softened and I emerged from the protective cocoon she had created. I looked around me and saw nothing but pieces of burning debris. The lightship that I had just seen take off, my lightship, had blown up with Cat apparently still on board.

  I looked at Joosthava and said “Maybe he eMDaDD’ed himself off before the blast. I bet he’s at home now eating molten lava beans.”

  “I’m afraid not,” she said. “I warned him too late. He knew it was too late. He told me to take you. He knew I could only take one with me.”

  I stared increasingly blankly at her, “Yes, but he’ll be alright. He’s made of Rubanon. He bounces. We’ll find him. He’ll be fine. Won’t he?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Joosthava, “that was at least a 500 Exajoule explosion. He will most likely have been vaporised. The debris you see is only a small part of the lightship. Most of the lightship will have entirely ceased to be in an instant, as will have Mr. Cat.”

  Obviously, sugar-coating wasn’t one of Joosthava’s strengths I realised, as it began to dawn on me that Cat was gone. He was gone.

  Chapter 5 - Dealing with the Aftermath

  Coping without him

  It had been several days since my lightship had exploded with Cat on board. Investigators had confirmed there had been a bomb and that there were only minor traces of Cat’s existence amongst the recoverable debris. Joosthava had been correct, he had been vaporised.

  It was very strange and I was very sad without him. I hadn’t been insulted for nearly 72 hours, bored by his latest scientific or technical diatribe or choked nearly to extinction by any of his gaseous expellations. I must confess I was feeling almost totally lost without him. The mornings were so different and the days dragged. At night it was difficult to sleep without knowing he was somewhere in the apartment and, like as not, working on his latest Doctoral thesis. I couldn’t think, eat or concentrate on anything. I hadn’t bought any gadget from Cadabra Universe since before the explosion - a sure sign that I was not myself.

  Abraca-Joosthava

  Suddenly out of nowhere, as usual, Joosthava appeared. Why she was still popping up periodically in my apartment was beyond me. Our mission had to all intents and purposes been abandoned as far as I was concerned because of what had happened. However, I had by now become quite used to her appearing and disappearing like some ghostly spirit. As a consequence, I tended no longer to either pee myself or fall off my chair when she did make one of her myriad unannounced entrances.

  “You look sad,” she said. “Are you not feeling any better?”

  “Not really,” I replied, “I still just cannot believe he’s gone. I keep expecting him to appear and start verbally abusing me like he used to. I’m not sure how I am going to continue. If truth be known, I’m not sure I can do my job without him.”

  Joosthava stepped back a little, smiled as always she did and said, “You will get over this I know. It will take time. Has the replacement cat not helped?”

  At that very moment a rather fat looking tabby coloured robot cat trundled into the room, stopped a few feet from me and said in a monotone, “Oh nine hundred hours and nothing to report,” before spinning sharply around and gliding back out of the room.

  “No, Joosthava,” I said, “It most definitely does not help. Did you see how it glides? It glides!! Cat waddled, with aplomb. He was rude, imperious
, not even vaguely subservient and, above all, he smelled all the time. He cared about me. This thing has a sonic shower every morning!! Cat would be absolutely horrified!! It will never be the same. I’m lost - I can’t think without him - I just don’t know what to do,” I ended woefully.

  “Oh, please do try,” she said, “For him. We must find out who did this and what is going on at Messier 31. He would want that.”

  “No,” I said, “I can’t handle it without him. “To be honest, just between you and me, he really had all the brains, all the ideas and was as brave as a lion. I treated him badly at times. He deserved better than me. We were a partnership but I tried to take all the credit and make him seem insignificant. He really was so much more than just a bad smell and I never told him. I wish I could have my time with him all over again so that I could make some amends and feel complete again. I don’t remember ever feeling like this before.”

  “I realise that you and Mr. Cat had been together for quite a few years. Like me, you understandably came to trust and respect him greatly.”

  I looked at her and said, “That’s nice. But, not sure I’d say I trusted and respected him that much. I mean with all the abuse he dished out it wasn’t that straightforward to even vaguely like him, which makes it all the more confusing for me. You see, he was just ‘there’, he was ‘it’. We were so familiar and had shared so much. I guess my trust and respect for him must have been buried underneath the surface of our daily attempts to annoy and irritate each other. There is that well known saying that you never miss what you don’t have and unfortunately I had Cat, and now I miss him.”

  “I do understand,” she said sympathetically. “Tell me, how did you and Mr. Cat meet in the first place?”

  Cat’s story

  I had been thinking about how Cat and I had first ‘met’ myself, in fact almost continuously through the night. I was more than happy to reminisce out loud and tell Joosthava that we hadn’t really met as such. I was given him by my employers.

  Having received him as essential and standard Intergalactic Tax Inspector equipment, I realised very quickly that he was quite unusual for a piece of equipment. I didn’t know much about robots, but had experienced quite a few as I was growing up, both in the homes I lived in and in the outside world. Everything from shopping assistants and MediDroids, through to virtual learning world attendants. None of these robots were ever rude to me and none of them did their own independent research on topics ranging from ‘Genomes of Prehistory’ through to ‘Clean Energy from Nothing’. He used to go on about that latter topic endlessly in recent months and I was always completely flummoxed by his impenetrable theory on nothingness. So confusing and irritating.

  Anyway, shortly after Cat started to order me about and basically tell me what I needed to do on pretty much a daily basis, I had asked him to explain a bit more about his origins. I mean, I knew he was a robot, built using technology that blurred the lines between ‘electronic artificial World’ and living beings, but how exactly did he come to be so like a real cat in the way he behaved? Why did he have such an intensely superior personality? Was it programmed or inherited from Zeus or a similar God? I wanted to know these things very soon after we started to work together and I must say I was surprised to hear from Cat that it was all largely inherited. His eagerness to spill the beans was not surprising, as if there was one thing Cat liked more than molten lava beans, it was the sound of his own voice. It turned out that he was to all intents and purposes a direct descendant of the so-called ‘Pure Cat’ Azz-Lex, a feline with a weird name from the 22nd Century who saved humanity and has essentially never let humanity forget it.

  Cat’s continues his tale

  Cat went on for a long time telling me things that were linked to how he came ‘to be’. As I have already explained, he did like to talk. Quite a lot of what he said was about the early days of deep space exploration, how Planet X was discovered and how Azz-Lex wound up coming to Earth because of the Mud Lizards.

  He said his existence really all flowed, in a rather convoluted manner, from the days of Virgin Galaxy’s deep space unmanned missions to discover new life. In the late 21st Century these ships were all uncrewed and robots were Earth’s way of telling the rest of the Universe that we existed and were friendly. In the first wave of missions between about 2085 and 2150 not a lot happened really. There were a few interesting planets discovered with basic lifeforms and potentially valuable new elements. Indeed, the very first Virgin Galaxy Deep Space Probe to return to Earth gave us Bryllium, discovered on the planet Luminem. Bryllium was a key element in the battle that Earth later had to survive the effects of the Great Radiation flood of 2212.

  Shortly after Luminem had been discovered, a similar deep space probe got everyone on Earth very excited with the discovery of Planet X, from which quite regular apparent communications had been detected. Unfortunately, this did not lead, as hoped at the time, to contact with any civilisation. Though of course we do have you, Joosthava. Cat told me about your connection with Planet X.

  After the excitement over Planet X, it wasn’t until after 2150 that missions from Earth discovered a number of planets with more complex, intelligent lifeforms like the Silurians, Sinosovureans, and Kimkadians. And then Plasmolidium was discovered. Whilst at first this planet seemed similar to earlier unpopulated planets that had been colonised by Virgin Galaxy, subsequently the Mud Lizards put in a rather unfriendly appearance. Their interaction with human explorers led to a specific atrocity that sparked war with the Mud Lizards.

  Cat told me that after the few humans who took part in the initial hostilities with Mud Lizards on Plasmolidium, returned to Earth, humankind began to be devastated by the so-called Mosquito virus. Deaths mounted and the projections were that humans could well become extinct. What happened next ultimately and more directly led to Cat’s eventual creation.

  Tjoorbaert Morabitz and Azz-Lex

  Annihilation of the human race by the Mosquito virus looked likely until the intervention of Vice-President Professor Tjoorbaert Morabitz from the Austrian Academy of Galactic Science.

  Tjoorbaert was the founder of ClonaCat, a company originally established to clone cats so that owners whose cat had died, could easily get the perfect replacement. However, no matter how hard ClonaCat tried they could never perfect the process of providing an exact physical and behavioural copy of any deceased feline. Though ClonaCat’s original business plan failed they did, rather serendipitously, manage to clone the first unicorns on Earth. This led to a lucrative business, breeding unicorns for racing purposes. Tjoorbaert became very rich.

  Despite the unicorn work, Tjoorbaert did not give up on his desire to fully understand the genome of domestic cats. He was therefore understandably intrigued when a talking black cat, calling himself Azz-Lex, turned up at his apartment at the height of the Mosquito virus epidemic. Azz-Lex turned out to be perfect physically and had an IQ almost 100X higher than the norm for a domestic cat on Earth at the time. This meant basically that Azz-Lex was ‘dead clever’.

  Even more astonishing than Azz-Lex’s intelligence was the fact that he provided the cure for the Mosquito virus. Scientists at ClonaCat were able to show that a transposon in Azz-Lex’s DNA could counter the effect of the Mosquito virus. Subsequently, they also used parts of Azz-Lex’s DNA to help make the first robotic cats on Earth, work that provided the foundation for the development of advanced AIs like Cat himself.

  The Azz-Lex transposon

  So, in 2170 humanity had been essentially saved by the ‘Azz-Lex transposon’ which, when implanted into a human, conferred full immunity to the Mosquito virus. There were however consequences. All humans effectively became part-cat, or rather part Azz-Lex with the phenotype of humans in relation to cat characteristics varying widely.

  For many there was hardly any effect but others suddenly liked to chew grass to induce vomiting, whilst some couldn’t pee unless they were standing on sand or could scratch around in some soil first. Quite a f
ew human Azz-Lex transposon carriers couldn’t survive without being waited on hand and foot. Obviously, despite the social embarrassment that some of these characteristics could cause, especially at garden parties, it was better than dying. Fortunately, around 15 years after the initial introduction of the Azz-Lex transposon, other scientists at what was now CloneMate, found treatments that could suppress most of the cat features that Azz-Lex had inadvertently introduced into the human gene pool. This still left us though with humans who occasionally hissed when they got really annoyed, and sometimes couldn’t help but sometimes chase anything smaller that moved and, ideally, had a wiggly tail.

  Joosthava had listened patiently to all of this story. As I finished she said “So you, like all humans, are part Azz-Lex.

  ”That’s right.” I said, “All humans have the Azz-Lex transposon and without the suppressive drugs I mentioned earlier I might have more of a tendency to chase feathers on the end of sticks or scratch the legs of tables and chairs. All that happens with me though is that on occasion I feel a little ‘cat like’ inside myself, if you know what I mean?”

  “Oh I know what you mean better than you could imagine,” said Joosthava. She then added, “So this means effectively that you and Mr. Cat were genetically related.”

  I sighed and said “Yes we were. But I was more than just a distant relative of Cat. I was his friend and he was mine. We argued with each other endlessly, but really we were laughing inside all along. Or at least I was. I hope he knew that,” I ended.