by Bogi Takács
“Okay, okay, yeah, sure, yes.” Jay nodded quickly, clearly making an effort to keep his face very serious, grounded, realistic, and like he wasn’t already picking out cat toys for his small, dark, computer-filled apartment. “No promises, got it.”
“Walk and talk,” Stefanos said again and kept moving on as the other two followed, but it wasn’t hard to see the smile hidden behind his bushy black beard, and glinting in his golden eyes. “So…your new friend got a name yet?”
“Seven. Like the brilliant, efficient, complex, and yes, beautiful, Seven-of-Nine…Lives. Because this ’borg’s a cat.” His grin only widened as Stefanos slowly turned to stare at the both of them. As before, the synthetic feline face seemed to smile too. If Rose hadn’t known better, she might have checked for yellow feathers; that cat had to have just eaten a canary. “No—‘Tails.’ Seven-of-Nine-Tails. Like cat-o-nine-tails, and like Ninetales, and—see? Layers. Layers upon layers of wordplay and self-referential naming brilliance. Just like her human.”
Rose decided right then and there that if Jay couldn’t convince Danae to let him keep this cat—Seven—she would. It probably wouldn’t come to that, though. Danae had a heart. A particularly big, passionate, and generous one. It was one of several reasons Rose married her. She didn’t see much to worry about.
“Amazing,” Stefanos marveled. Instead of sounding sarcastic, he was smiling. Rose realized that in the (increasingly remote) event she’d had to argue to keep Jay and Seven together, she wouldn’t have been alone. She didn’t expect the warmth that rose in her chest, but she hadn’t expected much of anything that happened today either. “Absolutely amazing.”
“I know! I can’t wait to show Re…runtime partner!”
“You could have brought him, you know.” Rose couldn’t quite hide all of her disappointment. “How many years has it been, and we’ve never met him?”
“Yeah, he doesn’t really do parties. Or names.” Jay reached up to pet his new friend, actually giggling when she started to very gently nibble at his fingertips. “Cats, though? I can’t wait. He’ll love her. So will Rowan—and Annie, and Ash, everybody! Everybody’s gonna love her!”
“I…hope you’re right,” Stefanos said, not looking at all convinced. “But you really might want to wait until she has fur. And actually meows, instead of…talks. Like that.”
“Why would I wait? She’s perfect the way she is. Isn’t that right? Yes it is right, that’s a great big af-fir-ma-tive right th—” Jay almost missed a step and tripped when Seven showed off a new, previously hidden feature. “This is the best day of my life…”
They walked the rest of the way home to the way of slightly metallic cat’s purrs.
Rose’s sincere wish was that by the time she returned home with the missing cat, and two guests, everything would have returned to normal. But like so many things in Parole, “normal” was once again too much to hope for.
The kitchen was spattered with bright red. It covered the floor, the countertops, even the walls, spray had made it all the way up to the ceiling. The only thing more stained than white ceiling or yellow linoleum was Danae, standing very still in the middle of the devastation, looking like she’d survived a massacre—but not without scars.
“Oh.” Rose’s mouth fell open. She couldn’t form a question, no more words at all. A chill didn’t just run down her spine; she felt the cold adrenaline shoot through her veins as she automatically prepared for a life-or-death fight. But she couldn’t make herself move, she could barely think. Jack. Where? Danae, hurt, how?
Slowly, Danae looked up, raising her eyes to meet Rose’s. Her thousand-yard stare spoke of horrors, of dark deeds and brutal desperation. “Need more strawberries.”
“What?” Rose’s words came out in a dry, choked whisper. “What happened? Where’s Jack?”
“Clean shirt. Sticky. Juice everywhere. Cake…ruined.”
“Ca…oh.” Rose let her breath out in a rush. “It’s just strawberries. Danae,” she hurried the last couple steps between them and pulled her into a hug, not minding the mess. “You scared me! I thought—”
“I know what you thought.” Danae wrapped her arms around Rose and let her head drop down onto her shoulder. “But no, everything’s f…no it’s not, look at this mess! I’m so sorry! Everything happened so fast, as soon as you left—”
“James Tiberius!” came Jay’s shocked voice from behind them, and they both turned to see him and Stefanos in the doorway, Jay staring at the ominous stains and Stefanos’ arm already powering up. “What happened here? Is it over? Are there any hostiles—”
“No, it’s fine—it’s strawberry and red food coloring, it’s fine!” Rose rushed to reassure them.
“It’s not fine!” Danae flopped her head forward and rubbed at her raw eyes, sending a small chunk of cake and icing flying from where it had been stuck in her hair. “Party’s cancelled! Call everything off! Hi, Stef.” She sniffed, mellowing somewhat and looking up at him. “Thanks for coming.”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” He shut off his arm-mounted cannon, shaking his head and letting out his breath in a rush. “What happened here?”
“I—cat! Dog! Plants—everything’s ruined!”
“Well, then we’ll fix it. Now why don’t you take a few deep breaths and tell us what happened?”
“It’s still ruined! Look at this,” she rubbed at a particularly nasty stain with one finger, to absolutely no effect.
“Well, it could have been ruined a lot worse! It looked like—just a lot of bad!” Jay’s voice pitch still hadn’t come down. Seven, still riding on her new favorite human’s shoulder, sat up a little to nudge his chin with her forehead and resumed purring, but softer this time and on a different frequency than before; the rhythm was slower and much more soothing. “Oh. That’s nice. That’s really…nice.”
“Anti-anxiety frequency purrs…hey!” Danae looked up as if noticing the metal cat’s presence for the first time, face lighting up in a relieved smile. It seemed that Jay wasn’t the only one getting some good out of the calming purrs. “You guys! You found it!”
“Aw, it was nothing.” Jay shrugged with his free shoulder, smiling and breathing much more easily than he had just a few seconds before. “Pretty sure Seven wanted to be found anyway.”
“Seven…?”
“Of-Nine-Tails,” Jay finished, suddenly looking both very nervous and tentatively hopeful. “And…I guess she’s technically yours. We just found her. For you. Um, it. We found it—your missing model. Work-in-progress. Unit.”
Danae gave the pair the briefest of scrutinizing glances before shaking her head, but her smile didn’t waver. “Well, those are some hardcore imprint protocols right there. I dunno if—Seven?”
“AF-FIR-MA-TIVE.”
“Yeah, she’s not so mine anymore.”
“Really?” Jay asked with wide eyes, as if hardly daring to believe it.
“Congratulations.” She nodded, not seeming at all annoyed that her creation had apparently made up its own mind. “You got a fully functional mechanized therapy and companion animal. I tweaked my usual alloy mix to something a lot more stealth-friendly. She won’t stand out like a sore thumb on SkEye’s scanners—so you in particular should be able to get up to all kinds of fun together. Nice human choice, Seven.” She gave the cat a nod. “Twelve different therapeutic purr frequencies for anxiety, panic, flashbacks—and a full health-scan mode, she can monitor heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, all that good stuff. And you can probably figure out how to soup her up even more. What else? Oh!” She snapped her fingers. “Wi-Fi hotspot, directly configured to boost your signals and block SkEye’s, actually. Enjoy that.”
“I will,” Jay said in a reverent tone. “This just keeps getting better. And it’s not even my birthday.”
“It does seem like it was kinda meant to be. Oh, but I can totally get rid of the voice-box weirdness if you want, she’ll meow just like a bio-kitty.”
“U
h, lemme think about that one. I kinda like it the way it is.”
“Okay, your call.” She shrugged. “I always liked their original voices too, but people always seem to find them creepy. How about fur?”
“Fur is good. Can you do Himalayan?”
“Anything you want. And it won’t make you sneeze.”
“Thank you, Danae.” While Jay petted his new friend with barely contained glee, Stefanos reached out with his non-metal hand and picked one of the bigger chunks of pink icing out of his sister’s hair. “We were hoping you’d say that.”
“We were?”
“I can handle robot cats.” He smiled down at Jay, and when he spoke his tone was warm, steady, and free from any of his previous misgivings. “Even cats that talk in…that voice. As long as they make you happy.”
“I can’t believe we’re related when you say stuff like that,” she said, but she was smiling. “I could never say that kind of mush with a straight face.”
“You can’t say anything with a straight face.”
“Oh! Damn! Never mind, I see the resemblance.”
“All right, focus.” Rose sighed, and surveyed the wrecked kitchen. “That’s one crisis resolved, onto the next. Next time just remember…dogs chase cats.”
“It wasn’t Dandy’s fault!” Danae protested. “He was just doing what dogs do. But he’d never cause a mess like this, he’s a good boy. He would never, ever, not in a million—”
“Take a breath,” Stefanos advised as her face began to redden again. “If Toto-Dandy didn’t make the mess, what happened?”
Danae opened her mouth—then stopped, an entirely joyless smile spreading across her face. “I’ll show you.” She bent down and picked up a fist-sized strawberry that had rolled under the kitchen table, then crossed the room, stopping before she reached the doorway that led into a much sunnier and more open space. The next room seemed to contain an indoor forest, thick with hanging vines and explosions of flowers soaking up the pale sunlight filtering through the skylight windows. This was Rose’s indoor conservatory, home to around half of the flora that spread throughout their house’s in- and exterior, filled to bursting with green life.
She held up a finger for everyone to wait and pay attention, and slowly extended her arm with the strawberry toward the door, standing well away from the threshold. After a few seconds, an enormous leafy head snaked through the doorway at head level with surprising speed, and unhinged a gaping pair of jaws with long, needle-sharp teeth.
“That!” Danae pointed a trembling finger at the snapping, straining giant Venus flytrap as she jumped backwards out of its reach, narrowly avoiding its fangs. “That’s what happened. That thing has always hated me, and today it—it struck!”
“Oh, Serena,” Rose said in a soothing tone, hurrying over to pet the giant head that swayed back and forth on its thick vine-neck, its needle-point teeth dripping a clear liquid onto the linoleum. “Did you get scared too? It’s okay now, it’s all over.”
“She wasn’t scared,” Danae said in a much more level but no less vehement tone. “She was the one turning everything into her own little kitchen of horrors!”
“Really?” Rose turned back to face her, still petting the giant carnivorous plant and now eyeing Danae with the barest hint of doubt. “Serena made all this mess?”
“She took advantage of the chaos! She waited until you were gone! No, she lay in wait, until when everything was quiet, and when you left to find the cat, and I put Dandy in my shop, she—she struck!”
“Struck you?” Rose’s eyebrows shot up.
“No, the cake! When Jack and I were shutting Dandy in my shop, the monster plant ate it! First she ate the ‘Happy’ part.” Danae tilted her head to stare at the plant’s suspiciously smile-shaped mouth. “By the time we got back, she was going after ‘Evelyn.’”
“Thank goodness she didn’t get her,” Jay snickered. “Parole needs its superheroine. Eaten by a giant flower, wh—”
“I’m not done.” Danae turned her sharp gaze on him and he shut his mouth immediately. She reached out and grabbed something from the counter that none of them had noticed before amid all the rest of the devastation. It was a small, crumpled white T-shirt, which she shook out to reveal the word ‘BIRTH’ in bright red. The distorted, dripping letters and spatter all around looked like something right out of a campy horror movie.
“Jack tried,” Danae said, starting to look a little dazed again. “I put the cake down on the table while I fought off Serena and he climbed up and tried to protect it. Just like his moms, I guess… instead he fell.”
“Poor kid. How’s he doing?”
“You know, better than I would. Better than I did, maybe. He’s four years old and already cool in a crisis. I dunno if that’s good or bad.”
“And what a crisis. Gets attacked by a giant plant, falls into his mom’s birthday cake—there’s something weird and symbolic about that, isn’t there?—looks down, his shirt says ‘Birth’ in creepy bloody murder letters. I dare you to psychoanalyze this, Rose.”
“My analysis is,” Rose said faintly, gently shooing Serena back into the conservatory, “thank you for not showing that to us until after you told us it was strawberry and food coloring, Danae. And I’m so sorry about Serena, I don’t know what got into her!”
“Ugh, it’s not your fault.” Danae dropped the shirt to the countertop again, then sighed and flopped back against it herself, finally exhausted. “Any more than Dandy’s mine. At least I could always program him not to chase cats. Not that I’d ever impede on his…never mind. It just happened so fast.”
“I know, honey, but hopefully we can get it cleaned up just as…almost as fast!” Rose gave both her shoulders a squeeze. “Evelyn won’t be home for a little bit. We can still salvage the evening, you’ll—”
“Hello!” Evelyn’s voice reached them moments before the sound of the opening door. “If there’s any surprises waiting, my eyes are closed!”
“Oh no,” Danae whispered as she and Rose stared into one another’s eyes and matching expressions of quickly dawning horror.
“Evelyn?” Rose called in an only slightly tight voice, turning around quickly and hurrying down the hallway toward the entrance. “Baby, keep your eyes closed for a second longer!”
“Don’t worry, it’s not blood!” Danae tried to sound as cheery as possible, but some things would never come out any other way but disturbing. She grimaced as she turned to the potentially terrifying room, frantically pointing at the fallen chairs, strawberries, and the worst smears and stains on the walls and floor. “Help me clean this up!”
“With what?” Jay whispered back as Stefanos shook his head and followed after Rose. After a moment’s hesitation, Danae shoved a crumpled white-and-red cloth at him—Jack’s stained shirt. But before either of them could continue, Rose returned, and she wasn’t alone.
“I promise, we’ll have everything cleaned up before you know it, don’t worry about a thing,” Rose reassured Evelyn as she led her by the hand. “We want you to enjoy tonight, really, we just ran into some…road bumps.”
After ten wild, harrowing years in Parole, there wasn’t much that could make Evelyn Calliope stare. The magenta-haired superheroine was still in her stage clothes, punk-rock spikes and ruffles making her instantly stand out wherever she went, but especially at home. She had the familiar air of exhaustion and exhilaration that followed a show, and looked like she wanted nothing more than to change into something much more comfortable (with lower heels) and enjoy a quiet evening with family and friends before bed. Or that had been the plan at least. Coming home to find the house looking like a juice-bomb had gone off inside had not been on the night’s schedule. She was staring now.
“This…this isn’t your surprise,” Danae said weakly.
“Well,” Evelyn found her voice at last, but still seemed lost for words. “It’s still a pretty good one.”
“I’m just so sorry,” Rose sighed. “This did not go as pla
nned.”
“That’s an understatement.” Danae snorted. “Ev, we suck. If you want to call this whole thing off and go out for pizza or something, we’d understand. This has to be pretty much the most disappointing birthday ever.”
“Now that’s where you’d be surprised,” Evelyn said in a flat, almost deadpan tone, and nothing more.
“I wouldn’t,” Rose shook her head. “Not with how you grew up.”
“I know!” Danae shot an accusatory glare at the remaining “Day” cake. “That’s why we wanted so bad to give you something really nice, Ev.”
“It’s really fine.” Evelyn smiled, and after a fraction of a second it looked convincing. She was clearly still processing the shock of this and all other associated birthdays, but like always, she recovered by moving forward. “Let’s just get this cleaned up. And—are we waiting on anyone else?”
“No, just us,” Stefanos said after the briefest of hesitations, as Rose started picking up the overturned kitchen chairs and Danae went to get a broom from her workshop. Hopefully by now the worst of the icing would be dry enough to just sweep up, though the actual juice and dye stains would be trickier. Unfortunately, her mechanical animals weren’t as good at cleaning up food-messes as they were at creating them. “Ash went out on a run, and Rowan doesn’t—”
“Doesn’t do parties, that’s right,” Evelyn finished, then turned to Jay before he could add the customary, perfectly-reasonable-in-Parole, but still-somehow-disappointing excuse. “And neither does your runtime partner.”
“Hey, you’ll meet him! Eventually,” Jay said with only the briefest of hesitations. “He can’t hide forever. I swear I’ll drag him into society one of these days. And I’ll even tell you his name! Or better yet, he will.”