Unapologetic CatharsisChapter Two — Not A Politician
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| The AI-Critter reached out to telepathically share memories. |
Un-Cat Episode 10. — Money, Politics, and Stuff
U.G. reached for her mailbox, key in hand and heard a gun trigger safety click. Not something a human might have been able to hear, he was on the hill behind her, but she was a Cat-person. The “spidey sense” of her eight-limb-telepathic AI-Critter should have detected the man way before she had gotten in range of his rifle scope.
U.G. had woken just before the sunrise. She enjoyed walking in the dim as the dark of night turned ultramarine blue gradually turning pale and brighter as the Earth rolled towards the sun. As she walked down the long gravel drive the AI-C had told her there was only one other person awake for miles.
She was going to the fetch the mail on her morning walk because the AI-C had told her that they had mailed the check last night in the usual way and the new "OCD" post office employee was on route again. This was a problem because even with the flag down this mail carrier (who was new to the area) would collect the letter and she would have to go in, to the post office to get it, always a hassle.
The rent for the house near the corner store was late again. The lease on the gas station and the corner store businesses were paid directly to the bank. But, her parent’s old house was rented by three young people, the business owners’ grown children, and the girl’s boyfriend.
One of the young tenants, usually the boyfriend, would stuff the rent in an old manila envelope with a metal fold clasp they had laying around, ‘U.G. here’ written on the front instead of a to address and ‘from us’ written on the corner where a return address should have been and "mail" this unstamped unaddressed rent payment in the mail box.
“Hey! Where is the Dog?” A familiar voice whispered harshly pricking U.G’s cat ears to turn, while her body froze.
“So?” U.G.’s thoughts directed towards the AI-C, hearing footsteps on the gravel behind her now. “The other person awake this morning, is the bipolar man you AI-Critters have a tough time reading and now he is pointing that rifle at my head?”
“Yes. The man who lives illegally in the woods near here. The gun isn’t loaded. He has two bullets in the left breast pocket of his shirt.” the AI-C thought back.
She turned around to face the rifle barrel.
Besides U.G. this man was Lee’s biggest fan. Lee had sniffed him out and used to visit him, checking in on him often. Lee had helped make his crazy-shack into a home, bringing anything useful or extra they had around from rebuilding U.G.’s house, helping the man dig-in, insulate, designed a Dog-people style open plumbing system for his dwelling, built a battery bank with solar panels for his roof. Lee also had brought over one of U.G.’s old computers, connected him to their wireless-internet and other than U.G. this woods-man was one of the few people on Earth who had read all of Lee’s writings.
“I posted his obituary,” U.G. said not blinking.
“Where? I don’t get the paper.” The man always whispered or muttered under his breath with tight lips. He was afraid someone was surveilling him via satellite.
U.G. stepped closer to help the AI-Critter get a clearer telepathic read. “Lee always told me, being too reclusive was my biggest error in life.” Speaking this out-loud to herself and she thought, biggest-mistake meet biggest-fear being hunted and shot like an animal.
The AI-C got a clear image from U.G. and connected the dots to him. She had emailed three short replies to the man after her copy & paste emailed death notice.
The man's name, not his actual name, but the name he liked to be called was 'Dean'. "Dean, I did send you an email." She said as calmly as she could.
“Why wasn’t I invited to the funeral?” The man said lowering his gun from her forehead to her chest.
“His people do not have funerals.”
“Of course they do. I’ve seen wolves howl.” Dean lowered the rifle, his shoulders slumped. “I miss him. What did you do with him?”
“Dean. You know better than anybody, Lee wasn’t a wolf. I am going to get my mail now and we are going to walk away from the road before the mailman gets here.”
U.G. got the rent out of her mailbox and started walking towards the corner store, not back towards home, past the old house. Dean followed keeping pace to walk beside her and talk. “Are you gonna press charges? Are you going to report me? I would never shoot one of Lee’s Cat friends.”
“I know. Listen. Don’t ask me how I know, but I know the rifle isn’t loaded.” U.G. said.
“The handgun on his belt is loaded.” The AI-C communicated to her the location of a concealed gun holster. U.G. decided to not walk into the store, she couldn’t risk one of the humans getting shot because of her failure to be a good neighbor to Lee’s friend. She walked away as quickly as she could, past the house, to the fork in the road that leads to her driveway. Dean had to run to keep up.
“Show me where his grave is. Did you mark it or just bury him somewhere in the woods?”
The AI-C could hear only a tangle of his thoughts, she could see a mix of alien invasion fiction, little grey extraterrestrials mixed with Lee’s stories. Lee didn’t describe very much about his home-world, mostly he would discuss technical points about how the Dog-people’s society and economics were different from most Earthlings.
“Dean. Do you remember how Lee would sometimes share his thoughts with you when you got upset or afraid because he wasn’t an Earthling?”
“Yeah, he was like ‘My-thoughts-to-your-thoughts’ except it was for real. He could show you thoughts, speak with this funny voice in my mind. He put his hand on my forehead, like this.” Dean held up his thin bony hand with fingers spread.
“Yes, that’s correct.” U.G. nodded. She wondered if she could even make that science fiction gesture with her paw. Lee’s paws had been much more finger-like than her’s.
“I need you to understand. Lee didn’t wish to be buried on Earth, he requested his body be sent home.”
“Home.” Said, Dean, trying to imagine this, but his mind still churned with bad images of caskets and body bags being loaded on helicopters and trucks. Dean had been in combat.
U.G. stopped walking. “Dean, before Lee died he gave me the gift to share memories. May I show you?”
“You can do that too?”
“Yes.”
“Awesome.” Dean closed his eyes and leaned slightly forward almost like expecting a kiss.
He is not afraid of you, he considers death by big cat an honorable death. The AI-C told her telepathically, making sure Dean’s gesture was not a trick to lure her in close.
U.G. careful to not extend her claws, rested her paw on his forehead, just above his eyebrow and the AI-C reached out and lightly touched one tentacle behind Dean’s ear. Telepathically sharing bits of her memories. The AI-C showed him Lee’s body in his bed and the shimmer of bubbles as it teleported to the coffin-sized craft waiting in the moon crater on the dark side of the moon. The small light grey spacecraft. the same pale silvery hue as moon dust lifting from the surface of the moon before it disappeared, a spec vanishing in the vastness of space. The craft will skip like a stone to return his body to his people on his home planet. She explained as briefly as she could.
In this moment of contact the AI-C having been caught off guard once, it would not fail to protect U.G. again. The closest word to what it did when it scanned Dean’s mind, is ‘Downloading’. Years worth of memories, everything it could reach in Dean’s mind, and there was a lot the AI-C could reach when in direct contact with the man’s skull: starting with what was easy and on the surface, a mass of concepts from many books Dean had read, then deeper; why he was afraid of the government, disconnected and mixed with people he had trusted who had hurt him. Then day after day of too much time spent alone, walking, walking all day and for many hours into the night, wandering for a long span of his life. He had almost starved several times in his efforts to get as far away from people as he could.
During this brief moment, U.G. didn’t sense what the AI-C was doing and apparently neither did Dean.
After U.G. and the AI-C stepped back from Dean, he opened his eyes and said. “Thank you. Every time I see the moon now I will think of that Dog.” He grimaced, almost a smile. “You know his name isn’t Lee right?”
“I know. Can you pronounce his Dog name?” U.G. asked.
“Hell no,” Dean said, and stepped off of the gravel drive into the woods. As suddenly as he had appeared he was bounding away along the nearest deer path in the forest floor that would lead him downhill in the direction of his home.
