THE WISH BELLY III
A Fiction Serial by Shane Kimberlin
"Hello?"
"Hi." It was her.
"What's going on? Are you safe?"
"Yes, I am safe."
"But where are you?"
"You need to go to the cherry tree, Jack."
"I am headed there."
"Go to the cherry tree."
"But what is going on?"
"Oh bozhe!," said the cat, "Hang up phone."
"What?" I said.
"Who's that?" she said, "Is it...is it the cat?”
"Hang up phone," said the cat, "Now."
"Just a little longer," she said. Her voice had an edge to it, like the signal of a television distorting under northern lights.
The cat leaped at me and, with his clubby paws, hit the phone away from me and ended the call. I swerved and nearly went off the road, but regained composure.
"What is wrong with you?" I yelled.
"You were being played," said the cat, "That was not her."
"I know what my wife sounds like."
"Not your real wife. It was artificial."
"Artificial?"
"A construct. An on the fly generative conversation artificial intelligence."
"Like a deepfake?"
"Yes, but far more advanced. A replication of your wife's conversation patterns with a certain 'aim.' They have the program run, right? But there's a measured goal, that is, getting you to stay on the line so they can trace your call. The second goal, I'm guessing, is to obtain cat, aka, me."
"But why?"
"Why not?"
We were both quiet for a moment.
"Cat," I finally said.
"Yes."
Who are you?"
"Very good question, and I will reveal in due time."
I slammed the brakes very hard, causing the cat, who was not buckled up, to fly into the glovebox.
"Are you insane?"
"I will not be driving," I said, "until you tell me something. It's already been a long night and I don't need any more confusion."
The cat jumped back up into the seat. He looked at the seat belt buckle and pawed at its metal construction like the worst ball of yarn.
"Fine."
"I'm sorry," I said.
"I want food."
“We can’t stop. We have to get there.”
“I cannot tell story unless you promise we will eat.”
I closed my eyes.
“Okay. The next place to eat you see on the road, I will stop.”
He nodded.
"It all started," the cat began, "back home in Odessa. We were the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic then. My dedushka, Kit Ivan, was a ship cat on the diving boat Yelva on the Euxine, er, how do you say, the Black Sea. Do you know that boat, the Yelva?"
I felt sheepish to tell my pet cat I knew very little about Ukraine, let alone any boats.
"No," I admitted.
"It does not matter. So, great-grandfather worked the boat, then the dedushka worked the boat, and soon after my papa, Kit Anton, worked the boat. It was a tradition going back to your 1970's.”
I nodded.
“I found out my family line was well-documented, I’m told, all the way back to the middle ages by our human friends.”
“Not ‘owners,’ huh?”
“Please, we are not dogs. We have more dignity, though they can’t help it. There is a rumor that Saint Gerasimus’s lion was distant relative. And so we were normal ordinary cats. We had quirks, we had loves. My mother, Kitsa Galyna, loved soda bread. I used to wander out with my brothers and sisters to watch a violin player, a young woman, maybe seventeen. She sat at a chair outside a bakery and played. She would pet us and, on rare occasion, give us milk from her bottle”
"Did...did your family talk?"
The cat nearly smiled.
"They did not talk the way you and I are talking. They talked the way other cats talked.”
"Okay. So, how come you can talk?"
"I am getting there. I was born as a normal cat, no talking at all. This must have been in the late 80’s.”
“The late 80’s? So that’d make you-”
“-old, no?”
“You seem sprightly.”
The cat sighed.
“Well, yes, but- I’ll get to that. At a certain age the admiral began bringing me on the ship with my pops. Two cats are better than one, no? Anyway, one Autumn morning the boat went out to check on something. Again, I do not know how to explain these things in more detail. Very fuzzy. But, we were on ship, and the boat stopped moving. The sky grew dark very fast. Then, a great flash of light.”
“What happened next?”
“Many things. I saw echoes of everything. There were many different cats on that ship standing in the exact location as me, but they were all me. I was running around the ship too. All me, all at the same time. Every single point from which I could move at that moment was, in an instant, combined. And I saw every single me move through. But then they appeared.”
“Who?”
“They. The creatures that have your wife.”
“Really? Where did they come from? The sea?”
“No. And as soon as they appeared, I howled. No one else reacted to them though. They moved through the people like ghosts.”
“I’m confused.”
“They were as ghosts in all they were”
“Then if they don’t come from the ocean, why do they wear that gear?”
“They don’t come from any place that has an ocean.”
“What do you mean?”
The cat licked his paw.
“They wear the gear as protection.”
“Are they, what, space creatures? Aliens or something?”
“I do not know. I don’t think so. Not in the traditional sense. I don’t believe they are from a planet.”
“Then what are they?”
“Not sure. I’ve wondered for a long time. After I saw them in that flash, my memory goes blank. I woke up on the ship many hours later. It was quiet. You could hear the waves and wind. The sun was so bright. And I walked around the galley to find my father, to check on the crew. As I walked, I noticed that things were far more strange to me than before. Hard to explain. I tried to call out, but what I heard was not a meow. It was a man’s voice. I leapt and turned around, thinking someone was behind me. But there was no one. I tried again. ‘Batko.’ I stood still. The voice was coming from me. It was my voice.”
“Were you frightened?”
“Yes. And confused. I kept walking the ship. There was nobody inside. I went outside and there we were, back in Odessa at the dock. Tied up. The Yelva was painted a different color. I ran home as fast as I could, to the admiral’s house.”
“Then what?”
“I came to the house and there it stood, like it always did. The door opened and out walked a man.”
“A man?”
“Yes. One I didn’t recognize. Behind him stood a small child and a woman. They had a dog. It was not the admiral. It was not my family. The dog barked and I ran away.”
“Where did you go?”
“Well,” the cat almost laughed, “Everywhere. And odd. The leaves were bright green. They weren’t when we left port. It had been fall. It felt like summer. The streets looked the same, but different.”
“Same but different? How?”
“Different cars. Different shoes. I didn’t recognize any of the animals, some who were my friends. I saw the time of day. The sun was up high. It must have been after lunch. I ran as fast as I could to the bakery. From a distance I could hear a song. It was her. Something steady, yes. I was not mad. But then I drew closer, and I saw the violin player.”
I drove silently with nothing to add.
“She,” he continued, “looked much older. Dark bags under her eyes and thinness. Time had been rude to her disposition. I could tell it was her though. As she played she looked over at me. She smiled politely and continued. Then, she looked back at me and the music suddenly stopped. She stared.”
“She recognized you.”
“Yes. She smiled the same smile she had a long time ago, and for a moment there was no difference. She took out a bottle from her backpack and poured out some milk into its lid. I drank.”
“What happened then?”
The cat looked up at me.
“Lots of things. She began to cry and pet me. I stood still. Then, I said, ‘vse dobre,’ or, ‘it’s okay.’ She stopped petting me. I looked up at her and her eyes were as wide as the sea. I ran away.”
“You ran from her? But you knew her. She could have taken you in.”
“I knew a different her. Strange all around, it was. I realized that except for few people- the violin player, the newspaper man, a certain sign painter- no one else I knew. They were gone. I searched all of Odessa and could never find my family. They are likely all dead. My father, my mother, my siblings. The admiral is gone. I waited by the ship and every crew member was not someone I knew.”
“Hmm. So, when you woke up-”
“-I woke up and it was many years later.”
We didn’t say anything for a time.
“Do you ever,” I finally said, “miss the past? Who you were?”
“Sometimes,” replied the cat.
“Before,” he continued, “it was almost like living without a dream, you know? You merely saw the thing as what it was. There was no symbol. No trick. Now, that is all there is. Symbols. Like being stuck in a dream you can never awake from, until the end, of course. I know I will die, and sooner than I wish. I now see and think and feel like one of you, even though I can never be. But I take solace in having such an extraordinary existence for a simple ship cat. It is kind of funny, no?”
“I suppose so. It must be hard sometimes.”
“We cats are tough. We muddle through somehow.”
“Hmm.”
“Look,” said the cat, “a place with food.”
He tapped at the window. Outside sat a fast food restaurant named Little Joe’s.
“Okay,” I said, “we’ll go through the drive-thru.”
“Excellent,” he said, “but one favor you must let me do.”
“What’s that?” I asked as we pulled in.
“I order.”
The Wish Belly series by Shane Kimberlin:
