👽 The Threat of New Overlords
First Draft Created: 2024-06-15 18:45
Updated: July 17, 2024
Last Updated: 1 month, 2 weeks ago
I wrote on the theme "Surprise", hence my attempts at subversion. Overall, my story topic was inspired by a comment I encountered on Youtube identifying our present overlords and remarking on the situation of them meeting our future ones. Hopefully I can find that comment again, and share with them what they inspired.
Awe. That was what I felt as we beheld the sunset over the mountain. This was no surprise, we had seen it many times before from my living room.
No, the real cause of my awe was that the guests refused to leave. Truly, their tenacity - and incapacity for shame - was awe-inspiring.
Hint after hint I had dropped that it was time to go. "Oh dear, you'd better rush! Don't want to hit the traffic!" "Oh dear, looks like a storm is coming, you definitely don't want to be caught here or you'll be here till Monday!" "YAAAAAAAWN.... I'm _soooooo tiiiirrrrrreeed".
Finally, I'd had enough. No more drinks. No more prolonged conversations at the door turning into longer conversations and people sitting down again. No more.
"WHELLLLP" I announced, loudly, getting up and trying to keep the edge out of my voice. "Time for you all to go then. I need my beauty sleep."
Incredulous faces. Some mouths dropped. I didn't care.
I marched to the door and held it open. A room full of frozen faces. I jerked my head pointedly towards the open door. "Go on then!"
Muttering, the guests started gathering their belongings together. More than one or two glanced at me and each other, testing their luck, then wilted under my glare and picked up their possessions, trooping out through the door.
Covert operations and keeping up appearances be damned I suppose, I thought, irritably. But sometimes, after a tough week, everyone had just had enough of maintaining vigilance and professionalism. I, for one, wanted the rest of my Friday evening to myself to decompress from yet another unpaid job I didn't want to be doing for someone else.
The last thing I wanted was a meeting with what weren't even MY colleagues, disguised as a social event with people I actually wanted to hang out with.
"You could have handled that better."
I jumped. The mire of my thoughts had somehow almost made me forget that I wasn't alone.
It was the voice of The Creature, The Shadow who haunted my apartment in the dead of night, who had manifested unnoticed behind me.
Early, this time.
I had reflexively turned around at his voice, as my brain caught up to the arrival of my master, still stepping up to me, his presence betraying no sound - just the the jarring vacuum silence of a phantom.
Midnight-favouring and midnight-shaded, his face resembled a perpetual glower, despite his intimidating self-possession. Steve seldom lost his cool, though when he did... he made it count. I shivered, remembering the times he had drawn blood, on me... and other hapless creatures that dared venture into the dark. The dark was his domain.
"Apologies," he said now, in the calm, collected baritone characteristic of an aristocratically-coded British supervillain. I swear he hadn't always had that accent. He had picked it up from Hollywood media somewhere, but I refused to check in on what shows he was watching on the small tablet my trembling hands had placed, at his insistence, upstairs in his attic.
Though an outsider may not know it from our banter - what with keeping up appearances and all for guests not in the know - disturbing the darkness within was an even more unnerving experience than the darkness coming without to haunt me when it... he... grew restless.
The darkness, the creature, went by the name of Steve, had made the nightmarish, cobwebby place even more formiddable.
And Steve did not like to be disturbed.
Our uneasy coexistence was maintaining well enough for now. I didn't need to wake up to Steve sitting on my chest sharpening his claws, or worse, to not wake up at all.
"I see that you are still frazzled." He continued. "I did not mean to surprise you."
I doubted that. Steve lived for sneaking up on people. He could not resist - professional and cordial though our relationship was. It was hard to fight one's own nature - the nature of shadow and darkness, in feline form.
"I prefer it when you pretend to be a normal cat" I grumbled, cautiously. I meant, of course, that I wished he would just mew in a high-pitched voice. It'd make me feel larger, less subservient, if he didn't sound so appropriately like the one who would have me executed, or do it himself, if expedience dictated. I would take that false confidence, if it was the only courage and cold comfort I could truly have around him. But I wasn't about to admit that.
"I am a cat," my glossy midnight ruler said, and if he'd had eyebrows I would have expected them to be raised. "I am a cat like any other, albeit higher-ranking than most."
He gathered himself inward, then leaped up onto the dinner table, and I slumped into a chair in front of him, knowing that he intended to look me in the eye. I wasn't looking foward to his rebuke.
"You know I operate through you," he said, softly.
"I do. You've reminded me of this many times, yes."
"Honestly, Max, your incompetence would bring a lesser cat than I to the point of desperation. Your informers were barely helpful. Though I must admit, hiding under the tall one's chair, I was tempted to start attacking the ankles of his loafered feet in frustration. I wanted to drive them all out myself and to tell them to come back only after they had done a better job."
"Look," I said. "I know you are worried about the alien visitation. But it's no invasion! These guys, their government connections, they say it's all under control! You heard them! The world president said in the press conference that it's nothing to worry about! It's just standard diplomacy!"
"You don't understand." Steve said. "You don't see it, of course, because nobody ever notices it when things are going well. And you humans aren't great at using your eyes and ears like us. Or your sense of smell," his nose twitched, "And I can smell when things aren't right. Metaphorically," he added, lest the subtlety of his ongoing jab be lost.
"Yes," I said shortly. I didn't need Steve's reminders of how superior our overlords' senses were. Or of the blight that humans - and his in particular - were apon them.
Steve stood up, butt first, stretching in a downward dog pose before raising himself up and taking a few steps forward to the edge of the table, looking me dead in the eye.
I resisted the urge to pull my head back out of clawing range, though I knew he could smell my trepidation.
He ignored me, more important matters clearly on his mind.
"Cat overlords have been running this world for thousands of years now. And while it's still best we keep our operations a secret, make no mistake, we are running things smoothly. An invasion, a potential shift to a new overlord, a tumbling of the mighty and benevolent Cat Empire... could all spell disaster not just for our own coalition, but for you - you and all the humans.
And I need not remind you that this goes beyond humans, so you needn't descend into misanthropy. If you humans fall, then so to does the global population of animal-kind. The New Environmentalism Task Force is barely holding planet restoration efforts together since the early 21st century's catastrophe, and even if the aliens are able to contain the planetary instability, they do not have the skills, the knowledge or the logistics to maintain the ecosystem. They would threaten not only our hard-won and fragile inter-species peace but the entire ecosystem's survival."
"It... could?" I felt rather stupid, as I always did when having a conversation with Steve. There was a reason he was high up in the Cat Shadow World Government (CSWG)1.
Yes, that was the name. The Cat Empire, in my experience, tended to prefer names that said exactly what they meant. Much as they liked to play with their food, and to toy with their underlings, they liked even more for those underlings to know their place. Humans were permitted to "rule" on the logistics - as they were good at much of that which didn't require a certain feline finesse, and had useful characteristics like height and opposable thumbs (as Steve frequently reassured me), but for any major decisions, the Cat Empire would step in.
Their rule as Shadow World Government was absolute - the "shadow" part of the name was a relic of times past, when their influence had not been total and their return not yet public - but now it was no longer a sign of covert presence (though they ran plenty of covert operations - hence our meeting) but more a descriptor of their presence, ever-looming, like a shadow, watching everything that happened under their rule. Omnipresent, though invisible in the dark.
Cats are egotists, I thought, traitorously.
"Yes," he said, yanking me back out of my thoughts. "You would lose power to enforce if we lose our power to rule, to guide and protect you. It may surprise you, but we do not simply sit idly by and observe you. We orchestrate far more things than you realise and far more than I disclose to you - for your own safety of course. Our paws are in everything."
"Like what?" I asked. "What can you disclose? I need an example. For... if I ever need to pitch it to someone new, who doesn't know about the human-cat covert coalition. As we bring more agents in. I need to represent you as your recruiter and henchman, don't I?"
Steve sighed. "Oh Max. You really try my patience. Henchman? Just look at yourself in the mirror. Humans are great for dexterity, yes. You can build machines really well and to our specifications that also give off just the right amount of warmth for sitting on. You have an incredibly ability open cans..." Steve's eyes took on a hungry look, "... and doors - though these confounding contraptions are problems you yourselves invented it's true... but still, you really should congratulate yourselves on your ability to open and shut things, and to make us comfortable. You are incredibly useful!"
It was almost as if he was trying to goad me, daring me to respond. As if this were just another part of him getting into my head. But no, this time he seemed sincere. As sincere and encouraging as a megalomaniacal mob boss could be.
"And you make us some really lovely furniture, really generously-sized for sitting and lying on, and for that, we thank you. Truly. And boxes, ah yes." Steve closed his eyes as if relishing the existence of his box upstairs. "But that is nothing, nothing... compared to what we do for you. But you wanted an example, yes."
Steve cleared his throat, then sat his haunches down and began cleaning his whiskers carefully as he spoke. "As you've noticed, rodent populations are at an all time low now, particularly when you compare it to centuries past. Do you want another outbreak of the black death?"
"It wasn't the rats though, it was the fleas..." I began.
"Halt!" Steve snapped, slamming down his paw down on the table. Despite the softness of the thump, I winced, knowing restraint from a cat when I saw it. "You dare to tell me the story? Do you really trust your narrative? The human narrative from your human informers..." he scoffed, tossing a glance at the now-vacant couches, " who begged and sent us in, pledging themselves to us if we'd rescue them? Who let us solve the problem and let them know what information we saw fit about the cause?"
He paused as if deliberating, then raised his paw back to his mouth to continue his cleaning.
"True," he added through cleaning his ears, though with more condescention and exaggerated patience than acknowledgement, "your scientists identified the fleas as the source... eventuallly... but who do you think orchestrated the invasion of the city by those rats, and how do you think that it spread so fast with so few rats? Even today, many human scientists and historians now believe that it was actually humans who spread the plague... to themselves , how absurd! Only because you don't understand the deviousness of rats.
That so many operations were planned ... those kamikaze rats, sent by their kings, carrying the black death specifically towards the makers of newly created textiles that would be sewn into clothing, the exact locations where fleas could then spread throughout the populations and even move along trade routes, for maximum damage. So in a way, humans did transmit the plague, as unwitting transporters for the biological warfare of the rats, who lost only those few among their massive populations who were already infected.
Those rats with their cult-like worshipping of their kings, willing to die at an order, even to become infected if numbers of carriers were short, and to take out the humans whose trap had killed the wrong oligarch's daughter. You didn't learn that in your fifth grade history class, did you?"
"I... I never knew!" I stuttered, flabbergasted. "That's what happened? That was so many centuries of..."
"Yes. We didn't think you needed to know what we'd learned on the field." Steve said, calmly. " You had surrendered yourselves again, you were already our slaves, just as you were millenia before in ancient Egypt, and we had it under control. But perhaps this is a such moment when you truly should be informed, to appreciate all that we do for you, and how you rely apon us, and how you'd better hope we win against the aliens, should it come to a battle.
For despite your traps, poison and ingenious solutions, not to mention your previous generations of humans being a parasite on the environment before the Task Force arrived," Steve gave me a look of distaste - which for a cat looked odd and exaggerated, opening his mouth in the gag of the Flehman response to compensate for the subtlety of the usual cat range of facial expressions- "you humans are not able to control rodents without us. Your methods of containment and ellimination are woefully inadequate and would unbalance the environment far worse than you did before."
Steve squatted and rolled back on his haunches slightly, back curled. Still, I knew better than to relax at the posture change, for I knew he was only preparing to clean his underbelly.
"Hold on a second," I said, a bit more cautiously this time, as the glint of Steve's eyes still glowered at me despite his head moving back and forth in preoccupation with his task. "Wasn't it ... it was ," I steeled myself. "It was our introduction of you when you came with us on our voyages... that unbalanced so many habitats!"
Steve's head snapped up at me from his cleaning, clearly irritated for just a split second, but then resuming cleaning as he spoke. As always, he maintained his composure, provided he wasn't executing a well-timed dash and kill of a nearby rodent, bird, bug, or leaf in the wind. Some things were just nature, after all.
"Yes," he acknowledged.
I sighed in relief at his calmer tone.
"Back then," he continued, "humans and cats had a lack of knowledge about the damage we BOTH wrought on the environment when we trod, in our exploration, without care." Steve paused cleaning, tilted his head at the sound of the gate at the far end of the property slamming a bit too loudly - I rolled my eyes, thinking again of the departing guests - then he resumed.
"We also didn't have the Task Force, as humans were in a race to burn the planet to the ground with their ambitions, growing unrestricted like a cancer and doing far more damage to the planet than the rat populations you helped inflate." He growled softly, his paw frozen inches from his mouth, then studied it, and put it down, deliberately, cleaning done. He looked up from his paws, eyes boring into me. Waiting.
"Fair point, we did do that" I admitted. "And cats have strongly playful urges to ruthlessly attack things they don't even plan to eat." I couldn't resist adding, tempting fate.
Steve ignored me again, keeping cattedly to the point. "Now tell me, do you think the aliens would be able to contain a rodent population for you? And can you trust them to care enough about the fate of a planet they may colonise merely as a refuelling station on our inter-galactic highway? You'd be decimated in a heartbeat. You may be used to subservience and knowing your place, but make no mistake, the aliens will not be the benevolent masters nor the apex predators and protectors that we are. Should you lose us, you would be, in a word, screwed."
"I... I... Ungh." I sighed, knowing he was right, but Steve, ever the monologuing supervillain, was on a role and had to drive his point home. "I mean who do you think is going to help you?" He permitted himself a snigger. "The bunny?"
I glanced over at Marina, in the corner, who had started nibbling at a lighter, one of the guests must have dropped in their reluctant haste. I quickly retrieved it and returned to my seat... to my place, which Steve always made me feel I was being put in. Steve waited, patiently, and I could have sworn I heard him snigger again at his point being well made. Still seated on his haunches, looked up at me with what could only be described as pity until I sat, returning myself to his eye level.
"And that's not to say what happens if the rodents decide to exact revenge for all you've done to them, putting rats and mice and other small creatures in labs" Steve continued, his voice growing gradually quieter and more intense, in a way I knew meant to anticipate a threat, however veiled. "Like all cats, I am no mere bureacat. I take pride in doing my service on the field, and I can tell you that taking out those little buggers may be easy for a cat, but I hear that in places where there are no cats ... when they sense they have the strength of numbers... they can be be quite ... vindictive. And just like with the black death, it can take many centuries before you even realise they were even involved. That is why you need us. Not only to contain their numbers, but for our networks, our spies and our influence. You'll never track those rats down the way we do."
"I get it already!" I said, shortly. Steve's reminders of how inferior and helpless I was ... we all were... felt like overkill for an already frazzled man with too many day jobs and too few of them paid.
I was tired. First the human government agents wearing me out with their talk - in a meeting that clearly could have been an email - and now "my" cat was being sanctimonious, re-knitting the origin story he had told so many times before, as if he were Lex Luthor speaking to an underling up in his skyscraper, merely to dazzle them and to flex his power.
"Are you trying to remind me that I'm just a useless human again?" I tried to keep the bitterness from my voice.
"No," he said softly. "I just wanted you to reach the right conclusion. You humans rely far more than we do on our synchronicity. After all, you can do nothing without our permission. If you tried, we wouldn't even bother to kill you. We would just watch you fail and crawl back to us, and you'd be worse off."
"Fine," I said, feeling defeated. "It's not like I can disobey."
"No," he said. "You cannot."
I couldn't resist. Maybe it was my urge to gain back some power, to not give in to desperation. I had to poke back.
"Still," I said. "Shadow overlord though you may be, you do have to admit it, and you did admit it. You depend on me for your comfort. My house, my couches, my delicious food that you couldn't make for yourself - not to that quality. My nice warm space, out of the cold and the rain. My fireplace. My tablet, with those shows you watch, upstairs, with the cat-friendly remote I rigged for you. Like it or not, you still live comfortably, hell, you even watch human movies. You live comfortably, and you live vicariously, through me."
Steve rose, on all fours, abruptly. With a snarl and lash of his tail, he whirled himself around, hopped off the side of the table, and darted up the stairs to his box in the attic. Our conversation was done.
My breath came out in a sign, as I relaxed the tension I didn't know I'd been holding in throughout the duration of the evening. My small act of defiance had surprised him, caught him off guard. He would not be bothering me anymore that night. Possibly not for several more.
"I attack the darkness," I muttered to myself, wryly.
A small victory, if just for my dignity and self-esteem, in standing up in some small way against my cat and master.
Still, in my heart, I knew he would not be defeated. And still I served the Cat Empire. One way or the other, subservience was the inevitable fate of all humans - now, and stretching out formidably, far beyond the foreseeable future. And likely, forever.
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