Chương 37: Classic Mistakes

The cat was gone. I wasn't disappointed, exactly. The last thing I needed in the apocalypse was another pet, right? And while I knew Riley and Zelda could be convinced to play nice with a cat, Bear might have been more of a challenge. I was puzzled, though. I made myself a real cup of coffee and I ate my chocolate chip +10 animal communication cookie standing in my kitchen, wishing I'd had a chance to find out what the cat wanted and how it had gotten inside. And then I made a classic mistake.

Instead of pulling on some clean clothes and heading straight back into the rift, I turned on the television. I wanted to know what was happening in the world. Between the squirrels, the goblins, and the rift in my backyard, I knew everything had changed, that the world wasn't the same place today as it had been yesterday. At the same time, my power still worked, my house was still my house, my dogs were still my dogs. Well, okay, Zelda had changed, but not in a bad way. Mostly, my dogs were still my dogs.

But I wasn't being swarmed by monsters, nightmares weren't falling out of the sky on me, and the rift—while being weird as shit—hadn't exactly been a horror show. The bugs were big, but they squashed just the same as smaller bugs. The news, though? That was a horror show. You know how disasters flow on television news? The anchors talk, they show some footage, then they're back in the studio.

After twenty minutes or so, they move on to a heartwarming rescue, a traffic jam, maybe a murder or two, probably something about politics. Then the disaster is back. Wash, rinse, repeat. Not today. Today it was one new disaster after another, and the cycle never made it back to repeat. Power outages across the globe; entire cities gone dark. Social media filled with footage of monster attacks, large and small. Car crashes, plane crashes, trains derailing. Fires out of control.

The National Guard deployed, the Army right behind them. And, of course, people being people. Worse, being the type of people the media loved to elevate, because—people being people, after all—they were what we couldn't look away from. I was sure mothers were protecting their children and doctors were fighting to save lives and first responders everywhere were working their asses off. But there were also riots and looting, and worst of all, people with powers playing at being supervillains.

And maybe that was unfair. Maybe the guy strolling around downtown Chicago setting buildings on fire didn't have control over his new abilities. Maybe the teenager hurling cars at the police was having an understandable mental health crisis. Maybe the guy in Colorado with an enclave who'd declared he was only accepting applications from "beautiful girls between the ages of fourteen and twenty" was… yeah, no. He was a villain. Probably not a supervillain, just a petty little slimy villain, but definitely a villain.

Still, I couldn't look away. I sat in front of my television, on my comfortable couch, with my dogs curled up near me, and watched the end of the world as we knew it. At least I learned a few things, so it wasn't entirely wasted time. Mana, apparently, was a form of energy that had always existed in our world, just at levels so low nobody noticed. Now the levels were rising, and mana did not play nicely with technology.

It wouldn't destroy everything overnight, but things were going to break, and the replacements weren't coming anytime soon. Meanwhile, animals would go mana-crazed, structures might transform, and people would change, like it or not. The System was supposed to help us control those changes, give us choices instead of letting the mana forcibly evolve us. Or at least that's what the talking head on television said.

I narrowed my eyes at the screen, wondering where they'd found this guy and whether he knew what he was talking about or was just guessing. He seemed a little too pro-System, given what the Multiverse was putting us through. But I might be a little pro-System myself. I glanced at Zelda. She was sitting next to me, head tucked against her folded paws, open eyes fixed on the television screen. Riley was asleep on my other side, Bear was curled up on the rug by the door, but Z was awake and watchful.

I wondered if she understood what they were saying. Had her other-species comprehension skills grown along with my own? I couldn't tell, but I didn't ask her. Instead, I went back to watching. They were talking about the rifts now. They were opening everywhere, tearing through buildings, roads, bridges, whatever happened to be in the way. People were disappearing into them. Some came back with stories about monsters. Others didn't come back at all. The other news was the enclaves.

Apparently, my fellow challenge scenario survivors had used their time more productively yesterday evening. While I'd been huddling with my dogs, enclaves started popping into existence. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. The good news was that enclaves were protected spaces. No rifts would open up inside an enclave, and no monsters could cross its borders.

But the bad news was that the enclaves had built-in population limits that apparently couldn't be increased until the enclave itself tiered up. No one knew what that entailed, but desperate parents were pounding on glowing walls made of blue light around the world, trying to get their children inside. I had to stop watching then. A less marginally viable person would probably have immediately headed back into the rift to learn everything there was to know about rift management. I took a hot bath. With bubbles.

And then I went onto the internet and started downloading things. All the things. Video courses on fighting for dummies, practical guides to surviving in the woods, instruction manuals on living off-grid. I wanted to get as much information as possible, as quickly as possible, before the internet disappeared. I was racking up credit card charges like there was no tomorrow. Because, you know, there probably wasn't.

By the time I'd finished my TV binge, my bath, and my downloading shopping spree, it was full dark outside. I'd lost the whole day to… well, call it information gathering. That sounds better than wallowing. (It might have been wallowing.) I'd fed the dogs between the bath and the spree, but I ate my own dinner—leftover cold pasta alfredo, cooked on such a different day—standing at the kitchen counter, shoveling it down, considering my next steps. The rift management tutorial? Maybe.

But I had no idea how long my electronics would continue to work, and if I wanted all that downloaded information to be useful, I probably ought to print it. The printer was in my dad's office. I hadn't used it since the first couple months after his death, when settling his estate meant making copies and mailing paperwork. The dust was probably an inch deep in there. But the printer was the only printer I had, which meant if I wanted paper copies, I'd have to hope it still worked.

I put the leftover dish into the sink, set my fork on top of it, and grabbed my laptop. With one last glance out the kitchen window at the splotch of rift marring my otherwise peaceful backyard, I headed toward the office. I hesitated at the door. My house wasn't haunted. And if it was, I didn't think my dad would be an angry ghost. Our relationship had its ups and downs, but the deepest downs were the result of my mental illness.

Living with bipolar disorder isn't easy, whether it's yours or belongs to someone you love. It took me a while to figure that out, though. His side of it, I mean. And by the time I did, well, he didn't want to talk about "emotional shit" and I didn't want to push, and then it was too late. Maybe that's why I felt like a trespasser in the house that used to be his, why it never felt like mine. Or maybe my house was haunted, and the office was where my ghostly dad was spending his afterlife.

I turned the knob and pushed open the door, a little disgusted with myself. I wasn't really scared of my dad's ghost, was I? The room was dark, stale with the smell of dust and old paper. I paused to let my eyes adjust. One lamp stood by his chair; another was on his desk. I took a step into the room, then froze, heart leaping into my throat. Eyes. Eyes were gleaming at me out of the dark. Twin golden eyes, hovering chest-high across the room. I wanted to scream, but no sound came out. Behind me, Zelda barked once.

A single, firm woof. Smells like cat. I exhaled on a rush of relief that felt like summer rain. Cat. Of course, it was the cat. Because the cat didn't care about closed doors.

"Jesus, cat, you scared me," I said. The cat's answering meow was precise, determined. And as clearly as if we were sitting together over a cup of tea, I heard: My name is not Jesus. Nor is it Cat. I am the General Ulysses S. Grant. You may refer to me as the General. My eyes had adjusted enough that the light from the living room showed me the shapes of furniture, the shadows still dark. The cat was sitting on the back of my dad's armchair. I crossed to the desk, turned on the light, then looked back at the cat.

The General Ulysses S. Grant, huh? Which one of my neighbors would name their cat after a Yankee? Definitely not the ones down the road with the Confederate flag stickers on their pickup trucks. I didn't talk to those people, for obvious reasons. Zelda had padded into the room behind me. She sat on the floor by the desk, regarding the General with skeptical brown eyes. She lifted her muzzle into the air and sniffed, nostrils flaring. Why are you here, Cat? Cats are not pack." Hey."

I twitched my index finger in her direction, saying, in dog, Don't be rude. He's a guest. Zelda flicked her ear at me. Guest? Or interloper? If Bear had said that, I might have been worried. Well, after I fainted with surprise at her complex vocabulary and sophisticated syntax. But I knew Zelda wasn't serious, because none of the fur along the back of her neck had lifted. The animal communication cookie meant I was reading her on a whole new level.

After a day of mostly fear and grief, it was a strange pleasure to understand my girl so clearly. Like getting an unexpected dessert at the chow hall in jail: the circumstances sucked, but I still appreciated the treat. The General uncoiled, rising from a crouch into a regal sit, tail curling neatly around his front paws. Had I known of your presence, Madame Dog, and that of your colleagues, I might not have sought refuge at this place. He lifted one paw and licked it, claws flaring.

This chamber bears no trace of canine occupation, however. I hoped it might be suitable for a short-term stay. Or maybe he wasn't saying that at all. I knew I understood every word of Zelda's, even the surprising ones. I wasn't so sure about the General. I felt like I was getting the gist—the formality, the dignity—but maybe I was projecting. I eyed him, trying to understand what I was seeing. The flaring claws—were they a warning? The licked paw—a conciliatory note? And then it clicked. He was a cat, not a dog.

He didn't have a dog's innate, instinctive honesty. Dogs are terrible liars. They don't often try to lie, and when they do, it's usually more funny than convincing. But cats could lie. That regal composure was a front. A mask to disguise a small, frightened creature doing his best to be brave. The General had been hiding in here for hours, alone in the dark. No food, no water, trapped in a house with three dogs and a strange human, in a world that had stopped making sense. He was pretending.

What I sensed as his words didn't align with what twenty points in animal communication and twenty-two in Perception were actually showing me. A red dot blinked in the corner of my eye. Almost automatically, I opened my notifications. Skill gained: +2 to Animal Communication. +1 to Animal Handling.