The Cybernetic Kitten.

The Cybernetic Kitten stretched it’s metallic sinews and gave a plaintive, digitised mew, which, had it been a biologic kitten, would have turned to curling whips in the crisp morning air. But the kitten was not a biological entity. It was a masterwork of mechanical cybernetics. It’s joints where made of metals and artificial fibres. It’s fur was a breath-takingly complex polymer, and it’s Brian was a terribly small computer.
The kitten leaped down from the window sill, and stalked into the kitchen. It’s left back leg struggled valiantly to keep up with the rest of it. Lately, the Kitten had been going for longer and longer stretches with out repairs. The Supply lights on it’s basket where almost all showing up red now, and the nightly injections of life had been getting much weaker of late. The Basket’s primitive computer mind, even more primitive than the kittens, had been apologetic. No one had re-filled it’s parts hoppers, and the Mains power had been off for an awfully long time. It’s fusion cells where nearly out.
The Kitten understood little of what the basket said, and the basket little of the kittens speech. Each Cybernetic entity had been programmed and built to a specific function. They had not been given anything which was not required of this function.
The Kitten rubbed itself against the kitchen door frame. The door had fallen from the frame long ago. The gentle rubbing gave the kitten a sense of pleasure. In a distant corner of it’s mind, it vaguely remembered rubbing against something soft, and yielding, something which used to pick it up, and stroke it. The Kitten could not remember the last time it was stroked. It’s memory was small, designed for a much shorter life-span. New memories came in, and old memories had to be erased. This was done with strict, digital priorities. The least accessed memories went first. But the kitten had been alive so long that almost everything of it’s former life was gone.
The Kitten hauled itself over to it’s basket, a strip of fur which had parted company with it’s body trailing behind on the floor. The furs sensors where still active, and the movement felt like being stroked. The kitten liked this very much.
With a grinding of joints, and whining of gears, which had accompanied the kittens movements for as long as it could remember, it climbed into it’s basket. Something at the back of it’s memory circuits told it that it wasn’t meant to grind when it moved.
The kitten found little comfort in it’s basket. The lining was torn and faded from long occupation. The stuffing had come out, and long since rotted away. Even the comforting warmth which the basket exuded was now reduced to a feeble spot of warmth in one corner. The basket blinked a feeble greeting.
[repair supplies low] it said.
[energy supplies critical]
[projected lifespan: Basket: 12 days from this date]
[projected lifespan: Kitten: 14 days from this date]
The kitten’s Brian struggled with the words of the basket. It always talked in such a strange way, and it used words the kitten could not understand. But the kitten could not talk back to the basket, as the basket did not understand him. In the early days of the isolation, the kitten had tried to teach it to talk properly, and maybe even purr and mew, but it had been to no avail.
In the early days, both Basket and kitten had been optimistic. They had been left alone before when their masters went on holiday. But now, they had been left so long that they almost had no concept of master any more. When they had been left, the landscape outside the window, on which the kitten sat each morning, had been green, and lush, with almost no hint of the sprawling metropolis beyond the garden walls. Now, it was blasted, red, brown and black. Then, it had been studded with pretty green and brown lumps, which the kitten thought were called Trees. Now it was studded in twisted, bent dead things, like a giants skeletal finger bones.
Neither kitten nor basket remembered when exactly the isolation started. They had woken one morning, or more accurately, the kitten had, as the basket did not sleep, to find no masters. The world had been very quiet that morning. No birds had sang, and no children clattered. No dogs – how the kitten despised dogs – had barked. There had been curious black marks on the walls and the streets when the Kitten had looked out. He ad longed to investigate, but the door was closed. Those funny pieces of balck and white material which the masters looked at in the morning had shown pictures of strange vehicles, with long snouts. The kitten had thought of them as cars, he had ridden in cars before, but they had looked so strange and alien.
N9ow, the kitten longed for company. An6y company, so long as it wasn’t the doomsaying basket. He longed not be stroked and petted and talked to. He longed ton sleep in warmth, with a master’s arm around him. He longed for voices most of all. The world was so silent. Before the isolation, he was sure there had been noise of some sort. Although his memories where old, and hard to access, and although his memory had bad-sectors now, which the Basket could not fix, he was sure there had been noise, and movement once. Now there was silence, and stillness. Occasionally, water fell form the skies, and there was the noise of the wide, but these noises where alien to the kitten. His program responded only to friendly noises; words of endearment, calls to loving arms.
The kitten tried to draw what comfort he could from the basket, but it was no longer soft and warm. It had become cold and metallic. The Kitten lurched to it’s feet and crept from the kitchen. Here was the picture box, which the masters had watched so often. Here where the baskets they sept in. Much larger than the kittens, and silent. They never talked to the kitten when he jumped on them, and no lights flashed. Maybe the masters where repaired elsewhere. The Kitten would have liked the comfort of one of those baskets now, but his leg would not work, and he could not jump high enough any more. He turned, and walked away.
Here was the big wooden room, where one of the masters sat before a strange device, and hit buttons all day. Here was a similar device, which the young masters used to play with, when they where not playing with the kitten. Here where the holes in the ground that hot air came from. How the kitten longed for that hot air. It had blown once or twice after the isolation, but mysteriously stopped. The Basket claimed that all the house hold was powered by the mains, and the mains had dropped out. The kitten was puzzled by this pronouncement, an found no meaning in it at all.
Here was the kittens old companion, which had stopped mysteriously the very day the air stopped. The Kitten did not know what it was, exactly, for it never had talked. It was a blue beetle shaped creature, with a curious flat head, and wheels. There had once been blinking lights on it’s carapace, and it made a funny whooshing whine when it moved. It hadn’t moved for a long time, it just sat out in the middle of the mildewed passage, forever stalled and covered in dust. The kitten rubbed against it, raising a cloud of dust, which would have choked a biologic kitten.
The Kitten continued his aimless walk. For a long time, he had thought he would find the masters in one of the rooms along his way, that they where only hiding, or on holiday or some such. But he never had. He had given up hope so long ago that the memory had almost been erased.
Now the kitten fund himself back in the kitchen, and walked trough to the little room with the metal walls. The walls where made entirely of metal cylinders, with brightly coloured faces. They showed pictures of food, which had no effect on the non-eating kitten. The Masters used to open these cans, place them in a small white box, and then, when the box beeped, eat them. Something in the box magically warmed them.
There was a sound outside.
The Kitten’s ear microphones automatically adjusted to maximum gain. The sound was approaching, a churning whining whooshing airy sort of sound. The kitten remembered similar sounds heralding the return of its masters. Maybe they where back after so long?
The Kitten tried to run to the front door, but it’s legs weren’t up to it. It made do with a hasty stagger.
The front door was all that stood between the kitten and freedom. It seemed an impenetrable barrier, but the masters had opened it daily. Now, it hung on a curious angle, as if it would fall. The kitten hoped it would, then he could leave the house, and maybe, just maybe, find company outside. The Kitten sat expectantly at the door, peering out through it’s grimy glass panels. The sound was close now, very close. Some part of the kittens computer mind calculated it to be 23.7metrers distant, and closing at a speed of 25K/P/H.
A strange, dusty thing came into view. It was rounded, like a beetle, with some curios projections, and bright points of light on it’s skin. The Kitten supposed it was a car, but it had no wheels. Surely cars had wheels? The kittens memory was hazy on that fact. The mysterious contraption stopped, and the dust settled. The noise dropped not a fain, yet insistent whine. Part of the beetles carapace peeled back, and something stepped out. The kitten did not recognise it, but supposed it to be a master.
It had two legs, and two arms, and walked upright. The Kittens programming stated that anything which moved like that must be a master. Admittedly, the kitten could remember a curios, reddish furry master, with a brown leather face, which had bounced behind bars, and said ‘ook’. Maybe there where many kinds of master?
This master was like nothing the Kitten had ever beheld. It’s skin was like metal, covered in studs, and plates, with blinking lights, and controls. What looked like the outline of a mountain range in bright green scrolled across the chest. The Master’s face was not metallic, however. It was leathery, and brown. The kitten was sure that no master before had boasted a small prehensile trunk, and four eyes on stalks. Hair on their chins, perhaps, and some had had circles of glass over their eyes. But none had looked like th8s. But, it had two arms and legs, and walked upright. Therefore, to the kittens limited program, it was a master.
The Master approached, and opened the door. The door collapsed, and shattered. The master’s massive metal feet crunched on the shards, as it stepped inside.
The Kitten stepped forwards, and rubbed itself on the legs. The master bent down, and picked the kitten up gently. The Kitten rolled up, and purred in the arms of it’s new master.

Garro Zantor returned to the scouter, and heaved his armoured bulk into the passenger seat. The scouter’s armoured carapace resealed with a hiss, and Garro strapped himself in.
Denoz Drallkan looked over at him from the drivers seat as he eased the big armoured vehicle into gear.
‘Anything?’ he asked.
‘No. Just one of these,’ replied Garro, holding u the purring furry metal thing.
‘What are they for?’ asked Denoz, peering at it.
‘No idea. Just one of those strange things the Solarians used to do, I suppose.’
He threw the object into the back seat. It made a amusing squeaking sound as it flew.
‘Weird people, the Solarians,’ murmured Denoz, dragging the scouter around a sharp corner of the ruined street. ‘They made some marvellous stuff. I mean, look at that,’ he pointed at the skyline, where three massive green towers stood. ‘We only just managed to build a space elevator a couple years ago, and the Solarians had one thousands of years ago.’
Garro grunted. ‘It was never finished, you know,’ he said. ‘Otherwise, there would be Solarians still at large in the galaxy.’
Denoz nodded. They both knew what had happened. The Solarians had made some incredible things, and had learned unbelievable technology. Their technology had killed them all. Huge areas of Sol 3 where unlivable now, covered in blankets of heavy radiation. Massive areas where now just glass, from the intensity of the explosions. The entire race had died in an instant.
It was sad, but the Dentrovartiin expeditionary force was not paid to be sad. They had come in search of valuable material or technology. So far, they hadn’t found much apart from those weird furry metal things.
‘Maybe it’s an idol of their god?’ asked Garro.
‘What?’ asked Denoz, still peering at the glistening spires of the space elevator. ‘The elevator?’
‘No, that fur ball. We find so many, maybe they worshipped them as a god.’
‘What, like those funny Green and Yellow boxes on the streets, and in most of the shops? The ones the technical boy say where sort of electric buses?’
‘Yeah, like those things, I suppose.’
‘Maybe,’ agreed Denoz, guiding the scouter over a patch of rubble. ‘Juts maybe.’
An hour later, the Scouter left the ancient city which Solarian maps called Melbourne, an cried back to the Dentrovartiin Base at Geelong.