Category: Cat

The Silurian Silkworm Affair – Act I

Landing on Siluria

This mission was supposed to be totally routine. That’s what they’d told me at mission control. No slavering Mud Lizards to worry about, no time vaults, no extermatrons, all very straightforward. Well, I can tell you, as our little ship plummeted through the lower clouds on Siluria at breakneck speed, everything felt very much ‘not routine’. I held tightly to the arms of my chair and involuntarily squeezed my upper thighs together, as the urge to set loose my bladder grew with the feeling that very soon, at this speed, we would smack into some very hard ground.

I looked across at my AI, Cat, the Rubanon encased robot who had been my companion on long-haul tax investigations now for several years. To say he was fighting the controls on the flight deck would be a bit of an overstatement as on lightships in 2225, there were only screens to tap away at when piloting. However, it would not be an understatement to say he was tapping away quite furiously with both front paws at the pilot’s control screen in front of him. I couldn’t really at that moment think of anything else to say other than,

“Are we going to crash?”

Cat glanced across at me and said “Yep. Think so.”

My lower jaw and lip scrunched up into my top lip as I squeaked out “Nothing you can do?”

“Nope. Don’t think so,” said Cat.

“Oh that’s just great,” I whined. “Nothing you can do. Well that’s ok for you being made of totally indestructible Rubanon isn’t it? I mean I’m a human right. I’m going to wind up like a jigsaw puzzle for the crash investigators. The worst thing that’s likely to happen to you is that you’ll bounce about for a while after we smack into the ground. Just typical!!”

“Don’t collapse into total cowardice just yet,” said Cat, “I may not be able to stop us crashing but I think I’m going to be able to make the landing effectively soft enough for your scrawny body to survive.”

“Seriously?” I responded as I pulled myself up slightly in my chair before lurching uncontrollably forward with great force, as the ship impacted. I lurched back and then forward and then back again several times as the ship gradually juddered to a slowish downward motion until I was finally able to sit relatively still and upright in my seat. Unfortunately, my focus on the impact, allied to the valiant attempt my upper body had made to stop itself from being shaken about like a mountain in an earthquake, had led to me losing concentration on keeping my bladder under control, with inevitable consequences. I felt the warmth inside my pants spreading and, as the damp patch became obvious at the front of my khaki coloured tunic bottoms, I really wished I hadn’t had that large glass of Baffleberry juice just before our descent started. Especially because it tasted of onions.

As Cat spotted my expanding damp patch he exclaimed “Eeeyuck. Can you not control yourself?”.

“Well I have to some extent,” I said, “My bowels have so far stayed relatively still.”

At that Cat rolled his eyes and said: “Right, we’ll head up now.”

“Up where?” I responded.

“To the surface,” said Cat, “The only way I could see to slow us was by landing in the ocean” he continued. “Now we need to head up, but slowly. Whilst we are ascending I will try to work out what happened to the ship. Lightships don’t just fail like this. It’s very puzzling.”

To be continued………

The Mosquito Virus

In 2175 humans were devastated by the Mosquito virus, a contaminant from outer space. Serendipitously, scientists at Clone-a-Cat discovered that a transposon in the DNA of a genetically engineered cat called Azz-Lex, could neutralise the Amora virus. Implantation of the ‘Azz-Lex transposon’ became the miracle cure that saved humankind.

Treatment did, however, lead to people who periodically chewed grass and vomited or needed to squat on sand to pee. Absolutely everyone wanted to be waited on hand and foot, eat or sleep, so nothing ever got done.

It was much better than dying unless of course, you were a dog.

The Azz-Lex Transposon

After the first major space battle between Earth and the Mud Lizards around 2170, the so-called ‘Mosquito virus’ started to devastate the population of our planet. Essentially a biological weapon, despatched to Earth by the Mud Lizards from Plasmolidium, our foremost research laboratories could find no cure.

cat

It was only after the intervention of the leader of the GoGLES, Azz-Lex, that Earth was saved. This talking cat from Planet X turned up at the home of the owner of ClonaCat, Tjoorbaert Morabitz and injected him with both the Mosquito virus and the so-called Azz-Lex transposon to prove the cure to Tjoorbaert.

The Azz-Lex transposon, a small piece of DNA within Azz-Lex’s DNA, was able to hybridise with the Mosquito virus DNA within the human genome to render the Mosquito virus harmless.

You can read about the Azz-Lex transposon in the Inspector and Cat adventure ‘The Zygote Crystal‘.

The MoATaRS

The Inspector and his colleagues’  Joosthava and Krokus Joe, and of course Cat, defeated the Mud Lizard threat to AccEvolve using the Endurance Zygote Crystal, in 2224. To do this though, Cat had to AccEvolve himself into a Giant Cat to dispense with the two Mud Lizards Yakh and Ulth and free the Inspector, Joosthava and Krokus.

On their return to Earth, the Inspector found out that Cat was now back on Planet X with the Endurance Zygote Crystal with the other GoGLEs. Cat, or Giant Cat as he now was, sent a message back to  Tax HQ to warn Earth that other aliens were coming from deep space to attack Earth in the near future.

He recommended that Tax HQ  should form a small group, that wound up being known as ‘The MoATaRS’ (Monitoring of Alien Threats and Response Squad) and comprised the Inspector, Krokus Joe and Joosthava. In addition, Cat sent back to Earth one of his children, a young black robot kitten, to grow up with the Inspector and become his new protective companion and the 4th member of the new group.

Dinosaur Skyland

Dinosaur Skyland is the very latest in Artificial Reality and CE (Consumer Edutainment). Orbiting around 100 miles above sea level, Skyland is basically a place to take the family back in time for a luxury holiday, to the Jurassic period when dinosaurs ruled the Earth.

Holiday makers can get close up and personal with the widest range of creatures from that period. If learning is your thing then Skyland provides a range of options to study the animals, including to actually become part of their daily routine. If thrills are why you are there then you can joust with the most fearsome of dinosaurs, from the Slasharapter to Megasaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex.

The World famous T. rex experience includes such optional fun extras as ‘Watch your Granny get Swallowed Whole’ and ‘Feed the kids to the Rapter’. There is also a ‘break it off with your partner’ service mediated by a pair of suitably empathetic Velocirapters that has proven very popular since Skyland opened its clouds to visitors.

It was at Dinosaur Skyland that Cat almost got bitten in half by a T. rex.

Clone a Cat

ClonaCat was founded around 2110 by Tjoorbaert Morabitz, at the time the World’s most famous genetic engineer. Tjoorbaert was also a massive cat lover and believed that other people like him would pay small fortunes to have their beloved pet cats cloned and re-created after death. Tjoorbaert was certain that he could do far better than earlier experiments at domestic pet cloning that had not quite fulfilled needs.

However, just like the early experimenters in this niche market, Tjoorbaert found that the cats he created were never totally the same for the owners as the pets they had just lost. ClonaCat was looking like a failed enterprise until fortuitously, scientists working there on the horse genome, reactivated some ancient genes and created the first unicorn on Earth. This led to a whole new sports activity, unicorn racing, and ClonaCat became a prosperous concern through the selective breeding of unicorns for racing purposes.

The income from their unicorn ‘arm’ enabled Tjoorbaert to continue his research into the domestic cat genome, work that was accelerated by the arrival of a cat called Azz-leX. This cat appeared to Tjoorbaert literally out of the blue one evening (well appeared on his doorstep anyway) and turned out to be the ‘perfect’ cat with an incredible IQ. Not only that, but Azz-leX also provided humanity with the Azz-leX transposon, the cure to the DSR virus that had started to devastate the human population around 2170, near the end of the first interstellar war with the Mud Lizards.

ClonaCat ceased to trade in around 2180, being subsumed by CloneMate, another major cloning company of the time. CloneMate then used the expertise that ClonaCat scientists could bring to make the first generation of rubanon based artificial intelligences (AI’s). Cat, the Inspector’s companion, was the first off the production line and the only output from CloneMate that held a completely expressed copy of Azz-leX’s genome.

The Story of Cat

Cat, we know, is a robot. But how exactly does he come to be so like a real cat? Why does he have such an intensely superior personality? Is it programmed or inherited from Zeus or a similar God?. Well, you may be surprised to hear that it is largely inherited. He actually derives from the Pure Cat Ashley, a domestic cat from the 22nd Century who saved humanity and has essentially never let humanity forget it.

cat

When some of the few human combatants in Interstellar War I returned to Earth around 2175, despite the usual stringent quarantine checks, humankind began to be devastated by a virus that attacked the human immune system. Deaths mounted and the projections were that within 10 years humans could be wiped out. That was looking to be the case until the work of Vice-Professor  Tjoorbaert Morabitz from the Austrian Academy of Galactic Science and his assistant Trevor (unfortunately, Trevor’s surname has been lost in the annals of the history of science but some experts believe he actually did all of the work). Anyway, Tjoorbaert was also the founder of ClonaCat and in his efforts to create the perfect domestic cat, he had spent many years trying to fully understand the genetic make-up of Ashley who had been perfect physically and had an IQ almost 100X higher than normal for a cat of the time.

Whilst studying Ashley’s genes and behaviour (and the latter was what you probably would expect from Zeus) Tjoorbaert (or possibly Trevor) discovered that a transposon in Ashley’s DNA had the capability to destroy a range of viruses, including the common cold, that variously afflicted the human population. The so-called ‘friendly-transposon’ also became the miracle cure for the Amora virus, the bug brought back by the early deep space explorers.

Humanity was saved by this serendipitous property of the Ashley ‘Friendly’ Transposon. There were consequences, however. All humans effectively became part-cat, or rather part Ashley, with the phenotype of humans in relation to cat characteristics varying widely. For some there was hardly any effect, others suddenly liked to chew grass and vomit whilst some couldn’t pee unless they were standing on a tray full of litter and quite a few couldn’t survive without being waited on hand and foot. Obviously, despite the social embarrassment some of these actions could lead to, it was better than dying. Fortunately, around 15 years after the introduction of the Ashley Transposon, other scientists found treatments that could suppress most of the cat characteristics that Ashley brought into the human gene pool. This left us with immune humans who occasionally hissed when they got really pissed off and chased anything smaller that moved.

And Cat? Robot Cat? Well, he was the perfect clone of Ashley though he had no living flesh because of course, he was ‘robot’. However, Ashley’s DNA had properties that went well beyond the 4 nucleotide bases found in all living creatures across the Universe to date. Ashley’s DNA had attitude and Cat had inherited elements of ‘attitude’ in extremis.

Molten Lava Beans

These are Cat’s favourite snack. And my goodness did they compound his wind issue, or gaseous expellation as he preferred to describe it.

Whatever, although not made of flesh and blood certain of Cat’s internal workings (God knows which) led to a serious accumulation of hydrogen sulphide which he periodically expelled (or ‘let rip’ as he again describes it) through one or other of his myriad ports. Molten lava beans exacerbated the issue and whenever he snacked on them you could guarantee that fairly quickly, especially if in a confined space with him, you would regret it.

I knew full well that Cat controlled his expellations to annoy me and as a ‘weapon’ to guarantee I treated him like the Prince he thought he was.

Where did molten lava beans originate from? They were first noted on the planet Kimcadia by early explorers who had landed there. A staple component of the Kimcadian diet, their constant ingestion by Kimcadian diplomats explained why the seats furthest away from them at official banquets were so sought after (and expensive). The history books tell us there was a similar problem at banquets held for a US President in the early 21st Century, where hot air and possible use of weapons seemed to be as much of a problem as hydrogen sulphide.

Sonic Radar

Cat had many technologies to call on in his role of protecting me from all manner of dangers. He was pretty rubbish in my view at this protection malarky and always seemed to leave it to the last minute to grab me from the jaws of disaster. I think he enjoyed doing that (leaving it to the last minute that is!!).

image of radar screen

Anyway, one tool he had which was generally very useful, was his highly sensitive sonic radar. Unlike normal radar that detects objects and their movement, with sonic radar, Cat could also detect sounds very accurately. This basically meant that he could detect the smallest of objects easily, even if they remained totally motionless.

He often remarked that he always knew where I was because he could readily lock onto my brain, despite its size…….. cheeky little automaton!!

And Cat…..?

Oh yes, everyone asks what Cat is. Well, in short, he’s a massive pain in the butt to me and a right little know-it-all to boot (occasionally literally:-) ).

In reality Cat (note the capital C) is an artificial intelligence or what I like to call a robot. He has a Rubanon skin which makes him pretty indestructible (though a T. Rex nearly bit him in half once). Now that’s a story – and of course once again I saved his bacon. Not that he’s a pig of course.

Anyway, he is a robot and he is there to serve me and protect me in my duties as an Intergalactic Tax Inspector. Aside from the fact that he has the hardest outer coating known, and inside is full of chips (not the edible kind), he looks to all intents and purposes, due to clever body sculpting, like an ordinary domestic cat. I have to say he has many of the nastier characteristics of domestic cats!!