introduction
What are you doing here?
The clean, crisp voice cut through the metal box of a room.
It came from a young man, sitting cross-legged in a plush chair. Behind and around him stretched a large and complex computer apparatus, with blinking lights lighting the edges of his body. His gaze was deep, penetrating, and direct – those dark brown eyes stared out from a face, beautifully structured…almost artificial. Humans did not have such impeccable bone structure, coupled with an athletic physique. He could've been a statue, or a photo of one of those actors from so long ago. And yet his gaze held all the piercing intelligence of a man – nay, perhaps more than a man – and his voice held much more command than a…a Pet.
But he was one, wasn't he? Underneath the virtual simulation goggles that had been pulled back carelessly over his forehead, he had ears. They weren't human ears, either -- they looked canine. They drooped nonchalantly at the side of his head, and one twitched slightly.
Ah, yes, I am one of them. But do first take a seat – stay a while. I think it's time you humans got a history lesson.
prologue
The history texts say we once lived in a lush world. Earth once housed multitudes of species, which populated grand forests and vibrant seas. There were vast plains of low vegetation, and the deserts were not caused by depletion but because they were the remnants of dried up seas. They say we once had ice caps, too, other than the annual freeze at the poles. They were covered in glaciers, hundreds of feet thick. Just ice. And then, they said, people actually lived in the real London. Not this London, but the one a thousand feet below us, with buildings and streets and parks and universities. Not this giant block in the sky that we call New London, with its artificial climates no one sees. Once, things were real.
I suppose it all ended with the last world war. They said by 2300 that almost all the natural resources had been depleted, and many of the twelve billion people in the world were going to die if they didn't find more resources. But there weren't any, so they started a nuclear war over it. Wiped out all of the humans, except for half a billion. They rebuilt their major cities, like London, Paris, New York, Tokyo, Seoul, and the like, except in the air, like New London, or underwater, or underground. Because there's a reason we don't go down to the land. There's nothing there, and because there's nothing there, we can get swept up in a dust storm and reduced to bones in seconds. Or we could fall into one of those apocalyptic fissures that spills forth magma and toxic gasses. And then there's all the nuclear radiation that they say will cling to the rocks for another thousand years. Our planet is, for all purposes, no longer able to sustain life.
So I guess we had to create our own little "planets". We have our greenhouses, our factories, all packed into this giant box we call a city. We have farms on the lower levels, you know, where all the depraved are forced to live and work. They can't spend all their time on the internet like you can.
But that's what you humans do. Did you know that once upon a time people had real friends? Families, even? Up until World War III people had genuine family units. Father, mother, son, daughter. Not just one person living all by themselves in the internet. People used to have homes, rather than just a cell. You have your computer room, a chair, a bed, a place to store food, and a bathroom. That's it, isn't it? How often do you leave your cell? Not often. How often do you have someone over to your cell? Never, unless something breaks. What would you do if the internet went down for an hour? A day? A year? I'm surprised you can even walk.
I suppose it's the war to blame for all your self-inflicted isolation. There's nothing left of our world, so what is there to see? The internet offers you all sorts of fantastic things that the real world cannot provide. Except, I suppose, reality. You know well enough that the internet can never replace the real world. The graphics aren't perfect. You can touch things, taste them, feel them, but touching a virtual cloth is nothing compared to feeling an actual piece of linen. As great as it is, and as great as your friends may be, it's not like anything is truly real. You know that. I definitely know that. But you buy it up, don't you? That's all your world is, though, from the time you were a young child in one of their child-rearing facilities – because obviously no one can bother to meet people to get married and have children on their own – to the time you got your own cell. It has educated you, employed you, as well as offered you everything else you could possibly ever want. Except for one thing.
Which is why you started the Pet Project.
It started with people trying to alter human genes to create more attractive, more intelligent human beings. Their limited success caused an underground group of scientists to attempt to combine human with animal genes to create a sort of "super human", perhaps ones that could survive on the desolate landscape below us. It didn't work out well, as I've heard. Either the genes wouldn't mix, or the creatures they made were too mutated to live. And then, the government found out about it.
It took sixty years for the government to allow the research to go on. I don't know why they allowed it. Was it to do something with the genes of animals, now extinct? There was no way they could revive panda bears or dolphins or even cats when they have to struggle to meet the food supply for their own stagnant population. But they let them try and create these animal humans.
Things went better. After twenty years, they were able to grow their first functional being. He was part human, part domestic cat, and he was covered in fur and quite strange looking, I've heard. But he lived. He lived about thirty years. But he was never very intelligent. As they further refined their hybrids, they got them to only express a certain animal trait. Ears, and a tail, they decided. But they were almost all stupid.
Then one of the scientists had a breakthrough. Humans didn't really do much interacting with each other in these days. They had enjoyed owning pets back when animals existed, so why didn't they make them pets that could offer them both animal and human companionship? Since they had sub-human intelligence, they wouldn't mind being treated like a pet, but they could still also be useful and run errands and the like.
So it took several more decades to make the government approve this, and for them to get their formula perfect. And I suppose it really was perfect. The Pets they created were beautiful. They didn't have to start out with pre-existing humans to attempt to beautify them through gene therapy. They could simply take the most desirable human genes and mix them together, with their animal genes. Then they sold these Pets for large sums of money. Except, I suppose there was a problem, because they were too beautiful and many of the buyers were quite lonely. The manufacturers didn't make it a problem, though. They saw it as something to profit from. So they made more. Even if these Pets were, to an extent, self aware, they were given no rights, and they sold us. Lots of us. You know how it is though. We aren't allowed to speak to anyone but our owners. We aren't allowed to go on the internet. I suppose it makes sense, considering many of us are completely unintelligent, but that doesn't make it right. Especially when there are those of us who aren't stupid.
my story
I was a dog type. Created to be obedient, loyal, and affectionate – a standard type, no fancy custom, but still a high-quality Pet. My genes weren't mixed properly, though. I wasn't enough dog, I believe. I had the ears, and I had the tail, but I certainly didn't act like one, and I certainly didn't think like one. After all, I could think, which was quite the commodity.
My memories start when I was a small child. They kept us in a large, sterile facility with many other Pets. We could spend time with each other in the commons. We would play simple games, and interact. We sent the rest of our time in little cages with a cushion bed, a bowl of water, and some food that was always the same. They'd make us run around a track every day so we'd get exercise, and then spent the rest of the time training us to be good, obedient Pets.
I met another pet, who was quite unusual – he was some kind of bird, and instead of hair, he had feathers on his head. He was intelligent, though. I was friends with him, in those early years. The problem was that he was too obvious about his intelligence, and they found out. The took him away and I never saw him again.
That's what taught me to comply with all their wishes. I could not excel, but I could not fail, because the Pets who would not perform at their standards were also taken away. Where to, I know not for sure, but I have a feeling that they terminate defective pets, which has grown ever stronger as I've grown older and learned more.
I don't think I learned any one useful bit of information over those early years, aside from how to keep my life. Some of the information they taught us were things I did not want to learn, but did any ways. I picked up that I was to have no rights, that I was a lower being, like the chicken and cattle they raised for food. I exist as a slave as soon as I was old enough to be sold. I would then live to be about thirty years old, or until I ceased to be appealing, and then they would dispose of me.
I think I was fourteen years old when they sold me. They simply put a collar on me, led me to the front of the building, put me in a carrying craft, and then set me on the doorstep of a cell. Two people were there with me, on either side of me, just to make sure I did not run off.
The man that answered the door was middle aged and of typical human physique – overweight. Both he and his cell smelled bad, and smells have always been a big issue to me. I was gifted with a more acute sense of it, along with my ears and tail.
It didn't take me long to realize that I was going to enjoy this life even less than the monotony of my past one. My owner mistreated me…or perhaps he was normal, but I, being a sentient being, did not appreciate how I was treated. I put up with it for about a year, seeing as I didn't feel I had any choice. After all, I had no rights, and my first three attempts at escape ended in almost immediate failure. But eventually I was able to successfully escape. I evaded authorities for long enough for me to procure a knife to cut the collar and dig the chip out of my shoulder.
You know about the chips, right? They plant a tracking device in our shoulders when we're infants. I didn't know that, until the second time I ran away, when one of the police mentioned it.
Regardless, I did a shoddy job at it and the wound became infected, causing me to have to seek help from a human.
I went to the poor. They didn't own pets, because they couldn't afford them. They had to put up with the menial tasks of the population, and they were perhaps the only ones who still understood human compassion and relationships. The real humans are the proletariats, and a kind, elderly woman found me and treated my shoulder. She let me live with her, in her small, computerless cell. She looked after me, and she attempted to educate me, too. It was the kindest gesture anyone had ever shown me. She treated me like I was human.
I was a good student, because I learned things quickly. She often said that. I learned to read and to write, and to do math. She wasn't the most intelligent woman herself, but she knew enough to pass on to a veritable educational infant such as myself. So I must say those were good times, perhaps the best of times. Until, of course, she died of a stroke.
Paying my respects to her was out of the question, seeing as I was still on the run. I had to hide in back alleys, between buildings, scrounging off the leftovers of restaurants and grocery stores. It was only so long before I was caught, and I was lucky that the people who did were the kind of people they were.
The Pizza Post was my favorite place to scrounge around. It was not a high class restaurant – none of them are, because only the proletariats attend them – but I have always held a deep fondness for pizza, especially with pepperonis. Except, when I went to scrounge around for a half-eaten slice or two, I was grabbed from behind and thrown down a flight of stairs into a sort of cellar. In the fall, my cap was dislodged.
Now, back in these days, I took certain precautions not to be recognized as a Pet. I always wore a hat, which I tucked my ears up into. I dyed my hair a nondescript shade of brown, and hid my tail down one of my pant legs. I guess my disguise had slipped for a second, and these people caught me.
Except the questions they shouted to me had nothing to do with me being a pet. They asked how I had found them, what I was doing so close to their base, who sent me. I stared up at them, unsure what they were talking about.
I was finally able to squeeze out "I don't know what you're talking about. You have must have the wrong person."
They stared at me for a second, before one of them blurted out, "hey you're just a Pet!"
This confused me. They clearly didn't seem to care that I was a pet. There was something more troubling them. "I…Er…Yes…So can you let me go?"
A large male walked over to me, and seemed to examine me for a moment. "Where's your collar, boy?"
I shook my head.
."Your tracking chip?"
Again I shook my head.
Apparently unconvinced, he grabbed my arm and yanked me to my feet, before rolling back my sleeve and examining the scar from where I had cut it out of me. "Huh," he'd said, letting me fall back to the floor. "Where's your owner?"
I shook my head once more, this time fervently.
."You mean you actually managed to escape?" he seemed surprised. "How long have you been independent?"
."Two years…" I muttered.
."You're smart enough to do that?"
."I'm smarter than the other pets at the facility…And I'm smart enough to know that if I let them know that, they'd get rid of me. I…I was also told that I was a quick learner. I can read and write now. It's very helpful," I said, in earnest.
."Very interesting," the man paused, then looked around to his comrades. "Eh, what say, should we keep him?"
."I…What?!" I felt my heart lurch with fear. Was I going to be kidnapped? An illegitimate Pet?
The man stared at me for a long moment, as I shrunk back. "Calm down, boy. We're illegal too. Hackers. We're working against that apathetic slob who was your owner, and everyone like them. Since you're-"
."You're going to tell him?" Another interjected.
The man put up a hand to silence him. "Relax. He's a Pet. Even if he's a bleedin' genius no one's going to listen to him. Kid's on the run, aren't you boy?" He said, ruffling my hair. "So why not you make yourself darn useful and help us? I mean, it's not like you've anything better to do. Way you're going, you'll be dead in a year or two. With us? You might make it another five," he said, laughing loudly.
It was thus that I came to join them. They were a band of hackers working in an abandoned part in the lower portion of New London. Apparently they were much more organized than first impressions. It was an extensive network with bases in every city, and there just so happened to be an outpost behind the Pizza Post. Their headquarters was very high tech, and I was impressed by the amount of people in it. They walked me straight through it, though, until they brought me before a blonde woman who looked to be about in her mid thirties. I assumed she was in charge from her demeanor, and from the manner in which she interviewed me. After I'd essentially spilled my guts out onto her table, as well as every last scrap of memory I'd tried to forget, she assigned me a small room with a bed and an internet, and the instructions to learn.
I spent the first three years receiving tutoring from various teachers and the internet. I spent most of the day studying, and although I picked up on new concepts fairly quickly, there was still just so much to learn. I also had to be taught how to use the internet. Pets weren't allowed to use the internet, but if I was to make myself useful, I'd have to.
It wasn't until I was twenty that I'd begun to hack into the system. I created an avatar for myself, and mostly scouted out targets for the more advanced members. But I quickly learned. By now, I'm one of them. In fact, I'm good at it. I have a bigger room now, with better technology, and a better living space. I get better food; I get treated better. I still have to deal with issues for being a Pet, but I guess a Pet is what they really wanted. I'm the ultimate worker. I can't leave and I can't betray their secrets. I'm doomed outside this business.
![Quarite :]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v337/super_funkey_monkey2/adoptables/Quarite.png)
