To Build a Mice Civilization

PART ONE

Dr. Amedeo Rinaldi

Dr. Amedeo Rinaldi had dedicated his life to one purpose: rebuilding civilization from scratch. Only the world didn't need another human civilization. He had already seen the disaster men made, and he—an outcast scientist, reduced to living in the basement of a university that ignored him—wanted to prove something different.

So he chose mice.

It wasn't an experiment in the traditional sense. There were no cages, no rewards for conditioning. There was an entire miniature city built in his basement: tunnels made of pages from old civil codes, towers of stacked cans, squares with fast food signs that served as temples. He created a scaled-down world and introduced hundreds of rats into it. He gave them food, space, materials.

And then he waited.

1. The First Law

The mice didn't disappoint. In less than a year they organized themselves into tribes. They had developed hierarchies, forms of communication that Amedeo couldn't understand, and, in an event that left him breathless, they created a system of exchange: they accumulated small objects and used them to get food. They had invented money.

That's when he saw them for the first time kneeling.

They did it in front of an old torn McDonald's ad that he had used to cover a hole in the wall. The oldest mice—the ones with scars on their snouts, the ones who had seen civilization grow—seemed to prostrate themselves before the smiling face of Ronald McDonald.

The basement had spawned its first cult.

Amedeo noted everything. He never intervened. He didn't change their environment. He just wanted to observe.

But then, one night, one of them saw him.

2. The Gaze

It was mouse number 24601. A gray specimen, with no distinguishing marks, one of many. Yet, while Amedeo was monitoring their activities through the infrared camera, the mouse raised its head and stared at him.

Directly.

It wasn't possible. Animals didn't know they were being watched. They didn't understand the concept of a camera. But 24601 was staring at the lens with eyes as black as a bottomless pit.

Then he turned to the other mice.

And made them all turn.

Amedeo felt his breath catch. A hundred eyes were watching him through the monitor.

He turned off the camera.

For the first time, he felt like he had made a mistake.

3. The Second Law

In the following days, something changed.

The mice began to organize themselves in an increasingly structured way. They built a kind of central arena and held meetings there. Amedeo tried to record their sounds, hoping to find recurring patterns.

He found them.

A phrase, repeated several times in their ultrasonic emissions. A precise rhythm.

Translated into human language, it said:

"The Second Law: The Guardian Exists."

Amedeo shivered.

Was he the Guardian? Had they seen him? Had they guessed?

He decided to intervene for the first time.

In the middle of the night, while the mice were sleeping, he went down to the basement and removed the McDonald's poster. In its place he put a mirror.

That was his biggest mistake.

4. The Third Law

At dawn, he found the mice gathered in front of the mirror.

They were mutilating themselves.

One by one, they tore off pieces of their tails, ears, and left them in front of the reflection. As if they wanted to offer something to the Guardian. As if they had realized that he had never shown himself because they were not worthy.

Civilization had discovered sacrifice.

Amedeo felt invaded by a sense of deep nausea. They had built it on their own. It had never been a controlled experiment: it was a cult born from a wrong truth.

And the truth was that they weren't worshiping him. They were looking for him.

That's when 24601 climbed onto the mirror.

He stopped at the top, stared at him—and Amedeo felt, with horror, his voice in his head.

Not a sound. Not a whisper. A thought.

"You are not the first."

5. The Fourth Law

Amedeo felt himself sink into a bottomless void. How could he? How could he communicate? The mouse was an inferior being, a parasite, a nobody!

Yet, now, 24601 came down from the mirror and began to walk towards his control station. He wasn't running. He was walking. As if he knew where he was, as if he had always known.

Amedeo, in a desperate gesture, turned off all the lights.

But he still heard it.

The sound of small paws approaching.

The pungent smell of his fur.

Then, the pressure of a tiny thing on his hand.

He turned around.

And he saw the mouse, standing on his desk.

"You are not the first."

"Neither am I."

And Amedeo understood.

Compressed in a second of absolute horror.

The miniature city, the spontaneous cult, the laws emerged from nowhere.

It had happened before.

It always happened.

And he wasn't the creator. He was just the umpteenth experiment.

One of many.

Epilogue: The Fifth Law

When his colleagues found him weeks later, Amedeo no longer spoke.

He didn't eat, didn't drink, didn't sleep.

He sat in the basement, staring at the mice in silence.

And they watched him.

They watched him with their empty eyes, waiting.

Because a new civilization was being born.

And this time, their God was there with them.

PART TWO

Rinaldi Amedeo, Doctor

Amedeo always had an obsession. Not people, not books, not the future. Mice. He always found them fascinating. Tiny replicas of civilization, perfect, precise, inevitable. He watched them in alleys, subways, abandoned warehouses. What did they do? Where did they go? What did they think?

Then he decided to build something bigger. An experiment.

In the basement of his house, he created the perfect city.

Modular cages, transparent tunnels, sections dedicated to agriculture, commerce, war. A miniature habitat, a civilization made of twitching tails and sharp teeth. He gave them a name. He educated them. He wrote their laws.

And they learned.

In the beginning, it was fun. The mice traded pieces of food, formed hierarchies, built nests that resembled miniature Gothic cathedrals. But then they started to develop something else. A religion.

At the highest point of their city, they erected a small monument. It wasn't random. It couldn't be. It was him.

A photograph of him, cut out from an old university card and stuck between two bars. They worshiped him.

The Great Eye.

FIRST MISTAKE

Amedeo laughed. They were just mice. A game.

Then one night he found the first scroll.

A piece of gnawed paper, tiny, dirty with ink. A message. Written in a language that could never have existed, yet perfectly translatable.

It said:

"Start over. Start over. Start over."

Amedeo felt something crack inside him. How many times had it already happened?

He looked at the old recordings again. Day after day, month after month, always the same evolution. Society grows. Society flourishes. Society falls.

And then, every time, it starts again.

Without explanation. Without him doing anything.

SECOND MISTAKE

One night, the silence breaks.

In the basement, a ticking. Not mice. Something bigger.

Amedeo goes down the stairs with his heart in his throat. The air smells of metal and dampness. The yellow light of the only neon projects wrong shadows on the walls.

The cages are open.

The floor is sprinkled with signs engraved with surgical precision. Curved lines, spirals, a language too articulate to be casual. Messages.

Amedeo approaches. With a tremor, he caresses one of the symbols engraved in the wood of the desk. He feels something move behind him.

He turns around.

And he sees it.

A man. Sitting at the desk. Identical to him.

THIRD MISTAKE

His double stares at him with a tired smile. He has a notebook open in front of him and a pen between his fingers.

"You were wondering how many times?"

Amedeo can't speak.

"Seventy-two."

The double's voice is calm. Familiar. Almost compassionate.

"Seventy-two times you built the city. Seventy-two times you saw civilization born and fall. Seventy-two times you found the messages. And seventy-two times you came down here, saw me and understood."

"Understood what?" Amedeo whispers.

The other Amedeo gets up, shrugging his shoulders. "That it's not you who studies them."

The ticking gets louder.

Amedeo feels his breath catch. Something tightens his stomach, twists it from the inside. The basement is changing.

The walls move. The The shadows move on their own.

The mice were never mice. They were observers.

And now, finally, they have finished their study.

Amedeo wants to scream, run away, destroy everything. But it makes no sense. He already knows it. Because this scene has already been repeated seventy-two times.

And it will be repeated again.

Amedeo's double approaches, leaning towards his ear.

And whispers:

"You are the last piece."

Then everything dissolves.

THE CYCLE BEGINS AGAIN

Amedeo wakes up.

He is sitting at the desk. The basement is intact. The mice are in their cages. The city is perfect.

But in the corner of the room, barely visible in the shadow, someone is watching him.

PART THREE

Amedeo (Dr.) Rinaldi

The Code 72

Amedeo opened his eyes and the basement was already written. The walls, the cages, the ticking of time that didn't exist: everything already engraved in a notebook that he didn't remember filling. Seventy-two times. Seventy-two lives. Seventy-two collapses. Seventy-two awakenings.

He looked at the table: a sheet of paper. "Read." It was his handwriting, but not his mind. He had written what had not yet happened. Reading meant remembering the future.

He did it.

"The city was never yours. The mice have always been the scientists. You are the variable. And the cycle... the cycle is already compromised."

The words changed as he read them.

"You are not Amedeo. You are not the first. You are not the last. You are an interference."

The Eye and the Tooth

When Amedeo turned around, he saw the Thing.

It was not a mouse. It was not human. It was a twist of reality, a patch of skin, fur and teeth overlapping. It watched him without eyes, with a wrong smile, open on several layers.

"Speak."

It was not an order. It was an invitation. As if the language he knew was a prison, and the Thing was the exit.

Amedeo tried to scream, but his voice twisted into an ultrasonic hiss. He understood. The language of mice was not made of sounds, but of the absence of them. They didn't speak. They subtracted.

And he was disappearing.

The Grafting Ritual

Amedeo woke up. He was still in the basement. But the skin was not his. The time was not his. He looked at his hands: there were lines engraved, not scars, but a language. Words that he could read by touch. "You are the last piece."

The night has too many eyes. Black eyes, round, shining like obsidian shards, that move under the floor, in the air ducts, between the cracks in the walls. Amedeo feels their rustling, the ticking of their nails on the linoleum. There is no silence in the basement. There never has been.

The city grows. The organism proliferates. And now it speaks.

They write. The first message is engraved in the wood of his desk with sharp teeth: "God does not watch."

Amedeo laughs. They cannot understand. They cannot know.

But then why does he find another one the next day, engraved in the glass of the surveillance camera?

"God is blind."

Then again, days later, engraved directly on the skin of his forearm while he sleeps:

"God does not exist."

Amedeo stops sleeping.

The mice now wait for him every night. Every night they gather in silence under the flickering neon light, still, standing on their hind legs, without making any noise. They wait. They wait.

One day, Amedeo finds them all kneeling in front of an old cracked mirror. They are watching something. He looks inside.

He notices the pain. Something inside him moves. He gets up with difficulty, looks at himself in the mirror that he didn't remember hanging.

The reflection is not his.

It's 24601.

And he smiles.

Because the one in the mirror has too many eyes.