Nine Lives

“Aren’t you a handsome fellow” Amy cooed at the black cat nuzzling into her calf as she scratched the base of his ears. “So affectionate as well. Yes you are, yes you are. Aren’t you?? Yes you are”.

She always used this stereotypical baby talk with cats, complete with rhetorical questions and answers to said questions. Anytime she saw someone else acting out this same pantomime with a cat, or a dog, or even a baby she cringed and vowed to never talk like that again. It was so unbecoming she thought. But then some friendly feline would sidle up to her and she just couldn’t help herself. This little guy was well groomed and had a shiny collar around his neck, obviously someone’s pet, but she’d be just as affectionate to strays. People could be a bit grossed out about that but she didn’t care, she kept a little bottle of hand sanitizer in her purse, so what’s the big deal? A cat was a cat as far as she was concerned, and she loved cats.

In her opinion cats could tell she loved them. They weren’t like their canine cousins who showed love to everyone unless given an explicit reason not too. No, cats were much more discerning, if a cat went out of its way to show you some affection it made you feel special. Still, rare treat or not I better get going she thought to herself. The cat meowed at her as she walked away and she instinctively turned and waved goodbye, immediately regretting it and hoping nobody saw her.

“So sorry I’m late!” Fred exclaimed as he burst through the door. “You must be exhausted and here I am not even on time.”

Elliot waved away the apology as he got up from the chair, “Oh you’re fine, it’s only five minutes.”

“Anything happen?” he asked as he hung up his jacket in the corner.

“Nah nothing really. Sure, she’s been asleep for most of it. Only left the house five minutes ago.”

Fred nodded at a blinking yellow symbol in the shape of a cat on the screen, “What was that about?”

“Ah, nothing major. There was a quarter percent fatality reading if she got into the city before eight thirty. Thought it was best to knock her back five just to be safe.”

“Huh, yeah best to play it safe. What was the cause?”

Elliot shrugged and headed for the door, “Mate, for less than a percent I don’t even check anymore. You know what it’s like down there.”

“Yeah” Fred sighed in agreement as he dropped into the chair. “Have a good one” he said absently but Elliot was already gone.

The room was a cube, the walls pure white and windowless, while the ceiling was a deep shade of blue, almost black. All the light seemed to come from the floor which appeared to be the most perfectly clear glass, below which Amy could be seen walking briskly down a busy street. It was as if the room floated above her like a balloon, following her as she walked. Neither Amy, nor anyone else, seemed to be aware of anything looking down on them.

The chair Fred sat in was on wheels, like a typical office chair except it was much thicker with big, padded arms. At the end of each of these arms extended thin but wide touch screens, one of which displayed a constantly changing array of charts and graphs, while the other was lit up with several dozen symbols like apps on a phone.

Fred peered down at the hustle and bustle below. He’d only been on this assignment a week and he was already getting bored. It was the usual bread and butter modis operandi job, watch over the “piece” as they were called and make sure they get from point A to point B in one piece. Sometimes that meant making sure they physically got to some location intact but, more often than not it was just making sure they survived, relatively unscathed, through a set period of time. Mostly it would be somewhere between a couple of weeks and a month, but he’d heard of people getting assigned to watch over a single piece for years, even decades. Amy’s stint was a pretty normal twenty-one day start to finish.

Fred was never given any insight into the Why of the whole enterprise, but he was still fairly junior. Why was it important for Amy to make it from February 16^th to March 9^th? He’d no idea. She seemed like the quintessential average Jane. He didn’t really understand what her job was but it was clear to him that it wasn’t particularly important, and she wasn’t secretly contributing to some important cause or anything like that. Everything pointed to her just being a quiet woman, living a quiet, comfortable but unremarkable life.

He knew the higher powers had a clear reason for wanting her taken care of during this time though even if it wasn’t apparent. Resources were limited, if you were assigned to watch over someone, no matter how mundane their day to day seemed you could trust it was important. That was a big part of what attracted him to a job which a lot of the time could be very dull, the work had meaning. The higher powers, they could see the whole board and they were thinking five moves ahead. Currently he was just in charge of making sure the pawn moved successfully from one square to the next, but one day he’d be the one making the moves.

Why shouldn’t he dream big? Three years ago he’d been just a Chrono Data Analyst, helping populate the screen of charts and graphs that gave the watcher real time information on all the risks and dangers facing their piece. It was an amazing resource, refined over millennia, allowing the watchers a brief but prescient glimpse into the future. Essentially it processed every variable in the universe and spat out live data on everything from the odds of chocking to death at lunch, to the possibility of sudden drone attack. The watcher, in turn, used this information to make decision on how to keep their piece safe.

The touch screen to Fred’s right was filled with tools he could use to respond to dangers. They were limited in their power though, more like nudges. If skillfully used could steer you through dangerous waters but they weren’t a blunt instrument, the required anticipation and timing to be effective. While all the tools were available on every assignment it was important to read the briefing file because pieces responded differently to their effects both because of personality and circumstance. For example, one symbol on the screen showed a tire splashing, if pressed it would cause the piece to be thoroughly drenched by a vehicle slamming through the nearest puddle. That worked great if you needed them delayed temporarily and they were in a busy rainy city, but not so well if they were stranded in the desert. You could be waiting a while for that splash.

There was a mic symbol that allowed the watcher to speak directly to the subconscious but for that to be effective you really needed them to be in a quiet place, or daydreaming at least, the little voice was all too easily drowned out by they bustle they lived amongst. There was toilet symbol that made them desperate to use the washroom, great if you needed them to pick up the pace a bit. One symbol was displayed as the outline of a head with a question mark where the face should be. This would cause a loose acquaintance from the piece’s past to bump into them and engage them in persistent conversation, insistent that they should get coffee sometime. They’d feel familiar enough to the piece that they were certain they knew them, but they’d never quite be able to place them. It was one of Fred’s favorites and depending on how polite the person was could delay them for anywhere between five and forty-five minutes.

BEEP!! BEEP!! BEEP!!

Oh crap! He hadn’t been paying attention to his chart readings and the alarm indicating imminent high probability of catastrophe was now insisting on his attention. His heart rate jumped, and the previously tranquil blue ceiling had changed to a strobing red. He quickly scanned the screen and took in everything with wide eyes instantly.

Truck runs red light……..Driver looking at phone……55 seconds…..54 seconds…..53 seconds……

Shit! Shit! Shit! Every time the seconds ticked down a deep red figure showing a probability tracker ticked upwards. It currently read 96.2%. Fred pushed the cat symbol so hard he momentarily worried he was going to break the screen.

Amy could see her office building now. Her headphones were in and blaring early noughties pop. As a teen and into her early twenties she’d, not unusually, felt very eager to conform and fit in. It wasn’t like she’d been particularly susceptible to peer pressure or anything like that she’d just been a normal young woman with the normal insecurities. She’d dressed much the same was as her friends had, watched the same tv, and listened to same music. As she’d gotten older, she’d naturally grown into herself and less concerned about how she was perceived from the outside. Her musical taste was the one thing that remained frozen from her age of extreme conformity. She could not remember the last time she’d added a new song to her playlist of choice, but she never tired of it.

She was approaching the final crosswalk before the entrance to her building when a black cat staring at her caught her eye. It looked almost exactly like the one she had seen this morning just after she’d left the house which was weird. Normally she might stop to fuss over it, but she was going to be late if she did, so she didn’t break stride. As she went to cross the road, and still making eye contact with the black cat, she almost tripped over not one but two more cats! Two tabbies, clearly city strays but healthy in appearance pawed at her shoes like she had tuna in her socks.

Fred was out of his chair, holding the mic button down and shouting “Pet the cat Amy! Please, please, please pet the Cat!” All the while looking through the floor at her and willing her to stop walking.

Amy pursed her lips and looked at her watch. So what if she was a couple of minutes late right? Michael didn’t come in until almost ten last week and nobody said anything. Lorraine, her boss, was late every other day!

“You guys don’t care about being late do you” she asked the pair of tabbies playfully. As she spoke, she felt a woosh of air on her face as a truck sped past accompanied by a cacophony of horns and expletives.

Exhaling for what felt like the first time in a long time, Fred dropped back into his chair and put his hands over his face. The beeping had thankfully stopped, and the ceiling had returned to its normal state of serenity. He’d briefly seen his whole professional life flash before his eyes and was feeling that rare rush of elation that comes with dodging a close call. He probably shouldn’t have used cats considering they’d already been deployed that day, he mused in hindsight. He was willing to admit to himself that he’d panicked a bit under pressure, he’d have to get better at that.