The two cats waited patiently as Sam got out his old cell phone and virtual keypad. The phone quickly projected a keyboard on the floor.


    “You ought to find this a lot easier to deal with.”


    The older cat nodded and began tapping on the virtual keyboard with her paws.


    “I TAUGHT HIM TO READ. HE CAN HANDLE THE REST.”


    “Wait, does he have a name?”


    “NOT YET. I’LL CHOOSE MINE. HE CAN CHOOSE HIS.”


    “Yeah, I guess so. Alright, I’ll have to help you do that too.”


    The older cat jumped out of the window and began scampering down the fire escape. Normal cats could be graceful in their own way, but watching intelligent ones was well beyond that. She moved with a speed and practiced certainty that could only make humans feel envy.


    “You seem familiar with this stuff,” he said, turning around to spot the kitten moving through the store pages with ease. “Did you have a nice caretaker before?”


    The kitten looked up at him with what he could only call a glare and slapped his leg.


    “Whoa! Alright, hold on there little buddy. Not so nice I take it? Well I’m not going to pry. Hey, wait. Don’t buy dye for humans, there’s pet dye.”


    “LOOK SUS.” The cat typed.


    “Hmm.” Sam considered. There were algorithms tracking everything. That didn’t mean the Rapturites had a direct way to look at them whenever they wanted.


    “BOUGHT IT.”


    “You know you should ask before you just buy things with someone else’s money, cat. Oh well. Let’s get you a name. Here.”


    Sam took the cell and looked up a page with baby names. Blues almost always took human names at some point.


    “Go ahead and look through there.”


    The kitten gave the blue lines a very serious look for a moment before beginning to tap away. He showed no hesitation at all as he deftly maneuvered around the basic web page.


    A sound chimed outside his window and he spotted the quadcopter delivery drone dropping off the hair dye. Fire escapes weren’t supposed to be used for package delivery, but elders flew the quadcopters, not AI, and elders were known to break the rules if you added a tip to the delivery, which the kitten apparently had.


    “How big of a tip did you give him?”


    “COST PLUS COST” The kitten typed into the notepad app.


    “Uuuugh, this is gonna wipe out so much of my savings.”


    As he looked back after taking his package he found that the kitten had disappeared. He began to look around frantically to find him.


    “Uh, cat? Are you in here?”


    No response.


    He started to look around the room. Nothing under his basic, hard as a board bed. Nothing in the closet.


    Then he noticed his door was open.


    “Shit! Did I forget to close the door?”


    He went out into the main room. His grandmother was still watching TV. He did his best to creep around without drawing her attention before hearing something in the kitchen.


    Trying hard not to scramble, he found the fridge open and the cat with a raw steak in its paws.


    “What the heck? Hey!” He whispered furiously.


    Not saying a word, the cat took one look at him before dashing off - or trying to at least. The steak was bigger than the kitten, and it furiously mrowled at him as it tried to scramble away.


    “I’m trying to help you! What are you doing stealing my food?”


    He reached out and tried to grab the steak, but the kitten wouldn’t release it. He held it in the air as it held on to the steak.


    “Sam?” He heard an old, shaky feminine voice call from behind him.


    Her motorized chair whirred as his grandmother sat looking at both of them.


    “Uh, grandma. I can explain-”


    “That’s one of those genetically engineered cats, isn’t it?”


    She sighed.


    “Well-”


    “You’re holding hair dye too.”


    “Uh…”


    “You’re feeding him the steak that was supposed to be for dinner tonight.”


    “Look, don’t tell anyone, please? He’s just a kitten!”The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    She moved with surprising swiftness for an old woman, grabbing the kitten by the scruff of his neck. The small cat went limp and she was able to take the steak away.


    “You can’t eat this, it’s still raw. I’ll cook it and Sam will shred it, so sit still for a bit.”


    The cat didn’t look happy with the removal of his prize, but he didn’t have much choice in the matter. She sat him on the floor. He huffed, and sat back licking himself and cleaning off the bit of juice on his face.


    “I won’t pretend I like what the corporations have done in making blues. But that doesn’t mean I completely agree with the church, either. I don’t know enough to judge.”


    “He’s as smart as a person! He can type! Look.”


    Sam ran back and got his cell phone.


    “Come on, introduce yourself.”


    “GIVE STEAK” He typed.


    “Not that!” Sam yelled.


    “Hmm. Looks like he’s got the mind of a toddler right now. You weren’t much different at that age. It’s surprising he can type though.”


    The motor of her wheelchair hummed as she went over to the counter and grabbed a cutting board and knife before cutting the steak into cubes with slow, deliberate motions. The device did more than just move her around, with servos attached to her arms stabilizing her movements and enhancing what little strength she had. She had no mind machine interface so it followed her movements the old fashioned way - by following her larger movements.


    “There’s a simple question the church forgot to ask. Does he have a soul?” She said as she cooked.


    “They’re as smart as a person. They might as well have one.”


    “Exactly. They might be a disaster in the long run, but the sin belongs to the people that made him, not him. I can’t answer the question, but I can treat him the way people are supposed to treat each other.”


    “I read the news today. The Rapturites think they’re all abominations. They’re going to start hunting them soon!”


    The kitten looked over, gave him an annoyed look, and slapped his leg. It did nothing but he gave it a look.


    “Hey, they’re the ones that said it, not me!”


    “I won’t pretend that he’s completely wrong. Smart cats can do a lot of damage to what’s left of the environment. The ecosystem is almost dead already. I’ve seen enough death over the years though, I don’t want to see more of it. If the world could end tomorrow, what difference does a few cats make? It helps that you''re a cute little guy, though.”


    She moved with surprising deftness for someone without much strength as she cooked the meat plain in an old carbon steel pan.


    “From what I can see this little boy is just that - a little boy in the body of a cat. He didn’t ask to be made, he didn’t ask to be hated. He just asked for a steak, didn’t he?”


    The kitten purred and rubbed against her feet.


    Sam huffed. “He didn’t ask. That was supposed to be my dinner!”


    She continued as she turned the meat. “You’re not going to die if you eat veggies for a night.”


    “If you can accept him, why can you accept the Rejuv?” Sam asked quietly.


    “I know it’s hard. I have little time left because I chose to live a natural lifespan. I know how angry you are and I know what you think of me. I don’t hate technology because it’s bad, but because I’ve lived a long life and seen people abuse it to hurt people. Like this cute boy here.”


    She reached down and scratched under his chin. The kitten purred loudly.


    “Your great-grandfather was someone you never got to know. So was your grandfather. Both of them worked to help people at first. After the war in Taiwan they worked together to make prosthetic implants and help the people that lost their limbs. They gave vitality and purpose back to people that lost their lives.”


    She took the finished meat out of the pan and put it on a plate before setting it on the floor. The kitten went after the thinly-sliced meat scraps with a fanatical hunger.


    “Both of them failed in their own way. Your grandfather didn’t have the morals he needed to have and people died because of him. Your great-grandfather thought technology would save us all and got burned up in a big fire at his company when he tried to push too far. In the end their work just helped people chop off their own body parts to try to make themselves better than other humans.”


    “Wait, we used to own a company?” Sam asked, startled.


    “Idaho Cybernetics. A family business. I was a big part of it.” She pulled back her hair and showed him a scar - the remnants of an implant, now removed.


    “Why didn’t you tell me?” Sam asked. “I had no idea that you used to be cybernetic.”


    “Because I wanted you to go down a better path than they did. That’s the same reason I haven’t let you have augments, even though I know it makes things hard and I know you want them. The money they made back then is what pays for this house today, but it’s almost gone. I decided to go down a different path. I tried to make up for the sins we caused. We’re not God, Sam, though god knows we keep trying to play his role. We’re meant to live, grow old, and die.”


    “But I don’t want you to die!” Sam said, his voice raw with grief.


    “I understand. If I went out and took the Rejuv pills like you want and got those new gene-messes, I’d live forever. I don’t blame you for wanting to. But that path ends with the same kind of monster that took your parents.”


    “I’m not going to become that bastard just because I get an aug!”


    “No, but many, many people will. They’ll use their power to lord over everyone else. They won’t give you a choice. They’ll force you to change and change until there’s nothing left of you. Just what they want you to be.”


    Sam looked down at the kitten who was already half done with the steak. He couldn’t figure out where it all went.


    “When I was a girl people believed in chopping themselves up to make themselves ‘better’. After a while they didn’t have much of a choice. Law and order broke down. Cyborgs had free reign of the streets and the law stopped working. The government could put down anyone that went too far, but the common person didn’t get that protection. Now people change their DNA to upgrade themselves. They become fleshy robots because they supposedly can''t be hacked by something better than they are at their own game. We might use that to defeat the Machine Emperor, but so what? We’ll just make another one out of flesh and blood. It won’t be you, but it’ll be someone. It’ll try to reshape you in its own image.”


    “Just like my parents.” Sam whispered.


    “That’s right. Just like them. I’m not saying you have to do what I do. Just find a better path. If you need augs to do it, then when you’re an adult get them. But I want you to make that choice as an adult with your own way of thinking and doing things, not something someone else made you do or convinced you to do as a child.” She said smartly. “Now for this hungry boy right here. Do you want to move in with us?”


    The kitten had finished its meal, flopped over on its side, and purred with an expression of supreme bliss.


    She picked him up and put him on her lap, stroking his fur.


    “I’ll take that as a yes. Did you give him a name?”


    “What? No. I was going to let him choose one.”


    “Sam, he’s a child,” She said, annoyed. “Would you want a name you chose when you were just a few years old?”


    “I guess not. One of the cats said that’s their tradition.”


    “Really? How old is she?”


    “Well she looks pretty young, so she can’t be older than ten…”


    “Exactly. A ten year old tradition? That’s not a tradition.”


    “So what now?”


    “Well, seeing as how he snuck in here and stole a whole steak from my fridge I’m going to name him for you. You’re a little troublemaker, aren’t you?” She asked.


    The cat tried to swipe a paw in the air, but the bloated kitten just flopped back down on her lap as she scratched under his chin.


    “You need a name that can belong to a normal cat.”


    “They like human names. They don’t like being treated like pets.”


    “Hmm. We’ll have to pick something that could work for both.” She pondered for a moment.


    “Loki. There was a character like that from the movies I watched as a kid. He was a trickster god. How about it?”


    The kitten rubbed its head against her and purred.


    “I knew a cat couldn’t resist being named after a god,” She chuckled.


    Sam smiled. Everything was turning out better than he expected.