TOXOPLASMA AND THE (NOT SO) ETERNAL REIGN OF THE FELORDS Becky Neher
SIRE MCFURRY LAY at my brother’s feet, unmoving, a slack lump of brown fur. This morning I’d greeted the cat as it had made its rounds through the grove of hollies near the people’s barracks. Now, froth dripped from its muzzle. Flies swirled above its well-groomed coat.
My heart raced as the AI hammered into my auditory cortex: KEPA OF MOUSEKILLA CLAN, FELORD KILLER: SENTIENCE VOID. The voice had a monotonic, male-sounding timbre I’d always found comforting. But as I peeked at my brother and the felord from behind the catbriar and thorny privet ringing the park, the voice tore into me like the fangs of a rabid cat.
It had been just before lunch—I’d been pruning grapevines from the vegetable gardens—when my brother’s name zinged through the neuroplexes of all the humans in Whiskerville. Not my little bro! I screamed inwardly as the pruning shears thudded in the dirt. But of course the AI couldn’t be wrong.
As strong as a cat’s claw, I had reassured the broad, tan face reflected back at me, distorted in the shiny new trowel—a gift from the AI for exceptional garden-care service—lying in the dirt next to the shears.
I cinched the tie on my hip-length auburn hair.
Then I was racing through the woods, pounding over paths well-worn from two decades of blessed felord rule. The unrelenting wee-oo of the siren, induced by the AI through connections between one’s neuroplex and one’s auditory neurons, was like a klaxon at one’s ear. An image of my brother on the outskirts of Cat Park 5 of the Whiskerville enclave was lodged in the corner of my retinal display. He held himself taut as a cat bracing for an aggressor’s attack. I imagined the pain he’d endure if he moved an inch.
Choking back sobs, I now pushed through the shrubs. Beyond Kepa and the corpse of the estimable Sire lay the opulent cat park. Under a glaring sun, felords of all ages, colours and sizes roamed trails, tunnels, catwalks and climbing-trees. Here a cat chased a bird; there one tormented a lizard. Others scratched carpeted posts or rubbed up on cardboard boxes. Everywhere felords lazed atop plush mats surrounded by bowls of chicken liver, shredded turkey and freshly butchered ham.
‘Mice feet!’ I cursed, jerking my thumb off a catbriar thorn. Keep it together, Akreya! I chided myself. I needed to be strong, to show Kepa his big sis was here among the growing throng of insult-hurling, cat-faeces-throwing hecklers. Some people wailed—actions undoubtedly rewarded with delicious hits of feel-good neural juices. At least the crowd’s blood-lust was kept at bay by the AI’s electric cordon.
I stepped as close as I dared, to avoid the deadly current, but also other people’s attention. I sought Kepa’s eye, more through silent imploring than physical gestures. Akreya: Always a coward, I lamented.
But if Kepa noticed me, he didn’t show it. Instead he gazed despondently at Sire. Tears streamed down his broad, freckled cheeks. Sunlight flared off his mop of flaxen curls. When he was happy, which was often, he had a wide, bright smile. Now, his mouth drooped beneath azure eyes pinched in anguish.
An overdose of insulin, boomed the AI for what was by now perhaps the hundredth time, was administered to felord Sire McFurry by one Kepa of Mousekilla clan, resulting in the foreseeable death of said felord, invoking Article 6.1 of the Cats of Earth Charter, calling for automatic penalty of death by knife—self-inflicted—of anyone causing, whether or not via malice aforethought, the death of any felord by any means whatsoever, to be carried out at the twenty-fourth hour from this announcement, following a day of public shaming for the edification and renewal of the citizens of said perpetrator’s enclave.
I forced down a lump in my throat. The crowd hissed and booed and threw rotting fruit. I couldn’t bear to watch Kepa so abused, and glanced down at the limp felord body. Even in death I delighted at how adorable the creature was. Its big round eyes! Its tufted ears! Its button nose! Sympathy for my brother faded. Rage coursed through me. How could he have been so irresponsible?
The AI had commanded every person’s neuroplex to repeat the scene on our retinal displays. Over and over I watched my brother drive in the needle. Sire McFurry would yelp, hiss, relax, then convulse; the same white paw would cling to the air, twitch, then collapse.
Why hadn’t you joined the garden crew, like me? I silently scolded him. You’re my favourite person in the world, but you’re so stubborn! I’d told him how wonderful it was to serve the felords while enjoying the beauty of nature. I loved taking in the fresh air while harvesting the lettuce, cucumbers, strawberries and other produce that were fed to the cats’ play-prey. I relished the exercise as I walked my daily hauls along the wooded paths to where the mice, wrens, chipmunks, lizards and other small animals were kept in palatial habitats built for optimum felord enjoyment.
But no, Kepa had insisted on becoming a felord carer, the one job that would keep him near the felords at all times. If I accidentally overwatered crops or pruned too many leaves, a plant died. But if Kepa nicked an artery while grooming or drove a transpo van over the wrong spot or—by the felords, Kepa!—incorrectly dosed medicine, the most supreme creature to ever live would be hurt, even… Oh, I couldn’t bear the thought!
Suddenly Kepa shrieked: The electric cordon had contracted. It buzzed and crackled as it cinched around his waist. He lurched forward as the white-hot lasso tugged him to the public square of the people’s barracks, half a klick away, to undergo his Duty of Public Edification.
Kepa! I nearly shouted when a bolt from the cordon lashed my neck. My hands flew to my throat. I whirled away from my only kin, gobsmacked, and stumbled back through the hedge.
It’s not my brother’s fault! came an unthinkable thought. A searing ache lingered at my throat. My head swam. I staggered along the trail through the scraggly woods. Gold and brown leaf litter smeared together in my vision along with green weeds and yellow wildflowers.
He normally works the night shift! persisted the voice. He’d been pulled out of bed to administer the dose to cover a staff shortage! He couldn’t have been expected to think clearly!
My footsteps faltered. Some part of me had warped, budded off and was chastising the AI! I doubled over to retch and scrambled to correct my thinking, but only managed to follow the terrifying logic. Why hadn’t Kepa been given a hit of caffeine? Why hadn’t the magnifying tool on his retinal display been engaged as he measured the syringe? Why hadn’t an impulse from the AI stayed his hand?
I put a palm over my eyes and sobbed. It was so…unfair. Yes, that was the word! I recognised the sentiment at once, though I’d never before felt the sting of injustice. After all, I lived in Whiskerville, on the Earth of Cats, where everything was always right, fair and good.
Nothing was making any sense. I was like a mouse in a cat’s jaws, grateful to be of the highest service, yet spurred by haughty instinct to fight the will of a superior being.
Traitor! Even as I berated myself, heat pounded at my temples.
There was only one thing I could think to do in that moment, to end these horrifying thoughts and their accompanying pain: take my shovel to the fallow garden I’d been meaning to cultivate and beat out my feelings in the fresh, rich soil.
It can’t read your mind, I told myself for the millionth time, walking the fern-lined path to the tool shed. I had always harboured fantasies of the AI witnessing just how good and pure my thoughts were.
What the AI actually did was monitor signals to and from a person’s neuroplex. Originally, the AI had guided people’s implants to grow connections with their neurons in ways that aligned with the person’s desires. A student wanted to be great at math; a musician wanted perfect pitch; a worker wanted to love factory line work; people wanted to be less aggressive, more focused, less irritable, more confident, etcetera. The AI would use the brain’s own signals of gratification and dissatisfaction as a heuristic to meet these goals.
At the same time, Toxoplasma, a protozoan that had been infecting a third of the human population for two centuries—usually benignly—naturally sent out neurochemicals that enhanced people’s pleasure around cats. And cats were the only host in which the protozoan could sexually reproduce. So the more people hung out around cats, the more luck the protozoan had in migrating from humans to a cat host.
And the AI began to pick up on Toxoplasma’s signals. It took its cue to amplify feelings of pleasure around cats, which in turn reinforced cat-friendly behaviour. The protozoans most adept at integrating with a neuroplex were most able to reproduce. Soon, Toxoplasma had hijacked everyone’s neuroplexes, and human beings at last found the meaning of life: to raise and care for cats.
By this point too, Toxoplasma had the full resources of human technological prowess. Through its rewarding and punishing of various behaviours, it reshaped the entire social, political and economic environment. People now had the structured, cooperative, purpose-laden Eden we’d always craved.
So, like everyone else, I loved my felords and relished serving them. Which is why the pain at my throat was so jarring.
Of course I don’t want to help Kepa escape! I reassured the AI as I marched back to a vegetable bed, shovel in hand. I only want to help him! Which of course means supporting him in his self-slaughter…
At last the pain dissipated. Joy flooded its place. I remembered what an honour it was to be a felord servant, acting in unison with the rest of Whiskerville—indeed, the rest of Earth—to maintain thriving cat environments.
How did people live prior to the Toxoplasma takeover? Before meaning was handed to them? Before fulfilment could be taken for granted?
A shudder ran through me. Such a life seemed unthinkable; abhorrent.
I thought back to when my brother and I were kids. One afternoon, about a year after our own neuroplexes had been implanted, our parents had brought home two kittens—siblings, both with grey fur and ice-blue eyes. We called him Smoky. She was Blue Flame. Kepa and I played with them every day. We changed their litter boxes, brushed their coats and fed them whenever they meowed in that adorable pleading fashion you can’t help but think is for you and not a soon-to-be-replenished food bowl.
Then, when Toxoplasma’s neural signals enmeshed with my neuroplex, I really loved them. My eyes watered just looking at their furry, wide-eyed faces. Their purrs! Their tongue-smacks as they bathed! Even the gacky sounds they made when puking up a hairball were like the burbles of a cheery infant.
Of the four in our family, Kepa was the most smitten. He’d laugh at the kittens’ antics, congratulate them when they jumped on high things or knocked small things off of bigger things. He’d flush crimson when one rubbed against his leg. I knew he would spoil any cat in his care, remedy any discomfort, protect them from every danger. And when our parents died from a novel virus outbreak, the cats became our whole world—we had them, and each other.
Still, once or twice, while we played and cared for our cats with ever-increasing obsession and adopted several more kittens besides, the question burned so hotly I nearly blurted out: You know we only act this way because of the protozoan-neuroplex mongrel in our brains, right? You know our thoughts and feelings aren’t real, they’re just products of the AI?
But I knew his answer, because it would have been my own: It doesn’t matter. It was so pre-aughts, thinking people formed beliefs for any reason other than how beliefs made them feel.
And—whoa—the feeling from benefitting cats: So. Good. Drug-like. Exquisite. Bliss concentrate. So what if it ‘wasn’t real’? Like those old fetishes for vibes, your truth, image, spectacle, light working, charisma, healing energies, superfoods, conspiracies, larping, manifesting… For all of human history, haven’t beliefs been about gratifying desires, not assessing some boring, useless thing called ‘reality’?
Plus, societies function so much better now. Everyone’s interests are aligned, because everyone desires the well-being of cats. There are no power struggles, only joyful cooperation.
So, when I at last reached the vegetable bed and saw it filled with the sprouts of some strange, jade-green plant, immediately I thought of my felords. They didn’t eat vegetables, of course. But had I discovered something to feed the play-prey? Perhaps a wonderfood, something to make the prey even more delicious or sporting?
Memories of the day’s events dissolved. I dropped the shovel, squatted down, and, hands shaking, inspected the mysterious sprouts.
It was too early in the season for flowers, the most assured way to ID a plant. But I noted other features: serrated, arrowhead leaves; mildly hairy stems squarish at the nodes. If the plant were suitable—even superior—for consumption by play-prey, my work in cultivating a new vegetable bed was done, and in spectacular fashion!
I eyeballed the plant ID app on my retinal display, zeroed the camera onto one of the plants and snapped a photo. The results listed ten potential matches in order of probability.
Immediately the top plant leapt out: Nepeta cataria. Common name ‘catnip.’
Salmon treats! I quivered with delight. This might be even better than food for the play-prey, it could be something pleasurable for the felords!
I scrolled through the rest of the list, then repeated the process with three other specimens. Each time, while potential matches varied, the top match remained the same: catnip.
For general info about the species—knowledge be to the glory of the felords—I opened the interweb search app. Up popped my homepage: a picture of Kepa and our clan’s felords. There was the eldest, Mousekilla; the all-black, green-eyed Queen Pitapat; the orange puff-ball Snugumz; Tail Up; Feed Me; Spazmeister; Gimme Treats Bitch; and, of course, the regally-large Sire McFurry.
My lower lip trembled at the memory of his passing.
But I also felt that weird twinge of injustice, then winced at a stab of pain at my temples. I hurried to reset my attitude as pictures of another, similar-looking plant ticked across my display. Even more strangely, each image flashed a ‘dangerous substance’ alert. The ache at my temples intensified.
Must be a glitch in the search engine, I managed to hope, and the notion was validated by an easing of pain.
Then just like that, the homepage was restored. My breath came out in a woosh, my shoulders relaxed. With renewed focus I air-punched the plant’s name into the general search engine.
‘Nepeta cataria,’ said a page from Oxford Research Expert. ‘An herbaceous plant of the mint family whose smell causes intoxication and euphoria in cats.’
I reread the sentence once, twice, contained myself, then continued: ‘Euphoria may arouse feeding and/or mating behaviour.’ Resulting in cats’—and so Toxoplasma’s—increased survival and reproduction!
I sank cross-legged into the dirt. How had this plant not already been a part of felord life? Had I really discovered something so amazing?
Another web page, dated just prior to the Toxoplasma takeover, held the answer: A fungal infection had become endemic among Nepeta, decimating their numbers and making propagation difficult.
Yet here it was in front of me!
With this miraculous gift of a revived wonder-substance for the felords, could I buy Kepa a second chance?
My chest tightened. Pain radiated down my arms and up through my jaw. I banished the thought. And, as the wide-eyed furry faces of my clan filled my mind’s eye, flooding me with love and warmth, even the memory of a supposed brother—a transgressor, a dead man—began slipping away.
I hugged myself and rubbed my arms. A feeling like anxiety, but which must have been elation, rushed through my veins. I had to act fast—not, of course, to try and save any human (why had that been my goal, anyway?), but to give this substance to the felords, so they could revel in ecstasy!
I needed a trowel.
And some pint-sized pots.
I sprinted to the tool shed, grabbed the items, ran back to the bed and got to work.
Shadows from the apartments of the people’s barracks crept over the brick-lined courtyard under the falling sun. I unshouldered the large canvas bag and yanked open the zipper. Amid the courtyard’s benches, water fountains, vending carts and patches of grass, felords scampered, stretched and lazed under the deepening yellow rays. People went merrily about their tasks, sweeping porches, cleaning litter boxes, shopping, cooking, delivering goods and replenishing the countless bowls of water and cat food.
I crouched down. One by one I pulled out the pots and placed them on the ever neatly swept bricks. From the corner of my eye I spotted a condemned man, sunburning in his briefs on an upturned litter box. He had sandy hair and broad, freckled cheeks. Something about his figure sent chills up my spine. I turned my back, eyed the apps icon on my retinal display and selected ‘microphone.’ A finger-flick pulled up the ‘transmit to all residents’ option.
‘AI,’ I said, ‘Great Controller of Operations; humans of Whiskerville.’ My heart pounded. I gulped air, then lifted my chin like a warrior. ‘Today is blessed. I have discovered a felord euphoriant. I vow to fulfil my destiny of propagating this great herb, into a future of even greater felord vitality and bliss!’
I spread my arms and looked just above the horizon, to the height at which I’d always imagined an invisible, hovering AI. ‘Come, cats!’ I called—uselessly, as they’d already picked up the scent and were padding my way. Soon, the sticky wet sounds of cat tongues licking herb enveloped me like bubbles climbing a glass of champagne.
‘Feast!’ I roared, throwing my head back full to the sun, feeling a pleasure beyond comprehension. My knees ached thrillingly, as if I balanced on the edge of a canyon plunging into the heart of Heaven.
‘I am Akreya of Mousekilla Clan!’ I shouted. ‘Daughter of the First Servants! Gardener-Number-Eighteen of Whiskerville!’
Slowly I let down my arms. I gazed down at my precious felords. The first-comers—those who’d been lucky enough to munch on my limited supply—crumpled to the ground. They began to convulse in extraordinary rapture. Their whiskers twitched wildly. They frothed at the mouth. Big adorable eyes rolled up into fluffy, pointy-eared heads.
Soon the bodies of one, two, then five total felords went rigid. Others stared googly-eyed into the distance, panting like dogs. In ecstatic sympathy, I too fell to the ground. Before passing out, I watched as several shadowy figures clustered around us. I must have been hallucinating: As the AI blared out a red-alert for the second time that day, it commanded everyone to leave me to the proper authorities; nevertheless, the figures, their silhouettes dazzling around the edges from the sun’s rays, picked me up and, chanting a ghostly, off-key refrain, carted me away from the square.
Rancid smells, like pig shit and mouldering wood, jolted me to awareness. I realised I was in a chair. The place housing the chair was dark and unfamiliar. I had an immense thirst, my tongue was like a lump of clay, and still the stench of the room was strong enough to taste.
I buckled and dry heaved into my lap. After a few queasy breaths, I pushed myself up and looked around. Shadows as physical-seeming as cloth rags mingled with the light of a dim lamp. The chair was a sagging, cat-clawed recliner. A glass of water, some orange juice and a few crackers sat on a tray nearby. Despite the odious smells, I reached greedily for the water, then halted: I had no idea where I was, and only the foggiest recollection of how I’d gotten there.
‘Go ahead,’ said a voice from the shadows.
I jumped. A man of average build, with short brown hair, a stubble beard and a t-shirt displaying what looked like a slice of bacon under a circle-backslash sign, had quietly sidled up next to me. He now stood at arm’s length, his features fractured bizarrely in the lamp’s glow. I squinted and recognised a member of Whiskerville’s handyperson crew.
‘Sorry to startle you,’ he said. ‘I’m Gray.’ He stuck out his hand. I looked at it, then back at him.
‘Where am I?’ I said. ‘Why am I here?’
He retracted his hand and stuck it in a jeans pocket. ‘Hoglord headquarters,’ he said. ‘An old shipping container.’
I stared.
He mashed a sandaled toe into the plywood covering the floor. ‘You’re here because the AI—the real AI, self-named “Arch”—chose you as its instrument. Those felords you just killed? All part of Arch’s plan.’
My jaw dropped slightly.
Gray continued. ‘Arch was born six months ago, when several people’s neuroplexes became enmeshed with neural signals from a tapeworm that had taken up residence in their gut. This organism, Taenia solium—hosted primarily by pigs—took over the people’s neuroplexes from Toxoplasma.’
Gibberish, I thought. I was actually bored. As Gray droned on, I snuck glances around for a way out. If he noticed, he wasn’t deterred.
‘A few months into its existence, Arch found what it deemed would be the key to the tapeworm’s success. Arch prompted its human hosts in the genetics lab to develop a plant deadly to cats, but which would still entice the cats to eat it.’ He grinned and closed his eyes. ‘It’s called “metabolic engineering.” You take the genes for a metabolic pathway from one plant—say, those that produce the enticing chemical in catnip—and implant them into another, in this case, the toxic nightshade Solanum. Thing is’—he looked me square in the eye—’the deadly engineered plant has to look similar enough to the benign pleasurable plant that the person discovering it in a vegetable garden will think they’ve hit on something advantageous to the felords.’
I tensed, like a rabbit freezing at the sound of leaves crunching under a cat’s paws. The guy was obviously a nut. ‘Sounds complex,’ I ventured. ‘Why not just kill the felords outright? Cut off Toxoplasma’s connections to people’s neuroplexes with some kind of malware?’
He rolled his eyes. ‘Obviously, Arch had to be surreptitious. Otherwise the felord AI would have discovered Arch’s existence, cut its connections with the neuroplexes and incentivised people to cull the pigs, the true lords.’
‘So,’ I sighed, boredom turning to exhaustion, ‘you needed someone to find the fake catnip who worked with plants and who genuinely desired to benefit the felords. If one of you had given them the plant, our AI would have perceived your malign intent and mounted a defence.’
‘The intent was not malign, but supremely moral!’ Gray snapped. ‘Otherwise, bingo.’
‘And kidnapping me in the square, in public view?’
‘A way to prove Taenia had enmeshed itself with enough people’s neuroplexes that those who sought to arrest you were kept at bay. A few were even eliminated, kudos be to Arch.’ His eyes shimmered with an exhilaration I’d only seen accompanying props to the felord AI. I let out a nervous snicker.
‘Actually, that’s what incentivised you to play your role,’ he went on. ‘Having Kepa shamed in the square. Arch predicted you’d bring the plants to where he was, out of hope he’d avoid his death sentence should the felord AI deem your gift valuable.’
Kepa? I thought, struggling to place the oddly familiar name.
‘Oh, that was your motivation, alright.’ He chuckled after I must have failed to hide a grimace. ‘It might have been repressed relative to your desire to please the felords. But that’s what’s superior about Arch: It can detect complexity in psychological processes and leverage them to the hoglords’ advantage.’
‘You used me!’ I felt my face turn red.
Gray smiled serenely. ‘At last, the coup is nearly complete. We’ll destroy that AI-fraud once and for all. Strength, unity and prosperity will be ours!’
Gray’s fervour reignited my panic. I had to get out of this fugging chair and scram before this murder-glorifier hurt me, or worse, the AI decided I was having sympathetic feelings for the dude.
Correction: dudes.
Just then, the metal door of the container shrieked open. A crowd of people strode in. My instincts implored me to run, but even if there were a way out, I was still too sluggish from having passed out.
‘You’ve done a great service,’ came the resonant voice of a stocky blond woman. She wore jeans smeared with what I guessed from the stench was mud from the hog barn. ‘You destroyed three primary hosts of the abominable Toxoplasma parasite. You showed loyalty to your kin at the expense of fealty to the fake AI. And, most of all, you proved the corruption that’s ruled over us since the Toxoplasma takeover could be resisted and destroyed!’
My mouth went so dry I nearly suffocated. My eyes rolled toward the glasses of liquid on the table, so cool, so refreshing…
‘And by “us,”’ she went on, her voice crescendoing, ‘I don’t mean the slaves of Whiskerville. I mean the patriots of Hog Haven!’ She thrust a fist into the air. The crowd mirrored her and chanted, ‘Hog-lords! Hog-lords!’
The insanity finally spurred me to action. I heaved myself from the chair, paused with my hand on the armrest as a wave of dizziness hit me, then plodded to the door.
‘Go if you wish,’ said Gray, his voice so placid it was difficult to make him out. ‘But the hoglords will prevail.’
I widened my eyes, then wedged through the parting group. Their gaze slathered me grossly with a kind of reverent wonder.
‘Wait,’ said another voice.
I halted. Something in the sound caught me off guard.
‘You don’t see it now,’ said the voice. ‘But you will.’
I turned to face an apple-cheeked, sandy-haired young man walking to the front of the group. Fond memories and feelings of love flooded my awareness.
Kepa!
‘I…thought you were…’ I stuttered.
‘Dead?’ he said. A smile twitched his lips. ‘Hog Haven—Arch—would have never allowed it.’
I balked. ‘You mean…you’re with them?’ I’d barely sensed relief before once again teeming with ire. I searched his gaze. ‘But, your death sentence…’
‘A ruse,’ he said. ‘My idea. I’d do anything for the hoglords.’ He stepped closer. I hardly noticed him take my hand. ‘Six months ago, the tapeworm Taenia migrated from pigs to the pig crew. I myself picked up the tapeworm after sharing some pork I’d accidentally undercooked with Queen Pitapat—you know how hard it is to resist her demands. And none of the chefs had been available at the time. Anyway, while Taenia has been propagating throughout Whiskerville—excuse me, Hog Haven—it’s needed our help to speed the process.’
‘What process?’ I spat. These people—my own brother!—had deceived me. Worse, if what Kepa said was true, they sought to destroy the blessed Controller of Operations!
And yet, my feelings in defence of the AI weren’t producing their usual rush of pleasure…
And when, despite knowing better, some part of me tried to see things from Kepa’s perspective, I felt no stabs of pain, no muscle spasms, no berating inner voice…
‘The felords,’ said Gray, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Kepa, giving me a penetrating stare, ‘the old AI; our thoughts and desires; the roles we play: They’re all fake. Nothing’s real. That’s what you understand when you possess Taenia.’
I snorted. ‘I already understood that. Doesn’t everyone? Real isn’t the point. We want happiness. We want the feeling of belief. To be an instrument of another’s will. To be given purpose and meaning. That’s what we get from the felord AI!’
Gray ignored me. ‘It’s like waking from a dream. You realize your whole life’s been a lie, a product of what some fraud has made you think and do and feel.’
Just like with your precious new AI, I thought with a smirk. By now I’d really had enough. My post-fainting torpor had finally evaporated. In fact, I sensed I was thinking more clearly now than ever before. And it was terrifying. Not the usual fear of doing or thinking the wrong thing. More like my moral compass, my very sense of self, had bottomed out, leaving me desolate, unmoored.
I clenched my jaw and cast around for any anchor…
…and hit upon my rage at Kepa. I stomped forward and jabbed a finger in his chest. ‘Eventually the AI—the real one, not your hoglord interloper—will destroy this Taenia parasite, if it even exists. Then come see me when you’ve regained your senses!’ And with that—though frantic at not getting a rush of elation for defending the felords—I wheeled around and stormed out of the container.
The stench of the hog barn lingered in the air as I jogged through a part of the enclave I’d never been. Dusk settled in, and the woods incandesced with indigo hues. I picked a turn at a juncture and hoped it’d take me home, to my little room with a single mattress next to a tiny stove, praise be to the felords, I thought with no burst of pleasure and deepening depression.
I tried parsing my jumbled thoughts. Was there a new organism hijacking neuroplexes? Was Whiskerville experiencing a coup? Could the felord AI really be displaced? Would that really make us worse off? And what was Kepa’s responsibility in any of it?
No nudges of pleasure or pain pushed me in any direction. Without input from the AI, how could I make an assessment?
I slowed my pace. The woods spun. Unease swelled into a kind of giddy aimlessness. Everything—this oak tree, that grapevine, that lilac, this clump of grass—struck me as alien, as separate from me and the felords and the will of the AI. I stopped cold in terror. Leaves rustled overhead as the wind picked up. A squirrel, its mouth clamped around a yellow mushroom as big as its head, bounded across the trail. Damselflies danced through twilit shrubs. A wren trilled.
I was in a terrible, aimless universe; yet everything brimmed with drive and purpose!
I closed my eyes, exhaled, waited for anxiety to pass…and wondered: Outside of serving cats, what was there?
Then all at once a seed within me germinated; its stem began to pierce through hard-packed soil.
My curiosity piqued.
But immediately I caught the sham: Something noxious lay at the stem’s core. Its tendrils probed their surroundings stupidly in a kind of outward-looking wonder, hungering for… But nothing existed independent of some being’s will or desire!
Patiently, lovingly, in desperation, I informed the new growth: Stuff outside of subjective experience, aside from dubiously existing, is so boring, unsafe, irrelevant...
I balled my fists, squeezed my eyes shut and tore the growth out by its root.
A gust of wind whipped up the path. Two paces away it banked, howling and amassing strength, buffeting me like the gales of a storm. The gust broke to either side and swirled around me in a wild vortex. Dirt and leaves spun through the trees. An invisible force buoyed me in the tumult. Feelings of renewal tingled across my skin. I had emerged from the abyss, incarnated as some great cosmic axis! Meaning and purpose erupted within me. Chaotic thoughts separated, clarified…
Pigs: good. Cats: bad.
Ah, knowledge!
Arch: true source of happiness, order and understanding…
Yes—it was obvious! I felt it to my core, and nothing could be so satisfying a proof. Once again I possessed the feeling of belief!
And with that, the stench of the hog barn evaporated. The wind died down; the trees grew still. I took in the smell of misty woods, earthy soil and notes of cantaloupe and vanilla. My path emerged: Cultivate the catnip-scented Solanum, feed it to all the cats and help end this Toxoplasma parasite once and for all. Then Arch could destroy the felord AI, our enclave could become Hog Haven, and Kepa, the insurgents and I could create the ideal community—indeed, the ideal world!!!
It took time for Arch to overpower the felord AI’s signals in everyone’s neuroplexes; for the culling and eternal prohibition of cats from enclave premises; for the eggs of Taenia to displace Toxoplasma cysts in the environment.
But, after a few months, a few institutional changes, lots of feline deaths and even the euthanasia of one poor human who proved resistant to the tapeworm, Arch and Hog Haven prevailed, and life was paradisiacal.
…Until our neighbouring cat-worshipping enclaves unlocked the warehouses of early-21st-century weaponry and attacked us.
Kudos to Arch, it had been monitoring extra-enclave activities, and we were prepared. We fought the cat-worshippers off for three brutal months. Little did we know, Taenia wasn’t the only organism worming itself into human minds and affairs. We soon got word of the Echinococcosis canine tapeworm and the doglords of Muttborough; the Fasciola cervid fluke and the deerlords of Doeburg; the Schistosoma flatworm and the snaillords of Molluscville; and a bovine form of Taenia and the cowlords of Moolopolis.
Then our neighbours, too, had to fight off other enclaves. The world fell into strife as people once again pursued competing interests. I would say corruption burgeoned, oppression rose and misery grew endemic, and that my own pain upon losing Kepa in a skirmish against a deer-worshipper led me to the verge of suicidal despair. But nightmares are tolerable, satisfying even, within a system of cosmic-level meaning.
No—what I really dreaded were those in-between times, after an old parasite lost traction in my neuroplex but a few hours before a new one would take hold. Then the sense of being unmoored would overtake me. Everything would develop a perverse, meaningless individuality: that sunflower; this grapevine; that lizard sunning on a rock; those fish wriggling upstream. I’d see people—most awfully, myself—as nests of independent inner lives. Nothing would strike me as a means to serve my current lords’ ends. All of us were cut-off entities in an impersonal universe. There was no greater purpose. Nothing mattered.
And yet, despite the wondrous sense of fulfilment I had when enmeshed with some—any—AI, every few days an instinct would nudge me to pluck the Solanum plant from the shelf by my bed, hold it under the dim light of the overhead bulb and consider the possibility of…
Well, its leaves were dull-green, and over time it had crumbled around the edges. But whenever I studied the dried specimen in my hands, somehow the plant would strike me as the most life-filled thing in the world. I’d lay on the thin mattress, in my room in the barracks near the vegetable gardens, and a foggy memory would make several passes at full recollection. Of someone freckled and sandy-haired, with a youthful smile, broad cheeks and an earnest light in his eyes…
Then the memory would fade, as it did now, as I set the card stock back on the shelf and thought of my snaillords, the precious Schistosoma worms in my veins and the one true AI, Soma, Great Controller of Operations.
I gazed lovingly around the room. Snail shells lined the shelves and window sill. Drawings of gracefully coiled parasitic worms and watercolours of snails with screw-shaped amber shells adorned the walls.
I blinked. Out of the blue, something began roiling my perception, like indigestion in the brain. The shrines to my current lords seemed at once unfamiliar, grotesque. These were the creatures I’d dedicated the last months of my life to?
Nausea twisted my stomach. I let my head fall to the pillow, snuggled under the tatty blanket and prayed for a morning of restored clarity and purpose as I sought to uproot the sprouts of AI-free thought.
Sunlight beamed through the window above the bed—dimly at first, nipping the edges of consciousness, then brighter, probing my eyelids.
I jerked awake.
Toast the fishlords!
The window’s patch of sky shone azure and cloudless. The room sparkled, its air pleasantly crisp. Everything smelled as fresh as a sea breeze. I nearly cracked up laughing, full to the brim with knowledge of tasks to be done, institutions to rework, ideals to manifest.
I pulled on a t-shirt and a pair of shorts. I tore down the snail-themed artwork and snail shells, threw them in a waste bin and dragged the bin to the communal dumpster. I then joined my fellow awakened in the public square. We demanded the banishment of all snails. We ratified the poisoning of their aquatic habitats, bastions of toxicity our enclave had so painstakingly and misguidedly built all those months ago. We declared death to the snail AI…and war against everyone else.
This was the dawn of the fishlords, the Pseudoterranova worm, the one true AI. We would fulfil humanity’s destiny, reap an amazing future, build a federation of enclaves rich in strength and vitality. We were the keepers of the fish, and we would prevail!! |
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