By Elliott Fielding
Chel knew it was a risk, but after this latest declaration, she had to say something. At least she wouldn’t be foolish about it. She was at home, where she should be safe from the prying algorithms of her employer’s policy alignment monitor, and once she was face-verified into her social node, she switched on an encrypted pseudonym. Going anonymous caused a dip in her displayed integrity score, but she was still in the green.
Chel reread the president’s declaration to “defend economic prosperity against fraud,” stoking her rage. Whose economic prosperity? And what was fraudulent about feeding kids?
She tried out a few phrases for her post, her smart keyboard smoothing out the typos and making unwanted suggestions. “Selective starvation” got dinged as too inflammatory, but she left it in. Once she had the perfect enraged-but-logical tone, she clicked the button to post. But instead of her carefully chosen words, what appeared was:
>>> catscaredofcucumber.gif
What? That was a strange glitch. Laughing cat emojis had already appeared on the looping image she’d supposedly just posted. She typed her thoughts again, hit enter again:
>>> assholecatknocksoverglass.gif
As she stared at the screen, hands frozen over the keyboard, the asshole cat garnered madjoy and ROFL reacts. Was this some kind of cyberprank? There did seem to be more cats than usual in her Vibe feed, but people were still sharing their lunches and life hacks, so it wasn’t an all-cats-all-the-time virus. Chel tried writing the blandest thing she could think of:
>>> I got out and enjoyed the lovely weather today!
When this posted fine, Chel’s heart started racing. She tried switching from Vibe to Blue, where her complaints about the government turned into:
>>> fluffykitteninsmallbowl.jpg
Her hands were shaking now. Maybe in a private message? She sent, or tried to send, a single sentence about the food restrictions to Oona. Oona hearted the resulting cat meme. At least her DM asking if Oona could come over went through.
While Chel waited for Oona, she checked the newsstreams, but even the most critical were only vaguely referring to a new crackdown on dissent, no mention of a strange resurgence of outdated cat memes.
“What’s with all the cat GIFs today?” Oona asked when xe arrived.
Rather than answering, Chel beckoned Oona over to look at her display while she typed her rant for the fifth time. Oona gasped when xe read what Chel was writing, then they both watched as the words transformed into a cute kitten with a click of the send button.
“Wait, what?”
Chel demonstrated again.
“Chel, you’ve got to be careful! You know Juan got fired for what he said about the carbon policy in chat. And now he’s basically ostracized from the node with a redzoned integrity score. And that new exec order gives Policy Enforcement even more authority to restrict ‘inciteful speech.’”
She knew. She knew every day. It was lonely watching the world go crazy while everyone talked about life hacks and sunny days. She looked back at her display, where more cats pounced and blepped and made biscuits.
Oona asked, “Do you think all these cat memes are people complaining about the president?”
“Maybe.”
“Oh, I’m going to post too!” For a minute Chel thought Oona was going to hit enter on a diatribe, but instead xe selected nappingcatfallsoffcouch.gif to join the avalanche of cat memes:
>>> catslipsonice.gif
>>> angryeyedkitten.gif
>>> catwithfaceinshoe.jpg
>>> terrifyingtinfoiltable.gif
The memes filled her feed, new kittens pushing old ones off, her screen a dizzying series looping felines.
“Look at all these! It’s a revolution!” Oona exclaimed.
“I’m not so sure.”
“Oh wait. Did you DM me that cat meme?”
“No, I didn’t. I was trying to talk about the benefits cut.”
“Oh shit. This is scary.”
Chel tried to imagine all those GIFs were from people like her who had tried to speak up. But did it matter, if all anyone saw was cats being silly? As she shut down her display, she noticed one last meme:
>>> hanginthere.jpg
Chel couldn’t understand why this image was still so popular. All she saw was the terror in the dangling kitten’s eyes before it surely fell.
Elliott Fielding is a scientist in Colorado who lives with pets spanning four classes of the kingdom animalia, including four random cats and one very predictable snake. Plus a few important homo sapiens, too. Xyr nonfiction has appeared in ScribesMICRO, and xe is thrilled to have xyr first fiction publication with MoonPark Review.
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