The Feline Factor
Tensor looked into my eyes, and suddenly I was somewhere else... watching lives that had already happened, or perhaps were still waiting to.
This is the fourth story in the Tensor Krishnan Iyer series. Read The Monogamy Virus, The 713 Connection and The Protocol Provenance first.
At 7:13 PM, the newsreader said:
“Across several developed economies, an increasing number of people are consciously choosing to remain alone rather than enter relationships. Sociologists say this may become one of the defining demographic shifts of the century.”
The screen showed numbers.
Marriage rates.
Birth rates.
Single-person households.
Graphs are very good at hiding sadness.
Krishna was sitting on the sofa.
He watched.
I made tea.
When I returned, he was still looking at the television.
“Interesting?” I asked.
He looked at me.
Then something happened.
I don’t know how else to describe it.
The room disappeared.
Shanghai, China
Her name was Lin Mei.
Thirty-eight.
Successful.
Educated.
Her parents called her sheng nü (剩女).
Leftover woman.
She hated the word.
She hated it more because she had begun believing it.
Every Sunday her mother arranged meetings.
The men were usually younger-looking versions of her father.
Stable job.
Good family.
Good house.
Good intentions.
Lin Mei rejected them all.
Not because she didn’t want love.
Because she wanted to be loved without being evaluated.
One winter evening, she found a kitten under her car.
It was raining.
The kitten was soaked and furious.
She picked it up.
It scratched her.
She laughed for the first time that week.
She took it home.
The cat slept on her pillow that night.
The next morning it had disappeared.
She searched the apartment.
Kitchen.
Bathroom.
Balcony.
Nothing.
Then she found it sitting on her father’s chair.
Staring at her.
She named it Ming.
Months passed.
Her parents continued sending photographs of suitable men.
Lin Mei stopped replying.
One evening her mother called.
“你不感到孤單嗎？” (Nǐ bù gǎndào gūdān ma? -> Are you not lonely?)
Lin Mei looked at Ming.
The cat was sitting beside her.
She touched its head.
“不” (Bù -> No) she said.
Her voice broke.
It was the first time she had said it without pretending.
The image disappeared.
I was back on the sofa, sweating.
“Was that Chinese?”
It sounded like one.
“How did I understand the chinese conversation?”.
Too many questions in my mind.
Krishna was looking at me.
Before I could speak, another world opened.
Tokyo, Japan
A man named Hiroshi.
Forty-six.
He lived with his parents.
The neighbours called him a Hikikomori (ひっこもり).
His mother called him Oji-san (おじさん) when she was worried.
Somebody had once called him a Kodooji (こどおじ)… a middle-aged child who had never quite left home.
On paper, he was a NEET “Not in Education, Employment, or Training,”.
There were many names for him.
None of them was Hiroshi.
He made origami.
Not the kind tourists bought at souvenir shops.
He could fold a sheet of paper into a crane so delicate that its wings moved when someone breathed nearby.
For twenty-two years he had tried to make a living from it.
He had failed.
Women had not exactly rejected him.
They had simply never chosen him.
That hurt more.
His mother left a cup of tea outside his room every morning saying…
ヒロシさん、お茶をお持ちしました。(Hiroshi, Your tea is served) Hiroshisan, ocha o o-mochi shimashita.
His father pretended not to worry.
Hiroshi pretended not to notice.
One winter, he stopped leaving the house altogether.
Then a cat appeared outside his window.
Grey.
Every morning.
Same place.
Same hour.
Hiroshi opened the window.
The cat jumped in.
He made a paper crane.
The cat attacked it.
He made another.
The cat attacked that too.
Hiroshi laughed.
It was the first time in months.
Soon there were paper cranes everywhere.
On the floor.
On shelves.
On the windowsill.
The cat slept among them.
One morning Hiroshi made his best crane yet.
He placed it carefully beside the cat.
The cat looked at it.
Then pushed it off the table.
Hiroshi stared.
Then laughed.
“Critic,” he said.
The cat blinked.
He made another.
This one sold.
Then another.
Then another.
Not enough to become rich.
Enough to begin.
He celebrated his 49th birthday one morning.
The calendar said, “Year 2007”.
His mother noticed the change first.
His father noticed it later.
Hiroshi still lived at home.
Still made origami.
Still had no idea what to call his life.
But every morning, before touching the paper, he opened the window.
The cat was always there.
And perhaps that was all Hiroshi had wanted all those years.
Not success.
Not a wife.
Not even an escape.
Just someone who would come back the next morning.
The cat remained unimpressed.
That was important.
I realized I was back on my sofa, tired.
Dead tired.
I know they were speaking Japanese.
I remembered my Duolingo days learning Japanese and failing miserably.
Tensor Krishnan Iyer touched my shoulder.
I heard from Tensor, “I know you are tired”.
Sudden jerk.
Another world opened.
Montpelhièr, France
The third image came without warning.
France.
A laboratory.
Fluorescent lights.
A man sitting alone long after everyone else had gone home.
Dr. Julien Moreau.
Atomic physicist.
Forty-three.
A man who spent his life trying to understand things that could not be seen.
His partner had left him three years earlier.
Not because Julien didn’t love him.
Perhaps that was the problem.
He loved his work more often than he realised.
There was always another experiment.
Another paper.
Another deadline.
Another reactor simulation that could not wait until morning.
Love could.
At least, that was what he had believed.
The day his partner left, Julien was at the laboratory.
He returned home at 3:20 AM.
The apartment was silent.
Empty.
Except for a note, dated 8th December 2042.
And a cat.
The cat wasn’t his.
It had belonged to his partner.
Julien tried to give it away.
The cat refused to leave.
He tried again.
The cat returned.
Eventually Julien stopped trying.
Every evening, when he came home, the cat waited near the door.
Not excited.
Not affectionate.
Just present.
One night Julien sat on the floor.
He looked at the cat.
“J’ai tout gâché.” (I ruined everything.)
The cat said nothing.
Julien smiled bitterly.
“Je suis scientifique. Je devrais savoir comment réparer les choses.” (I’m a scientist. I should know how to fix things.)
Silence.
He looked towards the empty chair where his partner used to sit.
“Mais je ne sais même pas par où commencer.” (I don’t even know where to begin.)
His voice broke.
He lowered his head.
For a man who had spent twenty years working with atoms, particles and probabilities, grief was an absurdly unsolvable problem.
He whispered:
“Il me manque.” (I miss him.)
The cat walked over.
Sat beside him.
That was all.
Julien began to cry.
Not dramatically.
Not loudly.
The kind of crying that happens when there is nobody left to impress.
The cat stayed.
For the first time in three years, Julien wasn’t trying to calculate what had gone wrong.
He simply allowed himself to hurt.
The next morning, he went to work.
He solved a problem nobody else in the laboratory had been able to solve.
At six, he closed his laptop.
And went home.
The cat was waiting.
That became their arrangement.
No promises.
No explanations.
No expectations.
Just somebody being there.
And for a man who understood the behaviour of matter down to the smallest measurable detail,
that was the one thing he had never been able to quantify.
“Winters in Europe are too cold”
That was Tensor’s message, I realized I am back on my sofa.
Shivering.
“Did I just time travel? To the future?”
Before I find an answer, a new world in front of me.
Princeton, New Jersey
The fourth image hurt more.
A woman standing alone in an empty kitchen.
Dr. Ananya Rao, Professor of Gender Studies at Princeton University
Indian origin.
Lesbian.
LGBTQ Advocate.
Her wife had died in a road accident.
It was 30th April 2032.
Exactly two years earlier.
There were still two coffee cups in the cupboard.
She had never thrown them away.
People had told her to move on.
She hated that expression.
Move on to where?
She had tried dating again.
Once.
Then twice.
After that, she stopped.
Not because she had stopped loving.
Because she hadn’t stopped.
One evening, returning from campus, she saw a cat sitting outside her house.
Grey body.
White paws.
She opened the door.
The cat walked in as if it already knew the place.
It went straight to the kitchen.
Sat beneath the cupboard.
Ananya froze.
The two coffee cups were there.
Exactly where she had left them.
The cat looked at the cups.
Then at her.
Something inside Ananya broke.
She sat down on the kitchen floor.
For two years she had spoken to nobody about the things she remembered.
That evening, she spoke to her wife.
Not in her head.
Aloud.
She told her about Princeton.
About the students.
About the stupid faculty meetings.
About the coffee machine that had finally stopped working.
Then she told her she was angry.
Then she said she was sorry.
Then she cried.
The cat listened.
It did not move.
Twenty minutes.
The next evening, Ananya spoke again.
Then again.
Weeks passed.
One day she suddenly realised something.
She wasn’t talking to the dead anymore.
She was talking to the living.
To herself.
To the cat.
To the woman she had become.
That evening she took one of the two coffee cups out of the cupboard.
She washed it.
Made coffee.
Sat at the table.
The cat jumped onto the chair opposite her.
Ananya smiled.
For the first time in two years, she didn’t feel guilty for smiling.
She whispered,
“Thank you.”
The cat stretched.
Walked away.
And slept on her wife’s old chair.
Ananya watched it for a long time.
It wasn’t happiness.
Not yet.
But the grief had finally made room for something else.
Company.
The room returned.
The television was still on.
7:13 had become 7:17.
I looked at Krishna.
He was sitting exactly where he had been.
“What was that? Did I time travel?”
“Hiroshi, 2007”
“Dr. Moreau, 2042”
“Ananya Rao, 2034”
“Lin Mei, Felt like late 90s”
He blinked.
I knew better than to expect an answer in words.
Four people.
Four countries.
Four different time periods.
Four kinds of loneliness.
Four cats.
Different cats.
Different lives.
Same strange intervention.
I suddenly felt angry.
“Why?”
Krishna looked at me.
The communication came slowly this time.
Not a sentence.
A feeling.
A question.
If humans can build cities for millions of people and still leave one person completely alone, what exactly have they built?
I had no answer.
Krishna looked away.
Then another thought arrived.
Very clearly.
Companionship is not the same as ownership.
I remembered every time he had entered my house.
Every time he had left without explanation.
Every time I had wanted him to stay.
And suddenly I understood why he never stayed.
Perhaps cats had never been very interested in being pets.
Perhaps they were interested in being companions.
The television changed to another report.
Population decline.
Loneliness.
Marriage.
Birth rates.
Human beings discussing the future.
Krishna watched silently.
Then my computer screen lit up.
I hadn’t touched it.
A blank document appeared.
A cursor blinked.
Then words began appearing.
Slowly.
One letter at a time.
PROJECT: SOCIAL REPAIR
I stared.
Another line.
STATUS: COMPLETED
Then:
COMPANION NETWORK: GLOBAL
Then:
COMPLETED ON: 2nd OCT, 2015
I turned towards Krishna in shock.
He was looking at me.
I know Tensor Krishnan Iyer is not more than 5 years old.
There was something almost mischievous in his eyes.
The cursor blinked again.
A final sentence appeared.
PROJECT DIRECTOR: VECTOR SHANKARAN PILLAI (VSP)
then:
EXPERTISE: QUBIT COHERENCE ENGINEER
I looked at Krishna.
& asked him, DO YOU KNOW WHO IS VSP?
He didn’t blink.
The screen blinked.
Once.
Twice.
The question remained.
DO YOU KNOW WHO IS VSP?
And for the first time since I had known Tensor Krishnan Iyer,
I was afraid of knowing the answer.
I know I was teleported.
Not once.
Not twice.
Not thrice.
Four times.
Fatigue, fell asleep immediately.