Brian Coad - Cat, Mouse

Illustration by Alan M. Clark

Three decades back, an Eastern girl who called herself Autumn Leaf, blew West. She crashed in a hippie pad with Mister Richguy.

Mister Richguy was good to her. She became his old lady. Together, they went into the pot business.

Soon they had beaucoup spare change.

Their phone bills were awful high. They invested spare change in college courses and learned how to build an electronic thing to route calls so they did not have to pay the phone company.

That was the, so to speak, embryo of the AI that later became the Ghost Cat.

Their business got too big to carry in their heads. They invested in computer courses and upgraded the AI. It developed into a Ghost Cat fetus, and soon had their business running smoothly. They got it into hacking.

Programmed by Autumn Leaf and Mister Richguy, the AI worked out ways to transfer, without getting caught, electronic cash floating around from banks and such, into their own account. This was safer than selling pot, which they quit doing. The AI became a Ghost Cat kitten.

Autumn Leaf and Mister Richguy learned all about financial networks and international finance. They programmed their AI to surf, or, more accurately, to prowl, the networks. Semi-autonomous, it was instructed to look for, say, a coming devaluation of the Polish zloty (or Paraguayan guarani), or, say, based on the price of tin, to anticipate a fall (rise) in the Bolivian stock market. It prowled with a big wad of electronic cash, which it could invest in such events, and make a profit. It was soon maturing into a full-grown Ghost Cat.

When Autumn Leaf and Mister Richguy owned several million dollars, they got bored. By then, all the business they did was legal and risk free, and the zest had gone out of it. Making money had become nothing more than a game of pushing counters around. They turned all that stuff over to the AI. The only constraint they put on it was to forbid it to do anything illegal except in a dire emergency.

The AI was now a full-grown Ghost Cat but for one thing: it had no body to download into when it was not working. It could not get out of its owners’ equipment, and cyberspace.

Long past hippie times, Autumn Leaf was still into feelings, growth, human potential, and such. With time to spare, she thought long and hard about their AI. She decided its growth would be stunted, it could never achieve its full potential, unless it had somewhere to get out of the nets, roam around freely, smell the roses, and sense the power of flowers.

She designed a cat’s body for the AI to download into, and persuaded Mister Richguy to help her build it. It had pure white fur. She programmed a lot of humanness into it.

She did not give it a name.

Autumn Leaf and Mister Richguy lived in a big house on a hill overlooking the ocean. Below was another house. A Mother Lady came to live there, with a dozen children. In its cat’s body, the AI observed their arrival. Cautiously it investigated them. When it had decided they were not dangerous, it decided to visit the Mother Lady.

In the side door of the Mother Lady’s house, there was a small flap cut, for cats to come and go. Her children were in the garden. The Al/cat crept up to the flap in the side door. It went inside, and searched for the Mother Lady.

It found her in the kitchen, peeling apples for a pie. Purring quietly, it went close and rubbed against her legs. She picked it up, stroked it. “Where you from, you beautiful puss?” she said. “I call you Ghost Cat, ’cos you suddenly appear out of nowhere.”

That was how he got his name. Once he had a name, he never thought of himself as “it” any more, only as “he.”

He could not tell the Mother Lady where he was from. He was not equipped for speech. She took him out to the garden and introduced him to the children. Soon, the pleasantest, most relaxing thing he ever did was to sit on her patio in the sunshine, watching the children at play.

The Mother Lady put a padded basket for him to sit in on the patio.

On a prowl of the nets, the Ghost Cat collected his month’s tax liability, a routine chore. That month he had done a lot of business. There was a great deal of money owed to the IRS.

He ran hard copy of the tax liability. Mister Richguy examined it. He usually had the same attitude to taxes as to other counters, but this time the amount due was so enormous, he became quite angry. “Your damn animal has screwed up,” he told Autumn Leaf, at the same launching a kick at the Ghost Cat.

Fortunately the Ghost Cat, who was plugged into the nets by paws, tail, nose, and ears, saw the kick coming, managed to release himself, and was on Autumn Leafs lap before it landed where he had been.

Autumn Leaf’s lap was safe but uncomfortable. Even so long after the Summer of Love, she was still into beads and macrame, which dug into him and abraded his fur.

Autumn Leaf chucked him under the chin. “What’s, like, the trouble?” she asked Mister Richguy.

“The damn cat’s in cahoots with the IRS to rob us blind,” said Mister Richguy.

“That’s not so, is it, puss?” She stroked the Ghost Cat. “Besides, it don’t matter anyway. Money’s only, like, counters.”

“Sure, sure,” said Mister Richguy, “but I still hate to see any more than has to be sent off to Washington to support politicians. Cat can’t do better, he’s in for reprogramming, or maybe getting his neck wrung.”

Autumn Leaf touched her lips to the Ghost Cat. “Maybe you better, like, stay out of the Old Man’s way for a while,” she said. She carried him to the front door, opened it, and put him outside.

Tail swishing, fur fluffed out, he trudged down the hill to the Mother Lady’s place.

He found the Mother Lady in her rocker on the patio, watching the children in the garden. She sensed his mood immediately. “You in some tantrum, you old Ghost Cat,” she said, the moment she saw him.

The Ghost Cat poked his tail straight up and strutted about the patio to show her how right she was.

“Easy, easy,” said the Mother Lady. “Why you not sit in you basket, watch the children? You feel better.”

The Ghost Cat flashed his eyes at the Mother Lady. In the background he could hear the children’s voices, shrill and silvery in the Sun-drenched air. She tapped on his basket and made the curious noises with which she sometimes invited his obedience. He eyed her again, then slowly climbed into the basket. “Who you mad at, anyway?” the Mother Lady asked.

If he could have spoken, he would have said the accursed tax man, the tax laws, and my Master in the house on the hill. As he could not speak, he had to be content with a growl.

The Mother Lady’s attention wandered away from him, down the garden to the children, beyond them, and out over the ocean. Out there, a great ship puffed towards the horizon.

The Ghost Cat felt ignored. He checked the children.

The Mother Lady’s children were waifs and strays. Whenever she ran across a waifed or strayed child, she brought it home. Just then, there were six boys and six girls.

At the bottom of the garden, where the early morning dew had converted freshly turned soil into thick mud, the boys—two each, white, black, and Asian—were studying its properties. The Ghost Cat, beginning to settle down, marveled at the way they studied the properties of things, and learned about them.

The girls, nearer him on the lawn, were playing ballerina. Music was provided by the Vietnamese girl, who owned a flute. The rest teetered and tottered on tiptoe around her. They giggled a lot.