Excerpt: Kitty Kitty Bang Bang

The lab cats wanted to play with the housecats again. Zep tried to slip through my ankles when I opened the clean seal door, but his rotund body couldn't squeeze past quickly enough. I nudged him back with my bootie and shut the door. The console lock clicked from red skull to a green happy face.

“Conrad,” I called. “The cats are trying to get out again.”

I bent to scratch behind Zep's ear. He batted my hand to show his displeasure and stalked away, tail plumed in the air. Stash's smaller and leaner form scampered behind him.

Conrad came around the corner, stripping off his non-latex powderless surgical gloves. Judging from the shadows under his eyes he hadn't come to bed after I fell asleep and left before I awoke. He hadn't come to bed at all. “I thought you scaled down their curiosity functions last week?” he said.

“I did.” I took a step forward and gave him a kiss. “Their play centers probably developed to take over the missing programs. The problem isn't an isolated function, it's the basic algorithm. I designed their brains to behave like cats, and they find a way to despite my modifications.” I poked Conrad's nose. “It's actually kind of encouraging.”

He frowned at me in that way he has that makes me want to smooth the wrinkles out of his forehead and then have sex with him on a lab table. “So we're looking at a fundamental rewrite.”

“I'd have to redesign the code from the ground up.”

Conrad rubbed his bristly chin, then smiled at me. “Or we could just let them be cats.”

I smiled back. “That was the whole idea. Stop leaving me alone at night. How's the work coming?”

He opened his mouth to reply when an explosion rocked the hallway. Conrad threw himself onto me and I hit the ground on my back. My breath left me with a painful whoosh. A plume of smoke drifted across the ceiling.

I let my head loll to the side. Lying on the floor, inches from my face, was the right rear paw of a cat, covered in glossy black fur and sprouting wires that sparked and smoked. Oil leaked onto the linoleum like blood.

One of the lab cats had exploded.