Dream Factory

A novelette by Greg Egan:

“Any pets?” Justine asked, glancing up from the checklist on her phone.

“No,” James replied, hopeful that this might count in his favor, though it was hard to read his interrogator’s demeanor. She’d said she was a law student, and he could already imagine her in a courtroom, calmly trapping duplicitous witnesses in the web of their own lies. Her two current housemates, both philosophy majors, were sitting on the couch beside her, but whatever they were doing on their own phones seemed entirely unrelated to the interview.

“Any allergies?” Justine continued.

“Umm, only pollen. As far as I know.”

“I meant allergies to pets,” Justine explained. “We have a cat, Pawpaw. Though if you have any serious food allergies, that would be good to know, too.”

James said, “We had a cat when I was a kid. I’m definitely not allergic to cats. Or peanuts.”

“Can you pay two weeks’ rent in advance, plus one more for the security deposit?”

“Yes.”

At the mention of rent, Ferouz and Lisa looked up. They exchanged glances with Justine; none of them seemed to need spoken language to confer.

Justine said, “Welcome to number 37.”

“Thank you.” James transferred the money, and when the real estate agent’s computer responded with a receipt acknowledging that his name had been added to the lease, he felt the tension in his shoulders ebbing away. He’d only had three more days left to find a new place.

As the interview panel rose to their feet, a small black-and-white cat padded into the room, tail high, mewing. Lisa crouched down and stroked its head, and it immediately began purring loudly and pressing back against her fingers.

“Wow, he’s affectionate,” James observed. “Or she?”

“He, but he’s neutered,” Ferouz replied.

“You should introduce yourself,” Lisa suggested. When she stepped away, the cat turned around and stared up at her pleadingly, so James quickly squatted down and took her place. Pawpaw responded as enthusiastically as he had to the more familiar human, rubbing his skull against James’ knuckles as if nothing could be more satisfying.

James couldn’t help smiling, but then he realized that the odd changes in texture he’d noticed were not tangled bits of fur, but small lumps beneath the skin. “Has he got ticks or something? On his head?” Maybe all this rubbing was about trying to dislodge the parasites or at least deal with the itch.

Lisa laughed. “No, that’s the interface.”

“I’m sorry?”

She gestured with her hands spread above her skull. “The Bluetooth antennas for the electrodes.”

“You put electrodes in your cat’s brain?”

“Noemi had them installed,” Ferouz interjected. “Pawpaw was hers. But then she had to leave the country, and she couldn’t take him with her.”

“Okay.” James didn’t want to assume it would be safe to bad-mouth the housemate he was replacing; they might have all adored her and entirely approved of her decision.

“She only did it so he wouldn’t attack the native wildlife,” Lisa said, taking over stroking duty. “It would be cruel to keep him locked up inside; the software stops him catching birds when he goes out.”

“Wouldn’t a bell on his collar do the same?”

“The studies show that this is four times more effective. And it doesn’t bother him at all. I mean, does he look miserable to you?”

“No,” James admitted. The cat was purring madly. But was that a genuine response to the company of the housemates, or just the software in his collar dictating how he felt?

The whole thing made him queasy, but what was he supposed to do? Make plans to spirit Pawpaw away to a deprogramming facility? Give up his place here and spend the next month trying to claw his money back, so he could feel virtuous while changing nothing?

There were a million worse things happening every day, and the cat wasn’t suffering in any ordinary sense of the word. Lecturing these people about a situation they hadn’t even chosen themselves would just make him seem obnoxious and set him up for a miserable tenancy until they managed to eject him.

“Can I move in today?” he asked.

Read More: Clarkesworld Magazine