While the cats were eating Harrold picked up all the torn bits of paper towels, washed the cat dishes, and rinsed out the empty cat-food cans. He spayed the inside of each can with bug spray to keep fruit-flies from breeding in them before dropping them into the recycle bin.
Next he went to the basement and scooped out the five cat litter-boxes. The resulting four pound plastic bag of poop and urine saturated litter he topped with baking soda, tied shut, and took outside to a big trash can. The trash can was already too full and heavy; he'd have a hell of a time muscling it out to the curb for the trash collectors.
Finally he was for the moment caught up with his cat chores and it wasn't even 7 AM! He could try to go back to sleep but from experience he knew that it was no use: he wouldn't be able to fall asleep again. He would simply be tired again all day. After a quick bowl of Cheerios he decided to continue going through boxes of miscellaneous items he had inherited from Emily.
He hated doing that; for two huge reasons. First, because it reminded him of his big sister Emily and her too-soon heart attacks and death at only seventy years old. Worse, it reminded him of going through his wife Annie's things five years ago, after she died horribly of cancer. He took early retirement after that, even though his pension was reduced. He didn't figure that he'd need a full pension anyway without Annie. Little did he know that he'd someday have a herd of cats as dependents.
All his cats were between three and six years old. He heard that cats typically lived for ten to twenty years. Really? The damn cats could all outlive him! That would probably happen, he figured, but probably not before some of them became sick enough for thousands of dollars in vet bills. He'd spend his last money and breath supporting the damn cats! It was something like having unruly kids that never grew up and didn't qualify as tax deductions. But he was stuck with them. He made that promise to Emily, and more important there was his implicit promise to the cats. They were his responsibility now, forever. And besides, he was getting used to the selfish little idiot bastards.
He carried a couple of Emily's boxes up from the basement to the living room where he could go through them in relative comfort while watching TV. Two or three cats followed his every move at all times, especially Harry, perhaps hoping that he would discover a box full of cat treats.
The first box held old china and ceramic knickknacks and unused birthday and holiday cards. Emily had amassed enough gift cards for another seventy years of life. He would gift all that stuff to a thrift shop. The second box contained a third box, and that box contained a shoebox with a strange note attached to it.
"Throw this box away without opening it or touching what’s in it," said the note, in Emily's neat handwriting. So he obviously had to open it.
Inside was something heavy wrapped in what seemed to be an entire roll of extra wide, extra heavy-duty aluminum foil. Inside that was a glowing solid translucent yellowish cylinder perhaps five inches in diameter and seven inches long. The yellow-tinged glow that escaped from its entire surface was as soft as that of a low-wattage night-light.
So far he had avoided touching the object directly. Emily must have had her reasons to write that warning note! He put on a pair of work gloves and picked up the object to examine it more closely. It was much heavier than expected, over ten pounds. The thing must be solid iron, or something of similar density! But iron wasn't translucent. He turned it over in his hands, examining it closely. It felt totally solid. There were no seams or screws, the surface of it was unbroken and perfect, and light seeped evenly through the yellow translucent material it was made of. What was it? A new kind of plastic or ceramic? It was too heavy for those, unless there was something heavier hidden deep inside, perhaps a core of lead?
But what powered the light? There were no openings for batteries! Could it be radioactive?
Well duh! That had to be it! This mysterious glowing object was a huge translucent radioactive mineral crystal, ground and polished into a perfect cylinder! Elaine was no dummy, she must have figured that out what it was. That’s why she wrote the note that said to not touch it and to simply throw it away!
Most likely though, the crystal was perfectly harmless. Harold had seen glowing crystals in museums, and they were never wrapped in protective foil or anything like that. He put the crystal up on the mantle over his wood-burning fireplace in the living room. It could perhaps usefully serve as a nightlight. Perhaps as soon as tomorrow he would take it someplace to have it identified and appraised. It had to be worth something, maybe as much as a hundred cans of cat food and a matching thirty-pound plastic bucket of cat litter. That would take care of the cats for almost a week!
No longer afraid of the object, he took off his gloves and touched it as it sat on the mantle. As expected it felt hard, smooth, and cool.
Instantly it blazed hundreds of times brighter! If he had been holding it, he probably would have dropped it! As it was, he backed away from it, terrified. The cats, only slightly startled by the sudden bright light but feeding on Harold’s fear, fled the room.
A kaleidoscope of flashing rainbow-colored lights appeared in front of the object for a few seconds then quickly faded away to reveal a little old man that wore a black suit and cape. "I am the genie of the lamp!" he declared theatrically.
"Lord of lights! What the hell is happening?" demanded Harold.
"You summoned me," said the man. He was thin and even shorter than Harold. He had long gray hair and beard. There were no fancy pointed shoes or colorful wizard clothes or clouds of multi-colored smoke. The old man looked nothing like any genie that Harold had seen depicted in books or movies.
"I did?"
"You rubbed the lamp!"
"I simply touched it!"
"That counts as a rub," said the man. "Who are you, by the way?"
"I'm Harold, brother of Emily until she died."
"Call me Genie. My time is extremely valuable, Harold, brother to Emily; what is your wish?"
"What wish?"
"Are you not familiar with human mythology with regard to genies? I hereby grant you one immediate wish plus one optional wish to be assessed in approximately two weeks."
"Not three wishes?"
"Never three. That's just a tall tale."
"Ok, but you're magic and I can ask you for anything I want?"
"You can ask anything that you are capable of expressing, but I of course have execution limitations. I tried to explain that to Emily, the previous holder of the lamp, but she reacted with anger."
"My sister made a wish that you couldn't grant?"
"I can't make sick people well," said Genie. "I can't even cure a common cold. It's a limitation. I can't physically change you in any way. So don't wish to be an athlete or to be good looking, for example. I get those sorts of wishes quite often and must refuse them, which is possibly fortunate for wishers as I have no sense of what good looking is for humans. And I can't bring the dead back to life either. That would be ghastly anyway."
"Can you make me rich?" asked Harold.
"Sure, probably, if you don't attach too many other conditions."
"Conditions?"
"The less conditions attached to your wish the better," said Genie. "Often to grant a wish some flexibility is required. If your wish is one sentence long and it isn't a run-on sentence, it's probably OK."
"I don't understand. I was never good at English."
"That's OK; your understanding is optional. You'll perhaps understand more later. Now what is your wish?"
OK, being rich would be nice, Harold reasoned. But if he lived in a huge mansion the cats would simply have more to destroy, which would probably bother him even more. His pension was adequate for now; and after he started collecting social security he’d be alright money-wise for sure! His biggest problem was stupid cats, not a lack of funds.
"I wish for intelligent cats that I can reason with," said Harold without further hesitation.
"That's a new one!" said Genie. "Pack a suitcase with the
lamp and your personal things in it and I'll be right back in a few minutes. Oh, and it would probably be wise to include some snacks." Genie instantly disappeared.
Over the next few minutes Harold hurriedly packed a suitcase. He re-wrapped the dully glowing crystal lamp in the aluminum foil and squeezed it in between his spare red flannel pajamas and his favorite pair of jeans. He included many chocolate candy bars and a few protein bars, though he was totally confused. Why did he have to pack anything? Was he going someplace?
Ten minutes after he had disappeared Genie reappeared. "Good news! I can grant your wish!" said the old man. "But it will take some doing, I'll tell you!"
"Can you tell me why I need a suitcase full of stuff? What has that to do with smarter cats?"
"You'll soon know," said Genie the genie.
With that, Harold, his suitcase, and Genie popped away, leaving cats that were startled for a very short time. Then they went back to sleeping, preening, and other cat behaviors.
****
Harold woke from a strange dream about a glowing lamp and a magic old man to find himself in a small grass hut lying upon a small pile of straw. And there was also a gibberish filing his mind; like a hundred voices speaking at once in foreign tongues, though there was no sound! What the hell?
"Woponum istro!" said the small brown-skinned naked middle-aged man that stood over him. "Quelipod smoon!" He seemed to be very excited about something.
"Who the hell are you?" Harold asked. "What is that gibberish you're speaking? And where the hell am I?"
"Quelipod smoon!" repeated the man anxiously.
"Harold," said Harold, pointing to himself. "Suitcase," he added, pointing to his nearby suitcase.
"Ghan," said the man, pointing to himself. "Suitcase," he added, as he picked up Harold's suitcase. He lay it upon a large thin woven straw mat in a corner of the hut, then folded the mat up around it, concealing it.
"OK," said Harold. "That will be OK, I guess. Ghan it is."
"QUELIPOD SMOON!" said a loud voice in Harold's head, a voice without sound, louder than the soundless background gibberish in his head but equally as unintelligible.
Ghan reached down to grasp Harold by the hand and pull him up to a standing position, then pull him insistently towards the open doorway. Harold took a step back towards his suitcase, but Ghan yanked him away from it and shook his head 'no' vigorously.
"OK, OK," Harold relented. "No suitcase then!" The little man to led him out the door into blindingly bright sunlight. There, only a dozen yards from him, stood a gigantic cat, easily more massive than an elephant! The creature reminded him very much of Flip and Cody: it was heavyset with rich orange stripes over a lighter orange background, with areas of nearly pure white around the mouth and nose. Except it was easily a thousand times bigger than either of the Brothers. Its hair, like that of the Brothers, has something between short and long with respect to the cat's proportions, which made it perhaps two feet long.
Its huge erect ears rotated to focus forward and its saucer-plate sized cat eyes shifted to stare directly at him. "OBLID AD OCUM SIG QUELIPOD SMOON," it seemed to say soundlessly. Then it turned its gaze up to the blue sky and roared a noise so loud and deep that the very earth seemed to tremble!
As the roar died away Harold sensed movement around him and finally took in the rest of his surroundings, even though the dino-sized cat remained a huge attention-getter. He was standing on a wide dirt road that in either direction as far as he could see was packed with hundreds of huts like the one he had just stepped out of. There were also hundreds of empty two-wheeled hand-cards, each designed to be moved by one person, much like Chinese rickshaws.
Roughly a dozen naked humans were massed in front of each hut. Most were men of all ages and teen-aged boys, but perhaps a third were women and girls of ages similar to that of their male counterparts. All had light-brown skin and head-hair and were thin and wiry looking; there was not a single over-weight person among them. All of them were shorter and smaller than Harold; he estimated that he was twice as big as the largest of them. Except for Ghan, none of these people payed much attention to Harold, instead they went nervously about their business.
There were additional gigantic cats also, one every couple of hundred yards or so along the road. Most of them sat passively watching the humans around them. They were of many different colors, some long and lanky, some short and chunky. Except for their enormous size, they all looked remarkably like normal domestic house cats.
He could see nothing beyond the cats, huts, and fields. No mountains, forests or buildings.
All of the humans were busily on the move: thousands of them up and down the road. Half walked steadily away from the huts towards a vast field of chest-tall green plants, the other half walked in the opposite direction towards a vast field empty of growth that stretched along the opposite side of the road. They did it strangely quietly and sullenly, as if they weren't particularly happy with what they were doing, but feared to speak or sing or even whistle.
Along the way many of the people were picking up various hand-tools that lay on the ground, Harold noticed. Harold didn't know much about farm work, but some of the tools looked vaguely familiar. The men and some of the women walking towards the green fields picked up long wood handled things with long metal blades attached to the ends of them. They were called scythes, Harold recalled, and were used to cut down crops for harvest. Many people moving towards the unpicked crops carried scythes with an obvious intent to harvest crops, while others pulled empty carts to apparently carry the harvest away. The people walking in the other direction mostly picked up what looked like variations of shovels, rakes, and hoes. Harold noted that the construction of the tools and carts was uniformly crude, as if everything had been hand-crafted. But somewhere beyond these fields there were apparently forests, iron mines, and places where tools were made.
All Harold's observations and deliberations had taken less than a minute, but now he suddenly realized that he stood alone on the road, facing a monstrous cat that sat staring steadily at him as though it expected something to happen. The cat's formerly impassive mood had changed in an alarming direction, he realized. Its eyes and ears were intensely focused on him alone, and its entire body had subtly shifted and tensed. Harold had seen this stance and mood in his own cats many times. The monstrous cat was getting ready to pounce on him, he realized!
He also became aware of a background noise; a deep rumbling sound that persisted for several seconds, then paused for several seconds before again resuming. The big cat was actually growling at him! That couldn't be good!
"Harold!" he heard.
Glancing about towards the sound of the voice he saw Ghan slowly and steadily moving towards the crop side of the road. The small brown man held two scythes. He reached out towards Harold with one of the tool handles, a look of terror on his face. "Quelipod smoon!" he repeated very quietly.
Harold bowed low towards the cat in a way that he hoped signified subservience, then walked steadily towards Ghan. Like Ghan he avoided looking back at the cat, fearing that to do so could trigger an attack. At any second he expected tons of orange cat to crush him and shred him to pieces or gulp him down, but he made it safely to Ghan and retrieved the scythe. It was little heavier than he thought it would be, but he would manage it somehow.
As he followed Ghan into the field he risked a look back at the cat. It was still staring at him, but voiced an ear-splitting snarl as it turned its attentions towards a man that had broken ranks with the others and was running across the open ground opposite the field of crops, obviously in an escape attempt. Perhaps the man was taking advantage of the orange cat's preoccupation with Harold.
With an ear-splitting roar the monstrous orange cat bounded towards the fleeing man with tremendous speed, easily overtaking the human in only a few monstrous leaps. It swiped a clawed paw at the helpless man, impelling him with meat-hook-sized claws. For a few seconds the great cat held high the screaming stri
cken man in plain sight of the thousands of now watching humans and cats along the road, obviously as an object lesson to detour further escape attempts. Then the cat brought the man to hang for a moment in front of its snarling face, before snapping the man's entire body into its monstrous jaws.
After a few chews the escaping man was gone, eaten alive by the monstrous cat! As the cat lifted its head and roared in triumph the humans that had witnessed the event returned to their work. Harold stood frozen in shock, but Ghan persistently pulled him towards the field and the work that was expected of him.
Harold's efforts with the scythe were awkward at first, but he soon caught on. The tool was crude but very sharp, and soon he was cutting down large quantities of the chest-tall wheat-like crop similar to what Ghan achieved. Towards the tip of each plant were masses of seeds/grain. Other workers carried away the cut crops using hand-carts, to destinations unknown.
After perhaps two hours of work Harold was already tiring fast. Fortunately the scythe was built for a smaller humanoid and likely relatively light, or he wouldn't have lasted even that long. He wasn't used to doing physical labor, and long past his prime. How long was the work-day here, he began to wonder? The sun was still slowly rising; it clearly wasn't yet mid-day. He slowed his work pace considerably, but picked it up a bit whenever he sensed that the big orange cat was nearby, likely watching him. It seemed to him that he could sense the orange cat's brooding malevolent thoughts whenever it was near.
It was getting hotter, and Harold was tempted to shed his tee-shirt and jeans, which were by now soaked with sweat. But in this sun he didn't dare, as without the protection of his clothing he would soon be burned to a crisp.
The big Orange Master Cat paced far up and down the road, observing the progress of the harvest. Occasionally he would roar his displeasure, causing humans to double their efforts. The other big cats lowered their heads whenever he approached them, signifying their subservience, then they batted heads and rubbed against each other briefly before the orange cat moved on.
Genie Page 2
