The Feline Affair (An Incident Series Novelette) by Neve Maslakovic

Author:Neve Maslakovic
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: novelette, schrodingers cat, time travel mystery, short reads, free time travel story, prequel to series, time travel academia, time travel female protagonist

3

That night I dreamed of cats. A large number of them, too many to count—a living wave pressing against my legs as I approached STEWie’s basket in the dimly lit lab like a thief in the night. Black ones, gray ones, white ones, spotted ones, all hissing and meowing. I climbed onto the platform, steadying myself on the steel frame, aware of the mirrors towering around it. Why had I come? I wasn’t about to go into the past; I couldn’t—I didn’t have the training, didn’t know how to operate the equipment, didn’t have funding, didn’t have a research topic or a spot on the STEWie roster, and besides, I was needed in the present to find the fridge phantom…

I was now crouched on the platform, the lab around me lit only by the flickering of workstation lights and the reflections from the cats’ eyes. The platform base felt cool to my touch. The cats, below me, pushed against the sides of the platform, their eyes glowing with meaning, as if they wanted to make sure I went into the past to seek information on one of their own. Or was it the opposite, a warning for me not to go, that the past wasn’t a place for me? The cats pressed into the platform, a heaving mass of bodies, as if trying to either send it on its way or destroy it. The platform was now shaking under my feet, and so were the mirrors around it, oriented towards where I knew not. I tried to hold on, and then I was falling, but I couldn’t tell if I was falling onto the floor, about to smack my head against its tiles, or if I was falling into History, about to hit my head on the pavement of ages past—

I woke up with a start, sweat pouring down the back of my neck, my head throbbing.

I turned on the light and rose to get a drink of water. Quinn was on a fishing trip to which I wasn’t invited (but I wouldn’t have wanted to go anyway, truth be told—our marriage had already started falling apart by then), so he wasn’t in the house for me to disturb. The water felt refreshing, and it had the effect of refreshing my thoughts as well. Well, that was a silly dream. As if I would ever be allowed to tag along on a STEWie run.

I took something for the headache and went back to bed resolved to pay less attention to the bets floating around the TTE lab.

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