Genosimulation (A Teen & Young Adult Science Fiction): A Young Adult Science Fiction Thriller Read Online Free PDF

Feral cats had been his friends. He loved to rub against them,
stroking all the way along, feeling the tail disappearing under his fingers,
only to feel a little head popped up again by his wrist, with pat-demands. He
stroked again and again.
    He waited, waited to see. When would someone, anybody,
notice that the little prodigy didn’t appear in classes, didn’t come home on
time.
    The experiment failed.
    The father left, leaving emptiness in everything. The house
which once bustled with life, had gone quiet. There was no one to push the
prodigy onwards.
    "If not my father, who will pull for me?" he
muttered to himself, and went back to pet the cats gathered around him, hiding
under the grocery store's stairs. Stroked again and again, repeat and
comforted.
    Occasionally the grocery owner went outside wearing a wig
and armed with a wicker broom, banishing the cats in strange sounds:
"Kishta, kishta, shunra!" But it didn’t last long. His friends were
rushing back and grouping around him, and in his heart he was laughing at the
woman, her heavy flesh and breath. Kishta kishta, Lilith.
    Not everything was successful in this new lifestyle. The
food issue, for example, was somewhat problematic. But Bnei Brak, the poorest
city in the country, took care of its poor better than any other city. A few
eyebrows were raised when Zomy approached, for the first time, the soup
kitchen. After all, a boy his age! But the fourth time it happened, he became
part of the scenery, gratefully accept the hot soup, the mashed potatoes, and
sometimes the chicken or small charitable gift or another.
    After dinner, he would continue to explore his small kingdom
on the streets, here looking at the ports, there enjoying the sun jittering in a
muddy puddle. Thoughts, buzzing so in previous months, slowly quieted in the
din of the street. For a few moments, he could have sworn it, he was touched by
happiness, a little touch of gold.
    And so little Zomy felt, in that bitter morning. His pocket
was full of chicken scraps, saved from the soup kitchen and well wrapped in a
plastic bag, which he kept for his cats. They would dearly love to taste them,
he knew. His cat kingdom, which began with three adult cats, had become a
mini-empire of several dozen velvety fans, waiting for him, regularly, in their
hiding place under the stairs grocery store.
    Always at the same afternoon hour, he knew, his hideout was
filled with small paws, eagerly awaiting his pocket findings. And every time he
had a new, surprising surprise for them. Meow, this time he had a fine dish for
them, the result of the generosity of the lady cook: chicken necks! Booty for
which there was no demand, except by cats. Meow, he rushed to his kingdom.
    Intimidating, eerie silence, greeted him. In fact, it was
not silence. He could hear in the dark, dragging noises and vomiting.
Scratching on exposed concrete, the sound of wheezing.
    With a feeling of mounting horror, he pulled out a box of
matches, holding one of the few remaining, and lit it.
    On the ground, hiding under the stairs in the depths of the
grocery store, lay his subjects, whimsical, white foam dripping from their
mouths. Their eyes were wide, some dead, some still rolling agony. He held the
match, seeing all over the kingdom, witnessing the extent of the killing, the
destruction. All the cats were there, he knew. The mothers he first met months
ago, to the last offspring whom yesterday he held in his hand and gently
cleaned inflammation from their eyes.
    The match burned his fingers, fell from his hand and was
silenced on the sandy ground.
    Zomy stifled a scream.
    There were footsteps on the stairs, slight shaking of the
sloping concrete roof over his head.
    "Do you think we should call the city services?"
    "Not yet, let the substance work. Call them this
afternoon."
    "They won’t stink?"
    "Don’t worry, the days are cold now. Call the city
services in a few hours, it’ll work out. Cats don’t come back."
    The stairs trembled