The Circle of Happiness

THE CIRCLE OF HAPPINESS

Matthew Philip

(Author’s note: formatting was lost upon pasting over from word and I’m too tired to fix it right now. Read at your own peril!)

2171 AD. An Ode to Progress

If insanity is merely a collection of thoughts which fight each other, humanity can be extrapolated into a similar sentiment thus far surprisingly accurate. At the turn of the 22^nd century, mankind sought to grow its battle grounds beyond its home star, and set to work on a plan of interstellar expansion. Scientists, businessmen, ethicists, politicians and celebrities all came together to build the single greatest achievement in the history of mankind: Interstellar Ark Abel, the world’s first generational transport ship for traveling beyond the boundaries of their stellar system in search of a properly-positioned, and hopefully beach-side, vacation property. It wasn’t an invention of necessity, per say, unless of course the desire for the grandest boat in the harbor begets necessity. It was instead, a wager on possibility.

Humans had long grown weary of generations upon generations of discarded trauma stacking up and packing the collective psyche of its constituency. The cracks were casting wide and deep and there seemed little compassion for anyone who fell in. A super special, important, and bright mind somewhere posited that perhaps we can separate a selection of humanity to continue the game in the sky while someone else handled the problems at home. And thus it was that on December 12^th 2165, the Interstellar Department of Transportation launched humankind’s first ark, known to its inhabitants as simply: Abel.

3,142 humans packed alongside a cornucopia of Earthling creatures traveling near the speed of light to an unknown solar system, Abel was thought to be an envy of the gods. Within the ship itself were life-sustaining systems built with exponential redundancies: a veritable ecosystem fully contained and functional without the protection of a planet. Not only was the ship charged with care of its likely growing human population over a thousand-year journey, it was also required to house a living, biological world comprised of plants, animals, and fungi (not to mention bacteria, microbes and other tiny bullshit) that provided the food and oxygen for the ship: a forest known as Oasis. The humans were tired when they named it and never bothered coming back to the topic.

Within Oasis, nature was free to nature (verb). The circle of life maintained a consistent flow of organic matter from one state to the next and upon arrival at their new planet, the animals and plants of Oasis would be the start of a truly new generation of life. It is unclear how well they will all adapt but that’s an issue for another story.

All the well-known creatures were present; and certainly worth naming in alphabetical order using the scientific names all the way down from domain to species. Even some of the lesser-known plants (apple trees, certain grasses, etc), animals (like horny toads and that one bird that’s kind of like a pelican but definitely isn’t a pelican), and fungi were forced on mission thanks to the cries of some liberal science geek nerd who insisted that evolution would need options.

The scientists charged with maintaining the Oasis forest worked diligently day in, day out to ensure a healthy life-cycle and the continuation of all genetic lines simultaneously. Breeding was mostly left to nature itself, although on occasion it became necessary to augment availability or even to facilitate “activity”.

Six years post-launch, the underappreciated white-coated intellectual workhorses of the ship noticed a depreciating mice population and thus began the first breeding session: an exercise boiling down to, essentially, placing two mice in a box until they fuck.

“Ouch!” screamed a mouse as he was set in a hard, smooth plastic container with nary a damned piece of straw to be found.

“What’s the meaning of…” his voiced trailed as he became distracted by human hands reaching down into the box and placing his would-be fuck-buddy inches away.

As the hands ascended back to the secretive world of the humans, a round, brown mouse was left sitting on her butt, splayed legged in front of the first, chewing on a piece of celery that was no doubt meant to calm her in stressful moments. She continued munching on the celery for some time as the first mouse simply stared in stunned silence.
To him, she was the most beautiful creature to ever exist. Most of his life was spent unwittingly waiting to be released into the Oasis to then be gobbled up by whatever found him first; but to him, that was simply a ‘great beyond’ that all of his family were giddy to enter.
This though, here and now, was something entirely different. She had the scent of a stranger, a reminder that his life has been spent sniffing familial B.O. She was very well fed and something about that piqued his interest more than the intriguing smell or the odd posture in which she sat. To a mouse who had never met a girl that wasn’t his sister, mom, or cousin, she was fucking perfect.
She sat and chewed while casually looking around the plastic box with an air of bored curiosity, and upon finishing her snack stick, released a belch and a tiny mouse fart while picking a green strand out of her teeth with a little claw before finally noticing the other mouse.

“Uh, hullo?” said the girl mouse with a low-pitched squeak. Her accent was foreign to the boy mouse but entrancing nonetheless. Humans a hundred years prior would have said she sounded like a singer named Adele, but the notion of such sounds has passed to myth by now and the inclusion of plumpness was not a slight but a mere coincidence that no longer tracks anyway.

“Hello?” replied the boy mouse in a voice that sounded suspiciously like a horny Paul Giamatti. Again, myth.

“Why ar’ you starin’ at meh?” She asked, really nailing the Eliza Doolittle impression. But that’s enough.

“Good snack?”

“Want some?” she asked as she freed the green string remnant from her teeth and flung it on the floor.

“I’m—okay,” he responded while restraining a slight urge to recoil. “Do you know why we’re here?”

“Oh, yea for sure.”

Then they sat in silence for a while as the boy mouse stared and waited, perhaps a little too patiently, for the girl mouse to fill him in. She resumed looking around, absentmindedly patting her legs in random rhythms while accompanying herself with various hums and mouth noises.

“Are you…going to tell me?”

“Ohh, I thought you was just being polite, love. Oh, no, yeah we’re supposed to do the bone diddy,” she said with a exaggerated wink, “you know, the poppycock, the windy whistle, the click clack? You know, cause we’re mice? The tallywacker ho? The thimble ride? The whiffle goosing? ‘ello love, are these getting through your thick skull?” she asked, knocking on his head with one paw while the other grabbed his cheek to bring them eye to eye, nose to nose. Her voice got real low and gravely, nearly demonic as she squeezed their heads together, “we…gonna…fuuuuuck.”

And so they did. A lot. They never even got each other’s names. Such a thing isn’t so odd in the mouse community. Thems some lil whores.

Six months and fifty-five litters later, five from our previously mentioned couple, and the mice population crises was over! Whew, it was exhausting. If only every problem could be solved with rodent hedonism.

Their task complete, their cycle nearing its revolution, our couple were released separately and unceremoniously into the Oasis to live out the rest of their days in peaceful—OH shit a panther!

Thirty seconds into his expulsion to the forest and our boy mouse was already running branch over limb to escape his first meeting of a non-friend. Who the fuck puts a panther on a spaceship? Luckily for the mouse, the lack of scarcity in Oasis had caused quite the lethargy in predators; and as such, the panther did not give chase for long. Winded and wheezing, the boy mouse found a tree hole to dip into and peek out of, assessing his danger level.

“Hullo,” came a familiar voice from the darker depths of the tree cavern. Twas the girl mouse!

“Oh my god, there’s a giant cat out there!” the boy mouse squealed as he spun around and peered into the inky innards of his safe space.

“Yes, why you think I’m in ‘ere, love?”

“Oh wow, it’s you!”

“Yea it’s me now get outta my hole before you ruin this one too!”

“Wait, too?”

The girl mouse emerged from the darkness with a whittled stick in hand, picking at her teeth and watching the other mouse with trepidation.

“Speaking of, if you’re here trying to continue our meetings, you’ll find my shoppe closed right up. PERMANENTLY. If you want a sixth, you’ll have to find some other Minnie bitch.” Her face dropped as she abruptly became very serious. “The giants…they did something to me. I can’t feel…” she trailed off as she clasped her hand across her abdomen and fought back tears.

The boy mouse rushed to her and embraced her in an unexpected hug. Were she not so suddenly somber she may have reacted with hostility, but instead she leaned into the hug and let her tears fall.

“It’s okay,” said the boy mouse, “I’m not here for that. I don’t even know where here is! They…they lied to us about the great beyond!”

“Who is they?” replied the girl mouse with heavy sarcasm on the end, her tears drying as she resolved to poking holes in her presumed mate’s ideology, “Old wives tales passed down through your own family, every one of whom believed them? That’s the ‘they’ lyin’ to you? It’s not anybody’s fault but your own that you believed that nonsense.” She certainly seemed to have perked up. “What’s more,” she continued, “is that you think lamenting about your own damnable ignorance does a damn thing to solve the problem!”

“Oh yea? What are you doing to ‘solve the problem’?” he asked back, imitating her voice in adolescent mockery.

She sat back on her haunches and pulled a mushroom from a crevice nearby, munching down on it and speaking with a full mouth while emoting with her stick hand, “I’m stayin’ ‘ere, love. Tha’s what I’M doing.”

The boy mouse sat down too, ever-so-slightly intrigued at how easy-going this girl was despite being thrown into a chaotic, nightmarish Hell wherein cats the size of homes roam with impunity and everything they’d ever been taught was simply, wrong?

“Did you ever believe it? Any of it?”

“The stories? Stories that change depending on the author and listener? Stories that teach you that just beyond your reach is everlasting peace and perfection?” she asked incredulously, “No, little boy mouse, I never believed such nonsense.”

He had never heard someone disbelieve with such reckless abandon. He sat in quiet contemplativeness as he processed what he was hearing. Surely she must have simply heard the wrong stories.

“But-” he started but was interrupted.

“Plus,” she continued, “if you listened closely back in the incubators, you could hear all the screams from this place. Constant screams and cries do not a heaven make.”

The boy listened for a moment but could only hear sounds of nature.

“I don’t hear any screams.”

“Everything you hear are screams.”

“Oh.”

The two sat in quietude for a bit before the urge to break silence overwhelmed the boy mouse.

“Seen the kids?”

“Still in the box I’m sure. They won’t come here until it’s their time to…” she trailed as she thought about the reality of the world.

“…to what?”

“To get ATE you dumb twat!”

“What, wait…no. To get ate? Are you sure it’s not ‘eaten’?”

The girl mouse stood up full height and grabbed the boy around the scruff of his neck, suddenly incredibly grave.

“I DO NOT JOKE ABOUT MY BABIES.” she said forcefully yet…calmly? and also, terrifyingly. “Look,” she said as she twisted around his head to see out the hole. The cacophony of nature sounds returned to his present thoughts as if sight and sound were somehow relative. “Everything out there is trying to eat us, everything.”

“So what do we do?” asked the boy mouse after some time.

“We stay here,” she replied, almost pensively, not looking at the other mouse but instead out to the Oasis, to the faked winds rustling through the leaves, “until we don’t. Then we get ate.”

“Oh,” said the boy mouse, solemnly.

“Yea,” said the girl mouse.

“…I still think it’s ‘eaten’.”

She didn’t take the bait, instead opting for melancholy reflection.

The two spent some time quietly grooming themselves and peering out their little tree hole, contemplating their reality and kicking an occasional beetle that wandered by. The sprinkler system in the Oasis started misting a fine dew across the forest. The mist turned into droplets and the droplets into beads. Evidently, this area was somewhat parched.

It was lucky for the mice that their tree hole was positioned in such a way that the water wouldn’t enter and pool; it was, however, unlucky for the mice that at that very moment, a tiny but fluffy borrowing owl sought refuge in their hidey spot. He gripped his talons ’round the entrance’s perimeter and thrust in his head, out of the rain. His entrance took the mice aback; they screamed and huffed it to the far wall.

“Umm, wholoo?” said the owl. He sounded like someone’s moody, disaffected gay nephew.

“YOU WILL NOT EAT US!” screamed the girl mouse as she thrust her stick into one of his claws.

“Owwwwwww (with like, 15 more w’s),” responded the owl in the longest possible drawl, like if Paulie Shore took too much Xanax. “I’m not going to erm, like, eat you little mousy. I, (pause for dramatic effect) am a vegetarian!”

Their confusion dropped their defenses.

“Wait, a vegetarian owl?” asked the boy mouse.

“Yeaaauuhhh. Like, it’s not that weird or whatever. I mean, none of the other owls will talk to me but I’m pretty sure that’s just like, some political bullshit, you knowwww.”

“So you’re not going to try to eat us, no?” asked the girl mouse, incredulously.

“Not unless you’re like, secretly a berry. Are yoouuu secretly a berry, little mousy?”

“No. Can’t say I am. So, friends?”

“Umm, (sigh) okayy, I guess, if I can stay here with you until it stops raining. My name is like, Victor or whatever. It is ever-so-awesome to like, be friends with a little mouse, I guess.” Sarcastic little shit.

“And my name is Kitty”

“Wait,” piped up the boy mouse, “you’re a mouse…named Kitty? Well that’s a fucking joke!”

“All of this is a fucking joke! And you’d know my bloody name if you ever bothered to ask it while you were poppin’ things in and out of me!”

“Hey I did not make the fuck box and therefor do not control what the fuck box is made for! Which, by the way, is fucking! not chatting. Besides, did you ever ask my fucking name?”

I don’t know who taught these mice to be such potty mouths.

“Erm, well, hey, you know, we’re all just mousies tryin’ to survive in a mouse-eat-mouse world.”

“Wait,” chimed in Victor, “mousies eat each other?”

The two mice exchanged sly grins as they realized this predator was a couple feathers short of a whole cockatoo, but restrained any laughter, so as to not insult their guest. They waited long enough for it to not be awkward.

“Well, okay, Kitty,” the boy mouse said, “I’m Ari. And I’m…sorry I didn’t ask your name before, you know, all the sex.”

“It’s okay. I still don’t care about your name,” she said as sat back against the wall, pleased with her aloofness.

“I’m Victor,” said Victor.

“Hi, Victor,” the mice responded in double-a unison.

A week passed and the three unlikely friends were quickly becoming quite the clique. They would scamper and scurry through the forest tall boys, frolic together in the flower fields, and keep watch for each other while they each bathed in the pretend river one at a time. Victor, Ari, and Kitty were a trio for the ages.

Another week passed in what would have been a lifetime for most of their compatriots; but a friend with eagle eyes helps the prey stay hidden and two tiny gatherers produces enough berries for all.

As the artificial sun set on a pretend night, the three friends settled in at home in their tree cavern and the conversation turned philosophical, as they had by now exhausted all their other knowledge share.

“What do you think happens once you reach the end of the forest?” asked Victor to the two mice.

“It’s a circle, Victor, we’ve been around it like five times,” answered Ari.

“A circle?”

“Yes, love. It’s a big ole circle, like, this way,” Kitty demonstrated, using her tiny little mouse fingers, how the ship is a circle and that if you just keep walking, you end back up at where you started. “You never noticed that all the rivers look exactly the same? It’s one river love! Oh, Victor.”

“Wait, you can FLY! You can SEE the curvature!” bellowed Ari.

“Oh, hmm…I guess honestly since I’ve been like, hanging out with you guys, or whatever, like since we started being friends, I guess I don’t really fly that high anymore. I only used to do to avoid the cats anywayysss so it’s like, whatever, you know?”

“Hmm, sure hon,” they both said back in unison, wont to move on.

“What do you think is the point of all this?” asked Kitty.

“The point of all what?” asked Ari.

“All this!” she yelled, gesturing to the Oasis. “Where we came from, to this? It makes no sense.”

“Since when do you care what anything is about? Do you miss the cold plastic ground or the giant’s hands fondling us?”

“I miss not running every time I hear a twig crack, though, I guess it’s not all bad. This body is looking a-maaazing.” she said as she ran her paw up and down her admittedly now svelte body.

Ari giggled, then quickly agreed, then sighed as he returned to pondering things.

“Yea, what is it all about?” he paraphrased.

“Like, the ship?” chirped in Victor.

“Ship?” they asked in unison confusion.

“Yeah. You’re the one who was like, it’s round, it’s a circle, it’s a round circle you dumb owl. You didn’t know it was a ship? It’s like, a ship. There’s nothing outside the circle.”

“What do you mean ‘nothing outside the circle’?” asked Ari.

“Just what I said, little mousie. All that ever was and ever will be is like, here in the circle.”

“Okay but what’s a ship, love?”

“Ohhh, it’s like a thing that we’re in that’s taking us to another forest.”

“Another forest?” they asked, mystified by the idea.

“mmhmm. Another forest,” Victor said affirmatively as the mice oohed and sunk into imagination at the notion.

“Another forest,” they all said together.

“Wait,” squeaked Ari, interrupting their daydreaming, “how do you know all of this? No offense, but you’re a…vegetarian.”

“Heard the giants talking, dick, when I was but a little owlet; and they said that we’re on a big ship and going somewhere amazing like another forest and that when we get there they won’t like, need this place anymore. The forest, I mean.”

“The giants need the forest?”

“Oh yeah, for sure. Get this, you didn’t know this? Okay, okay get this: there’s like this circle-of-life thing. So like, I’m supposed to eat you, right? And then something eats me and then something else eats that something? Are you like, with me?”

“Yes, Victor, we’re with you,” replied Ari as he glanced at a confused Kitty.

“So everything in life is just fucking and eating?” asked Kitty.

Victor leaned down to her face, “Everything. And the giants, see, like nobody eats them. They’re the top of the umm, circle-of-life.”

“Circles don’t have tops,” said Ari.

“Well, they’re at the top because they eat everything else and nobody eats them.”

“Some fucking circle. That’s a pyramid, dude. That’s a pyramid-of-life, and a shitty one at that.”

“Nah, I’m pretty sure they called it a circle. And they said there’s a thing called like, a food chain, which I think is where they like put a buffet in the forest. I’m excited to see that.”

“A…buffet in the forest?” asked a squinting Ari.

“Yeah but whatever, the point is that the giants are like, taking us somewhere. Life is going to be great!”

“If you say so, love. I still don’t know if I’m in a triangle or not.”

“Pyramid.”

“Wha’?” asked Kitty.

“Nevermind.”

They took a beat to parse this new information before Ari had a thought:

“Why doesn’t anything eat the giants?”

Victor took a moment to think about it.

“I guess, umm, cause they’re giants. They like, built this place! How’s anything supposed to eat a giant?”

“Hmm,” considered Ari, “one bite at a time, I guess?” and they all chuckled.

“What do you think the point of all this is, Victor?” asked Kitty.

“Ship, remember?”

“No, like, what do you like to daydream about?”

“Well, I nightdream cause like, my daydreams are regular dreams, cause like, my night times are days, you know?”

“Okay…” said Kitty, “so what do you nightdream about?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t really nightdream, you know?”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Victor,” chimed in Ari.

“Is that your dad?” asked Victor.

“Wait, what? Jesus? No, that’s..well actually, I don’t really know who that is.”

“Cool, so do you guys have any berries left? Wouldn’t mind, like, a midnight snackypoo.” Victor asked as he perched up on the hole, cautiously peeking out as if there would be berries just lining the ground below.

“Sure, love.”

Kitty rummaged through collected materials in the corner for a moment before emerging, balancing three berries across her arms. But, before she could hand Victor his, the shadow demon that is a panther’s paw deftly swooped in and scooped him out of their tree hole entrance. In the breath of a moment, he was swallowed whole by the very same panther who chased Ari all that time ago.

The two mice shrieked and scuttled around the wooden cavern, knowing there was no other exit. Their only friend in the Oasis was gone in an instant. He just wanted a midnight snack.

“THIS, KITTY!” screamed Ari, gesturing at the hole in which Victor sat moments earlier, “THIS IS WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT.”

Kitty pressed herself against the far wall, crying tears of lost friendship and wincing with every word Ari shouted at her. In his defense, Ari was processing his grief in his own way.

“THIS is THE POINT. It’s fuckin’ and eatin’ and dyin’. Or is that too bloody simple for ya?” He asked, imitating her accent.

Kitty started bawling uncontrollably. “I just…just…just, berry!” She held up Victor’s uneaten treat as if a plea to the owl god.

Ari mumbled something Kitty couldn’t make out.

“Wha’?” she asked.

“It’s a fucking pyramid, Kitty. A pyramid! Giants up top! That’s where they go! It’s pointless! The cats eat us, the birds eat us; the cats eat birds, but the birds don’t eat cats! It’s a fucking pyramid! There’s no circle in ANY of this shit, save this magical ship or whatever the fuck—”

“Wait, ship,” Kitty cut him off.

“Yes, Kitty, we’re on a BLOODY SHIP!”

An idea came to Kitty; a special idea that so many have had before but never acted upon. It was an idea so genuinely an idea that it could write itself out of existence, if only once. It was this idea that dried Kitty’s tears and narrowed her focus. She raised her hand and –THWAP— slapped the shit outta Ari. He stopped his gesticulations and dramatics and stood in stunned silence, holding his face and staring at the girl mouse.

“It doesn’t matter what shape it is,” she began slowly, making sure Ari heard every damned word she had to say, “because no matter the shape, we’re at the bottom.”

“Exactly, might as well just go be eaten!”

She slapped him again.

“…ate. And no, Ari, I don’t want to be eaten, or ate, or chased or fucked or prodded or judged or chastised or,” her voice a crescendo with each consecutive word, “bloodied or talked down to or corrected or…or caged!” she screamed at a now frightened Ari.

“I don’t want to be eaten,” she repeated softly.

“But what’s to be done?” Ari asked, now sheepish.

“We must outnumber the giants ten to one! Maybe twenty to one!”

“But, Kitty, they’re giants. They did (gestures to the world) all this.”

“Do you want to be eaten?”

“No but…but it is the way of things. It’s how we got to come to know one another, and have children, and meet…Victor,” his voice cracked as he said his friend’s name. “It’s how any of this works in the first place. You must understand that! If you were just a little bit smarter you would understand that this, here and now, this is what we need to do.”

“Get eaten?” A plan was forming.

“I mean, when the time comes, that’s what we’re here for.”

“I’m not here for that,” Kitty said resolutely as she gathered her knapsack and few belongings. “You can wait here to get ate; you can go out there and get ate, what does it matter, Ari? I’m not going to do that, with you or anyone. I’m here…to survive.”

And with that, she crawled up to the hole and stood tall, triumphant in her resolution, peering down at Ari scrunched on the floor.

“You don’t have to be anything that anyone tells you to be, Ari. And no matter who you are, you don’t have to be that either. It’s like Victor said, everything that ever was or will be is on this ship, and I intend to raise…umm, I intend to raise…” she paused as she searched for a better word.

“Cain?” offered Ari.

“No,” ‘fuck it,’ “HELL!!” she yelled as she leapt out the hole and scurried up the neighboring tree, whittled stick in paw like a tiny sword, until she was out of sight.

Ari sat in a fake moonbeam and absorbed the sound of every rustling leaf from her departure.

“And you’re a shitty fuck, too!” she yelled back, already some considerable distance away.

Up, up, up a tree, down another. A zigzag on a branch into a double-axel over to the next, Kitty made haste, indeed. She scurried and scampered and kited and jumped through the forest of Oasis, looking for her goal. She scanned the false sky and scoured the forest floor. Left, right, left again, she looked in all the directions!

Then she found it, protruding from a false tree painted to look wooden: a nozzle that creates the forest rain.

“Pfft,” she muttered as she knocked against the fake wood, “giants,” she scoffed.

Kitty giggled as she chewed the neck of the nozzle until the whole thing tore of, causing a gushing torrent of water to arc down to the forest bed. She continued muttering to herself.

“…fuckin’ giants. I don’t need no fuckin’ giants. Mmhmm. Pyramid my ass! I got your pyramid!” and with that she fastened her sword-stick to her back, grabbed both sides of the water-spewing tunnel, held her breath, and forced herself inside, against the current.

It was a grueling eight minutes of scratching and grasping and gasping and clasping, crawling and clawing up a tiny tube with gushing water seeking to unseat her grip with every fresh second. Tiny air pockets provided brief reprieve from the torrential rapids, and were she a less determined mouse, Kitty may well have given up. She was determined, however, and in time managed to squeeze her way into the central water-processing hub of the ship. An overflow valve made her escape from the waterway easy, and now she could put her new plan in action.

Kitty emerged on a tall landing in the water hub and shook out her coat as best she could. Below her on grated floors stood several of the giants, these ones wearing some kind of plastic bags she had never before seen. The cascading droplets eschewing from Kitty’s fur may have indeed landed on a few, but they simply went about their business, as the affairs of a tiny mouse are simply too irrelevant for a giant to consume itself with.

She scanned the room for options, noticing an air vent a few feet away.

“Air,” she said, as if forming a thought, “…everything needs air so…it must go everywhere!”

Kitty ran and leapt to the vent, squeezing herself through the grate in a matter of seconds (thank you pantherzempic) and whisking down its corridor in search of the room that started it all. It didn’t take long to find and Kitty, hopeful and determined, squeezed her ass through the incubation room’s vent grate to stand atop the pinnacle of ‘playing God’. Her plan solidified in her mind.

Box by box, mouse family by mouse family, Kitty unlocked and freed each and every one of her brethren, explaining, as she went, the reality of the ship and the Oasis. To thousands of stagnated minds, this new information was a fresh beacon of possibility, a resurgence of hope amongst the hopeless. The mousies aboard Abel were only ever told tale and Kitty ushered in a revolution of truth. She gathered the horde in the vent outside the room and made her plea:

“HULLOOO, MICE!” She shouted across thousands of tiny cheers, “This is the truth! Listen now, so you may never have to listen again! These giants use and abuse us! They take and take and take and when they’re done with us, WE become food. That’s it. We’re food; no better than the mush they tube feed us!”

The crowd booed and shouted, invigorated by the sheer inequality of the world at large.

“But WE are NOT to be corralled! We are not to be controlled! and we are CERTAINLY NOT here to be fucking ate like little fucking berries without thoughts or worries, or cares about another!” she fought back tears as she thought about Victor. “We deserve dignity god-dammit! We deserve life!” and with the chorus of support from her brothers-in-arms, Kitty led a rebellion of mice over man.

They started with the predators in Oasis, making quick work of their fattened, lazy selves by attacking during slumbering time. Mouse teeth are small but sharp, and with enough of them, like a field of piranha.

After the predators, came the meat providers. Kitty figured if all the mice died, they could at least take out the piggies and cows first. But the mice, sheer in numbers, lost very few soldiers. With the Oasis cleared, finally came the time to gnash and gnaw at the hands that hold the reins. The time of the giants was over. The mice worked their way from room to room, killing everything alive and disregarding the potential consequences.

In no time at all, the mice aboard Interstellar Ark Abel slaughtered (and fed on) every last giant, as they didn’t outnumber them ten to one, or twenty to one, but a thousand to one. After the last human had been slain, Kitty went to the bridge for a breather and a view. She climbed up the command console, unaware and unbothered by whatever buttons she pressed on the way, and sat atop the captain’s cold face while she viewed the Milky Way outside the window. Content with herself, she sighed relief and relaxed on the dead captain’s open eye, pawing it like a cat trying to get comfortable.

“Be careful,” came a stranger’s voice from nowhere, “those things cave in.”

Kitty looked to the direction of the sound to see another mouse sitting on top of the console she had just climbed. He was pointing to the captain’s other eye, which was just a pool of gooey grossness.

“Does seem like a comfortable spot though, right?” the other mouse continued, “Giants are weird.”

Kitty chuckled and offered, “were weird. Past tense, love.”

The other mouse laughed and agreed. Kitty climbed up beside him on the console and introduced herself.

“Name’s Kitty. Like what I’ve done with the place?”

“Hiya Kitty, I do! I was there for your speech and wow, you were amazing. I’m Todd.”

“That’s nice,” she said as she put her arm around her new friend. “We’re going someplace amazing, Todd. Do you want to do it, together?”

“Okay,” Todd said in the affirmative.

They stood holding hands as they faced out the window before them and set off on their adventure together, an ark full of mice. Unbeknownst to any of them though, Kitty had accidentally pressed a few unfortunate buttons on her way up the console and the ship was off course. They watched, hand in hand, out the window, unable to even process what they were seeing, as Abel slowly but surely smote the side of a random moon with all that was and ever will be.

The End