Cruise Control

 Cruise Control

The Time Machine
was on cruise control,
circling the Gunks
through the now-infamous
Heat of July 2026.

The dashboard blinked.

The engine sighed.

Tiki was looking
for a soft place to land.

Not easy anymore.

Climate change had rearranged
the rules.

Even the lakes
had climbed uphill.

Lake Awosting
still held out—

three and a half,
maybe four miles in,
rain-fed,
crystal-clear,
balanced on the Shawangunk Ridge
like a bowl of sky
nobody had spilled.

"Show-off,"
Tiki muttered.

 

This time
they had Gina.

Which meant
this time
they had a chance.

Katya had a plan.

Cats don't believe in fate.

They believe in timing.

If everything worked,
Katya could go back
to being
an ordinary housecat—

sleeping on warm windowsills,
knocking pens off tables,
judging everyone equally.

Tiki could reclaim

his hard-earned title
of Fishing Master,
a profession requiring
silence,
patience,
and spectacularly good excuses
for catching nothing.

But Gina...

Gina was the hinge.

The whole ridiculous universe
swung on one ordinary afternoon.

One meeting.

One conversation.

One smile
that lasted too long.

Katya's calculations

were simple.

If Gina
never met Anthony,

the future unraveled
like cheap yarn.

No time machine.

No impossible cat.

No July
hot enough
to boil the mountaintops.

Maybe.

Time was funny that way.

It always laughed first.

Tiki had one job.

Get them back
to the spring of 1974.

Land without crashing.

Avoid paradoxes.

And whatever happened—

keep Gina
from meeting Anthony.

Which sounded easy.

Until they saw
Anthony
walking up the trail.

….

The A/C was O-U-T

 The A/C was O-U-T

Katya narrowed her eyes.

This was not a minor inconvenience.
This was a full-scale feline emergency.

A cat, after all, was never meant to be slow-roasted at 102°F.

Something had to be done.
And F-A-S-T.

Her current kingdom—temporarily known as Rosendale—had become a convection oven with windows.

Honestly.

Why was the Creator always testing her?

Did she have some strange hobby involving lightly toasted house cats?

Was this another cosmic experiment?
"Let's see what happens when we remove the air conditioning and observe the tiny furry empress."

Rude.

People underestimated her.

They assumed cats were dramatic, aloof, incapable of communicating anything beyond the occasional judgmental blink.

A tragic misunderstanding.

Oh, she could communicate.

With precision.

With poetry.
With strategic levels of chaos.

Well...

We shall see about that, won't we?

Katya had more than one ace tucked beneath her velvet paw.

She had simply been quiet for far too long.

And every great heroine knows the moment before she saves the day is often the hottest.

Literally.

A faint hum rippled through the shimmering air.

Then came a familiar whir.

Out of nowhere, zigzagging through time itself, came Tiki at the controls of the time machine—grinning like a raccoon who'd just stolen the moon.

Right on schedule.

Exactly as Katya had planned.

Of course she'd planned it.

Heroes always have a backup plan.

Cats have at least nine.

The Creator thought she was writing the story.

Katya merely smiled.

Sometimes the author forgets...

...the heroine has already read the next chapter.

 

Writing A New Book

 Writing a New Book

The process can feel like a rewrite—
a better-edited version of the past.
But who would read it?

Time is precious and fleeting, especially lately.
They say memory is unreliable.
How many people will forget these last several years?

Some say to start with an outline.
Others say to write immediately, while it’s fresh, while the anger still burns.
And over the years, I have been very angry.

But now it is late spring, and I have a remarkable story to tell—one filled with strange adventures and unforgettable characters: Katya M. Cartouche, a black cat; Tiki, an eight-foot wooden yet mobile Indonesian tiki; Gina, beautiful and innocent despite adulthood; and Anthony—the Roman with the hooded beak—from Naples. There is also a dead ex-husband and a time machine.

Tony used to tell Gina that no one is truly good.
He said it often.

What he meant was that no one is entirely bad, and no one is entirely good.
People are complicated, unpredictable creatures.

For Gina, letting go of the safety net felt like jumping from a perfectly reliable airplane. The first step was the hardest. After that, she simply had to trust that the parachute strapped to her back would open and carry her safely down.

It did.

And the book clamoring to be written could become a bestseller in some universe willing to accept the truth as Katya and Gina understand it.

Right now, though, they are knee-deep in the swamp, while the ticks cling on for dear life.

…

And soon, all the masks will come off.