Chapter 3

The Guardian in his holographic avatar form and Jake were finishing up the basic duties of being a caretaker and what to expect from Maxwell when the puppy dog decided he would explore his New Home.

Explore at least the interior. He would get to the exterior eventually.

Maxwell looked around the room he was sitting in. He was on some kind of raised platform.

“Countertop,” said the Guardian in Maxwell’s head.

Countertop. Maxwell was on the countertop.

In front of him, there were four smaller platforms.

“Seats. For sitting on. Scaled to Jake’s species’ height proportions.”

Maxwell frowned again. He liked to sit on top of platforms. As all Catalum did. They reminded him of the plateaus from the homeworld. Maxwell liked plateaus.

But Maxwell also wanted to sit on them and see the countertop. He was not big enough to do so. But they were still raised platforms, so he was okay. He wagged his tail a bit at that thought.

To his left was some sort of mechanical cubby. He was unable to reach it but he could hear some rumbling coming from behind it.

“That’s the refrigerator. Jake uses it to store perishable food.”

“What par-ris-bel mean?”

“Food decays after a period of time. Jake’s people have not invented a method to store food for a long time.”

“Okay.”

Directly behind Maxwell was a set of deep pits on a lower countertop level. Well, deep for a Catalum. They were in reality only forty-five centimeters deep. But that was fifty-percent larger than Maxwell’s height, so he considered them deep. The walls of these pits were shiny and slick. Maxwell didn’t think he could readily climb them.

“Those are sinks. Jake uses them to wash dishes.”

“What is dish?”

“A small platform with a shallow depression used to put food on before eating the food. Used in conjunction with utensils, tools to help break down and hold food so Jake can eat without getting his hands dirty.”

“What’s a hand?”

“His version of a paw.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Maxwell turned towards something just under the countertop next to the sink. He could hear it quietly rumble, and water was slowly steaming from its vertical front. Maxwell shuffled and hopped towards it, taking care not to fall over as he transitioned from the upper countertop level to the lower countertop level. Whatever the machine underneath him was, it was making the lower countertop level warm.

Maxwell liked it a lot.

“That’s the automatic dishwasher.”

“Oh. It warm. Me like warmth.”

“The machine is nearing the end of its programmed cycle. It bubbles warmth up to the countertop when it’s about done.”

“Oh.” Maxwell was disappointed. He wanted the warmth to last longer.

Maxwell looked to his left. There was some sort of storage place filled with bags and metal cylinders. It looked like some sort of food storage place.

“That’s because it is.”

“Good know.”

Maxwell looked ahead. There was a doorway to a small room. That was his destination.

He did not make it.

Maxwell tried to shimmy down the side of the part of the countertop with the dishwasher machine, the side that wasn’t warm. The underside of his paws could take his weight and he would be able to slowly make his way down. Like a small creature of this planet, locally known as a cat, Catalum had some trouble climbing down from elevated positions. It wasn’t a big deal on the home planet, as those elevated positions going down were somewhat angled. But this slope was vertical.

He missed the wooden side of the cubby that contained the dishwasher. His hind feet were still gripping the countertop, though, which meant he rotated forward. This technically didn’t cause a fall. Instead, Maxwell whacked his nose on the wooden side.

A sudden tap or smack to a Catalum’s nose was a good way to startle the little creatures. In this case, the impact against the wooden side caused Maxwell to release his back paws. Which then caused him to fall.

Maxwell went headfirst onto the wooden floor.

His weight kept going, though, causing Maxwell to crumple somewhat and then fall over on his side.

“Rah-Ooo.”

“He fell,” the Guardian said to Jake.

Jake nodded.

The Guardian’s holographic form scooped Maxwell up, comforting him and cradling the little creature in his arms.

“You really should have been more careful. I could teleport you to the ground if you wanted to get down.”

“Ruaru, Reh-aaaah...” (“Me strong and independent. Me need no...”)

The holographic form rolled his eyes.

“You fell. That’s enough out of you on this subject.”

“Oo-eh.” (“Okay.”)

The Guardian turned to Jake and changed back to the local language.

“Here, hold Maxwell,” as the Guardian thrust the puppy dog into Jake’s arms. The creature clung to Jake’s chest as the man gave the creature a hug and held him close. It wagged its tail with a smile. Maxwell loved to be held.

“He’s fine. Maxwell can take falls like that.”

Catalum could take impacts like that fall on the chin because of their unique biology. They completely lacked a skeleton. Catalum didn’t even have a cartilage core. They were a flesh bag through and through. Instead, Catalum biology used powerful, if squishy to the touch, muscles to provide leverage. Their bodies were crisscrossed with muscular strands and their skin was almost pure muscle. Soft squishy muscle, but still very capable of moving around unimpeded. It gave Catalum a doughy feeling when grabbed.

But it meant that when falling to the ground or running into an object, the Catalum body would squish and dissipate the impact instead of bouncing off and take damage.

The lack of a skeleton came from the whole Catalum hivemind thing. Catalum were hiveminds of hiveminds, so everything was decentralized. Catalum ‘breathed’ through their fur. No Catalum was furless. They still maintained a heart and lungs, but those were essentially specialized backup organs when the Catalum needed a burst of energy, usually to escape predators, and later to go on the attack, though excessive expenditure of energy tended to make Catalum expire. Something that they went through regardless in their initial defense of their homeworld from invaders beyond the stars, the start of the eventual Catalum Empire.

“As I was saying,” the Guardian’s avatar said to Jake, “Maxwell’s physical needs: Food, water, air in some cases, will be automatically provided for by me, or any other ship in the region. All he needs is emotional love, something I cannot readily give him.”

“Basically, treat him like any other member of the family?”

“Indeed. A pet, if you will. It is time for me to leave. I need to find a more modern fashion. This get up has not been used for a few hundred years.”

“Do you need to be shown the...?”

“No, I’ll manage just fine.”

“Reow.”

Jake looked down at Maxwell. The little dog stared back at him, eyes making contact. Something about this was unsettling. Not in a bad way, but in a weird way. Most small creatures like cats, dogs, and mice did not like to make eye contact with large beings, like humans. It was a dominance thing. But the little creature did not care and stared at Jake.

When Jake looked back at the room, the nobleman was gone.

“Well, then, I guess it’s just you and me now.”

“Rouw.” (“Yep.”)

Jake rubbed the creature’s cheek with his left thumb a few times and scritched behind its right ear. He put the creature on the ground.

“I need to do some work in the garden. Will you be okay being left alone?”

“Rouw.”

“I’m going to assume that means ‘yes’.”

“Rouw!”

A piece of paper appeared on the table. “Yep.”

“Are you going to do that whenever I ask about Maxwell?”

“Of course.”

Jake shook his head and left to go tend to his plants.

Now that Maxwell was alone, he could do what he originally set out to do before whacking his nose and falling to the floor. His goal was to head into the small room, explore it, and find out what was beyond it. He made a hop in the room’s direction. It was more of a shuffling-hop. After a few of these shuffling hops, Maxwell got the hang of this planet’s gravity and hopped more properly, his momentum carrying him forward better as well.

Maxwell reached the small room and confirmed, it was indeed small. Small from a distance, small when inside. It was big enough for a single person to pass through, or four puppy dogs lined shoulder-to-shoulder, but not big enough for two people, or six puppy dogs.

There were shelves and cabinets of some kind to Maxwell’s left and a machine of some kind to his right, with shelves above it. The machine was like the re-fridge-ger-rater in the kitchen.

“It’s called a freezer. Like the refrigerator, it keeps perishable food edible longer by way of freezing them, rather than just keeping them cool. Freezing completely hampers bacterial growth.”

“What is bac-tear-rial growth?”

“Bacteria are teeny-tiny, microscopic organisms that are present everywhere on this planet. Normally, they would be of concern to a small being such as yourself, but your people’s biology is just too robust.”

“Okay. What does row-bust mean?”

“Strong. It means strong.”

“Me strong!”

“In some ways, you are strong, yes.”

Maxwell wanted to see what was on top of the cabinets to his left. He couldn’t quite see the back side of the top from his position on the floor. He saw some of the front half when he was further away, but sadly, because he moved closer to the room, his perspective changed, and he no longer could see the front.

To this end, Maxwell applied the folded skin bits on his paws to the cabinets’ front. He created suction, which allowed him slowly to ascend and climb up the cabinets. His muscular exterior skin kept him from falling back down despite the odd angle of sticking out horizontally perpendicular to the direction he was going.

Once at the top of the cabinet, Maxwell could see what he was looking for. The top of the cabinets had containers for utensils.

“Some for eating food, some for preparing food. The next room is the dining room, by the way.”

“Okay.”

Maxwell also had a better view of the room.

“This room. It prep-par-rayshun room?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. It prep-par-rayshun room memory now.”

Catalum biological memory storage, also known as their brains, wasn’t exactly the greatest repository for recollection. They were small creatures, with small brains, although like all intelligent species, had a high brain to body ratio. Over the millions of years of technological advancement, the Catalums were able to interface their ships to their brains. One of the most important facets of this technology was memory storage. Individual Catalum could store memories within the vast database of their ships and recall memories at will, allowing them to remember thousands if not millions of years’ worth of skills and experiences as they lived as literal representations of children in the garden forever.

Of course, their ships could pull and rearrange memories from their databases to their Catalum’s heads on a whim, too, but generally the individual creature would request their ships do this rather than the ships doing it on their own, as it could mess with the individual creature’s psych. Not that was a problem, either, but they generally did not like the disorienting effect of having their memories rapidly rearranged without their control.

Catalum medical technology, nanomachine technology, and genetic engineering were the best in the known universe. In addition to the insane immune system in their bodies, there were streams of powerful nanomachines that kept the creatures’ bodies in pristine conditions. All illnesses and diseases, bacterial or viral, were solved long ago, and anything that slipped through the cracks was stopped by the nanomachines. And aside from the uncommon physical handicaps, all genetic deficiencies were dealt with as well.

The Guardian made note that the small room was the preparation room and filed it away in Maxwell’s memory as such.

Maxwell shimmied his way down the cabinet and left the preparation room behind. He was now in the formal dining room. The creature noted that it had an eating table like the kitchen, but this one was more ornate, made of some kind of wood and carved into intricate patterns and shapes. The wood intrigued Maxwell. Being a Catalum, his eyesight was very good. His eyes were essentially the most powerful cameras on this planet, barring the capabilities of his Guardian. Combined with the Catalum natural curiosity, the typical Catalum, of which Maxwell was a typical Catalum, was interested in looking at patterns and details in physical objects.

He didn’t understand the fancy table and chairs, of course, but he knew it was more important to Jake and the house. All throughout Catalum history, the Catalum people never used tables and chairs. Most of their history they didn’t even use dishes, and when they finally did, it wasn’t in the format that the people of this planet did. Catalum dishes were less like physical objects that could be moved around and washed and closer to pieces of furniture, things that were part of a room’s fixtures.

The creature stared at the wood. He noted the lines and the eyes of the table and chairs as he wandered around under them. Maxwell noted the glossy red color of the wood. It wasn’t natural, or at least he didn’t think it was natural.

“No, the red color isn’t natural. It’s a glaze, one of several applications that can be done to wood to make it look nicer. The wood itself is quite dull in color without the glaze.”

“Oh. Glaze nice.”

“It does make the wood look nice.”

“Eyes and lines of table natural, too?”

“They’re called knots and grains, and yes, they are natural.”

“Oh. Okay. Eyes and lines have pattern.”

His Guardian metaphorically nodded.

Maxwell stayed there for a while, just looking at the patterns in the wood. They did that. The Catalum. Having conquered biological immortality and being very curious and not easily bored sitting in one place for a long time, Catalum would sometimes stare at the patterns in the things around them. Maxwell was not an unusual member of his species.

By the time Maxwell had enough and was ready to explore some more, the time had passed from one to three. Jake had not come in yet, or at least Maxwell did not notice. The Guardian knew Jake had not. Jake was still tending to the garden outside and doing some work on his truck.

Jake’s truck was an older model of ‘Ram’ variety and needed semi-monthly upkeep, although he could do all that stuff himself. It was a three-seater: driver, passenger, and a small middle seat between them for a little person, like a child. Or a puppy dog. Beyond this description, the truck was nothing special. An offroad vehicle that Jake used to get to point to point.

Maxwell left the dining room behind. He hopped into a smaller rectangular room. To his left was a large set of double doors. Maxwell assumed that it was the front doors.