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want to go back to the stars?”
    Moomamu sat up. If this voice wasn’t his own, if it was coming from somewhere in the walls, how would it know who he was? Or where he came from?
    “Earth doesn’t want me,” he said as the eyes of his companion Gary flashed in his mind. “They wanted me to die.”
    He kept his voice as quiet as he could. Any quieter and it would’ve been little more than a breath.
    “No,” the voice said, louder now, angry at the idea. “They were simply doing what had to be done … and, for that matter, so did you.”
    Moomamu scootered across the floor towards the wall, resting his back against the cold grit.  
    “I just want to go back to my Thinking point,” he said.
    “The mind,” the voice said, so close Moomamu could almost smell his smoky tongue, “once stretched by a new idea never returns to its original dimensions.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” he said.  
    “A human said it.”
    “Which one?” Moomamu said, appalled. “Was it Luna? The woman with the tired face?”
    “No,” the voice replied. “It was a famous one. I don’t know which one. I’m not a goddam dictionary of humans.”
    There was silence for a short while. The only movement came from the dust particles suspended in the air.
    “Who are you?” Moomamu said. “Are you going to jab me with one of those thump-sticks?”
    “No.” As the voice said this, Moomamu noticed a figure come into view in the dark, standing at the far corner of the box room. It could’ve been a trick in the shadows but Moomamu could almost see the outline of the feet draw the light from the door. “I’m here to help you.”
    Moomamu sat up a little more. His fists clenched.
    “Soon, you’ll be taken from here,” the voice said.
    Moomamu thought himself to be losing his mind. The voice was surely a dream created by his human flaws. “You’ll be put through several tests. Physical and mental tests that will determine who you will become in the future. You’ll also be made to kill.”  
    Moomamu tried to reply, but his throat was too dry. No words came.
    “Promise me that when the time and the opportunity comes, you will take it. You will kill.”  
    Moomamu coughed and forced out the words, “Who am I going to kill?”
    “It matters not. When the time comes, you must take a life,” the voice said as the outline of the figure fell backwards into the dark, as if never there in the first place.  
    The second the figure vanished a guard walked to the door, his footsteps echoing throughout the cell. A series of crashing keys against the wood. The door opened, washing Moomamu in candlelight so bright it burned.

    ***

    “The name is Snuckems,” the alpha growled.  
    Moomamu had cats in front of him and cats behind — big ones, standing on their hind legs. The tips of their ears reached his shoulders. They’d wrapped chains around his hands and legs and yanked him along, pulling him through the prison. The cats behind were all too ready with the thump-stick for laggers.
    The walls were brick after brick with the occasional hole in the side, allowing the morning twilight to enter. There were candles, though, lining the walls too, offering their own luminance. Moomamu missed the electric lights of Earth. They were much easier to operate. A simple flick of a switch. Clever humans, he thought.
    After walking through a corridor, the cat in front, the alpha, raised his monstrous right paw and shouted, “Halt,” and within a second the cats stopped. The alpha was a beast of a cat. His fur was old and grey and scarred with lines of broken flesh. He’d taken a claw to one of his eyes at some point. The right one. It lay still in his skull. Milky, white, and useless.  
    The alpha used his keys to open another of the cell doors, where they wrapped up another prisoner in irons; another cat, ginger like Gary, but this one had both of its front paws. They connected the front of Moomamu’s chains with the back of the second