IV.

Scambot gets out of bed and looks at himself in the bathroom mirror for 40 minutes. Disgust. Obscuring his image with shaving cream, he hauls himself to the living room and sinks into the couch, bereft.

He stares at a photo on the wall of his beloved childhood cat, an orange tabby named Chee, and slips out of consciousness again. He dreams?...recalls?...a conversation Chee and he had in his living room.

The big red K is still on the wall, twitching.

(Chee is an unusually vivid and oversized figure in Scambot’s memory, appearing about six times bigger than Ian):

Ian: Why would I dream that?

Chee: That was a story that got into your head and stayed there. It was in one of your books; remember? You threw it to the ground - I looked at it after you ran out of the room screaming. There was a pretty good drawing of the guy’s foot after he shot his toes off. Awesome kid’s book!

Ian: Who writes these things...and WHY? What’s the moral of that?! Turn on the lights before you shoot a guy? Don’t buff your toenails too shiny, or they’ll look like eyes?

Chee: Whoever made up that story up wouldn’t know a moral if you stabbed him in the kidney with one. The point was to put fear in your heart - make you cower, soften you up, while you’re young.

Ian: Sucks!

Chee: Yes!

(Chee and Ian go for a walk outside, silhouetted against the sky, going over a hill, like Snoopy and Charlie Brown in mid-amble.)

Ian: Once, during a field trip to an old churchyard, I dropped a bag of Fritos into the Holy Well. Well. I knew Satan was going to take me that night, so I put six entire...

Chee: You know what would be interesting? If you ever paid attention to anything that I said. That would MESMERIZE me with its novelty.

(A tiny red bug bites Ian’s arm. It itches. Ian scratches at it absent-mindedly.)

Ian: What?

Chee: I just asked you, openly, with my mouth, if you’ve ever felt your identity being pulled away from you. The physical sensation of that, happening. Have you?

Ian: I...don’t know how to respond, to that. Um. I don’t think so. I’ll say no, but with the proviso that -

Chee: Unscrupulous people...you seriously need to, just, watch out. I don’t know if it’s government or industry or mafia or all of it at once or what, but it’s a movement – it’s small now, but it’s growing, and soon it will come for you.

Ian: Small, but growing, and soon it will come. I don’t understand.

Chee: Remember this conversation. And always trust a cat – we are crazy perceptive. NOTHING escapes our attention.

Ian: OK. C’mon, let’s go home, it’s getting dark.

Chee: It is?

Comedy! (Then, they’re home again.)

Ian: Oap! I left eggs on the table, better put ‘em back in the freezer...

Chee: Don’t freeze those eggs! Didn’t your mother... “EGGS!,” blurts the adult Scambot on the couch, waking with a shudder. “Eggs?”