Branch
A stray cat hops soundlessly over a nearby wall. Your double turns to you.
"CASCADE..."
Wait. HOLOCENE? What's happening?
The past is here again. This time in the guise of your former double, walking down the backways with you one night, half a decade ago.
"I'm not saying it's likely, CASCADE, only that the possibility can't be dismissed out of hand."
"I don't think cats are running their own intelligence operation, HOLOCENE."
"Point one: nocturnality. Point two: x-ray sight."
Branch
"That second point is not a point..."
"Spoken like someone who's never locked eyes with a cat through a wall."
Something feline in his eyes, too. An intelligence, but utterly dissimilar from any kind you know.
"Say you're right, what do we do with that information?"
"We wait, of course. They know more about us than we do about them, we have to wait for them to show their hand."
"They have their own methods, their own strategic objectives, unaligned with any known power..."
"And, I fear, devious and at odds with our own."
Your double continues walking, his hands clasped behind his back and his gaze, restless, darting around the scene, taking in everything, absolutely everything.
Branch
End of this branch
"Who would they even be working for, HOLOCENE?"
"For no one, CASCADE, that is precisely the point. They have their own methods, their own strategic objectives, unaligned with any known power..."
"Intriguing."
"CASCADE, I have a clear record of every one of the four hundred and twenty two times that cats have suddenly stopped and stared at me at exactly the moment I was in the middle of an important intelligence operation."
"Whatever, forget about it."
"I forget nothing."
"That's why I have a clear record of every one of the four hundred and twenty two times that cats have suddenly stopped and stared at me at exactly the moment I was in the middle of an important intelligence operation."
"Of course it can't. Little can. Walk me through it."
"Yes?"