It was quickly discovered that Ombudsman Butler could silence radio by entering any room after the alerts from Fischadler were downgraded to a steady code orange: as in ‘prepare for possible/pending crisis.’
Wolfe was surprised when he heard Mr. Butler whisper “Thank you for letting me carry you for a while” to the exhausted black cat he now had slung over his shoulder like a kitty shawl himself. The radios were silent into every room Mr. Butler stepped; the exact opposite of the amplification effect of the interaction of UHF cat-fang radio from Ruh, who was too exhausted to be a person, even on Xmas, which they do not care about in the least except for the Crimbo lights and splatter of past positive memory in a sea of Prisoner of War type horrors.
Yep. Cat time. Alhamdulillah that.
…Dr. Garrett J. Butler is at a high enough maqam to influence reality- even if the sudden cut of the radio like sudden offense was noted by most.
“Yooooooooo, it’s the Mango Rizzler” saluted Kek as he walked past with a potato gun and a sack of golden apples.
“Please, don’t make that a thing, Murīd o’ Madness.” Replied Butler.
“Oh. Then it’s totally A Thing Now,” Grinned Kek, “…and thank you for your Bayat, Mango Shaykh. “
“Wait…what?!” exclaimed Ombudsman Butler who offered neither hand to Kek.
“YOU CALLED ME MURĪD! I AM GOING TO HAVE THE MOST TEACHERS EVERRRRRRRRRRR!-” Then Kek ran off screaming the Pokémon theme at the top of his lungs, dropping his potato gun and apples in the process.
Truly, a Xmas tradition that will repeat as you read this story each year.
“-I WANNA BE THE VERY BEST! LIKE NO ONE EVER WAAAAAAAAAAS!-“
…and then he dove into a bush, and ran out as a yellow cat wearing his jingle collar running off to join the Jewish exorcist in the Catacombs with bags of Chinese food waiting that Duke Leto allocated the funds to provide.
The chinese food was kosher, halal, gluten-free, and created by lovely people who took two dollars off your order if you asked to keep the head and feet in the order, “Like Normal.”
Kek thought it was badass.
Anyway. The Mango Butler arrives at the Sound Clinic, where Wolfe takes Ruh and placed him on the ASMR platform in the middle of the room, on a bed of corduroy, because it makes the most noise on microphone without being taffeta.
Mr. Butler was surprised to discover a chocolate point cat that could get confused for Wolfe, in the dark, maybe. Except the darkness of his fur extended far past the cream of the Siamese cat type pattern.
Like his brothers, Dr. Whispurrs has slightly longer canine fangs. But, being youngest, he was slender and unnervingly quiet. Dr. Whispurrs legal name was Siri Alexa HeiGügle for his own intelligence career, giving him an entire buffet of unwitting bystanders who called him by name, repeatdly, daily, [as his responses to those he chose to respond to personally, did not detect a cadence change in voice or AI believability.]
Dr. Whispurrs was also a medical Auralogist, and his original name was Mic. Pronounced “Mike”, like the microphone, but that name remained as open of a secret that Wolfe D’Artagnan occasionally responds to “Steve.”
On the wall, Mic Whispurrs pointed at two distinct sets of cat x-rays.
“I am not going to violate KHIPAA (Kitty Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act),” Mic pointed at the space between a Kitty head x-ray with a bright white artifact directly corresponding to a metal incisor. Kitty Breed: MX-PRZN
The other X-ray was of a Kitty chest, with what also resembled a “fang” but curving along the inside if the heart like a combination valve and pacemaker but with scary wires attached. Kitty Breed: PRZN
“Hey bro, you’re Max Persian.”
“…Mixed Persian, Wolfe.” corrected Mic smoothly.
Mr. Butler examined both x-rays with the unnecessarily redacted information.
“Why.” was all the Butler Mango man could say in reply.
“Implants were common under the prior administration. For one of them, it was an honor of legacy. The other romantic and cardiac torture repurposed into a stability mechanism later vis a vis DeutschlandTech. However. It is hijacked.” Mic continued.
Mic, under his black snapback hat that depicted a dark cat wearing black headphones, gracefully stretched his own toebeans into an unselfconscious transformation into a primarily human self, keeping only the cat ears and a neatly trimmed beard. Dressed all in black, and wearing a signet ring of onyx and some stone more refractive and iridescent than diamond.
From the hook on the wall, he retrieved his very real lab coat, dark kitty themed stethoscope, and suddenly you realize the sink of running water in his videos isn’t sensory, it’s clinical.
His nitrile gloves were also black, and he could not resist squeaking the fingertips together to make slightly disconcerting squeaky noises after stretching them down over his freshly scrubbed hands and arms. His n-95 mask was also black as he approached Ruh with a tuning fork, an oscilloscope, and a cellphone app that read all incoming and outgoing signal.
Mic Whispurrs left the sink running at full blast as he chewed & snapped his gum loudly under his mask as he tapped the tooth gently.
“Step out of the room, bitte. Mr. YouTube Mango. You block the signal: Why.”
Wolfe pulled up a YouTube video series called “Fischadler’s Fiqh: Human Resources & Beyond” with one hundred & fourteen distinct chapter videos. The setting: the exact same studio set-up as Mr. Butler Fiqh & Tidy- the clothing identical, the subtle Mango themes already pre-implied, right down to the carved wooden screens behind them both, created, clearly, by the same artisans.
Except the videos diverged at a crucial point: Mango’s Sponsors
“I owe everything I am and everything I do to the Middle Eastern Mango Ensamble Society. Absolutely no one else other than MEMES & Allah” Mango pontificated as Mr. Butler on Steve Wolfe D’Artagnan’s celly,
“…The blessing of the MEMES is that it exists and we are blessed by Allah by the existence of MEMES. I highly recommend you support your Iftar this year with a crate of Mango’s from MEMES.”
“Oh. Yeah. Boss Fishhawk got big mad about something about ‘disrespect’ and ‘casting me out of the inner circle.’ ‘reckless boy’ despite the fact I am indeed a man, and he, of all people should understand coercion.” Replied Mr. Butler.
“He’s poisoned, Garrett J. Butler” replied Mic, simply, as he continued the checkup on Ruh the cat, now wearing headphones as he tested various frequencies. “I cannot continue an accurate read of distress signals from your Murshīd if they are blocked m every time Garrett J Butler, the Mango Cat Mascot of Alaraf blocks the signal because a SIS guy has mad beef.
“Why do you keep using my full name…?” Replied Dr. Garrett J. Butler, Religious Scholar, Feline Buereau Investigations, Surveillance Analyst.
“Because Dr. Garret J. Butler, Khadim to my brother, YouTube Star & Ombudsman, You are losing yourself to your own mythologies continuously. Please step into the radio room with Wolfe, bitte. It is to the left, inward door.”
Mic tapped his fingers on his little black kitty clipboard.
“Worst case scenario, once the channel frequency is isolated, we can send clear signal back to the Human FishHawk while masking it with creepy-crawly ASMR to any hijacking his signsl describing spiders hatching and climbing out of human-“
“No thank you, Mic. I’ll step out” bowed Mango as Wolfe gently steered him by the arm to the inside door.
*************************
Ibn Arabi also accepted the catboy compromise. Mic had specifically found a half-lead vest cheap from a dying dental academy, gave it to Duke Leto, and when Duke Leto2 form, Ibn Arabi wore it under his sweater, and then his scarf hid the outline as the radio signal was blocked enough to his metal heart implant and wires that he could speak without pain and interruption.
Even the crows in the field that typically avoided or resisted cat & human translation were uncomfortably seated, lead by Helsea, the school head coroner of students.
“Dr. Leto, we are not going to continue this narrative without explaining why there is a ‘head coroner of students’ and still Claim that the prior cat torture administration has no effect on the present system.” Kafka extrapolated with great concern.
“KAFKA. There were students after you. Maybe some people want Proximity?!” replied a black footed cat wearing his own chef costume.
“A coroner makes more sense in a scientific torture campus than a Lars von Trier professor…” Replied another cat he did not know, this time with short grey fur and changing eyes- his voice was high pitched, “You don’t know what happened here, dude, and letting MangoRizzler handle it was the wisest decision you could have made, I commend you. I’m Loki, BTW. Hi Dr. Kafka the Firstest.”
“There are a lot dead & dying things here” replied Helsea, simply. [Helsea as a cat, could best be described visually Viking’s little sister, entirely unrelated to Viking, but partially dyed magenta with sharp black cat claws in every form and midnight ears with lynxy tufts.]
Ibn Arabi sighed: “Please do not make me flick the light switch like you are eight years old, ladies, gentlemen, cats, & whatever. The problem is this. Even with new administration, there is still damage from old administration.
The only way to counter it is with legitimacy and building the network strong enough to stand against the interference and face those who harm us with greater intelligence, ethic, numbers, and morality. We need to teach better & more useful things than any Global Human Resources Torture Company”
“Ra Ra Alaraf U. Astaghfirullah” said Bird, with the least enthusiasm.
“Bird. We can’t choose wars, but we can choose how we endure them. First way is by stopping complaining. Second way is by learning to listen instead of complaining. Third, is by realizing complaining is why you eat rats all the time, son.”
************************
Dr. Mic Whispurrs was able to adapt & retool both the Fang UHF narrow band dental implant as well as the pacemaker.
The Shaykh “Speaking through One’s Heart” now was no longer a constant deluge of partially pre-recorded distress, but could now shift channels cleanly and finally without constriction and pain.
When Ibn Arabi returned to his office, he no longer cares how he looked, and gracefully fell into his own four paws onto the cerulean rug.
Immediately, he noticed Ruh was half drugged on the catbed, the metal tooth now golden, still in recovery from anesthesia.
….and absolutely not in any condition to assume human form.
“Salaams Profeffor, Shoma Chetori?” Ruh slurred around their newly improved dental implant.
“Khoobum. We take it two sentences at a time.” said Ibn Arabi gently in reply.
He could turn into the radio at will now, but there was nothing he could do at the moment but endure this narrative longer with his best friend again.
Inshallah third party interferences had more pressing issues than to bother them more than the constant push & pull dynamics of their radios.
An override is an override. And even when improved, there was no guarantee at sovereign control of their recievers if the situation escalated or bad actors gained control of Fischadler’s own heart & head.
The Chronicals of Alaraf 