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Carrying the tiger cub Katie — a male tiger with a decidedly female na — Henry headed ho.
He didn't bring along the iron cage the cub had been kept in. The reason was simple: it wouldn't fit in his car.
That cage had been built to hold a full-grown tiger — thick iron bars, heavy weight, and, worst of all, huge size. Unless he used a truck, there was no way it was fitting into his small Cadillac.
He set the listless cub in the passenger seat and secured it loosely with a seat belt. From the cub's initial struggle to its current stillness, Henry, relying on his veterinary reading, guessed that aside from hunger, it was also suffering from dehydration.
Apparently, those poachers hadn't just starved it — they hadn't even given it enough water.
Henry didn't make any stops and drove straight back to his rented apartnt.
Just as he was about to head upstairs, Old Gary, the building's manager, saw him under the sunlight, tiger in arms.
> "Henry!" Gary called out.
> "Yes, Gary? What's up?"
> "What are you holding there?"
> "Ah, this?" Henry said with a straight face. "This is a tabby cat, Katie. Katie, say hi — this is Gary."
He grabbed one of the tiger cub's paws and made it wave.
Then he added, "I know the rules say no pets, but this poor little cat is holess. Can't you make an exception?"
Henry said it confidently because Gary's "no pets" rule wasn't exactly strict. He was pretty lenient with the tenants — especially those who paid rent on ti, never caused trouble, and occasionally shared food.
From a distance, Gary couldn't see clearly. He waved a hand dismissively.
> "Fine, fine. But you clean up after it yourself, you hear? Don't let it poop or pee in the hallways or anywhere else.
> "If anyone complains, I'll have to do sothing about it. And if it starts yowling at night when it's in heat, I'll toss it out on the street to find itself a tomcat. Got it?"
Gary clearly thought the "cat" in Henry's arms was a female. Henry had no intention of correcting him.
> "No problem," Henry promised. "It won't bother anyone."
> "Good. Don't cause trouble," Gary said with a yawn, waving him off. The California autumn sun always made him sleepy.
> "I'll head up then," Henry said, and went upstairs.
---
As soon as he opened the door, a snowball-shaped spherical robot rolled toward his feet.
It perford a quick infrared biotric scan and then emitted a high-frequency sound — one inaudible to human ears.
> "Unknown entity detected."
The high-frequency tone was a coded alarm — a silent alert designed not to tip off intruders.
Henry preferred quiet security to loud alarms.
This was his core robot, codena BB. Its outer shell was plastic, with no flashy colors or design — it looked just like a child's toy roly-poly.
The bottom half rolled freely, allowing it to move across the floor.
He had chosen plastic deliberately. It was lightweight, which ant smaller motors and longer battery life.
Even though Henry had unlocked the lithium–iron battery tech tree, BB wasn't exactly a mini arc reactor — it still needed to charge, and charging ant electricity bills.
And Henry was careful not to draw too much power. If his electric usage suddenly spiked, it might attract unwanted attention.
After all, it wouldn't take much effort for him to drain an entire city block's power grid — but that kind of notice was the last thing he wanted.
---
On the other hand, making the robot look like a toy helped lower intruders' guard.
Not that break-ins were common — with Gary watching the ground floor, the building hadn't had a single theft reported.
BB's control program wasn't true artificial intelligence. Real AI, with self-learning capability, required massive computing power — far beyond what current Earth hardware could manage.
So Henry had written a set of preset behavioral responses for most scenarios instead.
When BB's ultrasonic alarm sounded, Henry imdiately replied in the sa high-frequency code:
> "BB, register new secondary user: Katie."
> 'New secondary user registered: Katie. DNA sample required soon.'
> "Welco ho, Katie," Henry said with a small grin.
BB's voice was a stiff, chanical monotone — pure synthesized speech.
It wasn't that Henry didn't want a warm, feminine voice; it just required more processing power.
Besides, that robotic tone had a certain nostalgic charm for soone from Henry's generation.
The high-frequency language was reserved for top-level commands — even if soone detected the signal, they'd still have to decrypt it, identify the non-European linguistic base, and then replicate it to gain access.
With all those security layers, Henry saw no need for clunky things like usernas, passwords, or regular password changes — "anti-human design," as he called it, more likely to trip up the user than any hacker.
In truth, this voice-command system had been Henry's main project lately.
He'd spent weeks refining the microphone's ability to distinguish human speech from background noise, TV audio, and other sources.
He'd optimized how voice commands translated into machine-readable code, improving the shift from strict matching to fuzzy recognition, so the robot could respond even if his tone or pitch changed.
While it wasn't true AI, it definitely used big data–style analysis to achieve its impressive adaptability.
---
In this system:
High-frequency command access belonged only to top-tier users who could alter core settings.
Henry was the primary user, with full command authority.
Secondary users, like Katie, had limited privileges — enough to trigger feeding and simple care routines while Henry was away.
For now, the only registered visitor was Old Gary — BB wouldn't raise an alarm if he entered.
Henry hadn't installed any lethal defense asures — only surveillance caras that would automatically record if an unauthorized person broke in.
Setting up traps or weapons in a rented apartnt, surrounded by normal neighbors, would've been overkill — and suspicious.
The tighter the security, the more it scread, "Sothing valuable is hidden here."
And Henry hadn't left anything worth stealing in this place anyway.
Back when he first opened his black-market clinic in South L.A., thieves ca by almost every other night — until they realized there was nothing valuable to take. These days, even cockroaches avoided the place.
---
After registering Katie and greeting the new "user," BB rolled back to its charging dock.
For now, its only installed function was a cleaning mode, operating via a detachable arm attachnt. Henry hadn't programd more complex routines yet.
So, the water bowl for the tiger had to be filled manually. Henry poured a large bowl and placed it on the floor.
Then he took three thick steaks from the fridge, tossed them into a pan, and started cooking — one for himself, one for Katie.
He still wasn't sure whether to feed the cub raw or cooked at, but he decided to let it eat what he was eating.
The only real concern was the tiger's strict carnivore diet — unlike dogs, it couldn't digest starch or plant matter. Too many carbs would only cause indigestion.
Henry sighed, flipping the steak.
> "Guess I really have to work harder now," he muttered. "Can't afford to starve this little ancestor of mine."
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