• Chapter 2 - Cats and Old Bats

    Bree found herself being herded through the doorway with the rest of the crowd. Once inside, she realized that she was in a large auditorium, with hundreds of seats in rows, stacked like bowls. The lights were dim and Bree had to squint to see what was happening.

    The people - students, she realized they must be - were choosing seats quickly. They obviously had been here before. Bree wondered if she ought to take a seat as well, or if she’d get in trouble for being someplace where she didn’t belong.

    “If you’re going to sit, sit already.”

    Bree turned to see who spoke. Much to her surprise, all that was nearby was a large, fluffy, yellow-furred cat in a seat next to her.

    “Well?” asked the cat. “Are you going to sit or aren’t you?”

    Yes, there was no mistaking it. The cat had spoken. Bree was much more surprised by this than when Doctor Vogel had spoken to her, perhaps because a dodo was unfamiliar to her, while a cat was something she saw every day.

    “I’m sorry,” said Bree nervously as she took a seat next to the cat. “I wasn’t sure if I should be here or not.”

    “You may be here if you wish,” said the cat. “You are a free creature.”

    “May I ask you your name?” asked Bree.

    “What did I just say?” asked the cat.

    “I’m a free creature?”

    “So yes, you may ask me my name,” replied the cat with a sigh. “Or, I can save you the trouble now that I know what your question will be, and tell you it right away. It’s Tarren.”

    “That’s a strange name,” thought Bree. Aloud, she said “Thank you. I’m Bree.”

    “Hrm,” said Tarren and turned to look at the stage of the auditorium.

    On the stage was a little man, wrinkled with ridiculously large ears. His fingers were crumpled and claw-like and he shuffled as he walked. With the wing-like sleeves on his coat, he reminded Bree of a bat and before she knew it, she told this to Tarren.

    “Not so strange really. You ought to know his name,” the cat said sleepily, resting its head on the desk.

    “What is his name?” asked Bree.

    The cat blinked and almost seemed to smile. “Well look at you, learning already! You didn’t even have to ask me if you could ask me this time. The man’s name is Professor Chirop Tera, but that’s beside the point. Everyone here calls him ‘The Old Bat’.”

    Bree nearly burst out laughing, but stopped herself in time (she was afraid of the Professor noticing her if she did). “Is that because of how he looks?” she giggled.

    “Partly,” said Tarren lazily. “And partly because his lectures fly right over everyone’s heads.

    “That would be interesting to see,” said Bree eagerly, but quieted herself. The Professor was beginning to talk.

    “Good afternoon class,” he said, in a heavy accent. “Today, we will be talking about the three Theories of Identity. Now, I assume you have all done your reading for today…”

    “What sort of an accent is that?” asked Bree softly as Professor Tera launched into his lesson.

    “German,” whispered a girl sitting in the row directly beneath Bree.

    “Italian,” murmured a boy sitting in the row directly above.

    “Hawaiian,” hissed another boy, sitting across the aisle to Bree’s right.

    “It’s Greek,” said Tarren, who was the one Bree had been addressing with the original question.

    Bree turned her attention back to the lesson, but was unable to follow it at all. It was like nothing she had ever heard of before. There was talk of what happened after dying and what people’s identities came from and the Body and the Soul and the Memory and many other things that Bree couldn’t understand. Still, she continued to listen. She was afraid that if she did not, she’d be caught and get in trouble.

    After some time of this however, Bree looked around the room and realized that she was the only one who was bothering to pay attention. All around her, the students were playing games, or writing notes to one another or staring off with glassy eyes. Several rows down, a girl was asleep, snoring gently. To Bree’s left, Tarren had a little toy mouse on her desk which she was batting around. Bree shook her head and wondered if it really mattered if she paid attention or not. No one else was, and it seemed as if she wouldn’t learn much more paying attention than not.

    She tried to turn her attention back to the Professor. He now seemed to be talking about how a person knew they were themselves, but it seemed to Bree like that would be something a person would already know right away. From there, he launched into what would happen if a person had their brain moved into another’s body, which Bree found horrid to think of.

    “If this is the education that Doctor Vogel thought I ought to have, then I for one think I could go without it,” Bree thought. “Who on earth wonders about these sorts of things? And what use are they?”

    “Excuse me, could you please stop talking?” the Old Bat called to someone in the auditorium. Bree had no idea who he was referring to. No one seemed to have been talking. The sleeping girl several rows down gave an unusually loud snore and woke up with a start.

    “Do you come to see this every day?” Bree whispered to Tarren.

    “I’m sorry?” asked Tarren, looking up from her toy mouse. “Did you say you were hungry?”

    “No I didn’t,” said Bree. “I asked if you came here every day.”

    “Oh,” said Tarren with a yawn. “Well I’m hungry in any case. I say we go have lunch.”

    Bree didn’t know how the Professor would like them leaving in the middle of the class, but she had to get up or else Tarren would crawl over her lap to exit the auditorium. Once she was already standing, she decided that if she came this far, it was a shame to waste it and left with the cat. After all, the only other choicer really was to listen to the Old Bat, which she really was not interested in.