Author's note: This piece of fiction is set in a not-too-distant future in which the Collective of Hallifax has succeeded in encompassing all of the Basin of Life.

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Scroll in hand, already fatigued by the monotony of routine, I once again patrolled my lonely catwalk, assured time and again of its necessity. My breath clouded in the artificially chilled air before my muzzle, drifting then silently to my feet where it vanished against my body's warmth. I'd figured a few years back that this sturdy overpass hung a good sixty or seventy meters above the icy steel floor. It occurred to me each and every evening just how simply I could put an end to these arbitrary strolls. Sometimes I wondered how the biologists would explain to their tour groups why a worker's body lay in such smeared and fractured disarray upon the floor of the Commonwealth National Zoo. What a shame it would be to miss their flustered attempts at excusing such an event.

The Custodian of Sanitation would probably have tossed my body in the incinerator before morning, anyway. It'd put an end to the cold, at least.

One step at a time, periodically tapping here or there on my shimmering crystalline scroll, I diligently made my rounds, face bathed on both sides by the frosty glow of the exhibits. Here on level eight of the Taroch Corridor we housed every known variety of a creature called "Cat." One of these beasts, once known as the Tiger, was said to have had a snout-to-tail length greater than the height of an above average Igasho. She was once the subject of grand poetry and lofty admiration, once hunted for her glorious striped pelt and dagger-sharp fangs. The societal value of such a creature, however--being unfit to serve as our pets or to be served on our dinner tables--diminished rapidly in the Collective's Sprawl. She now occupied vial T8-BC871F.

Hundreds of thousands of millions of such vials lined the walls, which stretched out of sight in all directions on either side of the suspended walkway. These were an entire biome's progeny, the remnants of an era when those living creatures were somehow valued, when their existence seemed somehow necessary. Even now, their seed and ova preserved so faithfully along the expansive corridors of the Zoo, we maintained our odd covenant with Kiakoda, and in doing so assumed Her role. How ironic the old parable of eggs and baskets seemed within these walls.

A glaring break in that blue uniformity suddenly caught my eye. A single red indicator blinked its silent message below one of the vials--the seed of another cat called Lion--its every flash wrenching my gut. The simple heading across the top of my scroll confirmed the news: CONTAMINATION. I felt my knees weaken and my vision blurred as terror clouded my brain, and yet I was thankful simply to feel something. Against protocol, against every one of hundreds of hours of training, against my own will, my trembling hand reached over the guardrail for the tiny capsule, my fur and claws illuminated by the faint red flash. I then held in my shaky fingers the ruined future of an entire species. A cloudy tube of Aslarn's Pride was our hollow attempt to save it.

I felt my fingers tighten on the cold white vial. I felt its thin walls shatter beneath my grip and cut my pawpad. I felt the tainted fluid chill the blood of my palm. I felt.

A blinking red light was all the great Lion deserved in the way of funeral fanfare. This was the sole signal of his final departure from our realm. If only we could all be so exalted!

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The Custodian of Sanitation happened upon my body on the floor of the Taroch Corridor. Within the hour, a blinking red light on the incinerator console announced the disposal of the day's waste.