Preface

mostly written by the Anchorite

Twitch knew in his rational mind to not tamper with his human’s myriad gadgets, but the heart wants what it wants and he could no more resist than the sun could resist rising. 

A mishap with her sleeping device transported Twitch to a different world in a shower of sparks. Twitch had once again landed in an alternate plane of reality. 

Why did those gadgets have to be so tempting? Twitch entered a world where  where he had never existed. Twitch always knew he was the most awesomest cat in the universe, but even he never expected this nightmarish dystopia.

Familiar faces existed in this world, but not as he knew them without his life-changing, awesome influence. Without Twitch there to act as his goofy best bud and complement to his self-serious personality, Mr. Kitten became the monomaniacal Lord Kitten who turned the Western United States into his personal dictatorship where humans became second-class citizens to their feline superiors. Anton Fitzgibbon, Chaircat of the Internet, became consumed by his lust for material wealth so he indifferently ceded political control to Lord Kitten while he held the world’s purse strings. Anton hoarded the gift of the internet, cutting humans off from access, and used his vast wealth to drive the world’s financial markets into collapse. The Chaircat singlehandedly sent the world back into the Great Depression with poverty unseen in a century and a blackout on all wireless, advanced technology.

There were enterprising humans who adapted to a world cast backwards. By agreement with Anton and Lord Kitten, Grease seized the Eastern United States and reinvented himself as an old-school mobster. He transformed New York City, Atlantic City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore into sleazy, crime-infested hellholes and appointed his right-hand man Squeegee to watch over the Midwestern territories Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and Kansas City. American citizens faced either a brutal feline dictatorship where humans were not people, or a lawless urban nightmare ruled by a harsh criminal organization. Countless people risked their lives to flee south to Latin America, with Mexico receiving the brunt of the American refugees in an ironic reversal of fortune.

Conditions were not any better across the globe. Cad Cadsworth ran amok in England, turning the country into a charnel house where he slaughtered people at will and his fanatical devotees spread chaos and anarchy. The European mainland became the battleground of the Norse Goddesses Blondhilda and Grimgudrun. They brought Ragnarok to Earth, summoning monstrous and demonic legions from the planes of heaven and hell that devastated the land without regard for human life. Blondhilda sought to conquer the Earth and sacrifice its inferior humans to the pantheon to usher in a new divine age while the nihilistic Grimgudrun fought to end all existence. All factions across the world made a tacit agreement to aid and sabotage both combatants equally to keep their war contained to Europe and to keep it eternal because a victory for either goddess meant the end of the world.

Hello Sailor and Bancho Domino overthrew the modern, peaceful Japanese government to return the nation to its militaristic imperialist roots. They took the titles of Emperor and Empress themselves, with Hello Sailor publicly executing their predecessors with her katana while Bancho Domino murdered the Diet by pumping poison gas into the legislature’s chambers. On the Asian mainland, Pope Hian established a repressive theocracy as brutal as that of the Dark Millennium world. To Twitch’s surprise, Regia was the Pope Hian of this world who followed in her father’s footsteps unlike the compassionate, rebellious woman that he knew. After Blondhilda and Grimgudrun’s war destroyed the Vatican, Regia seized control of the Catholic Church’s remnants along with the multiple Christian denominations and Buddhist parishes that she repurposed to spread the gospel of her namesake St. Regia. Her lover Claire Guang became the Church’s enforcer and information minister, applying her creative talents to spreading the gospel and propaganda among the cowed populace. Pope Hian’s spoiled cat Ting Ting had free reign of the land to satisfy her cruelest urges in ways that matched Lord Kitten for sheer depravity.

To round out this lovely story, thought Twitch with sarcasm, Blondhilda and Grimgudrun’s entry into the mortal plane opened a dimensional rift in Australia. Cottie the Apricot Queen led an invasion force that quickly decimated the country. Squadrons of Royal Soldiers poured through the rift as the evil queen planned her own global invasion. Queen Cottie broke the Australian spirit when she made an example of their national hero the Wereplatypus by hanging from an apricot tree. Finally, without knowing true friendship like Twitch offered the LOLShark became a savage beast who terrorized the seas and made them all but impassable. Between the LOLShark’s interdiction of the navigable seas and the Chaircat’s technological shutdown that made air travel unsafe, people across the world became effectively confined to their continents. Twitch mused that this separation was about the only thing preventing these various factions from wiping each other off the map.

The world without Twitch was a harsh place, but it was not without hope. The safe refuge of Central and South America became fertile ground for a revolutionary movement. The would-be resistance gathered in Aztec, Mayan, Incan, and other pre-Columbian ruins. These Mesoamerican relics proved immune to technological and divine probes, so neither Blondhilda’s goddess senses nor Anton’s network could penetrate these ruins. 

Twitch sat in Mexico City’s Tenochtitlan ruins with the leading figures of the resistance as they planned a bold raid on Lord Kitten’s southern border. Stanley Chester Brown was a charismatic, dynamic leader devoted to the cause of freeing this world from its nightmare. He inadvertently opened the rift that led Blondhilda and Grimgudrun into the mortal plane. In his distant past, Stanley was a humble writer seeking an inspirational muse. He contacted the Norse Goddess Blondhilda and fell for her deceitful lies. The resistance members unanimously absolved him of responsibility for the foul villain’s betrayal, but Stanley remained driven by the burden that he carried on his shoulders of feeling responsible for opening the gates of the mortal realm to Ragnarok. 

Stanley found his real-life muse with his fiancée Heather Katz. She was a lawyer before Lord Kitten and Grease collectively destroyed the United States and had been happily engaged to Stanley. Now she served as his closest lieutenant, applying her analytical skills to masterful, strategic planning. Stanley and Heather wore matching rings with the promise to finally have their wedding when Blondhilda’s head was on a pike and Lord Kitten’s body sat stuffed over their fireplace. 

The unofficial resistance leaders had a group dedicated enough to lay down their lives for the cause. Rico, one of Heather’s former law firm colleagues, gave the movement his all and longed for the day when he could visit his homeland Cuba without the LOLshark reducing him to bloody gore for crossing the sea. The surly Helena with her severe buzz cut and spiked leather jacket looked intimidating, but she was a loyal freedom fighter willing to do whatever it took to overthrow these tyrants. Other men in the resistance movement found her exotic Eurasian features attractive and several hushed whispers noted how cute she was when she smiled. 

Gabriel “Gabe” Fitzgibbon rounded out the inner circle’s five-man band. Unlike Stanley or Heather’s more noble prior professions, Gabe had been a petty criminal in his youth. He had, however, been more misguided than truly evil and after true evil reigned supreme Gabe reformed his ways to become a noble revolutionary. As the Chaircat’s former human, he raised Anton as best as he could but without Twitch to keep him humble and in line, Anton’s ego grew out of control. He despised his human’s impulsiveness and perceived weakness, so Anton became a cold, ruthless cat motivated solely by greed and a lust for material power that proved a lethal complement to Lord Kitten’s lust for political power. Gabe felt devastated by his beloved pet’s betrayal, but he also felt responsible for what Anton became. Gabe poured himself into the cause in a way that paralleled Stanley’s near obsessive desire to defeat Blondhilda. Twitch had never known Anton’s former human, so seeing Gabe in the flesh was a revelation to him, although he felt annoyed by Gabe’s constant protestations that he wished that he adopted a dog on that fateful day that he went to the animal shelter.

CC proved the biggest surprise to Twitch. In this world, CC was alive and well instead of the ethereal ghost cat that he knew. Despite Gabe Fitzgibbon’s vocal rants that he should have adopted a puppy instead of that ingrate Anton, he took well to CC as Fitzgibbon petted the white cat and treated him like his own. As the only cat to refuse to join Lord Kitten, besides Ting Ting who was just as bad herself, CC had a prominent position in the resistance movement where he had the prestigious position of being the fledgling group’s mascot and inner circle’s sixth ranger. Far from the sleepy cat content to listen to shoegaze music all day long that Twitch knew, this CC was a dynamic, dedicated warrior. 

The revolutionaries listened to CC with respect and deference as humans should do with cats, rather than perverting the sacred relationship though coercion as Lord Kitten did. CC thus brought Twitch into the resistance movement where he would be their secret, undetectable weapon because he did not exist in this world. Twitch knew that he would not be able to return home until he helped save this world. The sooner he left, he thought, the better as this world was a dystopian nightmare where nearly everyone he knew were horrific travesties of what they should be and those who retained their good natures were desperate heroes facing nearly insurmountable odds. 

I hate seeing my best friends like this, he thought. Sure Grease was a jerk back home, but he was strictly small-time and nowhere near this bad. These people are my friends and without me, they’ve turned into evil stoopyheads. Blondhilda, Ting Ting, LOLshark, Princess Cottie … well with the Apricot Princess I can see it, but still. Worst of all is you, Kitten. How did you become such a monster? Such is a world without me, thought Twitch. It’s up to me to make it right, so it’s a good thing I brought my bow tie. I’ll go save the world, right after I can haz a cheeseburger. Nom, nom, nom…