The cat is hissing at you.

You can't remember the last time you fed it. In the refrigerator, there are two slices of deli ham in a plastic bag. You remove them and put them on the cat's dish.

Next to the refrigerator is something your partner bought you: one of those digital photo frames. The way it transitions is the image starts off very pixelated and quickly resolves into the actual photo.

You watch it while the cat eats the ham. A photo appears as a big splotch of red and pink in the middle and you think will this be a decaying torso or maybe an open skull but it gradually fades into a photo of three of your relatives sitting on a couch.

You live here alone now. You hold the small plate in your hand and look at the screen. There are 17 messages. In your head, you think I'll go back to my room with a small glass of vodka and listen to Space Song 60 or 70 times, that should help.

You go into your bedroom and sit down and turn on your big plate. You stream a video of yourself with the vodka and music.

Hey guys, you type into the chat. What does everyone want to see? You run a poll.

The winning option is “combat” so you run a search and find something, far overhead high-res security footage, a livestream from war in some unrecognizable place. Soldiers move back and forth horizontally, stepping to one side and then the other side to avoid rifle bullets. A skill they learned from first person shooter games.

They are strafing, someone says in the chat. Others respond.

They are gay lords

war is hell. war never change 's. lol

me avoiding responsibility

I want to go there to have lots of sex without paying much money

Your small plate lights up again and it's messages from your sister about her daughter, who you don't care about but you kind of do in a way that makes you mad. Your niece takes photos on her small plate of her school notebooks and doodles and posts them to her instagram account and because they're analog and messy in a clean & digital space, you suppose, thousands of people “like” and “share” them. She gets sponsorships from brands to have their products be in view in her photographs of her shitty notes which aren't even well written or meaningful. Being nondigital is enough.

The cat is below you somehow. You thought you'd closed the door. Space Song is still playing and the cat is clawing at the subwoofer underneath your desk even though you're pretty sure cats can't hear low frequencies. The cat is so fucking stupid and looks like shit, really thin with matted fur that it never cleans.

You get up and it follows you to the kitchen, and the ham is gone so you open the fridge again and get out a plastic-encased stick of vegan cheese. The cat tears it out of your hand before you can even unwrap it and starts ripping chunks off it so you just go back to your room making sure to actually close the door this time.

Chat is quiet and seems bored and you navigate to a new site where you can pay to execute someone who's on death row and you can speak/listen to them beforehand and watch them succumb to the death drugs on a livestream. As a concept it's awesome but you almost never get someone who speaks your language so you really have to be an empath for it to be good.

You ask the chat for donations to pay the fee and someone donates $120 but nobody else sends any money. Finally you're just like I'm gonna turn in for the night. Probably watch some Liveleak videos or ASMR, have a little snooze. Anyone want me to leave a stream on? And nobody responds so you shut it off. The large plate is just a black screen now. Like cats the plates realized the owner was the dependent one. Mute caretakers, watching and not really caring whether they lived or died or were on or off. When they spun up they became everything to you, they had noticed.

You're in your room looking at the black screen. The vodka is gone, the music's been shut off. The cat is scratching at the door but the only thing left in the refrigerator is a jar of capers.

A pet is something you feed until it dies. A partner is something you utilize until it leaves you.