The Hipster Who Leapt Through Time (The Hipster Trilogy Book 2) by Luke Kondor

half-empty. Some milk. A half-eaten sandwich she’d not finished. Some slices of cooked ham. And a tin of cat food, half-eaten. By Gary, of course.  
    She grabbed a fork and scooped out the jellied meat into a ramekin on the kitchen floor. She wasn’t even sure what ramekins were for but they made fancy-as-hell cat dishes.
    “How did you know to go there?” she asked as she sat back down at the table. “How could you know that child was in danger? Or even Moomamu. How did you know he was a Thinker? And the parasite? How do you know any of the things that you do?”
    “Gary already told Tall One,” he said as he grabbed a meat chunk with his good paw and pulled it to his mouth. “Gary has chip in neck.”
    “Yeah, you did say that, but I don’t know how that means you know stuff.”  
    “Chip is Network connected.”  
    “Like WiFi?”
    “No. Similar. It connects Gary to the Freelance Network. It gives him insight into what’s happening around the galaxy. What jobs are being posted. Who has taken them. How much they will be paid for doing so.”
    “And … what does that mean? Someone posted a job to kill that family?”
    “No. Just the boy. The boy was the job. Parents must have gotten in the way.”
    Luna felt sick. She could almost see the faceless child standing behind Gary, looking over at her. Unable to breathe. Unable to cry. Unable to ask for help.
    “Some sort of Freelancer’s job to kill a fucking child? Why would somebody need that to be done? Hiring some hit-man like I hire a cleaner? Why? Gary? And on that note, why are cleaners becoming more and more expensive? It looks like I’m gonna have to clean the toilet myself.”
    Gary stopped eating. He turned and looked at Luna. He looked at her with all the resolution a cat’s face could muster.  
    “Gary doesn’t know why people would want child dead, but Gary intends to stop it.”
    “What?” Luna couldn’t grasp what he was saying. The job was done. It was over. They’d failed. “The kid’s already dead.”
    “That was the first,” he said. “I saw the buzz on the Network. There are many more. Many, many more. And once Gary has eaten he will re-connect and will try to find out where. He will find Freelancer who kills Earth children and he will kill him.”
    Luna saw the restrained anger in Gary’s eyes. He’d appeared stoic and calm this entire night but the facade had dropped. Just a little. Just enough to betray him. The faceless child standing behind him wasn’t just Luna’s vision of her failure. It was Gary’s too.  
    “Okay,” Luna said. “Okay.”
    She stood up and walked over to the phone on the kitchen side. She pulled open the kitchen drawer and grabbed a laminated green and black piece of paper.  
    “I’m getting a curry,” she said. “Do you want any?”
    “Sure,” Gary said. “Gary wants meat.”

Moomamu The Thinker  

    The wind kicked dust into Moomamu’s face. He squinted and rubbed his eyes. Human eyes were terrible at dealing with dust. They went leaky and sore. Not ideal, especially when surrounded by a group of slaves who wanted to kill you.
    The slaves, a handful of cats and a single human, all holding weapons and pointing them at one another, were ready to fight to the death.
    Killing, Moomamu thought. It was the worst thing that living creatures gave to the universe. Death. Primal. Mostly for recreation, for fun.
    He looked up at the stadium full of furry heads and pricked ears and hissing mouths. The only two doors to the central dusty ring of the Scrapping Grounds were both locked. One with a heavy metal chains and bolts, and the other was a simple trap door in the floor that could only be opened from beneath. Both sealed now.  
    “Are you ready?” the shouting cat, Payton, bellowed. He wasn’t talking to the slaves. He was talking to the audience, and they responded with all the cheering of rabid madness.  
    Moomamu rubbed his eyes some more and noticed the slaves disperse and pair