The last savior

Lucas stood in the shelter's main hall, half-shielding his eyes from the light as he mulled over his current predicament:

First, he had leaped forward in time. Judging by his surroundings, he was still on Earth, but some five centuries into the future.

Second, Earth's technology was now unbelievably advanced. The idea of countries had basically vanished; in their place were mega-groups often called "alliances." The largest of these was the Human Alliance—though there were plenty of others, like the Empire Alliance, the Third Trade Zone, and so on… all combined under the banner of the New Humanity Federation!

Outside the shelter, most public facilities and services were run by robots. In other words, it looked like human beings really didn't need to do any manual labor anymore.

Currency had been replaced by something known as "identity credit," and physical cash was a thing of the past. A person's identity was linked to their bank account—whether you ate, traveled, or went shopping, it was all billed directly to your identity credit. Which meant that having no ID was a major problem for Lucas. Even if he could land a job, he wouldn't get paid! 

So right now, his only options were relying on old Gadget's charity or taking a chance on petty theft.

A more pressing concern was that the police robots were already onto him. Apparently, they'd tagged him as some kind of "E-level criminal." He was scraping by when it came to food and shelter, but next time he tried to steal something, who knew how closely they'd be watching?

And on top of this, although he saw plenty of wild vegetation out there, he hadn't found a single variety that was actually edible; as for wild animals… aside from rats and cockroaches, he hadn't seen anything else. Had all other larger creatures gone extinct?

In fact, the only "animal" he'd run across so far… well, he wasn't even sure if it really counted as an "animal."

Finally, there was the big question—why did he journey across the centuries in the first place, and could he go back?

The answer was probably wrapped up in Aurelia, who had shown up at the same time he did. The trouble was, this female android's body wasn't in perfect shape, and her memory chip was missing large chunks. If she hadn't finally regained the power of speech a week ago, she might have been disassembled into scrap by Gadget—by now…

Just then, Lucas heard a quiet rustling nearby. With a sigh, he closed his eyes and called out, "Hey, old guy Gadget—I managed to snag a newspaper today."

A slow but piercing voice came from beside him: "Oh? Did you learn anything from it?"

"One good piece of news, and one bad piece of news. Which do you want first?"

"Makes no difference… let's go with the good one…" The voice—harsh and sharp—suddenly hopped onto the stone platform, presumably picking through the items Lucas had brought back.

"The good news is—I confirmed once more that I'm still on that planet I told you about, the one called 'Earth.' And, just like you guessed, I'm a dude who somehow ended up five hundred years in the future. But the bad news is that if this really is Earth, like we're thinking…" Lucas mumbled, slowly opening his eyes. On his chest stood a creature nearly three feet tall, with tiny forelegs, beady eyes like mung beans, pointed ears, a long tail, and two sharp buck teeth poking out from its mouth. 

By Lucas's reckoning, it was basically a giant white-furred rat—bigger than a cat.

"Uh… It's obvious you're on Earth," Gadget said, nodding. "So what's your big 'bad news'?"

"If we're absolutely sure this is Earth," Lucas replied, meeting Gadget's gaze as the rodent nodded emphatically, "then that would make you…a rat!"

"Uh…" Gadget froze like a paused video. His tiny bean-like eyes went wide with horror, and his mouth quivered. "Y-you… you mean…"

Lucas nodded solemnly. "Exactly. In my old world, rats aren't exactly beloved."

Aurelia's eyes flickered with a mechanical whir. "Rat—rodent, omnivorous, highly resilient—"

Before Aurelia could finish, Gadget seemed to seize up the instant he heard the word "rat." His eyes rolled back, he let out a sharp squeak, and a strange light flickered through them. Then he collapsed limply onto Lucas's chest.

"No… nooo! I am NOT a rat!!!" A moment later, a high-pitched, gut-wrenching screech echoed through the shelter.

Truth be told, Lucas had never seen a rat like Gadget before. This rodent was fluent in at least thirty languages, including the one Lucas himself was speaking. 

Gadget had once scribbled the entire solution to "Goldbach's Conjecture" on a wall in under five minutes—though Lucas had no way to verify if it was correct. Gadget was a wealth of knowledge, could stand upright, and had extremely particular tastes in life's finer points.

Ever since Lucas arrived, his main daily routine had been to learn about this era's languages and customs from this old rat, Gadget, while keeping Aurelia safe from being dismantled by him—since Gadget would drool over her mechanical components. 

The moment Lucas caught him eyeballing Aurelia with a screwdriver in hand, his inner caveman instincts flared: "This gorgeous female android is for sex, not spare parts!" So he put an end to Gadget's attempts to dismantle her on the spot.

That's how the debate got started in the first place—was Lucas in a parallel universe, or just stuck in Earth's future? And was Gadget a rat, or was he some other creature? This argument kept dragging on, until Lucas found a newspaper showing the current date.

Lucas shook his head at the old rodent's wailing and went back to his earlier line of thought: He'd gone out to steal precisely to gather more intel on this world, hoping to confirm once and for all whether he was in another dimension, or if it was truly earth's future.

His only companions right now were Aurelia—an android with advanced mobility and a scrambled memory chip—and this talking white rat named Gadget, whose tech know-how would probably leave any 21st-century scientist wallowing in shame. 

Then again, aside from being a giant mutated rat, he might also be a little mentally off.

Sure, Gadget claimed he could scrounge up some sustenance for Lucas, but as you might guess, not everything that works for a rodent is something a human can safely eat.

Even if there were an unlimited supply of rat-friendly food—and all of it somehow happened to be to Lucas's taste—he couldn't just hide in this bomb shelter for the rest of his life, hoping he'd magically time-warp back one day.

So in the end, he had to figure out how to survive in this futuristic society before those cops eventually pinned him down—and, more importantly, how to assimilate into the human population of tomorrow.