Maple: Field Report

Black Screen

Nothing. Then — green text, one character at a time, the way a terminal boots:

A progress bar fills. Slow. Deliberate.

A beat. Then:

Int. Lavoie Living Room — Dawn

First light through the curtains. The house is still. A hockey net sits in the backyard through the sliding glass door. Drawings cover the fridge in the kitchen beyond. A family lives here.

On the couch: MAPLE. Orange tabby. Modified harness across the chest — a small piece of repurposed tech with a crooked RR badge clipped to the strap. A single green LED blinks.

One eye opens. Gold. Alert. The eye of someone who has been waiting for exactly this moment.

The HUD activates across Maple’s field of vision — green overlay text, distance markers, the whole tactical suite.

Maple stretches. Front paws forward. Back arched. Every vertebra accounted for.

Maple drops off the couch. Lands silently. Paws on hardwood. Tail up. Moving with purpose.

The toy piano theme begins — one note at a time, building.

Int. Lavoie Kitchen — Morning

ROB is at the stove. Flannel shirt. Spatula in hand. Pancakes. The morning routine of a dad who’s done this a thousand times and will do it a thousand more.

Maple jumps onto the counter. Lands between the coffee maker and the fruit bowl. Sits. Surveys. The HUD scans the environment.

Pancakes on the griddle —

Coffee pot —

MAX’S backpack by the door —

Rob notices the cat.

Maple does not move. Does not acknowledge. Stares straight ahead. The HUD reads:

Rob reaches for the cat. Maple shifts — imperceptibly, but enough. The cat is now heavier than physics should allow. Rob sighs. Works around Maple. Flips a pancake over the cat’s head. Maple doesn’t flinch.

MAX runs in. Eight years old. Hockey jersey. Grabs a pancake with his bare hand.

He isn’t. He’s never late. He’s eight.

Max scratches Maple behind the ear on the way past. Maple’s eyes close for exactly one second.

Eyes open. Back to work.

Ext. Lavoie Backyard — Morning

The sliding glass door. Maple is inside, looking out. The backyard: grass, the hockey net, the fence. A PIGEON lands on the fence post.

Maple’s pupils dilate. The whole body goes still. The HUD explodes with data:

The overlay shifts to full tactical mode. Distance markers appear. Wind direction. Intercept vectors. A targeting reticle locks onto the pigeon. The pigeon pecks at the fence post. It does not know it is at war.

Maple crouches. Low. Coiled. Tail twitching at precisely two beats per second. Maple’s hindquarters shift left, right, left — the ancient pre-strike calibration. The music builds. Brass sneaks in under the piano.

The pigeon looks up. Looks around. Looks directly at the glass door. At Maple. The pigeon flies away.

Maple sits up. Immediately. As though the crouch never happened. Lifts one paw. Licks it.

Never in doubt. The brass resolves into a tiny fanfare.

Int. Lavoie Living Room — Window — Late Morning

The front window. Maple is on the sill. Perfectly positioned. Eyes locked on the street. A MAIL TRUCK turns the corner. Maple’s ears rotate forward.

The MAILMAN starts up the path — and doesn’t stop at the mailbox. He’s carrying a PACKAGE. Too big for the box. He keeps coming. Onto the porch. The dotted trajectory line bends toward the front door. A red boundary marker flares at the threshold.

This is new. The pigeon stayed in the sky. This one is coming IN. Maple drops off the sill. Silent. Instead of going to the door, Maple falls BACK — into the mouth of the hallway that runs to the bedrooms — and plants there. Between the door and everything that matters.

A KNOCK. Rob crosses to answer. Maple does not move from the line. The HUD tracks the gap between the mailman and the hallway — the only vector that matters. Rob signs. Takes the package. A kid’s name on it — MAX, in marker, under the shipping label.

The door closes. The lock turns. Footsteps fade down the path. Maple holds the line one beat longer. Two. Then comes a slow lap — kitchen, living room, the mouth of the hall. Not the perimeter. The inside. The part with the people in it.

Maple returns to the sill. One eye stays open. It always does.

Int. Lavoie Living Room — Afternoon

Max is on the floor. Cross-legged. He has a LASER POINTER — one of those cheap keychain ones. A red dot appears on the hardwood floor. Two feet from Maple. Maple sees it.

Maple LAUNCHES. Full speed. All four paws engaged. The dot moves — Maple adjusts, slides on the hardwood, claws scrabbling for traction.

The dot zips across the floor. Maple is fast. Committed. A coaster flies off the coffee table; Maple does not care. The dot goes UP THE WALL.

Maple jumps. Gets three feet of air. Paws hit the wall. Gravity has opinions. Maple slides down.

Max is laughing. The kind of full-body kid laugh that fills a house.

Maple stops. Mid-recovery, one paw still raised. Looks at Max — really looks. The laugh. The way the kid folds in half over a red dot that isn’t even a real threat. The HUD tries to make sense of it. Runs the unit through its designations:

No. Handlers give orders. Max provides a laser pointer and a reason to run into a wall.

The rank doesn’t fit either.

The field stays empty. The one target Maple can’t get a lock on. Maple holds the look a moment longer than tactics require. Then files it away, unsolved.

The dot disappears. Max clicks the pointer off. The wall is empty. The floor is empty. The satellite is gone.

Maple stares at the wall. Long beat. The wall does not explain itself.

Maple sits down and grooms. The target will be found again. It always is.

Int. Lavoie Kitchen — Afternoon

CLAIRE is in the kitchen. She pulls the VACUUM out of the closet. Plugs it in. Maple is on the counter. Watching. She turns it on.

The vacuum ROARS to life. Maple’s HUD goes RED — the first and only time in the short:

Maple BOLTS. Off the counter in a single motion — a blur of orange fur — and lands on top of the refrigerator. The highest ground in the house.

Maple watches Claire push the vacuum across the kitchen floor. Golden eyes track it like a predator watching something that might be a predator. The HUD can’t categorize it. This is the only enemy Maple has never defeated.

Claire finishes. Turns it off. The house goes quiet. Maple stays on the fridge. A long beat. A thorough risk assessment. This takes time.

Maple drops to the counter. Then to the floor. Walks PAST the vacuum — close enough to touch it — with the most exaggerated casual stride a cat has ever produced. Tail high. Eyes forward. Nothing happened. Nothing has ever happened.

Maple sits. In the middle of the kitchen. Dignity: maintained.

Int. Lavoie House — Late Afternoon

The front door opens. Max walks in. Backpack. No energy. He drops the bag by the door. Doesn’t kick off his shoes the way he usually does — just walks through the kitchen, through the hallway, into his room. The door doesn’t slam. It just closes.

The house feels different.

In the kitchen, Rob looks at CLAIRE. Claire looks at Rob. The kind of look parents exchange when they know something is wrong but don’t know what yet.

Maple is in the hallway. Watched Max walk past. Didn’t follow — not yet. Now Maple sits outside Max’s door. Listening. The HUD is still active. But something is different. The overlay flickers. The data doesn’t come as fast.

The readout cycles. Trying to categorize.

Delete.

Delete.

The HUD has no category for this. No protocol. No intercept vector. For the first time in the short, the tactical overlay doesn’t know what to do. Maple stands up. Pushes Max’s door open with a gentle nudge — it wasn’t latched.

Int. Max’s Room — Continuous

Max is sitting on his bed. Not drawing. Not playing. Just sitting. The kind of sitting that eight-year-olds do when they don’t have the words yet for what they’re feeling.

Maple jumps onto the bed. Doesn’t land on anything important. Doesn’t demand attention. Just sits down. Close. Next to Max’s leg. Close enough that Max can feel the warmth.

The HUD goes quiet. The tactical overlay dims. The distance markers disappear. The threat assessments, the mission logs, the intercept vectors — all of it fades. The classification engine makes one last attempt at the designation it never filled. The one target it could never lock.

The cursor blinks in the empty field. Once. Twice. Then it stops — and the field fills. Not with a rank. Not with a category. With the only thing the system has ever been able to confirm:

The music has been gone since Max walked in the door. Now — a single piano note. Then another. The toy piano melody from the opening, but slower. Softer.

Max’s hand finds Maple. Starts scratching behind one ear. Maple leans into it. Eyes half-closed. A long beat. The kind of silence that isn’t empty.

Max reaches into his backpack — still on his shoulder, he never put it down. Pulls out a crumpled piece of paper. Smooths it out on the bedspread.

It’s a drawing. A family: tall dad, mom with red shoes, a small kid in a cape, and — off to the side, slightly too big, wearing a crooked badge — a cat.

Max looks at the drawing. Looks at Maple. Maple looks at the drawing. Maple looks at Max.

Max leans into Maple. Maple doesn’t move. The piano melody builds — just enough. Just warm enough.

PULL BACK through the doorway. Through the hall. Past Rob and Claire in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, giving their kid his minute. Past the fridge covered in drawings. Past the hockey bag by the door. Out the front window.

The Lavoie house. Ordinary. Warm. Enough.

FADE TO BLACK.

End Card

Black screen. Green terminal text:

A beat. Then, one line at a time:

A long beat.

Post-Credits Stinger — Int. Upstairs Hallway — Night

The house is dark. Everyone is asleep. The only light comes from the streetlamp through the hall window. At the top of the stairs: two gold eyes. Maple. Crouched. The harness LED blinks green in the dark.

Maple’s pupils dilate to full. Hindquarters drop. The ancient pre-sprint position. Maple TEARS down the hallway at full speed. All four paws off the ground in the stride. A streak of orange in the dark.

CRASH. Something falls. Something rolls. The house is silent.

CUT TO BLACK.