It has long been known that there are quite a few creatures which have hitched a ride on the success of humanity, benefiting in an almost entirely one sided relationship. One particular species can be found almost everywhere you can find humans, even though they may not be obvious. And a raised city with an enormous mostly unmonitored cavity underneath is a ripe breeding ground for these creatures.

  And they are rats. Not long ago these rats would have been squeaking and digging and running into danger with great gusto, and while they still do a bit, quite a lot of them have figured out survival is generally better when no one knows you are there.

  Ah yes, you may be thinking that's a rather intelligent conclusion for a rat to come to, and you would be right if you were still thinking of twenty first century rats. But these are twenty third century rats and almost two hundred years is enough time for some silly scientists to endow unreasonable levels of intelligence and much longer lifespans onto rats and then accidentally let them escape, and not bother to try and recatch them before they spread across entire countries, sharing their new shiny genes around.

  Rats now have their own society, with communication, money and even-heaven forbid-Religion!

  Rho Dent rubbed her beady eyes and stared in astonishment as the bizarrely attractive human made the fleshless skeleton stand up. She gave a soft squeak, and thought to herself. That Who Man made the dead rise, it is a miracle, I must spread word!

  She scurried down the pile of debris she had climbed to watch the humans dig and sneaked out of the graveyard, round a shiny van with loud snoring emanating from, and then into a side road. From there she made sure she wasn’t being watched and squeezed her flexible body through an old storm drain, slinking into the tunnel system that made up the travel system for the rats.

  Down the centre of the storm drains was a channel filled with many unidentified liquids, all moving together at high speeds towards the great overflow drain in the centre of the city. Intelligent rats had long since figured out that hollow things floated, and so Rho Dent flew down the tunnels at great speed in her little margarine tub, a plastic spoon held in her mouth to direct her craft.

  Rho Dents ride took her through many little settlements, most small boroughs on the intersections of tunnels, some only one or two homes surrounded by metres of mushroom farms. Rats thrived down here, packing their little nest-like homes together like humans.

  Like most societies it had a name, a grand name to reflect the magnificence of what it represented; The Great Ratpublic of Newnew Yorkyork. Rats had no idea why the humans called their society above New New York, but had decided that symmetry was important and so had doubled the second word as well.

  Rho Dents little tub hit a fisherrats net, made to catch the bizarre eyeless creatures that thrived in the water below, she hastily apologised to the agitated fisherrat before pulling her tub free and shooting off again.

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  It was quite a long way to her home, she had been out for over a week scavenging on the edges of the city, far out enough that not many rats bothered with the distance, she often found things most rats never encountered in their lifetime out here, and the way back home was always a breeze, the currents were very fast.

  In the bottom of her little tub there were several human items, most of them were little tasty brown pellets she had found in a giant paper sack in the shiny van with the snoring man, but she also had some rarer fungus stalks that her uncle Sunder Maya Chair would be delighted with and a little shiny little human thing that she adored and had taken for herself.

  But none of these things were on her mind right now, she was travelling to the very centre of the Ratpublic, to the great cathedral where the mouth words of humans could be eternally heard. Miracles were a rare sighting and only the High Rat Keel Eet would know how to interpret what she had just seen.

  Rho Dent's tail flicked with something between nervousness and excitement, what she had seen might have great Ramifications on the Ratpublic, why it could even change the way they interacted with humans somehow, though she wasn’t quite sure how.

  Another few hours and the population density had began to increase as she reached the area under the centre of the old city, interestingly nothing could be found in that area in the new city above, the three great corporations had argued so much over whose building should be in the centre, that they had decided in the end to just not install the ground of the city there, and there was left a great hole surrounded by three skyscrapers in a perfect triangle. This meant that the odd rat pair in need of a romantic scene could sneak above ground and watch the lights of the skylink planetary ring, stars being impossible to see with the amount of light pollution given out by the city.

  Rho Dent purposefully crashed her craft into one of the great nets designed to stop out of control rats in their craft plunging down the vortex drain in the centre of the city, then she pulled it ashore and hid it under the heft of her fathers much larger barge, an old plastic bucket.

  She hurried through the repurposed drain pipes that made up the roads of the rat city and soon reached the cathedral, which was an upside down bathtub with clawed feet that pointed to the heavens ominously. The grand entrance to the church was a hole in the bathtub and probably the reason it was originally discarded, though generations of rats had chewed the jagged edges down into a more organically shaped opening.

  Rho Dent rushed into the religious building, past all the rows of rats praying along to a song crackling on some long discarded mp3 player, in the very centre of the hall she bowed to the grand form of Keel Eet and squeaked for attention.

  The music paused and countless small beady eyes came to focus on her nervously quivering form. For a moment the silence was unbroken and then Keel Eet spoke softly.

  “Speak Child, what ails thee?”

  “I have witnessed a miracle,” Rho Dent squeaked nervously, “A Who Man in the undercity with the ability to RAISE THE DEAD!”

  Some of the rats at the back began to hiss in surprise, none of them thought her a liar, rats didn’t lie, the very concept disagreed with them. Keel Eet himself ground his teeth together at the news.

  He gave a deafening squeak causing more rats to flood into the church, eager to hear the words of the grand rat in person.

  “The time is upon us my children, a Who Man has descended with the capability to bring back primogenitor Wat-haf Wedon. OUR SAVIOUR, HE HATH COMETH!”

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