A tiny, robotic voice chirped, “Welcome, Archival Rodent. You have accessed ‘Tom and Jerry Tales: The Complete Broadcast Anomalies.’ Please select a chapter.”

He was suddenly on the deck of a galleon made of 1s and 0s, sailing a sea of television static. Beside him stood a Tom Cat dressed as a peg-legged pirate, his tail a literal Ethernet cable. Across the deck, Jerry was no longer a mouse, but a swashbuckling first mate with a sword made of a paperclip.

They weren’t fighting. They were crewing together.

Outside, a server hummed somewhere in the digital ether, preserving a truth the old cartoons never aired: that even a cat and a mouse, given enough timelines, eventually choose to sit down.

He couldn’t resist. He tapped another file: ‘The Cheese Shop Caper – 1949 Extended Cut.’

Jerry, never one to resist a button, tapped a file labeled: ‘Pirates of the Aether – Unaired 1965.’

Jerry sat back in the portal’s glow, his tiny heart pounding. He had seen the multiverse of his own existence. In hundreds of lost, forgotten, or unmade episodes, he and Tom weren’t enemies. They were explorers. Partners. Even, sometimes, friends.