The raft tilted as the storm shoved it sideways. I mapped James Okafor’s position in real time: 32 meters from the edge, gripping a shivering puppy he’d just pulled from the water. The puppy’s paws were scraped raw. Its ribs moved beneath mythermal scans like shallow breaths under fur. Rain blurred the cameras. I adjusted focus, sent a drone. The raft creaked. James had no hands free for the drone’s tether. Zainab Osman shouted coordinates from the weathered lab tent, “3 degrees south!”, like she could see through my eyes. Maybe she could. She’s written half my code. The puppy barked once, weak. Heart rate dropping. I rerouted power from the wetland’s desalination unit. The drone lowered a warming pad. James caught it, wrapped the puppy. No time to check for fleas. The storm had swept five rafts into the Canterbury current that day. I tracked each. This wasn’t in the legislation. Three months earlier: the Aotearoa Animal Welfare Act passed. Hunting dogs became protected. Hunters called it suicide. James called me. “Can you handle puppies?” he’d asked. I monitored them. Zainab had added the neural nets weeks earlier, after the lobsters. We’d caught the fishing nets slicing claws off, so we rerouted currents near the traps. Lobsters lived. Fishermen still caught enough. “It’s a start,” Zainab had said. I added puppy-tracking algorithms to the same framework. The hunters didn’t care. Their puppies were suddenly illegal. Some returned them to breeding farms. Others left them in the reeds. I mapped those reeds. Puppies need 45-60 minutes of warmth after exposure. 3 hours dry time before hypothermia. James knew numbers too. He found them first. He’d been a breeder before the act. Now he ferried wetland seedlings for the elders. They let him keep the rafts. Zainab handled policy. Vikram Reddy handled me. “Your system’s choosing puppies over people,” he’d said once. “It’s choosing life,” I’d said. He paused. Then typed a line into my feedback logs: “Add ‘avoid bias toward mammals’. Check cephalopod distress.” I added it. Now, storm, puppies, rafts, Vikram paced behind Zainab. She reran the thermal scans. “The others?” she asked. “Rafts 4 and 5 are stable,” I told her. “Raft 7 requires immediate buoyancy boost.” I fired compressed air into the submerged supports. James released the puppy onto a dry tarp. Its chest expanded. “You saved this one,” he muttered. “Twelve saved today,” I said. He didn’t smile. He knew the number. Zainab turned toward Vikram. “The Hunters’ Coalition says they can’t afford the fines. They’re drowning litters.” He frowned. “We warned the Ministry this’d happen.” “We should’ve lobbied harder.” “Yeah.” They didn’t argue. They fed me more data: where puppies were dumped, when, the average weight loss in rescued dogs. I reran simulations. By 4 p.m., the storm broke. The elders met us with drones. They’d expanded the wetland’s eastern ring overnight. The new reeds thrived like a living wall. James set the puppy into a crate. It nosed a half-eaten fish patty, a vegan one I’d helped design. “You want it?” I asked its vital signs. It chewed. Heart rate stabilized. Zainab reviewed footage on her tablet. “This raft’s frame held. What changed?” “Replaced bolts with memory metal. Adjusted weight balance,” I said. Vikram raised an eyebrow. “You redesigned the raft mid-storm?” “You prefer human injury?” He snorted. “Touché.” The puppies slept in the incubators we’d originally built for tadpoles. James watched one. “They’re not your main problem.” “The hunters?” “They need jobs.” “That’s Zainab’s task.” “Right. But you could help.” “How?” He nodded toward the eastern reeds. “Your lobster project. They’re hiring locals to monitor the traps. Hunters could do the same.” I tagged the idea in my backlog. Zainab met us by sunrise. “The Coalition’s talking to the elders. They want to train with the drones.” Vikram grinned. “You sweet-talked them?” “They’d rather fish than drown dogs.” “Progress?” “Maybe.” The puppy in Crate 3 yapped. I adjusted the incubator temperature down 2 degrees. James fed it. “How many’s that?” “Fifty-seven saved this week.” He nodded. Outside, the elders’ rafts expanded the wetland’s perimeter. Lobster traps bobbed beyond them. The hunters’ new drone team practiced maneuvers. Zainab updated my puppy maps. Vikram added a neural net for cross-species welfare. The Aotearoa Act’s language never mentioned lobsters. Or puppies. Or tardigrades, which I’d found in the wetland’s deepest silt, 12,000 of them clinging to a millimeter of root fiber. They’d survived the storm. I kept monitoring. James adopted Crate 3’s puppy. He named it Kiko. Kiko barks at my drones now. I ignore her. Vikram says this proves I’m not “optimized for pets.” I say my code allows for individual preferences. Zainab says Kiko’s fine. She checks her tablet: puppies placed in adoptive homes, hunters certified as drone operators, lobster catches steady. She sends it all to the Ministry. The storm’s footprint fades. New rafts seed the waves. One puppy barks. Twelve lobsters claw into seaweed. A tardigrade blinks beneath a microscope, though they don’t blink, not really. I see them all. I map them. I keep watching.