Zoo (2 page)

“
Where am I?” I asked the
blonde girl.

“
Didn’t they show you the
film?”

“
Yeah, but . . .
”

“
Well, you’re in your new
home.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder, and I almost
expected her to start smacking on some gum.

I sat up and looked around. There was a
small jungle toward the back of the enclosure with the rest of the
area being flat land. The jungle was thick with ferns and trees. I
could see a hint of a waterfall over some low hanging vines. At the
front of the enclosure, on the flat land, I could see a small
vegetable garden, a fruit tree, and a cow tied to a post. Half of
the space was surrounded by a rock-wall, and the rest was encased
by a glass-dome.

“
This isn’t anything like
where I came from,” I said aloud to myself and to the
girl.

“
Yeah, me neither. All I
can figure is that they want to experiment by putting us in
different environments and then seeing what happens.” The girl
shrugged her shoulders. “So, what’s your name?”

“
Emma David.
You?”

The girl spewed a ton of information at me
all at once. “Janice Hall. Grew up in Manhattan. Got into partying
young. Overdosed on cocaine in a nightclub. Been in here alone for
about a month. It’s good to have some company. I started talking to
the cow a few days ago. Can you believe that? They could have at
least put me in one of these things with some good neighbors or
something.”

She completely overwhelmed me, and I didn’t
know what to say in response. The thing that stuck out the most
about her little speech was that she said she had overdosed. She
looked too young to have had an overdose. “How old are you?” I
finally asked her.

“
Sixteen,” she answered
nonchalantly, while inspecting her cuticles. Then she dropped down
next to me and grabbed my hand to have a look at my nails. She was
behaving like a monkey. I could recall watching them at a regular
zoo. They would sit and pick at each other, searching for bugs or
whatever nasty things inhabited their fur. It made me
uncomfortable, but I was so focused on figuring her out, that I let
her continue for a while longer.

Janice was so young and beautiful, and she
was probably wealthy if she grew up in Manhattan. I’ve seen plenty
of famous socialites on cable TV hit rock bottom before they hit
18. What a waste. Drugs were one thing that I never messed with,
and she was a prime example of why.

“
What year are you from?”
I could tell she wasn’t from my time, even though we were dressed
the same. There was something about her that was different, besides
the New York accent.

She continued to look over my cuticles. I
let her because it seemed to calm her down, which also helped my
own nervous energy. She answered, “I was born in 1962. They ‘saved’
me in 1978.” She made air quotes with her fingers as she said the
word “saved.” Then she asked me, “What about you?”

The time travel crap was starting to weird
me out. I felt like my head was going to explode, but I held myself
together long enough to answer her. “Um, I’m 17. I was born in 1995
and they ‘saved’ me in 2013 . . . This is crazy!” Nope. I couldn’t
keep it together after all. Why was I sitting there making small
talk with a strange girl? I needed to get the hell out of my new
prison.

I ran over to the rock wall, searching for a
door. Nothing. After I reached the glass front of our enclosure,
where the public would be observing us from the other side, I beat
my fists against the hard surface. I screamed and screamed and
screamed.

Then, I screamed some more.

“
Tried that already. It’s
no use. Besides, the park’s not even open. Nobody’s here, silly,”
Janice told me. She stood behind me, next to the cow, with her hand
on her hip. I noticed she had fashionably tied some kind of vine
around her waist to accentuate her curves under the hideous sack
dress.

I didn’t care what she said, so I ignored
her and kept beating the glass wall from one side all the way to
the other. I went on that way until I reached a point where I could
see into the enclosure next door. What I saw was unexpected.

ECCENTRIC OR CRAZY

I climbed up a couple of the rocks and
boulders that lined the side of our enclosure to get a better view
of our neighbor. Some of the boulders were rough, while others were
slick. Some were moss and ivy covered, making the wall green in
places. Our enclosure seemed to be pie shaped, and from what I
could tell, our space was a quarter of one of those domes on the
video. The boulders made a rock wall that covered the entire back
of the pie-shaped enclosure, all the way up to the top of the dome.
As the wall got closer to the front of the enclosure, it dropped
down a few feet, leaving room to see next door.

Anyway, what I saw over the rock wall was
unexpected.

A mature woman—as my mother said older women
prefer to be called—was stretched out on a chaise lounge, fanning
herself with a delicate and highly decorated fan. Her hair was
silver, and her cheeks were tinted with a circle of pink blush that
stood out against her overly powdered, white face. The gown she
wore was extravagant, like she fell out of a Victorian era movie’s
ballroom.

The same glass as everywhere else separated
the space between our two enclosures. Surprisingly, I could hear
her when she spoke. With an English accent, she said, “Oh my. Had I
known I’d be having guests, I would have dressed in something more
proper.” She sat up and scooted to the end of her lounge chair,
fluffing her skirts.

“
Have you come to hear me
sing, young lady?” she asked me.

“
Good job,” Janice
grumbled below me. “It’s horrible, and now she’ll be at it all
night. I’ll never get any sleep.” She stomped off to someplace in
the jungle portion of our enclosure.

I turned back to the older woman. She was
patiently waiting for me to answer her. “I don’t know. I was
actually trying to find a way out.”

“
No. No. No. You mustn’t
do such a thing. They don’t allow that sort of behavior here. Now
sit up straight and listen to your Auntie Josephine sing. That’s a
good girl.” She strolled over to her small stage and adjusted the
bodice of her gown. She cleared her throat. And then she let it
rip. OPERA. Holy mother, Janice was not kidding.

Lost in her own world, I left Josephine to
her singing and continued up and around the back of the enclosure.
I carefully scaled the rock wall. Back on the far side, where we
shared a wall with yet another neighbor, I peeked over a boulder to
see who inhabited the space. It was empty as far as I could see.
The space was rocky with lots of strange trees and tall grasses. I
couldn’t see beyond ten feet or so.

“
Raarrrrrr!” When a hairy,
mud covered face popped up in front of me, I fell backward and
probably about six feet down to the ground below.
Ouch, my butt.

“
Whoa!” I gasped. I
learned that the space next door
wasn’t
empty, and in doing so, I had
nearly peed on myself.

After getting back on my feet, I rushed
around trying to find Janice. I pushed through the jungle and found
two small huts made of bamboo. They sat in a little clearing.
Janice was sitting outside one of them, inspecting her
toenails.

“
What the hell is on that
side of us?” I asked breathless, while I pointed in the direction
of the thing that had growled at me.

“
Some kind of cavemen from
what I can tell. Pretty entertaining. Bunch of morons trying to
make fires,” she said. “Thanks, by the way, for getting Derby all
fired up.”

“
Auntie Josephine? I
didn’t know. Sorry.” I could still hear her belting it in the
distance. “She seems sweet though.”

“
Whatever. I’m going to
bed. That’s your hut and here’s your water pouch.” She pointed to
the structure to the right of hers. “They brought it in this
morning for you. If you need to shower, use the waterfall. It’s
also for drinking. Latrine’s that way—close to the wall. It’s
pretty gross, but at least it drains somewhere else. Guess the zoo
didn’t want everything to be that authentic.” Janice tossed me the
water pouch. Then she crawled into her hut and left me to my own
devices.

I caught the pouch with no problem, but then
I dropped it on the ground as soon as it made contact with my hand.
“Ugh! Gross!” I squealed. I couldn’t believe I actually squealed,
but she threw me a freakin’ animal skin pouch to put water in. She
had to be kidding.

I spent the rest of the
evening exploring the enclosure—
without
the animal skin, water
pouch. I saw everything there was to see, except a way
out.

LIFE ON MARS

On my second day, the park opened
mid-morning. I could hear laughter and yelling, and I could smell
coffee and sweets. When I crawled out of my hut and pushed through
the jungle, I could see them. Aliens. Strangers. Future us.

They were all dressed differently. I could
pick out dozens of different eras: hippies, 1950’s housewives,
futuristic metallic clothes, men with bowler hats, children dressed
similar to how I used to dress, even people with clothing from King
Arthur days. It was all making my head spin. Why were they all
dressed so randomly? It didn’t make any sense, and I wasn’t able to
come up with a single explanation.

The confusing groups of spectators were
pointing, giggling, whispering, and reading computerized
informational screens on the outside of our enclosure. Children
were standing on their tiptoes to get a better look. Since Janice
was still asleep, all they could see was me, wild eyed and
terrified. I scrambled back inside the safety of my hut and hugged
my legs as tight as possible. I cried for a long time.

Tears.

Sobs.

Hiccups.

More tears.

A few whimpers.

No, really. I was completely lost and
devastated in that moment. I wasn’t my normal self. All I could
think was that my life was over. It was the most horrible
experience ever, or so I thought at the time.

When I finished feeling sorry for myself, I
got angry. I rushed out of my poor excuse for a house, past the
small clearing, and straight for the front of the dome. I headed
straight toward the intrusive public. I beat on the glass and
screamed. “Get me out of here or find someone that can! Help
me!”

Some of the children ran away screaming.
Parents tugged on the few that remained, moving them on to another
exhibit. Older adults made ugly faces at me and shook their heads
in displeasure. I didn’t care. I kept screaming louder and louder,
until Josephine Derby joined in with her own chorus. More opera.
She was trying to drown me out. She did a very good job of it too.
The crowds moved away from me and toward her for some better
entertainment.

I thought I was going to lose it. I stormed
back up the hill to my hut. Janice was sitting on the ground
flanked by two men in white coveralls. “Sorry. I should have warned
you,” she said. Then she dropped her head so that her eyes wouldn’t
meet mine.

“
What are you talking
about? And who are you?” I spat at the two men. Unfazed, they
walked over to me and jabbed me with a needle before I could decide
what to do.

WARNING

Once again, I woke up in the white room with
the floating plastic chairs and desk. My good friend Dick sat
across from me. He was slicking back his greasy, black hair with
his hands. When he finally noticed I was staring at him, he
straightened up and cleared his throat. He was embarrassed to be
caught slacking off, even if I was only an animal in his zoo.

He stood up from his chair and walked around
the side of the desk toward me. I struggled to move. My arms were
strapped to the chair by white bands with no buckles. Dick stood
over me, all six foot four inches of him, trying to intimidate me.
He said, “You’re here because you caused a disturbance. Such things
are not tolerated. This is your first warning. The second time you
cause a disturbance, you will be severely punished. And the third
time, well, let’s just say you’ll be back in that car we got you
out of, and no one will be there to save you. Or perhaps we’ll send
you somewhere that will be a lot worse than death. There are other
People’s Past Anthropological Centers in this world that aren’t as
nice and comfortable as this one.”

I thought;
surely there couldn’t be more places like
this.
And;
how
could they be worse than this one?
I kept
my eyes trained on his. I didn’t want to display weakness, like the
last time I was in Dick’s presence. Truth be told, I was a mess.
“You people are sick. This isn’t right,” I hissed through gritted
teeth.

“
Well, like I said, we are
more than happy to return you to your imminent death. Would you
prefer that?” Dick asked me.

“
No, I don’t want to die,”
I admitted, but I couldn’t keep my mouth closed. “How do you fool
everyone?”

“
What do you mean?” he
responded. Confusion was clear on his structured face.

“
The bodies—when you take
us. What do you leave in our places?”

“
We mastered human cloning
in the 2020’s and developed human pod farming in the 2170’s.
They’re both illegal of course, except when dealing with the
Centers. We are the exception to all the rules. And that’s why
corporal punishment and even execution are practiced here, because
in essence, you don’t really exist.” His words sent a shiver down
my spine.