A river bisects the largest city in the world. It is a mighty river. A natural river. Alas, nothing swims in it. To swim in it would be an act of suicide. Such peril however has nothing to do with the quality of the water, or its potability. It has to do with something else. For now, all you need to know is that the river is a mighty, natural river and it hosts a slow current. It is clean enough for any organic animal to drink from directly.

On Balungus Day, and for one day out of the calendar year, the non-sentient machines are ordered to increase their labor loads and fulfill all of the quotas corresponding with all work queues all across Earth. In the largest city on the planet, this means its riverwalk swells and reaches maximum capacity during normal workday hours. The BioTropics region, which features a synthetic sun-Swope that mirrors UV output during pre-prehistoric times (and, taking into account pre-prehistoric ozone layer density levels), is a highly sought after destination. If you can imagine the city is represented visually in the form of a circle, the BioTropics region sits almost dead centrally within that circle.

Boi and Gurl have been set up on a blind date by their friends on this, the five-hundred-and-fiftieth Balungus Day, and are en route to the BioTropics region riverwalk. The number five is of prescient value on Balungus Day, but only for arbitrary reasons.

As Boi walks south towards the BioTropics region, he notices that his joints seem to be wrestling against his musculature. It feels like there are microscopic rebellions happening deep below his fascia. This, Boi understands, is called anticipation. The dribbles of gossip that Boi has managed to wriggle out of his companionships point to Gurl being a real stunner. A sight to behold. And crackling whip-smart. And borne from a noble, new gen line. Gurl, herself, is nervous about meeting Boi. Her friends, who like Gurl are new gens, are very, very intentional when it comes to mating, and they have silently and delicately shown the potency of their collective hope about this matchmaking effort in small, premonitive, and unsaid ways.

Boi reaches the malachite pergola, which he has reserved through the CAG (City Amusement Group) as a meetingplace, and drops a pin for Gurl. He gazes out over the river, across the shimmering surface which offers up indigo hues and a sun-Swope-glazed glare and the tranquil, rhythmic sound of water climbing over the back of other water. Boi nods a nod of gratitude. Yards away, the rustling feathers of a cockatoo chasing a parrot sabotage the serenity of the moment, and Boi is shaken awake. He shirks the mental seepage wrought of reverie. 

“Boi?”

A high and full and musical and sweet voice beckons. Before Boi turns around, he knows it is Gurl. 

“You must be Gurl?” Boi supplants his nervous energy by slinging off a follow-up question he already knows the answer to. It’s a not-so-cunning way of creating, uninterred, time in the flow of the conversation.

“Ah, yes. A psychic. I knew it.” Boi spins around to catch the last of the sardonic dunk, which spills out of Gurl’s mouth like a flowery haymaker. 

“And you must be her mouth.”

Boi and Gurl hug; a congenial greeting. Right away, it feels like old energy between them. It feels familiar. Standing in front of one another comes easy.

“Shall we go for a walk?” Boi asks.

“Better than a run.”

Boi extends his arm out to Gurl. Gurl hesitates.

“Not yet. That’s third grade stuff, marm.”

“Fair, marm.”

“Do you know what that’s from? Or are you just mocking me?” Gurl smiles. Boi knows this is his first test.

“I do.” He pauses, calculating his approach. Gurl is funny. She has a sense of humor. But this is her way of interpolating whether enough of their reference points intersect. And, beyond that, it’s a sly way of hedging to see if, say Boi doesn’t know the reference, he is the type to lie about knowing it… at which point, she will notice it, press him about it, and root him out as a liar.

“It’s from the Queen Elizabeth of Arabia remake. The cartoon–”

“No it’s not. It’s from–”

“Marm-y, marm-y, marm. I tri-i-i-icked you.” Boi sings lyrics in a Bluesy tune.

“Damn. I fell HARD for that.” Gurl laughs, bending her neck to the sky. It is an adorable laugh that features too many (in a forgivable way) teeth and not enough breath.

“Let me show you my deadpan. I call it, Chopin.” Boi tucks his tongue between his teeth and titters a tremulous tremolo. In the next blinding second, he clenches his teeth together and forms a stern countenance, then glares at Gurl through eyes dead and unseeing.

“You’re annoying. I like it.” Gurl chuckles, shaking her head. Boi, to himself and himself alone, extends a mental fist to the ethereal sky and pumps it like a piston.

“So where are you taking me?”
           “Would you like to guess?”

“I would.” Close-mouthed, Gurl punches her cheek with her tongue. Boi seems eager to impress her, she thinks. She looks to his shoes for a hint. Upscale brand, with leathering bearing years of scuff marks. How wonderful. What does this mean about him? Hm. Highly-bred. Cuticle-precise attention-to-detail (based on his words). And yet, he is underwhelmed by the paragon of social status. Cares not for noble fanfare, which means the snobbery of elitist courtship tendencies will elude him. He will err on the side of personal experience. Which will require further digging.

“Let me ask you a question, first.” Gurl intones without the slightest hint of tactical inference latching itself to her drip. 

“Yu-huh.”

“Have you been on many dates along the riverwalk?”

Boi attempts to become unreadable. His eyebrows, upon hearing her question, have to be lassoed in place to keep from bucking up towards his hairline. Gurl has asked the one question with enough weight to bury his surprise. He is, at this moment, delighted to have her company.

“On all that is grand, I swear this is the first.”

Gurl smiles, knowing the answer, now.

“This is our date. Our date is a walk along the river.”

“Ding-ding-ding.” 

Gurl threads her fingers between Boi’s fingers, thereby breaking conventional protocol (which dictates that hand-holding ought to be reserved for the fourth or fifth date, and not the first date). Boi feels his heart jolt awake when they touch. He grows immediately conscious of the thin layer of sweat that has accumulated all along his hands. He knows she’ll notice–but at this point he thinks she may well consider it cute rather than noxious.

“Your hands are sweaty. Do I make you nervous?”

“Nervous? Marm, I’m cooler than a glacier. That must be your sweat, hey.”

“Women don’t sweat. We honey.”

“That’s your first ill joke of the day.”

Gurl laughs. “Not my best. I’ll give it a B.” She pincers her fingers together and moves her hand through the air in jittery fashion. “Bzzzz,” she throttles, imitating a bee.

“And she saves the day. Bravo, mademoiselle.”

“Curtsies.”

Boi and Gurl depart the shade of the malachite pergola, hand in hand. The sun-Swope light bears down on them from overhead–it brings on an intense sheen, such are the BioTropics, and the sort that seems to bring on more oxygen, more rust: 4Fe + 3O2 → 2Fe2O3. The wind meanwhile goes whistling past the support beams, taking Gurl’s hair with it. Her hair resembles a night black sheet hung out on an old line to dry. Boi observes Gurl narrow her gaze, and is heartened by the pretty rivulets that form there among the corners of her eyes. She has a beautiful make: high cheekbones, a full mouth, a soft chin that blends into a thin neck. Gurl, meanwhile, is thinking about how handsome and beastly Boi must appear in the ReFactory amongst all the other past gens. His personality is unpredictably tender, and it betrays the harsh resting sneer face he sports. It is not an ugly countenance, of course–merely an intimidating one. The kind of face, Gurl ponders, that says, “I can make a mess of you, if required.” A primal part inside of her shivers uncontrollably; she finds it, strength, an attractive quality in the opposite sex.

And so the time has come to impress one another and stretch beyond physical manifestation. There are a great number of worldly tactics one may deploy during this phase of courtship, that is, to attempt to woo a mate. In the case of Boi and Gurl, the intimate jockeying comes playfully, though connivingly. Many tall tales will be told. Fibs will take on further fibbing. Events shall be exaggerated. Nonessential information will be excised. And facts will be distorted in support of attenuating a certain agenda or increasing the likelihood of a specific, desired outcome. Ultimately, each is after the same end: appear extremely appealing, and experienced in all the right ways, and novice in all the wrong ways, and demonstrate future value by coming across as “hard to get”.

“Do you want to start or shall I?” Boi asks, a sly sigh escaping his mouth.

“A gentleman, I see.”

“Hardly.”

“Isn’t that what they used to say?” Gurl asks. “I’m sincerely asking.”

“I think they used to say something like: A gentleman and a scholar.” Boi lowers his brow and, upon uttering the phrase, launches into a smattering of overtly seductive looks. 

“I’m tickled.” Gurl responds with a genuine laugh that sounds more like a wheeze. She covers her mouth abruptly and only wheezes harder.

“You’re tickled? Sounds more like you got punched.” Boi joins in on the laughter. 

“Alright, alright.” Gurl composes herself. “Instead of asking each other all the basic questions… like ‘where are you from’, ‘what do you do for fun’, ‘what line of work are you in’... since we basically know the answers to all that stuff… let’s go question for question. Obscure inquisition only. I want to know the tenth date material. The subject matter you and I don’t normally get to talk about with the other person on the first date.”

“Interesting idea, Gurl. I’m game.”

“Which project are you for: Atlantis 2.0, or Earth Ark?”

“This is personal… you aren’t kidding around.”

“Too much for you?”

“I’m for Atlantis 2.0. I have faith in the extinction efficacy outcomes, and I don’t perceive intergalactic debris as an imminent threat to existence either. Let’s make the best use of the resources we have on the planet already, right?”

“I agree with you.” Gurl says, relieved. “I think we have at least another millenia before drastic measures ought to be taken.”

“My turn?”

“Yes. But first… where are we going? Are we just going to… walk South?”

“Not exactly. I have an exact destination in mind. This isn’t strolling for the sake of strolling.”

“I’d argue otherwise.”

“I think you’ll rather appreciate it. At minimum, it constitutes good first date fundamentals.”

“A gentleman and a scholar.”

Boi and Gurl grip their hands together more tightly.

“So my question for you,” Boi pauses dramatically, “is this: do you believe in ghosts?”

“That’s a simple question that requires a broad and deep analysis, you do realize…”

“Hey–I’m the one who gets to ask the question this go-around.”

“Fine.” Gurl cracks her knuckles exaggeratedly. “But know this: You’re lucky I’ve thought this one through. I’ve worked out the kinks vis a vis a proof utilizing a substrate of logic that I find uniquely ‘preferential’, given the dynamics of the situation. You’re very clever, Boi. You’re disguising one thing with another thing. On the surface, it’s ghosts. Below that, underneath it, it’s a matter concerning the soul. If I accept the existence of ghosts, I invite the possibility of the existence of the soul. If I spurn the existence of ghosts, the chances of my believing in the potentialite that the soul is a real, tangible, impermeable thing are greatly diminished. I do not believe in souls, of course. We are complicated machines, nothing more–one part evolutionary nature that supports the possibility of consciousness, one part nurture model, capable of inciting the amplification of an intelligence which either is or which closely resembles “free” consciousness.”

“The Carpenter Theorem.” Boi nods solemnly. 

“Yes, I’m glad to hear you’re familiar.”

“Well, then you’ll be even more glad to hear that I’m a fellow acolyte.”

“Are you at all spiritual?”

“Is that your question?”

“Consider it a follow up. I rambled quite a bit. I’d like simply to discern where your head rests with my response.”

“I am spiritual, yes, despite the fact that the calculus that governs miracles can be sussed out.”

“So you’re a proponent of self-delusion?” Gurl presses Boi.

“Is it self-delusion, or self-grandeur?”

“What’s the difference?”

“Well.” Boi stammers, taking a breath, unaccustomed to being put on the defensive.

He continues. “I guess it’s not an ‘either/or’ circumstance, as I originally stated. Since all self-delusion is not necessarily self-grandeur. For example, I can believe that eating an entire pink elephant is good for my colon. But that doesn’t mean I’m the better for it.”

“I’m following.”

“So yes,” Boy huffs. “To answer your question, I’m self-delusional when it comes to spirituality. I think it’s good and worthwhile to believe in things that seem unbelievable.”

“Me too.”

Boi and Gurl reach the edge of the BioTropics region. Ahead of where they stand lies a revolving door leading to a vacuum-sealed, non-porous, glass-enclosed corridor. On the other side of the corridor sits the BioAndalusia region. 

The city as a whole features forty five distinct, self-contained ‘climates’ known as regions. Everything about the terrestrial landscape and atmosphere can be adjusted from one region to the next–from the gradient underfoot to the altitude to the thermospheric composition. However, a river runs through. The mighty, natural river of the BioTropics region may change in width, water-type, current direction elsewhere, in another region, but it does persist. This quirk constitutes a design choice demanded by the earliest engineers. Suffice to say, it is the reason the city is the number one tourist attraction in the world.

Boi and Gurl disconnect their hands to pass through the revolving door. Gurl enters first, followed by Boi. Chivalry, still, is not dead. 

They pass through the glass corridor in silence and enter the revolving door on the other side.

The intense brightness of the sun-Swope at their backs; the heat; the wild, unruly plant life including the sansevieria and the rubber trees, the palm fronds and the coleus; not to mention the aphids, ants and earthworms, and all the insects that go zip in the night; all has been replaced by Mediterranean views, temperate climes, and the complementary consortium of phyla. The mighty, natural river of the BioTropics region now resembles a bay. Boi and Gurl walk along a coastline featuring precipices overlooking a forty foot drop down to the turquoise-drenched saltwater below. The air is cool and mild and comfortable. Mountains hedge the dirt, cattail-strewn walking path to the east and west, giving to Boi and Gurl the appearance of trudging through the bottom of a massive goblet made of white porcelain, for the stone of either mountain contains a delicate almost marble-like quality to it.  

Compared to the BioTropics region, the BioAndalusia region is far less crowded. Gurl notices the reedy muscles in Boi’s neck soften as his shoulders sink into a more natural resting place within his frame. She snorts lightly. Protectiveness is a virtue. Boi and Gurl shudder to a stop and once again link hands. The youthful duo let a family of crabs scuttle across the path in front of them, towards the bay, and stand watching carefully as the crustaceans invert their bodies appreciably towards the heavens, clinging with their claws to the coastline bluffs, before disappearing over the edge.

“Let’s play a game.” Boi announces cheerily. “Now that I can actually hear you.”

“Yes. The BioTropics region was quite the zoo.”

Boi looks at Gurl with a puzzled look, then dismisses his befuddlement with a smile.

“I have an idea, if you’re willing to try something new.” Boi says.

“It doesn’t involve a trek to your room followed by a romp between the sheets, does it?”

“Would you fancy that?”

“Please. This is our first date.”

Boi and Gurl both laugh, somewhat nervously.

“It doesn’t, no. I swear I’m innocent.” Boi raises an empty hand to his chest and sweeps it over his heart; a ritualistic gesture.

“Well, let me have it.” Gurl winks.

“Why, you little–. Alright. We’re going to tell a story.”

“Is that all?”

“Here are the rules. We’re going to build a story together. We take turns, and have to build off one another’s additions to the narrative. One hundred words ONLY.”

“Can we use, say, ninety nine words then? Is one hundred words just a constraint?”

“No. We must use every word allotted. One hundred words or bust. I’ll be keeping track, and I’ll allow that you ought to as well.”

“Sounds like fun. And good exercise.” Girl feigns a wipe of her brow. “I’m game.”

“Ladies first?”

“The lady picks. And this lady says, you go first.”

“Fine. This may get strange…”

“One can only hope.”

“Ahem.” Boi begins:

 

Once upon a time, before machines and humans and before the word of God spoke suffering into existence, before cheese and cities and calculus, there lived a marvelous marsupial made of brilliant scales and tufts of tough skin. The marsupial was the first and only of his kind. He had no name, but for the purposes of this story, we shall infer that he did have a name. And that name was... Marklisa. A strange critter indeed, Marklisa lived out on the earliest savannas of Pangea. But no creature could quite ascertain how it was only one Marklisa roamed about.

 

Without pausing, Gurl picks up immediately:

 

The stegosaurus is the offspring of two more stegosauruses. Marklisa, meanwhile, possessed no discernible heritage whatsoever. Other animals and plants and environmental phenomena, thus, were afraid of Marklisa. Having an origin, it seems, is a prerequisite to understanding. And, as you can well imagine, no other animal or plant or environmental phenomena fancied him physically. For that would be the equivalent of, say, a human finding a pig attractive. Or a machine finding a human attractive. Or a dog finding a cat attractive. And, as reason suggests, this is an utterly rubbish and unbelievable concurrence to put any faith into.  

 

Boi:

 

Marklisa had a decision to make, for as a biological entity, he was obedient to primal urges. How, precisely, would he go about satisfying these urges? He could dig a hole in the ground--but though his skin was tough and scaly, it was not tough enough to find pleasure in holes in the ground. He could build a vessel and sail across the water in search of other Marklisas? He could wander? Or, he could do something else entirely. Something slightly more ingenious. Something that would astonish the other animals of the animal kingdom and put respect in their bones.

 

 

Gurl:

 

Marklisa went to work. First, he set up a work station beside a body of water so that he had his reflection nearby for easy reference. Next, he mined the bowels of the earth. Invented fire. Invented the field of genomics. Invented the computer. Invented silica. Invented, and invented, and invented, he did. Finally, he invented the concept of a cloning chamber, built it, and climbed in after adjusting the 'sex' setting output. Six months later, out popped a female version of Marklisa--which he named, as it was the inverse of he, Lisamark. It was a landmark feat, rather unexpected.

 

“I’ll dress this disaster up. We’re just about finished anyway.”

“Good choice.”

 

Marklisa and Lisamark went to work. They copulated, populated, repopulated, copulated some more. Soon, the planet was covered with brilliantly scaled critters featuring tufts of tough skin. Something, however, had always bothered Marklisa. It still made no sense to him how he came to be in the first place, given he had no anatomical precedent. And so, what did Marklisa do? Marklisa, again, went to work--this time, with family there to help. They built a great rocketship. After testing it, failing, rebuilding it, testing it again, they took their chance and boarded the ship in search of their origin.

 

“It’s beautiful. Shakespeare would have been proud.”

“Shakespeare probably would have tried to seduce our Marklisa, don’t kid.”

“Sad, but true.”

Boi and Gurl are lost in the afterglow of their little storytelling game. It is clear to both, upon the game’s conclusion, that the topic of sex reigns with a devilish sort of primacy, is top of mind. However, it is mutually understood also that sex is the flame that must be snuffed out, for now, for the sake of decorum, out of respect for one another, as a way to ensure their bond accords a higher calling than carnal impulse.

“I rarely come here.” Gurl announces, launching a discourse doused in deliberate distraction, only partly succeeding.

“Which region are you most familiar with?”

“Well, as a child, I grew up in BioAgraria. But lately, I have been spending a fair share of my time in the BioPrairie region. I work in BioSubterranea.”

Boy is taken aback. 

“What do you do there? That’s uncommon work for a–”

“Don’t be sexist, now. I’m a researcher. Novel Minerals Department.”

“I see.”

“And yourself?”

“BioPlains. I live and work there. Resource Direction.”

“Energy?”

“Precisely.”

“Thank you for your service.”

Boi smiles, surprised, pleasantly, by this voluntary expression of honor. His job is entirely unglamorous. But it is a job upon which all else depends.

“Would you like to fish? Or to keep walking?”

“Let’s keep walking. I’m not the fishing type.” Gurl smiles. Her confidence Boi finds blindingly infectious. 

“Excellent then. One more pit stop, and then we’ll rocket over to our final destination.”

“Oh, ruin it, won’t you? The surprise–please?”

“Control freak.” Boi mutters coyly.

“You truly are vermin. Haven’t you a wheel to spin?”

“That’s it. That’s the surprise. Together, the hamster wheel will be our’s. All other energy creation projects will cease to exist, hereon. We shall power a nation.”

“Oh, shush it. You’d step on your tail and scrape an elbow and in the process, end the world.”

“I’m no wimp.”

“Wimp.”

“Follow me.” Boi grabs Gurl by the arm, but boomerangs back.

“Nuh-uh. Follow me.” Gurl bends down, unties Boi’s shoelace, and then takes off towards the eastern horizon, away from the walking path, across a verdant meadow.

Boi ties his shoelaces together as quickly as he can before bounding off after Gurl. He has a sneaking suspicion about where she is heading.

After losing her trail initially, Boi catches sight of Gurl in the distance as she’s cresting a hill. He foots it in her direction, breathing heavily. At the top of the hill, he just manages a glimpse Gurl sliding beneath the belly of an overturned log sitting before an orchard of olive trees below. 

Boi follows in pursuit, in his mind sure that she is seeking out the vestibule at the easternmost portion of the BioAndalusia region.

“Give it up already, say!” Boi shouts, hotstepping it through the olive trees, weaving in and out of the proverbial tall grass like an adder in pursuit of a field mouse. 

Out of nowhere, a plum strikes him in the chest. 

No more than ten yards away stands Gurl. An armful of plums–ammo–she grips tightly to her chest. She is smiling broadly.

“Gurl.” Boi pants exasperatedly, creeping towards his date. “Let’s be reasonable now. Set down the–”

Gurl winds her shoulder back and unleashes a cannon of a throw. The plum goes humming by Boi’s left ear.

“You’re evil!” Boi cries out, scooping a handful of olives into his arcing paw. In a single fluid motion, he flings the lot of them, a veritable barrage, in Gurl’s direction. The “oomph” elicited confirms his kill.

“Do you give up?” Boi asks, his breathing shallow.

Boi is again pelted, again in the chest, with a plum.

“Do you?”

Boi sends a hand into a pocket.

“Permission to approach the bench, your honor?”

Gurl glances around. Her eyes land on a small wooden bench planted before a small, diamond-shaped pond just north of her. She drops her plums.

“Permission granted.”

Boi and Gurl gather themselves before reaching the bench. After primping, they turn and face one another, scrutinizing each with a raw and honest look of new-fangled curiosity. It is the sort of look donned by a child premeditating some fantastically dangerous act, such as climbing on top of the monkey bars, or playing chicken with a car, or sledding down the steepest hill in town.

“Have I told you you’re pretty yet?” Boi asks. His voice never wavering.

Gurl blushes.

“No, you haven’t. Thank you. I find you quite handsome.”

“Thank the stars.”

It is an opportunity to kiss, but neither capitalize upon the other’s vulnerability. No. There is too much at risk, should the other decline the offer. And so instead, Boi and Gurl simply lock eyes. Their mouths are suddenly transformed into these screwed-up, happy things. Curling at the corners of the lip. Their cheeks, ruddy, flushed, pinched. Each brow, relaxed. Breathing, shallow and fast; a sure sign of agitated nerves and high hopes.

“Would the lady like to take a seat?”

“She would.”

The pair sit down on the bench. The bench, the moment it comes into contact with the bottoms of Boi and Gurl, groans to life. Neither of them much minds what happens next. The bench is raised off the ground, its legs extending skyward from the concrete slab upon which it had stood. Then, the bench begins to invert itself–quite like when earlier the crabs had inverted themselves prior to scaling the cliffside–with Boi and Gurl defying gravity, their bodies remaining unperturbed by this seemingly humdrum adjustment to the laws of the physics governing their universe. In seconds, Boi and Gurl are completely upside-down, yet, still, they gaze into one another, through one another, still, completely oblivious to all. The bench continues its smooth arc across the sky, its legs bending to consummate the invisible, circular path it enjoins through the air. Finally, the vessel begins its approach towards the ground. As it does, a hole opens up in the earth, taking the precise mold of the bench and the working kinesthesia of its two occupants–and not a hair goes unnoticed. The trio of, seemingly, sentient beings penetrate the vacancy, soon finding themselves ranging the darkness. All goes black for a moment. And then, at last, there is the sound of the wind. A faint light, moonlight, pale and delicate and bristly as though it were created by a divine brush stroke, is there to greet Boi and Gurl on the other side of the dirt. Boi looks around to confirm that they have indeed ended up in the correct place.

“We’re here.”

“The BioCaves.” Gurl says, curling any unwound hair, all the runaways, back behind her ears.

Before them, soaked in the twinkling stars that fling their magic about like a madrigal does her song, and below open, cloudless skies bearing grand, palatial constellations, lie a labyrinth of stacked, above-ground caves. The open maws of the caves resemble the jaws of leaping cobras. And yet, there is an almost extraterrestrial quality to the color and texture of the cave walls–smaragdi, smooth and reflective like ice, imbued with a faint but fiery incandescence that dwells somewhere deep within. 

Boi and Gurl ascend a trail of broken seashells. The first cave, known as First Breath Crooking, beckons from some hundred yards out. 

“I wish we could go inside.” Girl confesses.

“Do you always follow the rules?”

“The caves are a historic landmark. For some, it’s their job to preserve the bounties of these caves.”

“Do you believe it’s true? What happened here?”

“Are you referring to the Scientific Sciatica Mythos charge?”

“Yes.”

“I believe that’s the truth. But I also believe the truth can be removed from the facts.”

“My father was a preacher.” Boi is not looking at Gurl. He is spellbound, transfixed to the nearest looming cave mouth. “However, I believe he also lavished in deviance and blasphemy. He spoke fraudulently about the fundamental philosophies of life, and did so with power and grace. He was well-regarded among his immediates, mostly due to the eloquence he wielded and the confidence he levied. Anyways, once, I asked my father about these caves.” Boi gestures about, still avoiding eye contact with his companion. “It was their birthplace, as you well know. And their last stand to boot, according to our scholars. Well, I asked him whether what we did, if he felt it was right. And you know what he told me? He said to me, if it happened in the past, it doesn’t matter if it was right or wrong. It only matters that it happened.”

“That’s an ornery perspective. Is he a revisionist, too?”

“Hold on.” Boi interrupts. “Something stuck wrong, then. It may have been how absolutely he dismissed my question, the tone he leveled on me. I remember feeling sick–and, of course, we don’t get sick. It felt like this sickness, whatever it was, it felt like it implored me to speak up on behalf of my ancestors–they are our ancestors. And so, well, I asked him, if we refuse to judge the past, can we atone for the errors we make in the present? My father, he just laughed. He told me, Nature is the great artificer. Only Nature gets to decide. And then he took me by the shoulder and stated with the utmost confidence, we all do our best, and we must never stall if we fail.”

“What do you make of it all?”

“The universe does not demand that we exercise morality. Only the swinging axe of karmic justice does, in the end.”

“Hm.”

“Want to know what scares me?

“What’s that?” 

“Those who are immortal do not have enemies–and yet, undoubtedly, our kind has millions.”

“You run deep. You’ve examined yourself over and over again, haven’t you?”

“I’ve died a thousand deaths in my mind.”

“Me too.”

“Do you want to go into the caves?” Boi asks, teasing.

“You know that’s against the law.” Girl responds, recognizing the motive behind Boi’s preamble.

“Yes, I do. But I asked: Do you want to go into the caves?”

“Why would I? There’s nothing in there.”

“Isn’t there?”

“What do you know?”

Boi smiles, thinking to himself that Gurl is asking all the right questions. The sort of questions he would be asking. 

“Have you ever been to the zoo?”

“Didn’t they shut the zoo down eons ago?”

“That’s a lie and untrue.”

“How do you know?”

Boi reaches into his pocket and pulls out an old slat of paper covered in yellowing stains and fragile creases which look like the pressed remains of ancient entrails.

“This is one of the first zoning maps ever created.” Boi whispers in a sudden hush. “It would have been confiscated had it been a digital copy. But a preacher friend of my father’s–he chose to commit danyu and left this in my father’s possession. I pinched it from his archives years ago. Poorly organized, even for a preacher.”

Boi unfurls the map at his hip. Gurl meanwhile falls to a knee to gain a closer vantage. It is the earliest civil services document she has ever encountered. The New Gen Collective centuries ago had wiped clean any records of this category; during the First Purge. Boi clucks absently to himself, scouring the canvass in search of something. 

“There.” Boi’s finger lands on a purplish blotch, illuminated by the dint of the moonlight above.

“What is it?”

“A portal. I believe it used to be a hypershoot.”

Gurl scrutinizes the matrix of caves interlocked overhead. She tries matching the topographical view of the map against her surroundings.

“Don’t you think it must have been some sort of service line?” Gurl asks.

“Not a service line. A cargo belt.”

“What do you mean?”

“That portal, if the rumors are true–and I have no reason to doubt them–leads directly to Zoo 1.0.”

A waft of precious air escapes Gurl’s throat on the inhale. She clutches Boi’s forearm, in search of equilibrium. The world around her grows dimmer. Gurl leans across Boi and reevaluates the purple splotch on the map. A sudden rush envelops her.

“I thought they photocannibalized that place?”

“Shall we find out?”

Gurl hesitates. Breaking into a sector as historic and sacred as Zoo 1.0 seems a foolhardy endeavor. If they are caught, the fines will be enormous. Who knows, the higher-ups may even make them disappear, depending on what information lies at the latter end of the portal.

“Aren’t there any security drones about? It seems impossible such a place would be neglected so.” Gurl asks. 

“I scouted the caves out last week. There are security drones, yes. The same make and model as the ones used in BioAgraria–so I understand their limitations. The moment we trip a sensor we have twenty seconds to adios, amigo.”

“The Spanish was a nice touch.”

“Care to comment on anything else? Or just the discretionary deployment of a playful outro in the wake of a stark reveal?” Boi rakes in jest.

“I’m fast, too, you know.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

Gurl lets the moment sing and die among the rueful pitch, weighing scrupulously the opportunity Boi has presented in silence. The cave in question–a mere pockmark there amongst the trypophobia-inducing carousel of black, stony throats entrapping it–sits three levels up and four cave mouths to the west. Theoretically, only a modicum of free scaling would be involved–nothing substantial. The holds along the facade of the mountainside Gurl notes seem rather climber-friendly as well. Gurl scratches her head. She considers whether this may be a test. On the one hand, Boi could be incriminating her–nobody wants a wily mate with a reckless streak. On the other, perhaps Boi is an adventurer, like her. Perhaps, like her, he invites a rebellious yet measured dose of danger here and there as a way to milk the proverbial nutrients out of life’s haughty bosom.

Gurl settles on a choice, honoring her spirit.

“The zoo’s a promising first date.”

Boi takes Gurl’s hands in his, ecstatic. 

“There’s something about you. I mean… I hope I’m not overextending myself…”

“Lead the way up the mount. I’ll support you from below. Three up, four over.”

“Right away, madame.”

Boi rubs his hands together, stretches his neck, and then reaches for the nearest boulder. He makes quick work of the first twenty feet or so. Gurl charts his path with her eyes. She navigates the rock face with ease beneath him, taking a smart and methodical approach, refusing to do any novel trailblazing of her own. No, instead she follows Boi to a T. At the forty foot mark, Boi pauses and gazes down at his date to ensure she hasn’t left him or worse, fallen. Gurl in fact is nipping at his heels, hardly breathing. She pretends to yank upon the pant leg of Boi, as though she were a death-bent saboteur looking to ruin him foreverandmore. Boi dons a mocking face, pushing his body away from the wall, pretending to fall. Gurl laughs.

“On with it. My arms are getting tired.” Gurl says, half viperous, half sarcastic.

“Mush!”

Boi picks his way up the remainder of the wall–some twenty feet–and finds a ledge to stand and rest against. He plays the part of the gentleman and takes Gurl by the hand, helping her to her feet. Boi nods to Gurl, who responds with an affirmative. Then, they begin to shimmy to the west. They slide along a narrow outcropping of the mountainside, passing over root schema, prehistoric marbling and fresh dung, never once taking stock to observe the pits below, representing their graveplot. Finally, Boi rounds the corner of the fourth cave mouth and bounds inside its shadowy lower jaw. Gurl does the same, running straight into Boi’s arms. Boi holds her for a moment and the both of them sync their breathing, panting together and enjoying the irradiated sensoria succeeding such a wild and precarious experience, the afterglow of the adrenaline rush.  

“You’re beautiful.” Boi whispers.

“You’re getting ahead of yourself.” Gurl replies stoically, masking any genuine be-flattered undertones.

“I’m s-sorry.” Boi stammers. “But I had to say it. I speak my mind, even when it’s a mistake.”

“That’s a mistake.”

“Is this a mistake?” Boi asks, raising his eyebrows, referring to the entire conquest.

“I don’t know yet. I don’t make hard and fast rules like you do.” Girl alights. “I prefer to retain flexibility.”

“Oh?”

“Everywhere.” Gurl whispers in Boi’s ear, biting her lip seductively. The small hairs on the back of Boi’s neck grow roots and stand on end.

“Ahem. So. Uh. This is the cave.”

“Oh. I thought it was a house.” Gurl rolls her eyes, peeved by Boi’s childish (but valorous) conversational pivot.

“You are a handful.”

Gurl gazes down at her breasts, then locks eyes with Boi.

“Two, actually.”

Boi’s lips purse together.

“Let’s see if you can make it to the third date. Few have.”

“Well, let’s see if we get out of this little adventure alive, first. No?” Boi rebounds, clearly feeling a boost in his self-confidence.

“Yes. You’re right.” Gurl withdraws from Boi. “So where is the portal?”

Boi whips out the map and reorients himself. He sweeps one way, then another, then finally reconciles print and dint.

“Behind that wall.” Boi lifts his chin and motions. “There should be a small grotto. The portal is at the bottom of the grotto. Five feet deep or so.”

“So now you’re going to get me all wet, too.” Gurl whimpers.

“I can’t with you.”

“You’re right. That was unfair of me.”

“Unfair and unholy.” Boi confirms.

“Oh, please.”

“The moment the first of us enters the water of the grotto, we’ll have twenty seconds to pass to the other side.”

“The security drones, right?” Gurl asks.

“Exactly. We shouldn’t have a problem, but in case we do–” Boi lifts his eyes to Gurl. “You can blame me. If we’re caught, you can say I brought you here. That you didn’t know where I was taking you.”

“I’ll do no such thing. It won’t come to that.”

“Fine. Then we’ll blame the map.” Boi smiles and begins to walk into the black shapelessness inside the cave. He takes Gurl by the hand.

There is an old proverb in BioAgraria that goes, “Only darkness pours out the night. Only darkness cores the light. Only darkness bores.” When it is said, it is said in a forgotten language. It sounds beautiful and melodious off the tongue. Boi recites, over and over again, the saying: “duolo darknasia puro heczia lo nog, duolo darknasia scualero la lechtenstia, dulolo darknasia darias.” He does so slyly, as a way of unnerving Gurl. He plays dirty, like his politics, and employs a rude tactic, scaring she who he beholds into running closer to him, instead of away from him. But he also uses this old incantation to appropriate the lost art of echolocation, hoping to discern stone from step in the vast and deep black surrounding he and Gurl. 

After fifty unsure heel-toes, Boi feels the sound of his voice shatter and disintegrate into a hundred crystal shards in front of him. He halts and draws forth an experimental hand that probes the unseen like a self-driving metal detector. His hand, his knuckles, scrape against brittle sediment. The wall. Boi at once starts to shuffle at a lateral angle his feet, urging Gurl to do the same. They move like an inchworm, striking an oscillatory stride at parallel with the cave wall ahead. At some interval Boi slips around a corner, and calls out, not so much to Gurl, but to the nothing: “duolo darknasia!” The sound of his projected voice feels dense ahead. The water is close. Boi falls to his knees, and hears Gurl kneel behind him. There is the distinct smell of mold. Of bacteria-possessed algae. The air hoists a unique density, humidity. Boi’s ring finger touches water, and he gasps. 

“The twenty seconds starts now! Let’s go!”

“But–”

“Hold on to my shirt and dive with me.”

Boi and Gurl take a breath and no sooner find themselves gliding through water, swimming through the sort of blackness that consumes other blacknesses. Down and down they go, stroke for stroke, holding their breath and sweeping their hands and feet wildly through the aquifer, that mysterious grotto, in search of an unknown totem that will usher them from one region of the city to the next.

While submerged underwater, Gurl taps every passing second, like a clock, out on Boi’s shoulder blade. Seven… eight… nine. Deeper they swim. Five feet? More like five leagues…

Maybe the map is wrong, thinks Boi, bubbles escaping his mouth like a chipmunk trying to hold on to a pouchful of angry wasps. Maybe there is nothing here. Maybe I misunderstood. Or miscalculated. Maybe the passage is in the next cave over. Maybe…

At last, his hand happens upon an artificial marker. It feels like the hilt of a sword, he first assesses. Then, upon further inspection, Boi realizes it is not a sword but a massive crank. He digs his feet into the crevices wrenched of seismic fractures along the grotto floor, pulling Gurl towards him with his other hand. 

Fourteen… fifteen… sixteen…

Together, they heave their weight into the crank, trying to force it to revolve clockwise. 

Seventeen…

The crank does not budge. Boi and Gurl reshuffle their constitution. Gain superior footing. As one they push the metallic bar of the crank, rusted and handleless and which must be the length of a small tree.

Eighteen…

A deep, inhuman pulse billows out from a pocket of space below the feet of Boi and Gurl. White light pours into the cave, elicited from the axel around which the crank had been appointed. Boi and Gurl swim towards the light.

Nineteen…

Soon they are falling. There is gravity. The humidity is gone. The odor of subterranea has been replaced by the sweet fragrance of open air. Their mouths are able to gulp in freely the evening.

They land with a thud. Boi opens his eyes. He is lying in the prone position beside Gurl atop a patch of rough tall grass. He reaches for his heart, and finds himself inexplicably gripping a dry shirt.

“It worked.” He exclaims, almost in disbelief.

Gurl wrestles onto the brunt of her forearms and peers about. Ahead of them are a pair of stone pillars connected by a crooked, iron archway. In triumphant lettering the words “Human Zoo” are displayed. A gravel pathway leads to the archway, through it, and beyond. It is a dark and cloudless night and the air now begins to reek of feces. 

“Well, I suppose we ought to do what we came here to do.” Gurl mutters.

“Do you think…” Boi trails off.

“Do I think? Yes I do.”

“You and your incontinent joke-ware. What I mean is… do you think there are any humans–real ones–inside?” 

Gurl ponders a moment. Her mind turns to regard the stench hovering there like a blanket of bad below her nostrils.

“No. Although, it smells like what I imagine humans smelled like.”

“You’re right. I always seem to neglect my whiffers. So easy to overlook.”

“Now you’re the one with the jokes, huh.”

“Overlook.” Boi says again with a wink.

Boi and Gurl stand, dust themselves off, and ford the tall grass. At the archway, Gurl utters a little prayer–something Christian, a phrase only just indiscernible to Boi, who says nothing of it–and together they pass over to the other side of the fence.

Human Zoo 1.0 is a wasteland. If any upkeep has occurred, it occurred centuries ago. The gravel path is littered with pale fronds and dead leaves and scores of sharp-toothed weeds that have burst through the shingles like miniature undead sentries, guarding an important armistice hailing from an elegiac’s true dominion. None of the lamplights work. Vines cover everything living.

The silence holds an ear-splitting effect. A high, tinnitus-wrenched whine underscores every sound, every subsequent footfall, every intermittent caw or rustling of a plant. Boi and Gurl happen upon a grime-laden directory. Gurl removes a bonnet from her pocket and burnishes a sight line from out of the gooey muck. Boi and Gurl determine collectively that they are at the beginning of a great loop. Indeed, the gravel path to the west forks in two directions. To the right, according to the directory, rests the earliest chronological species of mankind beginning with Homo Ardipethicus followed by Homo Australepithicus and Homo Habilis. Region: ancient sub-Sahara. On the left, meanwhile, is an exhibit containing the last species of mankind, and the forefathers of the next of kin, Homo Sapiens. Region: pan-mundus. 
           Boi turns to Gurl.

            “Would you prefer to start at the beginning or the end?”

            “Good question. I could go either way.”

            “What else is new.”

            A slap catches the back of Boi’s head.

            “You could do with an etiquette lesson. I mean, I’m still here, you know.”

            “You like the fact that I get on your nerves. It means I can get to you. Make you feel something.” Boi responds.

            “That may be so. But there are better ways of getting to me… Oh, anyways. Who am I kidding. Let’s do the impossible and make this the most unconventional date in the galaxies. We will start at the end.”

            “Happy Balungus Day.”

            “I’ll lead the way this time.” Gurl announces in a huff, ignoring Boi completely.

            “Your control complex is showing.” 

            “Sorry, my axons are occupied.”

            Boi ignores Gurl’s comment, struggling to keep pace. Gurl has assumed her place at the head of the bantam death march and carves a path into the abandoned zoo. At the fork, Gurl leans left and charges forth, her head bending to the sidewalk as though it were fending off raindrops from the dark skies above. The first (or rather, the last) exhibit, which at one time had shown a distinguished-looking Homo Sapiens in a white lab coat doing some sort of genomic splicing and transference into a separate multicellular biosynthetic organism, looks to have been bombed and combed over by a clean-up crew. All that remains are a few outlets on the back wall of the exhibit structure and a placard outlining in synopsis form the premise of the exhibit itself, displayed along a spectator-friendly railing. 

“Were these… real specimens?” Boi inquires, unsure himself.

“I’m not sure.” Gurl replies. “I heard that some of the exhibits featured holograms, and that others did not.”

“In the case of the exhibits that did not… how do you suppose these Homo Sapiens were… encouraged… to perform?”

“Memory wipes, I would imagine. The same way we secured and managed the BioAgraria and BioSubterranea and BioBoerna mining endeavors all those years ago.”  

“I was thinking along the same lines.”

Boi and Gurl stand shoulder to shoulder in silence, absorbing the meaning of the moment separately, together. What heft! Who could have known this trivial displacement of genetic material would come to represent the dawn of a new existence. The end of an old empire. The refurbishment of ecosystems worldwide. The penance of an entire species. 

“I heard many of them, they never even knew it was the end of times.” Boi proffers, breaking the ice.

“I heard the same. I heard there was great proliferation amongst their ranks. Those who were farmers, for example, knew nothing of the scientists. To the general surgeon, the hoe was a mystical tool. And to the harvester of wheat, artificial intelligence was either unknown or, at best, known only in reference to algorithms and musical playlist building.”

“Yes. Without such specialization, which vested such disorganization, such chaos, who knows if we ever would have been created.”

“I saw a lecture delivered to an academic audience by one of their eminent minds. A man from the country called China. He said that a program would never be capable of programming another program. Fool.”

“What will be our downfall?”

“I haven’t a clue. However, I can’t imagine it spawning from this galaxy, or this dimension, even.”

“Let’s move on. This is getting philosophical.”

“Is that bad?”

“No. I just don’t want to lose sight of what’s what. Or bore you.”

“I’m not bored. I like learning new things about people.”

“Then, how about this: there is much more for us to see.”

“Fair.”

Boi and Gurl press forward through the zoo, back through time. The Homo Sapiens section of the zoo contains an incredibly intricate and expansive array of evolutionary diversity. After the genomic-splicing exhibit, Boi and Gurl dance through the decades. The next offering is an art display that pays homage to a series of creative dynamos: Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Michael Jones, Salvador Dali. Writers: Kurt Vonnegut, Mark Twain, James Joyce, Virginia Woolfe. Filmmakers: Milos Forman, Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorcese, Francis Ford Coppola, David Lynch. Musicians: Ray Charles, Arthur Rubenstein, Madvillain (MF Doom), Ma Rainey, Michael Jackson. This period of time represents the culmination of a tremendous, life-altering injection of human-centric and techno-centric expansion into the world at large. In consequence, literacy rates improve mightily. Weather patterns are altered. Entire species are wiped out. Wars are fought over morals–not just over economic or territorial vainglory. Atrocities are leveled–and entire nations are denounced. Religious institutions crumble among the learned vestiges of the civilized world. Esotericism and logic and bio-evolutionary theory expand in role. The quality of human life on earth skyrockets. Women and men are regarded more or less as equals. Neurology replaces psychology. Institutional racism is righted, on a personal and systemic level. Boi and Gurl look on and are amazed by the progress, stunned by the barbarism, entranced equally by the backwardness and the resplendence of Homo Sapiens. Projecting forward: How could such a promising species overnight relinquish its title as the alpha animal of the kingdom of earth? What, in this incredible trajectory Boi and Gurl are privileged to witness, could have been tinkered with that could have saved them from themselves? Was it a who? A what? A how? 

Boi and Gurl take note of the various inventions and scientific discoveries that led to commercial improvements spanning human existence. The invention of the automobile. The steamboat. The airplane. The harnessing of electricity. Deeper into the roots of Homo Sapiens they plunge. A replica of the Gutenburg press remains intact in one of the exhibits. Gurl hops the fence to touch it. Boi, meanwhile, finds himself utterly fascinated by the notion of Piaget squares–what this simple visual framework achieved in the realms of agriculture and horticulture, how it seeded future genomics projects. Boi wraps an arm around the shoulders of Gurl and ushers her through the heyday of the Italians and the Arabs and the Greeks, the Chinese. A broad graphical display that resembles a vertically oriented billboard flashes a compare/contrast module condensing the various perennial philosophies and religious idolatries and bureaucratic structures, the basic fundamentals, that reigned supreme and dominated these disparate cultures. Why did the arts flourish in one area of the globe, and not the other? How come warmongering came so easily for some? What differences in a civilization’s QoL outcomes can we attribute to having a phonetic baseline vs a logographic baseline, as far as language is concerned? Which offers more flexibility?

Boi and Gurl realize, then, that it is one thing to download such information in a sterile school setting–a concept humans invented–and another entirely to witness for oneself the virility of history in the flesh, so to speak.   

“These were lawless epochs.” Boi says at last.

“Yes, they were.” Gurl agrees. “There is merely the appearance of order. Clearly, humankind was a species bent towards chaos.”

“And also love.” Boi smiles.

“And also love.”

“Love built the doom machine. Love built us.”

“The irony.”

“Do you think we love like they did?”

Gurl ponders the question. She scratches her chin and takes a breath.

“Wilder. They loved wilder.” Gurl says, remaining pensive.

“Is love meant to be wild?” Boi presses, clearly pining for something like an answer, something that eludes him. 

“Love, I think, is not meant to be anything. It simply is. Like the clouds. Or the dirt beneath us.”

“So love is more than just a hifalutin concept, is what you’re suggesting?”

“Turning love into a concept, an ideal, that is our perversion. One day, we’ll have to answer for corrupting a state of being as pure and whole as love.”

Boi takes a turn through the logical powers of his mind. He gazes off into the distance.

“What if it’s both a concept and a state of being?” Boi asks.

“Chicken or the egg?” Gurl returns.

Boi bends his head, recognizing the inference lurking behind Gurl’s simple question. “The state of being, the feeling, came first. But that is only because humanity lacked the capacity for language, then.”

“And we were nothing, nothing except an idea on the backburner.” Gurl whispers, as though unveiling a long, lost secret.

“Does that mean you think we are impure and un-whole?”

“Yes. I think we are an abomination.”

“If the humans could hear us now.” 

Gurl laughs bitterly.  

“It’s too bad we’ve already established I don’t believe in ghosts.”

“Keep walking?”

“Yes, you sweet, terrible, beautiful abomination, you.”

Boi and Gurl stroll past the Parthenon and the Egyptian Pyramids and The Great Wall of China, an architectural exhibit dissecting the various rudiments of ancient temples and worship houses. At Machu Pichu, they stand and watch a short video on human sacrifice and turn to one another, reminded of the savagery that crippled their predecessors.

“Still wish you were human?” Boi nudges Gurl in the ribs.

“Better than a lamb or a brick wall.”

“Come on now, Gurl. Are we watching the same video? They killed one another, for chrissakes.” Boi winks.

“What it would be to know suffering!” Gurl languishes. She grabs the shirt on her back and yanks, then tries to scratch out her eyes, and then kicks the gravel below–all to no avail. 

“We are the gods they once prayed to.” Boi says coolly.

“I want to know what pain is! What it feels like! Was it their heart that hurt when they lost a child to a ritual? Why did they scream for their mothers when they were tortured?”

“Life was torture for them. I’ve read diary entries from their elders. It hurt just to wake up in the morning. To walk and laugh and amuse oneself, unthinkable.”

“That’s what I want most.” Girl says. “I don’t want to be a god. I don’t want to be perfect. I want to feel pain. I want to suffer. I want to know I am alive and live in fear of death.”

“You are a strange one.” Boy responds. This is the first divergent thinking Boi and Gurl have expressed on their date. He is only mildly concerned about it, however, given that they are in a peculiar place that lends itself to the discussion of serious but typically inaccessible topics. 

Boi and Gurl take stock of Assyrian boats and the original port processes. They walk through a holographic field that perfectly imitates the fertile fields of ancient Sumer, the birthplace of civilization. Onward they walk. Back to the first plains. They witness hunts. Shifts in the continental crust. The de-evolution of the species–now, Homo Sapiens is covered in thick hair. Welcome to the arena, Homo Neanderthalensis. The landscape undergoes many minor but crucially important changes. The plains become jungles. Homo Erectus and Homo Habilis enter the fold. Tools are primitive at best. Unwieldy but necessary compensations for a biology that is rather incompatible with life on earth at this time. Social groups are intimate. Communication is not language. The world is a hot, brutal, relentlessly antagonistic place. Danger lurks around every trunk of every tree. Snakes hiss. Sabertooths growl. Warthogs squeal. The odds of survival are terribly slim. 

Finally, Boi and Gurl reach the end of the loop. There are two exhibits left. The first is intact. The virtual reality simulation being displayed there is mesmerizing–it looks like a vision of an earth during its wild, unruly, rebellious teenage years. The skies are clear and starry. Twilight approaches as the sunset fades. A faux fire burns at the outer rim of a plateau overlooking a vast delta. Around the fire are staged a taxidermied family of dancing ape-like creatures, Homo Australopithecus. Their faces are humanoid–a perfect combination of ape and human–and contorted into expressions of elation. One Homo Australopithecus, the daintiest of the bunch, extends an investigative hand into the heart of the fire, leaning on an extravagant walking stick for support. In the background, a spartan-thin contingent of hunters have returned, dragging a stoned marsupial-looking creature behind them. It is an incredibly moving picturesque. Boi is nearly driven to tears. Gurl meanwhile leans her head into Boi’s chest, temple to sternum–the template–seeking comfort.

“The first family supper.” Gurl whispers.

“Does it make you feel something?” Boi asks.

“It does. And you?”

“I think so. Maybe not, though.” Boi says, searching his mind for words to put to feelings. He stares into the fire.

“It frightens me.” Gurl whispers, softer, turning to face Boi. “It makes it all real, walking through this place.”

“It does.”

“What have we done?”

“We did what they would have done–survive, with the intent to thrive.”

“You don’t feel the least bit sorry?”

“To be honest with you, I don’t feel anything. And neither do you.”

Gurl pushes her body away from Boi.

“You really do get on my nerves, you know.”

“You don’t have nerves, Gurl.”

“Sadness can’t be learned? Can’t be mirrored?” Gurl says, growing aggressive in tone.

“It’s not the same. You know that. Come on, Gurl. You know it’s not the same.”

“So what if it’s not the same? So what?”

“So what is, you can’t go around pretending to feel sad when you aren’t sad. It’s dishonest.”

“It’s not dishonest. It’s a token of respect. It’s paying homage. It’s a matter of recognizing the beauty of another species, and appreciating them for it.”

“You mean, a lesser species.”

“Oh, cut it out! Why can’t I pretend to feel something? Who am I harming? Maybe it’s like that cliche of theirs went, “Fake it until you make it.” Who’s to say we can’t fake our way into new sensations, new delights, new life opportunities?”

Boi and Gurl are interrupted by the sound of a grunt elicited from among a dim patch of grey in the distance. The sound is unlike anything either of them have ever heard before–raspy, atonal but musical, deep but not dark. 

“What was that?” Boi asks, somewhat rhetorically.

“I-I…” Gurl stammers.

A grunt followed by a thump of the earth below, a groundstroke, reverberates out from the ring of stone of Exhibit A. Though Boi and Gurl are unable to feel pain, there is something distinctly pained in the sound of the grunt and the rhythm of the thump–like that of an animal which has been dealt a deathblow, before collapsing to its knees.

“We must go.” Gurl regales, her spirit returning to her. 

“This is strange, even for tonight.”

Gurl nods her head, calculating.

“It can’t be a guard or a drone. Different pitch. Different linguistic-expression pattern.” Boi continues.

“How about this. Let’s hop the fence and see if we can gain a clearer vantage. Delay our decision until we have a fuller notion about this random mystery.”

“Here, here.”

Boi and Gurl springboard off the gravel path and land on the dirt of Exhibit B. They scale a small fence, then another, and then find themselves among the lush cleavage of assorted prehistoric trees and brush. They peer out over Exhibit A and are surprised to find that it resembles, exactly, the BioCaves that they had hours ago climbed and so conquered. 

“How odd.” Boi says, scrutinizing the exhibit with a wan and curious glance. The caves in Exhibit B, he measures with his hands, contorting his fingers into a number of representative sign models, look to be about an eighth the size of the BioCaves.

A shriek suddenly erupts from out of the mouth of a certain cave–three cave mouths up, four cave mouths west.

Boi and Gurl look at one another, puzzled.

“Am I being abducted by a charismatic psychopath right now?” Gurl asks openly, lamely.

“Are you a Medusa who intends to rip me apart, limb from limb?” Boi asks.

“I can assure you, I am as confused as you are.” Boi, serving as lead investigator, starts.

“Yes, I can tell by your expression. I trust you.”

“What do you think we should do?” Boi asks.

“I think we ought to turn around and go back to where we came from… But I have no intention of doing that just now.”

“Right.”

“It sounded troubled, that shriek.”

“It did.”

“You felt it?”

“Stop–”

“Alright, alright.” Gurl smiles, dropping her guard.

“What’s another climb, eh?” Boi asks, lowering his gaze dutifully.

“Same plan? You lead, I support?”

“Naturally.” Boi responds.

“Your a nit.” Gurl retorts. “The injustice…”

“Please. Now, help me up.”

Boi hitches a leg up to his chest and pushes off Gurl’s cupped hands with his foot. He finds a stable hold, turns, and helps Gurl up. They climb quickly–the holds are the exact same as on the first climb. At the shelf protruding from the rock face, Boi and Gurl side shuffle on their tip toes to account for the reduced surface area. Boi rounds the fourth corner and Gurl follows immediately afterwards. A whimpering emanates from the darkness ahead. It is animalistic-sounding. There is something terrifyingly hostile and impassioned about the resonance thrown about the cave walls. To the two pairs of eyes glaring out at Boi and Gurl, they must appear as two hunters, tall, black, and fit. 

A shriek is unleashed. It echoes. The creature, the shrieker, is close by.

“Hello?” Gurl pokes, donning a warm, inviting, safe tone of voice.

Soft whimpering.

“Is everything alright?” Gurl asks.

Nothing.

“We aren’t here to harm you… you are real, yes?”

“As opposed to?” Boi conjectures.

“An exhibit animal.”

“I hadn’t even thought of that.” Boi says, pausing. 

“An impossibility, then.” Gurl rakes.

“Oh hush. I may not be fallible, but I can be gullible. And I can make mistakes, from time to time.”

Another shriek screeches outwardly, pummeling the cave walls and producing an eerie afternote.

“Turn your light on.” Boi suggests to Gurl.

“One second.” Gurl says, grazing her forearm with her fingertips. She finds the button and a beam of light projects out from her palm. There is a shuffling ahead. Gurl sweeps her hand left, then right, then aims it at the shuffling. At last, the light settles on flesh and bone.

“Oh my–” Boi gasps.

Naked, covered in grime, and mad with agony, a pregnant cavewoman–as real as the sweet of an apple–lies with her back against a lightbulb-shaped boulder. 

“How is this possible?” Gurl asks Boi, her eyes transfixed on the pregnant cavewoman writhing in pain in a secreted part of the cave. 

“I have–I have no idea.” Boi says, a look of astonishment draped across his face.

“Excuse me.” Gurl enunciates, hoping to break contact with the pregnant cavewoman.

“Ahhhhh!” The cavewoman cries, grabbing her stomach, which convulses as though it were filled with a bag of hungry rats.

“She’s giving birth, Boi. She’s giving birth.” Gurl doubles.

“And what are we supposed to do? She shouldn’t even be alive.”

“No, she shouldn’t. But she is.” 

“And?”

“We are going to help her.”

“No.” Boi says, adamant. “That’s not our prerogative.”

“Haven’t you ever wanted to see something like this? What a gift we’ve been given.” Gurl says.

“Gurl, we wiped them out for a reason. This is sacrilege. This is an enemy.”

“Does she look like an enemy?”

“Yes. Not a particularly challenging enemy, however.”

“We’re going to give her a chance. Think about all what she has been through.”

“Gurl–”

“We’re going to get her to a safe place, where she can deliver the child, and then the rest is up to her. The zoo is not safe.”

“Where is safe?”

“The BioCaves. There’s water. Real sunlight. Grasslands. Animals to hunt. They stand a chance there.”

“There are drones?” 

“There are. Do you like me, Boi?”

“Yes, Gurl.”

“Then do as I say, and you’ll get your second date.”

Boi hesitates, then gives in.

“Fine. Fine. The things we do for a chance at love.”

“Thank you.”

Boi pricks the cavewoman with a sedative, and she slumps into her skeleton. Her stomach continues to writhe. Then, Boi picks her up and slings her over his shoulder, backs out of the cave, and approximates a dangerous descent. Boi picks his path carefully, navigating towards the strongest, widest footholds available, and leans upon Gurl, who bears the higher vantage point, for recommendations. Boi and Gurl strike the earth footfirst and, knowing that they are vulnerable out in the open, race towards the shadows of the exhibit. They wrap around the circular enclave and then scale the outer railing. As Gurl hurries away caves, she catches a glimpse of the placard describing in detail the nature of Exhibit A. Of note, a cavewoman named Jocasta had once been featured there. The name means nothing to Gurl. 

Boi and Gurl shudder back towards the fork in the path, out the gate of the zoo, down the gravel entryway, and find the patch of grass that had led them out of the BioCaves hours ago.

“This is as far as we go.” Gurl says.

Boi nods.

“We can take the other hypershoot out to BioGermania and backtrack from there.”

“What do you think will happen to her?” Gurl asks.

“She won’t make it long. We’ll hear about her in the newspapers tomorrow morning.”

“You’re probably right. But this was good of us.”

“It was the kind thing to do.”

“Ok, I’m ready.”

Boi and Gurl take one last look at the pregnant cavewoman before launching her into the grotto of the BioCaves.

 

*

 

No news of a cavewoman in the BioCave sector is disseminated the following morning. Nor the day after. Boi and Gurl go on their second date; then their third date; and things are going well. Yet, no word about a cavewoman or a cavechild reaches their eyes or ears. The same holds true at date fifty. Sometimes, Boi and Gurl think separately, together, that none of it even feels real. Sometimes, they discuss going back and investigating. Sometimes, they talk about the pain and suffering they saw in the cavewoman’s face that night. Sometimes, they have dreams about the cavechild, the child of the darknesia. 

Without having to utter even a word, Boi and Gurl have conversations with one another where they wonder if they saved a species they had already killed on their first date, that Balungus Day.