The Last Zoo

by Sam Gayton

  Megalolz had been pretty bad. Lots of people died because of it, because once the internet went down nobody could communicate properly. The old ways, like phone calls and fax, had all been phased out. There was just the net. And after Megalolz, there was nothing at all. Lots of countries got confused and thought Megalolz was a cyberattack on them, instead of something that was happening the world over. So a whole bunch of wars happened, basically by mistake.

  Once the fighting started, no one bothered trying to talk either. It took a couple of years before people figured out that Megalolz was just the work of some nameless hacker in some random sprawl who probably hadn’t even realised how powerful his virus would be. A few countries in Europe are still fighting each other now, thirty years later, even after finding out about Megalolz. Like it’s a habit they can’t be bothered to break.

  After Megalolz, a lot of things vanished for ever. Pia’s dad used to list them all. His voice would go faraway and sad, like he was talking about old friends he’d lost touch with.

  Search engines. Selfies. Swiping. The final season of that show he’d been watching.

  FOMO. China. The States.

  Silly videos of cats.

  ‘Bad stuff happens when people don’t communicate,’ he always told Pia. What would he think of her now, sitting in Siskin’s office, knowing the angels were missing, not saying a word?

  • • •

  Pia waits. She swings her legs and fans her face and scratches some dry mustard off her dungarees. She marvels again at the weenie-genie. That really is the longest beard she’s ever seen! The way it piles up around his little cigarette-lighter lamp! He must be one of the most powerful genies in the zoo. She bets he could make gold rain from the sky. And Siskin has him sending mail.

  She spots an enormous blackhead in the grey curve of Blong’s nostril. It’s huge. Big as a barnacle. It needs its own enclosure in the zoo. Pia can’t take her eyes off it. It’s sort of horrifying, but strangely calming to focus on too.

  Wait, maybe his name is Blom.

  Ping! go his goggles.

  ‘Siskin will see you now,’ whatever-his-name says. Pia has the sudden urge to guess, one way or the other, Blom or Blong. Like a sign. If she gets it right, it means she at least has luck on her side when she steps into Siskin’s office.

  She stands, and says, casual as she can: ‘Thanks. See you around, Blom.’

  He pulls up his goggles for the first time. And not to smile.

  ‘My name isn’t Blom.’

  ‘Oh. Sorry.’ Pia feels the positive power of the universe fall away from her, the way it falls out from a horseshoe hung up the wrong way. ‘It’s Blong then, isn’t it? Not Blom.’

  ‘No.’ He looks peeved. ‘It’s not Blong either.’

  ‘Oh.’ Now Pia is completely confused. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Very sure,’ says the secretary.

  ‘But I thought last time we met I heard your name wrong.’

  ‘No.’ The secretary narrows his little brown eyes and jabs his thumb at the genie on his desk. ‘Last time we met, you heard his name wrong.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Pia again, a little more bleakly this time. ‘Sorry. I’m in a bit of muddle today.’

  ‘What else is new?’ The secretary swivels round on his chair and pulls his goggles back down.

  Pia scowls. ‘Just so you know, you have a disgusting blackhead on your nose,’ she says quickly. Then the door to Siskin blinks open and she heads inside, hot with embarrassment and full of bad luck.

  7

  YURK!

  Zoo Director Siskin sits behind his aluminium desk, observing her with eyes like grey chips of ice. He looks so scary he makes Pia’s stomach clench and a splurt of something sour suddenly burns up the back of her throat. Of all the terrible mistakes made this morning, the hot dog with mustard and extra onions might yet turn out to be her most catastrophic.

  ‘Are you going to vomit?’ Siskin asks, the same way someone else might say ‘How do you do?’

  Pia doesn’t trust herself to answer back. She keeps her mouth jammed shut and shrugs.

  ‘Make up your mind. You’ve wasted enough of my morning already with your tardiness.’ Siskin produces a disposable tissue from the shiny pocket of his suit and holds it out to her. ‘Use the bin by the door. Wipe your mouth afterwards.’

  This is a very Siskin thing to say and do. The boss has procedures for everything. There is a rumour that tacked to the inside of his wardrobe is a sheet of paper with twenty-eight bullet points, telling him step by step the correct way to get ready in the morning.

  Pia bets the rumour is true, except she reckons it is way more than one sheet of paper. Nobody can look like Siskin in only twenty-eight steps. The boss is immaculate – always. His blue suit never has a crease. Each hair of his goatee is perfectly in place on his face, like iron filings in the grip of a powerful magnet.

  Pia makes a lame attempt to neaten her fringe with her fingers. She really should’ve made more of an effort. Combed her hair. Washed her face. At least turned her shirt the right way out. These appraisals are a big deal. Zookeepers have got reassigned after them, sometimes even to the Seam.

  Never Pia, though. She fails the psych test every year, of course. Her file is full of phrases like ‘pessimism’, ‘obsessive self-analysis’, ‘a preoccupation with failure’, ‘unresolved grief’. Apparently, in her current mental state she’s at high risk of mind-fray if she ever enters the Seam. At the very least, she’d develop a severe hot-dog phobia.

  Eating it was such a bad idea.

  So is thinking about it now.

  She really feels sick.

  Stupid genies and their unhelpful wish-grantings. Pia makes a promise to herself that one of her last acts as their zookeeper will be to give both Solomon and Bertoldo a very close shave.

  Behind his desk, Siskin clears his throat. Somehow, the sound forces Pia’s nausea back down. She takes a few deep breaths through her nose and cautiously opens her lips. Luckily, only words come out.

  ‘I’m fine. I’m ready. Sorry I’m so late.’

  Siskin nods and bends down to a drawer to retrieve her pink file. The light from Siskin’s desk lamp glares off his shiny bald head, so bright it makes her squint. Through the walls comes the quiet hum of power cables, the throb of the ship’s engine.

  ‘Cornucopia, isn’t it?’ he says.

  It is, technically. It means boundless plenty. Dad’s idea. He used to say having a kid when the world was about to end was an act of reckless optimism, and his daughter’s name should reflect that. Pia approves of the idea – she just wishes her parents hadn’t chosen such a crappy name.

  ‘Pia for short.’ She tells him this every year, and every year Siskin gives zero indication he has heard her.

  While the boss flicks through her folder (he hates tech, won’t use goggles), Pia wipes the sweat from her forehead. Come on, she thinks. Come on, come on. Let’s get this over with. I’ve got a full-blown calamity that I’ve left at home completely unsupervised.

  ‘So.’ Siskin brings out a slim grey file from inside the pink one and opens it up. ‘Let’s have a quick chat.’

  Despite saying this, he keeps on reading. He makes no attempt to start any sort of chat at all.

  The silence stretches out. A full minute of it, like elastic. Pia isn’t sure what will snap first: it or her. She looks around for something to distract herself with.

  Siskin’s office is a lot like him. Controlled and cold and clean. A little empty. Metal-framed photographs cover one wall, showing various pictures from the mountain’s history. The famous portrait of the first research team, just before the detonation. The same scientists in hazard suits, at the fringe of the blast radius, scanning patches of glitch with their instruments. A blurred shot of the first-ever voilà: Zafira, a lemon-yellow genie.

  Right, that’s
it. She’s looked at the pictures. She can’t stand it any more.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ she asks.

  Siskin stops reading, and glances up. ‘Is that a habit?’

  Answering questions with questions is one of the most annoying things the boss does. Now she feels angry as well as upset.

  ‘Is what a habit?’ Pia says back to him. See how he likes it.

  Siskin sighs. ‘Why are you assuming the worst?’

  Argh! Take a deep breath. Be calm. ‘Because I have a track record.’

  Siskin holds up the file. ‘I can see that. You’re missing the last two weeks of reports. How is Threedeep, by the way?’

  Pia looks at the floor. ‘Still mending. The ’genieer says she doesn’t really know what she’s wishing fixed.’

  ‘Of course she doesn’t.’ Siskin shakes his head disappointedly. ‘That nanabug is i-era tech. Practically a living thing itself. It’s certainly more complicated than some of the voilà we have in the arks. A pity you aren’t as careful with the zoo’s drones as you are with our celestials.’

  Oh Seamstress. She should tell him now. Just say it. Go on.

  Pia gulps. ‘Well, um, I actually—’

  ‘Please.’ Siskin holds up his hand to cut her off. ‘Stop with the modesty, Cornucopia. You know the celestials better than any of us. You are a credit to this zoo.’

  Pia can’t bear to hear Siskin say that. ‘I’m not.’

  ‘You are a credit to this zoo,’ Siskin repeats emphatically. ‘Now look at me and nod.’

  Pia looks at him and nods. ‘But I messed up—’

  She jumps as Siskin slams her file shut.

  ‘Of course you mess up! Just look at today. You arrive late, you almost throw up, you’re nearly in tears for no reason. And what’s that on your trouser leg?’

  ‘It’s, um, mustard.’

  ‘You see? This is why you’re so perfect for the celestial ark.’

  Siskin is in full flow, no stopping him now. He loves doing this: taking long reports he has just read and summarising them.

  ‘Celestials don’t need to eat or photosynthesise, correct?’

  Pia nods. Now she feels sick, not just with the hot dog but also with herself. What a coward.

  ‘But they do need to appear to humans. Otherwise, they – how did you put it in your report?’

  ‘They burn out. Like light bulbs. They use up so much power trying to get you to notice them they blow a fuse. At first, Mum and Dad thought they fed off utility. Like, being useful. But it’s more complex than that. Angels, genies and devils all need attention too.’

  Siskin nods. ‘Which is where your clumsiness, absent-mindedness, and general calamity-causing have all proven very useful.’

  He rattles off a bunch of impressive-sounding statistics, about how the angels were thirty per cent busier and ten per cent brighter, and her genies were making triple the previous amount of wishes, which seemed to prolong their flames.

  ‘Just make sure you keep an eye on their beard lengths,’ Siskin continues. ‘As for the remaining devil, he hasn’t managed to trick you into making a deal with him yet, which is about all I can hope for.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It’s good to know I can trust you with this. It’s important we care for our celestial voilà. The zoo cannot function without the genies. And as for the angels...’

  Trailing off is not a very Siskin thing to do. In the silence, his jaw twitches.

  ‘The two most important voilà in this zoo,’ he finally says, ‘are the two angels in your care. Earth needs a miracle. Now at last, it has two miracle-workers.’

  Pia squeezes her eyes shut. Once again, the enormity of the secret she is keeping threatens to overwhelm her. Since before Megalolz, the zoo has been floating around the island, gathering up creatures from the Seam that might stave off the end of the world. Because the apocalypse is at hand – and it is not the flash of fire and fury that previous generations had predicted. It is slow, and some days it is almost unnoticeable, like the winding down of a clock, or the moving of the ice slugs. But it is coming. As the ohtwo factories break down and global temperatures climb and sea levels rise, it is closer every year.

  It is just like Siskin said.

  Earth needs a miracle.

  Right, that settles it. She won’t tell Siskin the angels are missing. Not yet. Not until she is absolutely certain she can’t find them again. It is just too awful to consider that the entire world is now doomed, and Pia is to blame.

  Nice idea, says a voice in her head. Burying your head in the sand – that worked really well for humanity in the i-era, didn’t it?

  Pia tells herself to shut up. She isn’t burying her head, just keeping the problem contained. Siskin will freak out and transfer her, and that won’t help anyone. If anyone is going to find the angels, it is Pia. Like the boss said, she knows them best.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she says. ‘I’ll sort everything out. You’ll—’

  Siskin holds up a hand to silence her. He notices a hair on the sleeve of his suit and plucks it off. ‘The only celestials you don’t seem to have had much progress with,’ he says, carefully putting the hair in a drawer like someone filing a report, ‘are the ghosts.’

  Pia’s throat tightens. She swallows a few times and looks at the floor.

  ‘Which surprises me,’ says Siskin, standing up and sitting on one edge of his desk.

  Oh, great. This is Siskin’s talk to me posture. But Pia doesn’t want to talk. She wants to tell Siskin to shut up, she wants to yell at him, but she is concentrating too hard on her belly as it clenches and boils.

  ‘I know it’s an unusual situation. They used to look after you, and now you look after them.’

  Pia says nothing.

  ‘I thought you would have liked seeing them.’

  She shakes her head. Closes her eyes to stop the queasiness.

  ‘Why not?’ Siskin sounds genuinely interested. ‘Talk to me.’

  ‘Because,’ Pia gasps. ‘Because they don’t – because they don’t realise it’s me.’

  And she gives up trying to fight it. She doubles over and yurks all over Siskin’s desk.

  Siskin leaps to one side, clattering into his lamp and knocking it over. With a blue flash and a bang, the bulb blows.

  ‘Sorry,’ says Pia groggily.

  The director looks at his broken lamp. It is probably vintage and designer. Then he looks at the bright orange mulch that Pia has spewed all over his files. A vein pulses in his forehead. The disposable tissue comes back out from his suit pocket, pinched between thumb and forefinger. Pia takes it and meekly wipes her mouth.

  ‘Let’s reschedule,’ Siskin says coolly. ‘We’ll conduct the on-site appraisal when you’re feeling better.’

  Pia looks down at the vomit-covered report. ‘On-site?’

  ‘I’m missing two weeks of data because of your nanabug accident. I was about to suggest we compensate with a tour of the celestial ark. But we shall follow hygiene procedures. You should return to your ark and recuperate.’

  Pia gawps at the vomit. It saved her. The hot dog had actually saved her. Siskin was about to invite himself on to the celestial ark for a guided tour. Oh Seamstress, that was close! Now she can keep him and everyone else away from the celestial ark until she works out what to do.

  Siskin’s secretary gets called in and gives Pia a look of utter loathing as he scoops up some of the puke with a wad of paper, then scribbles out a wish for the little grey genie to zephyr it away.

  The blackhead on his nostril is gone. He must have squeezed it out.

  Pia shudders and almost yurks again. She hurries out of the office as fast as she can and sits down on a seat in the corridor, gulping the ship’s stale recycled air. Despite throwing up, she feels better than she has all morning. OK, she is never doubt
ing Solomon and Bertoldo ever again. What a mighty boon they gave her. It hasn’t led her to the angels, but it has bought her time.

  ‘Shall I ping a nanabug to take her away?’ Pia hears the secretary ask Siskin. There is a note of pleading to his voice.

  ‘I shall take her myself,’ comes the answer, in a tone that suggests it is the only guaranteed way to get rid of her. Siskin steps out into the corridor. ‘This way.’ He turns left towards the elevator.

  Pia follows him. She has the weak-headed, weirdly euphoric feeling she always gets after throwing up. Siskin’s shoe heels rap steadily over the floor. She finds herself walking in step with him. The man walks like a metronome.

  ‘I don’t think your secretary likes me,’ she says.

  ‘Weevis is almost the same age as you,’ Siskin answers, as if that means they ought to get along brilliantly.

  ‘Weevis?!’ Pia facepalms. ‘Now I remember. He so looks like a Weevis too.’ She mutters it into her memory. ‘Weevis. Weevis, Weevis, Weevis.’

  Siskin gives her a look that he often gives to kids. Sort of like they are creatures in the zoo, ones that really weird him out. Pia is sure that he would prefer a zoo without any kids on it at all. Everything would probably be a lot more ordered. But it would also be a lot more empty.

  No one really knows why kids are the best at creating voilà inside the Seam, but bad stuff tended to happen to any grown-ups who went to the Seamstress. Most of the first research team – the scientists who created the reality bomb – had gone crazy in the Seam, or even disappeared altogether. Pia thinks of the photograph of them on Siskin’s wall. Those excited smiles. Not even the mightiest of hot dogs could have saved them.