Oryx and Crake

by Margaret Atwood

  "Guess who else he told?" said Crake. "My mother and Uncle Pete. He was going to do some whistle-blowing through a rogue Web site - those things have a wide viewership, it would have wrecked the pleebland sales of every single HelthWyzer vitamin supplement, plus it would have torched the entire scheme. It would have caused financial havoc. Think of the job losses. He wanted to warn them first." Crake paused. "He thought Uncle Pete didn't know."

  "Wow," said Jimmy. "So one or the other of them ..."

  "Could have been both," said Crake. "Uncle Pete wouldn't have wanted the bottom line threatened. My mother may just have been scared, felt that if my dad went down, she could go too. Or it could have been the CorpSeCorps. Maybe he'd been acting funny at work. Maybe they were checking up. He encrypted everything, but if I could hack in, so could they."

  "That is so weird," said Jimmy. "So they murdered your father?"

  "Executed," said Crake. "That's what they'd have called it. They'd have said he was about to destroy an elegant concept. They'd have said they were acting for the general good."

  The two of them sat there. Crake was looking up at the ceiling, almost as if he admired it. Jimmy didn't know what else to say. Words of comfort would be superfluous.

  Finally Crake said, "How come your mother took off the way she did?"

  "I don't know," said Jimmy. "A lot of reasons. I don't want to talk about it."

  "I bet your dad was in on something like that. Some scam like the HelthWyzer one. I bet she found out."

  "Oh, I don't think so," said Jimmy. "I think she got involved with some God's Gardeners--type outfit. Some bunch of wackos. Anyway, my dad wouldn't have ..."

  "I bet she knew they were starting to know she knew."

  "I'm really tired," said Jimmy. He yawned, and suddenly it was true. "I think I'll turn in."

  Extinctathon

  ~

  On the last evening, Crake said, "Want to play Extinctathon?"

  "Extinctathon?" said Jimmy. It took him a moment, but then he remembered it: the boring Web interactive with all those defunct animals and plants. "When was it we used to play that? It can't still be going."

  "It's never stopped," said Crake. Jimmy took in the implications: Crake had never stopped. He must've been playing it by himself, all these years. Well, he was a compulsive, no news there.

  "So, how's your cumulative score?" he asked, to be polite.

  "Once you rack up three thousand," said Crake, "you get to be a Grandmaster." Which meant Crake was one, because he wouldn't have mentioned it otherwise.

  "Oh good," said Jimmy. "So do you get a prize? The tail and both ears?"

  "Let me show you something," said Crake. He went onto the Web, found the site, pulled it up. There was the familiar gateway: EXTINCTATHON, Monitored by MaddAddam. Adam named the living animals, MaddAddam names the dead ones. Do you want to play?

  Crake clicked Yes, and entered his codename: Rednecked Crake. The little coelacanth symbol appeared over his name, meaning Grandmaster. Then something new came up, a message Jimmy had never seen before: Welcome Grandmaster Rednecked Crake. Do you want to play a general game or do you want to play another Grandmaster?

  Crake clicked the second. Good. Find your playroom. MaddAddam will meet you there.

  "MaddAddam is a person?" asked Jimmy.

  "It's a group," said Crake. "Or groups."

  "So what do they do, this MaddAddam?" Jimmy was feeling silly. It was like watching some corny old spy DVD, James Bond or something. "Besides counting the skulls and pelts, I mean."

  "Watch this." Crake left Extinctathon, then hacked into a local pleeb bank, and from there skipped to what looked to be a manufacturer of solarcar parts. He went into the image of a hubcap, which opened into a folder - HottTotts Pinups, it was titled. The files were dated, not named; he chose one of them, transferred it into one of his lily pads, used that to skip to another, erased his footprints, opened the file there, loaded an image.

  It was the picture of Oryx, seven or eight years old, naked except for her ribbons, her flowers. It was the picture of the look she'd given him, the direct, contemptuous, knowing look that had dealt him such a blow when he was - what? Fourteen? He still had the paper printout, folded up, hidden deep. It was a private thing, this picture. His own private thing: his own guilt, his own shame, his own desire. Why had Crake kept it? Stolen it.

  Jimmy felt ambushed. What's she doing here? he wanted to yell. That's mine! Give it back! He was in a lineup; fingers pointed at him, faces scowled, while some rabid Bernice clone set fire to his undershorts. Retribution was at hand, but for what? What had he done? Nothing. He'd only looked.

  Crake moved to the girl's left eye, clicked on the iris. It was a gateway: the playroom opened up.

  Hello, Grandmaster Crake. Enter passnumber now.

  Crake did so. A new sentence popped up: Adam named the animals. MaddAddam customizes them.

  Then there was a string of e-bulletins, with places and dates - CorpSeCorps issue, by the look of them, marked For Secure Addresses Only.

  A tiny parasitic wasp had invaded several ChickieNobs installations, carrying a modified form of chicken pox, specific to the ChickieNob and fatal to it. The installations had had to be incinerated before the epidemic could be brought under control.

  A new form of the common house mouse addicted to the insulation on electric wiring had overrun Cleveland, causing an unprecedented number of house fires. Control measures were still being tested.

  Happicuppa coffee bean crops were menaced by a new bean weevil found to be resistant to all known pesticides.

  A miniature rodent containing elements of both porcupine and beaver had appeared in the northwest, creeping under the hoods of parked vehicles and devastating their fan belts and transmission systems.

  A microbe that ate the tar in asphalt had turned several interstate highways to sand. All interstates were on alert, and a quarantine belt was now in place.

  "What's going on?" said Jimmy. "Who's putting this stuff out there?"

  The bulletins vanished, and a fresh entry appeared. MaddAddam needs fresh initiatives. Got a bright idea? Share with us.

  Crake typed, Sorry, interruption. Must go.

  Right, Grandmaster Rednecked Crake. We'll talk later. Crake closed down.

  Jimmy had a cold feeling, a feeling that reminded him of the time his mother had left home: the same sense of the forbidden, of a door swinging open that ought to be kept locked, of a stream of secret lives, running underground, in the darkness just beneath his feet. "What was all that about?" he said. It might not be about anything, he told himself. It might be about Crake showing off. It might be an elaborate setup, an invention of Crake's, a practical joke to frighten him.

  "I'm not sure," said Crake. "I thought at first they were just another crazy Animal Liberation org. But there's more to it than that. I think they're after the machinery. They're after the whole system, they want to shut it down. So far they haven't done any people numbers, but it's obvious they could."

  "You shouldn't be messing around!" said Jimmy. "You don't want to be connected! Someone could think you're part of it. What if you get caught? You'll end up on brainfrizz!" He was frightened now.

  "I won't get caught," said Crake. "I'm just cruising. But do me a favour and don't mention this when you e-mail."

  "Sure," said Jimmy. "But why even take the chance?"

  "I'm curious, that's all," said Crake. "They've let me into the waiting room, but not any further. They've got to be Compound, or Compound-trained. These are sophisticated bioforms they're putting together; I don't think a pleeblander would be able to make anything like that." He gave Jimmy his green-eyed sideways look - a look (Snowman thinks now) that meant trust. Crake trusted him. Otherwise he wouldn't have shown him the hidden playroom.

  "It could be a CorpSeCorps flytrap," said Jimmy. The Corpsmen were in the habit of setting up schemes of that sort, to capture subversives in the making. Weeding the pea patch, he'd heard it called. The Compoun
ds were said to be mined with such potentially lethal tunnels. "You need to watch your step."

  "Sure," said Crake.

  What Jimmy really wanted to know was: Out of all the possibilities you had, out of all the gateways, why did you choose her? He couldn't ask, though.

  He couldn't give himself away.

  Something else happened during that visit; something important, though Jimmy hadn't realized it at the time.

  The first night, as he was sleeping on Crake's pullout sofa bed, he'd heard shouting. He'd thought it was coming from outside - at Martha Graham it would have been student pranksters - but in fact it was coming from Crake's room. It was coming from Crake.

  More than shouting: screaming. There were no words. It happened every night he was there.

  "That was some dream you were having," said Jimmy the next morning, after the first time it happened.

  "I never dream," said Crake. His mouth was full and he was looking out the window. For such a thin man he ate a lot. It was the speed, the high metabolic rate: Crake burned things up.

  "Everyone dreams," Jimmy said. "Remember the REM-sleep study at HelthWyzer High?"

  "The one where we tortured cats?"

  "Virtual cats, yeah. And the cats that couldn't dream went crazy."

  "I never remember my dreams," said Crake. "Have some more toast."

  "But you must have them anyway."

  "Okay, point taken, wrong words. I didn't mean I never dream. I'm not crazy, therefore I must dream. Hypothesis, demonstration, conclusion, if A then not B. Good enough?" Crake smiled, poured himself some coffee.

  So Crake never remembered his dreams. It's Snowman that remembers them instead. Worse than remembers: he's immersed in them, he'd wading through them, he's stuck in them. Every moment he's lived in the past few months was dreamed first by Crake. No wonder Crake screamed so much.

  9

  ~

  Hike

  ~

  After an hour of walking, Snowman comes out from the former park. He picks his way farther inland, heading along the trashed pleebland boulevards and avenues and roads and streets. Wrecked solarcars are plentiful, some piled up in multi-vehicle crashes, some burnt out, some standing intact as if temporarily parked. There are trucks and vans, fuel-cell models and also the old gas or diesel kind, and ATVs. A few bicycles, a few motorcycles - not a bad choice considering the traffic mayhem that must have lasted for days. On a two-wheeled item you'd have been able to weave in and out among the larger vehicles until someone shot you or ran into you, or you fell off.

  This was once a semi-residential sector - shops on the ground floor, gutted now; small dim apartments above. Most of the signs are still in place despite the bullet holes in them. People had hoarded the lead bullets from the time before sprayguns, despite the ban on the pleebs having any kind of gun at all. Snowman's been unable to find any bullets; not that he'd had a rusty old firearm that would have taken them.

  The buildings that didn't burn or explode are still standing, though the botany is thrusting itself through every crack. Given time it will fissure the asphalt, topple the walls, push aside the roofs. Some kind of vine is growing everywhere, draping the windowsills, climbing in through the broken windows and up the bars and grillwork. Soon this district will be a thick tangle of vegetation. If he'd postponed the trip much longer the way back would have become impassable. It won't be long before all visible traces of human habitation will be gone.

  But suppose - just suppose, thinks Snowman - that he's not the last of his kind. Suppose there are others. He wills them into being, these possible remnants who might have survived in isolated pockets, cut off by the shutdown of the communications networks, keeping themselves alive somehow. Monks in desert hideaways, far from contagion; mountain goatherders who'd never mixed with the valley people; lost tribes in the jungles. Survivalists who'd tuned in early, shot all comers, sealed themselves into their underground bunkers. Hillbillies, recluses; wandering lunatics, swathed in protective hallucinations. Bands of nomads, following their ancient ways.

  How did this happen? their descendants will ask, stumbling upon the evidence, the ruins. The ruinous evidence. Who made these things? Who lived in them? Who destroyed them? The Taj Mahal, the Louvre, the Pyramids, the Empire State Building - stuff he's seen on TV, in old books, on postcards, on Blood and Roses. Imagine coming upon them, 3-D, life-sized, with no preparation - you'd be freaked, you'd run away, and after that you'd need an explanation. At first they'll say giants or gods, but sooner or later they'll want to know the truth. Like him, they'll have the curious monkey brain.

  Perhaps they'll say, These things are not real. They are phantasmagoria. They were made by dreams, and now that no one is dreaming them any longer they are crumbling away.

  ~

  "Let's suppose for the sake of argument," said Crake one evening, "that civilization as we know it gets destroyed. Want some popcorn?"

  "Is that real butter?" said Jimmy.

  "Nothing but the best at Watson-Crick," said Crake. "Once it's flattened, it could never be rebuilt."

  "Because why? Got any salt?"

  "Because all the available surface metals have already been mined," said Crake. "Without which, no iron age, no bronze age, no age of steel, and all the rest of it. There's metals farther down, but the advanced technology we need for extracting those would have been obliterated."

  "It could be put back together," said Jimmy, chewing. It was so long since he'd tasted popcorn this good. "They'd still have the instructions."

  "Actually not," said Crake. "It's not like the wheel, it's too complex now. Suppose the instructions survived, suppose there were any people left with the knowledge to read them. Those people would be few and far between, and they wouldn't have the tools. Remember, no electricity. Then once those people died, that would be it. They'd have no apprentices, they'd have no successors. Want a beer?"

  "Is it cold?"

  "All it takes," said Crake, "is the elimination of one generation. One generation of anything. Beetles, trees, microbes, scientists, speakers of French, whatever. Break the link in time between one generation and the next, and it's game over forever."

  "Speaking of games," said Jimmy, "it's your move."

  The walking has become an obstacle course for Snowman: in several places he's needed to make detours. Now he's in a narrow sidestreet, choked with vines; they've festooned themselves across the street, from roof to roof. Through the clefts in the overhead greenery he can see a handful of vultures, circling idly in the sky. They can see him too, they have eyesight like ten magnifying glasses, those things can count the change in your pocket. He knows a thing or two about vultures. "Not yet," he calls up at them.

  But why disappoint them? If he were to stumble and fall, cut himself open, knock himself out, then be set upon by wolvogs or pigoons, what difference would it make to anyone but himself? The Crakers are doing fine, they don't need him any more. For a while they'll wonder where he's gone, but he's already provided an answer to that: he's gone to be with Crake. He'll become a secondary player in their mythology, such as it is - a sort of backup demiurge. He'll be falsely remembered. He won't be mourned.

  The sun is climbing higher, intensifying its rays. He feels light-headed. A thick tendril slithers away, flickering its tongue, as his foot comes down beside it. He needs to pay more attention. Are any of the snakes venomous? Did that long tail he almost stepped on have a small furry body at the front? He didn't see it clearly. He certainly hopes not. The claim was that all the snats had been destroyed, but it would take only one pair of them. One pair, the Adam and Eve of snats, and some weirdo with a grudge, bidding them go forth and multiply, relishing the idea of those things twirling up the drainpipes. Rats with long green scaly tails and rattlesnake fangs. He decides not to think about that.

  Instead he begins to hum, to cheer himself up. What's the song? "Winter Wonderland." They used to recycle that in the malls every Christmas, long after the last time it snowed. So
me tune about playing pranks on a snowman, before it got mushed.

  Maybe he's not the Abominable Snowman after all. Maybe he's the other kind of snowman, the grinning dope set up as a joke and pushed down as an entertainment, his pebble smile and carrot nose an invitation to mockery and abuse. Maybe that's the real him, the last Homo sapiens - a white illusion of a man, here today, gone tomorrow, so easily shoved over, left to melt in the sun, getting thinner and thinner until he liquefies and trickles away altogether. As Snowman is doing now. He pauses, wipes the sweat off his face, drinks half of his bottle of water. He hopes there will be more somewhere, soon.

  Up ahead, the houses thin out and vanish. There's an interval of parking lots and warehouses, then barbed wire strung between cement posts, an elaborate gate off its hinges. End of urban sprawl and pleeb city limits, beginning of Compound turfdom. Here's the last station of the sealed-tunnel bullet train, with its plastic jungle-gym colours. No risks here, the colours are saying. Just kiddie fun.

  But this is the dangerous part. Up to here he's always had something he could climb or scramble up or dodge around in case of a flank attack, but now comes an open space with no shelter and few verticals. He pulls the sheet up over his baseball cap to protect himself from the sun's glare, shrouding himself like an Arab, and plods on, picking up the pace as much as he can. He knows he'll burn some even through the sheet if he stays out here long enough: his best hope is speed. He'll need to get to shelter before noon, when the asphalt will be too hot to walk on.

  Now he's reached the Compounds. He passes the turnoff to CryoJeenyus, one of the smaller outfits: he'd like to have been a fly on the wall when the lights went out and two thousand frozen millionaires' heads awaiting resurrection began to melt in the dark. Next comes Genie-Gnomes, with the elfin mascot popping its pointy-eared head in and out of a test tube. The neon was on, he noted: the solar hookup must still be functioning, though not perfectly. Those signs were supposed to go on only at night.

  And, finally, RejoovenEsense. Where he'd made so many mistakes, misunderstood so much, gone on his last joyride. Bigger than OrganInc Farms, bigger than HelthWyzer. The biggest of them all.