Dogs of Orninica

by Unedo, Daniel

  We die today as clueless as ever. We never grew, or learned a single thing in our entire doomed turn on this earth. We were not cultured, nor distinguished, advanced or civilized. We certainly weren't important. We were only silly little specks on a big blue ball of chaos whirling through space.

  It is very freeing to admit to these truths. Finally piercing the protective film that covers my mind; releasing my ego. I suppose the only real wisdom comes to you when there's nothing left to cling to, and your whole state of existence is in shambles.

  The only truth that I now know as I wait to die is that I know nothing.

  The moment the rich were ripped from the earth by the Braniso explosions, we could have finally freed ourselves. Rebooted our civilization and created a self-sustaining utopia, much like the Autonomous Tribes of Nureongi have managed to do so successfully. But instead we stumbled around aimlessly, waiting to be told by by the newscasts what to do next. And when the clerics took over and told us mass-suicide was the only acceptable path of action. we didn't even bat an eyelid. We all die just as we lived, sheep lining up at a slaughterhouse.

  I realize that the ruins of the human civilization never really taught me anything of true value, but sitting here, waiting to be executed, to join the ruins of our own fallen civilization, I finally feel a tremendous relief. I am unbound for the first time.

  Vivid flashes of a wasted life play before my eyes. I can't stop the images, they pound through my head like trains rushing past a platform at full speed. Suddenly relief is replaced with intense regret.

  I was part of the problem. I am responsible for all this lunacy. It is my fault, and I deserve this horrible undignified end, to match the waste of a life I led. A life of craven passivity and blind obedience to deviant posturers. My senseless inaction has caused all of this. I am Orninica. I am guilty.

  Maybe this sudden eradication of our civilization is necessitated by the laws of the universe. In order for a new, better way of life to arise, the old must be wiped clean. Maybe this is the way it was always meant to end for us; this farce we call our reality.

  But perhaps there is a glimmer of nobility in all of this chaos. Orninica's earth sacrifices itself so that hope can rise once again, and whatever creature one day stands up to take our place will have a clean slate with which to establish their new world.

  Maybe they'll get it right next time, coming in without ever knowing the crippling influence of corruption and greed. Maybe they'll put the needs of the many ahead of the luxury of the few. Maybe this tragic loop of societies built on arrogance, greed, stripping of liberty and eventual self destruction will continue until someone, someday breaks the cycle, and survives the attack that will surely follow from its neighbors for daring to be free.

  No one else on the catapult or in the crowd of dogs waiting for their turn seems to be very afraid. I suppose they resolved themselves to the chaos of their lives long ago, and don't quite know how to interpret this final great injustice upon them, as anything more than one last affirmation of futility. We certainly lost any ability to stand up for ourselves long ago.

  Orninica was a nice place once, but it was fleeting. Almost from the start, we willingly gave away every natural freedom we were born with, and for what? I don't know any more. Was there ever any logic to it? I just can't seem to remember. It doesn't matter any more, none of this does.

  The clouds are clearing now. The sun is finally showing itself.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Spy III

  I was all ready to die. They kept delaying my execution for weeks, until finally, all the citizens were gone, and only the leading clergy were left alive. They brought me to the rocket launch site, and it started to look like they were taking me with them, to die in space. But as they boarded the rockets, they removed my chains and told me I was free to go. To be the only living witness of the great Orninican civilization.

  I watched as the rockets departed the earth on their journey to find their nirvana. I looked up at the sky until the last rocket was no more than a speck. I didn't know where I'd go or what I'd do now, so I decided to walk back to the restaurant to gain my bearings. I did notice the clergy didn't bring with them the remaining power-elite. I assumed they were left behind to repopulate the earth with nothing but purebred elites, as was surely their long held goal. I would soon discover I was wrong.

  It took several days to walk back to Rover Avenue. On my way through the empty streets, with only drones and janitor-bots for company, I passed piles of decaying corpses. I saw one fellow who had somehow managed to survive the catapult, I suppose by landing on someone less fortunate. Regaining consciousness, he struggled to stand up. But the drones saw him too, and in the blink of an eye he was down again. I had to dive for cover to avoid the ricochet, but I was a little slow and the bullets grazed the side of my face.

  It seemed that they were programmed to shoot on sight any dog that had managed to survive the purge. Not seeing the Nureongi as members of their race, the clerics must have made an exception for me and added it to the drone's network. The janitor-bots were working as fast as they could to remove and incinerate the dead from the streets, but there were just too many, so they were piling them on top of each other and setting colossal bonfires. There were some paths that were so piled with bodies waiting to be burned that I had no choice but to climb over them to pass. The air was thick with smoke and the foul smell of burning flesh. My eyes and nose stung.

  I couldn't help but feel responsible. My actions had surely led to this massacre, there was no getting around that. To be honest, I was frustrated that the clerics hadn't executed me. I was completely prepared to die, and when they didn't pull the trigger, I was left feeling barren. Regret began to set in as I passed more and more corpses and plodded through the thick carpet of blood that stuck to the road. Every water-body I passed was stained bright red with all the run-off.

  For a long time, I tried to convince myself that the Orns would be better off dead. That the only way to free them of this cycle of tyranny and enslavement was for them to meet their ends, released from their strangling restraints once and for all.

  I suppose it made it easier to pull the trigger on my plot after I'd convinced myself that I was freeing them by killing them. Knowing I'd be putting to death not just the power elite, but any innocent bystanders that were within the blast zone, made it especially important that I swallow this pill.

  I had never expected or planned to live for very long, after my decision to carry out the Braniso plot. It felt unjust, that I should live when so many innocents had been led to slaughter, that hundreds of millions of pups all around the world were splayed out dead on the roads, while I somehow continued to draw breath.

  I didn't much like being alone with my guilt-stricken thoughts on this long walk, and I knew it would likely be many years before I'd get back to Nureongi and hear a voice other than my own. Even if I did get home someday, I'd still have to live with what I'd done until my very last moments in this life. Being a long-gone martyr was really a much more comfortable plan than being forced to bear witness to all this senseless carnage.

  I wondered if maybe I shouldn't return to Nureongi at all. After years in this place, my heart was likely blackened beyond saving. What if I contaminated my peaceful, freedom-loving brothers and sisters with my years of serfdom, and my fierce, murderous plotting.

  But then again, the brutal war fought against them probably already had that affect. I hoped they hadn't lost sight of their spirits. I hoped they hadn't also been changed forever by the war.

  Every time I crossed through a suburb, I was very tempted to take one of the neatly-parked cars sitting idly in every driveway, but it was far too risky; especially now that the drones only had one dog left to police. They surrounded me constantly like a swarm of hungry mechanical locusts. At night, when the drones became especially unnerved at my suspiciously long walk, I had to take shelter in the lobbies of hotels to avoid sending them all into a frenzy. They
were some of the only buildings that weren't locked and unapproachable.

  Several times, overzealous drones latched onto me and airlifted me to the nearest police station or security checkpoint, and then, confused that the place was empty, dropped me down and departed. This made the walk take a lot longer than it would have. In one particular town, I was dropped at the same station nine times by different drones. They must have been set to a particularly high alert setting.

  After that frustrating experience, I tried my best to bypass what used to be major population centers. Because of this, there was a lot of desert to cross. But I suppose all of Orninica is technically a desert now that the trees are gone. Maybe even all of the world.

  As I entered the city, it looked oddly unfamiliar. I'd never seen it like this before; completely devoid of animation. It was more like a model of the city I'd once seen at the miniatures museum. Especially jolting was the almost total silence. I don't think I'd ever fully realized how alive the city was before this eerily still moment.

  Finally arriving at the financial district and turning the corner to the big Fitzcorp building, I saw four bodies lined up neatly outside. These weren't catapult victims; these dogs had gunshot wounds to their heads. They'd been lined up against the building and shot dead. Looking closer, I recognized one of them as Gerald Fitz, one of Maurice Fitz's grandsons. He used to have his own reality show on TV. As I passed more famous buildings, I saw the same scene again and again. All the wealthy socialites that had lucked out and escaped my Braniso plot, lined up and shot dead. Most of them young pups.

  The drones above didn't seem to be operating as normal. Instead of following me around suspiciously, recording my every move, they seemed to be completely oblivious to my presence. Some of them flied in circles aimlessly, others collided with buildings. There were no janitor-bots in sight. No catapults either, since no one lived in this district. Just short rows of impeccably-dressed rich folk with their brains blown out.

  I reached my restaurant. There wasn't much left of it, they were very thorough in stripping it bare when they were looking for evidence. But the old bench was still standing outside the door. I sat at it and took one last look at the long black street I'd given so many years to. The buildings didn't seem so big and menacing all of a sudden. I took a deep breath. The air didn't choke my lungs as I expected. I could even have sworn I could hear birdsong in the distance.

  I suddenly realized I was still wearing my clothes. I took them off and set them on the bench. I noticed the yellow roots in my fur beginning to show again for the first time in five years. I remembered Outa's soft golden coat and let out a longing sigh. I had no idea if she had managed to survive the invasion, or if anyone I used to know was still alive. I decided to put that out of my mind.

  It was time to finally leave this place behind forever.

  I would have a long journey ahead of me to get back home to Nureongi. But I was grateful I was there to witness the last days of Orninica before time took it and withered it down into sand.

  EPILOGUE

  In their haste to depart the earth for the sun, in search of their so-called masters, the Orninican clerics have just narrowly missed the one and only chance to actually meet the mythical humans they so honored.

  Far away from the heart of the late Orninican civilization, in what was the last remnants of the Amazon rain-forest, the last tree is felled by the unstoppable logger-bots, and out of the sawdust and leaf-litter climb the very last survivors of a long concealed tribe of Homo sapiens.

  These timid great apes have managed to stay hidden in the trees for thousands of years, far predating the tragically brief age of the Orninicans.

  The small tribe of thirty-odd members now have no choice but to leave their ancestral homeland and begin a desperate quest to find sustenance in other lands.

  As it becomes more and more obvious that a brutal ice age rapidly approaches, and with their lands also stripped bare, the surviving Nureongi gather their wounded and also begin to think about migrating.

  Perhaps their paths will meet somewhere along the way.