The Kingdom

by Jess Rothenberg

  How do you define real, anyway?

  I wonder if the mother is one of those people who believe the Kingdom’s practices to be unethical. There are many who believe it is morally wrong both to revive extinct species and to do it in a way that blends nature and technology so seamlessly, so intuitively, that the animals produced are neither biological nor machine, but both.

  Hybrids.

  The tour guide drones on. “All of these animals were born under observation as part of our pioneering FES program…” I’ve heard the speech so many times, I could easily recite it myself.

  “Are you coming?” I whisper to Nia. “We’re nearly there.” But Nia doesn’t answer. She is too busy staring at the teenage boy in front of us, posing with the sweep of savanna and rapidly taking photos with his phone.

  My eyes dart back and forth between Nia and the boy. Why does she seem so interested in his phone? She knows as well as I do that phones are forbidden.

  “Come on.” I nudge her arm. “Let’s go.”

  “I changed my mind,” she says quietly, her eyes still locked on the boy. “I can visit the water hole another time. You go ahead.”

  This is unexpected.

  “But it’s your special day. I thought you wanted to spend it together.”

  Nia looks at me sharply, her green eyes so clear and bright I can see my own reflection staring back. “Go without me,” she says. “I’ll see you at tea time in the Briar Rose Parlor at four o’clock. Okay?”

  I notice a new feeling in my chest. A slow but measured squeezing, like air leaking from a balloon.

  Disappointment.

  “Okay.” I try my best to sound cheerful. “It’s your day. You get to choose.”

  Nia’s face brightens. “Thanks, Ana.” She squeezes my hand. “I knew you’d understand.”

  I bid farewell to the tour with a graceful wave of my hand and climb down from the rover. Maybe this is a good thing, I remind myself. Maybe Nia no longer needs me the way she always has. Maybe, after all these months, she is finally growing into her role here.

  Maybe I have helped her.

  The thought lessens the ache.

  “But, Mommy, they’ll eat her!” I hear the same boy cry as I start out across the savanna. “The lions will eat Ana!”

  I turn back and give him a reassuring smile, dipping into a curtsy before I continue on my way.

  “Don’t worry, fella,” I hear the guide assure him. “Hybrids only hunt what they are programmed to hunt. She’ll be perfectly safe.”

  Safe.

  I wonder if I know what the word really means.

  A soft rustling in the distance soon distracts me.

  Any second now. The lions are invisible in the tall grass. I hold my breath.

  A moment later, there is a flash of brown, a tangle of elegant stripes, a thundering of hooves. A thick cloud of dust rises up—growling, snarling, a sharp and panicked whinnying, and then—a guttural scream.

  I glance back over my shoulder and see the boy turn into his mother’s arms, burying his head against her stomach.

  “What you’ve witnessed is the way that natural selection occurs in the wild,” the guide says, as he revs the rover to life. “The fastest zebras survive, while the slowest zebras…” He draws his finger across his throat. Then, they speed off.

  In between tour groups, the cleanup crew will arrive to strip the carcass of any usable or recyclable parts. Fantasists are not supposed to interact with Defectives due to heightened risk of injury, but today, I ignore the rule. Cautiously, I approach the zebra, or what is left of him—a mess of muscle, bone, and shredded wiring—and, after scanning the grasslands for any hint of motion, kneel down beside him. My chest aches when I see a smattering of spots above his front left hoof—an unusual genetic variation that made him stand out from his brothers and sisters. His name was EZ4310. I’ve known him since the day he was born.

  “Your life was meaningful,” I tell him, reaching to stroke his mane. “You mattered.”

  At the sound of my voice, the zebra’s eyes shift upward toward mine, irises round as saucers.

  He is still functional.

  Barely.

  I eye his limbs, twisted and torn. The grass, scattered with wires and entrails. The ground, soaked with thick, blue-black fluid, like oil oozing into the earth. Sitting with him, a new sensation settles over me; a deep crevasse opening up inside my chest.

  “It’s okay, boy,” I whisper as I pull his head into my lap. “You can let go.”

  The zebra blinks several times, and I can see my reflection in his warm brown eyes. Then, little by little, his gaze shifts to somewhere far away, as if he’s looking through me all the way to the sky. Finally, his head goes limp against me.

  He is gone.

  A strange hollowness fills me, though I am not sure why. After all, shutdown and final rest are natural stages of our technological lives.

  “Good night, old friend,” I whisper, leaning down to kiss his nose. “Run fast to the clouds.”

  The rumble of a Jeep alerts me that the cleaning crew is close, but when I turn around, I spot just one maintenance worker. From a distance, he is nothing but a gleam of black behind the wheel, as his hair catches in the sun. Quickly, I scramble to my feet.

  It’s the same boy I saw in the polar bear enclosure.

  Owen Chen. ID: 9-01-3-7219. Clearance Level: 10.

  As his vehicle pulls to a stop, I feel my stomach knot suddenly.

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” he says when he climbs out of the Jeep. “I hope you didn’t touch anything you weren’t supposed to.”

  My smile vanishes. “I’m allowed to go anywhere I choose so long as it doesn’t interfere with my schedule,” I tell him. “I know the rules better than you do.”

  The moment the words leave my mouth, I cannot believe I have said them. I quickly correct my facial expression from immodest to humble, hoping I have not offended him. I do not want him to report me to the Supervisors for impertinent behavior.

  To my surprise, he laughs. “Is that right?”

  I nod. “I’ve been here all my life. And you’re new.”

  There it is again. That bold, daring tone.

  What’s wrong with me? Am I glitching?

  “Fair enough.” He shrugs and fishes a pair of white sanitation gloves from his messenger bag before striding over to what’s left of the zebra. “You should probably move,” he says, glancing at my gown. “This can get … messy.”

  I take several steps back but continue to watch closely as he begins the hard work of stripping the carcass for everything from organ tissue to circuitry. I have never seen this process so up close and though I do not appreciate the rough way he is handling EZ4310, I cannot seem to look away. The way the zebra’s pieces fit together is so beautiful, I realize. Like a rare, intricate puzzle. The wire springs and metal screws of his mandible. The gel-like fluid oozing from his spinal cord, the same dazzling blue as a biosphere spring. The curve of his bones and the grooves of his joints. Even his striking brown eyes, inside of which are high-definition cameras the Supervisors will extract and use to study animal behavior.

  I know, because I have them, too.

  “Do you need help?” I ask when I notice Owen struggle momentarily. “I’m very strong.”

  “No,” he mutters without looking at me. “I got it.”

  After much pulling, grunting, and cutting, he finally wrestles something loose from the rib cage: a thick, fibrous muscle covered in black and blue goop that looks a little like an upside-down pear.

  A heart.

  “What do you need that for?” I ask.

  “Tests, mostly. A lot of the animals out here seem to have been born with defects in their electrical conducting systems. Affects the performance of their fight-or-flight response.” He gives the zebra a sorry pat. “Clearly.”

  “Are you sure?” I say. “I know everything about these animals, and I didn’t know that.”

  “No offense”
—he brushes past me as he begins carrying his collection bags back to his Jeep—“but there are probably a lot of things you don’t know.”

  “I know about the wolf,” I blurt, before I can stop myself. “Or the fox. From the woods.”

  He looks up, his expression changing in a way that is hard to read. “What’d you hear about that?”

  “I overheard guards talking. They say it is rabid.”

  “You mean you were eavesdropping?”

  “What?” His directness—or is it unfriendliness?—confuses me, and for a second I am not sure how best to respond. “No,” I finally answer. “No, I was not.”

  At least, not intentionally.

  Then, just to prove I’m telling the truth, I add, “I saw for myself. Something like blood in the snow, on the way up the Winter Land lifts. A family of rabbits, I think.”

  Owen goes silent. “You shouldn’t be going out there.”

  I frown. “This is my home. I can go wherever I like, as long as I’m back in the dormitory by nighttime.”

  “Well, for now maybe you shouldn’t.” He shrugs. “At least not to Winter Land. Not by yourself. There’s something dangerous out there.”

  “The rangers will find it. We are safe here in the Kingdom.”

  “Wow.” The kid scoffs and shakes his head.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, it’s just … someone’s been drinking the Kool-Aid.”

  Kool-Aid.

  I scan my wireless dictionary, but this far from the center of Magic Land, my signal isn’t as strong. The search fails. Once. Twice. Three times.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, mildly irked to have to ask his help. “But what is Kool-Aid?”

  The boy turns around and his eyes meet mine. Standing so close, I realize they are not simply brown, but a dark, earthy shade of burnt umber. Like trees and rust and chocolate, all mixed into one.

  “It’s just an expression,” he says. “I mean, it’s a drink.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Fantasists only require water, typically in very small amounts.”

  “No, but it’s also an…” He sighs. “Never mind.” He peels off his gloves and tosses them in the back of the truck. “My point is you sound like a brochure.”

  “You’ve been spending too much time with Mr. Casey. The Kingdom is a safe and happy place,” I repeat. “A beautiful place.”

  He gestures to the zebra. “And do you think this is beautiful, too?”

  I remind myself that he is new. “Animals die in the wild every day,” I explain. “Just like they do here. It’s natural. But without the Kingdom, they would never have existed in the first place. Our conservation efforts allow millions upon millions of annual guests to celebrate, appreciate, and get inspired about protecting our natural world. It’s a beautiful system.”

  “It isn’t beautiful when their organs fail,” he replies. “Or when they develop lymphoma by the time they’re six months old. Or when they’re born with genetic defects that mean they spend their whole lives suffering, if they’re allowed to live at all.”

  I hesitate.

  How does he know so much about the animals if he’s just focusing on maintenance work?

  Lymphoma. Defect. Suffering?

  These are words I have learned, but wish I could unlearn. Sick children visit the park all the time, having made wishes to spend their final days among us, the princesses of their dreams. It never occurred to me that the hybrids of the FES program could suffer similar fates. We were programmed to be perfect.

  “Look, this is exactly what I mean.” He walks over to the nearest acacia tree and carefully guides a resting butterfly into his cupped palms. Moving close to me again, he opens his hands. “What do you see?”

  “A butterfly,” I say, noting its beautiful black-and-orange markings, delicate white dots scattered along the edges. “A monarch. It must have flown over from the sanctuary in Magic Land. This species was wiped out twenty years ago. But thousands hatched just last week.” I cross my arms. “See? Without the Kingdom, they wouldn’t exist.”

  “True,” Owen says, “but hold on.” He gestures for me to open my hands, then carefully transfers the insect to me. When our fingers touch, a tiny spark shoots up my arm, and I flinch. “Look closer.” Owen carefully tips the butterfly onto its side and gently extends its wing. “See that?”

  This time, I notice tiny cracks in the surface, dusted with something that looks like powdered sugar. “What are those?”

  “Spores,” he replies. He takes out a small silver pocketknife and opens it, the blade glinting in the light. I watch as he scrapes a few of the spores off to show me. “Early stages of OE—that’s short for Ophryocystis elektroscirrha—a type of protozoan parasite. Those thousands of butterflies you mentioned? They’ll all be dead in a week.” He shakes his head, rubbing the powder between his fingers until it disappears. “It’s sad.”

  I peer closer.

  Is it?

  “I didn’t know maintenance workers were so involved in monitoring animal behavior,” I say. In my hand, the butterfly struggles to flap its wings. In fact, there’s no reason he should be handling the animals at all. I can’t help wondering: Is there something Owen isn’t telling me?

  “Can I catch the disease?” I ask him. This is, after all, no common cold.

  “No.” Owen shakes his head. “Anyway, it’s not really the disease that’s the issue—it’s their vulnerability to disease. Odd behavioral patterns. Diet. Sleep. Migration. Aggression. That sort of thing.”

  Patterns.

  A word with many meanings, my mind recalls.

  A natural or chance configuration.

  An artistic, musical, literary, or mechanical design or form.

  A length of fabric sufficient for an article (as of clothing).

  A reliable sample of traits, acts, tendencies, or other observable characteristics.

  I highlight the fourth definition and hit SELECT.

  A soft bell sounds as the memory is filed.

  The next time I encounter a similar human conversation, my operating system will make the connection without having to check.

  Owen walks back over to EZ4310 and nudges a bloody chunk of femur with his shoe. “They didn’t even eat any of him,” he mutters. “It’s like they just tore him apart for fun.” He looks at me. “Still think the FES program’s amazing?”

  I have no answer for him.

  Nobody has ever asked me what I think about it.

  Owen reaches over and takes the butterfly out of my hands. “You shouldn’t be here,” he says. “I could get in a lot of trouble for even talking to you.” He turns in the direction of the wind, raises his arms into the sky, and releases the butterfly, watching as it flutters away across the savanna. “It was nice to meet you, Ana,” he says quietly. Then he jumps into the Jeep, turns on the ignition, and drives away.

  I stare after the Jeep for a while, troubled by the new information, and by the spark of electricity that passed between us. Troubled, too, not that he knows my name, but that it sounds so nice when he says it.

  It is enough to keep me distracted all day. Enough that I don’t realize until too late what Nia has done.

  14

  TRIAL TRANSCRIPT

  MS. BELL: Mr. Jacobs, I’d like to talk with you about your interaction with one of the princesses—Pania, is that right?—on December 5, the year before last.

  MR. TREVOR JACOBS, PARK GUEST: Yeah, that’s right.

  MS. BELL: How did the two of you end up talking? Did she approach you, or did you approach her?

  MR. JACOBS: I mean, I don’t know. I guess I asked her to take a picture of me with my brothers. We were in Safari Land and I wanted a photo of us riding this sick water buffalo. I don’t mean, like—it wasn’t sick—it was just dope. You know? So I asked her if she’d take the picture, since Fantasists do whatever you ask them to do, or whatever.

  MS. BELL: Okay, so she took the picture. What happened next?

  MR. JACOBS: Well, she a
sked to see it after she took it to make sure the lighting was good enough or whatever. Something about the sun being overhead. I handed it back to her, but I accidentally loaded up an old video from my favorites folder.

  MS. BELL: What kind of video?

  MR. JACOBS: A video my girlfriend took of us at prom.

  MS. BELL: And how did she—how did Pania—react?

  MR. JACOBS: She got real quiet. She asked to see it a couple of times.

  MS. BELL: And then?

  MR. JACOBS: I don’t know; it wasn’t that big of a deal. After maybe the fifth or sixth time, she smiled and thanked me, I guess. And then some other family came up next to us and she went over to talk to them.

  MS. BELL: I see. And, Mr. Jacobs, about how long did it take for you to realize your phone was missing?

  15

  THE DECEMBER OF THE HYACINTH MACAW

  TWENTY-ONE MONTHS BEFORE THE TRIAL

  When they come for Nia—and of course they do—it is not while we are resting, quiet in our beds. Instead, they arrive in the bustle of daylight, below the gold-gray December sun, watching as we take our final bows at the midafternoon Magic Land parade, several hours after my talk with Owen in the grasslands. I spot them in the audience just before the curtain drops: three Supervisors dressed in white, blank-slate expressions in a sea of color and sound.

  Nia has stolen something.

  She has broken a rule.

  The nature of her punishment is anybody’s guess.

  “What will they do?” Yumi asks softly when we have gathered in the topiary garden behind the palace, after Nia is gone. Here, too, the rats have rendered the security cameras useless, and we are free to speak as we like. Yumi’s gown, a backless chiffon in luminous pink-pearl, shimmers as the sun passes behind a cloud. The six of us sit in a close circle inside a menagerie of lush, leafy shrubs trimmed into the shapes of animals—elephants, monkeys, foxes, a unicorn—arms linked in honor of our missing sister. “Will they hurt her?”

  Zara’s eyes go wide. “Do you think they’ll cut her hair?” She touches her own black braids, twisted away from her face into a glamorous, colorfully beaded bun, and I can see what she’s thinking: I would die if the Supervisors ever did that to me.