Hungry (14 page)

Another woman, my grandmothers’ age, recites a poem about birds. A guy, not much older than Basil and me, plays a fiddle while a little girl with curly hair dances what she calls a jig. When the entertainment is over, everyone applauds for a long time. Even I clap until my hands hurt. I’m excited about what I’ve seen and experienced with these people, and I didn’t need an algorithm to tell me that I’d like it.

Now the woman in the flowery dress stands in front of us again. She bows her head for a moment and clasps her hands, which seems to signal everyone to quiet down. She takes a deep breath and everyone breathes with her. She exhales and everyone lets their breath go. Then, as if on cue, everyone rises. I stumble to my feet, looking around, wondering how they all knew what to do. The woman beams at us and says, “And now, please join me in welcoming our beautiful and amazing Ana.”

*   *   *

Everyone remains absolutely still and silent as a tall woman with flowing brown hair enters the room from a side door. The sun has sunk lower in the sky, bathing the room in golden light. The woman appears gossamer in her emerald green garment embroidered with intricate designs of extinct life-forms—both animals and plants. She radiates a broad smile toward her admirers, some of whom seem nearly overwhelmed. As she walks by the chairs, she squeezes people’s hands and stares into their faces but never speaks, then she moves on. It takes several minutes for her to get through all the people who want to touch her, and in all that time, no one makes a sound.

I want to ask Basil a million questions. Who is she? Why won’t she talk? What’s with the staring? And why is everyone so reverent? Basil stands placidly at my side, hands folded behind his back, watching calmly. When I look at him with my eyebrows raised, he smiles gently then turns toward the front of the room again. I do the same and see that someone has placed a small platform in the center. Ana lifts the edge of her robe and climbs the steps then positions herself so that she’s facing the crowd.

I wait but nothing happens. Ana simply stands on the platform looking out at all the people who stand and gaze back at her. She turns her head, imperceptibly slowly from the right to the left, as if she’s scanning the room in super slo-mo. Like everyone else in the room, I can’t take my eyes off her. I’m not even sure why. Am I afraid I’m going to miss something? Like she’ll suddenly disappear or burst into flames? Or is it simply the novelty of standing quietly with other human beings while we really look at one another? No screens between us. No devices to distract us.

After several minutes she faces forward again, and her arms seem to float gently and effortlessly up from her sides. People begin to sniffle. Others moan or whimper quietly. Some have closed their eyes and bowed their heads while tears stream down their cheeks. Basil stands exactly as before until slowly Ana’s arms begin to descend. I feel a twinge of disappointment as her gaze softens, like I’m not ready for this to end. When her eyes are half closed and her hands hang loosely at her sides, she draws in a deep breath. Everyone around me does the same. Then, by some invisible cue, they all exhale simultaneously like before, breaking the spell in the room.

Soft murmurs travel through the crowd as people start engaging in all kinds of interpersonal touching. They hug one another, shake hands, and pat each other on the back.

“Amazing,” someone near me says.

“So much love and light,” a woman answers.

“My heart is full again.”

I jump when a man lays his hand on my shoulder. “Namaste,” he says.

“Uh, yeah…” I mutter, wriggling away, uncomfortable beneath his grip. “Same to you.”

“What’d you think?” Basil asks me quietly.

“Honestly,” I tell him, “I’m not sure what to think.”

He leans close and says out of the side of his mouth, “A little weird, huh?”

I snort a surprised giggle. “Just a little.”

“But powerful anyway,” he adds and reaches for my hand. When he intertwines his fingers with mine, a thrill zips through my muscles like protons on waves of light. That is a touch I’ll happily accept. Then he nods toward the front. “Show’s not over yet.”

We settle into our seats, hands clasped together, as Ana climbs down from the platform, which is wheeled off by the man and woman who had been guarding the door. Ana beams proudly at her followers and says, “Welcome Analogs, you beautiful perfect human beings.” Her voice is strong, but she sounds tired, as if all that staring took something out of her. “Here we are again,” she says with a little shrug as if she’s not surprised. “Unplugged, unimpeded, uninhibited.”

People in the audience are so excited, they begin to shout.

“Here we are!”

“They cannot keep us apart!”

“We are drawn together by energy.” Ana draws her hands together at her chest. “Forever united by the ingenuity of the greatest invention ever made.” She stops and I almost groan.

Here it comes
, I think, feeling like a dupe when I hear the word “invention.” Now it all makes sense. Is this an elaborate setup for some product or method or way of thinking that she wants us to buy into? I’ve heard of this kind of thing. She probably has her own PRC. I should have known.

Ana holds the silence for another beat, then she steps forward. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she says, “I give you”—she sweeps her arms wide—“the human being!”

The crowd goes crazy. People whistle and clap and yell.

“Huh?” I ask Basil over the noise of the energized crowd. “What’s she talking about?”

He squeezes my hand. “Us.”

“Me and you?” I motion from him to me.

“No.” He motions around the room. “All of us. Together.”

Ana seems to gain momentum from the energy of the people and begins to pace, stopping in front of a little girl. “Come here, my love,” she says, holding her hand out to the child. The girl stands up and follows Ana to the front. Ana kneels beside her. I have to crane my neck to see. “What’s your name, sweetie,” Ana asks.

“Marjoram,” the girl says.

“And what do you have here?” Ana takes a sheet from the girl’s hands.

“A drawing I made,” the girl tells her.

Ana stands and holds the drawing above her head. It’s a picture of animals on what appears to be real paper. “It’s beautiful,” says Ana, stroking the child’s hair. “Can I borrow it for a minute?”

Marjoram nods, wide-eyed, then scurries back to her father’s arms. Ana stares at the drawing for a few seconds and looks deeply troubled before she asks, “Where has all the beauty gone?” Her face clouds over. “This was called an apple.” She points to a round red blob with small green leaves.

Basil jabs me in the ribs and grins.

“I’m famous,” I whisper.

“This was an ear of corn,” Ana continues, pointing to other parts of the picture. “And here is a sunflower, and this looks like a chicken,” she says, laying her finger on a red-and-white bird the kid painted. “And this was called a fish.” She touches a pucker-lipped creature. “I bet some of your old-timers remember these. Fish once swam in the sea. And so did we. In the actual ocean.” She walks to an old man and says, “I bet you went to the beach as a boy, didn’t you, Spinach?” He nods happily.

“So where did it all go?” Ana paces now, picking up speed, waving the paper in front of her.

“Tell us!” someone shouts.

“All that beauty? Gone! Vanquished from the face of the Earth. Not by a meteor strike.”

“No, no!”

“Not by an act of God.”

“Not God!”

At the word “god” I wince and wonder if this whole thing is going to get weirder. Did I unwittingly stumble into one of those religious zealot groups still hanging on by their last shreds of faith?

“Where did they go?” she asks again. Even the youngest kids know the story. Is she a doubter? One of those hard-core skeptics who doesn’t believe there was truly climate damage perpetrated by the selfish, uninformed humans from generations ago, who then fought over the few remaining resources until most of the world’s population was decimated? Is she going to stand here and tell us that near-total global destruction was all a conspiracy by One World to get complete market domination? I’m not One World’s biggest fan, but even I’m not that cynical.

“The fish, the fowl, the four-footed furry beasts,” Ana continues, “have been eradicated from our midst, and we are left with what? Holograms?” Her laughter is bitter and harsh. “As if that is any kind of replacement? But it’s not just the fauna. The flora has gone, too. The self-replicating lush green landscape that made Earth the most amazing planet in our solar system. Animals and plants of the Earth evolved as one. There was a symbiotic relationship.” She laces her fingers together. “A give and take.” She sways. “Our carbon dioxide for their oxygen. Our oxygen for their carbon dioxide. We fed one another with our very inhale and exhale.” She stops, closes her eyes, and breathes deeply.

“And we felt things. Deep in our bodies. Hunger.” She presses her hand over her stomach. “And desire.” She moves her hand lower, just beneath her belly button and I squirm. “And in our hearts.” Now she places both hands over her sternum. “Because the heart, my friends, is more than a muscle. We used to understand this when we were one with the Earth. When our energies were combined. We had empathy. We had love. We had anger and jealousy. And what’s more, we relished the unpredictability of it all. We could experience a whole range of emotions that weren’t tamped down by some chemical cocktail scientists create in a lab and tell us is for our own good.”

The crowd jeers, and I sink in my seat, hoping no one realizes she’s talking about my mother.

“We are supposed to be filled with yearning and compassion. If we will only allow ourselves to feel it again.”

“I feel it, Ana!” someone shouts.

“You unchained my heart,” another person yells.

“Those emotions made us human. They distinguished us from the machines we built. And no matter what they say, becoming one with machines is not the answer.”

I wince, because this time the “they” she’s talking about is my dad.

She clutches her robe tightly. “We humans are at our greatest when we work in tandem with the universe, not when we fight against it!” Ana stops and lowers her voice. “There are consequences when we distance ourselves from the natural order of things and go mucking around with the very fabric of our beings. We must recognize ourselves as part of the macrocosm rather than fool ourselves into believing we can exert control over it. But”—she shakes her head sadly then gives a little laugh—“we humans are not as wise as animals.”

This kind of talk would drive both my parents crazy. They have no use for the idea that if we let nature take its course, everything will be fine. As my mother says,
Fine for whom? The cockroaches?

Now Ana becomes coy. A little smile plays at the corners of her mouth, and she looks up and to the left as if imagining another time and place. “You know, when the first few fish grew legs, they didn’t think to themselves,
Wow I should really chop off these legs
. No, they started roaming the Earth.” She prowls through the crowd.

“And when that creature later sprouted wings, she didn’t think to herself,
Wow I should really get rid of these wings
. No, she soared into the sky.” Ana spreads her arms wide and spins. “We must accept the slow and subtle shifts nature confers on the lucky few so that they can find ways for all of us to soar!” She steadies herself but keeps her arms open. “Because my friends, we’re standing on the edge of a precipice”—she teeters on her tiptoes—“ready to plummet toward our demise if we don’t embrace the changes in our midst.”

Now I’m sure this lady has lost it. Fish cutting off their own feet? Flying humans falling to their deaths? I have no idea what she’s talking about. It all sounds crazy to me. And then, all of a sudden, she’s very serious again. “Some of our brothers and sisters, like Tulip and Lettuce and Gardenia, have had their wings clipped. They’ve been locked away.”

Gasps and protests rise up from the crowd. I look at Basil, who doesn’t seem surprised by this news.

“Oh, yes,” says Ana. “It’s true. For what, you ask?” She stares at everyone, absorbing the energy buzzing through the room. “For being undeniably human. For participating in the most basic of human behaviors. For acting on the most fundamental of all human impulses. The thing we’re meant to do from the moment we are born, which has been stripped away from us in the name of greater good.”

A hush falls over the room as we wait for her to reveal their crime to us. I run possibilities through my mind. Acts of aggression? Theft? Breach of contract? I can’t imagine someone named Gardenia doing anything so vile.

Ana lowers her arms. She lets her shoulders slump. She stands before us like a broken soul. “They were hungry,” she says quietly. “Hungry for the give and take between the human being and the earth we are meant to have. Hungry for the life source meant to sustain us. This is not a bad thing, my friends. It is a human thing. It is this very desire that will carry us forward if only we have…” She points to the child’s drawing again. Everyone claps and whistles. “And I’ll tell you what’s more,” she shouts over the crowd. “It’s out there, if only we will allow ourselves to find it.”

People go crazy, but I let go of Basil’s hand and lean far back in my chair, shaking my head because she’s gone off the deep end.

Basil sees my reaction. “You okay?”

I raise an eyebrow at him. Surely he can’t buy into her nonsense. “All the food is gone, remember?” I tell him as if he’s an alien who hasn’t heard the latest news about Earth. That it was my mom’s discovery about controlling the hunger impulse by altering the FTO gene on chromosome 16 that led to the end of the wars. Foodless nutrition had been in the works for twenty years and was the only thing keeping humanity from joining all those plants and animals that were vanishing at an astonishing rate. The last piece of the puzzle, controlling insatiable appetites hardwired in humans, had to be conquered if the fighting was going to stop, especially if One World wanted control.

I’ve always thought the Dynasaurs were the only legacy of the Svalbard seed vault rebellion, but now I wonder if the Analogs could be a sister branch of skeptics. I gaze around, wondering if anyone here is sporting a Svalbard tattoo of a sprouting seed over the word
Remember.
Then again maybe not. Unlike the Dynasaurs, these people believe there’s food all around us. Yeah, right. Maybe it’s been cloaked just like my new Gizmo.