The Hospital From Nowhere

What if everyone lived in the same home? Then you can ask anyone in public, when does the train to home leave? When is our stop? They would always know. In all forms of public transit, they would always press the stop button for you, so you never have to. You can sleep on the train and never worry about missing your stop because it’s always going to be the last one. Everyone has the same home.

If you concentrate on it clearly, you may understand why such an implemented system could have a profound effect on society as a whole. Or not. It all depends. There are the individualistic reasonings of folk, the pompous egos of the determined, and even those who rigorously question assumptions and their fib-bloated enemies that all pose a threat to the vitality of a logistical dream. “It’s impossible,” they’d say. “I need my own toilet. I keep my weapon for others keep their weapons. And forbid all ideas about altruistic aid, because my neighbour doesn’t have the same ideas I do.” But in a random world with random people, it’s a certainty, not an impossibility, that they are wrong.

To peer into such an optimal idea, one needs to grasp the context of any candidate world’s history. Let’s do so now. Past the lush countryside full of orchards of lemon trees and strawberry bushes of Country, past the mud-ridden lakes and snow-capped mountains of Country, these noteworthy sights could be viewed through the window of a train travelling at high speeds--let’s make it a maglev train, well, only if it’s travelling through the richer western parts of Country. It will be a 19th-century coal-powered locomotive with a triangular cowcatcher at its head when it’s passing the more impoverished areas of Southwest, Middle, and Southeast Country. This train will switch between the two designs whenever it passes a provincial border, in the richer areas standing at the gates a heavily guarded, fully armed militia of conscripted young men (and in other places also women), and in poorer areas a simple river or mountain range wrapped in kilometre-thick glaciers acting as the collectively imagined line will do. This train speeds across Country, its riders stare outside the windows with oohs and ahs, mothers bounce children on their knees, fathers read about the nation’s latest political protest or genocidal massacre as they cross their legs and open their newspapers, waitresses push carts of tea and coffee through the aisles. All these people are going to the same place, the same destination. There is only one stop: home.

It passes through East Country now! Look at the massive statues of me littering the green rolling hills. The smell of fresh earth, of manure, of the sweat of tired but ultimately happy farmers toiling away in the fields. Wearing their hats made of woven bamboo, smiling, and waving at the train passing by. One man wipes his messy moustache and shows crooked teeth when he smiles. His eyes only show joy. The winds blow harsh in these farmland plains, the nearby city constructed a few wind turbines to capitalize on it. Mostly due to the corporations in the city wanting to profit off the collective citizen demand. But also a few within them having the heart to give this energy to those that needed it.

Next comes a canyon of granite rock and limestone and unbearable heat. The hot air from the nearby desert and the cool wind from the tall plateaus create a mixture of strange temperatures, especially during the night, and an area prone to tornadoes. A dead carcass of an animal lies by a dead, withered, bare tree, surrounded by vultures flying overhead. The grass is tall, yellow, and spiky. The clouds are dark and wet. I snap my fingers and boom, thunder strikes the land, by my hand. A little more friction and the lightning will follow. I leave that up to nature to decide. We are leaving the area anyway.

When the train enters the territory of the northern parts of Country, it turns into a plethora of sleds pulled by teams of dogs. A passenger puts on a toque and slides on mittens and pets one now. The canine whimpers excitedly, its tongue out and panting, its tail wagging back and forth faster than the propeller of a cargo tanker. Its teeth that I designed to sink into flesh and only flesh (until people started feeding them vegetables, then I had to change my plans) were sharp, white, and beautiful. The man says, “Yest!” and feeds it red game meat. The adorable dog jumps and snatches the meat from the air, snapping its jaws in a frenzy and finishing it in under a second. Its friend harnessed next to it by ropes, with a white coat and mismatched eyes--one brown, one baby blue--pushes against him playfully and wants some food of his own. The man laughs and pets that dog too, then feeds it. The rest patiently wait for their turn, big smiles on each of them, their ears up and alert and their tails like a maximum-setting metronome.

When the train reaches this certain problematic province in Country, it turns into a squadron of battle tanks. The Trainmaster’s uniform transforms into that of a war general. It’s a couple of strides past that no man’s land until we’re past this area, he thinks. I hate this area. The passengers agree. Women moan and men sigh grumpily at the thought of spending another minute in this area. A child with a soldier’s helmet opens the latch of his tank, his head rising slowly above the hole, and peeks outside. When a grenade gets thrown at the base of the tank’s rolling tracks and makes itself home in a ditch of wet mud, he quickly drops down and closes the hatch. The tank rocks sideways as the grenade’s boom lifts it slightly, then it drops back down. “Lei Zhen! I told you not to look outside!” berates his mother. He begins to sob at the pressure of being in trouble. Well, that, and the unimaginable amount of violence he had seen. My fault, truly. Apologies. “Oh, you poor thing. My poor baby,” she says, hushing him and pulling him close. Oh, this? This is not my doing, no.

Finally, the train enters a new provincial border and returns into a maglev train. Its passengers sigh with relief, having gotten rid of their soldier uniforms and rifles. Back are the seats alternately oriented to face each other, creating sectors of booths of four people each. In some cars, back are the glass chandeliers, the intricate curtains on the windows, the smell of tea and lavender.

“Oh my, I haven’t the chance to look at the time! We’re running late to your sister’s birthday party,” a wife says to her husband, looking at her expensive golden watch.

“Don’t worry about it too much,” he replies. “I’m sure she won’t mind. Did you hear about President Katja’s latest policy about the dams being built on the Solomon River?”

“Oh yes. The one that flows from the nation to the north?”

“That’s the one.”

Then let’s move to the kitchen, where chefs frantically rush to prepare their beloved customers’ meals. It seems that all kinds of things are flying everywhere. Spoons, forks, and knives spin like flying saucers bouncing from one counter to the next. A tomato, resting in its home of a hand-weaved basket, asks the saltshaker on the counter next to it, “Are you finally going to get with Pepper? She’s a lovely lady.” Fires roar from the stovetops, soaring sometimes one or two metres high, and men and women with tall white hats and calloused hands from decades of learning to burn things to make them edible are flipping sautéed mushrooms and broccoli and large ribeye steaks on black, worn-out frying pans, and are mixing chimichurri for passengers who are denizens of Southwest Country, and are mixing barbecue sauce for passengers who hail from Midwest Country, and--weirdly, I may add--are cooking them inside a dough layer of bread for the passengers from North Country.

“Mamma mia! You’re getting the sauce all wrong!” says a chef. “And the soup is too salty!”

Oil is sizzling, pots are boiling, steam is rising. A mixture of aromas floods the noses of everyone present. There are the delicious smells of the grilling meats, the poignant scents of the strong spices being sprinkled into some dishes, and the humid air full of cooking heat and body heat. An apprentice cook flips a rectangular glass bottle of truffle oil in one hand and majestically pours it onto a pasta. Another cook smacks him on the back of his head. “Bring more glory to this kitchen! This is the Train to Home, for goodness’s sake!” The apprentice sighs and thinks, Some king I am. Huge overhead exhaust hoods filter the smoke of the stove flames into pipes on the ceiling, ventilating it to outside, where small drizzles of rain droplets shower on the train’s roof, sloshing and dancing and tangoing here and there. But these were mere outlier drizzles, for the sun was out and shining and there was a visible rainbow covering the sky above a steep valley--the train was now crossing an extremely narrow, colossal stone brick bridge with a multi-arch design over a steep drop into a jungle. A waterfall to their right, on the side of the cliff the tracks continued, had its water plunge deep into the abyss, turning into a steam that began rising into the air. Some passengers oohed and ahhed.

“What on Earth?” says one. “By the King’s bollocks, whose design was this? A bloody waterfall that drops down only to go back up into the sky?”

“Quickly everyone! We need to get all this food prepared!” says the master of getting food prepared. She barks orders quite literally to her subordinates, pointing long magenta-painted fingernails to some then others. The head chef was no pushover, no flopper, no dud. She was strict and had a deadly killer instinct to her--and she literally barks.

“Ay Mabuhay, who let the chihuahua out?” says a cook from the middle part of Southeast Country, and everyone else laughs.

“Bark! Bark! Who said I am a chihuahua? I was made a tough, Turkish Kangal! Bark! Bark!” Everyone laughs again.

Let’s move to the cabin, the front compartment of the train, an hour later when all the food is served and the passengers are already enjoying it, where the Trainmaster is about to make an important announcement. He dusts off his white gloves and brushes his navy-blue conductor suit full of badges given to him by President Olvira Katja, a magnificent ruler whose main priorities include prosperity and clearing poverty and inequality for all in the nation, and takes hold of the microphone dangling on a rod from the ceiling in front of him and a little to his right. Before he makes the announcement, he takes a deep breath and looks straight ahead of him. The cabin features a wide, open windshield, making the frontal views of the train no secret to the Trainmaster. Below him are a series of confusing buttons and levers that no ordinary person has a clue on about. When he gazes out, he sees a beautiful, small town slowly coming into view from the far distance. It is to the left of the train, and in between them and it is only one more tunnel that goes through the side of a mountain, which is married to a valley beside it which drops more than two hundred metres into a massive open plain full of poppies and sunflowers, grazed by herds of cows and sheep. The legend goes that the mountain proposed to the valley during a hurricane and thunderstorm, and at the time the valley was ravaged by some of the worst floods seen by Country in over millennia, and because of such poor timing the valley almost did not accept. But alas, she did, and now the two prosper in unity alongside one another, feeding the animals and causing the rains and making the people of the town happy.

Speaking of the town, the Trainmaster decides now was a good time for the public announcement. He speaks into the microphone.

“Good, heavenly afternoon, passengers of Country’s one and only Train to Home! It is my pleasure to tell you that we have arrived at Sans Rival Magie, the fantasy capital of Country! Some of the oldest architecture and culture in Country exist here. The streets are roamed by gypsies, caravans, witches, and mystery! The Ministry is full of fiery driven governors who want to end all problems of the town--and nation! There are squares and markets, houses with balconies and verandas, ranches and vineyards, promenades and boardwalks, farmsteads and plantations, favelas and gatos, festivals and operas, culture and traditions, and most of all--good, good food! Let me tell you a little history about this small town. It is said that Dog Himself rose from Jevgenijs river a thousand years ago to erect this town on its beaches! Nobody knows why!”

Oh! How nice of him to mention me.

After he told the story, he said, “We are now preparing to dock at Sans Rival Magie Station. All passengers, make sure to gather all your belongings so nothing gets left behind. All children, listen to your parents! If you take a look to your left, the town is coming right up ahead. You can already see Gerhild Clock Tower above the homes of the town, a pickle’s length away from the descending sun, which rings its bell daily when the sun goes down. It was named after the wife of Emiliano Samuel, who passed away twenty years ago due to a terminal disease. Emiliano Samuel is the most popular governor of the town.”

Back in one of the train cars: “Mama! Mama!”

“Ow! Stop pulling my dress, mi hijo.”

“Is it true? Did a hospital magically appear in Sans Rival Magie? And no one knows where it came from?”

“It’s true, son,” says his father, readjusting the newspaper in his hands. “I’m reading about it now.”

The little boy, who is in between his parents, jumps up to join him on the red-cushioned seat. “Ooh! Tell me more.”

“Well, I can’t really say anything else. They’re still investigating. Apparently, it appeared in the forest nearby the town. Complete with a full working staff of people. They’re still finding out how many of them, and where the hospital came from. Maybe an illegal operation that was somehow hidden from the authorities? Although I don’t know how you can hide the construction of an entire hospital and the employment of its staff from mayor Kübra El-Hashem. That man watches the operations of the town like a hawk. Nothing of that scale would get past him like this.”

“If someone actually built the hospital, who would build a hospital, of all things?” says the mother. “Pray to Dog! He might have been the one responsible for this.”

“Maybe, mi amor.”

Flattering, really.

The train’s subtle hum diminishes as it slows down at the station. The passengers eagerly alight from the train cars dragging luggage and briefcases. Parents hold their children by the hand or carry the younger ones or push strollers. Gossips and occasional roars of laughter pepper the air, all blending into a unity of jumbled murmurs. They stare in awe at simple things around the entrance of their journey. A fountain here, a statue there. The food stalls grilling hot food. The benches full of homeless people.

One of them is an ashen man, dispirited by external appearance, dejected by all he believed in by internal appearance, who looks up helplessly at a businessman who had stopped by in front of him, seemingly unaware of his presence, laying down his leather briefcase to fix his suit. “Oh, hello,” says the businessman to the staring fellow with unhid intention. “How are you, sir?”

“No good, if there’s anything I’ve to say.”

“Ah. Listen, I’m not one fond of feigning ignorance. Do you have a place to sleep tonight?”

“Well, no, it’s a long story, I--”

Without warning the businessman pats him on the back and gently helps him to his feet. “You can tell me later. How about you join me and my family for supper tonight? Ride with me home. In fact, I insist! What do you say?”

“Sir, please understand I’ve no money--”

“Money?” The man looked incredulous. He chuckled lightly afterward. “We all live in the same home, don’t we?”

The homeless man shyly agreed.

“Then what is money but a means of helping family?” interjected the businessman. “Don’t worry about a thing. Come. Let’s wait by the road. My wife should be here any minute to pick us up. It’d be lovely if you met her.” Then, after a thoughtful pause, he softly implored, “It’s time to come home, brother.”

Until she’d arrive, the two men searched for her and talked about the stories of their lives in that peaceful, drizzling afternoon. The poorer one patient and cautious--yet utterly inspired--and the richer one hearty and eager to prove sincerity.

Let ourselves leap high until level with the clouds. The town, now perceptible in full glory, on a grander scale less focused on the individual. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? The copper-coloured shingles of the rooftops. The pine green shrubbery in many but sparse places. The tall stone churches, the marketplace awnings, the mixture of cars and pedestrians and bicycles and horse carriages rushing about in the streets.

Sans Rival Magie was known as a special town to its residents and its nearby neighbouring towns and cities, but across Country it was relatively unknown. That was because the town itself was not of any particular importance. It served its role in the nation’s economy through mostly agriculture and livestock, but also other rising industries, and provided its fair share of food to the nation. It was quiet and serene. Its population was mostly old, and its younger citizens were often cherished and esteemed to be the town’s bright future. They valued their educations seriously, not only because their families told them to, but because they understood what was at stake to bring their families, and the whole of the town’s people, out of poverty.

About two centuries ago, a relentless, week-long rainstorm showered the land the town would eventually be on, which permanently replenished the lake source of the Jevgenijs and made it more vigorous and bountiful. Fish, bugs, and algae came along with the promises of a better ecosystem from the newly healthy river, giving life to the land. As well, the rain made the soil wet and eroded rocks from the nearby mountains, which changed the dynamic of the soil and fertilized it to become not just better, but absolutely perfect for agriculture. The farmers today still hail it as the best soil in the world and have had no complaints about it for centuries. They found out that they could grow most crops of the world on it, and in half the expected cyclical time, as if the soil somehow made the seasons speed up. The land then became extremely valuable. Once farmers realized the power of the soil, there was a scramble for it. A settlement eventually began in the area near this river, first started by the rich who could afford it, then soon overtaken by the mass droves of the poor looking for economic opportunity. The settlement soon expanded into a town, which still values its agricultural roots today.

Sans Rival Magie has fields and fields of farms being tended to by individual, private farmers who get a decent living selling their crops and livestock dairy and meat. In 1867, there was a bill passed which acted as a constitution for the agricultural socioeconomic system of the town. Farmers had a sales tax on their crops and livestock, which was exponentially higher in proportion to how much land they had. The municipal government explained that this was meant to act as a measure to prevent one person or a few people from gaining too much influence and power in the industry. A practical way to stop any cartel practices and keep the market free. To economically invalidate expansion and increase equality. At first there were protests that such a bill was meant to be just another unjust class division between the rich and the poor. At the time there were already quite a few wealthy individuals who had amassed enough land prior to the bill that their wealth would keep them afloat against the tax, which they would only find a minor inconvenience--meanwhile any small competitors on the rise would experience it as a tough barrier against their success. About two thousand people peacefully protested by marching on the streets of Sans Rival Magie, mainly in Wilson Square, the main public concrete pavilion of the town. It was symbolic to have the protest here, mostly because in the centre of the square was a statue of an ultranationalist town hero, Subrahmanya Khrystyna Wilson, who was regarded as one of the town’s wisest people. A long time ago, he left on a self-reflective pilgrimage around the world in the name of Dog. He had built many churches to Dog around Country, and when he left, he promised the people of Country he would build one in every nation he visited as well, with the help of the local Dog worshippers in each one. He signed an official document of his promise with the president of Country at the time, Agnete Štěpánek, at the Sovereign House--which I found to be very unnecessary and excessive, really, but I do accept the love--and the single, official photo from the main camera that took the picture at the event hangs on the wall of Sans Rival Magie’s most famous fonda of the town, La Alegría de la Vida, where all citizens can freely see it when they order a tequila. Soon after Subrahmanya left, out of his sheer popularity, the public convinced the Sans Rival Magie Ministry to build the statue of him and name the square after him.

What about the protests? The protests did not last long. In fact, they lasted only two days and two nights. It became known as the “Twenty-two Protest” because of it. For recently, there had been an election about a month before it, an election for the new mayor of the town of Sans Rival Magie, and the winning candidate was a young, hungry beast who was determined to prove above all else that she was a capable new leader of the town. Her name was Wongani. The woman had such an instinct for politics, an aptitude for influence, and a talent for prosperous change that she was nicknamed, La Tigresa. Within the two days of the protests, she listened to the people and diplomatically altered the bill to be in favour of everyone. She was able to please both agricultural expansionists and new rising farmers, the wealthy and the poor, the privileged and the unfortunate. She helped foster the culture of zero corruption, a culture where politicians truly worked for the good of the people--a political culture which stemmed from the first founders of Country themselves and its constitution. Ever since then, every mayor or political leader of Sans Rival Magie has tried their best to follow in her footsteps and be a true man or woman of the people.

Every political leader since then has struggled with one problem which has plagued Sans Rival Magie since its inception: poverty. Because the town was founded on agriculture, an industry which could vastly be affected by natural disasters and disease, these factors periodically caused problems for the town’s farmers, and over time, they added up and created some massive inequalities within the town. For example, in the 1920s there was a huge drought which ruined much of the land’s magical soil. The unaffected areas’ soil had become extremely valuable, and only the richest of the town could afford them and keep their farming businesses running. In just this period, which lasted less than five years, huge inequalities sprouted within the town. The richest farming businesses capitalized on this opportunity of a window of time where most farming businesses stopped, and so they expanded and experienced massive success without regulation. This was not the fault of anyone, you see, but still it caused many of the current issues affecting the town today. It was pure misfortune.

There was also a big problem with some laws of the town’s constitution, laws concerned with a farmer’s production. Since the soil of the land was so valuable, the founders of the town wrote a law which said that if a private owner of a portion of the land did not produce a certain quota of crop or livestock (which was dependent on an agreed-upon scale based on the size of land ownership, of course) within four years, then the land would be taken from them by the Ministry and put up for sale. This meant that the owner of the land did not specifically have to be a farmer, you see, but if they did not produce that certain amount of food in that certain amount of time, they would be evicted. This ensured that the magical soil would be in good use for the town--the production of food for people. The problem was, the founders of the town at the time were politicians, not farmers. Which was strange because the town was founded on farming. So, they were no experts on agriculture, and they (quite stupidly, may I add) failed to see that such a law would not prevent good, honest farmers from losing their land if a natural disaster caused them to fail to produce their four-year quotas. It also caused some landowners to purchase the land with intentions of exploiting it economically with businesses or to simply live there or vacation there for four years without producing anything with the magical soil, then accepting the four-year eviction once their time was up. These people were called, “land sharks,” and they were considered to be some of the most evil and despicable people within the community.

This constitutional law meant that for the 1920s drought, many honest farmers were evicted by the end of it, and as more people moved in and the population of the town grew, the magical soil and land of the town only became more valuable, and many of these farmers could not afford to buy back the land they had lived in their whole lives, which, for many, had been purchased by their ancestors, and their farm had been a family farm for generations. The newly available plots of farmland were then quickly snatched by the rich, or even some land sharks.

This event, and many other ones in the history of the town, was why poverty rose in a place that was originally designed to be against inequality. However, the impact of the drought changed the town in many ways, some of which many people saw as good and irreversible. The rich who bought the new plots of land were able to expand their businesses and grow the production rate of food for the town and nation as a whole, causing massive exports and growing Country’s economy. This was due to the unified, centralized way they implemented the new plots of land for their production, which would always be better than separate, individual farms working for their personal agendas. It created efficiency.

The land sharks who bought their shares of land more often than not created businesses that gave jobs to many people, even the farmers who previously lost their land, and changed their roles which had been agricultural in nature for generations to now more service-based industries. Even with the new opportunities, there were still some family-induced rifts between employees and their employers, for many of them worked for businesses built on the same land that they had once owned their farms on. Such tensions created a revenge culture--unknown to the town’s rich, but very prevalent to its poor--known as cultura del renacimiento, where their goal was to restore the old order and eventually take back their old, generational family farms. It then shifted the popular narrative--working for a land shark was no longer disgraceful, in fact, it was one of the most honourable things a Sans Rival Magie citizen could do, as long as it was for the aim of taking enough money from them to buy back the land in the future, when the land shark would give up the plot in four years.

It was worse for the farmers whose plots of land were bought by richer farmers. As long as the new owners met the town’s production quotas, there was no way for them to buy back the land. These farmers in particular either innocently waited--sometimes praying to Dog--for a new natural disaster to ruin the crops, or they turned to evil. Some of them would purposely sabotage crops out of spite so these richer farmers could not meet the production quotas. They burned fields of grain, they poisoned livestock to slow down their reproduction, they did whatever they could. But because these richer farmers were incredibly efficient, it would usually take a lot more effort to cause a sizeable change in their production. The most extreme old farmers would breed a swarm of locusts or burn down entire stables. It was yet another problem the town had, and it would continue as long as these old farmers stayed angry--and as long as they taught their children to stay angry, too.

But these old farmers were the minority. The majority of Sans Rival Magie want to change the constitutional law of four-year production quotas in general, deeming it too out of date and unrealistic for the new type of economy the town was, with its many new booming industries that had nothing to do with agriculture. The law was never a good idea to begin with. But while that was true, the old farmers got extremely angry at this. It goes against their ideology, cultura del renacimiento. Such a change would mean they would have no chance to ever get their land back, and they would stay in poverty. It was also the type of change that would reward their main enemy: land sharks themselves. It would mean that evil people who never used the magical soil of the town’s land to benefit the people of Country, never producing a single crop in their lives, would get to own the land forever. Such a thought was inconceivably unjust for the old farmers. Luckily, changing the constitution of the town was extremely hard. It has never been done before, and the Ministry is having a tough time debating if it should even be allowed at all. It would go against foundational principles of the town’s first founders, ruining their grand vision forever. There was also the fact that each time they tried to change it, huge protests and riots from the old farmers occur outside the Ministry’s main town hall. For now, the constitution remains unchanged, and this conflict is still one of the main issues inflicting Sans Rival Magie today.

For now, poverty remains in Sans Rival Magie. It is the main concern of its politicians, and the place where most of its taxpayer dollars go. For this reason, the town’s municipal government has lacked in other areas such as keeping the town clean, road and sidewalk infrastructure, gardens and trees, and most important of all--healthcare.

So, when a fully staffed hospital appeared in the middle of the nearby forest out of thin air, it changed the town and its people’s lives forever…

#

But I can’t go there yet. First, we must go to Toronto, Canada. Two archaeologists, both middle-rate, unknown experts in their fields, are about to make a world-altering discovery.

They are walking around the halls of the Royal Ontario Museum, both men on the younger side, both in fine brown suits, discussing the details of their latest project. For years they had been studying the correlations of natural cataclysms in history and the specific times that they happened. What they found was astonishing.

“I talked with that historian you told me to talk to,” says the first archaeologist. “With his help, we plotted a graph of all the major natural cataclysms in Earth’s history. Some large, some small.”

“What did you find?” asks the second archaeologist. “Any interesting patterns?”

The first archaeologist stops and turns to face the skeleton of a tyrannosaurus rex on display. Such a majestic creature, he thinks. Forced to die by the hands of seemingly random mother nature. A meteor of a magnitude of global proportions, dooming them to near extinction. Maybe not so random? The dinosaurs never built any civilizations. Did they?

“Oh, very interesting patterns,” he says. “The smaller cataclysms were completely random, no findings there. But the larger ones, the planet-altering ones, the ones that completely levelled a great number of species and altered the biology of the Earth forever--I found an interesting pattern there. I have to take you to the artifact that helped me figure it out.”

“Yes, please do.”

“It’s not on display, it’s in the back of the linguistics department. They were trying to decipher its message after fully translating it. Its a stone with written text on it. After we excavated it, we learned it was Sanskrit. So, it took a while because we had to fetch a professor from the University of Chicago to translate it. Follow me.”

The man then explains, taking a majority of the afternoon, the full context of his findings and the full history of what he called, “human-influenced extinction events,” and he explains that he named it that because these extinction events were not actually caused by humans but they were persuaded by them, in a way a flood about to happen at a hydroelectric power dam built up its potential for disaster from the mistakes of the engineers that miscalculated it or the construction chiefs who authorized the faulty structure or the testing specialists who failed with their stress analysis. Errors of which were so great that the flood in the future is essentially caused by the grave wrongdoings of the past, and not of the dam but of the people that built it. In this way, the first archaeologist explains that all past human empires have fallen to such powerful disasters because of the way they have treated certain things about the Earth and its humbler residents with abhorrent arrogance. And this plague of arrogance pervaded all of mankind every so often enough that a higher power who was capable of recognizing it was in charge of making sure these little kings and queens were humbled back into peasants who know only subservience to the goodness of the planet, the greater wellbeing of the collective, and in some cases not even a conversion into peasants was warranted, but actually a conversion into decomposing bones and fossils from the great cost of death on purpose from the cataclysm.

The man cites multiple resources and his own personal prior knowledge. The Flood, he says, The Tower of Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, the Ten Plagues, Hera and the children of Zeus, the Chicxulub Meteor of the Yucatán Peninsula, the Holocene Extinction, the Younger Dryas, and perhaps many more that aren’t known, ones that may possibly erase the mysteries of how some past civilizations we know of were destroyed. He then continues on with a bold prediction: “What I mean to say is, and only comprehend this marginally as to not conceive any radical out-of-control ideas, but what I mean to say is that based on all our current data observed from years of my research conducted at this museum and abroad, all of it may be evidence leading to something that would break the world itself. So, to avoid panic, I’m only telling you this now, but others have yet to hear--by others, I mean other experts first, then the general public.”

“Well, tell me already,” demands the other man.

“All of it suggests that our current activities on Earth are increasing our collective level of arrogance as a species. And that soon, very soon, although there is nothing I know of to help me reveal when, another extinction-level cataclysm is heading our way. Some time in the near future. Dog help us all.”

Oh. Oh wow.

They are onto me.

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In the beginning, how things turn out are always based on factors beyond the control of people. It is up to individuals to spin these inherent inequities in their societies to subsist with the idea of living. For example, one of these factors is being ugly. Being ugly has an advantage. Ugly people learn the value of good character more than any other people in the world. Ugly people never become visitors to their parents’ house. Ugly people never need to ask for help. It was an idea so impactful to Nicolás Maximiliano--of whom he thought applied to him because he so fully convinced himself that he was ugly (but in truth was about as average-looking as one man could get)--that he personally chose to live by this philosophy. The best way to explain it was that on any given morning, his first goal was to, in some form or another, give to his community. This was quite easy because he was part of a doctor staff at a hospital, and on most days his form of giving to the community was doing his job and treating patients. He took pride in his work because of this, and sometimes he would wonder if it was possible to get rid of his days off to alleviate even more patients. It was something he had tried to do before, but his boss enviously reprimanded him, in a thick East-Country accent, “Who do you think you are? Do you think it’ll be easier to enter Dog’s kingdom if you do that? No Mr. Maximiliano, you get days off like the rest of us.” Then: “Don’t you have a child?”

Nicolás winced at any thought of Micha Maximiliano. There were two main reasons. The first reason was that she was a constant reminder of a painful one-sided split with Paloma Estrella. A woman who, like with many who understand, trickled into his life like a slightly open faucet, contributing piece by piece of her into his bowl until he had amassed a pot-volume soup of irresistible her. A woman he did not love nor even considered beautiful at the beginning, but because of her constant and immediate affection over weeks, he now believed was the most beautiful woman in the world. But such a comment would earn a snarky rebuke from her. She was so past marriage that a minimum of fifty years would have to pass before it would cross her mind again. So lost in her nursery work much like Nicolás, that all their memories together were prone to permanently stay memories. In truth, much like Nicolás, she was about as average in appearance as any other Country woman, but it was his perceived view of her that had drawn him to her in the first place. At the start he believed she was ugly. He imagined the two of them together was a flawless match in consequence, insecurity or jealousy were impossibilities. They could go through life together happy that at least they had one another and would only have one another. But then she revealed her inner self! Oh, that woman! As kind and empathetic as he wanted her to be, as masterful at motherhood he expected her to be, all that and more and he was so in love with her then that three years later the day she said she wanted to divorce him his starry eyes exploded like suns crashing down on the surface of a monsoon of tears. “Did you find another man? Have I hurt you in any way? Have I become uninteresting? Is Micha too large of a regret?” he begged.

“No,” she countered. “I just need to focus on being a nurse. We have many patients. That’s all.”

Any other man would berate such a ridiculous reason, but not Nicolás. He understood Paloma so well that he stepped back, closed his mouth, and tipped his head down in acknowledgement of her wish. He did not call her impulsive, or stupid, or irrational. He only asked if she could still take care of Micha. And if she would make an effort to help her stay naive about their split. In fact, he requested if she could help her stay naive about the whole world.

“You have a deal,” she had said.

Since then, about two or three months have passed and Nicolás’s love for his former wife had waned down to tolerable levels. Enough so that he could do the same as Paloma and get lost in his work. But still they shared Micha and they would always share Micha. This led to the second reason Nicolás winced at any thought of her. Without Paloma he was as about as useful of a father as a piece of tree bark on the ground of a forest. He was unprepared for fatherhood and did not know a single thing about raising an intelligent child. For Micha was not just a child--she was a smart one, and Nicolás was no stranger to intelligence. After all, he was a doctor, Paloma was a nurse, his best friend Miriamo Avila was a chief civil engineer, his boss was a genius at managing a hospital, one of the most stressful workplaces--but Micha was different. For any stranger, just one minute spent with her and they would see the brilliance in such a young individual. She spent all her day reading, and if not then learning from the various hospital staff around her or teaching herself how to cook if her mother and father were busy. And it was extremely embarrassing--at least Nicolás thought so--to see the excellence of a child knowing the story of her birth. In truth, the story of how Micha was conceived was a tightly held secret between the two. What was believed by everyone else including their closest friends and family to be a planned conception was in truth a sin that would test Dog’s forgiveness. It was, thankfully, one year into their marriage, so nothing was wrong there. But they had never even thought about having a child, and less would they expect one to appear out of thin air after having a decently innocent amount of fun drinking red wine from one of Country’s best vineyards and relaxing with their arms all around each other on their couch, which was inside Paloma’s room on the residential floor of the hospital. In hushed whispers they talked and teased and laughed, then Nicolás decided, “It’s hot in here, let’s open the window.” He went over, a glass of wine still in his hand, and as he opened it not five seconds later a swarm of bats, perhaps no more than half a dozen of them, swooped in and screeched in a furious frenzy. The rhythmic yet chaotic flapping of their wings and their incessant tendency to fly near their hairs caused Paloma to yelp and Nicolás to drop his glass, which exploded on the floor at his feet. With another hand freed, he used both to swat them out of his hair and get to Paloma. He practically dragged her into her bedroom, which was attached to the common room, and locked the door. Paloma cursed a string of words which shocked even me as Nicolás held her in a calming way, in a state of consternation himself for he did not approve. He never swore himself; he did not like to. As Paloma calmed down and the two sat down on her bed, Nicolás studied her tied-back hair, its bangs now all in a mess, and began curling them back behind her ears with loving strokes. Her face was red but was slowly returning to normal colour. Her large, circular earrings were vibrating because she was shaking. Her eyes, wild with fear, now looking at Nicolás’s own with what used to be fear but changed into tame anxiety.

“I’m sorry about that,” she apologized. “What are we going to do until they decide to leave through the window? Why does the hospital have bats? Of course, the hospital has bats. We’re in the middle of a forest. What are we going to do Nicolás?”

Nicolás did not say a word. He only continued fixing her hair and smiling a little smile which slowly rose from nothing before, taking in the moment with her.

Paloma, too, ceased all remarks after understanding what her husband was feeling. The feeling exuded into her skin from the contact of his as well that in no time they were spiritually connected. In that moment she saw him as someone new, a man totally in control, despite always having known him as a rather docile, but not unnecessarily weak man. Now it was evident to her that that belief was true. This man was special in that special sort of way a man could be caring yet powerful--and it all stemmed from his heart. Nicolás did not know it at the time, but this was the peak of their marriage, this was the point at which Paloma was in love with him the most.

Nicolás, in the enduring silence, had a short conversation with a bat outside who had stuck to the other side of the bedroom door. Now this was a time when both halves were beginning to feel the effects of their alcohol, but he swore the bat spoke to him and told him what a good idea it was to have a baby. Alcohol had no role in this sober agreement. He agreed with the bat, even laughing noisily to show it, and the bat outside laughed back too. Paloma, disturbed, asked him what was wrong. He decided not to tell her, to keep the conversation he had with the bat outside to himself, and instead took her slender arms in his hands and pushed her lightly down to the bed, and tenderly excited her in an unyielding moment. In his head, with wine in his liver, the idea of having a child was a joke from the bat, a joke he was only continuing, a joke that was surely far from reality. When nine months passed, he was no longer laughing. He believed the bat fooled him, but that only fools were able to be fooled, so he was a fool.

Despite the curious upbringing of her existence, despite his doubts of being a capable or great father, he still naively believed that Micha was the most important thing in his life. He would just never tell her that she was conceived by a bat. She owed her existence to a flying mammal. And although he considered her his biggest priority and achievement in life, it was not a properly shown concept. Micha saw her father as a relentless worker. She loved him deeply, and she showed it by cooking meals for him when he was exhausted, but at the same time she held an insipid resentment for the same reason. He was infatuated with work, infinitely busy. Her books could not replace the childlike pleasure one gained through the interaction with a father. But she was intelligent enough, even at the age of two, to understand the nature of Nicolás’s work and why she was privileged to complain. Every month Nicolás would bring in a severely injured patient or two, sometimes from a minute domestic insurrection, or a gas leak disaster from poor engineer-work, or common abuse. These individuals harboured a greater need for attention than two-year-old her, who had learned to put on her own diapers at two months and thirteen days old. So, she lost herself in her books. She learned everything about the world through her books. Sometimes she would spout random facts about the political states or current socioeconomic climates of other nations to her parents in the rare hours she shared with them. These would provoke eyerolls from her mother or strong but short-lived bouts of interest from her father. But neither were ill-intentioned. In secrecy, the main goal of each of the three family members was to reconnect with the other two and return to the way things had been before. But so socially fractured they were that displaying emotion was an unacceptable sign of weakness, holding them back from any meaningful repair.

I find this situation hilarious in a subtle but nuanced way. So delicate are the ways of people in manners I cannot explain or express, that I find beauty underneath the arrogance. The arrogance of altruism’s priority over the smaller good of Paloma, or the greedy achievement-seeker that is Nicolás. Even the voluntary exile caused by a prideful faith in the adamant, lonesome way of living that Micha knows so well. But as a consensual conclusion, deep beneath their outer feelings, all three understood that perhaps to survive a thousand years they do not need each other, but to live a few dozen, they do.

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