The Mezoi

Akela catches wind of a possible case to track, and rushes back to check in on the office before running off again.

     “I saw it! I promise!” the boy cried. His copper-toned skin was flushed with anger, his black hair wild from the number of times he had run his hands through it in frustration. His mother tried to straighten it, but he shook away from her.

     Akela smiled to herself and moved slowly down the aisle of the gas station store, looking for something with sugar in it. Not chocolate -- she didn't feel like it. She didn't like candy (especially if it was hard), or gum, either. At the same time, she was watching the boy on the edge of her vision. He was moving toward the check-out counter, and another couple of seconds went by before Akela came to the conclusion that nothing here would fulfill her desire and gave up. She picked a Diet Sprite from the cooler and went to stand behind the little boy and his mother, both dark-skinned and black-haired as she was. The mother had a tired, worn look to her round body, and the boy was no less than twelve years old in age, short for twelve, but powerfully built and lean, as if to make up for his stature. Both were Hispanic, she could see right off. And only someone like her who worked in areas like this would know something like that . . . the thought was amusing enough to bring a little grin to her face. The city folk rarely distinguished each other by race, anymore.

     “It was real, Madre! I saw it! It chased me all the way down the --“

     “Gonzalo, that is enough!” the boy's mother said, her eyes rolling toward Akela, embarrassed by her son and misinterpreting Akela’s grin, “Just a nightmare . . . sometime he think it is real.” Beyond that, the woman had really paid her son very little mind at all.

     To this, Akela smiled pleasantly and gave an understanding nod. But she was watching the boy as she set her drink down on the counter, only taking her eyes off him long enough to pay for it.

     “Madre!” the boy whispered in a choked sort of way, mortified.

     His mother took him roughly by the arm and steered him out the door. Akela watched the boy get in his mother's car, an old but functional faded blue Honda four-door. He mimed something attacking, his fingers arched like claws. He was bent over, his teeth bared like a cat's. His mother pointed at the door and said something: a command to get in the car. He straightened and shouted at her in final attempt to get her to listen. Akela picked up her paid-for drink and walked out the door. She could read the words on his lips before she even walked outside to hear them: It had a tail! She opened the door and heard him, now: “It had a long, scaly, brown tail!” He stomped the ground, fists balled tightly in emphasis.

     Akela pretended to ignore them, but rolled her head and shoulders, giving the pretense of shaking stiffness out of her neck and looking about at the wooded country highway. She had seen it a thousand times and instead she snuck a glance at the car's license plate, imprinting the number on her short-term memory with a practiced ease. She took note of which direction the car went and got into her truck, an old, faded red Toyota pick-up with a hooded bed, and wrote the number down on the back of a receipt. Then she started up her truck drove away toward the city. The little Honda had gone the other way. In her rear-view mirror, she watched as it turned a corner and vanished from sight.

     It wasn’t long before the massive concrete outer wall of the city loomed above her, trees stretching toward it as though reaching to get a grip on it. There was a space cleared thirty feet in width, but the trees bent and the branches spread to reclaim that lost ground. All in vain, as it wouldn’t be long before someone came alone and re-cleared that space.

     The city was split off into sections, the outer one surrounded by this massive concrete wall and only accessible through an automated gate. When she reached the metal framework of the gate, with electrified wires running throughout, she got out of the truck and walker over to a small scanner set into the wall, which had a black panel underneath a horizontal card slot. She fed her ID card to the slot, and pressed her left hand to the panel, until the panel vibrated in acknowledgement and gave her back her card. The gate opened, followed by a second, nearly identical gate, though this one was not quite so secured as the first, and she drove through to the suburbs. 

     At first, there was little change from the outside, with the exception of the occasional licensed cat or dog on the sidewalks, and always, they were licensed. Then she came to the houses. They were normal, but smaller than the country homes, for the most part " old houses, some dating back to the beginning of the century or even beyond that. Once in a while, she would see a house from the twentieth century, and here in the late 2100s, that was unusual enough to make the houses very valuable. The inner city didn’t have many houses at all except in richer residential neighborhoods, like where she lived, in a well-built single story house of modern compounds with a modern, A.I. security system. She drove on to the main city gate, a smooth, thick metal wall with electric fences around the inside and outside of the perimeter, but which never touched the metal. The metal simply made it impossible for any small creatures to climb over. But here in the suburbs, the outer city, everything was peaceful and calm, and the creatures were ordinary creatures. Everyone knew what was inside the city, but they were, generally, content to live their lives away from all that. The gate to the inner city was their only clue of what lay beyond, unless they had watched it open, or they worked in the city.

     The gate through this wall was maintained by a young man with pale skin and short, reddish-blond hair. Standing beside him was an older being the likes of which could only be found within the Inner City and very rarely in the suburban perimeter. She was about six feet in height, with a long, round snout and graying, medium-length brown fur with big, dark red stripes that had faded with age. She almost looked like a furry mix between a bird, a lizard, and a man, only the darkness of her fur giving any hint as to her gender. The furred being held out her hand for Akela’s ID. Akela held it out not only the ID card, but a briefcase that held official copies of all her citizenship documents, and the being, an advanced species of dinosaur, took it. It’s soft, scaly palm brushed against Akela’s hand, and the feel of it, so soft, like those of a certain someone else in her life . . . that touch reminded her to stop and talk to him after she was finished speaking to her employer. Not that she needed much reminding. He might just find her instead.

     These advanced dinosaurs were more properly referred as the mezoi. The word came from the dinosaurs' era, the Mesozoic, though most, if not all, took great offense to “dinosaur,” as many were not of dinosaur origin; even those who were of such ancestry had evolved and advanced beyond such a low term. It was no different that referring to humans as apes or monkeys. For those who were not mentally advanced, but still animals in every sense of the word, the mezoi had devised the word “cambos” from the word “Cambrian.”

     The mezoi handed the briefcase and card back to her, saying in her musical voice, “Welcome back, Tracker 5-6-5-9, to Nahuatl City, Georgia. Thank-you for your cooperation, Ms. Akela Iolana.” The phrase was standard, but the way the mezoi said it, the sincerity of her lovely tone and the silken, proper enunciation of Akela’s name made it so much more personal. The word “Tracker” referred to Akela’s job, which was to hunt down mezoi and cambos to be brought back to the city by the proper authorities.

     “Not a problem,” she said. The young man leaned forward. He'd been there before, when she'd left the city, on what was supposed to be a vacation. He said to her conversationally, “Nice to see you again, Tracker, though I didn't think you'd be back so soon. What's up?”

     “Nothing too big,” she said, and ordinarily, she’d have left it at that, but she went on in a low undertone, “Not other than a suspicious report I'd like to look into.”

     The mezoi gave a dry snort, “Now, don't go prying into things that don't have to do with you. Last time, you created a bit of a stir among our kind, you know. Even if it is said half of us have ought to have forgotten by now . . . I have not, nor have many of my compatriots.”

     Akela had to wonder for a moment just how the mezoi knew about the incident . . . it was not supposed to be publicized. It wasn’t, not publicly, anyway. She supposed she would never find out just who spilled the water dish on that one. She didn’t let the wonder show; instead, she covered it by laughing, “Don't worry yourself. It'll be fine.” Besides, mezoi and cambos running around were the law said they didn't belong was her business. She just wasn’t supposed to interfere, only report, which she had. “The thing " no offense, it was a cambo, not a mezoi --“ the mezoi female nodded “"tried to kill me. What did I do to deserve that? I was doing my job, and the critter --“

     “Was only a dumb cambo,” the mezoi emphasized, “If I recall correctly. You said it just now yourself.” She paused to make sure there wasn't any traffic being blocked " there wasn't " and returned to talk to Akela, who wasn't sure how the mezoi remembered the case. “Cambos can no more intentionally cause harm to a particular person than they can tell the difference between one side of a wall and another. You have a degree in zoology, if your identification is correct, and I should hope that it is.”

     Akela sighed, that thing had scared the living daylights out of her, “It is, I --“

     “Did not act rationally, I know. Humans get their minds the least bit off track and they ‘fall apart,’ so to speak. Just try to keep your mind, okay?”

     “Yeah,” she snorted softly, “keep my mind. That’s what I’m paid to do, isn’t it? Now, how did your people know about . . . how did anybody --“

     “How did we know about the case? I remember the article. It was a month ago last Wednesday, in the local newspaper on page D7. I have a memory about twice the capacity of that of most humans " hence the city sticking me in this pleasant little box nine-to-five. I remember most everyone who comes through here within a month " longer, if I have something to remember them by. And I can remember most of the article. Not word-for-word, but I remember what the case was about and I remember your name and what happened. So I’m just warning you to be careful and use better judgement, Ms. Iolana.”

     Akela nodded and the mezoi and the young man went back to their job. She was just setting her foot to the pedal when the mezoi spoke up once more, “Oh, and Akela?”

     She stopped at the sound of her first name. The female worked her mouth silently for a moment, as though unsure how to make this next statement. Finally, she sighed, shook her head, and said wearily, “Say hello to your partner for me " ack, my daughter. My daughter . . . please . . .says hello. To him.”

     Akela smirked, though her eyes pulled a questioning look at the same time, and she nodded, “I’ll let him know,” and then she drove on as the female slumped back into the gatehouse with a heavy sigh, muttering darkly.

     The mezoi were incredibly prevalent in the city. There weren’t as many as there were humans, but they were definitely everywhere. It never failed to stun Akela when she went into the country and humans classified other humans as minorities. They all looked the same to Akela. Now furry, scaly, or slick-skinned people with snouts and claws versus humans . . . to Akela and many other people aware of the mezoi, there was a difference worth noting. Unfortunately, there was a problem with letting people outside the city know about the mezoi and the cambos, and with letting these beings outside the city limits. And the same was true not just for Nahuatl City, but for all cities. Outside a city was an uncontrolled environment, and not nearly as much technology. The mezoi could not safely live this way, not the with the things humans had done to them. More than half of them had been altered by science in some way and nearly all of them were known to be dependent on a doctor. They were all, mezoi and cambos alike, very closely watched by the city to be certain that they did not harm anyone and no one harmed them. This wasn’t possible outside. When Akela had been looking for the cambo a month ago, it was a mouse-like creature  that had escaped when an antenna fell over and provided the vermin with a bridge over the wall. Akela’s job had been to track it, but it was more like a beaver than the mouse her supervisor had described. More like a cat, actually. It had huge teeth and talons like an iguana’s, and it leapt at her like a tiger.

     When she stopped the car, a friend and coworker of hers, a dromeosaurid mezoi named Taji, came to greet her. He had yellow fur over his entire body except for his pure white belly and throat, and wore a formal suit and tie for his job. He adjusted a thin silver chain about his neck that was almost hidden by his fur, and he asked her if she needed any help.

     “No,” she said, “Why? And where’d you get that necklace?” She laughed at the way he wrinkled his snout in disgust as he surveyed her filthy jeans, boots, and t-shirt.

     “Well, we didn’t expect you back so soon. I got this from my cousin, and, no, the boss didn’t say anything. You’re in muddy country clothes, so you really can’t say anything. I take it you came here in a hurry. I mean, we really weren’t expecting you.”

     Akela rolled her eyes and said, “Apparently, no one was. What’s the problem?”

     “Nothing, it’s just that there’s . . . well . . . nothing to chase. No one to look for.”

     “There is now. I’ve got a report I want to look into. Some kid at a gas station just outside of town was telling his mother that he was chased down the street by something with brown scales and a tail.”

     “I envy you. You --“

     “Don’t say it. I get to leave. Yay me. I get to go out there and deal with people who just don’t know that there’s a bit more to life than politics and nationality. People who see something with a long neck and tail and say ‘dinosaur!’

     “Point seen,” said Taji, but he didn’t sound convinced.

Author's Note

Have fun with it. Rip it apart. It's old, and it loves your commentary. I personally don't like how rushed the introduction of Taji is. He is one of my favorites of all the characters I've come up with, and he deserves better than that. And ... I don't know *where* in the world the word "Nahuatl" came from. I mean I must have seen it on the Internet somewhere, but knowing what it means makes it feel really cheesy to me. ...The kid makes me cringe. I guess he's okay...I knew a bit of French and Spanish when I wrote this...it's just a very old piece. That's what it is. I keep it because I love writing about the mezoi.

Reviews

[Demauscian]

You've seen Dinotopia I'd hope. This reminds me of that (loved those movies despite the cheesy nature of them). I am wondering, did these dinosa- uhh... I mean mezoi always exist but were hidden from the general public or are they a recent Frankenstein-esk creation... How is something of that magnitude able to be hidden, especially if they seem to escape a lot.

suggestions:
Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation! Do not forget these poor fellows three...

"she got out of the truck and walker over to a small scanner" watch for typos, they can distract. (paragraph 10)

"occasional licensed cat or dog on the sidewalks, and always, they were licensed." well...duh, you said the same thing twice, try to cut out pork like this. Too much 'stuff' bores the reader. (paragraph 11)

Sometimes your quotation marks got weird and I could not tell what was quote and what was not until I'd reread it.

The boy's dialogue at the beginning seemed a tad unnatural (not that yelling about being chased by dinosaurs is exactly natural).


Well... that's all I've got for you for now. Keep them coming, and don't forget to read what others have written! ^_^