Best of British Science Fiction 2018 by Donna Scott

Author:Donna Scott [Scott, Donna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: NewCon Press
Published: 2021-08-09T21:00:00+00:00

The Purpose of the Dodo is to be Extinct

Malcolm Devlin

“Nevertheless so profound is our ignorance, and so high our presumption, that we marvel when we hear of the extinction of an organic being; and as we do not see the cause, we invoke cataclysms to desolate the world, or invent laws on the duration of the forms of life!”

– Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

1. The Singular Death of Prentis O’Rourke

When Prentis O’Rourke was ten years old, he read a book about the last words spoken by the famous and historically significant, and wondered what he might say for himself when his own time came.

For the most part, he was not a morbid child, certainly no more so than any other boy his age. To the extent that it was relevant to him, he knew what death was, but the thought and manner of it had never consumed him. Instead, it was a subject that he merely found interesting. It was something worth bearing witness to if not investing in.

Beyond that, death was by no means his only concern. It was interesting to him in the same way it was interesting the way you could make a rainbow with the hosepipe on a sunny day, or the way his mother would slice an apple into neat little eighths before she would eat it. Death was just something else that happened, and given that there were so many things that happened, it seemed strange to waste too much of the life he had left on one thing at the expense of the others. It was a postcard from a far-off land that he did not intend to visit himself for many, many years. It would happen, it would happen to him and it would happen last.

His family had never been dishonest with him about mortality. When Breadbin, the family cocker spaniel, had died the year before after chasing the wheels of a Peugeot 305, there were no euphemisms to shield the truth from him. He wasn’t told that Breadbin had gone to a retirement home for dogs, or that he had taken off in a rocket back to Planet Dog, or that he now lived in a magical meadow, full of rabbits and squirrels to chase.

Breadbin had died, he was told. These things happen, he was told. It was okay to be sad, he was told.

Prentis had helped his father dig a trench at the end of the garden and together they buried the remains of the dog. Breadbin’s funeral shroud was the same old Martini branded beach towel that had previously lined his plastic bucket-bed. They filled the hole and planted a cherry tree in the grave, and Prentis was satisfied that some degree of completion had been achieved. He missed the dog, of course he did. He missed the movement of him about the house, the warmth of him as he curled up at his feet while they watched television, but he didn’t need to believe in Planet Dog,

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