Immortality Is Really Forever by Robert Laconil

Author:Robert Laconil [Laconil, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-10-08T22:00:00+00:00

February 2, 577,077,889

It’s a very nice zoo. With a wide selection of animals and a modern design boasting roomy cages, it is a wonderful place to spend a sunny afternoon.

The only problem is that I am one of the inmates.

I’ve seen this played out thousands of times on sci-fi TV shows. You know, an advanced bunch of aliens grab some humans and put them in a zoo. Do you see the forced irony here? No longer are you the top dog anymore. You are considered a less evolved creature by your captors, just like you did to the animals on your own insignificant world, you foolish Earthling. Get it?

But what adds insult to injury is that my captors are human too. The nerve of their arrogance to think for one minute that I am their inferior, a mere exotic Moon beast captured by brave hunters on some sort of space safari. Sometimes when I think of the injustice, I stick my tongue out at the visitors as they pass by the giant glass pane cage. Not familiar with the gesture, the visitors never engage; they just laugh nervously and move on.

And my cage? You’d think it might be a nice quasi hotel suite with a comfy chair and a kitchen with an island. Nope, it was a cheap reproduction of the Moon, a plywood floor barely covered by gray sand with craters in inconvenient locations. A Moon panorama was painted on the wall, a panorama so inept as to be unworthy of a grade school play. I understand the astronauts were hired as consultants to make it look as authentic as possible. Well here’s a tip for authenticity: don’t make craters out of papier-mâché.

One of the reasons I was deemed cage worthy was my inability to speak their language. Imagine a man who can’t pop but can only make vocal sounds. Such a creature must have something missing; he can’t possibly have the ability to reason. In a desperate attempt to prove my ability to reason, I quoted some Shakespeare, but that only confirmed my inferiority. If only the bard had included some more overt plosives in his oeuvre.

“To *POP* or not to *POP*. That is the *POP*-tion!”

So I, the subhuman, was relegated to a cage with all the other animals. But it was interesting to watch all the other animals. Some were still familiar to me, especially the insects and mammalian rodents. But the higher mammals had evolved, since they didn’t have the higher reasoning powers that had put a stop to human evolution. Their heads favored roundness with eyes in the front of the heads, making them seem more attentive, watchful. Their bodies were more muscular, leaner, fiercer. It was as if the distant memory of Snowball Earth had added more resolve to their evolution.

“Never again,” the evolved creatures seemed to say. “We’re ready, Planet Earth, for the next ecological disaster you may wish to hit us with.”

Surprisingly, I did miss the Moon terribly, which had become home to me.

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