Path of the Tiger

by J M Hemmings

  Jun swallowed slowly, his wide set eye – two dark slits in shallow sockets – darting around the room like those of some small, nervous forest creature. These twin obsidian orbs were the only things on his broad, square face – perched like a lollipop on a delicate neck – that conveyed any emotion. The rest of his features seemed so immovable and unchanging that his face could have been a prosthetic device stapled onto atrophied musculature beneath. None of Jun’s friends had ever seen him smile.

  ‘What about those, like … tardigrade things?’ Paola asked, ever hopeful. ‘Or um, the immortal jellyfish, what’s its scientific name again?’ After speaking, she continued to nibble on her nails and tried to shift her weight on the chair without making it creak again.

  ‘Turritopsis dohrnii,’ Jun answered.

  ‘Yeah, that,’ Paola said, popping her fingertips out of her mouth. ‘I’m sure I remember reading a blog about how the immortal jellyfish could, like, revert to a state of youth when it started to age, and it could, like, keep doing that indefinitely … I’m sure the scientists said that it was, like, immortal, essentially. And those tardigrades, they can’t be killed by radiation, high temperatures, low temperatures, starvation, or even like, being in a total vacuum … nothing! C’mon, that’s like pretty close to being immortal.’

  ‘Close,’ Chloe said dismissively, fidgeting with one of the many animal rights pins on her black pleather jacket as she folded up her long legs, wrapped in ripped, skin-tight grey jeans, on the ratty sofa. ‘But those things are literally freaks of nature, and—’

  A somewhat timid knocking on the apartment door interrupted Chloe. All three of the teens looked up in surprise; none of Paola’s family members were supposed to be coming home until much later in the day, and there was no other reason anyone else would be knocking on the apartment door. The knocking cut through the suddenly tense silence again, it was a little more insistent this time.

  ‘Uh, hello? I’m uh, I’m l-, l-, looking for the Eisenhower High Environmental C-, Club.’

  The voice was deep but soft, and none of the three teens quite recognised it, but if it was indeed someone looking for the Environmental Club, they had come to the right place.

  ‘It must be One_Two_Mr_T_2002,’ Chloe said uncertainly. ‘He emailed me last week asking about our meeting … but I didn’t think he’d actually come.’

  ‘I’ll let him in,’ Paola said, heaving herself up off the chair and heading over to the door with a smile of muted anticipation on her face. ‘You never found out who he was, huh?’

  Chloe shook her head, while Jun seemed to retreat, turtle-like, even deeper into the too-baggy athletic tracksuit he was wearing. Just as the knocking started again, Paola reached the door and opened it, and when she saw who was standing in the doorway, she almost stumbled back with shock.

  The young man who stepped into the apartment, beaming out a broad smile and carrying a paper bag full of takeout food, had to duck to avoid bumping his head on the doorframe. At the height of six feet nine inches, though, Daekwon Johnson was used to ducking through doorways.

  ‘Hi guys,’ he said, almost shyly, ‘I um, b-, b-, b-, brought a bunch of vegan b-, b-, b-, burritos and green s-, s-, smoothies.’

  The other three teens stared at him, slack jawed. Of all the people in Eisenhower High School who the mysterious One_Two_Mr_T_2002 could have been, Daekwon Johnson, track team star and Golden Gloves boxer, was the last person they were expecting.

  Even though Daekwon was a star athlete, he was far from popular. A severe stutter – a lifelong affliction – accounted for a hefty dose of social awkwardness, and while he had always been too big and strong to be the target of bullies, unlike the other teens in the room, who had all endured their fair share of physical and emotional torment throughout their school careers, nobody had ever wanted to be his friend. In addition to his machine-gun stutter, his skin was afflicted with vitiligo, and the natural inky, almost blue-black hue of his skin made the pale, albino-like splotches of white, which covered half of his face and at least a third of his body, jut out even more starkly.

  Despite the warmth of the day, he was dressed in a grey hoodie, skin-tight black jeans and gleaming white hi-top basketball shoes. As he stood in the doorway, he tugged subtly at the sleeves of the hoodie, pulling them lower over his vitiligo-covered hands.

  Paola was the first to regain her composure after the shock of seeing Daekwon – on whom she had had a secret crush for years – standing in her doorway. The most naturally amicable and gregarious of the three, she beamed out a warm smile, did her best to control the furious blush that was rapidly heating her cheeks, and swept her arm across in an exaggerated gesture of welcome.

  ‘Come in Daekwon, it’s awesome to have you here,’ she said.

  ‘Th-, th-, thank you,’ he said, the stutter in his voice at uneasy odds with the puma-like grace of his poise.

  ‘I’ll get you a chair, hang on a sec,’ Paola said as she locked the door. ‘Lemme take that, I’ll get us some plates and stuff,’ she continued, smoothly relieving Daekwon of the paper bag and setting it down on the scratched coffee table in the centre of the room.

  While she scurried off to the kitchen, Daekwon stood in the cramped living room and flashed Jun and Chloe a toothy if reserved smile. Chloe found that her usual brash confidence had deserted her, leaving only an embarrassing shyness in its wake. Jun did not return Daekwon’s smile. Instead, he simply stared at the tall athlete with the same deceptively blank expression with which he regarded everyone.

  Paola returned to the room, carrying a couple of cheap plastic plates. She cheerfully handed one to each of her friends, and when she came to Daekwon, her unwavering, impossibly broad smile widened even further. She stood in front of him for a while, staring as if starstruck before Chloe spoke up, sensing that Daekwon was feeling a little awkward.

  ‘Paola, One_Two_Mr_T_2002 needs a chair, yo,’ she said, her voice sharp-edged with sternness.

  ‘Oh uh, you g-, g-, guys can call me D-, D-, Daekwon,’ Daekwon said.

  ‘A chair, yeah, yeah, a chair,’ Paola stammered, her usual bubbly confidence faltering. In the corner of the room was her brother’s battered drumkit, stuffed with stained pillows to suppress the noise. Paola grabbed the rickety drum throne and presented it to Daekwon. Perched on top of the low stool, his long limbs jutting out at all angles, Daekwon cut a rather comical figure.

  ‘Thanks for um, for l-, l-, letting me c-, come to your m-, m-, meeting,’ Daekwon said, his stutter kicking in with full, embarrassing force.

  The other teens were quite surprised to see that he – the towering, all-star athlete – was self-conscious and struggling with confidence in their midst. Chloe, emboldened, took charge, her own confidence returning in force.

  ‘We’re happy to have you here, Daekwon,’ she said, flashing a disarming smile at him. The afternoon light streaming in from the open fire escape door caught her multiple facial piercings, adding a dazzling sparkle to her bejewelled, toothy grin. ‘As you can see, Eisenhower’s Environmental Club is well, kinda small, but we’re always looking to grow. And thanks for bringing the vegan burritos and stuff. I can see you’ve, like, done your homework on our principles.’

  ‘It ain’t no thing,’ Daekwon declared, ‘an’ besides, I’m v-, v-, vegan myself. I been p-, p-, plant-based for uh, th-, three years now. I started for the um, the a-, a-, athletic benefits, coz my boxing coach t-, t- told me about how it was good for r-, recovery time an’ shit, but uh, I done some reading an’ seen a lotta YouTube videos about how it’s good for the e-, environment too.’

  ‘And for innocent animals,’ Chloe murmured, unable to keep a caustic bitterness out of her voice, her facial features tightening with both a quietly seething anger and an iron-hard resolve. ‘They do not deserve to live in a state of like, permanent literal torture their whole lives, and then die terrified in slaughterhouses just because of the bodies they were born into. That’s the main reason I’m vegan, at least. Factory
farming, slaughterhouses, industrial fishing … that shit is a crime against humanity, a crime against Nature, it’s like, it’s literally the worst thing humans have ever done. And it’s like, one of the primary factors driving the Sixth Mass Extinction on Earth. It’s a crime against all life.’

  A murmur of agreement rippled through the room, and Daekwon nodded in support.

  ‘Yeah, I s-, s-, seen some terrible shit online about farm animals,’ he murmured, shaking his head sadly. ‘I watched Earthlings, an’ uh, Dominion online. And uh, Cowspiracy. It’s … yeah, you right … it’s a c-, c-, crime against humanity, is what it is.’

  ‘Uh, guys,’ interjected Paola, ‘I was uh, hoping to eat now, and I don’t really wanna think about all that awful stuff while we’re eating. I mean, even though we’re eating vegan, if I think about, like factory farms, battery hens an’ trucks full a’ poor, innocent terrified pigs … I get a little, like PTSD going, you know?’

  Chloe nodded, the grim hardness on her face melting away.

  ‘You’re right, you’re right,’ she said with a resigned sigh. ‘Let’s change the topic before I like, get too worked up.’

  Paola handed out plates, burritos and smoothies to everyone, and in satisfied silence they tucked in. After a few moments, though, the usually reticent Jun piped up.

  ‘We were talking about immortality,’ he ventured cautiously, peering at Daekwon with a probing gaze, almost as if he was testing him. ‘And how it’s impossible for any living thing to achieve. What do you think about this?’

  Daekwon considered the question as he chewed on a mouthful of rice and refried beans.

  ‘You mean l-, l-, livin’ forever?’ he asked after he swallowed his food.

  ‘Immortality, cheating death on a permanent, infinite basis, yes.’

  Daekwon nodded and took another large chunk out of his burrito. He scrunched his large, strong-featured face into an expression of deep concentration as he masticated on both the burrito and the philosophical issue.

  “I think,’ he began warily, after swallowing the morsel of food, ‘that it’s, like, impossible. That’s my g-, g-, gut feeling, coz I uh, I guess I don’t know much about b-, biology. But everything living dies, I know that fo’ sure. But I, I h-, have an idea. I think that a person can kinda b-, b-, b-, become immortal. But not in the way you be thinkin’, like.’

  ‘How so?’ Jun asked, nibbling rodent-like at his food, the expression on his face as serenely neutral as ever.

  ‘Think of Jesus Christ. S-, S-, Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha … J-, Julius Caesar. Cleopatra. W-, W-, William Shakespeare. Them folk died hundreds, or like, th-, thousands of years ago, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But even though they d-, dead, and they been dead fo’ a long time, we all kn-, kn-, know who they is. Err’body does. A part a’ them … the best part, uh, unless you talkin’ ‘bout s-, s-, someone like Hitler or some a-, a-, asshole like that, is immortal.’

  Paola’s face glowed with delight, enjoying her crush’s outside-the-box approach to the issue. Indeed, there was even a faint hint of a smile on Jun’s rigid porcelain countenance.

  ‘Those people’ Paola said, ‘they … they like, they totally achieved the unachievable. They did become immortal … or as close to immortality as anyone could ever hope to come. Their bodies may have died, but the, uh, like the essence of who they were, the truest part of them, it lived on forever.”

  ‘Shit,’ Chloe grunted, rolling her eyes and shaking her head, ‘now if only we could convince some of these fuckin’ billionaires who are like, investing their money into getting their heads and brains cryogenically frozen when they die, or like, building skyscrapers to be named for them and stuff, to instead like invest their millions of dollars into this kinda immortality instead. You know much of a difference they could make?! They could buy out cattle ranches in Brazil and give them back to the Amazon rainforest! They could buy palm oil plantations in Borneo and turn them back into native jungle, and prevent the extinction of orang-utans, tigers and Asian rhinos! They could turn the climate crisis around, and literally halt the Sixth Mass Extinction. I mean, like, imagine being that person – the person who in real life is like, the hero of one of those apocalypse kinda movies, who at the last minute saves humanity from like, the giant comet that’s gonna wipe out the earth. They could buy huge sections of the ocean, and like pay the fishing industry more money than they would get from fishing, you know, pay those assholes to leave the sea alone to regenerate and heal. They could become the greatest people in all of history! Bigger than Jesus, bigger than Mohamed or Buddha … because they’d like, literally be saving all life on this planet. Everything!’

  ‘Man,’ Paola sighed, ‘if only we could convince the damn politicians about this. In like, history class we was learning about how rapidly and drastically they changed up society for wartime production during World War Two. Like, they pretty much forced a massive, unheard of social upheaval to happen in this country … so why can’t they do that shit again to save the planet, to like, fight against the biggest threat life has ever faced?’

  ‘They’ll only do something like that when it’s about killing each other, and making a profit,’ Jun muttered darkly. ‘When it’s about wiping out whole cities or destroying ecosystems for economic gain … not saving them. When it’s about fighting over who gets the rights to plunder this square of earth or that one, and turn it into a lifeless desert … not who gets the right to save it, and preserve all of the awesomeness of the life on it.’

  ‘Wh-, wh-, why don’t the government,’ Daekwon asked, diving eagerly into the discussion now, ‘just make people plant t-, trees? Or use p-, planting trees as like, a t-, t-, t-, tax break or something?’

  ‘Or,’ Chloe suggested sourly, ‘get all the money that countries and corporations pour into, like pro sports and the Olympics an’ shit, and put it into like, a forest planting Olympics?’ Her eyes met Daekwon’s and widened with abrupt embarrassment. A hot blush flushed its damning crimson across her cheeks; she was not used to being in the company of athletes and was so used to mocking them that this sentiment had just spilled out. ‘Shit, I’m sorry,’ she mumbled, staring at the threadbare carpet. ‘I didn’t mean to like, shit on athletes.’

  Daekwon shrugged, the corners of his mouth curving up into a gentle smile of forgiveness.

  ‘Look, I’m an athlete, an’ uh, I gotta say that without b-, b-, boxing an’ sports an’ stuff, my life would be a lot w-, worse than it is. I never got good grades, an’ I s-, still don’t. Wid’out sports, I wouldn’t really have n-, nothin’ goin’ for me … but I a-, agree wid’ you. There’s way t-, too much money in sports today. I ain’t sayin’ that there sh-, sh-, shouldn’t be no money in sports, period, but I don’t think that it should be this like m-, m-, multi-billion-dollar industry, like it is. That shit’s outta control, yo.’

  ‘I think,’ Paola ventured, ‘that putting some money an’ like, publicity an’ competition an’ stuff into um, like, rewilding could be great. Like, see which country can restore their native forests, an’ like, grasslands, swamps an’ wetlands an’ stuff closest to how they was before us humans came an’ messed ‘em up. That’d be real cool.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jun agreed. ‘Award the rewilders with internationally acclaimed medals and honours. Imagine, a gold medal and fame for bringing a species back from the brink of extinction.’

  ‘This is great, this is really excellent,’ Chloe said, spurred on by a driven focus. She snatched up her tablet and began making notes on what they had been discussing, her nimble fingers dancing across the screen at a frenetic pace. ‘We need to get these ideas out, we need to get people thinking about this stuff. If we could just get a really huge social influencer on YouTube to talk about these ideas, and someone who’s got a lot of followers on Twitter to start getting our ideas out there … this is it guys, this is how we really get our ideas out there, and get them rolling like, like a little snowball on top of a hill. We just hav
e to roll it down the right path, and if it picks up enough snow on the way down, it’ll literally be a gigantic sphere by the time it hits the bottom! Come on, let’s keep this ball rolling, hit me up with more ideas! This is what the Eisenhower High Environmental Club is all about!’

  Chloe looked up from her typing and saw Daekwon staring at her tablet with a look of intent focus on his face.

  ‘I know, I know,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘I’m using a MANMO-M tablet and I call myself an environmentalist. Yes, like, I know now about the child slavery issues in Myanmar and Central Africa, and the exploitation of workers in China, the crazy rate of suicides at their factories there … and the terrible environmental destruction that MANMO-M is involved in. I’ve seen the undercover footage, and that documentary on YouTube about how they’re also supposed to be, like, involved with human trafficking and wildlife poaching and smuggling, and all sorts of other like seriously reprehensible shit … but I got this for my birthday two years ago, and in my defence I didn’t know shit about how evil MANMO-M was back then. I get it, ignorance is a shitty excuse, but whatever. I found out that stuff like, last year, and by then there was no way I could return this thing and get a refund, the warranty was up. And, like, throwing it away to buy from a more ethical brand – if that shit even exists, with all the shady shit all these fuckin’ tech companies get up to behind closed doors and high walls – would contribute to the electronic waste epidemic that’s like, literally wrecking the planet. I know it’s just … yeah, it’s gross to be using MANMO-M tech, but I seriously can’t afford to replace this. I mean, just—’

  ‘I uh, I w-, w-, wasn’t actually thinkin’ any a’ that,’ Daekwon interjected. ‘I was j-, just lookin’ at it coz my lil’ c-, cousin has the exact same model … I think. And uh, I g-, got a MANMO-M phone myself,’ he continued, taking out his phone. ‘I didn’t know all that s- stuff about how crazy evil they was neither, not when I b-, bought it.’

  ‘Oh,’ Chloe murmured, blushing and feeling a little silly after having pre-empted an attack that hadn’t even existed. She picked up a napkin and began tearing little shreds of paper off it as she spoke. ‘Well uh, at least now we all like, know about how shitty MANMO-M is, huh? Don’t buy their shit!’