The Origami Dragon And Other Tales

by C. H. Aalberry

  * *

  A helicopter searches across the ocean, circling, darting, rising, falling. It is one of many in the air. The company is looking for lost treasure, no stone will go unturned. They defy the laws meant to restrain them, they search with every tool at their disposal. There will be a price, they will pay it gladly. The missing agent is too dangerous to let free, too valuable to let lie. He is the company’s ace, their silver bullet, their last resort.

  A powerful foe wants him dead. This alone makes his recovery vital.

  I am asleep, resting, drifting. I am cold yet comfortable. Do I dream? Am I a dream myself? It is hard to focus.

  This search involves stranger forces than men in flying metal. Winged creatures search the waters from above, green serpents beneath. Eyes watch the waters from far away through means mundane, magical, electrical. There is little hope.

  One whirling metal bird sees something in the water, drops, hovers. There is a splash as a body enters the water. A struggle amongst the waves; two bodies are pulled out.

  I can hear voices in my dreams. They are talking about me, to me, around me. My head hurts. I don’t know where I am, only that I am in trouble. Did someone slip chilli into my food? I don’t remember.

  The body is broken, waterlogged, motionless. The medics cannot do anything with him. Needles break on his skin, his chest is still, his skin cold. There is no pulse. They are told this is normal; they shake their heads in despair.

  Insects bite at my skin. I am young again, too tall for comfort, too awkward for sympathy. My sister teases me. She tells me that one day she will be a model. We play with the family greyhound. We are happy.

  The chopper lands on a private estate in the country. The airfield is unregistered. The pilots are taken aside after landing, blindfolded, interrogated. Their work this night will earn them either rapid promotion or death. The body is dragged across wooden floors into an empty room, dropped.

  Two men enter. One opens a briefcase, pulls out a long syringe. The other man holds the body down. The syringe is wooden. It enters his body smoothly. They talk quietly, discussing rumours about their patient. They know little. The body stirs slightly.

  There was a day when the rain fell in love with the soul of a tree. The rain woo’ed the tree, sang to it, blessed it. They had a child. The world is made of such unlikely liaisons. The rain’s brother, ocean, heard of the tree, became jealous. It ravaged across the land to destroy the tree. The destruction was indiscriminate, ripping up forests, tearing apart the very ground itself. The child survived, the tree did not. The rain took its son to safer places.

  The syringe contains rain water. It enters his veins, calls to him. It is not enough. They leave him, their job done. His sister arrives, escorted by the company’s most senior leaders. They beg her to help. She has tears in her eyes, a letter in her hand. They argue over the letter’s contents. It is years old, written in elegant copperplate. It is his will.

  I grew, learnt, became. The ocean forgot me, the rain did not. My human family were good to me. I will miss them; I am dying now. I have been killed by a smiling enemy, a wrathful uncle, a forgetful sister.

  He is wrong; she has not forgotten. The company men are surprised by the force of her passion, insistence, anger. They shrug, pull the body outside. The body is heavy, too heavy. They drag him as best they can. One man finds a shovel, another picks a point in the ground. They bury him up to his shoulders, his head above the soil. They plant him like a tree, pat down the soil, wait. The sun rises, clouds march across the skies.

  And it begins to rain.

  Noah’s Park

  “Don’t trip over the elephants,” warned Shaun.

  I hadn’t noticed that that herd had come over to investigate the back of my bare calves. I froze as Shaun gently shooed them away. He was great with the animals, whereas I had only been working with them a few weeks and still felt like a clumsy titan.

  The herd’s matriarch led her family away from us, so Shaun and I continued planting. The largest of the elephants came up to my knee, but the younger ones were so small that they could have fit in the palm of my hand. The Park’s smaller species of animals had an unfortunate habit of getting under foot, particularly the zebra. There had been heartbreaking accidents, which is why only the most conscientious workers were allowed to walk on the soil. Shaun and I were considered gentle enough to get by. We both went barefoot and gloveless, for the work was delicate and we would need all the senses at our disposal. We were planting a mixture of tree species in a small grove alongside a riverbed in the hope that they would flourish there.

  I took a tree from the platform suspended next to my shoulder and dug gently in the soil with my small shovel. The tree, already half-grown, was the length of my forearm. It was a baobab, Adansonia digitata, and I planted it carefully in the soil. I picked up another tree from the platform. It was smaller than the ones I had already planted and covered in fruit. A few birds played amongst the branches, investigating its offerings even as I planted it. The next plant was a thorn tree, Acacia erioloba, and I had to handle it with care.

  “Just a few more, and then a cuppa,” said Shaun.

  Our morning’s work was almost complete. The trees we had planted were part of the Park’s scrubland, an area that was still under construction. The section was already covered with a mix of grasses, but we would need more diversity to keep the animals happy. First we would plant the large trees, and then move onto the bushes and smaller plants. Over time, some of the species might die off, but others would spread out across the land. Eventually the ecology would be totally self-sustaining, or at least that was the plan. The Park was small enough that it would probably always need our intervention on some level.

  The trees were small and beautiful, each one a work of art. They were bonsais, but their diminutive forms were due to genetics rather than pruning and nurturing. There were over two hundred species of tree in the Park, and the labgardens were coming up with more on a regular basis. Planting trees was a delicate task, and it was made even more difficult by the animals’ curious intrusions. A couple of birds pecked at my hands inquisitively. I recognised them as some form of parrot, but they were too small and too fast for me to be sure about their species. The Park is full of life, and even I struggle to keep up with the different species.

  A male lion roared nearby, scaring the birds away. I could see a couple of monkeys were already investigating the tree I had just planted. The vervet monkeys, Chlorocebus pytherythrus, were my favourite animals in the Park. Their antics made me laugh, and even the normally serious Shaun smiled as he saw them at their play.

  As we planted our last trees Shaun waved for a pick up. The now-empty trays were pulled into the sky and replaced with the tethers that we attached onto loops on our harnesses. The tethers were in turn attached to the end of long ropes suspended from the Park’s ceiling. Shaun checked my attachments carefully, and then used his small radio to signal that we were ready. The Park’s sky was criss-crossed by metal rafters that supported a variety of small engines used to suspend and transport both supplies and people across the Park without interference. They were temporary; most would eventually be removed when the work was done.

  The Park began to drop away as we were pulled upwards, revealing its shape to me as I flew away from it. The Park was set out as a long oval, one hundred and twenty-three metres wide and six hundred and twelve metres long. It was bordered by warm ocean water. The small trees and animals made it look much larger than that, and I experienced a tingle of vertigo as we pulled away. I felt like a god as I looked down on the tiny herds and forests.

  The Park was just as beautiful from far above as it was from the ground. Ragged forests covered about a quarter of it, and the rest was scrubland and grassland. A few large hills were scattered throughout the Park, some of which were the origin for the streams and rivers which wound their way across the lands until they met the ocean. A couple joined up, forming a lake that became an estuary. T
he Park was dedicated mostly to savannah, and was home to a couple of herds of various herbivores and a pack of lions. A flock of birds took off from the estuary, possibly scared by the roaring of a hippo.

  I could see herds of animals browsing across the grass, a small herd of elephants drinking at one of the rivers. I expected that the herd was a group of young males, and I made a mental note to check up on them as I was pulled up to a girder and climbed up onto one of the metal walkways that hung from the ceiling. The ceiling was a dome that encompassed the entire island and its surrounding waters. It peaked at twenty metres above the island, and we had to move carefully to ensure we didn’t fall. Any stumble would do incredible amounts of damage to the island and would certainly be fatal to us, too. Birds were rare up here, their presence discouraged by means I did not fully understand.

  Shaun and I made our way across the ceiling until we reached a door set into its side. We were met there by Harry, another of the Park’s senior workers.

  “You guys want to see something really special?” he asked us, clearly excited.

  Working in the Park was one surprise after the other. I had been looking forward to my morning cuppa, but Harry’s excitement was contagious.

  “This better be good,” Shaun grumbled good-naturedly.

  “Prepare to be amazed, old timer,” answered Harry.

  Shaun and I waited as Harry talked quickly on his radio to somebody hidden in a control room overlooking the island. Harry smiled at us and waved our attention over to the island. Nothing happened.

  “Nothing’s happening,” I offered, and Shaun chuckled.

  He stopped when he saw the curtains of thin mists falling from the dome down to the island. There was no wind to drive the rain across the island, but Harry promised us that it was at the top of his to-do list. We watched the rains for ten long minutes as they bathed the island. Each raindrop was tiny enough that it wouldn’t hurt the animals below. What looked to us like a light dusting probably felt like a monsoon to the animals. This was the first time rain had fallen on the Park, and many of the animals would be surprised by it.

  It was brilliant work, and Harry was right to be proud of it. I knew Noah would approve.

  “What’s the external weather like?” I asked Harry as we walked towards the staff room.

  It was easy to forget that there was a world outside of the Park. The light levels were carefully regulated from within the dome, as was the temperature. Most days I didn’t see the natural sky at all, but I still liked to know what was out there. Harry gave a small shrug, as if the real world wasn’t terribly relevant.

  “Couple of storms passing by, but we should miss the worst of it. We should still make the port on time.”

  The Park was built on the top of a converted supertanker that Noah bought cheap when the oil industry went under. It was officially called Parkland 1 and was the largest of Noah’s fleet. The Parkland 1 was a member of the largest class of tanker built, over half a kilometre long. The Park and its surrounding ocean covered almost the entire surface, with the control tower and a helipad pushed right to the back of the ship. Due to its size, even the worst storms barely moved the ship. The animals may have felt the occasional ripple, but nothing to alarm them. Below the Park were the machinery and stores that keep the precious life alive, and a second level dedicated to marine and fresh water ecologies which, while beautiful, were not as impressive as the Park itself. There were also quarters for the ship’s hundred or so crew, and a number of storage and control rooms.

  Noah didn’t believe in putting all his eggs in one basket, so I knew of at least one other ship being outfitted in a similar manner to the Parklands. If the fleet was large enough there would be no need for land-based labs or test areas. I wondered if that was Noah’s goal. He liked to be mobile.

  “He sure does,” Shaun said when I offered this observation.

  We watched as Harry poured five packets of sugar into his cup of coffee, tasted it, and poured in three more. Harry always had eight sugars with his coffee, so I was never sure why he bothered to taste after five. Shaun, who drank his coffee black and sugarless, looked on with disdain.

  “What’s he like?” I asked, wondering if either man had actually met the elusive man who captained our enterprise.

  I had read Noah’s wiki page before taking the job. There was little known about him, other than he was a master geneticist with seemingly infinite money. I wasn’t even sure that ‘Noah’ was his real name, and he only ever contacted me by email.

  “Noah’s the most demanding person you will ever know,” said Shaun, finishing his coffee as he stood up to leave.

  I had my own work to do, back in my office. I was fairly new to the ship and still got lost in the maze of corridors, so Harry offered to walk with me. We stopped outside my office, which was labelled “Dr Attenborough, Ecology”.

  “Any relation?” Harry asked me as I opened the door.

  It was a question I was familiar with.

  “Sir David Attenborough was my great-great-great grandfather. He was the reason I became an ecologist, although by the time I graduated there was little enough ecology for me to work on. These days when I watch the documentaries I can list the animals now extinct. There were no lemurs left in Madagascar by the time I got there.”

  It was a sobering thought for both of us.

  “But I’ll show you what I’m working on,” I offered.

  We sat down in my little office, Harry on my chair and me on the corner of my desk. I opened up the latest list of animals in the Park.

  “There are eighteen species of mammal in the park, twelve birds, eight reptile, twenty-seven insect, ten fish, two amphibian. I keep telling Noah that we need more insects, but apparently they are a challenge. Some species don’t flourish in the Park, and we have to keep rereleasing them. The insects are the worst, but the mammals always do well,” I explained.

  Harry was inspecting some of the animal figurines that littered my desk. Each has some significance to me, and I had printed most of them myself on various 3D sculpting devices. Harry was young, so it was fairly likely that there were some he didn’t recognise. He picked up a female praying mantis and turned it over in his hands like it was an alien artefact. I was familiar with many of the Mantodea species from my teaching work as a university academic. I used them to teach my students about predator-prey dynamics. My undergraduates thought that watching a glass cage of the mantis was wonderfully wild; I thought it was all so tragically tame.

  “Do you know that, with the exception of insect interactions, this Park is the only place where predators still stalk their prey?” I asked, “The only place where animals have to hunt and run and fight to survive? Sure, the animals are miniatures, but their struggles are as large to them as to any other beast.”

  “But animals are still kept in the zoos,” Harry said.

  I wondered if he was testing me on Noah’s behalf.

  “Zoos breed mediocrity,” I said, “and their breeding programs are about quantity, not quality. Their lions are slow, their giraffe have bad eyesight and the baboons are lazy, but none of that matters because they don’t have to find their own food or keep themselves safe. Our animals do, and it shows. Only the best live to breed.”

  “So a lot of our animals will die?” said Harry, seemingly genuinely surprised.

  “Yep,” I said with a smile, “but if this seems cruel to you remember that at least our animals have a chance. Out in the world they have no chance, because one day the zoos will close forever.”

  Harry and I made lunch plans for later and he left. I picked up my model of a yellowfin tuna, Thunnus albacares, and it sparked a memory of when I had been part of the problem. I had originally specialised in terrestrial species interactions, but in the decade since I completed my Ph.D. every species I studied had become effectively extinct. I ended up modelling fish populations for the U.N., but one day I was staring at my computer screen and I just gave up. I was trying to see how much flesh
we could squeeze out of the ocean before the inevitable collapse, and it was killing my soul. I was siding with the devil, and I knew it. The yellowfin were long gone, but the human appetite was insatiable.

  I quit that very hour and spent the next two years travelling the world in the hope of finding some part worth protecting. I found a few oases of hope, but they were besieged on all sides. Our generation, like the ones that preceded it, exploited the Earth for all it was worth. Unlike past generations, we inherited an Earth too weak to survive us. It seemed that the majority of scientists believed that all we could do was record a few genetic codes for the sake of remembrance, noting each species as they walked two-by-two into oblivion.

  I was one of the few who fervently hoped that we could do better than simply being the scribes of extinction, so I took the university job in the hope that I could change the next generation. I soon found that my students thought biology occurred in test tubes, and had taken my class out of historical interest rather than any real passion. My students hadn’t seen a forest that hadn’t been planted for the sake of woodchips or marvelled at the elegance of the hunt. For them, ecology occurred in glass tanks and metal boxes, the wonders of the world reduced to curiosities and amusements.

  I remember that many of my colleagues at the university were trying to work out how Noah was miniaturising his animals. No one knew if he was a madman, a genius or a fraud. When he called me up and offered me a job, I took it immediately. He chose me because I was old enough to understand the world’s problems and young enough to think they could be solved. I arrived on the ship to find a figure of a vervet monkey waiting for me on the bed.

  My computer pinged a reminder that it was time to work: two days until show time. I had so much to do.

  Later that afternoon I visited one of the labs to check out the three new species scheduled for release. Dr. Emzara was in charge of the labs on the Parklands 1 although rumour had it that she was also a very senior member of Noah’s inner council. She was a large woman with a ruff of thick hair and a surprisingly tough handshake. She welcomed me eagerly and showed me what she had. One side of the lab was dominated by shelves of animals in transparent cartons the size of shoeboxes. Dr. Emzara pulled one off the shelf so that I could have a closer look. Inside was a family of baboons, their hairy forms unmistakable. She moved them carefully, but they were still unhappy about the disturbance. I noticed that a number of tree trunks and rocks had been placed in the carton so that the animals would have somewhere to hide. It looked like a model version of a zoo enclosure.

  “The babies were delivered this morning, along with these others. The plan is to release this family first, and then watch them. Should be OK, they have been living in a test environment for the last six months. But look at these, look at these!”

  She hustled me over to the table which stood against one wall. On top of the table was a large enclosure in which several dozen small buck were grazing. They were beautiful little creatures, quite unaware of our watching them. She pointed my attention to a small tree on the side of the enclosure, and I crouched down to take a closer look. I almost fell over when I saw one of the buck was halfway up the tree, suspended from a branch. I looked closer until I saw the leopard lounging on a neighbouring branch.

  The animals knew from instinct how to hunt or avoid being hunted, but they improved with practise. It seemed cruel and perhaps even wasteful, but we wanted to show nature in its true form. Mother Nature can be cruel and violent, and we would not be shying away from the struggle of life and death. After all, these are the very foundations of nature and adaptation, and there were always more animals being shipped in as replacements.

  “Shipped from where, exactly?” I asked.

  There were so many aspects of Noah’s work that were still a mystery to me. For example, I had no idea how the animals were miniaturised. My old work mates had called it an extreme form of extreme dwarfism which defied explanation. They would have killed to get their hands on one of Noah’s animals, and they weren’t the only ones. I suspected that Dr. Emzara knew how the magic was made, but I doubted she would tell me.

  “Most of the breeding labs are on a separate ship, the Genesis,” she explained, “which isn’t as large as this tanker but houses most of the labs and a few smaller versions of the Park. That’s where we test the animal interactions before general release. Here, look at these.”

  She showed me some samples of animals sent over from the genesis labs. There were a couple of eagles, two new species of vulture and several new plants. I examined the plants under a microscope, marvelling at their perfect contours. We discussed the schedule of release. The normal protocol was to release the animals into a fenced-off section of the island to allow them to habituate to their new conditions. After a few days, we would free them and then watch them carefully to see how they went.

  The animals were tiny, perfect replications of their larger brothers and sisters. Like the Park itself, their lives were a throwback to a world intact and pure, a time before man invented the combustion engine and the rifle. There was no environment more pristine than those Noah’s creations lived in.

  “The leopards will be released directly into the wild,” Dr. Emzara continued, staring at them fondly, “and as the island is probably too small to sustain a breeding population we will need to import new animals from caged breeding colonies. The genesis ships have far more room for such things than the Park does, as they don’t need to accommodate a showy dome or sustainable populations. The Genesis has a dozen zoos worth of animals stocked up in boxes like the ones we have here.”

  The animals get complacent when they live like this,” I said, motioning towards the crates of wildlife.

  “They are fed, watered, sheltered and protected. Why wouldn’t they feel safe? That’s why we have the Park, so that they can be truly free. Free to graze, to be hunted, to feel the cold rain pouring down on them. I’m not sure I wouldn’t prefer the crate, myself.”

  I smiled slightly. I would have chosen the Park and its uncertain dangers over the boredom of the crates, but the idea was purely academic. We were playing God with the animals, but I knew that people would never live in the Park.

  The rest of my day was spent checking up on the animals recently released into the Park. Hundreds of tiny cameras were spread through the Park, hidden in stones and amongst trees. Telescopic cameras sitting in the domed ceiling recorded the herd’s movements from above, while cameras hidden in the rivers keep their vigil below the waters. A few cameras were mobile: tiny robots that watched over the herds. The work was complex, as some species were slow to adapt to the presence of other animals. The lions always fed well for the first few days of a new herbivore release, and I did my best to record the mortality rates. It was hard, as the Park had seven day/night cycles every twenty-four hours, meaning that I had a week’s worth of days to review every afternoon. This also meant that the animals aged faster than their full grown cousins, and so gave birth more often.

  Things seemed to be going well, remarkably well indeed. The lions had bred their first litter of tiny golden cubs, which were incredibly sweet. The trees were flourishing; the grazers and browsers were healthy. I worked contently until late into the night, taking copious notes and forwarding a number of the most promising clips to the video team. We would need them soon.

  Harry dropped by my office later that night.

  “T-minus twenty-four hours,” he said cheerfully, “so I brought along a few of the choice cuts to look through.”

  He had a couple of USB sticks which we plugged into my computer. We watched a few adverts showing the elephant herds grazing and a lion bringing down its prey. These were followed by a ten-minute documentary of a young buck learning its world.

  “Nice, right?” said Harry proudly.

  It was all part of Noah’s plan. He wanted to conserve ecosystems and species in miniature until the world was ready for them again, but there could be no recovery until people had changed their pr
iorities.

  “Do you really think this will work?” I asked Harry.

  “People live in front of their TVs,” he said with a shrug, “and they will want to watch this. As soon as we are up and running people will be able to follow the lives of their favourite animals. People will be able to choose which cameras they use, which animals they follow and which sides they take when hunter and prey go to war. Exciting, education and emotional. Now that’s what I call good TV.”

  Noah wanted to inspire a whole generation to better things. I privately wondered if a rerelease of animals could ever happen, or if Noah’s ships would be the only place where animals would still live free. The Park could potentially survive the total failure of the Earth’s ecosystem and still last for years, a bastion of nature doomed to eventual failure. Perhaps Noah’s long term plan included larger Parks, but the immediate strategy was one of entertainment.

  “Changing the world by documentary,” I said with a hopeful smile.

  “The most comprehensive nature documentary ever made,” he said, holding up an imaginary glass to cheers me.

  I worked through the night, only falling asleep as the sun rose. When I awoke, the ship was moored about ten kilometres off the shore of New York. We had reached our destination. Helicopters began arriving early in the afternoon, each bringing a group of journalists to the boat. The journalists were on the Parklands 1 to ask questions about the animals and the forthcoming series of documentaries. Only a hundred journalists had been invited, although thousands from across the world had applied. The journalists that attended were representatives of every large network, news station, blog and search engine on the planet. They were the cutting edge of popular opinion for billions across the globe.

  As the Park’s senior ecologist, I had been asked to sit in on the interviews and answer questions. I was used to presenting before small audiences, but everything I said today would be seen by most of the Earth’s population. My mouth was dry, and my hands shook slightly.

  “You ready?” asked Shaun, who offered me a cup of coffee as he led me to the interview room.

  The coffee was bitter and black, but Shaun’s company was relaxing.

  “You’ll be fine, boy. Noah has faith in you, and so do we,” he said.

  I wondered when he had talked to Noah. I myself had only heard from our leader via curt emails. Noah himself was absent, as always. I wondered what he could be doing that was more important than the unveiling of his masterpiece. I walked into the interview room and took a seat at the desk set to face the journalists. A small earpiece sat on the table in front of me. I put it in my ear, but couldn’t hear anything.

  I was surprised to see that Dr. Emzara was standing at the back of the room rather than sitting beside me. She winked and gave me a thumbs up.

  The interview room was a new addition to the Park. It was totally transparent and projected out above the safari. We were low enough to see individual animals moving below us. The view was impressive, even to those of us used to such sights. The glass became opaque just before the journalists entered, cutting off any view of the Park. The journalists entered quietly and with unusual reverence. They sat quickly, keen to hear from us.

  I was the only member of Noah’s team sitting at the desk, and I was beginning to feel very uncomfortable. The journalists and I waited for someone to arrive and begin the briefing.

  “Doctor Attenborough,” said a voice in my ear, “you will repeat everything I say to you.”

  I tapped my ear in annoyance. I had not expected to take the lead during the presentation, nor did I enjoy being somebody else’s mouth piece. Nevertheless, I did as I was told.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the world,” I repeated loudly, “welcome. Welcome also to the billions of watchers at home. As you know, we on the Parklands have been working hard on a new series of interactive documentaries to be released later this year. You were invited today to be given a taste of the wonder we have in store for you. Take a moment to look around the Park. Beneath each of your chairs is a tablet you can use to browse the many cameras hidden in the Park. Everything you view will be recorded on the tablet, which you are welcome to take home with you.”

  The room became transparent again, and buzzed with excited conversation as men and women looked at the beauty beneath their feet.

  I was largely ignored in the chaos that followed, but I pulled the earpiece out and searched the crowd for Dr. Emzara. She was standing where I had seen her last, a big smile on her face. I pointed at my ear angrily, and she mouthed ‘Noah’ back at me. I cursed my employer, but I put the earpiece back in.

  Most of the journalists sat entranced in front of their screens or stood watching the Park, but one walked over to my desk and slammed a fist down passionately.

  “I don’t believe a word of all this,” she said loudly.

  The room, previously noisy, fell deathly quiet.

  “I don’t believe this; I think you are showing us illusions and simulations!”

  Her protests gathered a lot of interest. I gulped as cameras and mics swung to face me.

  “Get the box under the desk,” Noah whispered in my ear.

  I did as I was told. The box contained a trio of Noah’s elephants. I let them out of the box and onto the desk. They trumped noisily, and began exploring their surroundings. I picked one up very gently and showed it to my critic.

  “Miniature, but real,” I explained.

  My desk was swamped with people, so I quickly returned the animals to their box.

  “That’s not real!” the protester said, now angry.

  She launched herself at the elephants as if to punch their box. I quickly got in her way, but during the scuffle she slapped me across the face and dislodged my earpiece. I was surprised to find several of the journalists were helping me separate her from the elephants. Our security people turned up quickly to drag her away.

  “It’s unnatural! Who do you think you are, playing God with nature!” she screamed as she was pulled away.

  “Everybody please sit down,” I yelled as politely as I could.

  The journalists settled quickly as the walls became white again and their tablets switched themselves off.

  “I apologise for the interruption,” I offered, somewhat lamely.

  “She’s an idiot!” yelled out someone.

  “She had a point!” countered another.

  I had lost my earpiece, but not my temper. This wasn’t the first chaotic class I had encountered.

  “Quiet please!” I said sternly.

  “How do you answer the allegation that such genetic manipulation is extreme and dangerous?” asked someone near the back of the room.

  “Extreme? Yes, but we live in extreme times. Our world is suffering, dying even. The aim of the Park is to conserve something of nature, and use this fragment to inspire the world to better take care of its environment. One day we may even be able to release fully sized versions of the animals held in the Park back into the world.”

  “But where is Noah?” asked another journalist, “and why set the Park up on a boat? Surely he could establish such a Park far more easily on dry land?”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, but luckily the questions were coming thick and fast by that point so I only picked the ones I could answer. Luckily the tablets were turned back on, distracting many of the audience away from my clumsy explanations. By the end of the interview I was exhausted, falling asleep in my office chair as soon as I sat down in front of my computer.

  Noah must have been pleased with how I handled the journalists, because soon afterwards I was invited to join him in person on his research flagship, the Jubilee. The Jubilee was stationed on the far side of the world. The transfer required two flights by helicopter and one by private jet, so I knew this meeting was important to Noah. The cost was immaterial to him in comparison to the expense of the rest of his enterprise, but Noah hated the idea of time being lost in such a wasteful manner.

  I don’t know
why he and the Jubilee were so far from the rest of the fleet, and I didn’t bother to ask. Three heavyset security guards escorted me onto the boat and up to a reception area. The guards looked like the sort of men found in the Russian riot police, so I didn’t argue with them. They checked my papers, frisked me twice and led me to an unmarked door.

  I entered what appeared to be a combination of office and laboratory. Shelves of chemicals lined the walls, and posters of complex biochemistry pathways hung from the ceiling.

  “Welcome, Dr. Attenborough!” boomed a familiar voice from beside me.

  I turned to see a small, bearded man wearing a lab coat and carrying a beaker full of blue liquid. He put the beaker down on a shelf and shook my hand with gusto.

  “A pleasure to meet you in person,” I said as calmly as I could.

  “Sit down, sit down!” he ordered, pointing at a seat.

  His voice was warmer and louder than it had sounded over the earpiece.

  “How is my Park?” he asked, taking his own seat behind his desk.

  Unlike the rest of his office, Noah’s desk was tidy and uncluttered. I glanced across his lab as I updated him on my work, which I know he had been following closely. He asked intelligent questions, made a few relevant suggestions and then moved on to the interviews.

  “A lot of them thought you are doing this all for the money,” I said, knowing that this couldn’t be the case: there were far easier ways to make money than this.

  “Money? Nah,” said Noah dismissively, “we don’t need their money, but we do need their goodwill. Did you know that the Parklands 1 has been followed by a Chinese submarine for the last six months? I know. I’ve seen the sensor data from the flock of hunter-killer UAVs that the U.S. has been flying over the fleet. Don’t ask who showed me that data, because they certainly weren’t meant to. Let’s just say that the novelty of a miniature lion is a temptation better than gold.”

  I knew he was right; Noah never sells his animals, but sometimes he gives them as gifts. There is a herd of tiny zebra living on the White House lawns, and I had heard that a certain hacker in Thailand has a whale living in his bathtub. I hadn’t known that he had been using them as bribes, but it made sense.

  “I’ve had to establish a network of such spies everywhere, and they all say the same thing. The U.S., the E.U., China, Russia and the rest are unhappy with us. They want our science, they want our secrets, and they aren’t afraid to use force to get them. They only thing stopping them is that nobody wants to fire the first shot. We have enemies, son, enemies who are not above covert action. Last year a whale was stolen from us by the Japanese, or possibly the Russians. They think they can use our science to make themselves great, or at least less contemptible.”

  Noah banged his hand heavily on the table in a rare show of passion. I wondered which country he was born in, and I was never able to place either his accent or his features.

  “The Park will be a shield of publicity, winning over popular support. Woe betide the government that messes with its people’s entertainment. In addition, it’s an excellent distraction from our real work,” he continued.

  “Real work?” I asked, surprised and interested.

  I knew that Noah must have a bigger plan than just the Park. He kept telling me that one day we will have fully sustainable populations, and I kept telling him that the Park just isn’t large enough. We would need to keep releasing new prey for lions, for one thing. We could never build a sizeable enough Park on a ship. It’s just impossible; we would need kilometres of space on which to build fake continents.

  “Real work, yes,” Noah nodded, “Do you realise that if even a small meteorite were to strike our Earth, almost all life would be extinguished? It’s happened in the past at least once. There are things we might do, if we have enough warning, like moving my fleet to the opposite side of the oceans, giving us some protection. If we survive the first impacts we have the supplies and technology to stay afloat and alive for as long as it takes before the worst of the dust storms and so on blow over. We could slowly re-establish the ecosystems by releasing full-sized animals of the types we already have, thus repopulating the Earth.”

  He spoke so casually that it took me a second to realise what a bombshell he was dropping. I had already suspected that surviving such a disaster had to be the point of the whole enterprise, but having it confirmed by Noah himself was still shocking. His plan did make sense and explained a lot about his organisation. Why else would we need to be mobile, for one thing? I was disturbed by the idea that we were being followed, but in truth it didn’t surprise me as much as it might have.

  “The Park’s not enough, though, is it?” I asked, “Because if the meteor is large enough there will be no surviving it by sitting on the ocean.”

  “No”, he agreed, “and there are some threats far more likely than rocks falling from the sky. What if there is no meteor, but instead the type of wars that poison the world for centuries? What if some madman creates a strain of flu capable of spreading and killing everything it touches? It wouldn’t take much, just a good knowledge of genetics and a complete lack of concern.”

  I thought about Noah in his lab, playing with genes like a lesser mind plays with Lego. I felt cold.

  “The Park is a bauble,” he continued, oblivious to my sudden concern, “a test tube. The real work must be far more resilient and far more extensive.”

  He turned his back to me and was searching for something on the shelves.

  “The Park is too fragile, but similar structures can be built deep into the Earth. These could be many times larger than the Park, kilometres long instead of measly metres. They will be true worlds unto themselves, and the animals within them will live and die in ignorance of the true nature of their surroundings. We already have three such places set up deep underground. Shaun will supervise one, Harry the second and my son the third. We will need at least ten such vaults of precious life if we mean to make our survival a certainty. I’ve been watching your work, and I think you have the necessary skills to ensure success.”

  I was flattered, confused and worried. I could see where he was going with this, and it was prophetic. He was convincing, very convincing. In my mind I could already see the war, the bomb, the space rock. The world was dying even as we talked, so it would only take a small push to end it. I didn’t really think Noah would start the apocalypse, but when it came it would not find him unprepared.

  “The animals will survive, and we can modify their environment so that they adapt to whatever conditions we find on the Earth’s surface… and then use these genetics to breed the full grown animals,” I observed, “but there is no way enough humans could survive the type of disasters you describe to repopulate the Earth.”

  “No, you are right. My son, Japeth, has been working on the solution. You haven’t met Japeth yet, for his research consumes all of his time. He and Dr. Adanta have come up with the perfect solution to your problem.”

  He turned to face me, placing a box in front of me. The box itself was unremarkable, just one of the many thousands used to house and transport Noah’s tiny animals. I peered in and shuddered at what I saw, my knees suddenly weak and my heart racing. I fell to the floor, and I remember yelling at Noah. I left then, slamming the door behind me. Noah chased after me, but I ignored him. He was a madman, and I could have nothing to do with him.

  Inside Noah’s box were two perfect figures asleep next to each other. I instantly recognised them as miniature Homo sapien. One was a man and the other a woman, and both were perfectly formed in every way.