The Religion of Death (Part 1)

Todd pressed his face up against the cold steel and glass binoculars when they reached the front of the line a few minutes later, tilting them to zoom in on a particular simulation that caught his fancy before moving on to another. Robert Chandler stood beside his son, adjusting the focus of his own pair, bending down to the eyepiece and hunching his back painfully to peer through.

Holograms came alive before his eyes, remarkably real in appearance but still lacking something, perhaps a soul, a spirit or an aura or a spark of life or whatever they’re called in hundreds of languages, if animals had them anyway — a debate the governor was not going to engage in at this time. Flashes of fur and fin and scale and feather came together in distinct silhouettes, colours and features and actions accurate but yet still inaccurate because they didn’t have the same feeling about them that Chandler recalled from his memory. Tigers snarled and bared their sharp fangs and teeth, their striped bodies sleek and agile; eagles hung suspended forever in the air, wings beating with their slowly graceful movements that bisected great contours in the air; apes struck their chests and howled and bounded across the ground; noble whales broke water and searched for krill below the surface; elephants raised their trunks and howled while their ears flapped in the wind; dolphins, pale bodies co ntorting with their tricks; bears hibernated, furry balls of slumber. And there were dogs and cats here as well, even the most common of pets were unallowed replication, the fear of changing the environment was so great that only holographic pets could be kept. There were many more simulations than this too, frames of animals in their habitats and sanctuaries, moving images of instinct that indirectly conformed with human observation.

"Dad, why aren’t we allowed to have animals here?" asked Todd. "I mean, I know it’s because of the policy but why can’t we even have them inside the colony where we can keep an eye on them?"

Chandler turned from his binoculars and glanced at his son. Todd had not moved, was still staring at the simulations, but he was nonetheless aware of his surroundings as well. "Humans, for the most part, can be trusted to regard the policy with some kind of respect," answered Chandler. "But animals are instinctual in their will to survive. We wouldn’t be able to control them and they could do a lot of damage to the environment if they ever escaped."

"I don’t understand."

"There aren’t many species here on Flint but they all have an impact on the environment. If we changed one thing it might affect everything else. If we were to introduce a predator it might end up harming and maybe even killing the kitties, the only real predator on the planet."

Now Todd did turn away from his binoculars, his face screwed in thought, and they gave their positions to the next people in line. "It’d hunt the other animals that the kitties eat so there’d be less for them and some of the kitties would starve, is that right?"

Chandler nodded. "Yes," he said, "something like that."

"But what about a smaller animal? A cat or something?"

"Again if they escape you have a serious problem. Firstly they could be killed by the kitties or even some of the other natives and then they’d have a taste for a foreign species. Secondly they might dirty and soil the drinking water. That would make us sick as well as the kitties."

"So the policy protects them as well as us?"