On a gray morning eight days before I died, I awoke from a recurring dream to find a familiar heaviness on my chest. Not wanting to open my eyes all the way, I pried one lid open and saw my portly black cat, Buddy, staring into my face and purring ever so slightly. But the message was more menacing, and it was conveyed directly to my brain: “Feed me now, servant.” His yellow eyes fairly spoke the words in my mind, and while I wanted to linger in bed and revel in the details of the dream, the alarm clock by my bed told me the cold reality of morning would not wait. I stretched my long legs and, with a groan, heaved myself out of my warm comforter. There was no point in putting off the inevitable. The next week would be tough, and that fact was undeniable. What made the morning more ominous was I wouldn’t have time for my daily grueling run. They were more like obsessive-compulsive sprints till total exhaustion, but they helped keep me sane and were my special “me” time. They were when I got my best thinking done.
“Shit,” I muttered as I stumbled over a pile of thesis papers on the way to the bathroom, banging my toe on a chair. If I was going to make the flight on time, and not piss off Dr. Pashtar and his team, I would also have to forgo my usual long shower and keep my beauty routine to a minimum. I never liked to rush the morning process, but death, destruction, and worldwide mayhem were a bit more important than exfoliating. I plodded into the bathroom, winced at the cold tile under my feet, and stared into the mirror at the pale face and wide, worried eyes that looked back. My thick black hair needed a trim—it had grown far past my usual acceptable “professional” length—and my near-sighted eyes took in the puffiness and general look of despair lining my angular bone structure. My years in the field were starting to take their toll, and now at the age of thirty-two I was paranoid about wrinkles. Getting a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology had never been my initial goal (I had originally trained in psychology), and even now as an adult I wasn’t used to being called Dr. Mina Brice. It made me sound old. Sighing, I turned from the mirror and climbed in the shower. I rushed through my beloved ritual, wishing I could stay under the hot water longer. Climbing out, I heard a plaintive “Mrrrow” from Buddy, insisting that I needed to refresh his bowl.
“I’m coming, you little monster!” I called out, intuiting his exact needs. My odd rapport with animals wasn’t something I, a scientist who lived only in the rational world, discussed with my colleagues, but my abilities were both real and confusing for me.
“Shit,” I cursed again, remembering I’d need to go next door to see my neighbor Mrs. Battaglia before I left. She was elderly, and I’d need to gently remind her to feed Buddy three times a day, to keep his little water fountain full, and to be sure to allow for plenty of lap time. Without his lap time, he became depressed. I was such a New York City cliché: no children, no husband, but the stolid companionship of a cat I had a telepathic bond with. Banging some unwashed pans around to make room for my coffee maker, I mentally repacked some of my luggage, hoping I wasn’t over capacity. I had yet to learn how to pack efficiently, although I had been around the world about a dozen times now. I balanced a mug of coffee on my lap while shoving contacts into my gray eyes, cursing myself yet again for never having the laser surgery to correct my vision. Some makeup slapped on and my dark, wet hair piled up into a bun of sorts, I went back to my tiny, haphazardly decorated bedroom where the two battered suitcases and one practical traveling outfit awaited my fumbling attempts at organization. While I stuffed some items into my carry-on case, I allowed myself a moment to reflect on the dream I’d had five nights in a row. I was confused by the feeling of homesickness I always seemed to get when thinking of the crystal-clear ocean, the multicolored fish, the high rocky wall with the hole in it that encircled the little paradisiacal cove. I was never a beach person, never really liked the warmth or the sun, despite working tirelessly in the heat of savannahs and tropical environs for a number of years now. But somehow this dream created a longing in me I couldn’t understand, and I was pretty sure this place didn’t even exist on the planet. And I had seen enough of the wounded and blighted world to know if it ever had existed, it probably didn’t now. Too much had changed, too rapidly….
Snapping out of the reverie, I zipped my carry-on case and waited for Buddy to remove himself from one of the suitcases, his baleful glare reminding me that he knew I was leaving again and he wouldn’t soon forgive me. I glanced out the window beyond the rivulets of rain, and noted again how odd it was that most people in Manhattan now had waterfront views. Parts of the city had been underwater for nearly a decade, despite the levees built after the hurricanes became more frequent. There was no stopping the inexorable floods that came in the years that followed, although the city planners told the residents we’d have another twenty-five or so years before having to leave the city completely. So why stay? Well, once a New Yorker, always a New Yorker. After I went to Columbia and completed all my degrees there, I hadn’t wanted to leave the city that allowed for everyone to be insane, no questions asked. Nowhere else in the world was it not only acceptable but expected that you be an eccentric and complicated human being. Although my research was in non-human species, the human psyche was always very easy for me to understand despite my own social awkwardness, and so being surrounded by colorful people with the same neuroses as mine was comfortable.
Most of the subway systems were above ground now, and a train sped past my window, shaking the cramped apartment and knocking a few books loose. This was something I was used to, and the price I paid to live on the island metropolis. It reminded me I was running late, as usual. We were on our way to a small Nigerian village, in the Oban Hills region, where chimpanzees in the area were close to extinction, thanks to relentless poaching along with endless drought. The team of scientists I was a part of acted like a triage unit in a battlefield, except that the war we were fighting was against the climate change that had affected the entire planet. I was part of a group of five other physicians, anthropologists, engineers, and biologists like myself. My job was to try to get enough of the wild animals remaining into localized sanctuaries, distributed throughout safe and habitable parts of the globe. My ability to work with wild species was chief among my skills. It all started with my uncanny gift to woo feral cats as a child, and once they were captured, my long-suffering mother would take them to shelters. This ability to click with the minds of non-humans was nothing I had learned in school, although animal behavior was something I had studied for years. It was an odd quirk I’d just always possessed, and couldn’t always control. I didn’t like to label it telepathy, but there really wasn’t another word for it. I would be spending many hours tracking chimps in the surrounding areas outside the village, getting them used to my presence, and then capturing them with as little stress on them as possible before they were taken to a sanctuary. I hoped my little gift would come in handy, as I’d also have to maneuver around the violent bush-meat poachers and accomplish my goal as quickly as possible. I sighed again, thinking of the danger that lay ahead. I finished my coffee, checked my bags once more, and kissed Buddy goodbye. I looked around my apartment, fond of my little space where plants came to die, and then almost broke my neck stumbling down the stairs to try and hail a cab.