No More Elephants in the Zoo

Anita Cable never seriously expected to come back from the dead. The forms Dr. Costa had her sign even said: they’d do their best, but the technology to reverse cryonic suspension just didn’t exist yet. And even then, there was still the glioblastoma.

To her, it was all the same – bury, burn, freeze. A corpse was just a corpse, after she moved out. But it was little Molly that insisted, and how could Anita deny her anything?

“I’ll wait for you, Mom,” Molly said, right before the cryo-capsule closed. As though Anita was just going for a trip. As though she’d actually ever return. The last thing she remembered was pressing her hand against the honeycombed ferro-glass, gasping as a blizzard tore through her veins.

“Molly,” she whispered. Blinked. Realized she could see. Before her, floor-to-ceiling windows, the bleary lights and shadows of the city, a daytime rainstorm. Beneath her, a comfortable – was it? Yes, it was comfortable – leather recliner, then fluffy slippers, a fine orange carpet. Around her, some kind of upscale lobby? Low couches, glass tables, tall ceiling. And a strange man.

“Hello, Anita.” White, at the far end of middle-aged, in a nice, if strange, indigo suit. He held a clipboard but his expression was kind.

“Molly?” Where was she? Where was here? Anita placed her palm on her own cheeks, curious to find she was warm.

“How are you feeling, Anita? The reanimation process can be a bit of a shock to the system.”

“I’m… fine.” No headache, no blurry vision, no trembling. She was surprised to realize it was true. “I’m fine.”

The man jotted something down. “Good, good. Glad to hear it. My name’s Dennis, by the way.”

Her fingers trembled, reaching towards his outstretched hand, but when their skins touched – when she felt the impossible warmth of another living human again – she grasped him tightly, for fear of him disappearing. A nervous hitch, half giggle, half cry, escaped her.

“It’s all right,” Dennis said, tone softer. “It’s a lot to take in, I know. You don’t feel any lingering numbness? There’s a gentle sedative still in your system. It’ll be hours before it wears off entirely.”

“No. No, it’s like… Actually, I’ve never felt better.” She ran her fingers over her temples, over her jaw. Gently touched the tender bald area where they’d sawed off a part of her skull in the myriad failed surgeries – and shivered when she felt hair. Short, supple, but definitely hair.

“Is the cancer gone?”

Dennis straightened and smiled more broadly. “It feels good to be alive, doesn’t it?” Only, the smile hinted at a sadness, or maybe a dread of things to come. “We must assume the cancer’s gone, yes.”

“Assume? Aren’t you a doctor?”

“No, I’m not.” His breath was measured. “I’m a fellow patient.”

“So they figured it out after all.” She snorted, what might have been a chuckle. Shouldn’t she be happy? Perhaps it was the sedative. Or shock, at coming back to life.

Anita decided to risk standing. She braced herself against the armrests of the recliner and carefully rose – only to discover she had no trouble whatsoever. “They really figured it out.” No weak muscles, no shaky legs, no dizziness. She spun her arms, touched her toes, lunged, jumped. Her heart fluttered and she felt warm.

“So,” she said. “Where is the doctor then?”

Dennis glanced out the window, at rain splattering with a low drum. “A lot has changed, Anita.”

“A lot has…” She let the question trail, narrowed her eyes. “How long was I out for?”

“Come on, let’s go chat in the cafeteria.” He ushered her out of the lobbyish room, which didn’t remind her of the cryonics institute at all. “You mentioned a name when you were coming to. Molly. Is she someone special?”

The warmth in her chest spread to Anita’s cheeks, and she felt herself reaching for a smile. When was the last time she truly smiled? It must have been Molly’s seventh. All her friends did the princess thing, but Molly wanted elephants.

“Real elephants, Mom! Not cartoons.”

They plastered all the walls with elephant posters, and went to the zoo – which was happy, to see them, and sad, to see them imprisoned, and Molly vowed to free all elephants – “No more elephants in the zoo!” – and then when the cake arrived – goodness! Grey was not a good colour for food, but Molly loved it.

Anita hugged herself, imagining holding Molly again. “She’s my daughter. She’s the reason I’m here.” That smile pushed against the sedative. “She was right. And I’m going to get to see her again.”

She stopped abruptly at the cafeteria entrance, glossed right over the size and decorations. Nearly jumped when she saw glowing blue words appear suspended in the air.

13:13. Currently: Free roam. Next at 15:00: Communal welcoming in Hall 17.

“What the hell is that!?”

“It’s a holoserver,” said Dennis. “Only I disabled the ads and retooled it to show our… well, no need for ads, I’m sure you’ll agree. Why – did you not have these, back when?”

“Words floating in the air?” She stepped a little closer to the mystery, fingers creeping. “Can I touch it?”

“Yes, yes, perfectly safe.”

The letters distorted where her finger prodded, but that was it. No cold, no heat, nothing fuzzy. No sensation at all. She withdrew her hand, frowned.

“We didn’t have these, no. Our ads were in print. On TV. On the internet, I guess.”

“Teavey?”

“Television. A box with sound and pictures. And idiots.” Anita shivered. All the warmth she had felt before faded, replaced by a cold deep in her gut. “Dennis – how long have I been frozen?” He looked at the floor. “What year is it?”

Dennis hesitated.

She grabbed his coat and pulled him close. “Tell me!”

“Anita, please, calm down–”

“–What. Year. Is. It.”

“We don’t know.” He guided her to one of the empty tables when she let go of him. “Please, sit.” A polished vending machine produced two steaming cups of something like tea, and he set them on the table.

“How can you not know what year it is?”

“A lot has happened while we were in stasis.” He took a sip and frowned into the distance, walking down a road that never got easier. “I went under in 2101.”

Anita’s eyes widened.

“You were what,” he continued, “early 2000s? The youngest patient – chronologically, not biologically – was suspended in 2248.”

He took another sip. “You might be wondering why you don’t find this more shocking. When the sedative wears off, you will, and we’ll be here for you when you do.”

“And we are the other patients?”

Dennis nodded. “To the best of our knowledge, the year is somewhere in the mid to late 3000s. You’re wondering why we don’t just ask someone, right? Like the doctors or other staff?”

Anita nodded.

Dennis drew himself up, preparing for a particularly challenging sprint. “In short, we can’t. Something… some thing, happened. To the world. To humans. While we slept. We don’t know if it was war, or disease, or what, but.” His throat hitched and he took another sip. “Everyone’s gone. We’re the only ones that are left.”

They sat in silence for a while. Anita felt her heart run maybe a beat or two faster, followed by a dull disappointment that there wasn’t a panic. Rationally, it crossed her mind she’d not see Molly again after all. Never see her again. Shouldn’t that be crushing? It ought to be, damn it.

“Wait,” she said. “If everyone’s dead, who brought us back?”

Dennis nodded, expecting this.

“We’re not alone.”

None of it really sunk in until that evening. She heard the words, they lingered in her now-healthy brain, but they didn’t register until the lights went out. Meeting the others – hundreds of patients, a small town – at the communal welcome in Hall 17 was a blur, a parade of time traveling strangers. And the talk of the aliens that roused them? Incomprehensible.

She started screaming at midnight. As Dennis said, the others were there for her, whether she wanted them or not. They made a human straight jacket, smothered her with shared experience, a common circumstance. Kept her from doing the regrettable thing she yearned to do.

Because what was the point of living in a world where Earth no longer belonged to Man? What was the point of a life without Molly?

“Can I see them?” she asked Dennis a couple weeks later. More than anything else, the idea of aliens felt unreal.

“In time, yes. They are uncomfortable to get used to, and there are biological precautions we must take.”

“They talk to you?”

“In a sense. They have an amazing grasp of our technology, and they’ve been able to communicate via our computers. I don’t know if they actually talk, per se. And… they are hard to understand. There’s little common ground between us. Culturally speaking, that kind of thing. I get the sense they’ve gone to great lengths to understand us.”

“Why are they here?”

“Far as I can tell, just for living. From their point of view, they’ve settled an unoccupied world.”

“And why,” Anita asked, “did they wake us?”

It was another one of those questions where Dennis hesitated. “To see if they could. To preserve the native fauna of their new home. Our de-extinction is of scientific interest to them.”

She was allowed to walk around the tower – for the whole facility was its own skyscraper – freely, but never alone. Never out of sight. No matter how many times she told them she was fine over the first few months, that she’d adjusted and wouldn’t do anything, there’d still always be one or two humans in eyeshot.

They saw through her lies.

It came as a shock to her the first time she saw children. Three of them, about the same age as Molly had been. Shrieking, barreling down the hall, absorbed in a running game. Then came a profound sadness that such tiny, young people had been afflicted with this fate. Cursed with an incurable condition, frozen, and thrust into a future that didn’t make sense, a future without a future.

“But they’re not patients,” said Renee, one of her constant companions. In better circumstances Anita would have called her a friend. In a different world, in a different time. If they hadn’t been born two centuries apart.

Renee smiled. “Those kids are real. More real than you and me. They were born here-and-now.”

Ambivalence. Vague dread. Anita’s other constant companions. “So the aliens are breeding us.”

Renee, too, hesitated. “I guess that’s one way of looking at it. I won’t lie, procreation is encouraged. And yeah, it did make my skin crawl. Still does. But those little rascals? They don’t care. This isn’t weird for them and they didn’t come here with baggage. Didn’t lose anything in the past. They’re just kids, having the times of their lives.”

She was allowed to walk around the tower, but not outside. Never seemed to stop raining there. Dennis said it wasn’t exactly rain, that there were things in the air that were no longer friendly to humans. Things that evolved without us, passed us by. No walking outside the tower without an environmentally sealed suit, anyway.

“Can I have one?”

“In time,” Dennis said. Because he knew. “We all went through it. It’s hard adjusting to this new world of ours.”

“I’m fine.” Of course, she didn’t really need the suit for what she was planning.

She took to watching the rain from the ground floor. Casually, she placed her hands on the windows one day. Nothing odd about that. Then another day, casually she placed her hands on the door. Still very normal, just a woman lost in thought. Then the next day, she did the same and pushed just a bit. Just until the door gave a little.

Not locked.

Anita smiled, and began preparing for the end. She picked a day the next week. A day everyone decided was Monday. Nobody knew if their new calendar lined up with pre-extinction, but there was something comforting about having regular Mondays. She was pleasant to everyone, played with the kids, embraced the community. And let go. It wasn’t a terrible place, but it just wasn’t for her. Her time had come and gone.

She never saw the aliens, which was a regret. The idea both enthralled and repulsed her, and still seemed unreal. Ah, but life was all about accepting the nevers and moving on.

Finally her day came. Good luck, with Renee being her chaperone. “I could sure go for a coffee,” Anita said, her hands on the door. “Would you mind?”

“Could go for one myself.” Renee left to fetch them, because she trusted Anita. That was an unexpected barb in the heart. But no matter, this had to be done.

And as luck often does, good turned to bad when Dennis came down the stairwell. “Anita! Guess what?”

She closed her eyes and swore under her breath. “What?”

“I found a TV!” Anita glared at him. “Well, I think I did, anyway. There’s a good chance it’s not an original. You know, they constantly tinker with our tech, taking it apart and reproducing it. I think they maintained this building for us, and all the food and whatnot. Doesn’t seem like it would survive thousands of years without help otherwise. Our caretakers.”

She sighed. This Monday was looking to be a real Monday.

Dennis placed something in her hand. A small, flat bit of plastic, looking like a narrow thumb drive.

“What’s this?” she asked. There was a strip of masking tape on it, and in faded pen, “33875 ANITA CABLE”.

“A Q12 drive, I believe. Maybe a Q14? A mid twenty-first century storage medium, anyway.” He grinned. “Often, people recorded messages for their loved ones. For when they woke up. Most of them are holos, but for this older tech, well, it took me a while to track down a way to play it back.”

“Messages?” Her eyes widened. “Wait, you mean – this is for me?” Cold arced along her nerves.

“Would you like to watch it?”

They sat down in one of the myriad empty rooms in the tower, where Dennis had set up a giant, flat monitor. He slipped the drive in the bottom and dimmed the lights. Renee meanwhile joined up with them, bringing the promised coffee.

“Would you like us to go?” Dennis asked.

Anita looked between the two, found her throat dry. “Stay. Please.” The butterflies in her gut roiled.

Dennis hit play.

A mahogany office appeared, bookshelves for walls, a heavy desk, a woman sitting behind it. Her hair, a tight white bun, and her eyes, yellowed, and her skin, scarred by time.

“Hello, Anita.” There was gravel in her voice. “You probably don’t recognize my face, but we used to live together. It’s me, Molly. Hello, Mom.”

Anita clamped her hand over her mouth, but she’d lost all her words anyway.

“Only I’m not Molly Cable any more. It’s Carson now, and it was Gaines for a while too. A lot has happened.”

Anita’s eyes bleared.

“I wish I could tell you in person, but, ah, well. Life doesn’t work that way. I never stopped thinking about you though, and I never stopped hoping. And now, well, I still hope they bring you back one day, and we can catch up. Like this, at least.”

Anita nodded along, and when Renee offered her a handkerchief, she took it.

“I don’t know where to start, to be honest. Feels like I have eighty odd years to cover.” Molly chuckled. “Hope you don’t mind, but I recorded a lot of footage. The cryo people were very accommodating. Frankly, it’s helping me remember my own life, which is nice, as the old memory isn’t what it used to be.” She sighed. “I never did save all the elephants, but I did work with them for five-odd decades. Well, time enough for that later. Hey, I’m not alone here – do you want to meet your grandkids?”

Anita nodded, and dabbed away another tear.

“I’ve a feeling you said yes. Good, good. Well, I hope you have some time, Ma, ’cause the family’s grown quite big.”

“All the time in the world, baby,” Anita said. And all thoughts of Mondays left her mind, as she met those who came after her, and those who went before.