“Isn’t it beautiful, Mal? Imagine what it must’ve felt like to run through the grass.”
Mallory Cane’s small fingers returned her father’s grip. “But it’s all gone.”
Ryan sighed. “You’re right. All of it’s gone. But never forget, Mal. For as long as you live, never forget.”
Mallory knew that nothing more than shimmering, ephemeral light composed the Serengeti that surrounded her. She knew that the grasses swayed according to a computer’s algorithm, knew that no wind whispered through the massive dome of the viewing chamber. From her wheelchair’s vantage point upon the chamber’s central dais, Mallory realized that the giraffes were nothing but holograms. Nothing more than hidden speakers created the bellow that seemingly originated in the lungs of the tusked elephants. The light was clever. The light so wonderfully sparkled and shaped. The great viewing chamber tricked the mind, and it tempted Mallory to press at that joystick and rotate her dais so that she could track the lioness as she chased a herd of zebra, whose black and white stripes blurred in Mallory’s eyes. Hyenas laughed. Birds rested upon the back of the hippopotamus cooling in a pond. All that shimmering light was one more of humanity’s clever creations, and it almost tricked Mallory into believing that any warmth touching her face originated from a golden sun instead of one of the dome’s many furnaces. The light was wonderful, but none of it was real. All those beasts perished from the world a long time ago. All those animals were no more than holographic ghosts.
And Mallory knew it wouldn’t be long until she too perished from the world. She doubted that her memory deserved to be preserved as a holographic ghost. She didn’t believe that the memory of any woman or man deserved a bit or byte in the digital records of dying planet. Why should the shadow of woman or man be allowed to mar such landscapes of swaying light?
“I’ve had enough of this place.”
Ryan nodded at his girl. “Of course, Mal. We don’t want to linger too long on just one ecology. Why stay in one time and place when the dome’s computer is filled with so many incredible locations?”
“That makes me feel worse.”
Ryan knelt next to Mallory’s wheelchair. “A change will brighten your mood. Let’s imagine that we’re in a submarine. We’ll visit the great coral reef. We’ll visit an age before all the coral bleached white. The fish will look like rainbows darting through the water. You’ll be amazed, Mal. You’ll have to smile.”
Mallory closed her eyes while the dome’s projectors shifted and swirled all the colors together so that one world replaced another. Why did her father force her to stare at so many sights? Why good did he think it would do her to sit on that center dais and pine for things that could never rise from the grave?
The doctors granted dome access to Mallory two weeks ago, following that morning Mallory discovered a tumor suddenly swelling at the back of her neck, where her skull fused together with her spine. The cancers in her blood were quickly multiplying, and Mallory knew that tumor pormised that her decline was gaining momentum, that it wouldn’t be long until she vanished from the earth along with all the giraffes and peacocks, along with so many other children who perished before her.
“I don’t want to imagine that I’m floating around in any ocean,” Mallory squeezed harder on her father’s hand. “My heart will break if I have to look at another manta-ray.”
“You need to watch, Mallory. You need to know.”
“But it’s cruel. None of it can be brought back. Why must I keep looking?”
“So you’ll be strong, Mal.”
“For what?”
Ryan hugged his girl’s shoulders. “You’ll know soon enough. No need to rush the time with questions. For now, just look and dream.”
Closing her eyes would only prolong her time beneath the dome, and so Mallory watched the projectors paint another dream of light. Dolphins jumped above a green sea’s waves. Giant tails of humpback whales slapped at the water. She followed the dorsal fin of a great white shark. The world once glowed, but it blazed no more. Why did parents and doctors demand that their sick children spend so much time surrounded by that light? Did they think such images comforted their pain? Did they hope such pictures eased their sick children’s fear by hinting at what splendors the heavens might bring?
Mallory watched the projectors surround her with dense rainforests filled with chirping noise. Her eyes winced as the light painted whirling sand dunes made brilliant by a glaring sun. She sighed as her eyes swept over swaying wheat fields of gold. She sobbed as she considered that the white polar bears the projectors knitted upon a landscape of ice and snow existed only in illusion.
Finally, her father pressed a button on the viewing dais, and the light mercifully vanished.
“That’s enough for today, Mal.”
“Can we go home?”
Ryan shook his head. “There’s one more thing. We have to stop in the souvenir shop. You have to choose a postcard for your grandfather.”