Chapter 5: Reflections


The next day, Frankie decided a bit of a walk in the city would do him
some good. The last few days had been rather surreal. First, there was
the bus ride and the hallucination with the badgers. Then there was the
mannequin in the window of the Lace 'n Love Boutique that bore a
striking resemblance to his long missing sister. And then there was the
meeting with Smith the snake in the back room. Then there was the
mushroom, which turned out to be a drug that knocked him out for about
two days. Then there was the waking up in his own bedroom, fully
unclothed and with strange residues and bloody goop on his jacket. And
then there was the trip out to the abandoned warehouse in Waretown
followed by hand to hand combat with a cat warrior and Smith himself.

Even though he handled the fight with a lot of poise back in the
warehouse, a day later he could not shake the gory images of the cat
warrior impaled on spokes sticking out of a rusted piece of machinery
and of Smith the snake cut up end to end by the little dagger he held.
Considering he had not done any street combat before in his life, he
could not believe he was able to do that. It is funny, he thought, how
the full impact of what he did did not weigh on his psyche until way
after the deed was done. Perhaps, he pondered some more, that is how
murderers and even mass murderers are able to accomplish such horrific
tasks. Perhaps their conscience lags far enough behind that they do not
think about the impact of their actions in the heat of the moment. Thus,
it does not begin to weigh on their souls until much, much later,
perhaps after their conviction and sentencing.

Anyway, Frankie got out of the N train at the Union Square subway
station. After leaving the subway platform and passing through the
turnstile, it was just a few flights of escalators before he was out in
the open on the street level. The square was really a block or perhaps
more like half a block of open space in the middle of urban highrises.
It was not much of a park though. There were trees all along the
perimeter at evenly spaced intervals but most of the ground was
pavement. Concrete and stone tiles. There was a fountain in the middle
of the square and that was a popular sleeping place for the area's
vagrants and panhandlers in the summer on nights when it did not rain. A
bronze statue of a morphic lion, bedecked in a wool cloak rendered in
bronze and a feathered hat rendered in bronze, sitting astride a regular
horse, which was rearing up and looking like it was about to throw its
rider off onto the ground, adorned one corner of the park. Despite the
style of the sculpture's art, it was a relatively recent addition to the
square.

In the opposite corner, there was another bronze statue, this time of a
wolf in a soldier's battle uniform, complete with a camou shirt, pants
and hat. He was holding a rifle and had some tiny nuclear grenades
strapped to his belt. The bronze wolf was in an erect pose with one arm
holding the rifle and the other arm raised to a salute. Frankie had
passed by this corner of the park many a time but he had never read the
inscription on the bronze plaque at the base of the statue. This time he
did and saw that it was to commemorate the Last War of 2287. Since the
beginning of the 23rd century, every war was known as the Last War in
the hope that there would be no more wars after that. That was a nice
sentiment but a sentiment that was never fulfilled. Wars kept happening
anyway, every decade or so. People being people, there was bound to be
conflict among the nations. As long as there were differences in
ideology, differences of opinion and contention for the limited
resources of the planet, there would always be fighting no matter what
diplomatic measures were taken.

And in fact, it was a great war in the first quarter of the 21st century
that ended all of humanity and gave rise to anthropomorphic beings such
as Frankie the ferret and everyone else the world over. 

It all started with the mosquitoes. Some time at the beginning of the
twenty first century, it was found that mosquitoes had started carrying
an infectious disease with a one in four fatality rate. At first, it
was not as bad but as time went on the virus became more potent and more
contagious, and more and more of the population was struck down by the
fatal infection. At the time, there was an ongoing war for oil in the
Middle East waged by an international coalition led by the United States
Army. While the purpose of the war was to secure an oil supply and
remove it from the control of certain Middle Eastern dictators, the
stated purpose was to liberate the people of those countries. The newly
found virus added fuel to the fire and allowed the leading
political party in the United States to claim that it was the result of
genetic engineering performed by Middle Eastern biological terrorists
even though there was no proof beyond the speculation of a number of
self professed experts on terrorism.

So the decision was put to a vote with virtually no dissention through
the single party Congress and then through the single party Senate. And
within a month, planes carrying atomic bombs were bound for the Middle
East, the target being roughly between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers,
where then Iraq was. Of course, that was after Iraq had been liberated
in an earlier war but that point still proved central to the entire
region, the entire population of Israel having been evacuated to the
Mediterranean coast of Europe just a few days before in a massive
operation. As the entire subcontinent was turned into a glass parking
lot, the heads of the United States were content that they had finally
accomplished what no one in the one hundred years before had done.

Of course, the decimation really did nothing about the mosquitoes back
home. If anything, the mosquito problem got worse. And worse yet, the
geopolitical arena had become very unstable. Other nuclear powers who
had reason to believe they would be the next targets of an all out
attack from the United States or a United States led coalition decided
to launch preemptive attacks of their own. First, Pakistan joined in the
fray. That led to a counterfire from India. Then North Korea launched
some nuclear missiles of its own. Then followed Japan and China in
a nuclear counterattack. Eventually, the planet was thrown into a
nuclear winter.

Those who do not learn from their history are doomed to repeat it.
However, in this case, it is more of a geological or geobiological
history. Some 65 million years ago, the impact of the Tunguska meteoroid
and the subsequent global dust cloud that resulted cast a long term
winter over the planet. The long winter killed the large dinosaurs, who
were then dominating the top of the food chain, and allowed the rise of
mammals. In a similar way 65 million years later, the nuclear winter
killed off the species of Homo sapiens, who were then dominant and at
the top of the food chain, and allowed smaller mammals to take over and
evolve. As a side effect, the radiation, while it did kill off many
organisms, allowed others to mutate in accelerated fashion and gave rise
to the anthropomorphic animals, walking and talking creatures with some
animal features, that would take their place as heirs to the collapsed
civilization of human beings. Some, however, believe that small colonies
of human beings still thrive to this very day in caves deep underground.
Some say that was the reason why certain objects and certain items of
food mysteriously disappear from the surface world as secretive
marauders from the underground world come above ground to take them,
although, except for a few sightings thought to be inconclusive or made
up, none of the raiders have ever been spotted.

The other two corners of the square and most of the sides were taken up
by vendors of various kinds. By far the largest in number of the vendors
were hot dog vendors. They seemed to be thriving even though it was not
conceivable that there were that many New Yorkers who would happen to
have a craving for dirty water hot dogs on any given day. The other
vendors sold knick knacks and accessories like small toys, pocket books,
purses, sunglasses, belts and cheesy T-shirts. The sunglasses had to
come in many different designs, of course, to accommodate the
significantly larger number of phenotypes in the world of animals. Most
of the sunglasses came in the adjustable strap variety with only a strap
holding the lens portion up on the head. That design was the best
compromise as it was just not possible to cater to all positions of ears
and all shapes of heads. There were, however, a few other designs for
species whose ears happened to be in a convenient position to hold a
pair of sunglass stems.

Over on one side of the square, there was a staging area for carriages
pulled by horses that were not morphic. These carriages were of an old
design that had been preserved since the early 20th century. In fact, in
keeping with tradition, the coach driver would wear a black top hat and
a black long tailed cloak to mimic the coach driver's uniform of that
era. The carriage rolled around on wooden wheels, one pair of which was
large and one pair of which was smaller. The large pair of wooden wheels
was at the back of the carriage supporting the passenger area. The
passengers sat in the back of the carriage on a wooden seat. The coach
driver sat in front of the passengers. He held the reins of the horse,
which was fastened by means of a leather harness to the front of the
carriage. As a matter of consideration for all those who would use the
road after the carriage had gone by, there was a rectangular vinyl
manure catcher positioned just under the posterior of the horse. The
persistent joke about the horses wearing diapers was a bit off from
this reality but nevertheless the manure catcher did fit that
particular role.