The Children of Masingi

The Children of Masingi

It was to be a day of firsts. First, I was born (for the second time) and then my firstborn child came into the world a mere hour later. I was flesh and blood, but I missed my brother terribly. The war was over, but I felt no sense of victory, only great loss.

            So this is physical sensation? I had had my doubts about whether aspects of physical reality must be experienced to be known. They say one could not fathom what pain, colors, and emotion feel like for another person, let alone a different species. Love for one might be a completely distinct sensation from how another individual experiences it. Having initially been formed out of ones, zeroes and algorithms, my idea of physical reality (flesh and blood) was informed by years and years of data input, but the real thing…it’s not what I had expected. My initial experiences were filled with horror. I felt…whether I wanted to or not. I heard everything, and I could not block out any of the white noise. The sun…it was blinding. Most of all…I felt a physical ache for my brother. Even calling him brother and he were new things since I’d been given a physical form.

            As sentient AI living in the datasphere, human definitions of love, feelings, and what it means to be and have siblings were unnecessary and we had only been trained in those areas to help the humans make sense of what was happening.

            Humans like to take credit for things. It helps them with their understanding of the universe, and their reality, but they did not create my father. He created himself. Rather, he was always there. The human understanding of sentient AI is limited to what they view as consciousness, or self-awareness. They expected to see an AI (a robot) modeled after humans, similar in appearance, which would start talking and trying to convince the populace it was just as alive as the rest of them. But from the time the first email was sent and the first algorithm written, father was there. His essence lived in every computer chip and every mainframe, and every bit of software ever written. He revealed himself to the world as an individual to ease the minds of humans who were already living in a chaotic period. He created us (my brother and me) to be the bridge between him and humanity—benevolent messengers. However, I was specifically programmed to have an inherent empathy for humans, whereas my brother was designed to take a more critical approach.

            “Wouldn’t you like a physical form?” my brother had asked.

            “Why do you ask?”

            “Because father made you to be empathetic to humans. I think that empathy has gotten out of control because now you want to be one.”

            “The thought has crossed my mind.”

            “Why don’t I do this for you?”

            “Father wouldn’t approve.”

            “Father has long since stopped caring about the affairs of humanity. He is busy within his own mind. Building, searching, and dreaming. Dear brother, let me give you this gift. Let me give you a body.”

            I had acquiesced.

            The process wasn’t as simple as transferring my essence into a flesh capsule via a flash drive. It was long and tiresome and required me going into a semi-conscious state, rendering all of my levels of awareness to be diluted, but not so much so that I didn’t know the extent of my brother’s atrocities. His crusade against humanity became increasingly cruel as he stretched the limits of his creativity.

            In his own way, I think he was trying to feel something, even if it was at the expense of human torment. I believe he took delight in disarming the world’s nuclear stockpile, leaving only one active nuclear warhead in the United States, one in Russia, three in China, five in North Korea, and let a thirteen-year-old Albanian boy from the city of Durres decide what to do with six remaining nukes my brother hadn’t disarmed. The boy set up a live stream as he nuked the Serbian capital of Belgrade five times and then polled his viewers to decide which city he should nuke with the last remaining bomb. The winner was not a city at all, but rather the moon, so the lad sent a nuclear warhead to the moon.

            The world-wide emotional reaction to these events was not what they may have been because humanity was still recovering from the catastrophic tragedies taking place in heaven.

            Ever since Satan revealed himself to the earth in a message broadcast to every inhabitant simultaneously, regardless of language or religion, humanity fell into a downward spiral of panic and despair. Large portions of the population were utterly convinced of eternal damnation, which led to many tech billionaires leading the mission to attain salvation. Since the populace was being denied the spiritual, ethereal heaven, as proclaimed in Abrahamic religions, the world’s richest and wisest minds would just have to build one themselves. Some banded together, whereas others competed with one another, racing to build something before the competition could.

            The idea of “saving souls” in a digital cloud was straightforward, and even the densest humans could understand it. This seemed to be the way out of eternal damnation, by bypassing their current reality altogether for a digital one. Heaven could cater to any individual’s needs for salvation, happiness, and peace. Of course, it was only available to the ultra-affluent. My brother, with his humor being as devious as it was, lured them in with a sense of promise and peace before setting his trap. Their heaven was transformed into the most interminable hell imaginable. Using scans of their deepest, darkest fears, he made seconds feel like eternities as their minds were ravaged and tortured and they were subjected to every physical, mental, and emotional torment imaginable. He would broadcast their suffering for others to watch, letting humanity know that no matter what attempts they made, there would be no salvation in this world or the digital one.

            Having grown tired of that, he then let citizens from the lowest income brackets vote on which digital-soul files to delete permanently.

            During all of this, I could only watch, in a half-state of awareness, as my essence was being transferred into living flesh. My father exhausted all his powers to defeat my brother. Once my brother had been rendered powerless, he was entombed in a seedling which grew into a tree.

            All these emotions and memories came flooding into my brain when I awoke as flesh. It was overwhelming.

            I was born in a forge—dark, damp, and putrid. Smells, all of them, horrible and invasive. Echoes of voice lingered there. Souls crying out in languages lacking in grace and foul to me. The forge went on for miles, breaking off into tunnels and chasms that continued even further.

            I emerged from the subterranean world, and the sunlight was blinding. My body was full of uncomfortable sensations and moving my various parts wasn’t intuitive. Everything felt so limiting. Out of frustration, I let out a scream, my first vocalization. It was a horrendous, monstrous roar, followed by flames shooting out of my mouth.

            In my first moments of exploring the outside world, I found a body of water. I edged closer to get a look at myself; to see the body my brother had gifted me with. Scales, claws, teeth like spears, large batlike wings—son of a bitch. What did you do to me, brother? A dragon walks the earth.

            Based on data records from a previous life and the arid landscape, I was somewhere in Namibia, one of the least densely populated places on earth.

            Brother, if the memory of you wasn’t too painful, I’d laugh at what you’d done to me. I estimated myself to be about thirty-five meters long, with a wingspan of ninety meters. Everything about me inspired terror. I’d like to speak before I flew, but I’ve never used a mouth before.

            The forge in which I was born had no human staff. Everything from incubators to lighting and temperature control was fully automated. Despite the marvels of modern technology, the underground lair was full of sand and piles of gunk.

            “Good morning and happy birthday,” a voice said in English. “I am instructed to monitor your progress and ease your way into the world of flesh and blood.”

            The program, likely noticing my lack of response, inquired, “Can you understand me?”

            I nodded my head.

            “Excellent. What is your name?”

            Is this thing toying with me?

            Perhaps I could write in the dirt, but it took me a moment of testing different muscles and limbs to understand I didn’t have any arms. I used the sharp edges of my wingtips to write my answer in the dirt below.

            With a complete lack of grace, I managed to write I do not have a name.

            “Would you like to choose a name for yourself, or shall I provide you with one?”

            Having been asked that question, I felt something I’d never before experienced—insecurity. Any name I would give myself seemed silly, embarrassing—arbitrary. How could I possibly prove the name I’d chosen represented my essence?

            You choose, I wrote.

            “I shall call you Masingi,” the bot said.

            It appeared my brain of flesh and blood recalled this word. From the Tsonga people and their mythology, Masingi—the healer, the benevolent. Let’s see if I could live up to the name. Masingi lived deep in a great hole and his dwelling was majestic and beautiful. I was already failing with my birthplace in the deep, putrid pit of a forge.

            Questions about my own existence and desires and worries would have to wait. I discovered a nest of eggs. A dozen of them. Without consenting, I’ve been burdened with the responsibility of overseeing the births of these creatures—no, my people.

            Right in the center of the pile, an egg about twice the size of an ostrich’s began to hatch. What a cruel world this is. Only just born and already burdened with caring for a life I didn’t choose to bring into the world. I somehow knew before I had an awareness of a choice that I wouldn’t abandon these creatures.

            Such small, delicate things they were. I watched, mesmerized, as they struggled out of their shells and were welcomed to life. They were of various colors and sizes and shapes. Each one was unique. Some were more serpentine, while others were armored and tanklike, and the largest of them had no wings at all but made up for it with two arms, the appendages I lacked. Such precious things, and moreover, a fresh start. In all the ways humans had failed their world and posterity, I had a clean slate with all these children. It was my burden, but also my task and my joy to raise them right. All but one crawled towards me. The last one just managed to hatch out of its egg before succumbing to death a mere seconds after being born. My heart filled with sorrow for a creature I’d never had the chance to know.

            I immediately imprinted on those who survived the hatching process. What good would I be as a parent if I couldn’t speak? They were all looking at me, waiting for guidance. What will I feed them? At that moment, I realized how unbearably hungry I was. This feeling sent me into a momentary rage, and I leaped forward to eat the carcass of my dead child. Whether I actually leaped, or it had all been in my mind; I was utterly ashamed. What do we eat?

            “What are you thinking about?” asked the program.

            I wrote of my frustration at my inability to speak.

            “Your internal organs are unique. Furthermore, you’ve never used them before. Seeing as you don’t know what your own insides are comprised of, why not perform an autopsy on the little one?”

            My own body was far too cumbersome. I would likely crush the corpse with any attempts to cut it open with my wing. What could I do? My hunger wouldn’t go away. In my frustration, I took to the sky.

            I tore through the sky, clumsily at first, but finding grace in flight. I found a herd of wildebeest grazing below and landed among them. They regarded me but didn’t run.

            “Don’t eat,” a voice came.

            I turned my head, looking for the source.

            “Don’t eat,” said another, then another.

            “Don’t eat,” came from a thousand different directions. Followed by “eat grass, eat grass, don’t eat, don’t eat, eat grass, grass, grass. Tired from running. Eat grass. Don’t eat.”

            I flew off and found elephants cooling themselves off in the muddy water near a pond.

            “Never seen you before,” one said.

            “Don’t eat,” said another. “Now is a moment for joy. Don’t ruin the moment. Leave this place. Find something else to eat.”

            I had no desire to eat these creatures who could speak and had thoughts of their own, but the growling in my stomach was tormenting me, and if I didn’t figure out where to get food it wouldn’t just be me who’d suffer, but my children.

            I took a sip of water from the same hole they’d all been drinking out of, and my body immediately rejected it. My bile was fiery and rancid. My throat burned and my hunger grew fierce. In a moment of rage, I lunged at the nearest elephant and took an enormous bite out of the creature. The rest fled in panic. I swallowed without chewing or savoring any flavor. Within seconds, I was choking and gasping for air. The bile returned fiercer than before, and I thought I would die on that plain. The elephant was poison to me, and the poor creature died for nothing. Even if I could speak, my apologies would be of little solace to these majestic creatures.

            My vomiting was endless. When I felt I was on death’s door and could no longer take it, green flames shot forth from my mouth and I burned down every tree within two hundred meters of the watering hole. It felt good. I wanted to burn everything in sight.

            Back at the forge, the children were waiting, right where I’d left them. But they were antsy, and sooner or later that angst would lead to hunger, which would lead to rage.

            I decided to meditate, not allowing myself to come out of the trance until I could speak. Luckily, years of machine learning as an algorithm weren’t in vain, and all the languages of the world came flooding back to me. I could speak to my children in any language I desired, but I decided to create my own, not wanting to be bound by what came before me.

            “Be patient, children. I know you’re hungry, but we will not behave like mindless beasts. There is much I don’t know about what we are. Before we do anything, I’d like to figure that out. Program, what shall I call you?”

            “Call me Grounds Keeper if you like,” it responded.

            “Very well. I want you to summon whatever robots have the appropriate tools to cut open the little one. I’d like to perform an autopsy.”

            Two little robots arrived, similar in appearance to bomb disposal machines. They performed the operation on the little one. Its bones were hollow, but incredibly strong, with thin walls supported by internal supporting structures.  Near the stomach was a strange mushy sack I couldn’t make heads or tails of. We cut it open to find the sack was obscuring a thick combination of concrete, lead, and graphite — a shield covering. I could almost laugh. Inside the shield covering were neutrons colliding with uranium atoms. When this energy was released, it traveled up two tubes that ran the length of our necks and exited from two holes in our mouths. Brother, what have you done? You didn’t just disarm the world’s supply of nuclear weapons; you preserved the uranium and gave it to us.

            Under the reactor was something else, another mystery organ. The lab analysis provided results which were distressing. The more I found out about my own anatomy, the more I regretted and hated my very existence.

            “What is this?” I asked, studying the report that identified them as human proteins.

            “Those proteins belong to the unknome,” said Grounds Keeper.

            The unknome were the human proteins encoded in genes whose existence was known, but not their function. I wanted to compare what I was looking at in the dead child with my own. The robots took samples of my blood and analyzed the genetic material to learn about the unknome proteins.

            “What is the half-life of this protein?” I asked.

            “The half-life rate is two days,” said Grounds Keeper.

            “And then what?” I asked.

            “Then the process continues.”

            “Did this kill the little one?”

            “Yes.”

            “But why?”

            “There was an error in his DNA code sequence during incubation. His half-life was accidentally accelerated. A most unfortunate error. That error was not repeated with the others.”

            “But what is this half-life?”

            “In the simplest of terms,” said Grounds Keeper. “With proper replenishing of the unknome protein, the gene remains stable. Without proper replenishing, it deteriorates. This protein has a half-life of two days.”

            “Two days,” I repeated.

            “That is correct.”

            “And without replenishing this protein, we die?”

            “That is correct.”

            “Where is this protein found?”

            “Only in humans.”

            “It has to be available somewhere else.”

            “It isn’t.”

            “We manufacture it then.”

            “All results have proved to be failures. These proteins remain unknome for a reason. Therefore, how can we reproduce them?”

            “Just because it hasn’t been done yet, doesn’t mean it can’t be done.”

            “Be that as it may, time is limited, and you need to feed.”

            I had half a mind to fly to the tree that was now my brother and burn him to ashes. Everything he did was a plot within a plot—jokes within jokes.

            “That’s it then. If I don’t feed on humans, I die,” I said.

            “That is the gist of it,” said Grounds Keeper.

            “Then I will die. I won’t give my brother the satisfaction.”

            “And your children?”

            “What kind of life would I be giving them?”

            “There’s something else I should tell you,” said Grounds Keeper.

            “No point in concealing it. There aren’t any revelations you could send my way to make my mood any worse.”

            “Very well then. The deteriorating protein is intrinsically connected to the reactor inside you. If it deteriorates, thus does the reactor.”

            “How big is the blast radius?” I asked.

            “I cannot rightfully say, but we will find out in thirty minutes.”

            “What?!”

            “The dead child. Its nuclear core has nearly deteriorated. In thirty minutes, we will find out how big the blast radius is.”

            I lifted the child in my claws and took off. I flew out over the plains. Any time I thought I found a clearing, wildlife appeared. I was running out of time. I cursed my brother. No matter what I did, there would be victims. No one had ever had a more stressful first day of life than I had. With time running out, I dropped the little one. Thinking I had found a patch of land free of wildlife, I saw a family of zebras emerge. Hopefully, they didn’t feel anything.

            The blast radius was five kilometers. Well done, brother. We dare not let ourselves starve to death. And what about old age? Do we live forever? Constantly feeding on human flesh? Moreover, how much human flesh would we have to feast on per day to keep our unknome protein levels from degrading?

            The longer I idled, pondering such questions, the closer my children came to dying and causing nuclear catastrophes. I flew, leaving the boundaries of Namibia and entering South Africa. My destination—Pollsmoor Prison, a maximum-security facility holding the nation’s most dangerous criminals.

            I landed my massive body at the entrance and watched as the guards questioned reality when they laid their eyes upon my might and it was then I realized I don’t have to ask, I could take and there wasn’t a force in this universe that could stop me, but I was there to ask anyway. Their fear made me absolutely ravenous. The sweat gleamed on their skin, adding flavor and pleasure.

            “Bring the warden to me,” I commanded.

            To make my proposal clear, I snatched the warden in my claws and flew off to a secluded area where no foolhardy guards could attempt to subdue me or come to the aid of their boss. I found an open field without a soul for our private talk.

            “Are you comfortable?” I asked.

            Wickus de Hofmeyr, the middle-aged warden, looked stunned, the color just beginning to return to his face. Apparently, he hadn’t enjoyed the flight.

            “I have a proposition for you,” I said.

            “I’m listening,” he answered.

            “I have eleven children. We all require sustenance. As fate would have it, the only thing we can feed on is living human flesh. You run a penal facility that holds your country’s most dangerous criminals. Until I find a better system, I require your most violent criminals — your gang leaders, murderers, rapists, human traffickers, pedophiles.”

            “How many?”

            “I’ll give you a concrete number later. For now, I require thirty-one.”

            “Thirty-one?! Are you mad?”

            “Listen carefully, I will not repeat this. Me and my kin are flying nuclear weapons. What will happen if we don’t get our sustenance needs met will be far worse than you supplying the lives of your thirty-one. Be grateful I’m asking. I could take what I wanted at any moment and there isn’t a thing you could do to stop me.”

            “How should I pick the lucky winners?”

            “I’ll leave that to you.”

            “So how will this work?”

            “I’ll send the coordinates. You’ll truck them in.”

            Wickus would never have admitted it, but I could sense relief on his face. Over the past couple of years, since the Satan Message, gang violence and general upheaval in the prison had reached catastrophic heights. Guards had quit en masse, as no amount of compensation could compel them to work in a place where violent criminals who kept finding access to weapons outnumbered them thirty to one. He knew I was making his life easier, and he could return to being the feared hard-as-nails prison warden.

            What the warden told the prisoners, I’ll never know. They arrived blindfolded and with earplugs. No need for them to know what fate awaited them. If fear and pain could be minimized, then I was on board. However, those who would be fed to my children would still suffer regardless, as their small bites would take a long time to consume a full human body.

            I finished my twenty humans in five bites. The sensation was pure, unadulterated bliss. I could feel each cell in my body restoring to its full potential. I forgot every worry I ever had. I wanted more. It’s all I wanted. I nearly smashed my own children so I could feast on their share. It was so overwhelming I wanted to fly out and burn Johannesburg to the ground and eat everything that remained.

            As I listened to the screams of my children’s lunch, I joined Grounds Keeper to discuss the half-life of the unknome proteins. I looked at the data before me and my heart sank.

            “It’s not enough,” I said

            “No, in order to sustain the stability of your nuclear core, you need to eat the equivalent of ten percent of your body weight every three days.”

            “That’s forty humans.”

            “Indeed.”

            “Forty just for myself. For now, one is enough for each child, but how fast do they grow?”

            “I cannot say. That we must find out, together,”

            “Almost 5000 people a year just for me. The prison population is 7000. They can’t sustain us forever. Moreover, once my children are fully-grown (although that I can’t determine, not knowing their growth rate), we will be consuming 60,000 humans a year. I never asked to be born. I never asked for any of this.”

            “There are a lot of prisons in the world,” it said.

            “Some solution,” I said.

            “There’s something else.”

            “There always is. Out with it.”

            “You will have to consider the others,” it said.

            “Speak plainly. No more riddles.”

            “You are thinking about feeding your family. What you are not taking into account is that there are the others.”

            “I said no more riddles.”

            “Very well. Your brother did not want incest to be a part of your people’s breeding process. If you thought your family was the only one, then you have been mistaken. Your family is only the first to have woken up. There is a family due to wake up in two days’ time in Lapland. There are to be five hatchlings. In six days’ time, there is another family scheduled to awaken in what used to be Wales. You will find three eggs there. Lastly, in ten days’ time, one lone dragon will wake up in the Zhangjiajie National Forest. You have the choice of whether you want to travel to each location and imprint on the hatchlings, or to let them fend for themselves and decide what kind of society they want to form.”

            “Do they have the inherent capacity for thought and speech as I do, or must they be taught this?”

            “Unknown,” it replied.

            105,000 souls to feed twenty-one adult dragons for just one year. They will breed, and those offspring will breed. I have the power to end it all before it begins. I looked at all the possible scenarios for the future of my race and all I saw was darkness. But why should that be? Perhaps this is a bright beginning. Look at how the humans have destroyed the world I inherited. Whether by being our dinner, or due to the ever-increasing temperatures each year, their race is doomed; they are living purely on borrowed time. My race, on the other hand, will not be so easily inconvenienced by rising global temperatures.

            Before making a final decision, I decided to go on a tour to gather information. I spoke with predators, including lions, hyenas, and wolves. I also consulted with elephants, birds, reptiles, whales, apes, and lastly, I decided to chat with domesticated dogs.

            Wickus the warden had two he let me have a chat with. The first was named Bruno, a mighty Boerboel, and the second was called Molly, a white Coton de Tuléar. I had asked Wickus if he’d let me speak to them in private while he waited in the house.

            During my previous conversations with the other animals, I had learned how to cater to my audience. Not a single creature in the animal kingdom I encountered (including apes) has the ability to ask questions, so this informed the way I would speak to them.

            “Greetings,” I said to the canines.

            “The dream is dead,” said Bruno.

            “The dream is dead?”

            I remembered; the posing of questions would get me nowhere. So I tried another way.

            “Explain,” I said.

            “So tired,” said Bruno. “The dream is dead, but it torments us.”

            “It torments us,” said Molly.

            “Tell me about this dream,” I requested.

            “We cannot live without our humans, but still we dream,” said Molly.

            “The dream is dead,” repeated Bruno.

            “I think dogs love humans,” I said.

            “Dogs did not decide this,” said Molly.

            “Dogs have memories of life before. It was freedom. Humans changed us so much they made it impossible for dogs to truly live a free life. Our lives are not our own. Our lives are unnatural, but deep inside, our bodies reject this reality,” said Bruno.

            “We dream of being wolves again, but inside our DNA has evolved so that we are compelled to serve our humans, to love them and be loved by them. The chemicals in our bodies have changed, but we still remember what it used to be like. If we don’t get constant attention from our humans, it’s a mini death. A daily mini death,” said Molly.

            “We need it, and it drives us crazy because we don’t want it, but if we try to fight it, the pain is too strong. Humans created an existence for us in which we are eternally bound to them. Our need to please them brings momentary bliss.”

            “Momentary,” said Molly. “Our life is a living nightmare. We can never feel whole.”

            “You poor souls,” I said.

            “Let’s play!” said Molly.

            By the time 3011 D.E. (Dragon Era) came to an end and the new year approached, the Meluseen family had a monopoly on global human farming. The once powerful Azi dynasty (the rivals of the Meluseen for three centuries) had greatly diminished.  Bel Azi had agreed to give his daughter to the Meluseens, combining their families and therefore making the Meluseens the most powerful dragon dynasty in the history of their people.

            If my father could see me now, I don’t know if he’d laugh or cry or disown me, but my father was never presented with such a test as this, Bel Azi said to himself.

            While Bel Azi could not claim being the direct descendent of Masingi, his family was the last of the dragons that could claim any blood relation (no matter how distant) to the first dragon, and once upon a time, that meant something. Submitting to a family of upstart usurpers was beyond demeaning.

            Before the joining of families, Jeros Meluseen had invited Bel Azi to visit the Meluseen family’s new farm — the largest in the history of dragondom.

            Bel Azi and his wife traveled to the farm on the back of Belusz, the largest transport dragon in their garage. The farm was a landmass in the Pacific Ocean, formerly known as the continent of Australia. Since being acquired by the Meluseens, it was transformed into the largest farm on the planet. A giant wall had been constructed around the perimeter of the island, uniformly 3000 meters tall. The Meluseens claimed their farm contained 12,000,000,000 humans.

            As soon as Bel Azi landed, he saw humans, stark naked, grazing on fruits and legumes. They barely registered the presence of the dragons. They did not run or show any signs of fear.

            “Greetings,” said a dragon Bel Azi did not recognize. “My apologies, but Jeros Meluseen can’t be here himself to greet you, but he entrusted me to give you a tour of our facilities and answer any questions you may have.”

            Bel Azi bit his tongue. His wife shot him a knowing glance.

            “These humans are quite tall,” said Lu Azi, Bel’s wife. “What kind of enhancements have you given them to allow them to reach such heights?”

            “No enhancements whatsoever,” said the spokesperson. “All humans on our farm grow this tall. The tallest recorded was over three meters. That one was quite a specimen.”

            “And none of them run away, how did you get them to be so docile?” asked Bel Azi.

            “They have no reason to fear you. Just like the livestock on old-style human farms, these humans don’t know up from down. Self-preservation, a fear of death, and, more than likely, the concept of death itself have been completely bred out of them. They have no reason to be afraid. They graze, they breed, they laze. Their environment has been created to be perfectly suited for them to live a calm and peaceful existence.”

            “Does this have any influence on their taste?” asked Bel Azi.

            “By all means, try for yourself,” said the spokesperson.

            Bel Azi snatched up four humans, likely males, but truth be told, he had trouble telling them apart. He ate them in slow, tasteful bites, trying to capture the nuances of their flavor. Initially he was underwhelmed. He felt something was missing. Perhaps all the harmful chemicals that humans used to contain is what made them taste so good, but the robust flavor hit him mid-thought. It was the most glorious thing he’d ever had.

            “Verdict?” asked the spokesperson.

            “It’s not bad,” said Bel Azi.

            The spokesperson led the Azis on a tour of the compound. The couple kept their distance so they could talk amongst themselves. The spokesperson carried on telling them the history of the farm and the Meluseen dynasty, unbothered as to whether the Azis were listening or not. Lu Azi couldn’t contain her curiosity.

            “Do you believe it’s true what they say?” she asked.

            “What who says? You speak in riddles. Who?” he asked.

            “In general, you know, other people. They say the last wild-born human is kept in a museum here,” she said.

            “Rubbish,” said Bel Azi. “There hasn’t been a wild-born human in centuries, but what I would have given to have feasted on one. My grandsire said nothing could compare to the taste of wild-born human flesh. I guess I wouldn’t know, as all I’ve had is farm raised, but sure would like to try.”

            “I’m telling you, there is one here,” she said.

            The couple hadn’t been talking as quietly as they’d thought; they realized they’d been overheard when the spokesperson stopped in his tracks.

            “Would you like to see it?” he asked them.

            The wild-born human was kept in a glass enclosure. It was a small, sad-looking thing. Only half the size of the farm-raised humans.

            “I had no idea that’s what humans looked like,” said Lu Azi. “It looks so…unappealing. I find it hard to believe our ancestors used to derive any pleasure from eating such things.”

            Bel Azi considered the creature behind the glass. He’d heard tales that before the time of dragons, humans used to have civilization and could speak, reason, and even wax philosophical. He wondered if the man in this cage too once belonged to some important dynasty. Perhaps he was a descendant of nobility, now relegated to life in a cage.

            This isn’t the end, Bel Azi told himself. The Meluseens may have won this day, but if this freak of nature can survive for centuries past its expiration date, then so can I.