Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1)(10)

Speculations about what the world would be like after human control of it ended had been – long ago, briefly – a queasy form of popular entertainment. There had even been online TV shows about it: computer-generated landscape pictures with deer grazing in Times Square, serves-us-right finger-wagging, earnest experts lecturing about all the wrong turns taken by the human race.

There was only so much of that people could stand, judging from the ratings, which spiked and then plummeted as viewers voted with their thumbs, switching from imminent wipeout to real-time contests about hotdog-swallowing if they liked nostalgia, or to sassy-best-girlfriends comedies if they liked stuffed animals, or to Mixed Martial Arts Felony Fights if they liked bitten-off ears, or to Nitee-Nite live-streamed suicides or HottTotts kiddy porn or Hedsoff real-time executions if they were truly jaded. All of it so much more palatable than the truth.

“You know I’ve always sought the truth,” said Adam One that time, in the aggrieved tone he sometimes adopted with Zeb. He didn’t use this tone with anyone else.

“Yeah, right, I do know that,” said Zeb. “Seek and ye shall find, eventually. And you found. You’re right, I don’t dispute that. Sorry. Chewing with my mind full. Stuff comes out my mouth.” And that tone said, This is the way I am. You know that. Suck it up.



If only Zeb were here, thinks Toby. She has a quick flash of him disappearing under a cascade of glass shards and chunks of cement as another burnt-out high-rise crashes down, or howling as a chasm opens under his feet and he plummets into an underground torrent no longer controlled by pumps and sewers, or humming carelessly as from behind him appears an arm, a hand, a face, a rock, a knife …

But it’s too early in the morning to think like that. Also it’s no use. So she tries to stop.


Around the table is a collection of random chairs: kitchen, plastic, upholstered, swivel. On the tablecloth – a rosebud-and-bluebird motif – are plates and glasses, some already used, and cups, and cutlery. It’s like a surrealist painting from the twentieth century: every object ultra-solid, crisp, hard-edged, except that none of them should be here.

But why not? thinks Toby. Why shouldn’t they be here? Nothing in the material world died when the people did. Once, there were too many people and not enough stuff; now it’s the other way around. But physical objects have shucked their tethers – Mine, Yours, His, Hers – and have gone wandering off on their own. It’s like the aftermath of those riots they used to show in documentaries of the early twenty-first century, when kids would join phone-swarms and then break windows and mob shops and grab stuff, and what you could have was limited only by what you could carry.

And so it is now, she thinks. We have laid claim to these chairs, these cups and glasses, we’ve lugged them here. Now that history is over, we’re living in luxury, as far as goods and chattels go.

The plates look antique, or at least expensive. But now she could break the whole set and it wouldn’t cause a ripple anywhere but in her own mind.

Rebecca emerges from the kitchen cooking shack with a platter.

“Sweetheart!” she says. “You made it back! And they told me you found Amanda too! Five stars!”

“She’s not in the best shape,” says Toby. “Those two Painballers almost killed her, and then, last night … I’d say she’s in shock. Fallow state.” Rebecca’s old Gardener, so she’ll understand Fallow.

“She’s tough,” says Rebecca. “She’ll mend.”

“Maybe,” says Toby. “Let’s hope she’s disease-free, and no internal injuries. I guess you heard the Painballers got away. They took a spraygun too. I really messed up on that.”

“Win some, lose some,” says Rebecca. “I can’t tell you how cheered up I am that you’re not dead. I thought those two scumbags would kill you for sure, and Ren too. I was worried sick. But here you are, though I have to say you look like shit.”

“Thanks,” says Toby. “Nice china.”

“Dig in, sweetie. Pig in three forms: bacon, ham, and chops.” It hadn’t taken them long to backslide on the Gardener Vegivows, thinks Toby. Even Jelack Rebecca is having no problems with the pork. “Burdock root. Dandelion greens. Dog ribs on the side. If I keep it up with the animal protein I’m going to get even fatter than I am.”

“You’re not fat,” says Toby. Though Rebecca has always been solid, even back when they’d worked together slinging meat at SecretBurgers, before they turned Gardener.

“I love you too,” says Rebecca. “Okay, I’m not fat. Those glasses are real crystal, I’m enjoying it. Cost a mint, this stuff did once. Remember at the Gardeners? Vanity kills, Adam One used to tell us, so it was earthenware or die. Though I can see the day coming when we’re not gonna be bothered with dishes anymore, we’ll just eat with our hands.”

“There is a place in even the purest and most dedicated life for simple elegance,” says Toby. “As Adam One also used to tell us.”

“Yeah, but sometimes that place is the trash can,” says Rebecca. “I’ve got a whole stack of lap-sized linen table napkins, and I can’t iron them because there’s no iron, and that really bugs me!” She sits down, forks a piece of meat onto her plate.

“I’m glad you’re not dead too,” says Toby. “Any coffee?”