“Yikes, I can’t even see them anymore. Oh my gosh, those seals are in trouble! Possibly there will have to be some population dynamics shakeout around here! But you know how that goes, fluctuations of predator and prey follow a pretty clean pattern. The number of predators swings up and down a quarter of a curve after their prey species, in the sine wave on the graph. And to tell the truth, I think there are millions of seals down here. The Antarctic coastal life zone seems to be doing well. Hopefully the polar bears will benefit from that, and join the other top predators down here in a happy harmony, a circle of life. For now, let’s get some altitude under this baby and see what we can see.”
She pushed the release button on the anchor bolts and they were freed by the explosives in their tips. Up flew the Assisted Migration, skewing on the wind, bounding up and down on itself and blowing quickly out to sea. She turned it into the wind and had a look below. White shore, black-and-white leads, white sea ice, black open water, all gleaming brassily in the low sun of midday. Hazy horizon, sky white above it, a milky blue overhead. The six bears were completely invisible.
Of course each of them was tagged with a radio transmitter and a few minicams, so Amelia’s viewers would get to see them live their lives on her show. They would join the many other animals she had moved into life zones better able to support them. Amelia’s Animals was a very popular spin-off site in the cloud. She was curious herself to see how they did.
She was headed home, and almost to the equator, when Nicole appeared on her screen, looking upset.
“What’s wrong?” Amelia asked.
“Have you got your bears’ feed on?”
“No, why?” She turned it on and got nothing. “What happened?”
“We’re not sure, but they all went out at once. And in some of them you could see what looked like an explosion. Here.”
She tapped away, and then Amelia was looking at the Antarctic peninsula and the sea ice: then there was a bright white light, and nothing more.
“Wait, what was that? What was that?”
“We’re not sure. But we’re getting reports that it was some kind of a… some kind of an explosion. In fact there’s feed coming from someone… the UN? The Bureau of Atomic Scientists?… maybe Israeli intelligence? Anyway, there’s also been a statement released to the cloud, claiming responsibility, from something called the Antarctic Defense League. Oh, that’s it. Some kind of small nuclear incident. Something like a small neutron bomb, they’re saying.”
“What?” Amelia cried. Without planning to she sat down hard on the floor of the bridge. “What the hell? They nuked my polar bears?”
“Maybe. Listen, we’re thinking you should head to the nearest city. This seems to be some new level of protest. If it’s one of the green purity groups, they may go after you too.”
“Fuck them!” Amelia shouted, and started to beat the table leg beside her, then to cry. “I can’t believe them!”
No response from Nicole, and Amelia suddenly realized they were still transmitting her response to her audience. She cursed again and killed the feed, over Nicole’s protest. Then she sat there and cried in earnest.
The next day Amelia stood in front of one of her cameras and turned it on. She had not slept that night, and sometime after the sun had come up, looking like an atomic bomb over the eastern horizon, she had decided she wanted to talk to her people. She had thought it over while eating breakfast, and finally felt she was ready. No contact with her studio; she didn’t want to talk to them.
“Look,” she said to the camera. “We’re in the sixth mass extinction event in Earth’s history. We caused it. Fifty thousand species have gone extinct, and we’re in danger of losing most of the amphibians and the mammals, and all kinds of birds and fish and reptiles. Insects and plants are doing better only because they’re harder to kill off. Mainly it’s just a disaster, a fucking disaster.
“So we have to nurse the world back to health. We’re no good at it, but we have to do it. It will take longer than our lifetimes. But it’s the only way forward. So that’s what I do. I know my program is only a small part of the process. I know it’s only a silly cloud show. I know that. I even know that my own producers keep stringing me out in these little pseudo-emergencies they engineer because they think it adds to our ratings, and I go along with that because I think it might help, even though sometimes it scares me to death, and it’s embarrassing too. But to the extent it gets people thinking about these projects, it’s helping the cause. It’s part of the larger thing that we have to do. That’s how I think of it, and I would do anything to make it succeed. I would hang naked upside down above a bay of hungry sharks if that would help the cause, and you know I would because that was one of my most popular episodes. Maybe it’s stupid that it has to be that way, maybe I’m stupid for doing it, but what matters is getting people to pay attention, and then to act.
“So look. It’s messy now. There’s genetically modified food being grown organically. There’s European animals saving the situation in Japan. There are mixes of every possible kind going on. It’s a mongrel world. We’ve been mixing things up for thousands of years now, poisoning some creatures and feeding others, and moving everything around. Ever since humans left Africa we’ve been doing that. So when people start to get upset about this, when they begin to insist on the purity of some place or some time, it makes me crazy. I can’t stand it. It’s a mongrel world, and whatever moment they want to hold on to, that was just one moment. It is fucking crazy to hold on to one moment and say that’s the moment that was pure and sacred, and it can only be like that, and I’ll kill you if you try to change anything.
“And you know what? I’ve met some of these people, because they come to meetings and they throw things at me. Eggs, tomatoes—rocks. They shout ugly hateful things. They write even worse things from their hidey-holes. I’ve watched them and listened to them. And they all have more money and time than they really need, and so they go crazy. And they think everyone else is wrong because they aren’t as pure as they are. They are crazy. And I hate them. I hate their self-righteousness about their so-called purity. I’ve seen in person how self-righteous they are. They are so self-righteous. I hate self-righteousness. I hate purity. There is no such thing as purity. It’s an idea in the heads of religious fanatics, the kind of people who kill because they are so good and righteous. I hate those people, I do. If any of them are listening right now, then fuck you. I hate you.
“So now there’s a group claiming to be defending the purity of Antarctica. The last pure place, they call it. The world’s national park, they call it. Well, no. It’s none of those things. It’s the land at the South Pole, a little round continent in an odd position. It’s nice but it’s no more pure or sacred than anywhere else. Those are just ideas. It’s part of the world. There were beech forests there once, there were dinosaurs and ferns, there were fucking jungles there. There will be again someday. Meanwhile, if that island can serve as a home to keep the polar bears from going extinct, then that’s what it should be.
“So, yeah. I hate these fucking murderers. I hope they get caught and thrown in jail and forced to do landscape restoration for the rest of their lives. And if people decide it’s best, I’m going to take more polar bears south. And this time we’ll defend them. No one gets to drive the polar bears to extinction just because they’ve got some crazy idea of purity. It isn’t right. Purity my ass. The bears have priority over a creepy, stupid, asshole idea like that.”