The Last Gorilla: The Environmental Branch (Short Story, Part 2)

The Last Gorilla: The Environmental Branch (Short Story, Part 2) (March 14, 2005)

Note:  This part concerns the environment. The two parts of this story is a gross brush for a novel. 

            It was a time when those well established “Green Peace”-like movements were integrated within the UN; the genuine “Green Peace” proletarian groups were consistently being tamed by many subterfuge, such as trickling of financial aid, embargo policies, threats, sabotage, lack of State funding, misleading eco-research results funded by multinationals, and hostile multinational mass media. 

The consequence was that equatorial forests were practically deforested to make room for the lucrative bio-agriculture, genetically modified to resist diseases, and that produced better and many crops around the year and were void of any health risk in nutrition or natural diseases.  An individual knew his nutritional type and could select the bio-food that suited his condition.

            For that aim, a centralized powerful organization with the UN called “Defense of the Environment” was created to encourage bio-diversity and promote vegetarian eco-systems.  The goal was poetic and laudable but the secret plan was malignant and executed by ruthless mercenaries for bounty.  Already, elephants and whales were exterminated because they polluted the seas and ravaged the vast cultivated lands in India and Africa; they were of no use for mankind, and were easy to locate and exterminate.  Many species were exterminated on the ground that the analyses of their genomes were completed, thoroughly known, and samples extracted for future reproduction on demands for private billionaires or lucrative zoos. 

The young generations had plenty of digital pictures, videos, documentaries, virtual animations, and cartoons of the animal world to keep them happy and busy.  Grown ups were too busy and militarized to care about this nonsense and redundant animal world as long as they could keep dogs and cats as pets.  Sheep, cows, chickens, and pigs were deemed essential for the time until artificial meat products with various taste were chemically feasibly produced for mass consumptions.

            Chimps, macaques, and their sorts were on the verge of extermination.  The problem resided in killing the gorillas.  It was easy killing gorillas but the UN had to account for the increasing number of suicide acts among the trackers. Testimonials and statistics proved that those who committed suicide looked directly in the eyes of gorillas. The imposing gorillas sat as statues, majestic, and intelligence piercing the eyes of the bounty hunters; the mute conversation said “You may kill me; I am ready but I pity you.  After you kill me you know that you will be next to go.  If you can kill intelligent and meek mammals then your own kinds will ruthlessly kill those of you who fail to obey orders”. 

The “Defense of the Environment” executive branch was ordered to desist momentarily in the plan to exterminate gorillas. This department was glad with the decision since it had more serious categories to exterminate and they required qualitative tactics for mass extermination.  For example, the department was sending plenty of grants to figure out how to subdue rodents, ants, and cockroaches.  The final selection of strategic methods zeroed on sterilizing the females.  One study suggested growing crops that would not hurt man but would sterilize those bloody females that plagued earth sensibilities.

Soon restaurants were ordered to leave specially grown crops in strategic locations.  Soon, every morning, people were traumatized with thousands of rodents and roaches dead belly up any which way they walked.  The people were very understanding and looked at this mess valiantly for a month; a few communities participated in the collect along side the “sanitary” personnel or garbage men, wearing all sorts of gloves, masks, robes, and spraying in all directions, particularly towards their own body .  Soon, people remembered stories of the plague and the dreadful and painful dying process when infected with cholera.

The worst story came from medical research; published papers broke the surprise news: rodents and roaches, in particular, were mutating and defeating the genetically altered crops.  Other kinds of crops were to be researched but this time the crops had to be slightly poisonous to mankind. In the meantime, lethal new generations of anti-biotic were to be researched and produced in abundance to cope with a plausible cholera epidemic.  Old patent medical archives have to be dusted off in search of antibiotics that did not pass Federal regulations (and immediately shipped to under-developed States for reconfirmation of the validation process), or were not commercialized for one reason or other, or were stopped at critical phases in the testing.

Things were getting out of hands and doom was greatly exaggerated by the scary, weak, and puny spirits who never had confidence in sciences in the first place. Predicators took to the streets wearing all sorts of sacerdotal outfits or plain expensive three-piece suits and shiny red or yellow shoes that emulated cardinals or bishops or pagan shamans.  The favorite theme of the predicators was the “Coming of Time” depending of which stage of the coming they forecasted and according to which religious sect they were proselytizing.