One Hundred Years Later. Alberto Vazquez-Figueroa
were two massive mastiffs who really knew how to make an impression by snarling and baring their teeth.
Even if the heat encouraged the sick to stay in their homes and await their fate with resignation, it did not dissuade the hungry, who left in search of anything that might soothe their pangs.
But there was nothing left.
Five weeks after the first alarms set off, and even though it happened within Chinese borders, the citizens of the world’s largest cities threw themselves like a plague at the supermarkets, leaving the shelves so empty that looking at them was painful.
Many had not seen an orchard in their whole lives and some even believed that carrots grew on trees.
Admittedly, these city people were very good at technology.
Little did it help when companies started closing, first out of fear of infection and then because of lack of supplies.
Around the world, stock markets had plummeted by the billion during a tragic spring and summer in which swimming suits disappeared from beaches.
A beautiful three mast yacht with red sails that belonged to a banker from Panama left to the Pacific Ocean with provisions to last him six months and the logical hope that the whole thing would be over in that time.
Authorities used its GPS location to see that it had not docked in any port nor disembarked in any island, but by September, an Australian cargo ship found it floating in the middle of nowhere.
No one answered their calls, so they left them to continue their way, even though there was not a breath of wind and yet their the helixes were still.
When she read the news, Aurelia thought of an old Samoan song:
Still and speechless drift the Dead,
the sail’s shade protects them.
Beneath the keels the sea laments
and the sun points Westward.
You will be merrier in Noa-Noa,
by the fires of Tehemaní,
hearing the voice of Taharoa
fall soft over the eternal sea.
She could not remember more of the song, other than an allusion to the paradise that awaited the audacious sailors who had dared to defy waves and wind as they advanced into the largest of oceans, with the intention of populating all its coasts, from New Zealand to Isla de Pascua.
Aurelia missed the early mornings spent reading books with exotic settings, before her mother told her to tidy up her room and feed the animals–the latter she hated on account of a damned cockerel that had developed a certain animosity against her ankles.
Their fierce feud ended with the vicious bird’s transformation from troublemaker to pepitoria sauce, but the girl did not feel all that happy about the way their quarrel was settled; with a swing of the axe perpetrated by her mother, who then delegated the task of plucking its feathers to Aurelia.
***
Óscar was born in a farm and had grown up among animals; he spent hours with them, tended them, petted them, named them, so that as soon as he learned how to read and write, he saw that he would have to learn a lot more if he truly wanted to become a veterinarian doctor.
He devoted himself to his dream, was first in school, and won a scholarship that would allow him to dedicate the rest of his life to dogs, cats, pigs and horses.
He was lucky to have crossed paths with a professor who knew how to give proper guidance to his students; a man who could ask a wolf what was hurting him and have the animal reply.
In fact, Mr. Dionisio did not really ask, nor did the animals really reply. He just watched them, spoke to them as if they were old friends, whispered soothing words and tickled them behind their ears–what he called the “G spot” for tranquility.
“If you make an animal feel relaxed, it well end up telling you one way or another what its problems are. However, if it stays tense, you’ll probably just get bitten.”
When the rumors started about a strange disease that had started in a remote region of China, many voices denied the virus the right to be called a living thing, as it could only reproduce by infecting foreign cells and hijacking their metabolism.
However, two American biologists compared the protein structures of several cells and viruses, finding types that were related to each other but separated by centuries. According to them, viral families that belonged to the same order had originated in a common ancestral virus.
Part of the confusion was due to the abundance and diversity of viruses, because, even though only five thousand had been identified, some experts claimed that there could be almost a million of them.
The ones that caused the diseases imitated the system of fabrication of proteins of the cell they invaded and then made copies of themselves until they finally owned the person.
Seeing that, Mr. Dionisio asked his students to conduct an exhaustive study on the fauna of the region where it had all started, considering the possibility that some imprudent local had eaten the wrong animal for breakfast and thus created the disease. According to the professor, the possibility of new diseases being transmitted from animals to humans had real foundations.
Dogs, monkeys, rats and bats were some of the animals that became suspects the moment there was an outbreak of a new disease. The latest accused, the Asian pangolin, had been freed of all charges, which was more of a reason to redouble their efforts to find the original transmitter.
“We must center our focus in the animal market,” said Mr. Dionisio, who had decided to put all his students’ knowledge as well as his own at the service of that urgent cause. “After research was done on bird flu, experts located the origin in some chickens that had been infected by fecal remains; excrements that had fallen from higher cages. Even though China has forbidden the consumption of wild animals, I doubt the prohibition had any real effect.”
“Why?” asked Óscar, who was fascinated by the topic. After all, his family lived in a farm surrounded by forests that were full of wild animals.
“Because it’s simply impossible to control fifteen hundred billion people with such deeply rooted traditions. Markets like the one in Wuhan, where wild and domestic animals mingle in the worst hygienic conditions, constitute the perfect habitat for viruses such as this one, which are astonishingly smart.”
“Viruses can’t be ‘smart’.”
“They must be. They were around thousands of years before us, and will still be here thousands of years after they finally finish us. Humans have hunted since the beginning of their existence, although not the numbers that they do now, and the ‘Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species’ has no jurisdiction in China, Vietnam or those African countries where people eat the uncooked meat and brains of dogs. That’s why the danger doesn’t lie on the consumption alone, but mostly on trade, and this could be a fantastic opportunity for the revision of laws on animal rights.” Mr. Dionisio was an expert in the topic and after a brief pause in which he caught his breath, he continued. “In many regions of Africa, Asia and South America, food stalls have a part that is visible from the street but also keep a back room where they hide forbidden species. The problem is that we can’t just tell the natives to stop eating something without providing them with an alternative.”
“And does that alternative exist?”
“It is said that humans use three thousand animal species for their consumption, but these numbers are wrong because it only registers the twenty types of insects, when we know that these ascend to two thousand. If the hungry have to turn to desperate measures, those whose stomachs are full should not complain when their own greed ends up killing them.”
That last sentence made Óscar wonder who the people with the “full stomachs” were.
The “full stomached” are those who always need more.
Not