A New Wilderness

At eighteen, I was sure I would not live to see my next birthday. The world was too cruel, and I wished to be rid of it. But here I am, at thirty, sitting at a nice restaurant. My sister sings happy birthday to me as we stare at the single slice of cake the waiter had delivered to our table. She claps her hands together, eyes crinkling with a smile. Though she’s a grown woman of her own, I still see her as my little sister, forever preserved in my mind as the girl of seventeen laughing and dancing in the kitchen.

As I blow out the candle, Heart next to me tries to climb up the table to get a better look at the chocolate cake. She had always been fond of chocolate.

Heart is an Android bear, one of the first of the new line of technology that developed robots who were all inspired from beloved childhood toys. In my younger years, she was a tiny fragile stuffed bear with light beige fur, red pyjamas, and a red ribbon on her right ear. I had crafted a personality for her through child’s play: she sings with a high baby-ish voice, laughs too much, and is friendly and brave, unafraid to befriend people and animals larger than her.

When I first learned of the Android project, I had spent a great deal of money just to have Heart immortalised into a robot so that I can talk to her in real life and not worry about damaging her frail body. Her new robot body is wonderfully crafted, stronger and yet still as cuddly with her soft synthetic fur.

As Heart pokes at the cake with a fork, sighing glumly as she knows she can’t eat it even if she wants to, I glance outside from the window seat we are at.

I spot a family of Bears —real bears, not Android bears like Heart — snuggling together under a bistro roof, trying to keep warm from the cold rain. The father Bear removes his scarf from his neck and wraps it around his Cub. The mother Bear moves to say something to her husband. Her Bear snout moves eerily similar to the way a human mouth moves when speaking. Though animals have evolved into Animals when I turned twenty-two, I’m still not used to seeing human-like intelligence and characteristics on the bodies and faces of beasts of wild and burden.

A police officer — a human one — walks up to the family of Bears. He yells at them, his voice penetrating the glass window slightly, enough for me to hear him but not enough to know what he’s saying. I assume though that he’s trying to get the Bears to leave, as this part of Manila no longer allows loitering or standing by idly. “Not good for town reputation and upkeep,” the mayor had said on TV last week.

The father Bear tries to argue with him, but the police officer won’t have any of it. I’m still staring at the commotion outside even as my sister tries to ask me if I’d prefer to order lasagna or fish and chips. Heart is still on the table, but now she has smeared the chocolate cake on her paws and snout, giggling as she does so. At the back of my head, I think about the bath I’d have to give Heart when we get home to get the chocolate off her fur. Good thing the new Android robots are waterproof.

The commotion outside has worsened. The Cub is crying now, clinging tightly to his mother, and the mother Bear is covering his ears with her paws. The father Bear is still arguing with the police officer. I can faintly hear his angry voice. “We’re just trying to get shelter from the rain!” he growls.

Without warning, the police officer swings his fist at the father Bear, hitting him squarely between the eyes. Though the Bear is bigger than the man, he still stumbles backward and clutches his head painfully with his claws. He knows better than to retaliate and fight against a human.

“Filthy beasts,” the police officer snarls. “Go back to the forest and live there instead of mucking up our streets. Fucking ‘evolution’ yadda yadda. Stop acting like humans and know your place! No amount of strutting on two legs or conversing with us is gonna hide your stink and your fur.”

The father Bear glares at him, but he doesn’t say anything back. His wife is shushing him, pulling him away from the police officer as the man spits at their feet. The Cub is still crying.

When I finally look away from the commotion, my sister says, “Damn, that stuff outside got pretty intense, no? And on your birthday too. Yikes.”

Heart tries to clean herself up with a napkin as the waiter across the restaurant laughs fondly at the sight.

As I try to get my appetite back to eat the fish and chips my sister ordered for me, I gulp down the sickness threatening to overcome me. What kind of world do I live in, where Android bears are treated with more kindness and respect than Bears who didn’t ask to evolve into the beings they are now? No one asks nature for evolution: nature simply does what she does.

But why am I surprised? If discrimination and injustice already happened to my fellow humans before the Animals came, then it is no surprise that they are the next to suffer the cruelty.

I take a bite out of my meal and close my eyes, trying to forget what I saw outside. Happy freaking birthday to me.