Brooklyn B. sits down across from him.
“Sorry to bother you. Would you mind, whenever you have a chance, stopping by my room? My window is stuck. I can’t get it open no matter how—”
“Can’t. Sorry.”
He labors down the hall to Pinky, who is still on the bathroom floor. Her feathers are as limp as her tiny tongue, which hangs out of her mouth. A crust has formed in the corner of her eyelids; a gray film dulls her orange eyes. He begs his ElderScreen for answers, for guidance, but it only shows him a video of a genetic scientist shaking hands with a fast-food CEO amidst a crowd of cheering children. There is no video about how to care for a dactyl because dactyls are meant to die. He should have seen death coming. Death is everywhere. It’s being born that’s a surprise.
He keeps scrolling, frantic, until his clicking is like stabbing, until he finds a video from an activist group, a video the ElderScreen is probably not supposed to show. It is the inside of an industrial barn, rows and rows of dactyls with feeding tubes shoved down their throats, conveyor belts carrying away their shit. He can almost smell the stench of prehistoric death. These dactyls look so different from Pinky—not pink at all, but a faded beige, as if they’d been sun-bleached. Then there is a closeup of the dactyls, and he can see they are matted in something, particles of feed and feather, or maybe they have been sprayed with a thick layer of fungicide or insecticide, to ward off pests in the inhospitable modern environment. Whatever it is, they are choked with this dust, all their color blotted out. There is truly no hope in this world. He can’t let Pinky die, although he knows for himself what it feels like to be not so far from death and wanting it to just happen already. He does not want to be saved. Does she? He lies beside her, although it is excruciating for the sharp edges and tender meat of his body. He may not be able to get himself up again, but if he cannot help her, he must at least share her pain. He embraces her on the slick indifference of the bathroom floor. She coos in a quiet voice he has not heard before.