The Tennessee had been going to shit, and neither of us had any idea how to stop it from spiraling completely out of control. Worse yet, Billy and I were alone; we were stuck here.
Parker, who was my personal attendant on the Tennessee, called out, “Can you hear me, Cager? What is that thing with stripes and orange hair? Do you know? Will he be kind to me?”
I waded in a little closer to shore, but only about three steps. Then I backed up one. I tried to make my voice as normal sounding and calm as possible. There was no need for me to shout at Parker, because the guy did have pretty good hearing.
“How did you get up in the tree?” I asked him.
But Parker had to yell for me to hear him clearly, which certainly agitated the tiger, who clawed at and chewed on the trousers I’d dropped beside the lake. “I floated up here, two days ago when the gravity turned off. The thing with the stripes who is eating your trousers right now has been walking around here in Alberta ever since.”
When the Tennessee’s gravity failed, all the animal cogs must have gotten out of the zoo.
A zoo without gravity can easily become a battlefield for clashing survival instincts.
The tiger chewed and chewed.
“Tell him to stop eating my fucking trousers,” I said.
I was mad!
And Parker, being the rigidly programmed horny but obedient valet cog that he was, said, “You! Thing! Stop eating Cager Messer’s fucking trousers!”
And the tiger, being the rigidly programmed large predatory cat cog that he was, snorted and growled, shook my trousers wildly in his teeth, and ripped them to shreds.
“Bad idea,” Billy whispered.
“Fine. Now I don’t have any trousers. Stupid fucking tiger.”
“Tigers are dicks,” Billy said.
“I think I should wait up here in the tree for a few more days, Cager,” Parker said.
“It’s only a tiger, Parker.” But I wondered when—if ever—in the history of humankind, anyone had ever said It’s only a tiger. “But he’s a cog. He won’t do anything to us. Watch. I’ll show you so you can climb down from the tree.”
Then I cupped my hands around my mouth, forming a megaphone with my fingers, and said this: “Attention, tiger! You need to go back to the zoo immediately! My name is Cager Messer, and my father owns this ship! Do you hear me? I am Anton Messer’s son, Cager, and I am telling you to return to the zoo!”
And that was when the tiger ate Billy Hinman’s trousers too.
No animals, not even fake ones, like being in zoos.
Billy Hinman said, “Plan B: Cager and Billy stay naked in the lake for the next five days, waiting for a fucking tiger to die of boredom.”
What could I say? I never had a Plan A to begin with.
Fortunately for us, we did not have to wait five days in the lake. Something else, which was enormously tall, judging by the rattling and swaying of the fake cedars or pines—or whatever—that didn’t grow or photosynthesize on the recreation deck called Alberta, came crashing toward the lake through the woods.
It was another refugee from the Tennessee’s compromised zoo: a giraffe. The thing’s head, nearly as high as the branch Parker sat on, came crashing through the canopy of Alberta’s fake forest.
And Parker yelled, “Cager?”
What did he want? I refused to be my horny cog’s fucking safari guide.
“Giraffes are nice, right?” I whispered to Billy.
Billy nodded. “And they’re bisexual.”
“What?”
“They really are,” Billy said. “Totally bisexual. They’re, like, the greatest animals ever.”
“How do you know that?”
Billy shrugged. “I just do.”
The giraffe stopped at the edge of the woods on the opposite side of the trail from where the tiger continued thrashing Billy Hinman’s trousers. The giraffe looked directly at Billy and me. He cocked his head slightly, as though waiting for one of us to say hello or something.
Also, I may as well admit this: I had never seen a giraffe before. It was very tall. And I was terrified of it too.
“Would you boys like to climb up onto my back, so I can carry you out from the lake?” the giraffe said.
He had a French accent.
“That giraffe is from France,” Billy said.
“Why the fuck would your dad make a French giraffe that talks?”
“I think the more important issue is why he would make a fucking tiger that eats trousers,” Billy said.
The tiger thrashed and thrashed.
“Bonjour, les jeunes garçons! My name is Maurice,” the giraffe said. And if giraffes could smile, Maurice was smiling at us. “But, please, let me offer you boys a ride on my back. The Alpine Tea House serves magnificent waffles. It’s just over there, at the bottom of the hiking trail. Are you hungry? J’ai très faim. Heh heh . . . I am, as you say, very hungry.”
Cogs were not supposed to get hungry. Ever. Something had been twisting out of whack on the Tennessee.
“He seems really nice, and I love waffles,” Billy said.
“Billy, I am naked. There’s no fucking way I’m riding naked on a bisexual talking giraffe to go get waffles with you,” I argued.
And Billy countered, “Cager, like you said: It’s an opportunity for you to do one of those things you may never get a chance to try doing ever again. Who’s ever gotten to ride naked on a giraffe to go get some breakfast?”
As it turned out, Billy Hinman and I did not need to carry our argument to any definite conclusion. Maurice, being the hungry French giraffe that he claimed to be, became fascinated by the tiger, who had finished eating Billy’s trousers and had moved on to his next course, which was my T-shirt.
Maurice looked at Billy and me, then apologetically said, “Excuse me. Excusez-moi, s’il vous plaît.”
Maurice spread his front legs wide and stiffly lowered his head toward the oblivious tiger, who was apparently an expert at sorting laundry and was now eating Billy’s T-shirt and socks.
Maurice cocked his head back and in one powerful thrust stabbed his pointy giraffe face directly through the tiger’s midsection.
Maurice made a sound like Mmmph mmmph mmmph! as he wriggled his face deeper inside the tiger’s body, gulping and slurping the internal components of the cat’s mechanization.
Billy Hinman said, “Okay. I take back the thing about him being the greatest animal ever.”
And the tiger, who had no discernible European accent, said, “Ow! That fucking hurts! This is all there is to life, isn’t it? Sadness and pain.”
The tiger wept and sobbed as great gushing blobs of viscous, semenlike hydraulic fluid burped from the gaping holes Maurice pierced in his torso.
Maurice ate and ate as the tiger cried and cried.
Maurice burbled, “Cette viande de tigre est délicieux!”
Four or five days in the lake was starting to look like a pretty good idea.
Parker shouted, “Cager, what do you suggest I do now?”
“Tell him to ride the giraffe,” Billy whispered.
And