Beast Machine (26 page)

“
Okay! Keep it coming,”
replied Tubman. Hitbear had fallen into the prone position and had
his hands covering his ears, as he did not believe any of the
nonsense Gora was spewing. His beliefs were firmly held.

“
Ja!” cheeped Owlbert.
“This ist enlightening! I vant more!”

“
Ha!” giggled Gora. “Just
pay attention.” She never had this sort of attention in a long time
and was enjoying being the main figure of peoples’ attention,
albeit it was creatures she had made. “This is quite nice,” she
thought.

“
Those rays go through our
atmosphere, as I previously stated,” continued Gora, “and they
essentially
bounce
off the Earth and back up toward space. On the way back up
toward space, the stratosphere
catches
most of each rays’ heat being
produced. That is where the Earth gets a majority of its heat from
– from heat being
caught
by the atmosphere from sunlight. Heat is also
given off directly when the rays first hit Earth, but the
atmosphere is what keeps it all on Earth to keep us
warm.”

“
So what’s the problem
then?” asked Tubman. “That seems pretty cut and dry. I’m not sure
how these, uh, zones came to be – probably by God or some sort of
god-like being – but what’s happening to make these zone-bobbers
weak? That seems to be where you’re headed at least.”

“
Excellent, Tubman!” said
Gora. “You are correct in that the atmospheric zones are being
weakened, but they’re being weakened by manmade means and being
weakened by an astronomically small amount of radiation from the
sunlight that permeates through
most
of the atmospheric zones every day!” Tubman smiled
and her floppy ears perked up.

“
With the weakened zones,
more radiation and heat comes with the rays. They come right
through the atmosphere with nearly their original strength.” Gora
drew the rays shooting straight through the circles representing
the atmospheric zones. “The more powerful sunlight still bounces
off the Earth and back into the atmosphere, which
catches
the more powerful
sunlight in the stratosphere. This weakens the stratosphere, where
the ozone is located, even more so than before but the stratosphere
still holds onto the heat tightly to keep the Earth warm. Except
instead of warm, it’s beginning to be blazing hot – and not just in
places that have been blazing hot for centuries. It becomes blazing
hot
everywhere
.”

Gora erased part of the
stratosphere line and draws a thinning line to represent the
current
stratosphere. She
uses orange-red chalk to draw small flames inside the Earth circle
to indicate heat levels rising. Owlbert and Tubman were gripped by
Gora’s lecture and Hitbear finally relented slightly by removing
his hands from his ears. He still held a look of stubbornness and
doubt while listening to Gora.

“
When the heat on Earth
finally gets to be too much, these places on Earth,” said Gora as
she drew the northern ice-cap and then the southern ice-cap, “will
melt completely. They’re actually melting slowly – you would have
to sit and watch them for some time to see any real change – but
they melt more significantly every day because of climate change!
Once the glaciers of the north and south icecaps are
mostly
melted, it will
cause a drastic change in nearly all our climate zones because of
mass flooding, among other issues. The world as we know, as you
used to know it, will be radically altered or completely gone if
the ice-caps melt. Not to mention all the species of plants and
animals that will go extinct as well.”

“
Wow, this is just…,”
started Tubman, “just amazing information. Why do people not want
to fix this problem right now!? Right this instant?!” Tubman began
to adjust her bandana as if she were about to get up and go solve
this climate change problem this instant. She began to sweat and
twitch like an epileptic during a rave.

“
Ja, ja!” said Owlbert,
“Vee must do something about this now! Or soon!” Owlbert joined
Tubman by beginning to have his own mini panic attack. They were
flustered about all this new information.

“
Whoa, whoa, whoa, guys!
Guys!” said Gora. “It’s a process that humans are dealing with
currently and we likely won’t see
too
much of it concern us in our
lifetime – erm, your second lifetime?” Gora had reassured them
slightly as the two panicked creatures began to slow their
breathing and cool their bodies. “Though, even the little things
help: like recycling, not dumping hazardous liquids in our
waterways and switching to an electric vehicle! Oh, and not using
gasoline powered things when you can. It all adds up!”

Gora knew, however, that
climate change was a dire situation that would lead to the Earth
dramatically changing between 2050 and 2100, if not sooner, but did
not see the reason in keeping her beasts in a frenzied state. Gora
feared what the reaction from Tubman would be if she told the
little hare that the sixth major extinction was right around the
corner!

She felt her part in the
climate change situation was ridding the scientific community of
humans like Dr. Borehole and her ilk that look to purposely
misconstrue scientific findings in order to confuse the public. The
misconstruing of facts has helped Dr. Borehole become very rich in
the process.

“
Thank you, Gora,” said
Tubman. “I don’t know what came over me!” Tubman grasped her chest
and smiled a smile of relief.

Owlbert’s feathers had been
gently ruffled during that moment of sheer anxiety, but he tucked
in any stray feathers to return to his sleek looking
self.

“
But what does manmade
pollution have to do with this all?” asked Hitbear. “You didn’t
explain that part. I think you just proved my point in that the
Earth’s climate reacts however it wants!” Hitbear was sure he had
won this debate. “The chemicals are naturally found on Earth and
Earth produces these chemicals through natural means! Volcanoes
surely make most of those toxic chemicals that harm the
o-place-thing-zone you mentioned.” Hitbear made a strange motion
with his hands to resemble a volcanic eruption and added explosion
sounds – that aren’t typical of volcanoes.

Boom! BOOOSH! Boom!
went the man bear, several times to the
displeasure of the others.

“
Ah, yes!” said Gora after
Hitbear’s volcanic presentation. “I forgot that part – thank you
Hitbear!” Gora looked at him mischievously. She was about to throw
a dagger right through the heart of his poor argument. “Sure, there
are real natural causes that harm the ozone, but it’s miniscule in
comparison to manmade pollution! The manmade pollution – from cars,
factories, coal mines, houses, even our own butts and cow butts –
weakens the atmosphere. Specifically, it weakens the ozone layer in
the stratosphere, just like the sunlight, or rays, have been doing
for – for a very long time. Except the manmade pollution is
escalating the process so much faster than the sunlight has been
doing for the past billions of years! We are speeding up the death
of life.”

Hitbear blew air fiercely
out his nose and furiously scratched at his neck. He was trying
desperately to think of anything to salvage this argument. But Gora
had blinded – erm – destroyed him with science and common sense; he
had no argument to retort.

Tubman’s heart began to
race once again at the thought of the Earth coming to an abrupt end
and fainted dramatically. Gora had not noticed the hare fall on her
back. Gora and Hitbear were still debating the merit of “manmade
climate change” despite coming to the conclusion that manmade
climate change was real.

Only Owlbert paid mind to
the fainting hare. Owlbert began to fan the hare with one of his
wings to ease her anxiety stricken body.

“
Not to mention, we humans
have changed the landscape of the Earth so much by altering
waterways, overfishing oceans and lakes, acidification of oceans,
deforestation – this kills the home of an incredible amount of
organisms! – and by generally just being the worst organisms to
walk the face of the Earth, aside from rats. Rats are the rodent
form of humans.” Gora sighed at the thought of how much damage
humans have done in such a short amount of time, geologically
speaking, but finally smiled because she was finally going to shut
up Hitbear.

Tubman regained her
consciousness and thanked Owlbert for fanning her.

“
Psh, that’s dumb,” said
Hitbear, knowing that his argument was for naught now.

“
You lost, it’s not dumb,”
said Gora with a giant smile on her face. Tubman and Owlbert
laughed at Hitbear’s visible frustration.

“
WHATEVER!” screamed
Hitbear. “Are we going to kill this woman or pretend that we can
actually save the world from its eventual destruction?”

Chapter 25
Damage Control!

It had been nearly a week
since Chairman Obelis had various objects hurled at him in a
crammed gymnasium in the town of Bella Vista. Jeffrey, and McCarthy
behind the veil of a computer and telephone, had been working on
damage control.

Jeffrey was assuaging the
situation at hand; the situation that Chairman Obelis had gotten
himself into in a smelly, crammed gymnasium at the beginning of a
debate. Not often does a debate end before the opening statements
even end, but somehow Chairman Obelis accomplished that feat rather
swiftly by pissing off every single Bella Vista resident in that
gymnasium.

Luckily for Chairman
Obelis, most, if not all, audio recordings of the opening
statements caught by local reporters were destroyed since the local
reporters, too, were outraged at Chairman Obelis’ harsh opening
statement. So outraged, that the reporters threw their audio
recorders at Chairman Obelis and the reporters didn’t care to
recover them. None of them seemed to report anything of substance
other than Chairman Obelis being “highly disrespectful” to the city
of Bella Vista and the state of Arkansas.

There wasn’t a single full
video of his opening statement, either, as the expensive local news
cameras – which weren’t tossed but knocked over by incoming items –
were destroyed or the memory cards malfunctioned, but there were
countless upon countless cell phone videos of the items being
thrown at the brave, if not stupid, Chairman Obelis standing firm
at his podium. The cell phone videos provided several angles of the
fracas but the sound was so distorted by the yelling that what
Chairman Obelis was saying couldn’t be deciphered.

The videos quickly found
refuge on the internet by way of Twitter, YouTube, Instagram,
Facebook and Vine; national media partners and websites quickly
played as many of the videos as they could of a political race that
they had zero interest in before. The videos were a hit and 24-hour
news channels had to cover the hits!

The videos’ popularity made
the Arkansas governor’s race gain immense traction throughout the
nation and on websites that shared domestic and foreign views
alike. Everyone wanted to know what would happen next in the
governor’s race for a state that neither Democrats nor Republicans
seemed to care about.

The videos didn’t harm
Chairman Obelis’ campaign or image, outside of Bella Vista, but it
led the rest of the nation to believe that Arkansans were a rowdy,
brackish bunch that angered easily.

Which was true; however,
Chairman Obelis wanted Arkansas to be the benchmark for how states
– American and otherwise – should operate, and wanted every
Arkansan to be filled to the brim with knowledge, happiness and
curiosity. He knew that the Bella Vistans in that crammed gymnasium
were merely acting human, but each view of the videos only
reinforced the thought that Arkansans were rowdy and brackish.
Mainstream news wouldn’t pull any punches either – let alone scrape
up context.

Every television in
Chairman Obelis’ main Arkansas house was turned on, each to a
different station. Each station was covering the wild debate
videos, even Spanish and Arabic channels were covering the nonsense
found in the videos. Most foreign stations mocked the people
throwing objects and used it as more fuel, rightfully so in this
instance, to poke fun at how Americans act.

“
Cantankerous, and likely
drunk, residents of Bella Vista hurled their shoes, chairs, cell
phones, and even their children’s diapers at Arkansas gubernatorial
candidate, Huxley Obelis
,” said one of the
24/7 news stations every time the video played, which was played
every fifteen minutes for a week straight. Then played at every
half hour interval for two more weeks.

“
Unruly humans toss debris
and their own items at political candidate that hurt their
feelings
,” read a headline on a popular
news site. The accompanied picture was of an elderly woman in
raggedy overalls frothing at the mouth; it was an unrelated picture
but was used to describe the average person that was in the
gymnasium that night to an audience around the world.

“
The people of Arkansas are
unhappy with gubernatorial candidate, Huxley Obelis, because he
insulted the University of Arkansas football program!”
said another all-day news station.
“
Find out more about the state that cares
more about athletics than their own well-being at six during a
special broadcast!
” Video clips of the
University of Arkansas football team went across the screen. Then
videos of couches being burned in the streets were
shown.