For the last eight years, Steven had tended to the most important, most thankless job at Spokes Zoo: taking care of the squirrel.
He had asked for assistants or advanced automation, but every time he brought it up to the administration, he heard the same tired line about finances. The money just didn’t exist, he had been told to accept. Steven had thought that his superiors would be moved, if not by his old age, then by his job. Francine was the last female squirrel alive; if she died, they’d lose all hope of her species continuing on. So it was his job to watch her, feed her, and tend to her medical needs.
Over the last two weeks, she had gotten worse. Much worse. Her fur was matted, and her left eye was swollen shut. The pus around her eye glistened in her artificial moonlight, and Steven couldn’t help but wince with guilt. She lived in a simulation of the forests of centuries past, but she wasn’t satisfied. Her instincts kept her clawing away at the corner of the glass, trying to escape. And through it all, Steven had to sit and watch. He thought it was cruel. No matter how nice the habitat was, it was still ultimately a prison.
Officially, animals that were extinct in the wild couldn’t leave their habitats. Medical treatment was to be administered inside the enclosure, and under no circumstances could an animal be allowed out. With Francine, though, Steven just couldn’t accept that anymore. He didn’t know how much longer he could keep her going, so he thought that maybe he could at least let her explore his office a few times before she died. This evening was one of those times.
“Good girl, good girl. Up you go.”
Steven set Francine down on his desk, and she twitched under the harsh, unnatural light. He dimmed his lamp to try to simulate some sort of a gloom.
“Just like the moon, right?”
Francine scurried away and started sniffing around the corners of his desk. Of course she didn’t respond to him, but Steven felt his heart sink anyway. He spent a few more minutes than he needed fetching his gauze and ointments. Maybe he could give her a little time uninterrupted. When he returned to dab antiseptic on her swollen eye, she scurried away, and he couldn’t catch her. He told himself his aching fingers weren’t as nimble as they used to be, but when he finally got her in his hand, she let out such a pitiful squeak that he immediately let her go.
Maybe squirrels would live for another generation or two if he managed to keep Francine alive, but Steven couldn’t figure out how that mattered. Squirrels had gone extinct in the wild centuries ago, and really, that’s when Earth lost them. Having five living members of a species cooped up in cages didn’t mean anything had been avoided. Steven and his research colleagues always talked about the importance of this kind of work, but he was willing to wager that if any of them were here, they’d see exactly what he saw: a tired, pained, scared creature who didn’t know or care why it was being confined. It didn’t know why its pain had to go on.
Francine had climbed onto the windowsill and was staring out at the endless sea of city lights. Maybe she was looking for some nonexistent forest on the horizon, or maybe she envied the insects and vermin in the streets below. She pawed weakly at the glass and turned her good eye questioningly towards Steven. He couldn’t stand the way she looked at him. It made him feel oddly ashamed. He decided it was time to put her back in her cage.
She was determined not to cooperate. Every time Steven reached out to grab her, she let out a panicked wail and scurried farther away along the sill. When he finally got her cornered, she slipped, fell to the ground, and landed on her back with a dull thud.
“Francine!” Steven bent over and scooped her off the ground. She was limp, she was barely breathing, and she was still looking at him with that hurt, pleading eye. He stared at her vacantly for a while—maybe a minute, maybe five. Then she started to drift off to sleep. That’s what made him finally come back to his senses. Still cradling her in his arms, he pushed his way out of his office and down the stairs. He ignored his screaming knees and made it to the ground floor at nearly the same pace he started. After he was out the front doors and on the sidewalk, he brought Francine up to his eye level.
“You made it,” he whispered. “And look: the sun’s about to rise.”
He carefully lowered himself down to the cement so they could enjoy it together. He wasn’t quite sure when she died, but she was gone by the time the dawn ended. He moved her cheek with his thumb, and her head fell limply back into his lap. Like a boy ashamed of breaking a vase, Steven hid her in his coat and took her back to his apartment. Out on the balcony, he fashioned her a grave in a pot with a hyacinth as a headstone.
Within the week, Spokes Zoo forced Steven into an early retirement. He could never show his face in zoology circles again, and he was too old to start a brand new career. Instead, he pinched his pennies, spread his dollars as thin as they would go, and looked after that hyacinth like it was his own daughter. It became one of the well-known eccentricities of the neighborhood, but he didn’t realize anyone thought it was that odd. If ever asked why he cared so much, he just said he was glad his hyacinths could see the sun rise.
First published in Twenty-two Twenty-eight on November 13, 2023.