They Know I am Feral and They Are Watching

Today the newscaster exclaimed that every animal and monster had officially been tagged or tracked by satellite. This concerned me because I didn't even listen to the news, the newscaster called to let me know -- to make sure I was aware. After we hung up I could not shake the feeling that nothing is wild anymore. We know where every condor and every werewolf sleeps, breeds, and eats.

Someday we will realize how dreadful this is. I think we will eventually be so worn out from our time of orderly content that we will have to hire people to go around acting wild. It should be part of the next economic stimulus. Or maybe not. Maybe we can save that money and find people willing to do the work for free. Maybe we’ll find a young woman whose fated love died early, who is left alone and now suffers random bursts of feral behavior. We'll give her a chance, anyway. If things get out of hand, we will have to put her and the rest of her kind in the zoos where we can go and monitor the wild, forlorn creatures at a safe distance. We will do this when the mundane existence of a carefully aligned, predictable world brings us to the brink of our own insanity. We'll wave at them with our planner in hand, yell into the pen, or tap on the glass. We will even want to feed them. But no matter how much we want to, we will not feed them. We may even ask an attendant if we can toss in a few peanuts, but the attendant will point at signs that say no.

I worry about the day they tag and track me. That will be the day the tiny bit of chaos that makes life fascinating is mapped and avoided at the command of a rusty robotic voice from inside my GPS, or by a phone call from the nice, well intentioned newscaster.