“You don’t look too bad,” I tell her, almost taking her arm. “How was it-Lovely Lane? How was the funeral?”
“It’s something else,” she whispers. “It’s the first time I’ve heard the minister refer to the subsequent amputation of the widow’s arms during a proper kind of ceremony. I mean, I know the story, but I don’t care. It made the minister seem a little bit inside Like he had his own blog or whatever. I took two propranolol-I’m not coming across numb, am I?”
“The opposite.”
“Thank you.”
I check my watch. “Seven-thirty.”
Laurie looks past me. “When the band finishes, we should go in. Oh, I think they may have just stopped. On cue.”
A sweetly modulated voice urges us to head into the Kel-Shor Virtual Pond. I’ve got to say, I feel sick to my stomach, but some of the people rushing past me, they look like they’re heading into a medieval tribunal. Someone has defaced one of the Frog Cycle posters; now, a drop of blood hangs from the gopher frog’s bottom lip.
“So the Kel-Shor people seem happy,” I say. “Naïve.”
“They know,” she says. “We had to tell them about the misfire. The scientists, um, I think they were persuasive.” “So I’m the naïve one, actually.”
Laurie nods.
“You ready?”
“Let’s go.”
The Kel-Shor Virtual Pond is a five-thousand-square-foot body of water encased in glass with about twenty yards of open air above it. The scientists have really, really messed with nature and speeded up the virtual frogs’ metabolisms. They’ve rigged the weather in the pond so the frogs go through one year in about three hours. What happens is, you sit there looking at the pond in winter, and the frogs are frozen and the pond is frozen and all of the plants are either dead or frozen and the air looks forbidding. So you watch, and the artificial sun gets brighter and the plants bud and start to grow and the ice on top of the pond breaks and the water totally sparkles and it’s fresh-looking and the frogs start to come to life.
The pond is ringed by a metallic mesh barrier, and it’s covered with a frosted white plastic dome. Beneath the dome, green and brown blobs move like blips on a cardiac monitor.
Movie theater seats run in tiers at a steep stadium pitch away from the pond. The capacity is 312. The first three rows are reserved for staff, VIPs, and the differently abled.
I’m in the front row, at a bad angle, getting settled into my seat, when a taut woman in a forest-green sheath, pearls, and sparkling silver flip-flops gives me her hand and introduces herself as Rie. I’ve already been briefed on her; she’s a potential “problem,” so I’ve got to baby-sit.
“My brother runs Kel-Shor,” she says, and plops into the seat beside me.
Without warning, the dangling halogen chandeliers begin to dim and the Frog Cycle soundtrack-cellos, moogs, crickets, a faux-Enya-swells over the sound system.
The modulated voice, this time slightly perturbed, says, “Welcome to the Kel-Shor Corporation’s Virtual Pond, home to Frog Cycle.”
Applause. Applause. Standing O. Someone says hush. Ssshhh The cowfolk settle themselves.
Rie sort of winces at me, and then the funniest thing happens: She takes my hand.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“I’m scared
“It’s fine. I’ve seen it twenty-seven times. It’s astonishing.”
The voice is back: “The development of a successful farming industry-for any amphibious species-depends on the regular and predictable supply of eggs. To harness efficient, safe technologies, to spawn domesticated amphibious species, is the goal. We look to Frog Cycle in the Kel-Shor Virtual Pond. We look. We see.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Rie whispers.
“The company thinks it’s subliminal,” I say. “Believe me.”
“I hate my brother.”
“Oh.”
The frosted dome cover begins to gently lift from the Virtual Pond. It hovers for a moment before it snaps into a lattice harness on the ceiling, pulling with it, like so many spider webs, the clinking clear-filament netting that encloses the pond and its environment.
Rie whispers, “Whoa.”
Uncovered, the Virtual Pond looks like a cel from a Pixar movie. The blues are so wet and the greens are so crisp. The plantlife is gnarled but it’s accented with, um, “cute” touches, such as tawny freckled trunks and smile-pattern leaves. The water itself is clear as a spring. Silver fish dive and spiral to the surface. You can see the pebbled bottom-ferns, tricks of light, the blipping brown creatures.
At first, you don’t think that the showpiece frogs, the engineered virtuals, are in the pond. You think they’re waiting for the air to warm up, for the sun to blaze a little bit more brilliantly.
I look down the aisle, trying to catch Laurie’s eyes, when it happens. The gasps-all at once, like the whoosh of a roller coaster twisting its first descent. Rie’s got a strong grip, the muscles in my arm are tense where her fingers poke me.
“It’s them,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say.
Them. Three chunky brown rocks covered with moss at the edge of the water. The three sit side by side like little lords, grinning insouciantly. Like boulders that grin-broad, immovable.
Until it moves.
The smallest-it’s the size of a small fat cat-opens its mouth and lets out a low rumble. It lifts its head and takes an astonishing leap and lands with a moist thud, eight yards to its left, scattering a group of small navy-green pygmy frogs, who let out high-pitched shrieks.
The voice purrs: “In spring, the frogs come out of hibernation. To mate.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Rie says. She lets go of my arm and makes a pucker-face at me.
The voice goes on: “The male frog embraces the female, holding her tight with his arms. This is the act of oviposition. It may last several days.”
“Oh, come on!” Rie snorts.
The second of the three virtual frogs flies into the air and leaps the entire long length of the pond, like a hurdler showing off. It lands on the opposite shore, bellowing in the direction of a tiny albino toad. Its glistening haunches tremble in the light.
Suddenly, lights mounted in the pond increase in brightness so the water’s utterly translucent. There are hundreds of tadpoles in the water, zipping in circles.
The voice says, “Cell Scope scientists have patented a gene technique that speeds up the frog’s internal clock.”
“That’s enough,” Rie says. She looks out at the audience, in tiers behind us and in a high, quivering voice shouts, “Somebody stop the music!”
There’s some laughter, a lot of shhs and “be quiets.” I’m relieved. The audience is loving Frog Cycle. The way you love a hunt, a dog fight. You’re supposed to yell, Stop! Maybe you’re supposed to yell, Somebody stop the music!
I take Rie’s hand. “This is real,” I tell her. “This is really happening.”
Suddenly I feel warmth. I smell algaeic warm wet air. Breath. Venting on my cheek and down my neck. I look over at Rie, and she shakes her head at me. “It’s not me, asshole,” she says.
I turn and meet its eye. The biggest frog. We’re talking twenty pounds. It’s less than a yard from me, its big bull head pushing against the mesh barrier, wheezing and looking right at me. A string of drool hangs from its lower lip.