She got a message from Mamá to call her—why was she awake so early?
“Hija, eso del catarro es mentira total,” she said when Irene called back. My girl, this stuff about the cold is a total lie. She always spoke Spanish with Irene.
“¿Banderas? ¿Cómo? No nos miente el Prez nunca.” Flags? How? The Prez never ever lies to us. Irene could be snide in both languages.
It’s one way to get rid of people. A cold. Fake colds, Mamá said.
Irene was pretty sure the Sino cold was real, even if it ought to be called something nonracist, like maybe the delta cold. Fake colds? She believed that, too. The Prez might do anything and get away with it. She knew his attractive persona was fake. Mamá had demonstrated in an underground art piece how his face had been sculpted over time to look handsome and his body to look vigorous. Not much could be done about his mind, though. Before Irene could answer, Mamá asked:
How far are you from the city of Wausau?
Close. Only a few miles. Was Mamá coming to visit? Oh, no. She’d wind up in a screaming battle with Alan and Ruby for sure, and Irene would be fired, and Nimkii …
Just asking. I want to send you some information.
About what? It could only be one thing, one exciting thing, the mutiny. Yes, Mamá.
I’ll send it to you with a secure courier.
Okay. Lately life had been one long series of frustrations, and now something would change—for the better, Mamá was sure, and Irene wanted to believe that. They chatted a little more.
Mamá asked, How is the pedazo? The piece—the piece of her heart and soul, a nickname for Nimkii in the language that meant family and affection for Irene. No one besides Mamá knew how thoroughly she loved him, and while her mother might never forgive her for failing to become an artist like herself, she seemed to accept Irene’s love of nature and its wonders. Then Mamá, who had gotten up ridiculously early to set up an art show, had to go.
Mamá, the artist. Irene was a work of art, of genetic art, unique—Mamá always said that. Irene had talked about that once with Peng. He was an old friend of Mamá’s, both of them with similar artistic aspirations. His answer was a little cagey, as usual, and said his art was all about making people who could be their best, and every single person was unique by genetics and environment. For Irene, being that close to art all the time hadn’t made her feel good about becoming an artist. Irene had seen how her mother struggled, and hardship hadn’t turned her into a better person.
Irene also didn’t look at all like Mamá, who had invented the story of a brief love affair to explain the difference. A lot needed to be unpacked in that, and someday the right day might arrive when they could talk about it.
She guessed it was finally was safe to go downstairs. Ruby was at her desk in the living room and never liked to talk to her much anyway, so Irene had the kitchen to herself. Still, the silence felt edgy. She ate some toast and drank a little cheap synthetic coffee, the best the family could afford, as she checked the official news on her phone. Yes, new restrictions had been proposed, but only for resettlement of refugees, not routine travel. And yes, a minor cold was circulating, but not another killer epidemic, so don’t worry about it. Finding the Line didn’t have a new video. Too bad. It would have skewered the flag-versus-cold thing hilariously.
By the time she slipped on her fluorescent orange staff vest and left the farmhouse, the sun had just risen over the horizon and the sky was clear.
Alan and Will had been busy. A big American flag, creased from long storage, hung tacked to the window frame on the barn’s second story. A smaller flag flew from a staff in front of the farmhouse, and two little flags, the kind handed out for rallies or parades, were taped to the outer gate on Nimkii’s pen. The bright colors of the flags contrasted with the worn, faded paint on the barn and house.
She hoped good weather would attract visitors. If none came today, Alan’s aggrieved prayers at dinner would be especially hard to listen to, asking not for blessings but curses. If there is a god, he/she/they/it is not petty and vengeful.
Meanwhile, without help as usual, she had to feed Nimkii breakfast, and as she did, she thought about ways to attract visitors and money. Maybe an observation tower would provide a better view of Nimkii, but even a simple construction project would cost a few thousand dollars. A robot to help with chores would never happen.
Would passenger pigeons really help? What attracted a lot of visitors was the zoos for mythical creatures like engineered unicorns, dragons, and bigfoots, no matter how poorly made and sickly they were. Nimkii was different, real. Peng had found a research paper that included Nimkii’s DNA and called it extraordinarily well thought through.
An hour later, she heard horse hooves on the driveway. The staff at a stable a mile away urged riders to visit the farm and the mammoth, and every time mounted visitors came, Nimkii would stop what he was doing to watch the horses.
But the visitors would come from the south and observe the worn graffiti on the pavement—predating Irene’s arrival—of the word cloNE surrounded by a circle and cut through with a slash. Ban clone. Irene felt dismayed by the graffiti and by its poor execution, upper- and lower-case letters mixed for no reason and a rather squarish circle—like it or not, she would always be the daughter of an artist. More important, it threatened Nimkii. She’d asked Alan about spray-painting over it.
“It’s not the best way
