The Refreshing, Post 8...

8.

We found out how the rest of us would be affected later that night. I guess to allow relatives of the missing (presumed to be animal) people appropriate time to take the news in and for grief, acceptance or whatever to set in before having to deal with their own fate, the report went off the air for a couple of hours, and ended with a scrolling list of the thought-to-be victims of the cloud (starting with Jimmy Scott) running in silence against a black background. Regular scheduled programming returned. After I flicked through six channels and only found a bunch of celebrities ballroom dancing, some infomercial for a device to make juice cartons easier to open, what appeared to be some really cheap “erotic” (read: not very) vampire movie (with a leading actress whose only lighting was across her eyes), another light comedy show starring another new teen singing sensation, devised purely with record sales in mind but with some damn catchy songs that refused to leave my head, the end of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (hell, I would have watched that over anything, and double hell, it was the Puma Man episode, my favorite), and lastly, one of those talk shows where the wild-haired, even wilder-attired host talks to his guests’ dead relatives, I switched off and went for the walk I never managed to go on before. Subconsciously I may have been hoping that the latest developments had sent Kimberly back out into the hall again, but they hadn’t. They had sent her to my room to find me however, which I discovered when I came back from my walk to find her stood in my doorway, leaning against my door (luckily she was thinking clearly enough not to break down my door and let herself in…I would have run away if she had gone that far), panting heavily, hair all bedraggled (in a sexy ruffled way), staring at me like she wanted to eat me. Then she said to me, breathlessly “They reckon folks are turning into animals”. I agreed that yes, that seemed to be happening, but…Well, I didn’t quite get to tell her that it was only people above the cloud that were changing, as she had grabbed my shirt and tugged me toward her, saying “I wanna get animal”. The absurdity of this particular situation didn’t have time to hit me, as she kissed me (and I started thinking that she might try to eat me after all), and I unlocked the door as fast as I could.
It was going to happen to all of us.
The news came back on a couple of hours later, and this time they cut right to the chase. The cloud was descending slowly but surely. The camera crew and spectators in Chicago were still on top of the apartment building when the cloud dropped again. Animals came down. Around the world, animals had come down from the buildings where the cloud had lowered, many places were now half gone above the cloud. My apartment block is only five storeys high (I’m on the third), and the cloud was scraping the roof. Based on all the research that had been done, the cloud lowered twice a day, and going by the distance it came down each time, it only had to drop twice more to reach the earth. Twice more meant one day. One day left and the cloud would have absorbed us all, turning us all into animals, birds, insects and other creatures (maybe some might not even change into living things, but the hope was that we all would)…into anything but human beings. It appeared that animals, birds, insects and other creatures would not be affected. In a morally and ethically questionable move a couple of different animals had been sent above the cloud and had come back down, unchanged after three seconds, unchanged after five, ten, thirty seconds. The longest they tried to keep them up there was five minutes, before it was decided that it didn’t look like they would be changing. Peculiarly though, at one point a hamster was put up in its cage, and after three seconds a tug was felt, but then they brought it back down to find that only the cage had changed...into a wallaby, with the hamster nestled safely in its pouch. It took a lot of work to resolve that situation, the wallaby being understandably miffed. In retrospect, it could have been worse. It could have been a full grown kangaroo.
So, humans being changed into animals, animals staying animals, buildings being changed into trees and mountains, trees and mountains staying as they are. Still no idea why. The most common explanation being that the human race, and all traces of its imprint on the planet were being wiped out, possibly by a higher power. With this being the best theory that could be found, and the closest to an actual scientifically supported explanation anyone could give, the majority of the world went with it. The world leaders and world media certainly did. That was where the “Refreshing” business began, and the attempts to stem the now certain hysteria, expected to break out en masse, on a larger scale than even before (and I had twice witnessed one of the potential effects of the hysteria).
This was not the end of the world, they were saying, rather it was the end of the world as we knew it (because that made it better, apparently), and the birth of a new world. Everything we knew, all the human race had done, was being Refreshed, made new again. It was like they were promoting this thing, making it out to be for the greater good. Sure, all the wrongs mankind has been responsible for were about to be erased and corrected, but what about what we got right? Simple, just cross our fingers and hope that the next human race (if there ever will be another) gets it right. Some bull about the species leaving behind its greatest legacy, sacrificing itself for the prolonged continuation of the most beautiful and incredible of all the planets. Failing to mention that this was not a choice, hoping that people would be gullible enough to accept that notion, and quietly (and peacefully) sit back and wait for the cloud to take them.