Dogs of Orninica Read online

  How will I pull it off? I've recently been able to meet the needs of my good friends in the pornography industry by pushing forward a default government censor of all adult materials on the Internet. It's still in the planning stages, but very soon an announcement will be made, and an immense and constantly-growing blacklist of obscene websites will remove billions of pages from the public Internet.

  We will of course use this morality censor to also wipe out piracy, and it can even be extended to target every one of our foes, such as political dissidents, loudmouthed action groups, alternative medicine peddlers and whistle-blowers. If a troublemaker manages to get his voice heard offline somehow, we'll just blame the wider than planned censorship on bugs in the censoring software. As for porn, dogs will just be forced to go back to buying it from under the counter, the old fashioned way. Everyone wins.

  Inside these walled gardens, we will ban all non-approved applications from being installed. Each application will need to be approved by the manufacturer of the device, and of course only applications that don't risk damaging your business model will be considered by your technicians for activation.

  In this digital utopia I'll shortly bring you, expensive proprietary software will rule the roost once again, everything enclosed in corporate-run walled gardens, that will funnel all user activity to the all seeing eyes of Orninica's surveillance agencies. There will be no more privacy, file-sharing, free speech or any of those dangerous notions that have somehow been allowed to fester in the dark corners of the Internet.

  Advertisements and malware will plaster every page. Comment sections on every site will consist of 99% spy agency and industry trade group interns supporting our team, ruthlessly ganging up on opponents, and generally steering discussion in our favor, while encouraging unbridled consumerism, class and race warfare, general apathy, and all those good things. Search engines will only turn up results that suit our agenda, prioritizing commercials for products related to the search and pay-walled results. Every user will be registered, tracked and logged and their trove of data rented out to the highest bidder.

  Ruff's Internet will seize the power from the citizenry that has so misappropriated it, and restore it to the great companies that rightfully deserve it. Mark my words, the rivers of profit will flow mightily again. We will kick and beat the Internet into submission.

  Computer makers and Internet portals, I plan to triple the allowance you receive to set up and maintain your surveillance networks. I'll put aside around a billion in tax funds every year to direct your way, so for the first time, there'll be a healthy profit in it for you. You'll no longer be the black sheep of the market, I will treat you like equals, ensuring you receive all the benefits you deserve for giving back so much to your country. Every search engine, social networking, messaging and email company that funnels information to our spy networks, and has donated handsomely to my campaign, will be eligible to receive the new perks.

  One of my favorite biotech companies has recently developed an amazing new genetically modified rice cultivar that is able to withstand surprisingly high doses of radiation. Thanks to this once-in-a-lifetime scientific breakthrough, your corporate farms will now be able to dose rice crops with steady radiation treatments, killing all weeds and pests without the need for conventional chemicals.

  I'll make it my personal mission to ensure this patented rice crop is introduced worldwide, and I strongly encourage other companies to develop radiation-resistant crops. Just think of the possibilities. I'll make sure that the irradiated crops aren't treated any differently by the market than conventional crops, so don't worry about forced labeling. You might even get away with listing the crops as organic, since no pesticides or herbicides will be needed. We might have to rewrite the official definition of 'organic' a little bit when I start the new job.

  The side effects from consuming this ingenious irradiated rice are very promising so far. My friends in the cancer industry will be very pleased to see the test studies. You all have me to thank for getting this incredible crop approved for planting nationwide starting next month. I came very close to being defeated, but I persisted and in the end I convinced the majority of my colleagues to vote with me. I also took down the names of everyone that voted to deny the new strain's approval. See attachment.

  Those shameless dogs almost cost a great company untold billions in lost revenues, so I plan to weed out these enemies of free enterprise, with your help. We can start by initiating a media campaign to brand them as socialist baby-killers or what have you. Get them voted out before they can do more damage to the economy. If all else fails, we might have to consider less democratic ways of dealing with these liberal tree-huggers. I’ll do whatever it takes to protect our government and its great companies from these sneaky machinates.

  It's just unacceptable; the dogs that somehow manage to get appointed to the NFDD food-safety advisory panel. Every voter appointed to that panel should have been a biotech industry expert like myself, with at least five years of dues paid working in the industry. We can't continue to let these ignorant, idealist, science-hating jackasses have a say in deciding vital policy on matters they have absolutely no understanding of. This is Orninica, damn it.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Spy

  Beautiful Outa, how I've missed you. I sit here in my big empty dwelling, somewhere in the middle of a towering building, sandwiched between hundreds of equally lonesome neighbors I've never met. Sometimes I put my ear to the wall and wonder if they feel as empty as I do in this strange concrete-covered land. Or if it is natural to them, if they feel gladness even, living here in this permanent disconnect.

  I don't know if I'll ever feel whole again since my tail was removed. Sometimes I could swear I still feel it, wagging away when I wake up from a particularly good dream of the old country. And this aerosol I'm forced to spray onto my tongue three times a day to stop myself from perspiring is causing me great discomfort. But I must prevail for the good of our tribe. I would give my life in an instant, to ensure your safety from the smug tyrannical Orninicans, my love.

  The air in Orninica is clouded with soot, the skies hidden by a swirling white chemical mist ejected by circling airplanes day and night. A foul lingering chemical odor is present at all times. It chokes my lungs to breathe in this place.

  Their tyrant security forces stop citizens at checkpoints all over the city, checking their papers and searching them for some imagined weapon that's never clearly defined. And the hapless citizenry, they don't seem to notice or care how broken and trapped they are. They have never tasted clean air, or real food. They won't even dare to look up from their little plastic devices.

  Never having been free from the demands of petty tyrants, they are direction-less and single-minded. All that consumes them is the unending compulsion to stock their vast dwelling units with useless ugly things. Things with screens and interfaces, things decorated with fabric and string, things to eat with and things to defecate in. Everywhere there are things. They must throw away more in one week than we'll ever need in a lifetime.

  I've yet to infiltrate the upper echelons of Orninica, and it's becoming increasingly difficult to climb further up the ladder and get close to their decision-makers. They're all very hostile towards outsiders, and even with my fur dyed jet black and my years of training, I suspect they can tell there's something foreign about me.

  The good news is that I finally succeeded in opening my restaurant, on the affluent Rover Avenue, where all the largest office blocks are located. This is allowing me to listen in on various important-sounding business lunches, even a few involving high-ranking politicians. I am making progress, even if it's not as rapid as I'd like. So far, there's no indication that they're planning an outright invasion of our land.

  The only pressing threat right now is the logger-drones they've dispersed around the world to remove all the trees. It's very likely a ploy to fracture our way of life. I hope our warriors will find a way to incapacitate th
ese destructive devices when they reach our shores. If they fail, your survival will be in serious jeopardy, so I very much hope the blueprints I've sent to our leaders will enable them to stop the bots in their tracks.

  I will return home some day, when my work is done. We will be together again, I promise you. Every time I write you, I think of the time under the ancient neutinamu tree when we danced and laughed for hours and fell asleep in embrace. I so long to feel your tongue on my cheek again.

  I wish I could write you more often, it's becoming very tricky to get my communications past the state's many eyes. All conventional correspondences are monitored and used to persecute supposed dissenters. Simple liberties we take for granted are non existent in this man-loving state. Everything natural and real has been stripped from these wretched dogs in the name of security and unbridled bureaucracy. They have long forgotten how to be dogs, and I wonder if they can ever remember.

  If they woke up tomorrow and their precious plutocratic government were gone, their sneaky nanny corporations vanished, could these sleep-eyed dogs continue to function? When you unplug robots from their computers, do they continue to perform their routines?

  Or do they collapse and shut down? I suspect we will find out one day soon. I just hope I'm safely back home when their society does finally and inevitably collapse in on itself. And I hope against hope that they don't get the opportunity to destroy us before they destroy themselves.

  But that's why I'm here, living in this nightmare of a world they've constructed to sap the life out of their unquestioning slave-dogs. I am here to quietly watch and report and guard our time-honored way of life for our future generations.

  Every now and then, there are some simple pleasant moments to be found hidden in this vast dreary city. Some afternoons, when I find a free moment, I sit on a bench outside the restaurant and watch the passers by go about their lives.

  The other day, I saw a little pup trying to shake the drone shadowing her. She'd walk in circles, hop and roll, duck and zig-zag. All the while the drone remained hovering silently above, like it were tied to the little dear by a powerful magnet. Amused, the pup entered a tall building and rode the elevator to the roof. Sure enough, the drone was on the roof waiting for her, and I could hardly believe my eyes when, without any hesitation, the pup took a flying leap off the building. Of course, the drone dove down and grabbed her out of the air, setting her safely on the street below unharmed, but for a moment, the little pup was as free as a bird. The smile on her face was as wide as any I've ever seen.

  No one else on the street even noticed what had happened, all consumed with whatever fiction played on their iYglass. But I walked up to the pup and shook her little hand vigorously, thanking her for breaking the routine, even if for only a brief moment.

  It was risky, I know. The hovering drones all centered on me. But I had to show her that at least someone in the city was awake.

  It just goes to show that even the ugliest, most sterile places in this world harbor glimpses of the amazing canine spirit. If only these poor, hapless dogs knew all that was taken from them before they were even born. Maybe they would wake from their slumber and finally fight back.

  The Oninicans are so stunningly devout in their worship of man. It's so difficult for a freeborn Nureongi to understand this unceasing affection they have for a race of fur-less apes that caged and brutalized our ancestors, selling them as meat in grimy street markets.

  Their religion is so alien to me. Our beliefs are so simple, it would only take a paragraph to explain what we believe in, while the Oninicans have volumes of holy books. The books of Bahman, Soupman, Greenlandon, Wandwohm, etc.

  But it does have some semblance of logic to it, why they'd replace simple truths of nature with complex mythologies and rules. Sometimes all the noise in this city is enough to make even me forget the simplicity of existence. I have to cling to my memories lest they slip away.

  When we are created, our bodies become a vessel to roving energy. Everything that exists has energy. When we die, the energy is released back into the universe, ready to be recycled again and again forever. This is all my soul knows and all it needs to know to exist.

  But the Orninicans, so out of touch with their very state of being... Everything they know is told to them by their elders to quash the soul, to stack piles of brick and concrete over the simple universal knowledge they were born with. Maybe as they die, maybe then they can recall the simple truths of earthly existence that they've denied themselves since childhood. Maybe death is the only good, real thing they have left.

  I believe in my heart that the typical Orninicans are good dogs, I really do. They've just lost sight of what actually matters in this transient life. It's much easier for them to hide their heads in their fictions and games than it is to see the rampant desolation surrounding them.

  If I were born an Orn, I'm not sure I would fit in much better than I do now. I get the sense that no Orn truly feels at peace with their surroundings. But they go to such lengths to starve their doubts with electronic devices. They are always plugged in to some kind of device. Even as they sleep, a 'dream-inducer' device clings to their scalp, pushing manufactured dreams and advertisements into their heads, while sending their deepest thoughts back to the system to be logged and filed forever. Amazingly, they will this. They even incur debt to afford to buy the devices.

  The sheer volume of entertainment is staggering, and so much of it has very little purpose. They have two basic types of fiction. Their dramas aim to shock the senses, with gruesome murder scenes and depictions of horrifying diseases. Nearly all the characters in their dramatic fiction are lethargic government workers; police, doctors, federal agents, forensics specialists, judges, social workers. The characters always solve the case at the end of the day, the government always portrayed as infallible, all powerful and benevolent.

  Often the cynical and ill-tempered main character has a special skill, such as a photographic memory, or the ability to read thoughts, and uses the skill to serve the government in some way. Scenes of brutal violence are a staple of these dramas, most probably as an instrument to desensitize the placid public.

  Their comedic fiction offers mild familiar humor. It comprises either of wealthy upper-class youths living together in the city, with jobs as executives or at top law firms, or of wealthy upper-class families living together in the suburbs, with jobs as executives, real estate agents or at top law firms. Sometimes there are talking hamsters added to the equation.

  The goal of the comedy seems to be to give affirmation to the public that Orninican life is good, and everyone can be happy and successful if they just follow the formula and buy all the products their favorite fictional characters buy. I haven't been able to discover how this propaganda continues to work when the viewers begin to grow old and realize their lives are still woeful. Perhaps some kind of mind control?

  The hundreds of hours of daily broadcasts are so similar and unchanging, yet I sometimes find myself consuming them as a mild distraction, if only to forget my worries for a brief moment. But I am strongly concerned there could be a deadening effect on my mind taking place. It gets harder to form my own thoughts the more of it I watch.

  The Orns are prescribed countless numbing medications and mood stabilizers by their doctors to treat the many pains and anxieties they seem to suffer. It must be a lot easier for them to be quenched by this empty entertainment when they're taking mind altering narcotics everyday. Maybe I'd have a better understanding of their fiction, and their society in general, if I were also medicated. It seems to be a big contributor to their apathy.

  The last time I went to a healer here, he insisted on prescribing me pain and sleeping pills for a twisted ankle. I was still new to this place, and it taught me a lot about how things work here. Everything is built to sell you a thing you don't need, that will somehow make it so you need to buy more things. It's a colossal maze with no exit, and being aware of that fact doesn't make it any easier t
o keep from falling into the trap.

  I once was dazzled by a commercial for a set of knives that featured a charismatic chef using them to cut through sheets of metal. I was amazed by their sharpness, and imagined they'd be very useful back home in Nureongi. However when they arrived, they could barely slice butter. Their handles were made of flimsy plastic, colored like hardwood. This kind of dishonesty is common and accepted, and somehow the Orns continue to consume countless near-useless and poorly made products with great zest. Nureongi need nothing more than what we can carry in our teeth, yet to appear normal in this society, I need to surround myself with things.

  I keep all but one of the rooms in my home filled with consumer goods. To keep up appearances, I must spend the majority of my time doing normal Orn things in front of my various screens and devices. But there's one small room I keep almost bare, with nothing more than a bamboo mat to sit on. I retreat to this room as often as I can, but obviously I can't stay off the radar for very long or it'll raise suspicions. It's the one place in this life where I can go to clear my mind.

  Sometimes at the restaurant, when I'm rushing back and forth in the steamy hot kitchen to finish the orders on time, my feet swollen and sore, my back knotted and stiff, a calm comes over me for a moment. A moment of clarity I suppose you could call it. Suddenly, I see myself standing in the ancient forest that stretches as far as the eye can see. The pups are darting up the trees and diving into the waterhole, their laughter bouncing from tree to tree for miles.

  The echoes of this laughter suddenly hit me and pull me to Nureongi in these moments, vibrations that have traveled all the way from the ancient forest, and somehow made it to my kitchen. In this moment, it's abundantly clear to me that I must do whatever it takes to preserve the lives of these pups that have never known the underside of the tyrant's boot. Even at the expense of my own spirit.