[Issue 2025.74]

‘Seven Stories for Now and Later’, Nancy S. Koven

Art by John Gould and H.C. Richter (1854)

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1. Harpactes kasumba

A thickset bird shuffles along the railing of the viewing platform, catches me looking across the river at its home, then turns to face the same way. We become an old married couple, exchanging sighs and idly scratching away the afternoon’s humidity. Its face is like weathered copper. My skin, too, is oxidized, the latest excision dressed in petroleum jelly and a sweatproof bandage underneath my hairline. There are no spiders for it to eat, but it doesn’t seem all that hungry.

After some minutes of quiet meditation, it speaks: “There are many stories in that jungle. Here is one of them. Of the twins you carry in your belly, one will be stillborn; I’m sorry, that’s just the way of things. The second you will sacrifice so that we may live on, and live in this forest, a little while longer.” Its voice is like a cracked recording.

I say nothing. Its 60-cycle hum is soothing, reassuring.

“Lidia?”

“I’m not Lidia.”

“I’m sorry, then. That story was meant for another. I sometimes get confused.”

The bird tilts its jeweled head toward me, and I almost expect to hear the clanking of bangles and rings. I see now that one of its coal-black eyes is hazy with cataracts. It’s getting on in years, like me.

“Still, you’ll die having mothered a great many children,” it continues, already forgetting I’m not Lidia. “One will claim she has no mother, but she’ll go on to collect old photographs of you and bird feathers. She’ll teach her grandchild the songs of birds who’ve gone extinct.”

“Like you?” I ask.

“Like me,” it agrees.

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2. Libellago stigmatizans

Dinner consists of a tank-grown fish that’s been curried. I’ve paid handsomely for this one-person table overlooking the river; nearby, people stand in queue behind a red velvet stanchion for their thirty-minute share of this same experience. Serialized meals will be served late into the night to accommodate the crowd.

The forest across the river is why each of us is here. From my seat, I make out a thick stand of silver-backed trees with teardrop flowers in white. Resam ferns and tangled climbers fill in the gaps. Further distant, the canopy wall rises several stories in the air, a combination of old-growth relics and satellite-fed holograms. “No more than twenty-five percent artificial greenery,” the villa brochure promises.

It’s too hot to be in formal attire, but we are. My dress pumps aggravate my bunions, and I’m annoyed I packed them. The voices of fellow diners, terse and staccato, punch like ginger and lemongrass.

“Lidia?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

My interlocuter is a petite male damselfly that I’d overlooked as part of the table’s centerpiece. With acrobatic maneuvers, he clasps himself to a painted replica of a female, his abdomen fusing with her neck in a wheel-shaped embrace, penis seeking vagina.

“You look like Lidia.” The orange patch between his eyes gives him a clownish expression, but his tone and manner are quite serious. He holds this pose while I finish dessert.

“That’s a resin figurine, you know,” I say after a while, trying to be helpful.

“Damn,” it mutters, then twitches away toward the water, the moon highlighting its frayed, threadbare wings.

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3. Rhinolophus sedulus

“I saw sixteen species today alone,” says the woman dangling plump, varicosed legs from the top left bunkbed. She holds a list of extinct animals up to her reading lamp and slashes through several names with a loud ballpoint pen, oblivious to the value of the paper the words are printed on. “Rather convincing mechs, don’t you think?”

“They guarantee thirty unique encounters in a week’s time or half your money back,” replies her righthand counterpart, who’s wearing a seersucker nightgown with ‘Bella’ embroidered on the breast pocket. She’s applying a tanning cream that smells like burnt toast that will later stain the sheets.

“I could only afford the three-night package,” pipes the small woman below her, “and it took over half my late husband’s inheritance for even that.” The top ladies offer condolences to the widower, lamenting how men rarely live past sixty these days. “Don’t make ’em like they used to,” one quips. With fertility rates so low, no one dares ask after children.

I remain quiet in my berth on the lower left. The overhead lights are out, and the breeze through the open window cools the sweat on my skin. None of the women detect the microbat that’s flown in and attached itself to the mosquito netting around my bed.

“That lottery system’s something else, too,” continues the first woman. “I had to wait twelve years for my number to be called.”

“Twenty-one,” counters Bella.

“I just wish we could get over there,” pines the third. “To wait all this time, pay all this money, fly all this way, and not even be allowed in the forest—”

“We don’t want humans ruining the last tropical jungle on earth, do we now?” says the first, injecting pedantic sarcasm into her voice in imitation of a tour guide from earlier. “Besides, you can see all kinds of greenery from right here. Never seen so much green in my life.”

The bat and I peer at each other through the mesh. Its eyes are lost in complex whorls of skin that serve as its snout. Its triangular ears, far too large for its face, jut out from a cocoon of dark brown fuzz. They’re the only parts that move as it hangs upside down.

“Are you Lidia?” it whispers.

I shake my head no, not wanting to draw attention from the others.

“Can you pass on a message to Lidia?”

This time I nod my head yes.

“Can you please tell her we really need her help and ask if she’ll come back? She said she’d be going away, but we didn’t think it’d be for this long.” As it talks, it sheds white powdery residue from its muzzle that looks like it doesn’t belong there.

To the room at large Bella says, “You know, people do try crossing the river at low tide to get over to the forest, but they inevitably get stuck in the mud flats.”

“Or caught by night patrols,” adds the varicosed woman.

“But I don’t want much,” the tiny woman protests. “Just a single leaf to take home.”

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4. Tetragonula atripes

Morning consists of synthetic coffee and a visit to the villa’s Living History Museum. Although I’m early, there’s already a horde of people encircling the dais in the center of the room. Hushed voices and flash-frozen smiles let me know they’re waiting for the Malayan tiger to appear.

I work my way over to the self-paced bee exhibit occupying the far wall. There’s no crowd here, and the few stragglers look vaguely disappointed; no one much cares about the bees. The collection consists of fourteen seemingly free-floating specimens: green-eyed, red-bodied, and black-legged, with wings done up in sepia tones. A slender metal pin pierces the abdomen of each bee, effectively tethering the group to the sleek shelving unit below. Antennae, heads, legs, and wings are free to move about so that, when the bees are in motion, they appear to fly over a field of polished metal. Right now, the bees are still.

Behind me, an amplified roar vibrates the cartilage in my ribcage. The mech tiger has arrived.

I put on the earphones and push small red buttons that feed me units of information. I am told that the bees are social and stingless. A discreet placard indicates they were designed by someone named Lidia.

“Tell me about Lidia,” I murmur.

The bees jolt awake en masse, as if electrified. “Lidia cares for us,” one says.

“She’s our mother,” says a second. The others nod in vigorous agreement.

“She tells us stories,” says a third.

“Tell me one,” I urge, quieting myself to listen.

“Lidia got lost in the forest.”

“The bees found her, gave her honey.”

“The hornbills offered her fruit.”

“The giant squirrels pointed her to fresh water.”

“The pangolins taught her to be safe.”

“The wild pigs showed her how to bed down for the night.”

“The katydids sang her lullabies.”

“The civets kept her warm.”

“The colugos watched over her as she slept.”

“The lorises wished her good morning.”

“The mouse-deer led her home.”

An alarm begins to wail somewhere above my head, effectively breaking my reverie and silencing the bees. Further down the wall, at the display of solitary pollinators, security officers descend on a teenager who’s attempting to wrench a pinned butterfly off its stand; there’s a booming market for stolen eco-mech. The bees, as if short-circuiting, wink out one by one.

As I make my way toward the exit, people clutch at my shirt sleeves, imploring me to take a picture of them with the tiger. A single woman walking alone is always happy to oblige in this way. Their cameras are fancy, heavy. Through the lens, only a few patches of orange and black are visible amid the sea of exuberant, human faces.

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5. Ahaetulla fasciolata

The mockolate bars inside the vending machine cost more than a day’s worth of meals. The first and last time I tasted real chocolate was at age five when my adoptive parents learned they’d conceived a biological child of their own. It was already normative back then to celebrate a conception as opposed to waiting for the birth.

As I feed the first coin into the slot, two small, pale eyes flicker open on the inside of the glass, regarding me coolly through horizontal pupils. What looks initially like a slender piece of vine wound around the metal spirals of the dispensing tray turns out to be a snake, its muted, brownish-gray body lost against a backdrop of neon candy wrappers. “Danger, Achtung, Cuidado, Attenzione, Hatari, Tehlike…” it says, cycling through thirty-something additional languages before pausing.

It sways its freckled head to-and-fro, giving the impression of a pendulum moving in slow motion. It samples the air with the tines of its tongue, its fangs strangely relegated to the far back of its mouth.

“Lidia likes her sweets, too,” it says finally.

“Do you miss Lidia?” It takes effort to ask this; I realize I’ve been holding my breath.

“I miss her laugh. Soft, full of wonder. Like new skin.” It draws out each word with great care, as if dreaming.

“Carefree and happy?” I ask.

There’s a long pause. “Moreso, lost in thought and often sad.”

I fish out a pen and sticky note from my purse and write: Careful, snake inside vending machine, adhering the paper to the lip of the coin return. The air is muggy, and I’m not sure it’s going to stay put. As an afterthought, I lean in and scribble an addendum: Achtung…

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6. Parathelphusa reticulata

From the gift shop, it’s a pleasant downward stroll along cement switchbacks to reach the waterline, where villa caretakers have gone to great lengths to simulate an immersive jungle experience this side of the river. Artificial rattan palms, underplanted with polyblend bromeliads and heliconias, line the walking lane.

No one hurries—it’s between shows—and clusters of people, who’re disproportionately fair-skinned, loiter under shade sails to consult cartoon-styled maps. A looping soundtrack of tropical birds plays from loudspeakers hidden somewhere overhead. Smiling attendants, marked by silk orchid lapel pins, sell drinks from curbside huts made from plastic thatch. Like the other visitors, I clutch a pineapple-shaped bottle of flavored water.

People generally look happy except for one middle-aged man who’s crying in front of the saltwater tank of a Neptune’s cup sponge. An astute docent, toting a mech otter in a harness, attempts to lead the man away. The otter looks bored. I sidestep a small crowd gathered by the cinnamon frog enclosure to follow the signs pointing toward the swamp forest crabs who inhabit the riverbank. The water is cycling into low tide, revealing what the garbage-trawlers missed. On the distant shore, I make out a lump of grayish-green, a crocodile perhaps. I can’t tell from here if it’s smiling.

I sit cross-legged on a flat rock and prepare to wait, idly picking bits of dried mud off my sandals; I know to be patient. Eventually, I’m rewarded with voices, too many to count and almost too small to hear, coming from a shallow, tea-colored pool. The creatures are polished, reddish-brown clones of each other, handsome but with clipped, belligerent voices that crash over each other in waves.

“new threat detected: human; <<recommend assess>>—”

“code 5: routine maintenance required; <<recommend contact Lidia>>—”

“aversive variable detected: excess salinity; <<recommend climb/purge>>—”

“human threat persists; <<recommend speak>>; what do you want?—”

“What can you tell me about Lidia?” I manage to interject.

“human speech detected; <<recommend assess/speak>>; Lidia is not here.—”

“aversive variable detected: sunlight; <<recommend swim/climb/burrow>>—”

“I want to fuck; <<recommend approach conspecific/speak>>; do you want to fuck?—”

“Do you know where she is?” I ask.

“human speech detected; <<recommend assess/speak>>; Lidia is in the forest.—”

“code 19: internal corrosion, mild; <<recommend contact Lidia>>—”

“I thought people weren’t allowed over there,” I say.

“human speech detected; <<recommend assess/speak>>; People are not allowed in the forest. Lidia is Mother. Lidia rests in the forest.—”

“Are you sure she’s there?”

“human speech detected; <<recommend assess/speak>>; Lidia said good-bye. Lidia said do not follow. We followed Lidia into the forest. We watched Lidia lie down in the forest.—”

“code 2: system error; <<recommend reboot>>—”

“How long has she been there?”

“human speech detected; <<recommend assess/speak>>; Lidia has been resting for eight months, eleven days, three hours, forty-four minutes.—”

“I want to fight; <<recommend approach conspecific/speak>>; do you want to fight?—”

“new threat detected: otter; <<recommend burrow/assess>>”

The docent ambles up with the otter in tow, flashes a sympathetic smile, and encourages me to follow her. She holds out a handkerchief, and I realize my face is wet.

“human threat resolved; <<recommend log entry>>—”

“otter threat resolved; <<recommend log entry>>—”

“code 8: battery low; <<recommend recharge/enter power saving mode>>”

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7. Presbytis femoralis

“I’m so glad you could make it,” says a moist, fidgety woman who pumps my hand a second too long. Deep grooves crisscross her forehead where she was wearing a headband magnifying lens moments earlier. “I know it was a lengthy and complicated process to get here, but I hope you’re enjoying the accommodations so far. Trip of a lifetime and all…” A nametag introduces her as Dr. Ong, the villa’s assistant cyberneticist, which I already know from the letter I carry in my pocket.

On the table next to her are a bowl of congealed soup, a soldering iron and array of deconstructed prosthetic limbs, and a glossy black-and-white langur. The room smells of spices I can’t immediately identify and strong body odor. The monkey has a diminutive face, its brown eyes recessed under a pointy cap of dark fur. Grayish-white wisps line its belly and inner thighs in a surprising upside-down T. “The child,” it says, studying my features closely. It’s not obvious if it’s referring to me or to the miniature primate lying face down on a nearby workbench.

“Yes, I’m Lidia’s child,” I reply.

“This is my child,” the langur says, flipping the limp body over by a paw and presenting it to me. The neonate is the shocking inverse of its parent, with black limbs and black tail but bold white fur covering the rest of it. Its eyes are closed.

“I’ve been trying everything I can think of to resuscitate it,” says Dr. Ong by way of explanation, “but Lidia was the real talent.”

“We all miss her,” she adds after an uneasy period of silence. The adult emits a chuckle-like tat tat tat, then becomes engrossed with an errant patch of hair on its abdomen, the room and all its contents already dismissed from its attention.

“Would you like to see where she worked?” Dr. Ong asks. She shows me into a small, adjacent room that’s outfitted with a series of dusty tables, shelves of equipment, and a small bed in the corner. The bed’s unmade, but it doesn’t look like it’s been slept in recently.

“Having a private room was the one luxury Lidia afforded herself. She worked hard every day of her life, right up until the very end.” Dr. Ong gazes out a window overlooking the forest across the river, her expression wistful as if hoping Lidia will emerge through the trees. Bits of jungle reflect through the glass, bathing the walls and work surfaces in alien greens. Dr. Ong catches me looking at her, then shifts nervously on her feet. I wonder if they used to be lovers.

“Her contract with your adoptive parents forbade her from ever contacting you during her life, but she kept tabs on you the best she could.” Dr. Ong gestures to a set of printouts thumbtacked neatly to a corkboard frame by the bed. Many of the clippings are faded from age: pictures of my childhood, graduation photos, wedding announcement, news of the birth of my son. Some of the pin-ups are newer, the ink fresher: tidbits about my career, obituary of my husband, news of the birth of my grandchild.

“She wasn’t ready for you when you first came into the world, but I like to think she became a good…” Dr. Ong lets her voice trail off. “Here, I’ve saved some things for you. Some photographs of Lidia and her journals. She wrote in her journal every time your birthday came around. You’ll find those particular entries page-marked with bird feathers.”

From the next room, there’s the sound of clattering dishware and a wet-sounding burp; the langur has jumped somewhere forbidden and is sounding off a self-congratulatory tat tat tat. “Let me go see to that,” Dr. Ong sighs and scurries next door.

Easing myself into a smile and into a chair, I sit down at Lidia’s desk and begin to read.

© 2025 Nancy S. Koven

[Issue 2025.74]

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