HELP! A Bear Is Eating Me! - Mykle Hansen [39]
Alone? You wish. Loneliness is obsolete. Haven’t you heard? Oh but you don’t have the Internet up here yet, I keep forgetting. Poor, disadvantaged bear. Let me give you the rundown: basically, we live in a global village now, we can transport anything to anywhere instantly, all life is deeply and magically intertwingled, all places are connected, and so every place on earth is slowly but certainly becoming more like every other place on earth. The deserts will get a bit more foresty and the forests will get a bit more deserty. I’m sure you’ve noticed how the winters haven’t been as cold as they used to be. Thank us later. Likewise, the wilderness will get more highways and the urban centers will get nicer landscaping. The polar bears are swimming south, the koala bears are climbing north. The property developers are beating a path up here to deflower the last virgin stretches of undeveloped property, while lumber and seafood floats away to Japan in crush-proof canisters. That’s the power of the global market: if someone in Taiwan wants a bear hide for their executive lav, market forces will suck it toward them with magnetic strength. But don’t worry, because Capitalism is a fair God, a good God, it uses its magic power to make everyone rich, perhaps even bears.
Mister Bear, quit crying. This is nothing to be sad about. Change is good. There’s a bright, exciting future waiting if you can just get with the program and find a seat on Capitalism’s magic bus. Sure, maybe there won’t always be a forest here, but on the other hand if you have any more cubs they’ll have great new options. They’ll be able to travel. If they can learn certain skills they could be pack animals, or golf caddies, or they could guard the estates of the wealthy, or perform in movies, or there’s the circus or they could be pets, maybe, if they could be declawed and detoothed and maybe drugged or something. Or listen, even better: I bet the U.S. Army could really use some mean, tough, strong, do-or-die kind of vicious killer bears like you and your family. Bear Squadron! You could go to Iran and fight terrorism!
Terrorism? You know, the guys who hate our freedom?
Wow, you really don’t get any news up here, do you? Okay, terrorism is … well, it’s hard to explain, but you’ll know it when you see it — when they invade your homeland and threaten your way of life!
No, no, no. Not me, not us, totally different people. With turbans, and really long fuzzy beards. If you see anybody sneaking up here with turbans and beards, you be sure and eat them right up, okay? Trust me, they’re delicious.
Shit. Mister Bear, I’m sorry things turned out the way they did. If you could get to know me you’d see I’m really not a bad guy. I’m sorry about your son, not that it makes a difference. But I have to ask you a favor, Mister Bear, because I am going absolutely nuts. From this pain. I move my eyeball, my thighs throb. Just talking hurts, just thinking hurts, just living. Everything hurts and all I want is for it to stop. I’ve got a low, low threshold of pain. If you were torturing me for information I would have long ago told you everything you wanted to know and everything you never cared about and I’d be making up new exciting facts just to please you. My brain’s boiling, my hair’s screaming, I’m so thirsty and hungry and cold, and I can’t make my hands move, and I just want to die now. All I want is to die and I can’t even do that by myself. That’s the favor. Can you help a brother out?
Look: it’s okay if I die. Because I’m going to live forever. Somebody’s going to find me eventually, find this wreck, and they’re going to piece it all together, everything that happened to me. My story will live on. Marv Pushkin the man may die, but Marv Pushkin the story, Marv Pushkin the book,