NEW CHAP

“Bet you’ve never seen trees like that!” Terry, Art’s father said releasing his pale right hand from the steering wheel and pointing to a distant green fur on the mountain range they had been approaching for the last hour.

“Ya.” Art replied as he re-adjusted himself in the passenger seat.  He was excited but didn’t know how to show it. It wasn’t the sort of thing ten year old Art was used to being excited about. It wasn’t a new Sim. A new Cloud-buster. A new Vis-chip. It was a bunch of trees. Ofcourse he had seen trees, plenty, but never so many backed up against one another. His eyes brushed back and forth over their tips, surveying them for some break in projected graphics. But there were none.

“Those are the real thing kid, hundreds of years old. My father used to take me here every summer. Parks gotten a lot smaller since then but its still the same place.” His father said. There was something in his voice Art had never heard before. Some level of pride book ended by hesitance. Almost worry. “There used to be parks like this all over the country. I really wish I could have seen them all.” He paused and looked out at the forest before them. “ You’ve never seen a real bear have you?” His father suddenly exclaimed, splitting his grey beard with a child’s smile.

“We saw one at the zoo. Remember the big one who was sleeping?” Art didn’t know that bear was almost always sleeping.

“No no its different in nature. These are real bears. Wild. Well find one ill show you.” Art’s father sat up in his seat and ran his hands up and down around the wheel, leaning forward into the road.

Art had been learning about the old national park system in school and found the subject wildly boring. Some Old man called Jim Mirror or something had stopped everyone from building new buildings and roads to preserve a section of wilderness. It didn’t make much sense to him. It seemed like a waste.

As they passed the last ‘Coulier Group Motor Trail’ Sign and came to ‘The Coulier Group Welcome Road Gateway’, Art began to realize why that Mirror guy had tried to save this place. It was beautiful. Art wanted to say so but he was too shy. He wasn’t old enough to say ‘Beautiful’ out loud. He said it to himself.

After paying the $347 dollar camping fee Art and his father found a campsite and unloaded the truck.

‘Theres nothing here’ Art thought tossing tent poles onto the pile of Arachnylon his father said was their tent. ‘Theres no lights?’ He asked his father without opening his mouth. ‘ Theres no bathroom…There’s a bathroom. You cant stay somewhere without a bathroom. NO ONE would let you do that. Its underground. That’s probably where everything is.’ He decided starring at the flat dirt of their camp. His thoughts were interrupted by the peripheral image of his father pulling a hatchet from his knapsack.

“Dad why do you have an Axe?” Art asked , taken aback.

“Its going to get cold kid. Real fuckin cold. Were gonna need wood for our fire. Ill teach you how to use it.” His father replied.

This was going to be a fun trip. Only fun Dad said ‘Fuck’.

Over the next two days Art and his father hiked through the park, stopping and taking time. Something Art had never truly experienced. His father taught him more in those two days than Art had learned in his entire life.Real skills, not just facts. Practical things Art knew he would use for the rest of his life. Or hoped he would.

They had been keeping  an eye out for the bear wherever they went. His father would stop and turn the flat of his hand to face back, in a half crouch, scanning the landscape. Art stopped out of fear, and his father out of an excitement the man thought could only exist in memory. Art was terrified but as the days and lessons went on he became more enchanted with the idea of seeing something truly wild. Every fantasy was peppered with images of white teeth wet with blood, tearing his limbs apart, red muscle glowing in the sun. The sound of his father’s back connecting with a bed of pin needles. Their last screams. He told himself the only re-assurance he had ever heard: “Too many Sims, the world isn’t really like that.”

It was day three when they saw the bear.

Art’s father had taken him on what seemed to be a death march up the steepest incline anyone had ever endured. They were headed to the smaller of the two lakes in the park- ‘Lake Morris’. Art kept his mind fluid with humor. He imagined a massive escalator bypassing the trail, progressing effortlessly to the plateau where the lake kept itself wet. Dreams of some elevator inside the mountain, rimmed with cushioned leather seats, walls adorned with screens showing the latest Sim highlights.

By the time they reached the top he forgot it all.He was too tired to think. It was one foot after the other, one breath then the next. He felt the trail level out and looked up for the first time in what seemed like hours. It was amazing. Looking over the park he could see and expanse of unadulterated wilderness no Sim could duplicate. No photograph could portray. No description could describe. He almost felt bold enough to say that it was ‘Beautiful’ outloud. But he held back again.

“Come on kid, Lakes just past those pines.” His father said. His voice trailed off as he kept the pace.

They pushed through the trees and brush, bypassing the winding path that would serve only to slow them down. As Art caught his breath he filled his lungs with a breath of cold air and felt his heart jump. The water became clear. Such a calm and flat sheet of dark blue anything he had never seen. It was natural yet somehow more perfect and smooth than any plasteel window he had ever seen.

“There!” His father shouted shooting his tan left hand forward to point at an all at once massive but silent and shinning beast. There it was. The bear. The creature moved with such ease Art wondered why man had even bothered to mechanize anything. The bear in the zoo didn’t move much at all. It  now seemed that caged marvel of nature served only to hold down the concrete beneath in place. The bears in his hunting Sims moved like people, without anything near this level of finesse. The pictures he had seen of brown bears made it seem as though they traveled with a heavy footed stomp that could shake the earth. This bear didn’t make a sound as it sprinted from the tree line to the Lake’s shore and dove in.

“They can swim?” art shouted dropping his walking stick.

His father’s hand fell to his side as he crouched. “ Oh they can swim kid, watch.”

The bear (Pedaled into the mountain sea, head just above water) swam -less gracefully than it sprinted but still moved with surprising ease through the water. Upsetting the liquid crystal as it made its way toward the center of the lake.

“Now where the hell is he going?” His father pondered aloud.

Art’s eyes darted back and forth between the bear and his fathers face, unintentionally gauging how to react to something so amazing and new.

His fathers face contorted in disapproval. This was something Art had seen before. Homework, messy room, broken dishes. The first familiar image he had absorbed since they hit the dirt.

“Jesus fucking Christ really? Godamnit.” Art’s father said standing again. “Why do we have to fucking ruin everything. Godamnit.” His hand met a wrinkled city brow.

Art looked (ahead to see where the bear was going) where the bear was swimming . A mass of Mylar bags and Dorito mulch had amassed at the center of the lake. The sight of trash was for jarring for the first time. Something Art had seen every day of his life was now so  surprisingly foreign and offensive. The bear reached the island of litter and began to lick and nibble at the trash.

Art’s father hung his head, looking up from time to time to reaffirm his disbelief.

“They eat trash?” Art asked quietly. He knew they didn’t. Or shouldn’t.

The bear became less graceful, and while it didn’t emote in the same way Art’s friends and family did, he could see it was afraid.

“Dad what’s happening?” Art asked taking a few steps closer.

The once flawless beast began to thrash and (Gag) roar. This was going wrong. Art started crying.

The bear had ventured too far into the lake and was losing energy. Water began to flood its mouth and throat, coughing clear water back and forth. Sucked in through its maw and ejected from the snout. And then it was gone. The lake was calm.

They packed up the campsite and hit the ‘Coulier Group Fond Farewell Trail’ without speaking a word.

“It was beautiful Dad, Before, you know” Art said looking out his window.

Dad didn’t say much after that.

Nineteen years later Art was sitting in the apartment of his supplier. He handed over a loaded credit chip.

“Got somethin new for ya this time. Sludge.” Crazy Chester his supplier said. He pulled a sheet of  perforated plastic-like material from the flat of a paper cutter and folded it in an accordion pattern.

“That time travel, shit your pants stuff?” Art replied.

“Yeah.”

Art’s phone rang. “Hold on.” He answered it.

“Im sorry to inform you that your girlfriend has taken her own life.” A nurse admitted from 17.9 miles away.

‘She was beautiful before, you know…’