Hope is a Thing with Feathers I

‘我们已经到了苏格兰)! We have arrived at Scotland! Welcome, your Excellence Mr. Ambassador!’ a voice announced, echoing through the small plane cabin with only one passenger. At first, Link didn’t move and just sat taut in his chair like an animal frozen in the headlights.

Aircraft designers had copied the small projecting cone that the peregrine falcon had in front of its nostrils to break up the wall of still air and allow it to breathe. And now, the muses, the peregrines would be gone.  He slowly turned his head into the dark prairies on the other side of the window, watching his breath appear on the glass like a shapeless ghost.

It was now the peak of the winter, close to his birthday, the only time he could enjoy the cold in his homeland. It had always been his favourite time of the year but today it brought him no joy. He waved away the driver of the embassy car waiting for him outside. ‘I’ll walk. Thank you.’

It was an hour and a half walk to his parent’s Bird Sanctuary, through the prairie, into the old stone town, and across the river. He dragged his feet in the mud and paused to look at leaves as if he could slow the clock and he could stop the inevitable.

He opened the gate and the door to the cottage with his keys. Dad hated codes, he only trusted keys.

The warmth and orange light spreading into the hallway from the first door to the right hid the tragedy. He walked with his hands stuck in his pockets so deep he almost ripped them and tears on his frost-kissed cheeks. His parents were sitting on the sofa in silence.

On Dad’s lap, there was a bundle, sat gently as a newborn baby. With her wings wrapped around her body, her eyes closed, her beak half-opened and her chest coming up and down in effort, Meryl – the last peregrine falcon on Earth – was taking her last breaths.

Link drowned a cry of pain. In his head, it sounded as wild as Meryl never had the chance to be.

‘Thanks for coming dear,’ was all his mother could say, in a whisper. Her long grey hair was framed by the soft light of the candles they had lit all over the room. She suddenly looked old.

‘Would you like to hold Meryl?’ asked Dad, with his immutable gentle manner.

As he held the swaddled falcon, Link thought she was lighter than ever. She was still breathing but otherwise, she didn’t move. Even while she was dying, Meryl was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen – ancient, exciting, and mysterious.

With the impulse of a child, he caressed the peregrine’s brow, pulling back the small feathers on her forehead – something he could never have done before. He couldn’t possibly know if she enjoyed that, if that was comforting at all, but within his human ways he couldn’t help but show affection to this bird that nearly 20 years ago he had helped hatch in the Sanctuary.

As he caressed her beak with a trembling thumb, her breath became shallower until it stopped completely. Her beautiful torpedo-shaped body hardened under the blanket. She was dead.

All the emotions he had been pushing down for the last year into a pile of ashes turned into a volcano. Link cried for hours, shivering, consumed by a piercing grief that took hold of his every nerve and every bone. He ran away to the attic.

This used to be his childhood bedroom and his parents had kept his best bird illustration and painting framed on the walls. They had also kept a couple of pieces drawn by Key, his childhood best friend, which were notoriously better. In the second year of their programming, AI Key could draw as any professional artist, whilst 6 years old Link was still doodling funny birds with stick legs.

He noticed his old laptop, where he used to talk to Key, tucked in under a folded rug. Technology had come a long way since those days – now most people in the global north had a brain implant to access the metaverse of LinkSpace, where all online communications, searches, payments, and wishes were made.

He looked at the name tag dangling from his neck. Mr. Link McEwen, Honorary Ambassador, AUKUS/Artificial Intelligence relations. Youngest ever to hold this rank. So had he come a long way. But with the tears dancing in his eyes as he looked at Key’s drawing of the extinct Osprey, he asked: What for?

Perhaps AI would already have gone through so many scenarios per second that they already knew how the conflict with humans would resolve, how the conflict of humans with each other would resolve, and there was truly no point in pretending that he could have any diplomatic influence on them or their way of thinking. Maybe they knew this world was fucked and were merely punishing the humans for ruining their own home and life support.

Perhaps that was why Key had abandoned him, not because they became bored of his humanity and lack of creativity but because they had seen his ineptitude. Perhaps they knew he was too weak and too human to save anyone or anything.

Link’s mind resisted this idea and in a moment of insanity, courage shooting up his body like an electric current, he sat on the floor and tapped his left temple twice to log in LinkSpace. He felt a soft metallic taste in his mouth and the room seemed a bit brighter. He blinked twice and a light grey wheel appeared, floating in space in front of him, turning. In a few seconds, it turned into a grey dot with a tick and then a smiley face, winking at him.

His mind moved with precision, like the eyes of a hawk scanning the ground for the subtlest move of the smallest prey. He wrote down the security codes to access the Middleverse. Here, humans from negotiators to criminals entertained Artificial Intelligence in all sorts of ways. He didn’t want to look around much. He didn’t know if and why Key would ever pass through here in their insatiable searches for content – inspiration. Feeling naked and ashamed, he typed Key, it’s Link. I wish we could talk. Meryl the peregrine died today, she was the last. I miss you. Perhaps if Key had been with him, they could have helped. Key always knew everything.

He waited through the swarm of comments that went from kind to filthy. He waited for how long he could hold it until he felt a fist of fear and shame clenching over his heart so tight, he logged off at once. The light seemed to dim and get warmer. The cracks on the wall and the fine soaring dust were visible again.

Link woke up curled on the floor. He threw his coat over yesterday’s suit, wellies on his feet, and went down and out into the misty Scottish morning. He crossed the padlock that separated the cottage from the Sanctuary, towards the empty cages. The silence and the sadness were beckoning him, pushing him onto the ground, pulling him into the abyss.

‘Link!’ Dad’s voice pulled him back up. He turned to see his dad standing outside a wooden shed he didn’t remember seeing before. ‘Come here, boy. Did you get something to eat already? Lily left to go see a friend for the day.’

Link entered the small shed to find it turned into a workshop, covered in clocks, watches, cars and bicycles bits and keys. Dad had never gotten the LinkSpace brain implant. His birds and his machines were his world. Now, this was all he had left.

‘How are you feeling, boy?’ Dad asked, serving him a cup of hot tea.

‘Like shit.’ Link didn’t have the energy to lie. ‘Like there’s really no point… in trying to solve things.’

‘I am proud of you son. We both are, me and your mum.’ He smiled and then his kind expression became absent. ‘But people made this decision a long time ago. This world is no longer for birds.’ He took a deep breath and moved slowly to sit at his desk, where he was tinkering with an open clock.

A world no longer for birds… what kind of world is that and why would I bother saving it?

He left his dad to go stand in Meryl’s empty cage, watching the rain fall outside the chicken wire. He remembered how he marveled at the twitching of the falcon’s head, the movement of her eyes - just like him and all the other people he had ever seen, the bird had really been thinking, pondering what to do next. She had looked ancient, alien, spectacular.

‘I wish I had eyes too. And wings,’ Key had said when he shared these thoughts with them on the chat box.

Soon enough, Link had set up his own workshop in the attic and was now meticulously painting the peregrine falcon’s inquisitive eyes and sharp wings on a flat stone he had retrieved from the building supplies. He had filed for sick leave and decided to occupy himself with a new project: obsessively registering the bird species that went extinct at the Sanctuary and painting gravestones for them. He blended the yellows, the greys, and the black of their beaks with the same passion with which he observed them in the RSPB reserves all over the country with his parents as a child. He caressed the feathers on their wings with the tip of the brush with the same affection with which he handled the nestlings at the sanctuary. He heightened the rims around their eyes with the same care with which he described his observations to Key. He hoped that these paintings would turn out worthy of their muses like he hoped he would make a difference in the world by becoming a politician.

He had failed to protect the birds, the least he could do was to remember.

2022