I’m so sick of these goddam dogs. To clarify — since 90% of my readers are on Earth — by dogs, I mean those creatures we found in the moon void, snarbls. Not that I loved dog culture on Earth, mind you, but the fact that we chose to try and domesticate these…creatures just feels ridiculous. I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures. They look like Komodo dragons with an extra row of teeth, their twin tails — which contain their lungs — full of barbs. I suppose wolves were no less intimidating when we domesticated them, but at least we’re both mammals. At least we’re from the same planet!
It’s not that I’m completely incapable of understanding the appeal. Snarbls are fiercely loyal. If you go to the snarbl pits and one decides to meet your eyes with all seven of theirs, they’ll watch over you for life. I would know — my girlfriend has a hot pink snarbl that growls anytime I go near her. Unfortunately, her snarbl also caught the moon flu, so now we have to give it twice daily injections to keep it alive, something I can only help with if I put on a wig and dress in my girlfriend’s clothes.
So, sure, we’re all lonely here on the moon, and the snarbls were there to fill a void even space colonization hadn’t. After all, when I left Earth, I’d thought I’d been running away from everything, finding…I don’t know, freedom? Instead, I just found myself in another job where my boss threatens to cancel bonuses if we don’t achieve 7000% growth each quarter — something we haven’t done since the colony was new.
No, my only problem with the snarbls is at the park. As you might imagine — though you’re probably glad we pulled ten million people out of your cities, parks, and rush hour traffic — space under the moon domes is limited. And yet, with the burst of optimism reserved only for the beginning of an experiment, my neighborhood reserved two whole acres as a park for recreation. It’s a beautiful place, filled with trees grown in the greenhouses and flowers planted in the shape of the moon flag. But that was before the snarbls.
Now, basically at any time of day, save for during little league — because the parents of sports-addicted children are just as ferocious as dog owners — the place is teeming with snarbls. They chase each other around, trying to mate as their owners coo, throwing eyeballs from the morgue into the air for them to catch.
“You did it!” they shout, laughing as they snap pictures on their phones.
“Now, Sparky,” one says in a voice much too gentle for a reprimand, “let go of that nice snarbl. Get your teeth out of his head.”
You’d think there might be a concern about coaching your snarbl to like the taste of human flesh, but I think everyone learned early on the futility of that. Just ask the woman who used to teach tai-chi in the mornings… It’s a lot harder to Part the Wild Horse’s Mane without your right arm.
And look, it’s not like I haven’t lived in cities all my life. I’m too old for little league, but I’m wise enough to resign myself to the facts of life. If that’s how a majority of people want to use the park, fine. At least it creates another constituency to protect the space whenever the alderman decides to try and bulldoze it for another boutique space helmet shop. And while dog culture is innately selfish — just look at the giant piles of green snarbl dung on every corner in the city — I also get that it’s not entirely their fault.
After all, it’s capitalism that made us so lonely, right? Even though we all moved to the moon together — literally relying on each other for the air we breathe — it’s not like anyone leaves their apartments. We all work too many hours to care. So, if you want to go home to your snarbl and curl up with its sandpaper skin, be my guest. But when no one else can use the park for anything but little league, I guess… I guess, I just get mad is all.
Take my runs. I get up at 5 a.m. everyday, throwing on my sweatpants to get to the park before Earth-dawn, the only hour that you simultaneously won’t get mugged or run into a snarbl. This past week, though, I must have been ten minutes too late. I like to run on the grass to lessen the impact of the dome’s gravity machines. As I reached the field, though, I saw a snarbl out of the corner of my eye, dragging its owner along on its titanium leash.
I pulled to the side, under the giant little league scoreboard, hoping they’d pass me by and I could continue onto the field with my legs intact. At the very same moment, though, the snarbl owner stopped, too. Frozen, we looked at each other in the darkness. Surely he wasn’t about to use the park illegally before dawn. Surely he wouldn’t—
He unclipped the snarbl’s collar, reaching into his pocket for a fresh bag of eyeballs.
“Come on,” he cooed, walking into the field with a nice juicy blue eye in his palm, the color glowing like ice in the dull glow of the street lights. It wasn’t lost on me that my eyes were that color, of course, but soon, I had bigger problems. The snarbl must have caught a whiff of me with its tails, and it started growling, putting its shoulders up as they did when they were about to lunge.
“Now, now, Penelope, be a good snarbl,” the owner said, his voice calm as if murder wasn’t in his beloved’s eyes. He didn’t re-attach the collar, though. He simply pulled out a second eyeball. That caught Penelope’s attention, her eyes finally leaving me at the promise of a delectable treat. Still, it made me wonder. There are ten thousand snarbls in my city. Where did they get all those eyeballs? They must have cleared out the morgue months ago. Were they importing them from Earth?
My life may have been in danger, but somehow, I lingered. I was suddenly enraged, a lifetime of people putting their snarbls ahead of society pushing me over the edge. I wanted to call the alderman, the mayor, the space president — anyone who could make this injustice right. Wasn’t the park for humans? Hadn’t we gone far enough in accommodating every single whim of these foul beasts?
But then, the man glanced at me again, my anger dissipating like the moon’s ancient atmosphere. I was suddenly awash with guilt, seeing myself through his eyes. He was just trying to enjoy his morning, listening to the crunch of eyeballs in his snarbl’s jaws. And here I was, staring at him in the darkness, a far more devious kind of predator. How was he supposed to know what I wanted? At least snarbls are clear with their intentions, id-free as they gobble their way through society. Even if my anger demanded resolution, I didn’t want to be that person, the creep staring in the park. I want to live and let live, embracing the chaos of the city just as I do its charm.
I fled, heading for the tennis courts where I deserved to pound my knees into oblivion. Still, the injustice stayed buried in my heart, too, a pit of hot ash I couldn’t stamp out. I felt simultaneously guilty and aggrieved, unable to square the truth, my mind at once trying to love my enemies while I also desperately wanted someone to love me. Maybe I shouldn’t have expected more. If I was ready to pass a snarbl at any given moment, maybe I wouldn’t stand there in shock like a buffoon.
After I ran a dozen laps, sprinting harder than normal, I finally stopped, covered in sweat. I leaned against the tennis net, heaving in the recycled air of the dome. Earth had appeared on the horizon, its watery, blue surface like a sapphire in the endless night.
Standing, I banged my chest like a gorilla, the only somatic exercise I knew to get the anger out. It would be alright, wouldn’t it? Perhaps it would have been better to be born a snarbl, but with the sweat pouring down my face, I knew I had to forgive myself. I had gotten angry, sure. I had stood there like a wierdo, a fool. But I had found my way to other thoughts, too. I had felt empathy, searched for context, wandered toward understanding. After all, I’m no snarbl. I’m a human, and I’m still good despite my flaws.