D Day

Photo by Mitch Meyers on Unsplash

And on the 2,556,750,000th day, God reconsidered what he had made and decided that the world would be better off if human beings were other animals entirely — if there were no such thing as human beings at all. There would be species, but there wouldn’t be races. You wouldn’t look at a fellow zebra’s face and think yourself superior. You wouldn’t amass untold wealth. You would murder, at times, but no one would take it personally. (In the absence of people, “personally” wouldn’t be a thing.) You wouldn’t buy a gun and shoot children. You wouldn’t invent nuclear weapons. You wouldn’t blithely burn fossil fuels and irreversibly affect the planet’s climate.

Jade was at her best friend Ruby’s house when both of their phones pinged with the news, like it was an Amber Alert or a hurricane warning. Ruby wouldn’t have been surprised if God were the subject of an Amber Alert. Look out for God, driving a windowless white van with a vanity plate. To be honest, Ruby didn’t think very much of God.

Jade was straining pasta over Ruby’s sink. The hot steam rose into her face, a carbohydrate facial. Ruby stirred the pot of sauce over the stove. A bubble popped and splashed red tomato, not on her apron but just to the side of it, onto her white shirt. This was always happening to Ruby.

“What animals have friends?” Jade asked Ruby.

Ruby typed the question into her phone.

“Cetaceans are capable of true friendship,” Ruby read. “Higher primates, elephants, camelids, certain members of the horse family.”

“Camelids are camels?” Jade asked.

“And llamas and alpacas.”

At the end of the month, God declared, all people would be transformed. Ruby, Jade, and the rest of humanity would have thirty days to select what they wanted to spend the rest of their lives as. They had the entire animal kingdom to choose from. After the deadline, humans would not exist.

They sat down to eat their dinner. Ruby poured their wine into her favorite little museum-store glasses, which were shaped like egg cups. The friends clinked their glasses together and drank.

“What animals get drunk?” Ruby asked.

“That one I know.” Jade laughed. “Elephants and parrots. Deer, moose, bats.”

“So elephants have friends and get drunk,” Ruby mused.

“Except it takes a lot to get them drunk. Obviously. Females are” — Jade peered into her phone — “six to eight thousand pounds.”

“It would be nice, weighing six to eight thousand pounds and not obsessing over it.”

Jade twirled spaghetti around her fork and conveyed it to her mouth.

“What’d you put in this sauce? It’s so good.”

“Fish sauce! You like it?”

“I’m going to miss your cooking.”

“You won’t, though,” Ruby said, laughing sadly. “I mean, that’s the kind of beautiful thing.”

The change was meant to take us down a peg. A naval expression. A ship’s colors were maneuvered via pegs. There were higher and lower colors, more and less honorable ships. Humanity was to