Strands of Aana's gray hair are loose in the front. They hang in her face, out of her bun. She has her back to the table and stands at the stove in her kitchen frying doughnuts. She's got her apron with the big pockets on. It covers her favorite baggy blue sweatshirt and loose pants. She's humming along with one of Nuwa's greatest hits drifting in the warm, greasy air from their lightscreen in the wall. Nuwa is so plastic. I swear she's a gynoid! Her phony techno-vibe oozes through any lightscreen. Taata sits at the table across from me. He's in his favorite plaid shirt frayed at the cuffs.
All the lightscreens in their house are terrible. Every few seconds either Nuwa's face disappears or the sound drops. They haven't upgraded in forever. Aana and Taata are so old, they don't care. Dad's pretty sure it's because voles have been chewing the cables in their walls for years.
"Desert, huh? Never been to one and never will. Give me cold any day." Taata says, shaking his head.
"Deserts get cold at night. Really cold." I say.
"What'd you do?" He asks, chewing a piece of maktak - bowhead whale blubber. Taata calls it Eskimo chewing gum.
"Woka stepped on a massive spider hiding under the sand as soon as we entered level six."
Aana stops humming and turns toward us holding tongs. "Spiders are good mostly, but I don't like the creepy way they crawl with all those legs," and shakes her head with a frown.
Aana has the most expressive face. She can smile and laugh so hard one minute, and in the next glance have all the sadness, pain and suffering of indigenous people.
"Me neither, and this one had huge jaws, almost half its body. It tried to bite Woka's foot, but he kicked it in the mouth, and it crawled away. We got ten points for that."
"A good time." Taata chuckles, using his index fingers to push his mustache off his top lip.
"We could seethe oasis with palm trees up ahead and kept walking, but my bionic foot caught on something. I twisted around, and my butt landed on a cactus. Woka started laughing so hard, and then, out of nowhere, a black scorpion crawled from behind the cactus with pincers in attack mode, its tail hooked, ready to sting. He stopped laughing instantly."
"Another reason I like cold." Taata says, grinning, chewing hard, rubbing his chin stubble.
"With the cactus pricking my iqquuk, I reached out and grabbed the scorpion.Squirming, it was trying to sting me, and ended up stinging itself.We got twenty points for that!" I exclaim with a smile.
"Sounds fun, right Aana?" Taata asks, his eyes wide.
Aana turns from the stove,biting her lip into her tupiich, the tattooed lines on her chin.
"Twenty points is good."She nods, with the tongs in her hand, and turns back to the stove to lift the last doughnut from the pot.
"After that, we had to help a beetle as big as me bury a ball of dung."
"Hear that? What's more exciting than getting rid of anak?" Taata asks with a smirk.
"Ohhh...like when the village ran out of toilet paper!" Aana exclaims, chuckling. "The wind so bad that winter the supply plane couldn't land. No toilet paper for six whole weeks!" Aana laughs hard. Her eyes disappear into slits with her round cheeks pushed against them.
"Ewww....that's disgusting!" I say, and watch as she heads to the table with the platter.
She reaches over and puts the platter of warm doughnuts between me and Taata.
I reach for a doughnut so warm I blow it to cool off.
"The winter of....2042....or was it 2043?" She asks, settling in the chair next to Taata with a cup of tea. With her sleeve folded up, my favorite tattoo on the inside of her arm, above her wrist is visible. The circle with the dot inside. I asked her once what it meant, and where she got it. She said a shaman gave it to her when she was nineteen traveling in the lower forty eight. Said it's an ancient symbol, that it represents nature's generative principle.I nodded, like I knew what she was talking about. But I didn't....and still don't.
Taata spits the gum out in his giant hand that's almost as big as a baseball glove, and grabs a doughnut with the other. "That winter I will never forget, no matter how much I try," he says, chuckling and eats half in one bite.
"So Luki...you and Woka finally make it to the oasis?" Aana asks, her eyes wide, her forehead all wrinkled up.
One more bite, and Taata's doughnut is gone. He brushes his mustache and chin stubble for crumbs with his fingertips. Then hiccups and pops the maktak back in his mouth.
"Eventually.We had to pass a group of vultures on the way. Their heads were buried inside a putrid camel carcass. It stank so bad!" I say,holding my nose. "We had to move really, really slowly. We'd lose points if we scared any of them off. It took us half an hour to go six feet."
"This game gets better."Taata says, nudging Aana with a grin.
"We got to the oasis,found the well, and swam in a pool with gardenia flowers. The best perfume ever!" I exclaim and inhale deeply. "We made the pool bigger, and added miniature dusky dolphins that jumped, spun,twisted and leaped all over us. That was so fun! And at the very end,for fifty extra points, Woka caught a horned viper. I got to hold the jar while he milked the venom."
"Goodness," Aana takes a sip of tea. "What's next?"She asks, looking at Taata, her eyes smiling.
"Level seven. The boring tundra," I say, rolling my eyes, "we'll get through that environment in no time."
"Since when are polar bears, musk ox, wolves, walrus, penguins, caribou, ptarmigans and all the other endangereds here boring?" Taata asks, his eyes wide.
"Maybe boring's not the right word." I squint with a shrug.
There's a cawing sound,and the lightscreen flashes a beluga whale. Dad's ringtone. A beluga vocalization. Mom's a beluga too. Hers is their clicking for echolocation.
Taata's voice booms over the cawing, "Answer Frank Sloan!"
The beluga dissolves into Dad's face. He's in the pilot's seat on the Barracuda's bridge. Mom's in the chair next to him.
Taata bellows, "How's it going?" He shouts whenever he talks to a lightscreen.
"Catch any Red Dragons?"I ask.
Dad answers smiling with a nod, "As a matter of fact....did,"and turns to Mom, "didn't we asik?" He asks, using Inupiaq for 'dear one.'
Mom nods. "From China.Two of them were about to ki.... ibbon seal with their android. We turned them over to the Russ...."
We're all so used to the awful lightscreen and audio dropouts, we pretty much know what they're saying.
"You can always....the old XH-5 droids. They're ju....ike Sumo wrestlers. We got some good intel too." Dad says.
"We know the endangereds they really w....."Mom nods.
"And they're not in the Bering St....." Dad shakes his head.
"Which ones?" I ask.
"They want endlings and the most criti....... ...dangered." Mom says, her mouth drooping.
"And the functionally extin..." Dad nods.
"How come? I thought they wanted all endangereds."I ask.
"Sure th....do, but that's not where th......ig money is." Mom says.
"Which ones do they really want?" Aana asks, looking worried.
"For starters, .....lins, cinereous vultu...., radiated torto....., Puerto Rican crest.. toads,African.....dogs, and Partula snai.....," Mom says.
"Vultures?" Taata spits the maktak into his palm again and grabs another doughnut.
"Even ....tures," Dad nods. "Folks ...lieve eat.... the bird actu....wards off the plague. It's nonsense, but......what they believe."
"I hate Red Dragons!" I say and notice the window on Dad's side is open a crack.
"Our Russian WEAPP frie......have been tracking their lead....White Wolf. He's heading......way on his super-yacht." Dad says. "Apparently wants to wat......he marine migration. What's left of it rig.....here in the Stra...."
"We catch him .....we destroy the gang,"Mom nods with a grin.
A Russian voice crackles over the Barracuda loudspeaker. "Yanbu heading no.....west at forty....ree knots. Prepare for intercept......."
"Gotta go." Dad says and reaches for his ballistic helmet.
Mom puts hers on, and says, "See you for break......, asik," calling me 'dear one,'"and adds, "Aana and Taata, come too!"
"See you." I wave, and my heart skips a beat.
Their faces in the lightscreen go black. Nuwa's face reappears, warbling one of her greatest hits, and I could care less.
"Time for a smoke."Aana says, and heads behind me into their living room to puff her pipe. I love her pipe smoke that smells like a chocolate-caramel cloud.
"How 'bout a game o fInukat?" Taata asks.
I'm bored with his game. Played him almost every day after virtual school this winter. I know all the bones in his bag. I can reconstruct the seal's tarsal bones to make a hind flipper in ten minutes.
"Want me to beat you again?" I ask, grinning.
"Hmmph," he grunts with a smirk. "Don't think so. Grab the bag on the little table."He points.
I stand and reach for the bag of rough caribou leather on the table behind me, by the wall.Turning, I lean over to drop it in front of him.
He shoves the doughnuts out of the way.
"Got a new game," he says, "traded with my buddy. Let's see how well you know your tuttuk." He says Inupiaq for 'caribou,' and dumps the contents in the middle of the table.
I stare at the pile,studying the bones.
My mindsight flashes on Mom and Dad...on the bridge in the Barracuda.The ASV is surrounded by a blue cloud. It envelops the bow. The cloud changes shape, forms into a ball. It floats to the driver's window,open at the top, and like a stream rushes in. Mom and Dad flail their arms, slapping, hitting, punching the cloud. What is it? I close my eyes, take a deep breath. Dozens, no, hundreds of tiny, blue things buzz around their heads, attacking their goggles and neck, the only place they're not protected. My eyes flash open. It's not a cloud. It's a swarm!