When Man-Made by K.E. Rodgers

When Man-Made

  By: K.E. Rodgers

  ****

  Published By:

  Copyright © 2010

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased is coincidental and should be seen as such.

  Location: Earth – North Western Quadrant

  City: Blockdown Dome – Pop: 3,457, 823. 341

  Somewhere within the dome…

  Chapter 1-

  My grandmother told me the thing she missed the most was the smell of the grass; the sound of the breeze running over it, the way it looked, the way it felt. I didn’t understand what she meant by this. Did we not have grass growing outside on our lawn? My mother had it brought in from the Generation plant where it was made and laid out in long sheets in front of our home. It was bright and springy, soft and cool on my bare feet. Many afternoons, I would just lie out on it, staring up and far away at the sky above.

  My Nani said it was not the same. Sure it was pretty, almost flawless in its perfection. Every blade created from the finest materials of bio-engineering, put together by the best visionaries in our city. But it was not the same. It was not real. I didn’t understand.

  I told her it sure looked real to me. It even felt real. How could this bed of soft earth not be real? How could this layer of organic fibers not be real? I wanted to know what this real grass looked like and why my grass couldn’t measure up to its standards.

  “You will never find out,” my grandmother explained, a sad note hidden in her voice. “There is no real grass, not anymore. Some things are just beyond our range of knowing, no matter how much we would wish otherwise.”

  She steadily lowered herself onto the lawn beside me. She was old, nearly sixty years. I never wanted to get that old. And I told my eleven year old self that I never would.

  “They could make it better,” I said. By, they, I meant the skilled scientists and engineers of our city. I believed they were like miracle workers. “If they wanted to, they could make this grass look just like the old one. I bet they could even make it smell like your grass.”

  I was very enthusiastic at that age. And at the time, I truly believed that our brightest visionaries could do practically anything. I believed that their range of knowing surpassed any humans before us. They had created our world through their knowledge of molecular science, chemistry, and the physiology of the natural world. Through them we could have a world that we had thought lost to us. We could make it better.

  I was not yet born when the sun burned hot in the sky, when the land beneath my people’s feet trembled and rocked, when the sky turned black and many of the animals died. I could not understand why my Nani would miss a simple thing as grass, not when all I knew of this world existed inside our cities walls. I did not know this real grass and I did not miss it. You cannot miss what you never had. That was what I believed.

  “Don’t you like our grass, Nani?” I asked, flopping back and spreading my arms above my head. “Mom bought it especially for you, so you could play that game. The one you said you played when you were my age.” I turned my head to the side to look at her. “What was it called again?”

  Nani lay back on the soft lawn next to me, settling her hands over her stomach. “Bocce ball," she said, "It was like bowling only outside and on the grass.” She smiled to herself as she looked up to the domed sky. Only if you looked closely through the clouds and light, could you see where our city ended. Beyond that dome lay the unknown.

  Nani was smiling because she was reminiscing. It is a word that grown-up’s use when they want to reflect upon the past; a time when things were good or better than they are now. They can remember a time when they were happy and maybe in remembering it will make them happy now.

  “I like your mother’s grass, Lora, very much. It was sweet of her to think of it. There are not too many families that are as fortunate as we are to have someone so smart and capable of reproducing the natural world.” Nani brushed her aged fingers over the tips of the grass blades.

  My mother was one of the renowned visionaries who were responsible for recreating a natural world within our city. They made more than grass; they made our world. Every wisp of cloud over our head, the light that shined down on us, the rain that dampened our land, the snow that I made snow men with; they made it all. As I said, I believed that they were miracle workers and in some respects they were. I believed nothing was beyond their grasp to create.

  I watched my Nani as she touched our new grass my mother had installed for her on our lawn. I studied her as she studied the grass. And what I saw confused me even more.

  I think my mother had hoped that seeing this carpet of green fibers would somehow make my Nani happy. Why then did she look so sad? I cannot stand to see grown-ups cry. They are not allowed to cry. If something is powerful enough to make one of them cry it must be something inconceivably terrible.

  Nani didn’t cry, but she looked as if she was likely to start anytime soon. I have never seen her cry, except when my father died. But I’m not sure. It was likely that she could have cried and I had not been there to see it. It was only at my father’s funeral that she had cried openly in front of me. Her face had made such grotesque contortions. I thought it would break or at least crack down the middle, leaving an empty hole where her nose should have been.

  My child’s brain didn’t yet know how to comfort, especially someone who I believed was meant to soothe me, to wipe my tears and tell me all would be right. I could not do the same for her, though some part of me wanted to.

  “Nani,” I whispered.

  She blinked at me as if only now remembering I was lying next to her. For a moment her eyes had focused far away, to something or some place I could not see. Then she adjusted her focus back on my face. Brushing a strand of hair away from my eyes, she pressed her index finger lightly against my nose.

  “Yes, sweet pea?” she answered in a soft tone. Sometimes she said funny words like that. Sweet pea. What was that?

  “I’m going to find you real grass. I promise.” I spoke with such confidence.

  At the time I thought that I could find my Nani anything. That if I wanted it enough, it would not be a difficult task to accomplish.

  In my childhood exuberance, I took the utterance of such a promise lightly. It wasn’t that I had lied to her. I just didn’t fully comprehend the near impossibility of such a promise. Maybe I thought it was enough that I offered to look for this real grass. I likely would have promised to get her anything her heart desired to make her happy. You want the moon, the sun, and the stars? I will get them. I will get them for you Nani.

  She didn’t speak.

  We stared at one another and I watched as a tear slipped freely down her cheek. But she didn’t look sad anymore and I was glad that my foolish promise had made it so.

  My Nani would never smell real grass, or feel it between her naked fingers, hear it rustle under her feet as she moved through it. We would spend many more afternoons lying on my mother’s grass outside our home, but we would never talk about that promise I made so many lifetimes ago. Perhaps she had been right all along, that there was no such thing as real grass. Not anymore.

  From time to time I would think about that promise and how naïve I had been at that age.

  Children have such foolish notions about the world.

  Later I would take those words back. And I would rethink my rash promise with a grown woman’s perspective. I would prove Nani wrong, just as she hoped I would.