Eternity Park

The dragon padded out of the treeline and onto the beach, powder-white sand shifting beneath its claws. From her hiding spot twenty metres away, peering over an outcrop of jagged black rock, Kayla mouthed a wow. Komodo dragons had been extensively recorded and studied, particularly in the final years when their numbers were dwindling. The program’s behaviour was picture perfect.

Kayla had detection deactivated by default, so the dragon-program didn’t get spooked as she came out from behind the rock and approached it. The Komodo was considerably longer than she was tall, by a considerable margin, its tail thicker than her leg. It was covered in armoured scales and, as she watched, a tongue flicked out, snake-like, tasting the air.

Her display had pinged to register the sighting, and a myriad of facts and figures began to pop up on one side of her vision. Kayla sat down in the sand and flicked through them at random.

Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis).

Komodo dragon scales contained tiny bones called osteoderms, which functioned as organic armour, similar to chainmail.

Komodos hunted using their claws which could grow to 2.5cm (1 inch) long. Anticoagulant properties in their venom ensured their prey were more prone to bleed out following a non-lethal attack.

Komodo dragons were declared extinct in 2037, despite the best efforts of conservationists and philanthropists. DNA and tissue samples are held in the Grand Ark for future use.

Kayla swiped it away and brought up the menu. She had successfully registered the sighting, and it had synced to the Eternity Park servers. That brought her total extinct species sightings to 1,043.

Kayla looked back up at the simulation of the dragon as it wandered over to a shady patch beneath a tree and began digging. Kayla came around to the side as it scooped up the sand with its huge claws, tail swishing slightly from side to side to keep balance as it dug.

“Kayla,” said the dragon. She froze. “Kayla,” it said again. She realised the sound wasn’t coming from the dragon, but from realspace. She pulled off her headset to find her dad leaning through her half-open bedroom door.

“Hey,” she said.

“Pause your game and come on down,” he said. “Dinner’s nearly ready.”

On her way downstairs, Kayla mulled over the weekly update. Several new animals had recently been confirmed as extinct; a lemur, a scattering of birds and fish, and a cheetah. In the first few years, a species as big as a cheetah or an elephant transitioning from life on Earth to Eternity Park would have made for front-page headlines. Now, it was relegated to the Climate Crisis section on her news site. The front page was reserved for the resource wars in Asia, the newest pandemic spreading out of Africa’s megacities, and the unfolding oxygen crisis on the lunar colony.

The release of Eternity Park had gone unregarded for a while as the academic plaything of biologists, naturalists and nostalgic conservationists. After the update that had added an in-program checklist of species sightings, a few influencers had picked it up, and the rest was history. It was the perfect escapist collectathon for the age of ecological collapse.

Downstairs, the table was laid and Kayla’s mum was bringing through plates that had been warmed in the oven. Her dad was already sat down, knife and fork in hand, beaming,

“Careful, Kay,” her mum said. “Hot.” Kayla immediately pressed her palms into the centre of her plate, relishing the warmth. It was how she imagined it would feel sinking her feet into the hot, white sand of the Indonesian beach, beside the Komodo.

“Or just ignore me,” her mum said, taking her seat. Her dad passed around tortilla wraps and the three of them started spooning fillings from bowls scattered across the centre of the table.

“How was school?” her mum asked.

Kayla shrugged. “Same old same old. We couldn’t do PE because of the smog. And I saw a bird.”

“Really?” Her dad said. “What sort of bird was it?”

Kayla wasn’t sure. “I don’t know. Maybe a gull, or a tern. I thought it was one of the ones I saw in Eternity Park a couple of weeks ago, but it couldn’t be.”

“Well, obviously,” her dad said.

“Oh, by the way, Kayla,” her mum said. “Charlie called around for you a few minutes ago. You were up in your room on your thing and tea was nearly ready, so I said maybe another day.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Nice boy,” her dad said. “Is there any chance that, er…”

“Ben,” her mum scowled at her dad.

“What?”

“You’re embarrassing her.”

“Yeah,” Kayla said, “you’re embarrassing her. And anyway, no, there is no chance.”

“Well, that answers that,” her dad said. He shovelled an amount of bulging tortilla wrap into his mouth that wasn’t normally possible for land animals. Kayla tucked the edges of her wrap in and got to work.

The conversation died down as the three of them ate. The radio was still on in the kitchen and the sound of the evening news drifted through the open door.

“Dad, could you pass me the…”

“Hold on a sec, sweetie,” he said, one hand raised in the air in a gentle plea for silence.

“…primed to launch from StarBase Bradbury in the next few days,” the radio said. “Aaron Murdock’s departure follows several other prominent figures in the science and technology industries that have left Earth in recent months, after the chief executives of Lagos Fusion and Apple’s vice president John Bloom launched from StarBase Asimov in April…”

“Cowards,” Kayla’s mum said.

“Please turn that off,” Kayla said.

Her mum looked at her for a second before shouting through to the kitchen to the radio for it to turn off. “Sorry, Kay.”

“It’s ok. I just don’t like hearing about it all.”

“Nor I,” said her dad. “Their lot put us in the state we’re in. I’d like to say the world will be a better place without them, but, well, it’s a bit late for that.” The table was silent for a moment. “Well, cheers, everyone!” Her dad added, raising his glass. Kayla’s mum laughed, but Kayla sat silent, chewing a mouthful. Did they have access to the internet and Eternity Park on the generation ships? Maybe just a secure network - a snapshot of Eternity Park frozen in time, without any new updates. The billionaires and trillionaires would be free to wander a pristine virtual copy of Earth, lushly populated with all the animals their companies had killed.

Kayla finished her wrap and asked for another. As she was assembling it, she curled her hands into claws, imagining she was a Komodo gouging its prey. The fearsome dragon added a final dab of guacamole before tearing into the tortilla carcass with long, venomous teeth.

“Kayla,” her mum said. “You’re in high school now. Stop eating like a kindergartener.”

_________________________________

Kayla was in New Zealand, on the hunt for the kākāpō.

Looking through the index of extinct animals added to Eternity Park, filtering out the ones she had already sighted and registered, the kākāpō had caught her eye because of its name. It was one letter away from being a kaka-poo. The poo-poo bird. She was far too old to laugh at toilet humour, Kayla told herself, but it was still a funny name. And it was a funny-looking thing, she had to admit. Archived pictures showed that it was bright green and flightless, with an oddly curious expression.

She had spent an hour or so poking around on Little Barrier Island, off the coast of the mainland. It had been the kākāpō’s final habitat, chosen as an isolated haven for the final endangered specimens to live, safe from predators. A flu strain crossing the species barrier had put a stop to that.

Kayla stopped. There was a rustling sound from somewhere behind her, and she turned back and headed towards it, her detection turned off.

It was Charlie, from next door in realspace. She’d recognise his Eternity Park avatar anywhere. He was clad in black ninja robes from head to neck, and an enormous disco ball fully encompassed his head. A neon smiley emoji decorated the “face” of the disco ball. In contrast, Kayla was wearing something she would normally wear; jeans and a jumper.

Kayla reactivated detection, and Charlie jumped back as she popped into view in front of him. The smiley emoji flashed into a shocked face with an open O for a mouth.

“Jeez, Kayla,” he said. “You scared me.”

“No, you scared me!” she said. “What are you doing out here?”

“Looking for you. You left your location tracker on.” Charlie did something on his wrist and his avatar’s helmet vanished, revealing his face.

Kayla frowned and brought up her own menus again, deactivating her tracker. “At least send me a message before you start hunting me.”

“I wasn’t hunting you!”

“Fine.”

“I just wanted to hang out…” Charlie trailed off. “Nevermind.”

“No, its okay,” Kayla said. “We can hang out.” For a moment he didn’t reply, and the two of them listened to the backdrop of Eternity Park’s dynamic ambient soundtrack; the distant squawks and chirps of birds and insects, the faint crashing of a nearby waterfall, and the sound of the wind rushing through a thousand treetops all at once.

“You want to know a fun fact?” Charlie said.

“Sure,” Kayla said. Charlie’s fun facts were usually okay.

“The sound that trees make, acamolwhen the wind blows through them, it’s called psithurism.”

“I always just called it whispering.”

“That works too.” Charlie looked around. “What you looking for out here, anyway?”

“Kākāpō.”

“The what?”

“It’s like a big green parrot that can’t fly.”

“You could be swimming with dolphins, or walking with rhinos, and you’re looking for a… land parrot?”

“Look, you can come if you want,” Kayla said. She turned and headed off through the trees, back the way she had been going. There was a fallen tree that blocked her path and she scrambled over it, listening carefully as she pushed aside a patchwork of branches.

Charlie was beside her. “Okay. I’ll help you look for the kookaro.”

“Kākāpo.”

“Are you sure that’s right?”

Kayla scowled at him. They carried on through the trees, towards the sound of water. It was getting louder.

“It is a pretty funny name,” Charlie said.

“Yeah, it is.”

Over a little rise, the land dropped down suddenly for a few metres. A little stream trickled over the edge in a weak waterfall, gathering in a still pool at the bottom, crowned by rocks. As Kayla and Charlie peered over the edge, something small and green jumped down from a branch on the other side of the pool and jogged to the water’s edge. There was no other way to describe its movement, although it felt strange assigning that action to a bird.

“Is that the one?” Charlie said.

“I think it is. Be quiet, we’re detectable.” Kayla stared at the kākāpō as it dipped its beak to the water, and there was a ping as the sighting was registered.

Kākāpō (Strigops habroptilus).

The kākāpō was also known as the “night parrot” or “owl parrot.”

One of the longest-living birds, kākāpō were known to live up to a hundred years old.

Kākāpō were declared extinct in the wild in 2026. One specimen was discovered in captivity at a private residence in Adelaide in 2028, although this died shortly thereafter. Viable specimens of DNA and tissue samples were unable to be retrieved.

Kayla flicked through a few more of the factoids. “It says here it’s normally nocturnal.”

“Guess we got really lucky seeing this one,” Charlie said. “Must be an early bird.”

Kayla groaned. “Come on, let’s get closer.” She turned her detection off and scrambled down the slope towards the pool. The kākāpō looked up, responding to another sound rather than her, and Kayla almost burst out laughing. The expression on its face was ridiculous. It looked the same way her dad did when he tried to help her with her maths homework. She crept closer and held out a hand, as if to stroke it, and her hand passed through it like it were a ghost. Or she was.

The kākāpō hopped away into the trees. Charlie slid down the slope to join her, splashing through the water. Kayla turned detection back on so he could see her.

“There you are.”

“You didn’t want to get a closer look?” Kayla said.

“Not really,” Charlie said. “It feels weird.”

“You’re weird.”

“I’m being serious,” he said. “Getting that close and them having no idea you’re there… it makes me feel like I’m a ghost, like I’m dead. Except they’re the ones that are dead.”

Kayla felt a little chill, despite the heat. “I thought the same thing, actually,” she said. “But it’s really cool to get that close to them and see all the details.”

“I guess so. What are you doing this weekend?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, stepping onto one of the big rocks that bordered the pool and jumping to another. “Probably this. Maybe we could…”

“Hang on,” Charlie said, head cocked slightly, listening to something Kayla couldn’t hear. “My mum says I have to go.”

“Oh, okay. I’ll see you later.”

“See you later.” Charlie was gone.

Kayla sat on the rock, listening to the trickle of the little waterfall. It did feel strange, what Charlie had said. About stalking through this world like a ghost. And if it felt strange to her, imagine how strange it must feel for the animal-programs; godlike figures in crazy outfits blinking in and out of existence in front of them, chasing them, staring at them. Did they even feel anything? Had the original animals? What if these programs had more consciousness than the animals they were based on?

Kayla was thinking too much again. She saved her progress and pulled off her headset. She thought she could smell food in realspace.

_________________________________

Kayla’s mum and dad were shouting. Her headset was on charge, and her earpods were in, but she could still hear them over the sound of her music.

A message pinged on her phone. It was from Charlie.

CD0g360: hi

KaylaMartin: hi

CD0g360: are you watching the news?

KaylaMartin: no, why?

While Charlie was typing a response, Kayla flicked on the TV and went to one of the 24-hour news channels. It was showing FIFTY DEAD IN NEUROTOXIN ATTACK IN PARIS and footage of police cars rushing down narrow streets.

KaylaMartin: I don’t get it.

CD0g360: hang on a sec

Charlie sent her a link and Kayla clicked through. A double-black flood warning had been declared, and several towns and smaller villages not far away from them had been hit. Drone shots showed houses twisting into parallelograms with the force of the water pushing at their lower levels, before splintering and breaking apart. Half-intact roofs sailed down streets of roaring brown water.

CD0g360: isnt that where you’re aunt lives?

KaylaMartin: I don’t know. I’ll be right back

Kayla took out her earpods and went downstairs. Her parents were standing at opposite ends of the kitchen table, and they both fell silent for a moment as Kayla entered the room. She looked at both of them in turn.

“Why are you shouting?” she said.

“We’re not shouting,” her dad said.

“I heard you. Is Aunt Jess okay? I saw on the news that-”

“See,” her mum said. “Even Kayla knows. She would want us to go help her.”

“Kayla, just give us a minute, please, darling,” her dad said. She left the room, but stopped at the bottom of the stairs.

“Marie, I am just as worried about your sister as you are,” her dad said from the kitchen. “But strapping everyone into the car and driving into a flood emergency zone is not a good idea. If Jess is in danger, the rescue teams will help her.”

“I’m not packing everyone into the car. Jesus. I’m going by myself.”

“I can’t let you do that. What are you going to do in our crappy little car?”

“You’d already be on the road if it was your sister.”

“No, I… look, there’s nothing we can do. Unless you have a helicopter that can airlift her out of there, you’re just putting yourself at risk. Think of Kayla.”

“Oh, please,” her mum said. “Don’t play the Kayla card.”

Kayla ran up the stairs, the bottom three steps creaking. The conversation stopped, but neither of them came after her.

Back in her room, Kayla flicked through the Eternity Park companion app on her phone. She scrolled down the long list of extinct animal-programs she’d registered recently. Kākāpō. Komodo dragon. Clownfish. African elephant. Stag beetle. Golden eagle. Axolotl.

What would happen to them when all the humans had left Earth, or died? What if Eternity Park went offline, and the Grand Ark was lost to some natural disaster? All those lost species would be gone, forever.

She tried to call Charlie, but he was offline. He might be in Eternity Park himself, his location turned off; tracking something, or just wandering. She thought about telling her mum or dad, but remembered the cold atmosphere that had settled over the kitchen table for the last few days while they ate together, and thought better of it.

_________________________________

Aunt Jess was dead.

The rescue teams had completed the evacuation of her town several days ago, the bodies of the dead along with the living, but it had taken until now to identify her.

Kayla’s mum hadn’t come out of her bedroom since they had received the call, and Kayla’s dad kept checking in on both of them, asking if there was anything he could do. Kayla kept expecting her mum to erupt, screaming that she could have saved her if they’d let her go, but it never came, and somehow that was worse. Maybe she knew it wasn’t true. Maybe she didn’t care anymore whether it was true or not.

The news was showing wildfires spreading up one coast and floods rising up along the other, too far away to cancel each other out.

Kayla picked up her phone and messaged Charlie.

KaylaMartin: You there?

CD0g360: hey Kayla

KaylaMartin: I’m watching the news. I’m getting scared now.

CD0g360: relax, floods haven’t hit where we are since the millennium. We’re safe here

KaylaMartin: I think we might be next.

CD0g360: what do u mean?

KaylaMartin: The next additions to Eternity Park.

CD0g360: lol

KaylaMartin: Really? Not funny.

CD0g360: sorry i thought u were joking. If humans go extinct who’s going to add us to Eternity Park?

KaylaMartin: I don’t mean literally.

CD0g360: Then what do u mean?

KaylaMartin: Forget it.

CD0g360: i’m sorry i said lol

Kayla logged off, turned off the TV, and crawled into bed with her earpods. She scrolled through playlists before settling on Ambient Nature Relaxation ASMR Guaranteed To Help You Sleep. It didn’t work. All the background noises - the birds chirping, leaves rustling, animals calling out for mates - reminded her of Eternity Park, and all the lost ghost-programs that were unaware they were all dead.

_________________________________

Kayla had woken up early after a troubled sleep. She was in Japan when her headset was wrenched from her head. Going from VR to realspace when you weren’t ready for it was nauseating, and she shuddered. “What the hell?”

“Kay,” her dad said. “We need to go.”

Downstairs, she found her parents had already packed and were ready to leave. Her mum was ferrying bags out to the car. Her dad was running from room to room.

“What’s going on?”

Her dad reached out, took her hand, and led her outside. “We have to go. The floods spread overnight. Way more than they thought they would. We got alerts on our phones a few minutes ago.”

Kayla patted her pocket. Her phone wasn’t there, and she tried to pull back into the house. “Wait, my phone…”

“No time. We need to go, now.”

The enormity of what was happening hit her. Kayla let herself be taken towards the car and she climbed into the back seat with some of the bags. The car pulled away and onto the road, losing sight of the house.

“I didn’t pack a bag,” Kayla said. “I didn’t have any time.”

“We packed you a few days worth of clothes with what was in the clean laundry ready to go away,” her mum said. “We’ll be okay.”

“What about my toothbrush?”

“We’ll be okay for a few days.”

“What about…” Kayla stopped. She’d been about to say my headset, but her mum would only say we can get another one. She’d left everything; her phone, her earpods, her headset, her school things.

Kayla looked out of the rear window and back down the road. Their house was already out of sight, behind the little trees that lined their front garden, but Charlie’s house was visible. Their two cars were still on the drive.

“Mum, Dad,” Kayla said. “We need to go back and warn Charlie.”

Her parents looked at each other for a second. “He’ll be fine,” her dad said. “His parents will have gotten the alert too.”

“What if they’re still asleep? We need to…”

“We need to get out of here,” her mum snapped. “Do you want to end up like your Aunt Jess?”

Kayla fell silent. The car sped on into the morning, up into the hills and out of the danger zone.

_________________________________

The hotel they were staying in was nice, but smelled strange. The three of them were sharing a room, and Kayla’s dad snored. Her mum had bought her a new phone and earpods on their second day, and listening to her music drowned the noise out, but she always woke up when one song ended, in the pocket of silence before the next one played. It was like when she was little, falling asleep in the car on the long ride home from her grandma and grandad’s - she always woke when the car came to a stop, and the engine clicked off.

She had tried to message Charlie, to no avail. Her other friends from school had all got out okay, but no-one else had heard from him. On the news, people were still unaccounted for, and teams in high-visibility lifejackets patrolled the waters in dinghies, in thick black water that came halfway up the upstairs windows of the few houses that were still standing.

A few other families from the disaster zone were staying in the hotel. A few corridors down, there was a family with three boys that always kept the door open. Whenever Kayla wandered the hotel corridors, she glanced inside. The youngest boy was perhaps a few years younger than her, and he was always sitting in a chair in the corner, with a headset on. She felt a stab of jealousy every time she saw him, and thought of her own headset. By now it was thoroughly marinated in floodwaters and buried in the debris that had been their house.

She got an email from Eternity Park on the fourth day, with information about the weekly update, and the new species that had been added. She scrolled through pictures of more fish, beetles, a bee, something called an “eland” that looked like a gazelle or antelope, and three types of bat.

Back in the room, her dad was making a call. He made dozens of calls every day: to the insurance companies, his work, and to other people that Kayla didn’t recognise. His phone was on constant rotation between his ear and the charging dock that dribbled electricity out of the wall in a slow, syrupy fashion.

“Dad?” Kayla said. “Can I get some money for the pool table in the lobby?”

“I understand,” he was saying to the phone. “But what I don’t understand is how you can be saying we didn’t take the necessary precautions. We couldn’t exactly pick the house up and move it out of the way.”

“Dad? A couple of the girls from room 96 are starting a tournament.”

“But how can you say it’s not covered? How more ‘Act of God’ can you get? It’s in Genesis, for Christ’s sake.”

“Dad?”

“Just give me a minute!” he shouted. Kayla drew back. He looked back at her for a moment, with something on his face approaching guilt. “No, not you,” he said into the phone. “One second. Here,” he said, rummaging through his pocket and thrusting a few coins into Kayla’s hands. “This is all I’ve got.”

Kayla mouthed a thank you and took her money out into the hall. Her mum was sitting in the loose collection of chairs and coffee tables that populated their end of the corridor, vapour trickling upwards from her mouth.

“You okay?” her mum said, putting her e-cigarette away.

Kayla nodded.

“I heard all that,” her mum said.

Kayla nodded again.

“Come here,” she said. Kayla came and sat down in the chair next to her.

“Your dad is really worrying right now,” she said. “He doesn’t mean it if he loses his temper with you a little.”

“I know,” Kayla said. “I’m worried, too. About Charlie. And his mum and dad.”

“You still haven’t managed to reach him?”

Kayla shook her head.

“I’m sure he just left his phone behind in the rush to evacuate. Same as you did. His family don’t have as much money as we do. He might not get a new one for a little while.”

Kayla wiped her eyes. “You’re probably right. But you’d think someone would have heard from him.”

“I’m sure he’s okay, sweetie.”

“How can you say that,” Kayla said, “after Aunt Jess?” Her mum didn’t say anything to that, and Kayla realised she had stood up. She sat back down again. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean that.”

“I say that,” her mum said, “because I have to believe it. They’re sure they’ve found everyone who didn’t make it, and none of his family’s names have come up, have they? Is there no other way you can reach him?”

Kayla played with the coins in her hand for a moment, and stopped.

“I have to go,” she said, and ran off down the hall. Her mum called after her, but Kayla ignored her. She ran round the corner, past the elevators, and down the next corridor, to the room with the open door. She came to a halt, and the entire family looked her way at the same time. Even the young boy with the headset on turned his head in her direction.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m sorry. It’s an emergency. I really really need to borrow your headset.”

_________________________________

Kayla was back in New Zealand, on Little Barrier Island.

Her detection was off, and she crashed through the forest. Birds and rodents fled before her. She scrambled over a fallen tree, and stopped, listening for the sound of water. She followed it.

Up a hill, over a rise, was a little stream that trickled over the edge of a tiny waterfall. At the bottom was a little pool crowned with rocks, and a small green bird was drinking from it. Spotting her, the kākāpō made a choked chirping sound and ran off into the trees.

Kayla made her way down to the little pool. She climbed up onto one of the rocks that ringed the water, and looked around. She shouted out into the forest. No one was there.

She sat for a moment, unsure of what to do next. Whether she should stay, or try somewhere else. What about where they lived? There wouldn’t be a town there, not in Eternity Park. Just the landscape that had existed there before civilisation. And the landscape that would exist after it. Then again, there wasn’t a town there in the real world anymore, not really.

Kayla heard something moving in the leaves. The kākāpō was approaching her, slowly. Something big and strange was in the way of its water. She held out a hand, and the bird investigated it. Finding no food, it ran past her to the other side of the pool, and started to drink. Kayla closed her eyes. The sound of the running water was slowing her heart rate down, and the sick feeling in her chest was fading. She opened her eyes and watched the kākāpō dip its beak into the water, again and again. The wind caressed the trees around her, making a sound that she couldn’t quite spell the name of.

She must have been engrossed in watching the kākāpō drink, because she didn’t notice anything until there was the noise of a twig snapping at the top of the rise, and then silence. The little bird ran off again, startled. Kayla looked up, to the top of the little waterfall and the trees beyond.

She smiled. “I knew I’d find you here.”