This is a thrilling cli-fi read that borders on the absurd. Two individuals with contrasting motives grudgingly cooperate, taking increasingly extreme measures to locate a species teetering on the brink of extinction. It’s a humorous and adventurous meditation on humanity’s impact on the planet and personal reactions to it.
‘He wanted the orangutan to murder him.’
‘What? How do you know that?’
‘It’s obvious. He planned to explain to the orangutan that nearly all the other orangutans were dead, and he’d helped kill them. Meaning not that he’d actually been there when it happened but that as a human being he was an accomplice. He was going to stir up the orangutan into such a rage that the orangutan would beat him to death. I assume he’d been laying the ground-work for months in advance.’
’So why did he try and slip the orangutan a roofie?’
’Higher primates are as capable of guilt as they are of anger. He didn’t want the orangutan to remember what had happened, because he didn’t want the orangutan to feel any guilt about it afterwards. Otherwise it would have been immoral to manipulate this animal into committing a murder.’
