The Last Dog

A

CHAPTER ONE

berdeen Tallulah Maxwell, nicknamed Abby, and

fondly called Puppy-dup by Teresa and Bill

Maxwell, her human mother and father, tottered on

six-week-old puppy legs across an expanse of slippery terra

cotta tile in the vast kitchen that never seemed to end.

She lifted her black nose to the air and snied, then whimpered

woefully as she looked about. No whelping box here.

Everything was big and way over her head and she didn’t recognize

any of the skinny furniture legs or wooden walls of the

curved counter.

Her back shone like rich brown velvet in the sunlight that

warmed the oor from the rays pouring through the high

kitchen windows. Abby’s two white toenails looked opaque in

the sunlight, one on her front right paw and the other on her

left rear foot.

Her little angular face showed a resemblance to Lilith, her

bull terrier mother.

Jimbo Smythe, Abby’s canine father, was a purebred black

22 DAWN GREENFIELD IRELAND

Labrador who had an uncanny ability of climbing any wall or

fence in pursuit of romance. He breached fences throughout

the neighborhood and as far away as three miles. Some thought

Jimbo must be part cat since he always landed on his feet no

matter how high the fence.

Unfortunately, Jimbo jumped one fence too many and

mindlessly careened into a low-ying air glider, thus abandoning

his family in an untimely death.

Abby plopped down in the middle of the kitchen oor,

stuck her nose in the air stretching the elongated white star on

her chest, and wailed.

“Abby!” Lilith called from the whelping box.

Ejonia Matthews, the beloved house manager for the

Maxwell’s, stood in front of the food console, her stout body

draped in a brightly colored owing dress that cascaded almost

to her sandaled feet. Thick brown braided hair was wrapped

around the back of her head, and a beaded, braided loop hung

at the center back of her head. Fingers and toes were adorned

with colorful rings and bands.

She watched as Abby stood with her ears perked and

turned in a half circle and barked in her biggest puppy voice.

“Go nd your canine mother,” Ejonia said.

Abby looked up at Ejonia’s eyes and whined.

“That way.” Ejonia pointed toward the hallway.

Lilith barked once and warbled in normal dog-talk.

Abby galloped in the direction of her canine mother’s voice,

her feet slipping and sliding on the tile around table and chair

legs, down the hallway on the slippery wooden oor and over

the threshold into her human father’s combination oce

and lab.

Ejonia crept after Abby and peeked into the lab. All the

puppies, except for Abby, were sound asleep.

THE LAST DOG 23

“Come to bed,” Lilith scolded.

Abby scampered over the ledge of the whelping box that

had kept the puppies inside the box until two days ago when

they learned how to climb. She barked playfully, two feet on

the eece bed and two feet planted rmly on the oce oor.

Lilith gently lifted Abby by the scru of her neck and

placed her in the bed. Abby pawed at Lilith’s face and bit her

ears until she wore herself out.

“Settle down, little girl,” Lilith said. She licked Abby’s face.

Abby cuddled down in the bed with her sisters and

brothers and yawned. Within minutes she was asleep.

Lilith looked at Ejonia. “Finally!” she said.

“We’re going to have to put up a gate so they can’t get out of

the room,” Ejonia said.

“They’ll gure a way,” Lilith said, knowingly.

BILL MAXWELL, the thirty-three-year-old founder and CEO

of Maxwell Industries, walked across a crushed rock surface

outside the new main building where a fountain sprayed a ne

mist. A couple of dog-children romped through the water until

their parents whistled for them. They jumped down from the

fountain and then shook their coats, soaking their human

parents.

The sprawling four-story multi-building complex spanned

a park-like setting equaling ten football elds, with the Santa

Cruz Mountains as a backdrop. Bill had jumped at the opportunity

to purchase the land after the incident of twentyseventy-

six.

He approached the door, spotted a bunch of tourists, and

snuck around to the side door to gain access. He ran undetected

24 DAWN GREENFIELD IRELAND

up the stairs to his oce and labs that contained many guarded

prototypes unknown to the government or the general population.

Bill had developed robotic bees that ew around the

complex and his home, in and out of power connections, air

ducts, and any crevice or opening to explore, detect and report

any spyware or probes.

If the bees discovered any abnormalities, robotic wasp-ants

were dispatched to defuse, destroy or capture the inltrators

and tow them back to a holding case where Bill could study

them. Most were silly unsophisticated units that were no challenge

to decode. Sometimes Bill rewired their circuits and used

them as double agents to gather information for him.

Toby, one of Bill’s trusted employees, had a lot of fun with

the physical characteristics of the bees and wasp-ants. He was

well known for his sense of humor.

THE CROWD of tourists swarmed around the lobby,

fascinated with the information while taking in the virtual

storyboards. The company history was displayed on the wall

monitors and contained several of Bill’s most prominent inventions,

including the Dot.

A middle-aged woman with the latest chrome beauty mark

by her lime green lips stood beside one storyboard. Her bright

green, red and purple caftan with embedded glitter owed and

sparkled with her movements as she conducted a virtual tour

for the group of people. “William Maxwell is a technological

genius who owned several successfully developed patents at

the age of twenty-three. When Maxwell Industries announces

a new product, the world listens.” She pressed buttons on a

hand-held device that started a virtual player on the rst

storyboard.

THE LAST DOG 25

“The Dot is a microscopic disc less than 0.0396875

centimeters in diameter. The Dot contains your entire history—

medical, genetic, home location, workplace, and, when

required, will aid the Sky Angels in nding you if you are lost

or injured. The Dot is a safe harbor for animal and human children

or wandering supercentenarians.”

The second storyboard showed a Dot insertion procedure

and explained that Dots became mandatory in 2080. A man in

a white lab coat smiled as he held a compressor syringe over the

palm-side of a woman’s wrist. He pressed the plunger on the

syringe and painlessly inserted the Dot. The woman smiled at

the man at the end of the procedure.

The next storyboard showed how the Dot had made paper

money obsolete. Employers bought into the government’s idea

that “income credits” could be incorporated into the Dot.

Anything anyone required or desired could be purchased via a

Dot scan if a person had the credits. Dot scans became

commonplace at every shopping facility and distribution

center.

Viewers watched a holographic clip of Bill and a team of

programmers and technologists working diligently in a lab

setting in an old building. They were intent on expanding

the Dot’s functions to make it possible for dog and cat children

to communicate with human family members. Each

segment of the holograph was date-stamped showing the year

of research and development, sometime between 2076 and

2080.

The brightly dressed guide touched the thin screen and

showed the group a le which contained the code that had been

a challenge for Bill and his team. The holographic narration

continued with a discussion about how language experts and

software programmers had to solve the myriad of interspecies

language translation problems.

26 DAWN GREENFIELD IRELAND

The visitors murmured among themselves as thousands of

lines of code ew by on the screen.

The visitors giggled as various dog and cat children spoke

in dierent voices on the screen as their speech was tweaked.

The rst tries did not produce anything that could be translated

into any recognizable language.

The tour guide pointed to the various buttons on the wall

and encouraged the group to press them and listen to the selection

of voice examples. While the visitors pressed buttons, and

laughed at some of the voice responses, the tour guide

explained how it worked.

“The programming sends electrical signals to the transmitter,

which triggers the larynx to respond with the pre-selected

voice that is transmitted to a special collar with speakers, thus

allowing a conversation to take place,” she said.

A lady raised her hand. “I don’t understand how that could

work.”

“There’s a tiny transmitter that works with a nano-receiver

in the larynx,” the guide explained.

“Oh,” the lady said.

The guide had to further explain what and where the

larynx was and that the Dot technology was a stepping stone in

the intelligence evolution of the canine species.

After the group nished playing with the buttons, they

meandered down the storyboard wall to other inventions.

TERESA MAXWELL WALKED into Bill’s home oce and

approached the whelping box. While she and Bill were only

months apart with birthdays in January and July, she looked

barely twenty-ve. The puppies were sleeping in the curve of

THE LAST DOG 27

their canine mother’s belly. Lilith raised her head. Teresa

cupped one of Lilith’s cheeks.

“Mommy’s going to the oce to meet Auntie Gayle. I’ll be

back this afternoon, okay?” she whispered.

“Okay,” Lilith whispered. “I’m going to take a nap.”

Teresa bent over and kissed Lilith on the head.

MYRA-JUNE MEYER, Teresa’s front-oce assistant, greeted

Teresa and Gayle as they entered the newly constructed

fourth-oor oce suite. The tiny red-head wore a tted neknit

charcoal colored sheathe as she arranged oce tools at her

work space.

“Hi, Mrs. Maxwell. Hi Mrs. Goanower,” Myra-June said.

Gayle’s hair and eyes, as dark as polished opals, and awless

skin a creamy tan, made her unforgettable. She came to a

dead stop as she took in the white walls with tan, gold and gray

accents. She ran her hand across the back of a gold-tone chair

and admired the gray eece dog beds precisely stationed on the

Berber carpeting to balance the room.

A chrome dog-and-cat faucet and a water bowl were

against one wall a few feet from the co-species animal bathroom

closet.

“Is that bathroom closet new?” Gayle asked. “I don’t

remember seeing this one in your old oce.”

“I wanted to upgrade for my new oce,” Teresa said.

Gayle stuck her head in the bathroom closet open doorway.

The oor was covered with spongy articial grass that smelled

like real grass. The ne sand area was freshly raked and the

shallow wading pool contained about an inch of circulating

water.

28 DAWN GREENFIELD IRELAND

Gayle turned and took in the reception area. “I like your

command center, Myra-June.” The curved tan, white and gray

desk console was a focal point of the outer oce.

The perky assistant bounced up from her chair and ung

her arms out. “Isn’t this a great room?”

“It’s spectacular!” Gayle said.

“Any messages?” Teresa asked.

“The Trident Group would like to discuss a research

project. I sent you all the details but also put a hard copy on

your desk,” Myra-June said.

“Hmmm,” Teresa said. “I’ll look it over.”

Teresa linked her arm through Gayle’s and walked her past

Myra-June’s desk and opened the door to a hallway.

They passed two closed doors on the left side of the well-lit

hall and one on the right. At the end of the hallway a closed

door beckoned. Teresa opened the door to her spacious oce

and ushered Gayle inside.

“Oh, my Great Earth! This is beautiful, T!” Gayle said. “I

wish I were a dog!”

The room did not contain a desk. Virtual pictures hung on

the wall, one row at oor level for animal children and another

row several feet higher at a human adult eye level. Leg-less

overstued sofas and dog and cat beds were laid out in a halfcircle

and did not obstruct the pictures.

Dog and cat toys were stowed in boxes, and another chrome

dog-and-cat faucet and a water bowl were positioned to the

right of the doorway. There was ample room for animal children

to romp around without crashing into anything that could

hurt them.

The lower virtual pictures contained stimulating action

views of butteries itting through the air, rabbits hopping,

lizards creeping, squirrels going about their busy business and

THE LAST DOG 29

other animals doing things that a dog or cat child would nd

interesting.

Teresa opped onto one of the oor sofas and patted the

cushion for Gayle to join her.

“You’re not going to psychoanalyze me, are you?” Gayle

asked.

“Only if you bark, meow, or pee on the oor,” Teresa said.

They giggled.

“I can’t believe this day has arrived!” Teresa said. “It

seemed as if the construction would never end.”

Gayle looked around the room. “It was so worth the wait, T.

Your other oce was okay, but this is so vibrant, open and inviting.

Like I said, I wish I were an animal-child so I could come

here for therapy.”

Teresa’s smile faded as a bad thought crossed her face. Not

a day went by that she didn’t curse the old drug-pushing FDA

and those doctors of the past who only prescribed drugs instead

of trying to heal people. Only one in a hundred women could

conceive now and she was not one of them. Everyone knew

that if someone didn’t come up with a solution, humans may

become extinct in the next couple of hundred years.

Teresa shook o her melancholy moment. “My calendar is

full for the next two months,” Teresa explained.

“That’s wonderful!” Gayle said. Her demeanor changed

from glowing and happy to troubled.

“What’s wrong?” Teresa said.

Gayle grasped one of Teresa’s hands. When she met Teresa’s

gaze, her eyes were suddenly apologetic.

“Harold has accepted a position with Hycore Security in

New York,” Gayle said.

Teresa stared at her friend in disbelief and then she became

teary. She gripped Gayle’s hands.

30 DAWN GREENFIELD IRELAND

“Why didn’t you tell me Harold was looking for another

post?” Teresa asked.

“We’ve discussed it for a long time but we didn’t want to

say anything because you know how dicult it is to move to

another state and sector,” Gayle said.

Gayle appeared fraught with indecision. “I’ve known you

my entire life. You’re not only my very best friend, but you’re

like my sister, and now I’ll miss seeing the puppies grow up.”

“When…?” Teresa asked. She tried hard to be brave.

“Two months. July fteenth. There’s a lot of preliminary

preparation on both ends,” Gayle said.

Teresa took a deep breath. She had a feeling that July 15,

2086 would be one of the worst days of her life.

TERESA LOUNGED on the end of the large gray and gold-

ecked sectional sofa in the living room. A smile played on her

face as she watched Lilith sleeping on a round eece dog bed,

her legs kicking periodically, as she chased a dream. Teresa

thought Lilith was probably relieved to be away from her

puppies for a moment of peace.

Bill joined Teresa on the sofa and pulled her legs onto his

lap. He leaned in and kissed her, then really looked at her.

“What’s wrong?”

Teresa dropped the smile and unleashed her full emotions.

She looked very sad. “Have you talked to Harold lately?” she

asked.

“No. He’s been pretty busy,” Bill said. “What’s going on?”

“Gayle told me he’s accepted a position with Hycore Security

and that they’re relocating in July,” Teresa said.

Bill pulled back several inches and stared at Teresa in

disbelief. “What?” he said. “Hycore—in New York?”