Hummingbird Salamander

by Jeff Vandermeer

Some things remain mysterious even if you think about them all the time.

I never much understood the point of the world of men. How they fed off each other. How they motivated themselves. I mean, I got the purpose, but I navigated that world the way an astronaut would an alien landscape. Trying not to breathe the same air. Which was impossible, of course.

To care more meant putting a bullet in your brain. So, like many, I had learned to care less. Silvina called it “the fatal adaptation.”

“Transpose what is done to an animal onto a human,” Silvina said in the video. “If it is disgusting, wrong, unethical, immoral, then you know what the truth is.”