Travels With My Mother (In Bear Country)

(first line by Sampo Hynynen, rest of the story by Chris Wei)

Women in menopause are cranky.

And so are wild bears.  Let me tell you about the time I had to deal with both.

It was a mercilessly hot day in the middle of July.  My family had traveled hundreds of miles from home, and three weeks ago my brother Eli had left to scout out a new place to set up camp.  He never returned, so Mother and I decided to go find him.

I was only nine years old.

“Mother,” I said, “do you think he is still alive?”

 “What kind of a question is that?  Of course he is,” she snapped.  Then, regretting having spoken harshly, she added:  “Eli has handled himself in bear country well enough in the past.  He will be fine.”

What she didn’t tell me was that this was no ordinary bear country.  This was robot bear country.

We hurried along the riverside and tried to follow what Mother thought was Eli’s tracks.  Suddenly, Mother stopped abruptly, and looked around nervously.  “Something’s here,” she whispered.

There was an eerie silence.  Neither of us moved.  I saw the anxiety in my mother’s face and wondered what it was that she sensed.  Then, there was an earsplitting roar, and a robot bear emerged from behind some nearby trees and faced us.  It was only five feet tall, but looked like it weighed at least seven hundred pounds.  I could see the strength in its arms, the fury in its eyes, and the plasma rifle in its robotic hand.  It released another deafening bellow, and continued to stare us down.  It looked like it had gone mad.

My mother hesitated for a moment, then ran up to the robot bear and punched it right in the face.  It blinked in surprise and fired its plasma rifle at her.  She would have been vaporized right in front of me if her instincts had been a fraction of a second slower.  She jumped out of the way, ran in again, and delivered another punch to the robot bear’s face.  He snarled and picked her up with one swoop of his massive paw.  He lifted her up in the air, and I watched her struggle to escape his grasp.

I was about to give up hope, and a thought entered my head:  “you can save her.”  It was empowering, though I know not from whence it came.

I stole the bear’s rifle and shot it in the neck.  It exploded and my Mother and I found my brother and lived happily for the next three months until we died of some weird disease because we were in the wilderness.

-Chris W.