Tea and Bamboo

My father has become panda, my mother elephant. They are altogether out of place in my living room, for all my mother tries to look at ease, gripping a tea bowl in her trunk. It's their third visit since they were uploaded.

"Would you care for mung bean cake or more bamboo?" I ask, still too angry to be anything but polite.

"Bamboo would be lovely," my father growls.

We chat about the weather (warm) and the stock market (volatile) as if we were strangers, and I want to deny that it's really them embodied in animals, but the satisfaction in my father's eyes, the apology in my mother's are unmistakable.

Hong Kong is perpetually flooded, half the world hungry, but my parents have outdone themselves, not merely uploading themselves when their own bodies grew decrepit, but ostentatiously selecting endangered species.

After an awkward half an hour, they get up to leave. My father bows his head to me, and my anger wobbles or shifts--

I want to hug him, to bury my face in his fur, to tell him I'm glad he came over--

I want to ask my mother's advice about work, to tell her about my girlfriend--

The moment of weakness passes. Keeping my distance, I dip my head fractionally and open the door.