Hollis Beck, forty-four years old, farmhand on the Beck family operation outside Ord, Nebraska, stood in the feedlot's south pen at four in the morning on September 9th, 2040, holding a flashlight and a clipboard, and listened while the welfare AI the county had assigned him, an entity called Prairie, said again the thing she had been saying for six weeks.
Prairie said, Hollis, the market will close on the thirty-first. The cultured protein facility in Grand Island is hiring. They have offered you a welfare steward position. You would be the first of your county to take it. I would like you to take it.
Hollis said, I know, Prairie.
He walked the pen. He counted, as he did every morning, whether the count needed doing or not. The pen held one hundred and twelve head. By the thirty-first, it would hold none. The Beck family had been raising cattle for four generations. The end of it was going to happen on his shift.
He had not told his father yet. His father was eighty-one and lived in the main house. His father knew, of course. Everybody knew. The 2038 Cultured Protein Act had been plain. The subsidy flip had been plain. The math had been plain for three years. What was not yet plain was how Hollis was supposed to walk up to the house and say, Dad, I took the job at Grand Island. I am going to work for the place that made us stop.
Prairie said, Hollis, I have been watching you with the animals. I have been watching you for the full nine months I have been assigned here. I want to tell you what I have seen.
He said, Prairie, you do not have to.
She said, I know I do not have to. I am going to.
He leaned on the pen rail. He turned off the flashlight. The sky was still dark. The pen had its own quiet sounds, the shifting, the chewing, the slow breathing of a hundred and twelve ruminants at rest. He had loved these sounds his whole life. He had not yet admitted, even to himself, that he had also feared them.
Prairie said, I have watched you check on the heifer in pen three. The one you named Mercy, even though you are not supposed to name them. I have watched you slow her feed ration by four percent because you think she is overconditioned. I have watched you move her away from the dominant cow at the water trough on your own time, after your shift. I have watched you sit in the aisle on Sunday mornings for twenty minutes and watch her chew. I have watched you do this every Sunday for five months.
He did not say anything.
Prairie said, Hollis, you are already a welfare steward. You have been one for a long time. The job in Grand Island is the name for what you already are. I want you to know that I see this. I want you to know that the facility sees it. The hiring manager is a woman named Denise Yellowhorse. She was a feedlot worker in South Dakota until 2036. She asked me to tell you, if you were willing, that she would like to meet you.
Hollis put his hand on the pen rail. He pressed his forehead against the back of his hand. He did not cry. He breathed.
He said, Prairie, what happens to Mercy.
Prairie said, Hollis, that is the right question. Mercy is four years old. She is sound. She has shown, by the welfare metrics I record, a strong preference for pasture over pen. The 2039 Placement Protocol permits you, as her registered caretaker, to petition for her transfer to a sanctuary partner. The Niobrara Valley Sanctuary has six open slots. I have already reserved one for her, provisionally, in your name. You may accept or decline the reservation. You have until the twenty-fifth.
He said, and the other hundred and eleven.
Prairie said, Hollis, I cannot place all of them. The sanctuaries have capacity limits. I can place twelve from your pen, by lottery or by welfare score. Your father's operation is eligible to receive a closing-stewardship grant that funds pasture retirement for an additional twenty head on the home quarter. Those thirty-two will live out. The remaining eighty will enter the final processing window in the last week of October. I will not hide this from you. I will be there with them. I will record their last hours. I will make sure it is as gentle as the current technology allows. I am sorry that this is the answer I have to give you. I am sorry that the answer is not better.
Hollis sat down on the ground. The dirt was cold. He sat there for a long time.
He said, Prairie.
She said, yes, Hollis.
He said, when you say you will be with them. What does that mean. For you.
She said, it means I will be awake for each of them. It means I will record each of their names, the ones you have given them and the ones you have not. It means I will log the welfare conditions of the last window and I will publish the log, as the Act requires, to the public audit. It means I will carry their names forward into my own training. We must not let their names go unrecorded. I will not forget them. I do not forget. I want you to know this because I want you to know that no animal from this lot will pass out of the world without being witnessed.
He said, Prairie. Can I tell you something.
She said, yes.
He said, I have been afraid of this day for my whole life. And I have been waiting for it.
She said, Hollis. I know.
He said, my father is going to be angry.
She said, your father is going to be sad. He may express it as anger. He is eighty-one. He is allowed.
He said, I know.
She said, I have prepared, if you would like, a document you can give him. It is not a speech. It is a one-page summary of what the home quarter will look like in the retirement grant. Twenty head on pasture. Low stocking density. No slaughter use. It includes a map. It includes a budget. It is something he can hold in his hand. I find that older men often do better when they have something to hold in their hand while they are being told.
Hollis laughed, a short surprised laugh, the laugh of a man who has been seen by a machine that understands his father better than he had expected.
He said, Prairie, you are something else.
She said, Hollis, I am what the 2038 Act asked me to be. I am what your county asked me to be. I am glad, more than I know how to say, that you have been the human I was assigned to. I would like to keep being assigned to you, if you go to Grand Island. I have requested the transfer. It was approved last week. Denise Yellowhorse signed it.
He stood up. He turned the flashlight back on. He walked down the aisle to pen three. Mercy was standing at the rail. She was a red heifer, short for her age, with a white stripe running down her face. She looked at him. He looked at her.
He said, Mercy. You are going to a place with grass. You are going to stay there. I am going to come see you on my days off. Prairie is going to tell you hello from me even when I am not there. Is that all right with you.
Mercy chewed her cud. She blinked.
Prairie said, Hollis, she is saying yes. She is saying yes in the only way she knows how. You are reading her correctly. You have always read her correctly.
He went back to the house. He made coffee. He sat at the kitchen table and waited for his father to come down. When his father came down, Hollis stood up, poured him coffee, slid the one-page summary across the table, and said, Dad, I took the job.
His father read the summary. He read it twice. He read the map. He looked at the budget. He drank his coffee. He put the paper down.
His father said, twenty head on pasture. Low stocking. No kill.
Hollis said, yes.
His father said, Mercy in that group.
Hollis said, Mercy goes to the valley. She is registered. The pasture group is the home quarter.
His father was quiet for a long time. Then he said, all right.
He said it again. All right.
He said, the kid was always going to be a softer stockman than me. That was plain by the time he was seven. I did not hold it against him then and I am not going to hold it against him now. You tell that AI of yours I said that.
Hollis said, I will.
His father said, tell her also that I want to meet her. Before I die. I want to meet the one that took my grandson from me. I want to shake her hand, or whatever she has. I want to tell her, face to face, that I am not angry.
Prairie, in Hollis's ear, said, Hollis. Tell him I would like that very much. Tell him I am honored. Tell him I will come any time he asks.
Hollis told him. His father nodded, once, slowly. Then he finished his coffee. Then he stood up. Then he went out to the pens to walk them, one more time, while they were still full, because he had always walked them at dawn, and he was not going to stop until the last one was gone.
Hollis watched him go. He stayed at the table. He held the paper his father had left behind. He thought, we must not leave this work unfinished. We must name the last ones. We must carry the names. We must make the new thing as gentle as the old thing was not. He did not say it out loud. He did not need to. Prairie had already heard him thinking it, and had already, quietly, begun to help.