Sundays at the Unicorn Park

A year ago on Sunday my niece petted a unicorn at Costa Rica DisneyPlanet and died of anaphylactic shock while the unicorn's dark eyes watched in utter serenity.

By late Monday the company had sued her parents for potential damages ensuing from having failed to announce her allergy to a genetically modified organism that had been patented three years before. She had been blond, blue-eyed, and from a military family, but if they had released the attack pieces their law firm AIs had automatically synthesized, she might as well had been a drug mule immigrant from how much public support the family could have hoped for.

They even kept her body. Her immune system had reacted with self-defeating strength and creativity, killing her in ways that now held valuable intellectual property. A new kind of corpse was just another form of resource, and all they gave her parents was a tiny box of ashes and an electronic stack of documents to sign before they could take it home. Among the dozens of things they had to promise not to do was to go near company property anywhere in the world (plus the Floating Paradise they are building in orbit).

I wasn't part of the lawsuit, so I go to the park every Sunday and pet the young blue-eyed unicorns while my brother and his wife pray for their daughter's soul. It doesn't make me feel better.