The people always ask me, what’s it like being a real dog? I tell them that I’ve never been anything but a dog. They go on to say that had they been in my place, they’d have done things different. Dogs do smile, even the real ones, and when I hear the people talk like that, I pull back the lips around my jaw and give them a good look at my canines. You see, I grew up in a beautiful garden, raised by dogs. I didn’t know anything about the world outside my garden—its breadth, the people, tangible holography, or certified-real Zoos—until much later. I like to tell the people that I always knew there was something different about me. I’ve said it so often that I sometimes believe it when I say it, but in the dark of this cage where I record these words, I’m not so sure anymore. You see, the dogs I grew up with, they taught me how to be a dog. They also taught me to talk. Being around talking dogs, I thought it was the most natural thing in the world that dogs should talk. It wasn’t until much later that I realized that dogs don’t talk, at least the real ones don’t. Until me, that is.

It’s silly to think of it now, to look back to when I was a puppy. I could run from one end of my world to the other in a day. Large stonework walls surrounded my world, what I later called the garden. It’s not as unnatural as you might think. The ancient people believed that their world fell off at the end of watery horizons. When you grow up with a truth, you don’t bother to question it. I never had any doubts about the boundaries of my world. They were physical: I could nudge the walls with my nose to know their truth. I came to know much more than I wanted about the people and their truth, but that was later. At the time, the garden was large enough for me, and for a while, I didn’t think to want more.

My pack consisted of three dogs. Three dogs in an enclosed garden may seem strange now, but at the time I didn’t know about such things. The youngest dog of the pack was named Night. Her coat was a rich black, and while smaller than me, she could catch the quickest of prey with little effort. The pack leader was named Always. He taught us everything we needed to know about the garden. He was a large dog with gray fur that had turned white at its ends. When we were young, Always was around all the time to teach us the ways of the garden. But as we grew older, he spent less time with us, disappearing for long periods. When he disappeared, Night and I would search the garden for him. We never found a trace until he chose to return. For a garden surrounded by walls, not knowing where Always disappeared to was very distressing.

It’s easy to say I would have been happy if Always had let me stay in the garden. At the time I certainly would have disagreed. Night had a favorite way of describing how I dealt with my curiosity: “he would grab hold of it,” she would say. “And twist his head until the answers broke free.” Now that I’ve been out of the garden, I look back fondly, and not a day goes by that I don’t wonder what would have happened if I had stayed. But the people have a saying, once the cat is out of the bag, there’s no putting it back. This remains true for dogs as well.

A dog’s life is longer than the people think. While we live fewer years, our years are slower. It took me many talks with the people to figure this truth out. Part of it is the way the people approach the conversation. They tell me that they buy a ticket from the Cleveland Certified-Real Zoo many years in advance to have a conversation with me, the certified-real talking dog. They talk of “killing time until then” or “waiting months without thinking of much else.” Their lives, they say, build up to that moment. It’s hard for me to understand that. For a dog, we live in the long moment. We wouldn’t talk about killing time the same we wouldn’t talk about gnawing off a paw.

But it’s more than that. Our moments feel stretched out. I know this because when I finished a marathon conversation with the people, they tell me it felt too brief—some of them even feel robbed by the price. It’s difficult for me to know how to respond. From what the people tell me, they spend a lot of money to have a conversation with me. I’ve been out of the garden for many years, and I still don’t quite understand this talk of money. I think what the people are really complaining about is that they feel their moments are too short because they’re always living in the next moment. For dogs, the moments are very long. I imagine talking mice, if there were ever such beasts, would feel a short conversation with me felt like an eternity.

All this experience with the people began after I left the garden, of course. It was my own choice, and if there’s one thing youngsters should learn, it’s this: choices always have consequences. Even when you don’t realize you’re making a choice. I made my choice back in the garden. It was another perfect day. We did not worry about the garden’s weather. It grew slightly cooler in the winter months and slightly warmer in the summer months, but the overall climate was comfortably temperate. We had returned to our den after a successful hunt. Night carried two raccoons in her jaw. Always had disappeared a few months back, and I did not think or talk of him when he was gone. I missed him terribly and it seemed easiest not to dwell on such things.

Night dropped the half-eaten raccoon carcasses in the corner of the den, and stretched her front paws and arched her back. I lay by the entrance to the den, looking up at the pink sky.

Night trotted over to me and placed her head on my stomach.

“Do we die like the raccoons?” I asked Night.

She laughed at the notion. “Dogs don’t die,” she said. “We hunt and we kill prey, but there is nothing that hunts us.”

“When we hunt, I sometimes watch the prey, watch where they come from, watch their packs. Did you know that there are raccoons of all sizes and ages? Not all of them are fast. Some are like Always, their fur is gray and they move slowly. One time, I chased one of the older gray ones, chased him around until he died.”

“That’s what happens to raccoons when you sink those pointy teeth into them.”

“It wasn’t like that,” I said, lifting my head to look over at Night. “The thing is, I never bit him. He was breathing fast and then he wasn’t. He just fell over. I poked at him, but he never rose and I left him there. Is that what happens when we get older? We fall over? What happens after we fall over? Will Always fall over?”

“You think too much,” Night said. “When I have a full belly, the last thing I want to do is wonder about things I don’t know. You can ask Always when he returns. He said this garden was ours forever, and that we were not like the animals that we hunt. I mean, think about it: no matter how gray Always looks, he never moves slowly, does he? And besides, Always told us everything good in the garden was for us. Falling over can’t be good, now can it.”

A few days later, Always returned. Night and I were splashing after a fish at the river. We tried to paw the fish, and then leapt to bite it, but the fish were too fast and too slippery. We weren’t sure how long Always watched us, but when we gave up our hunt, we saw Always standing on the side of the stream, smiling contently.

“A good day for fishing,” he said.

Night and I ran to Always, nuzzling our faces into his belly. We stayed that way for some time until Always stepped away and shook us free. “It is good to see you too,” he said. We followed him back to the den.

We were quiet at first. Whenever Always returned, I felt bashful and overwhelmed. But Always kept up the conversation, pointing out the different trees, insects, and fruits that lined the trail back to the den. “I must be boring you with my discussion of the sycamores and grasshoppers,” Always said. “I’ve been away awhile and you must have plenty of questions. What has been on your minds?”

“I want to know where you went,” I said. While I had plenty of questions about the garden, what was always gnawing at my curiosity was where Always disappeared to when he went on his journeys. I felt he knew something that I couldn’t know. It turned out he knew much more. Always was eager to share everything he knew except this one thing: his whereabouts on his journeys.

As I expected, Always would not answer. He told us early on that he there was only one rule in the garden: we were not to follow him when he left on his journeys. He never discussed what would happen if we did. He would explain that this was the only thing he asked us, and, in any event, we should trust him that it was bad. Instead of answering my question, Always started explaining the life of the river. Night and I lost ourselves in his description of the microscopic life of the river. We never thought to ask how Always knew so much about things he could not possibly see—at least not see as we knew see. We believed in him too much to question or wonder how he knew.

It was not more than a week later that Always announced he would be leaving the next day. We had just finished a dinner of fish that Always had caught from the river. I tried to argue with Always. I told him about all the things we wanted to learn. Always listened carefully to our request, but then repeated that he had to leave but would be back to answer our questions. It was impossible for us to become angry at Always. What we did become was sad.

“Will you take us with you?” I asked again.

“No. You should be happy here. You have everything you need, everything you could ever want. I’ll be back before you know it.”

“I know you will be,” I said. “I believe you, I really do. But where do you go? We’ve searched the entire garden after you leave. We’ve checked in every place we could think of and we’ve never found you. Where do you hid? In the trees? Under the stream?”

Always laughed fondly at my questions. “Does it matter that much where I go? Maybe I’m steps ahead of you. Even though I look old, I’m still very spry.” Always motioned to the fish bones that littered the outside of our den. “Spry enough to catch fish,” Always said with a smile. “Which is more than I can say about two pups that live around here.”

Night nudged me to let it go, to let him have his secrets. It was then that I hatched my plan. Instead of arguing, I switched to asking Always about the sky and clouds. Always nodded and began discussing the formation of clouds and the atmosphere. He went on for some time moving from high-level concepts to the lower-level stuff. We had heard parts of this before, but each time he taught us, he introduced us to something new.”

I yawned through most of his lecture. When Always lectured, I was usually awake and eager. Today I rested my head on my paws and took short naps. It was very late when Always finished. My eyes were closed and I was dozing lightly. Always whispered, “the sun is almost up. I will leave now. I trust you and the garden will treat each other well. Tell him not to worry about where I go. I will return soon and we’ll continue our discussions about the atmosphere, and then we’ll move into the stars and space itself.” I kept my eyes closed and listened to Always trot off into the forest.

When Always was out of sight, I opened my eyes. “I’m going to follow him,” I told Night. “I’m going to find out where he goes.”

“I am not going with you,” she said. “He told us not to follow him. Has he ever led us wrong?”

“But why do you think he told us that? Don’t you see? There’s something he doesn’t want us to see, something so amazing that he has to keep it hidden from us. Can you imagine what that thing could be? I have to know.”

Night was wary, but she was tired and it was early. I didn’t tell Night at the time, but the idea to follow Always came from her. She said that everything good in the garden was for us. Always was as good as it came in the garden, so everything he did must be good, including his journeys. I had not realized the connection until after I decided to follow Always. I tracked Always into the forest and Night followed.

It didn’t take long to find Always’ tracks. He moved quickly through the garden, but he had trained me and I knew how to follow even the smallest of signs of his passing. We tracked him through the rest of the day and caught up to him at night. We watched from the trees as Always approached the garden’s walls. The wall began to shimmer and move. The thought that there was something to move amazed me. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Always began to shimmer and transformed into a two-legged creature. He was the people. Before he walked into the wall, he turned back and saw Night. She stood in the opening away from the trees. When Always saw her, and then found me in the trees, I ran into the garden away from Always. Night was a few steps behind me.

We ran back to the den, and Night and I hid in the trees.

“Where are you, where are you hiding?” Always asked. I couldn’t see him, I couldn’t see if he was a dog or the people. My head was still a mess. Thoughts ran through it that made no sense. Always had described the things in the garden to the infinitely smallest scale. He said that the smaller you went, the larger the world became, until it was humongous. The garden was not small if you took into understood the subatomic sizes. We lived in an infinite world, Always would say. Everything smaller becomes smaller, and everything larger becomes larger.

“And that wasn’t enough for you,” Always said. I saw him in the clearing now. He was shaped like the people. “Never enough.”

“But it was Night,” I cried. “She was the one who wanted to follow you. I didn’t want to.”

“It doesn’t matters,” Always said. “You followed me, and now I have no choice but to tell you the truth, the real truth. This truth will be your prison and your escape.”

Everything became clear when I left the garden. The rest you know. I was a real talking dog in a world where most things were digital, created by tangible holography. What the people longed for most was realness. There was a difference between fabricated and real. The scientists didn’t realize it when they first fabricated items. Real items felt different. When you were around tangible holography, there was a feel of fakeness, as if the fabricated item lacked a spirit.

And that’s where the zoos came in. What people wanted most were real animals. After the boom of tangible holography, most animals disappeared as the people replaced then with cheaper and more custom fabricated animals. Most zoos began replacing their real animals with fabricated animals, but a few conservative zoos did not. These zoos banded together and introduced the idea of a certified-real animal. But the zookeepers themselves tried to outdo one another. The price of certified-real animals skyrocketed, until even real rats and pigeons, which once were seen as pests, brought astronomical prices. Bugs were not far behind—although the real cockroaches were still plentiful, as it seemed not even modern science could replace them.

That’s where I came in: the Cleveland Real Zoo’s most successful experiment. A certified-real talking dog.