Prologue: Of Evil Creatures and Their Habits
"All the world will be your enemy Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and when they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you…Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed." – Richard Adams, Watership Down Chapter 6 "The Story of the Blessing of El-ahrairah" (1972)
The apartment was perhaps the one thing in his life that he knew with almost complete certainty would remain a constant. The floor was damp, the wood molding on account of a leak that had been largely ignored in favor of other projects; one of which were the dilapidated walls, with cracks in every possible place imaginable, to the point where one could see into the next room; and the paint job of a five year old it was a wonder that the roof, which was in an equal state of disrepair, did not collapse. Perhaps it was luck or maybe the Power of the Protagonist, that kept Nick Wilde's roof upright, or perhaps it was simply bidding its time, waiting for a poetically ironic moment to finally give up, and thus, create meaning. Whatever the case was, the roof, for the moment at least, remained as it was; rotting and slowly falling apart.
In terms of Nick Wilde himself, there was not much to say; for the fox rarely did anything of remarkable interest other than exist. Dressed in a faded green shirt that he had purloined from Mr. Ferguson, a deer; a patched blue tie that he had stitched together from various pieces when he could find them; and equally patched and faded khaki pants that he had bought years ago and repaired, Nick silently began to hate himself. To be fair to Nick, he was not a self-loathing creature, for he considered himself among his closest friends most of the time; it was just on this particular occasion that he allowed hatred to seep into his heart. He hated his apartment and how it was never clean, he hated his job at the Popsicle stick factory and he hated his landlady Mrs. Driver, a kangaroo with a chip on her shoulder for the entire world; her husband, Mr. Driver, Nick had no personal qualms with, other than that he was an extremely loud talker in any conversation, which made it almost impossible to talk about sensitive matters. But mostly, Nick hated that he was constantly alone.
"It would be nice" Nick thought to himself as he made his way forward, ultimately sitting on the couch, "To have someone to talk to, someone who understood."
The fox was then reminded of something that his father had told him once: These are the absolute certainties in life- No one is born evil, no one is born alone, and everyone matters to someone. Whether or not Nick actually believed him is another entirely, for he was often known to stretch the boundaries of fact and fiction, truth and half-truth.
"No one is born evil" Nick continued, speaking aloud, his voice soft and sad, as if he finally allowed himself to believe what he had long denied, the singular truth that had become the antithesis to his entire existence up until that point.
Looking out the partially open window, Nick noticed the Zootopian night skyline and how average and dull it appeared. What was once what he considered to be the best view of the city, now had a blanket of familiarity and sameness; no longer did it represent hope and promise like it had before, for in its place stood the personification of everything that was wrong with the world. In Nick's mind the very idea of Zootopia was a fairy tale, an idea that lacked all practicality, logic, and reason. Instinct, he believed, always trumped Philosophy and Ideology. The power to rise above, to overcome what density and fate had given him, was to deny everything that made him who he was, which was something that he could not nor would ever accept.
As Nick turned on the television to land on the news- which he hated, finding them too biased to report impartially and much too focused on popular culture to talk about real issues, like the current housing crisis or the rising poverty rate- he slowly began to tune out the world, and as he did he began to turn to the only thing that put his mind at ease: song. In truth, Nick was the worst singer in the city, for he had absolutely no sense of pitch, which was incredibly unfortunate given that his rhythm was sublime; but that did not stop him from doing so all the same, if only to leave for a few moments. In his heart of hearts he knew that he could not escape the world forever, just as he could not escape the numerous phrases and slurs that passed his ears every day; and this saddened him, and in addition to his loneliness, became the reason for his song. At the same time however, Nick promised himself that he would never cry out of loneliness again and that if he were to sing it would only be out of sheer happiness to the point that no other action was called for. And so, as the television made its way to a documentary channel about The Law of the Jungle, Nick, reducing himself to humming, turned up the volume as he listened to the words of the famous philosopher, writer, poet, and social activist Thomas Moore, a crane, as it played on the archival footage.
"Cranes are very pragmatic by nature. We often only see things as they were and as they are, never as they could be. The same is true for those of us who are gathered here now. It is our responsibility, not as prey or predator, but as individuals, to rise above what we have been called. To prove that we are more than cranes, more than lions, or mongooses, or chickens, or mice. Or yes, more than even foxes. That it is not what we are, but what we do, that defines us."
Nick did not really know why he took a sudden interest in the words of Thomas Moore, he severely doubted that he was growing an intellectual conscience, and he had always maintained that as far as politics and other such matters were concerned that he was anti-authoritarian on almost every issue that one could possess an opinion on, so it was a general surprise to find himself taken by Moore's words. He would later say that it was the neutrality and the animalist ideology that caught his attention, but in the moment it was not the overall meaning but the specific mentioning of his species; to be thought of and spoken in a positive light. It was a good feeling, he figured, to be recognized and not hated immediately; and so, with this thought in mind, Nick resigned himself to sleep. As he dreamed, both of better days and the possibility of the promise of a new life, the world around him became brighter, as the sun creeped over the horizon, bringing on the coming of the morning and a new day.
