The True Meaning of Smekday

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism.

Tip continues her story in a private journal, with instructions for no one to read it until the time capsule is unearthed and she is dead.

They drove west and Tip parked for the night in a junkyard. When she woke, they were caught in a flash flood brought on by a hurricane. J.Lo said the Gorg bring bad weather. Tip drove while J.Lo used Boov technology to bail out water through an open window. Panicked, Pig got tangled in a camera strap and jumped out the window. J.Lo dove in after her and made two trips, fetching Pig and the camera. Tip was emotionally overwhelmed and hugged him.

In the two days it took to wait out the storm, they exchanged stories about their species. J.Lo doesn’t know how families work; Boov don’t know their parents, but myriad people, whose job it is to teach or feed them, raise them. In the present, Tip includes a comic book J.Lo drew about Boov’s life and culture on the way from Florida to Arizona.

The comic retells the evolution of the Boov. A social class called the HighBoov eventually made general education available only to their chosen, condemned, and reclassified scientists who said industry is polluting the ocean as “the Forgotten,” and established the Boov “Grand Destiny” on land (173).