Man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food

Host: The lab was silent except for the faint hum of the refrigeration units and the slow rhythm of the ventilation fans, their sighs like the breathing of some invisible beast. Stainless steel gleamed under the cold fluorescence, clean yet cruel, like the logic of science stripped of mercy.

Jack stood near one of the long tables, his hands tucked into the pockets of a lab coat that wasn’t his, staring down at the microscopic slide beneath the light. It was almost nothing — a sliver of muscle, a filament of life. And yet it pulsed, even in stillness.

Across from him, Jeeny leaned against the counter, arms crossed, her eyes moving slowly over the skeletal remains of old experiments — jars, instruments, models of anatomy. Her hair caught the sterile light like something soft refusing to die among machines.

On the speaker above them, a recorded voice — calm, ancient, prophetic — played in Italian, followed by its translation:
"Man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food, tombs of animals, hostels of Death, coverings that consume, deriving life by the death of others." — Leonardo da Vinci

The words filled the air like a haunting diagnosis of existence itself.

Jeeny: “He never flinched from the dark, did he?”

Jack: “No. He dissected truth the way he dissected bodies — without apology.”

Jeeny: “That’s what makes him terrifying. He saw beauty and horror as twins.”

Jack: “Maybe they are.”

Host: The light flickered, briefly cutting the scene into frames — Jack’s shadow, Jeeny’s stillness, the shimmering reflection of the slide.

Jeeny: “You know what that quote reminds me of? How we pretend we’re different. Like civilization has erased the animal in us. But we’re still consuming, still surviving off the deaths of others — whether they bleed or not.”

Jack: “You’re saying progress is just polished hunger.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. We’ve just learned to market it.”

Jack: “Then what’s left? Guilt?”

Jeeny: “Maybe awareness. Maybe that’s all morality really is — consciousness of the cost.”

Host: He straightened, the light glinting off his eyes, thoughtful and tired.

Jack: “Leonardo saw life as a loop — eat, decay, repeat. Energy changing form. No heaven or hell, just metabolism.”

Jeeny: “And yet he painted the Last Supper.”

Jack: “Because he understood the irony — that communion is cannibalism with good lighting.”

Jeeny: “You sound like him.”

Jack: “Maybe I just understand what he meant — that every breath we take belongs to someone else first.”

Host: The sound of rain began tapping against the high windows, soft but insistent, as if nature itself had come to listen.

Jeeny walked toward the specimen tray, looking down at it. The small glass dish held a preserved bird — delicate, weightless, eternal in its suspension.

Jeeny: “He called us ‘hostels of Death.’ That’s brutal.”

Jack: “No. It’s honest. Life feeds on death. Even peace grows from destruction. Forests need fire. Flesh needs sacrifice. The world survives by eating itself.”

Jeeny: “And we call it living.”

Jack: “We call it necessary.”

Host: The rain quickened, streaking the glass with silver lines. The lights hummed above them, indifferent.

Jeeny: “So where does compassion fit into that? If everything lives by killing, what’s the point of kindness?”

Jack: “Kindness isn’t rebellion against death — it’s acknowledgment of it. A pause in the cycle.”

Jeeny: “A pause?”

Jack: “Yes. Kindness doesn’t stop consumption; it slows it enough for awareness to exist. It’s our only protest against the mechanics of survival.”

Jeeny: “You make mercy sound like delay.”

Jack: “Maybe that’s all it is. But sometimes delay is grace.”

Host: She turned to face him, her eyes full of the reflection of the sterile lights — two orbs of warmth in a room built for detachment.

Jeeny: “So you believe we’re just… conduits?”

Jack: “Aren’t we? Every cell we own once belonged to something else. The carbon in our blood, the calcium in our bones — stolen stars, dead oceans, eaten plants, lost beasts. We’re graveyards that learned to walk.”

Jeeny: (quietly) “That’s both beautiful and horrifying.”

Jack: “That’s existence.”

Host: A long silence settled, broken only by the soft patter of the storm. Jeeny traced her finger lightly along the metal counter, as though searching for warmth in the cold logic of the world.

Jeeny: “But if everything we are is borrowed, then nothing is truly ours. Not even our goodness.”

Jack: “Exactly. That’s what makes it sacred. We give back what was never ours to keep.”

Jeeny: “Including each other.”

Jack: “Especially each other.”

Host: The lights dimmed slightly as the building’s generator adjusted to the power surge outside. The air grew thicker, almost reverent.

Jack: “You know, when Leonardo called us ‘coverings that consume,’ he wasn’t condemning us. He was describing the cost of consciousness. Animals eat without awareness; humans devour with remorse.”

Jeeny: “And remorse is what makes us human.”

Jack: “Yes. The ache that comes with knowing you’re both predator and prayer.”

Host: Jeeny smiled faintly, but it was a sad smile — the kind that comes from seeing too clearly. She looked again at the preserved bird, her reflection layered over its small body.

Jeeny: “You think he ever found peace in that understanding?”

Jack: “No. But he found purpose. He studied death to understand life. That’s the paradox — we only begin to live when we stop pretending we’re exempt from dying.”

Jeeny: “And yet we fear it endlessly.”

Jack: “Because we’re the only creatures that can imagine it.”

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s why we build art — to prove we were more than biology.”

Jack: “Or to make the biology bearable.”

Host: The rain softened, turning into a misty rhythm against the glass — a sound like the breathing of the Earth itself.

Jeeny: “You know, Leonardo never separated art from anatomy, soul from science. He saw creation and consumption as one movement — destruction and beauty intertwined.”

Jack: “Maybe that’s what immortality really is. Not escaping death, but transforming it.”

Jeeny: “Turning it into meaning.”

Jack: “Into memory.”

Host: She looked up, meeting his eyes, both of them reflected in the glass, ghostlike and human.

Jeeny: “So we live to become someone else’s nourishment — physically, emotionally, spiritually.”

Jack: “And if we’re lucky, their inspiration.”

Jeeny: “That’s a better fate than being forgotten.”

Jack: “It’s the only immortality worth having.”

Host: The lights flickered once more, then steadied. The rain faded. The silence that followed wasn’t empty — it was full of the hum of unseen life continuing in the walls, in the air, in their blood.

Jack turned off the microscope light, plunging the lab into a soft, shadowed glow.

Jeeny: “Do you ever think Leonardo saw God in all this? In the feeding and the dying?”

Jack: “No. I think he saw God as the process itself.”

Jeeny: “So creation is the act of devouring, and divinity is digestion?”

Jack: “Something like that.”

Host: They stood for a moment in that quiet revelation — two small beings in a vast, indifferent cycle, recognizing their place not as masters of it, but participants.

Outside, the storm cleared. A faint moon emerged, reflecting on the wet pavement, pale and perfect.

And as they stepped out into the night, the cold biting at their skin, they carried Leonardo’s truth with them —
that life is not separate from death,
that existence is communion through consumption,
and that every heartbeat, every breath, every act of creation
is both a theft and a gift.

Host: Because Leonardo da Vinci understood long before the rest of us —
that to live is to borrow,
to love is to consume and be consumed,
and to die is simply to return what was never truly ours.