(The new serial in 9 parts spanning as many millenia by young Dr. Raymond Blatts, the distinguished geneticist and foremost figure in woolly mammoth and neanderthal re-incarnation studies as well as the author of such bestselling works as Geography's Alive and Goddammit, We Are Monkeys!)
PART I: First Things First,
There are no heroes in this story, only facts! But since we are all homosapiens here, alive in the childhood of our species and so therefore still almost universally bound to the narrow minded perspective-trap of "the good and the bad' along with countless other stupefying conventions, I will in the name of order - and if anything can be called good, it is certainly order - single out for my reader a protagonist. And even now as I write in my great, free-wheeling, intellectual ease it pains me to highlight one of our species's organizational shortfalls as I let slip from my Palm Pilot pen the understandably hackneyed "single out" (did you know that cuttlefish organize their world around multiples of 8?). We are, to be sure, talking about a 'single' organism here, but to say 'single,' although certainly useful in the sense of giving the idea of collective purpose, it does not do justice to the googleplectic complexity of our tale. Because our hero is not the organism of a person, but the organism of a whole people. And that people is the neanderthal!
PART I: First Things First,
There are no heroes in this story, only facts! But since we are all homosapiens here, alive in the childhood of our species and so therefore still almost universally bound to the narrow minded perspective-trap of "the good and the bad' along with countless other stupefying conventions, I will in the name of order - and if anything can be called good, it is certainly order - single out for my reader a protagonist. And even now as I write in my great, free-wheeling, intellectual ease it pains me to highlight one of our species's organizational shortfalls as I let slip from my Palm Pilot pen the understandably hackneyed "single out" (did you know that cuttlefish organize their world around multiples of 8?). We are, to be sure, talking about a 'single' organism here, but to say 'single,' although certainly useful in the sense of giving the idea of collective purpose, it does not do justice to the googleplectic complexity of our tale. Because our hero is not the organism of a person, but the organism of a whole people. And that people is the neanderthal!
Now, some of you readers might just have scoffed at this unveiling, and some of you may have been scoffing from the start, and others of you still might still be scratching your heads like a monkey deciding whether he ought not just masturbate and save himself the trouble of thinking a bit, so at this point I'll simply say damn you to hell, those of you scoffing, and put that away, those others of you! But for those of you still here who plan to listen closely and undividedly, I'll explain to you now why I've chosen the neanderthal as the hero, when it would be just as sensible to choose the homosapien, and why if I can choose a collective hero I can't go what seems to you the extra step in picking a few individuals. I've chosen the neaderthal as hero based on the age-old and naive conception - and, I say here emphatically, you must remember I'm singling out heroes here for the reader's sake not my own! - that those first offenders in a chain of retribution will for eternity be saddled with the greater bit of guilt simply because they were saddled first: it was the homosapien that happened to eradicate the neaderthal when it was only taking it's first breath as a species, when just as easily the Neanderthal might have managed to get the upper hand, if he'd grown up a bit faster and wasn't just hanging around with it on his hang-down all the time. As it happened, they didn't, and therefore as homosapien readers (ironically enough) we will itch for the time in our story when the homosapiens get there comeuppance (which according to my estimates occurs some time in the 6th decade of the 1st century of this millenium). As for the lack of individual heroes, which you no doubt feel will leave you without anyone to make friends with, and against which, surely, if you can't simply admit to being lonely, you argue with the question: "Well, then, who is driving this ship?!" Well, let me just say now as we untie are fast-lines from the safe dock of the universe-as-you-know-it that this journey isn't going to be easy, but if you're willing to stick it out, all will be revealed in time. And in answer to your question, which happens to be the question of all questions, I can only say that that which is driving the ship is that which has been driving the ship for all time and beyond. And yet, for the sake of order and that goddamn necessary evil of convention, I will allow to eventually evolve from the fabric of this tale those neandrathals who, so ordained by the unknown, shine with that cosmic brilliance that blots out those lesser bodies and draws unto itself our fickle attentions. But in the beginnings of our tale, even if I so wanted, which I most certainly do not - as I hope you will already have recognized - I couldn't choose a hero for you without indulging in the most fatuous form of fantasy. For these events - even though they are contained in that dust speck of time which is the whole lifespan of living things on our, as far as your concerned, infinitely old world - still fall outside our certain knowledge. And when I say 'certain' and 'knowledge' I do so conventionally.
Conclusion of Part I.
...Until next time give into every shallow desire of your infintisimal present, if you so desire, but know that if you do, you will be amongst that shady crew of sluts and bankers (etc. etc. etc.) that will be saddled up with the guilt of our downfall by those sad souls of us who manage to survive it by no special strength or goodness unique to themselves.
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