ATTENTION!PEOPLEOFEARTH!
FREETRIPTOK-PAX!
SICKOFYOURLIFEONTHISPLANET?WANTACHANGEOFHABITAT?THESHIPISLEAVINGSOON!SENDYOURAPPLICATIONNOW!!!
REQUIREMENTS
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2. Pacifist
3. Musthavenomorethantwochildren(theyarewelcomealso)
4.Preparedtogiveawayanymoneyorproperty
5.Opposedtozoosandallotherexploitationsofnon-humananimals
6.Willingtoleaveallflagsbehind
7.AbletolivewithoutTV
8.Allreligionsmustbeleftatthedoor
9.Senseofhumorpreferred
HUNTERS,CORPORATEEXECUTIVES,ANDPOLITICIANS
NEEDNOTAPPLY
ONLY100,000SEATSAVAILABLE
SENDAPPLICATIONTOfled@mpi.com
(includeGPSco-ordinates,ifknown)
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“Surely there are a few people out there who can meet these criteria,” Karen observed. “Abby, for one.”
“Do you think she would go without Steve?”
“Probably.”
We giggled some more.
* * *
Normally I have a brief afternoon snooze right after lunch. This time, to my wife’s amazement, I stayed in my study to see what I could find about the use of sign language to speak with the various apes. A number of primatologists have utilized this technique to communicate with certain of their subjects, and have discovered, for example, that they possess considerable language skills, and even the ability to create new words to express themselves when the old ones seem inadequate. Koko, a female gorilla, possesses a Stanford-Binet IQ of 85-95, boasts a vocabulary of about a thousand words, and can understand several thousand more. Moreover, I learned, all of the ape families demonstrate long-term memories, are self-aware, and exhibit rich emotional lives. I knew that of all the animals, the chimpanzees were genetically most similar to humans, but was surprised to learn that even gorillas share a whopping 97% of our DNA. Surprisingly, though, it’s their Asian cousins, the orangutans, who are most like humans in hair pattern, gestation period, and dental characteristics, as well as hormonal levels, sexual physiology, and copulatory behavior. But there is no question that all of the great apes are truly our very close cousins. Literally, in fact, since we both evolved from the same ancestor!
There were dozens of books listed on amazon.com, but I didn’t want to wait the few days it would take to get them. I told my wife where I was going. “Bring me back a good mystery,” she called out. “See if you can get MurderonSpruceIsland!”
If the “boys” were waiting for me outside, they didn’t try to stop me from jumping into the car and zooming off to the library, perhaps because of the rain.
Only three of the books I had found on the Internet were available. I checked out the one that seemed most informative, as well as the mystery Karen had requested. With less than two days before my next meeting with fled, I began reading as soon as I got home, and by evening I had compiled a list of six individuals who were experts on ape communications.
But calling them would have to wait until the next morning. We had dinner guests that evening.
* * *
Just before the Siegels arrived, our lovely daughter Jennifer called from California. She was very excited: the HIV vaccine she had been working on had passed the initial tests for safety and effectiveness, and would be going into larger-scale clinical trials in the next few months. With all that hard work behind her, she and her partner (an ophthalmologist) were planning to come east for a short vacation in July. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t be staying with us long; they would be spending most of the time in Massachusetts, the only state where they could be legally married. Though we talk to her regularly we hadn’t seen her and Anne for nearly two years, and we quickly assured her we would take whatever time she could give us.
But the main reason she had called was that she was wondering what was going on with fled, whom Karen had told her about earlier. Forgetting that the government boys might be monitoring what we said, I filled her in on everything I knew. She listened silently, and when I was finished she posed an interesting question: if fled’s child were half human, would he or she be treated as human or chimpanzee, i.e., would the baby be welcomed by the general public or ostracized as a “freak of nature”? I hadn’t really thought about that, but her point was obvious. Just as children of mixed parentage are considered to be non-white by almost everyone, probably most people would consider fled’s half-human child to be “sub-human.”
But an even more frightening possibility crossed my mind, and I asked her whether she thought that some people—particularly those professing certain fundamentalist religious faiths—would want to harm fled and the child, claiming it to be the “work of the devil”? Privately, I wondered whether Wang and his partner might not reach the same conclusion.
Jenny, always the practical one, advised, “Dad, see if you can get her to leave before that happens.”
* * *
Despite the fact that we shared a granddaughter (Will’s wife Dawn is Bill and Eileen’s daughter), and were nearby neighbors, we hadn’t seen our old friends the Siegels for several weeks, mainly because they had only recently returned from a visit to Poland. “It’s an amazing country,” they informed us. “They are enjoying their freedom from communism tremendously, and are open to all kinds of new ideas. And,” said Bill, taking a forkful of couscous, “the food is wonderful.”