Homo sapiens sapiens: "My bones ache a bit, but anyway my memory is still intact."

     It isn’t often that a zealous journalist comes upon a talking skeleton that (who?) has not forgotten his (her?) sense of humor, having gone through the ice ages, the ravages of the Roman Empire, the Inquisition, the Dark Ages, the thirty years war, the plague, the Second World War, fascism, the struggle between capitalism and its critics, the coups and counter-coups in Latin America, the Bush Administration, the woman’s liberation movement, birth control pills, viagra, beatle-mania, AIDS and the tatters of post-modernism.

   There was a problem, though. The interviewer usually has a fairly good idea concerning the sexuality of the character he tabs to question. In this case it was not at all clear, for the obvious reason that even without clothes there was no sign of what one might construe to be reproductive organs. Makes a reporter feel a bit on the edge, not knowing the sexuality of the interviewee. So I resorted to my rational instinct and just addressed him (it, her) as Homo Sapiens Sapiens, or HSS.

    HSS looked relaxed enough, leaning against a wall on which someone had scribbled something about his (her) cranium. I approached gingerly and said:"Hello!" There was no reply so I blurted out my greeting again, a bit taken aback by my own intrepidness, "you wouldn’t have a moment to spare, would you?"

   HSS remained motionless and as silent as a dead galaxy. Was he laughing at me? Was she getting ready to clobber me? Was it doing some late morning yoga exercises? Suddenly I thought of all of the gods mankind has created over the past million years or so, how many weird beliefs men and women have invented to bide their passage to the after-life, then I raised my arms above my head, took in a deep breath, inched my body forward and pressed the button of my trusty Sony recorder.

   "Moment? What’s a moment in a million and a half years?"

   "True...you’ve got something there, but, well, moments do exist, don’t they?"

   "That depends. For me time doesn’t exist."

    "You do look a bit young for your age...ah...we don’t seem to be getting anywhere...ah...let me begin with the last question: is there any hope for mankind?"

     "Hope?"

    "Yea, are we going to survive? Will we destroy everything in our desire to turn Nature into exhaust pipes and computer products, enchanted forests into genetic deserts, will the speed-up of modern life turn our limbs into flimsy flowing extensions, will we retain a notion of our past, of poetry, of what it’s like to dash through the meadow, pause in a sun-lit glade and make sweet love with a smiling damsel?"

    "I doubt it."

   "You dobut it? You mean disaster is going to strike after all?"

   "Without a doubt. Disaster is part of life.It happened to me. I was skipping playfully around a glacier in the Alps one day when I slipped and fell into cold nothingness.I see things more clearly now."

    "So you think there’s no way we can avert it? Doomsday is just around the corner. Sounds rather negative, if you ask me?"

   "Why?"

   "You know, as if it were just a matter of time until..."

   "I told you: time doesn’t exist. It is but a human invention."

   "Oh."