THE NEANDERTHAL SWAN SONG
by Richard W. Novy
Ugh said a soft goodbye as he closed the door after the goodnight kiss. His conscience grated on his nerves. Something had to be done. This beautiful woman somehow found his miserable self attractive. It wasn't natural. He had to keep himself separate from them--no relationships, no love, and positively no offspring. Yet, how could he tell Akira, the only person who ever looked past his face and into the man beneath, that he didn't want a relationship. He couldn't, because it wasn't true. He did want a relationship, but he just couldn't allow it. What if she's like the Demon?
A letter, yes, a letter would be best. Ugh sat down with a piece of paper and a pen. Typing it would be far too impersonal.
Ugh carefully folded the letter and placed it in an envelope. He stamped it then walked down the hall to mail it. Afterwards. he did not leave his room for several days. What if he should see her? She might spring a demon web, or worse yet, she might ignore him. 12 November, 2098 My Dearest Akira,
I must confess to you that the past six months have been the best of my miserable life. You are the one break in the clouds. But, as much as I love you, I must end our relationship. Once I describe myself to you more fully, you will see that I cannot allow this relationship to happen. Some of the story you know, the holes will be filled by this letter.
There is no mercy in the world. Fate wouldn't even allow me--somebody who should never have been born--to kill myself. My life is miserable. I am alone in a world full of people, millions of years out of my time. You see, I am not Homo sapiens, I am Ugh Boogah Abramowitz, Neanderthal man, cloned from the remains of--well--my original self, found preserved in the ice of Siberia in late October of 2066.
My mother is a paleontologist. It was my demonic mother who selected my name. That alone should give you a sense of her lack of compassion. What kind of a name is that? She had me implanted into her womb so I could be reborn, but her objectives were purely professional. What better way to learn about primitive man than to observe one. I literally made her career.
I was born in a laboratory, you know, the white room with a big glass window kind. She nurtured me through my early years, though I later learned that she and her colleagues observed me through that window far more often than she actually came to comfort me. The laboratory was all I knew. I thought that one day, when I was big, I would watch children through the glass window, just like my mother.
Many people jump to conclusions and judge me by appearance. Being Neanderthal, they assume I have no morals, ethics, or self-restraint. Nothing could be further from the truth. I was well educated early in life-mostly through self-study. I could speak, read, and write in English by age four, French and German by age six, and Japanese by age seven. But I had no friends. I was a specimen, the subject of papers and books too numerous to mention. I brought great esteem to my mother in the academic circles, but I received nothing for it. She wanted desperately to prove that Neanderthal was an intellectually inferior breed, and that Neanderthals became extinct due to some inherent defect or mental incapacity. My aptitude toward languages infuriated my mother to no end. Her thesis was that homo sapiens survived because they were smarter than the Neanderthal. I think it was because homo sapiens were simply more violent.
As I grew older, I started to question my existence. I remember that I used to ask my mother if I could go out of the laboratory. For a few years, it was enough that she told me that I'm not supposed to leave the laboratory. But when I was twelve, I got bold. I insisted that I be allowed to leave it, but was rebuffed. I had books, and I had the internet, but I was very, very bored.
One time when I asked, and after she told me I was supposed to stay in the laboratory, I asked why. Her explanation I cannot remember. What I do remember is that all the years of loneliness and isolation came out in a rage that day. As peaceful as I am, I just couldn't hold it in any longer. I cracked a table in half with my fist and tried to walk out of the room through the door by which my mother came in. I was out of the laboratory for no more than fifteen seconds before I felt a sharp prick in my right arm. The next thing I remember is being flat on my back, bound to a table with leather straps. I stayed on that table for several days, and was only released after promising that I would behave and stop trying to get out of the laboratory. I did not attempt escape a second time, but I knew I was a prisoner, and I wanted out.
The older I got, the more distant my mother became. Perhaps it was due to my appearance. I was not a normal boy by any means. As I entered puberty, I began sprouting hair on most of my body, and the sloping of my forehead became more pronounced. The next several years were an agony beyond belief. I had no friends, and by the time I was fifteen, I had no interaction with other people except for the occasion when the physicians would poke and prod me in any number of uncomfortable places. I had access to an outdoor area adjacent to the laboratory, complete with evergreen trees, a pond with a waterfall, and some ducks. I rarely spent any time there; it was too depressing. It always reminded me that I couldn't get away to see the real outdoors. I passed most of my time away with books and research papers downloaded from university web sites.
I developed a fondness for astrophysics, electronics, mathematics, history, and law. I was especially good at mathematics, and this prompted my mother to become more sadistic in her studies. Then one day, I discovered the web site for the ACLU and read everything on those pages. A few days later, after several days of typing, I sent a lengthy email to the webmaster describing my situation. When I woke up the next day, my computer and books were all gone. There was nothing in the place of my computer, but in the place of my books were volumes of poetry.
When I next saw my mother, I demanded an explanation. I wanted my computer and my textbooks back. She told me that I would not get them back because they were biasing the results of her research (remember, Neanderthals are supposed to be stupid). The paper she was working on was far too important to let my comfort interfere.
I hate her. Finally, I resigned and picked up one of the volumes. At the time, poetry was among the most vulgar creations imaginable. The favorite topic of these poems was something I knew nothing about-love. They were so sweet and flowery that I almost puked. After reading about three of the books, I could ingest no more, so I began a book-by-book study of the frequency of the different metaphorical words used to represent love.
I was working my way through the third book when the door opened and my mother entered. She appeared to be very angry, but spoke as if to disguise it. "You have a visitor, Ugh." A man wearing a three-piece Italian suit and yellow necktie entered the room. "This is Mr. Foster. He is an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union." She pivoted and stormed to the door. As she exited the room, she turned and mouthed the words, "I'll get you for this." She slammed the door, leaving Mr. Foster with me.
"Mr. Abramowitz," the lawyer said, "Thomas Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal. You have been without rights your entire life. The ACLU has sent me here to evaluate the situation and decided whether to sue--on your behalf--to win your freedom." After a lengthy court battle, we finally won the case.
Everywhere I went I was met with stares. Children pointed fingers at me from across the street. Some people really have a morbid curiosity. Sometimes they would walk up to me on the street and just begin touching me. At first, I thought I could pass myself off as a particularly ugly Mongol, but my face didn't really resemble anything currently alive.
I had trouble finding a job, and when all my money was gone, I, and lived under a bridge near Palo Alto, California. I was beat up four times in two years. There were seventeen attempts, all ambushes. This macho thing comes out, and they want to beat up the caveman.
I didn't really mind living on the streets because I could always go to the library. I was a daily fixture at the different Stanford libraries for over a year before they started refusing to allow in vagrants. I walked around the bay to Berkeley and started again. It only took them three months to bar me there. It's hard to believe how conservative Berkeley has become in the last hundred years or so. They feverishly deny most of what took place in the 1960's, when I would probably have been given an honorary doctorate and a tenured position on the faculty. Anyway, the Berkeley police escorted me to the city limits and I crossed the bridge into San Francisco.
I don't remember much of what happened after that because I started doing heroin. I do recall sinking deeper and deeper into depression as the days passed, until finally I decided to end it. Next thing I remember is dangling high above the Golden Gate by a pant-leg snagged on a bolt attaching the new jump barrier. I should have jumped out farther, but I lost my footing and slipped during my jump.
As I studied my predicament, I saw a cop looking down at me. She didn't look very experienced. I don't remember exactly what she said, but it was something completely stupid like, "Are you doing okay?" She had a Texas twang.
I remember looking at her like she was a talking baboon and saying, "Yeah, I'm doing great, that's why I just tried to throw myself off this bridge."
"You just hold tight, we're going to get you out of there."
"Why don't you just cut my pant leg and let me fall."
Well, that didn't happen. The police dragged me--kicking and screaming--back onto the bridge, then took me to a psychiatrist. What a Homo sapiens psychiatrist thinks he knows about the Neanderthal mind, I couldn't even try to guess. To me, any sane person with my background would be suicidal.
Nevertheless, the therapy did do me some good. They sent me to an institution, and I managed to improve from suicidal to deep depression. My disposition improved even more after I convinced them to bring some physics journals to me. I started getting back into my old routine of making a thorough study of each article and deriving all the equations. At one point, I worked non-stop for over 35 hours at a particularly interesting paper regarding the structure of neutron stars. What made it so interesting was that I discovered an error.
I wrote the authors of the paper and included the correction. It completely invalidated their theories, but they refused to admit their error to the inmate of a mental institution. I then sent a letter and the derivation to a Dr. Hiroshi Yamaichi, the lead author of a paper they referenced. I waited for several weeks before getting a reply, but the reply was worth the wait. I was invited to the University of Tokyo to speak at a colloquium.
I wrote back telling of my situation, and said that I would love to come to Tokyo if I could get out of the institution. In three weeks, I had a letter telling me that everything would be taken care of. I don't know how he did it, but six days after I received the letter, I was on an airplane headed for Tokyo.
The Japanese have a reputation in the west for discrimination against outsiders, but I felt none of it. I was given a hero's welcome at the airport. As I walked out of the terminal with Dr. Yamaichi, I saw signs saying, "Welcome to Japan, Neanderthal Man," and "Welcome Ugh Boogah-San." Teenagers crowded me to get my autograph as if I were Elvis. They cheered as I entered the limousine that took me to the hotel. I must say that I have never before felt as exhilarated as I did that first day in Tokyo.
The colloquium went smoothly. I delivered the neutron star lecture in passable Japanese, thick with my American accent and the subtle quirks of speech due to my anatomy--my lisp and my trouble with the letter Z. I made the unfortunate mistake of using Z as an important variable, so I was stuck with my horrid pronunciation of that letter several times per minute. The auditorium was filled to standing room. It reminded me of a famous quote by Albert Einstein, after a similar experience, where he commented about being amazed at how many people were interested in his lecture on tensor calculus. Oh, there was a small group of astrophysicists, and a somewhat larger group of students, but of course the majority of the people attended to see the living fossil.
There was a large reception afterwards where I mingled with more of the public. I'd met with the public in the U.S., but there, it was always like a circus sideshow. Here, they were asking me questions and they cared about my answers.
After the reception, I went back to the hotel. I had a meeting scheduled for the next morning at the university, and then a week of playing tourist before heading back to San Francisco. I thought about the day's activities and realized that for the first time in my life, I could truly say that I was happy.
The next day, I walked to the campus to meet with the dean of the Letters and Sciences College. He told me that my colloquium was the best attended lecture at the university since the turn of the century. Seven new applications were already filed today for the fall semester in the physics department, and it was only ten o'clock. I told him that I enjoyed the entire experience and wished that I could stay in Japan.
The dean said that he was hoping I would say something like that, then made me an offer. I could have free tuition, room, and board for as many degrees as I would like to pursue in exchange for cooperation with the paleontology department's requests for testing, plus four public appearances each year. Additionally, a position on the physics department faculty awaited if I should finish my doctorate at Tokyo. How could I refuse?
I have been at Tokyo eight years now, and was researching papers on the unified field theory for my dissertation when I met you. You are a distraction, and worse still, you are a paleontologist. As you can see, I've had enough of both in my life. Physics is what keeps me alive, and physics is what keeps me sane. Only you can come between physics and me. The theory I am working on could potentially be the most important discovery in human history-you see, I am very close to understanding how to travel faster than light. This is my calling, and it will prove to the world that the Neanderthals were not intellectual inferiors, but possibly even the source of homo sapiens intellect. This is the singular task to which I must dedicate the rest of my life. I must make my mark upon history before I again become a part of it.
Regards,
Ugh B. AbramowitzOn the fourth morning after the letter was mailed, there came a gentle knock on the door. It was the knock of a demon. He did not get up from his bed to answer it. He said nothing.
"Ugh, please open the door." It was Akira. The demon had come to haunt him. Still he said nothing. "Ugh, I love you."
Ugh sat up. Would a demon say that? He sat, wondering if behind the door stood a demon or an angel. She knocked again and he walked slowly to the door. He stood silently for a moment before he opened it. Akira was there, her hair loosely hanging over the collar of her baby blue jacket. She had a small package in her hands.
Ugh invited her inside. Akira gave a shy smile, then handed him the package. "This is for you. Please open it."
Ugh began to unwrap the package.
"Carefully," Akira said.
Inside was a very, very old book. It was incomplete. Only the front half of the book remained, and there was no cover, but it didn't matter. A tear ran down his cheek. He opened the book, turning the pages very slowly so they wouldn't tear. He looked at Akira and smiled. He looked over the hand-transcribed pages of the book, cherishing every molecule of ink. He closed the book and stared at the cover page. On it, written in decorative letters was most of the word Principia.
He looked at Akira, smiling like a child. This was certainly no demon. "Where did you get this?"
"It was my father's before he passed away." She took the book from him and placed it on a table so she could take his hands in hers. "It has been in my family for seven generations, handed down from eldest son to eldest son." She looked into his eyes. "I have no brother. My father's last words to me were to give it to my husband so he could continue the tradition."
Ugh was stunned. Akira Abramowitz sounded as natural the sea or the sky. "Marry me," he said, and she embraced him.
Story copyright ©2000 by Richard W. Novy <rnovy@scottsdaleonline.com>
Illustration copyright ©2000 by