“Carbon dating shows that the last remaining Homo Hopean may have lived as recently as 2016,” Robin Archibald, lead archaeologist on the Deep Hope Project, unveiled in a Princeton conference room today to a group of journalists more interested in trying to follow the spreading rolls of Donald Trump’s waxen meltdown via Twitter.
“Ahem. Is this thing on? I said, ‘We once had hope.’ In fact very recently. Our team has found fossils whose eye sockets are curved in what is clearly an optimistic facial arrangement, leading us to believe this earlier Homo species of likely wore a permanently hopeful expression. This is a significant finding people.”
A few journalists glanced up from the digitized maelstrom of a Trump-tweetstorm-tantrum.
“What happened to these Hopeans then, why did they die out?” A CNN reporter asked before diving back into her device to retweet an unneccesarily sharp takedown of the bluntest leader in recorded history.
Dr. Archibald glances cursorily at her notes, aware no one is listening to her anyway.
“It appears they perished last winter in a great migration to Canada, falling victim to a lack of Uber Eats and generally terrible reception. Any other questions?”
There were none, though a ripple of grim amusement moved through the gathered writers and broadcasters as yet more evidence was live-tweeted, leaving. I doubt that the United States is currently being run by the political equivalent of the Ghostbuster’s Marshmallow Man: fat fists, heavy feet, and an otherwise harmless idiocy rendered terrifying by its sheer size and weight.
The doctor closed her dossier and began to stride off the stage, but then stopped, paused for a moment, and then briskly swung back to the lectern from which she’d been speaking.
“Let me pose the question you should be asking. If we are post-Hopean, then what are we? Sapien means wise, and surely we can all agree that no longer applies, if ever it did. Thus my team and I are proposing a reclassification of our species to Perseveraverunts, which means ‘persisted,’ as this appears to be our defining characteristic. It is also our contention that we are currently living in an epoch of stiff headwinds to this persistence, and that this era should be henceforward be known as the Age of Nevertheless. Thank you.”
Categories: Science
The Out And Abouter 