Ardi to Lucy to Laurie

Denver-by-the-Sea, October 4

A startling discovery was announced today by the Post-Global Post-Institute of Post-Science, located on the shores of Mount Whitney. While laying the Ohio-to-Australia underwater super-conducting transit tube, excavators discovered the remains of a female of the long extinct species known as homo sapiens. Dubbing her “Laurie,” short for Lauriepithecus in vinoacademicus, scientists claim the discovery completes our knowledge of the chain of evolution of hominids right up to our present-day Humongous Cranius Enlightenmus species. Beginning with Ardi (short for Ardipithecus ramidus), evolution proceeded through Lucy (a member of the Australopithecus afarensis species), then through Laurie, and then at last culminated in Humongous Cranius Enlightenmus.

With Laurie were found several personal effects, including an artifact with the words “United Healthcare” inscribed on it, indicating Laurie depended upon the archaic capitalist economic system of private health insurance to obstruct her ability to get her body through life. A small satchel found nearby contained the remains of what were known as “credit cards” in homo sapien society, which permitted individuals to use the archaic system of exchange known as “buying even when you don’t have any money.” Laurie apparently used them at several ancient markets known as “department stores.” The satchel also contained a huge pile of colorful “lipsticks” (a substance scientists think female homo sapiens applied to their mouths to attract males), and a strange item called “chewing gum,” which homo sapiens apparently used to exercise their jaws.

Laurie lived in an age when there were still male homo sapiens, before males were eradicated after it was concluded that they were detrimental to species survival due to their tendencies to drink beer, abuse their spouses, make war, and clog their computers with pornography. Scientists estimate Laurie lived about two million years before the appearance of Humongous Cranius Enlightenmus, which, for reasons that remain unclear, resulted in the almost immediate extinction of the puny-brained homo sapiens.

Laurie apparently lived right near the end of the time when homo sapiens roamed the earth, before college educations were planted in brains by the insertion of microchips. When Laurie was alive, homo sapiens indulged in such primitive practices as distance learning, centered in a cave in what was formerly the city of Phoenix (now on the floor of the Sea of the Southwest).

Reconstructed brain wiring revealed that Laurie died of a massive attack of boredom, at a ritual gathering apparently called “a faculty meeting.” Ancient papers near her body suggest the subject of that meeting was “outcomes assessment,” whatever the hell that was. Stomach contents indicate she ingested several pieces of cubed cheddar cheese, celery and carrot sticks, five oatmeal-raisin cookies and two cups of watery coffee with artificial creamer before keeling over.

Homo sapiens harbored the idea that they represented the culmination of evolution. In spite of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, some actually believed they were created out of whole cloth and that the entire universe, including homo sapiens, was created in six days. In burning fossil fuels like there was no tomorrow, they made a mess of the planet, destroying its biodiversity and creating an effect they labeled “global warming.” Their intransigence and selfishness in the face of this problem of their own making resulted in the planet Earth as we now know it, where most of it is under water. Only with the arrival of Humongous Cranius Enlightenmus has the average temperature on Earth dipped below 100 degrees Fahrenheit.