I think Jesus was messing with us

April 13, 2090: Neanderthals become extinct again

http://www.reason.com/news/show/131717.html

The road to cloning the first Neanderthal was a long and rocky one. First, there were the Christians, who had their hissy fit about scientists trying to play God. As fate would have it, they were all raptured in 2028 (2,000 years after the death of Christ, not his birth, DUH). A reporter who happened to be on the scene was able to ask Jesus a few questions before He left again, among them His opinion on the Neanderthal cloning issue. "Hey!" He responded, "I miss those little guys. Yeah, bring 'em back!"

Then, there was the major moral problem: should we bring a new species into a world with as many problems as this one has? We have enough trouble making sure all the humans here retain their basic rights--are we sure that we could offer them fully to a new species, one that we know nothing about?

By 2034, all human rights violations, genocides, wars, and variations on inequality in the world had come to an end. This came about due to the fact that everybody really wanted to see a live Neanderthal. Video footage of Jesus telling you to do something is very compelling.

It took a few tries to get them right. Initially, the plan was to use a female chimpanzee as the host for a Neanderthal DNA-inseminated egg. In fact, this produced perfectly healthy Neanderthal babies...which were invariably strangled to death by the chimp mothers immediately after being born. Strangely enough, the same thing happened with the first human test mothers to carry Neanderbabies to term (note to scientists: DO NOT USE SCHIZOPHRENICS AS TEST MOTHERS. BAD IDEA ALL AROUND).

The first Neanderthal baby was born on May 22, 2038, at a cost of 27 million Ameros. Marissa (the scientists wanted to call her "Nene"; stupid scientists) was healthy, progressed through grade school fairly uneventfully (she had a little trouble with math), went to a community college, and got a job working in an apartment rental office in Ames, Iowa. Though she had hundreds of suitors, it was Marissa's choice not to marry.

The case of Marissa seemed to work so well that plans were made to create an entire Neanderthal race of about 10,000 persons. These were done at a much lower unit price, totalling around $500 million in cost (note to scientists: Play God Wholesale!). This was in 2064.

The warning signs were minor and easily overlooked to begin with...not being able to keep secrets well...chewing on anything plastic...peeing in the corners. "Okay," we said, "they're a little unpredictable; they're just a little slower, we have to patience with them."

Then they reached their teenage years. Ripping off their clothes (and those of others) whenever they got emotional...chewing on human babies (never hard enough to break the skin, but still)...setting fire to any business with "soft" in its name. "It's a phase," we said. "Their hormones are just running wild because their pubertal stage lasts longer."

However, by the time that batch of 10,000 reached the age of 25, we realized the full extent of our mistake. The Neanderthal, it seems, is the quintessential annoying person. Hanging around after parties long after everyone else had left, farting in elevators, using a paper towel to open the bathroom door on their way out of public bathrooms and then dropping the paper towel on the floor, repeating that same stupid phrase that they find funny over and over again--LOUDLY--in restaurants, getting up 50 times during the course of a baseball game to go pee, chewing on ambulance tires, scratching themselves ALL THE TIME, trying to friend you on Facebook (still around!), even after you ignored the request a dozen times, listening to the hockey game on the radio in church (still around!), jaywalking, pissing on everything, writing bland sitcoms, instigating riots, taking two newspapers (still around!) from the box when they only paid for one, stealing wheelchairs from cripples, making prank phone calls, and the SMELL....

Humanity as a whole realized why the Neanderthal went extinct in the first place--they were just too much to deal with. Our ancestors simply neglected to tell us that they got rid of the original Neanderthals; they assumed (and with good reason) that they'd never come back.

On March 28, 2090, World Facilitator ("leader" was too loaded a word by then) Jacques Smith gave the imperative to the world: "Let's just fucking kill them already. I'm not even kidding."

It took until April 13 to root them all out. The last to go was Marissa, who we had all honestly forgotten about until then. We would have killed her too, except for the fact that we felt kind of guilty about doing it--she hadn't caused any problems herself. It turns out that she had been stifling her Neanderthal urges her entire life. In her case, this was fairly simple to do, because for the first part of her 52 years on Earth, there had been no other Neanderthals around to encourage her, or to go along with any crazy ideas she herself came up with. By the time any other Neanderthals were around, she had socialized and learned that her urges weren't how humans did things. We let her live (quote from World Facilitator Smith: "Yeah, okay, fine"), and made the decision to only have one Neanderthal on Earth at a time. This way, we still got the nostalgia factor of having a Neanderthal, as well as a reminder never to create them en masse again.

P.S. Boning a Neanderthal always results in a human baby, no matter what, so the one-at-a-time thing was a pretty foolproof plan. Except for the Neanderthals, you know, having to go through that "I'm the only one of me on the planet" brand of not fitting in. They all identified with Gonzo in Muppets from Space.