Son of a Trickster by Eden Robinson

Author:Eden Robinson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2017-02-07T05:00:00+00:00

20

THE HUMAN MANUAL

Humans come with an instruction manual, some twenty-four thousand genes, which, given the innumerable ways we malfunction, would appear to have been written by a dyslexic drunk on a bender. We’re biological machines with consciousness, builders of empires, creators and destroyers of worlds, singers of sagas and dirges, able to envision the pearly gates of heaven and the fiery depths of hell, able to bounce around the moon, but unable to walk a couple of steps to put our water bottle in the recycling bin.

The difference between us, between one human and another, is probably one DNA base pair in every thousand. What does that mean? I can say with great certainty that you and I, we were born from women. We look up at the night sky and see the same stars, the same moon. Breathe and sleep and pray and work and daydream and sing and cry and fight and love, but in the end our bodies are meat. They rot in the ground or burn in the fire or are pickled in their own casings, displayed like waxed fruit for family and friends to weep over. Our bodies are transitory vessels built from recycled carbon like every other living being on this planet. Bits and parts of you have probably been a cricket or a dinosaur or a single blade of grass on the prairies.

With all the power of technology and science in the world, I would bet you dollars to doughnuts that you still trust a human face to be a human. But come closer and let me speak to the creatures that swim in your ancient oceans, the old ones that sing to you in your dreams. Encoded memories so frayed you think they’re extinct, but they wait, coiled and unblinking, in your blood and your bones.

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