The Last Taboo
(Meta note: this is probably the most on-the-nose thing I will ever write.)
The Last Taboo
Corey was almost falling asleep in his Human History class. He just had to resist the low and soothing voice of Dr. Harkin whose lectures sounded more like a lullaby than a dry conveyor belt for information he would be tested on.
Rather than fall asleep at his desk, which would surely draw the wolf's attention in such a small classroom, he decided to keep working on his latest short story. He switched over to it on his digital tablet, and picked up where he'd left off:
crept into the cave, trying to figure out if it was a safe place to spend the night. He knew that Adrian would find some way to capture him if he slept anywhere else Besides, if he was eaten, he thought, then at least it would be better than being captured. He dared not think about what Adrian would do to him for killing his entire squad. He felt his way around the total pitch blackness for while before deciding it was worth the risk to light his torch. Getting out his Army flint, he
"Corey?" asked the professor's voice sharply enough to penetrate his concentration.
The young lion looked up with a start, to see the elder wolf towering over him. His heart was pounding so hard, all he could get out was: "Um --"
The professor snatched the tablet out of his hand. "Taking good notes, are you?" he sarcastically asked.
But Corey could not come up with an answer, as he was frozen in terror. His social life was about to end.
After taking a tremendously tense ten seconds to read the entire page down to those last few words, the professor brought the guillotine down on his reputation: "Why are you writing fiction about humans, when you are here, in my class, to study them?"
Corey could feel the eyes of the rest of the class landing upon him, first in incredulity and soon enough in malice. They were burning his name and his visage into memory to start rumors: golden fur, brown eyes, strong jaw and medium-length muzzle, long chin fur, twice-pierced, soft-furred ears.
But he kept it all from his face, focusing instead on answering the professor's question. That was what his grade and continued attendance was based on, after all. Deciding he had little to lose, he told the truth: "Because... I know all this already, Dr. Harkin," he answered unsteadily. "You're talking about the Cromagnons, right? I've studied them quit a bit. They lived more than --"
The wolf stood up tall over him, and dropped the tablet on Corey's desk with a loud clap, getting the lion to shut his mouth instantly.
"Well then," he concluded sternly, "if you have nothing to learn, I won't waste your time. You may leave, and come talk to me in my office after class is over."
It was all the lion could do to keep from running out of the room crying, as he felt the wolf step on his hopes of a good grade like a tin can. He quickly put the tablet back into his shoulder bag, and with the entire class of eight watching him, speed-walked out of the room, feeling like he was about to explode.
Once the door was shut behind him, that's when he allowed the emotions to kick in. He felt like he was about to cry for the first time since transferring. He didn't want to make a scene, but he didn't know where to go.
Without really thinking, he just ran down the hallway, blowing past one or two other students, dashed up the three flights stairs (his heart was already pounding anyway), and made it to the completely empty faculty offices. He flopped down on the couch in front of the biology department, and just broke down sobbing into his T-shirt.
And why shouldn't he, Corey thought. He had been exposed as the worst thing it was possible to be: an anthrophile. His social life was over. He could hear them now: "Corey writes anthro shit!" "Corey watches anthro porn!" "Corey is a perv!" "Corey is a raving savage!" "Watch out, Corey's a psycho!"
They couldn't understand him, and others like him, at all. They were wrong about humans. They thought the only thing humans did was the truly symbolic one: wipe themselves out. Nothing could be further from the truth; they created more culture than the Maxwellians ever did. Human History taught him so.
But they didn't care. None of them did. He was a pervert and a freak, and that was that.
It wasn't long after the tears stopped that he heard a kind, though unfamiliar male voice. "Are you okay?" it asked.
Corey sniffed, wiped away his tears, and looked up through his sorrow to see a tall, lanky, green... pterodactyl?
"Professor -- Gryndeen?" he asked.
"Indeed, I don't believe I know your name." He wore a smile that was clearly trying to pull Corey out of his despair, but it wasn't working.
Corey took a shuddering deep breath, to try and restore his breathing to normal. He slowly stood, and with a small, customary bow, answered, "Corey," before dropping limply back on the couch.
The pterodactyl bowed back, "pleased to meet you... and what troubles you, if I may ask?"
Corey just sighed the words that his brain had been repeating to him over and over the past several minutes. "My social life is over," he sighed with resignation as he looked back at the floor.
"Why?"
"Because I've been... exposed," he answered with a sniff, still having trouble saying the word out loud.
"Exposed? As what? A murderer?"
Corey looked up at him with a mixture of incredulity and confusion. Dr. Gryndeen responded with a small smile in the corner of his mouth.
"No," answered Corey stiffly, ignoring the smile.
"As a thief?"
"No."
"As a criminal of any kind?"
"No."
The pterodactyl crossed his arms and smiled. "Well then, it can't be that bad, can it?"
The question, well meaning though it was, Corey took as a challenge. He pulled out his tablet, story still positioned exactly where the professor saw it, and gave it to him.
"Yes, it can," Corey retorted with a small edge to his voice, and a nervous scratch of his long chin fur (which would never grow into a mane, but he considered part of his image none the less).
Corey watched the pterodactyl's eyes scan the document, taking the exact same ten seconds Dr. Harkin took before he looked up with his judgement in hand.
"I see," was all he said.
"So are you going to hate me now?" Corey snarled.
"Of course not! 'Hate' is not in my vocabulary! Please, come into my office. I'd like to tell you a story."
The Professor went over to a door across the hall, and swiped his keycard, making the heavy wooden door's lock audibly click. He opened the door, and stood in the door way until the lion had gotten to his feet and started walking over.
Corey looked around at the office stacked high with books on one wall, and small cages with animals on the other. He knew that Dr. Gryndeen was a genetics professor -- a world famous one, in fact -- but this looked more like a zoologist's office.
"I know you haven't taken my classes, stated the professor as he sat down in his oversized desk chair. "Otherwise, you would not be nearly so upset about this as you are now. On the first day, I ask my students one simple question: what percentage of our DNA is human?"
Cory, while miserable, did dimly remember an answer. "99 percent," he said flatly.
"Much more than that. More like 99.999%. It's easy to complain about our differences and minimize our similarities, but I have no illusions about that. Here's the part of the story I don't tell, though: that humans and our kind interbred."
The surprise finally snapped Corey out of his despair. "What?" was all he could get out of his mouth.
"It's true. It was first discovered almost 20 years ago by my colleagues at the University of New Chicago, but it took a while to convince the scientific community of such an outrageous claim. But it made sense to me, for there was no other explanation of the variation we have in degrees of genetic diversity."
The language was a further reminder that he hadn't taken any of the professor's classes. "Um... what do you mean?"
"Well, if we had all been cloned in one 'batch', by Dr. Maxwell Schmidt, as the common wisdom goes, then you would expect to a similar number of random mutations in each area of the genome in the 10th generation of lions as you would cheetahs. But we don't see that. There are different levels of variation between subspecies, suggesting an extra source of genetic diffusion... a set of mutations that happened after initial creation in the 'vat' that was passed down the generations."
He paused for dramatic effect. "And that source was none of us, but someone genetically similar enough to us to breed."
Corey's curiosity now had him. "But... how is that possible? There were so few people who survived... weren't there less than 20 who happened to be in The Underground Storage Room when the bombs fell?"
"That is outside my area of expertise, I'm afraid. All I know is what the data was telling me: for reasons as yet unknown, there was a group of humans who loved us. Loved us enough to mate with us, and raise those offspring. They were the mirror image of you -- and are part of who we are, both culturally and genetically."
Corey couldn't help but give a small smile. "I guess that's why I'm going into anthropology. I've always been... fascinated by humans. They really aren't that different from us, yet how could they act so different? How could they build weapons to wipe themselves out in seconds, spend hundreds of years abstaining, and then have one petty conflict -- near the Mediterranean Sea, was it? -- and cause the destruction of the entire world? How?"
Dr. Gryndeen sighed good-naturedly as he leaned back in his chair. "I'm afraid that's not my department. But if you were to ask me, I would say that even we could be moved to do such a thing, contrary to popular belief. If we hadn't been raised by survivors, and had discovered powerful human technologies ourselves, who knows what terrible wars we would have fought by now."
"Well," sighed Corey, still melancholy but far away from the spiral of fear and despair he had previously fallen into, "I'm glad you understand. Now I just have to convince everyone else I know of the same thing, and maybe they'll understand why I write what I do."
"You know what they say," added Gryndeen as Corey got up, "adversity is when you see who your real friends are. I bet 6 months from now, you'll be glad this happened."
Cory didn't believe him in his heart... but his brain was able to tell himself that, maybe it would be okay. He would be the one someday to discover the real reason, and then when he showed the world, it would all be okay. Someday. If he could get there.
"Um, one more thing, professor?" he asked. "Do you know Dr. Harkin?"
"Sure, I've seen him at staff meetings."
"Well... I really annoyed him. What can I do to show I'm serous about this?"
Dr. Gryndeen suddenly snorted. "Read his book," he answered.
"What?"
"He wrote the textbook you're using now, I bet. Read it, and show interest in it, and he can't be too mad at you."
"I've been reading ahead in it, so..."
"So tell him that. I'm sure it will help."
Corey sighed, some part of him still wanting to feel bad, but not really able to. After all, he was going to be an anthropologist someday.
"Thanks, Professor," he added, as he got up and stepped outside.
And until class was over, he would keep reading the textbook where he left off.
The End.