by Rod Vickery

Created on: April 29, 2008   Last Updated: December 22, 2009

MaMa Memory and the Howler Monkey Boys

(Absurdity in a Post-Human World)

Chapter 1

Alexis Honeycutt was the most curious Human I ever met, a blend of humility and bravado with a dash of intellectual conceit.

The details of our initial meeting remain unclear because the stopgap meansures were in effect at the time. No one exactly knew what the stopgap measures were, but we were concerned. Mother suggested they had to do with the surplus of hard cheese in the marketplace because it was cheap and plentiful, but I remained doubious. I understood that excessive cheese could gum up the works, but to shut down a complete city because of that possibility seemed absurd. Perhaps it had to do with the chronic shortage of water in the city. Perhaps it was mere hysteria propogated by prankters. At any rate, mother stopped buying cheese.

This much I do know. Before the government set up the digital relay stations, which monitored citizens' movements, Alexis and I traveled freely. Not since then. Now each of us lives isolated, though I can't say for sure how isolated my old friend is. I never run into him, not even at the entertainment centers. If pressed, I would hazard he's asleep. When the going gets tough, the tough go to sleep. In these perverse times, I find myself envying him. Sleep comes at no cost, life here is expensive.

He returned to our city after he won a permanent stay of banishment. Stays were rare as clean air, but prison officials didn't see the point in keeping him locked up after he was granted refugee status. When the Murdoch World Station ran a feature on his campaign for "Human Rights for Almost all Types", Alexis became an international cause celebre.

I remember asking him why not Human Rights for All Types rather than Human Rights for Almost All Types. He shrugged and said, "Who's going to back rights for the Decrepits? I mean, they may deserve such consideration, but a protracted battle to include them might very well squash my campaign altogether. No thanks."

He became a staple on the BioCams, historical regenerators ubiquitous in the cities that could be accessed by any citizen. No one had ever before demanded rights for most of us. Alexis was the first and his campaign was picked up by the historians. Neither mother nor I understood what " Human rights" were, yet we remained convinced they were important because Alexis cheered them on. Besides his regard for Human rights, we admired his Human wholeness. He was complete with no mechancal parts.

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