Since the Great Freeze of 1989, early May in Central Florida isn’t what it used to be, with hundreds of square miles of orange blossoms pumping out a perfume to make jasmine weep in envy. But there are still enough groves to catch your olfactory attention. George and I were sitting in his 12 foot aluminum fishing boat one fine Sunday, breathing it in and waiting for the speckled perch to make a judgement error, when he broke the silence unexpectedly:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
“Ever wonder if evolution is still going on?”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
“Evolution never stops,” I said. “It can’t.”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
“Yeah,” says George, “but I mean, like, human<\/em> evolution.”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n “Well, we’re doing everything we can to subvert it, so it sure seems stalled — until we start fiddling with our own genome intentionally, I suppose.” George was no dummy, so I assumed he was leading up to something interesting. I waited to see what.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n He was slow to answer. This piqued my interest.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n “What I mean is, we got this far by basically trying everything and discarding most of the duds, right?” I nodded. “But Homo sapiens<\/em> has been around for a good while now, and so far we seem to be just squatting on our laurels, as it were.” I smiled at the reference to my Class Poem<\/a>. “What if there were a new species already, but it’s hiding from us?”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Now it was my turn to take a while to answer. “You got something in mind?”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n “Sure,” he jumped right in, “the obvious shortcoming of H. sap.<\/em> is stupidity<\/strong>, right? What if there were already a bunch of super-smart humans hiding in plain sight?”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n I was actually shocked. This wasn’t George’s average wild idea. “You seem to have given this some thought.”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n “Yes! Now, suppose you were one of them. With an IQ of 300, let’s say. What would you do?”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n “Make a fortune on the stock market?”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n “Get serious. How would you prevent the H. sap.<\/em> hordes from coming for you with pitchforks?”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n “Why would they do that?”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n “Come on, where have you been for the last few thousand years? What does H. sap<\/em>. do to anyone<\/em> they perceive as even slightly different?”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n “You got a point there. Okay, what would you<\/em> do?”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n “I’d pretend to be stupid<\/strong><\/em>. Not just below average, but too stupid to be worth picking on.”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n “Okay, I’ll bite. There sure are a lot of those Homo superior<\/em> faux-idiots around.”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n “Don’t laugh. Think about it. They have to hide from H. sap.<\/em>, but they need to work together to prepare the world for their eventual takeover. They need politics<\/em>.”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n “Wait a minute, ‘eventual takeover<\/em>‘? Why do they need to take over?”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n George looked at me with a frightening skepticism, as if he had mistaken a coral snake for a scarlet kingsnake. “Seriously? Are you<\/strong><\/em> comfortable with the world H. sap.<\/em> is leaving for your grandchildren?”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n “Another good point,” I admitted. “So you tell me, how do these smart guys pretend to be stupid, hide in plain sight, and simultaneously form a political…”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n The other shoe dropped.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n “Holy shit! That’s the first rational and hopeful<\/strong><\/em> explanation I’ve ever heard for the Trump movement!”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n George smiled. I didn’t ask him how he’d voted.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Since the Great Freeze of 1989, early May in Central Florida isn’t what it used to be, with hundreds of square miles of orange blossoms pumping out a perfume to make jasmine weep in envy. But there are still enough groves to catch your olfactory attention. George and I wereRead More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-shortstories"],"gutentor_comment":1,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=466"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":558,"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466\/revisions\/558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}