Breaking News : 2050

We're getting breaking news in from Baghdad...
two bodies perfectly preserved in sand...
discovered... that's unearthed... three years ago,
the news released this morning. Dating from
the dawn of man, they are by far the most
intact, the oldest and most thrilling find
yet made. A meal, their last, was taken from
their stomachs, analysed and found to be
red grape - and something that perplexed the ex-
perts for a while, now thought to be a form
of apple, quite unlike our modern one.

I'm looking at them as I speak; they bring
to mind discarded snake or lizard skins,
part stained, sun-dried, part bleached. In other lights
they might be dressed in leathers for a ride.
To where? Perhaps to where they were (it might
appear) so intimately whittled out
of marbled ivory by ripples in
hot sand - but then again, these blotchy things
could take on almost any form you please:
exotic fruits, all moisture sucked from them,
their wrinkled skins diminished, shrunk and posed
as foetal forms, like doodles see-through thin.

Displayed for cameras, they lie as they
were found, their fingers linked - they'd thought in sin -
in Baghdad's Palace to the Modern Man
where scholarship and science now begin,
and out of which two eerie facts emerge:
despite their difference in gender terms
they share a single DNA; and he,
for all his wholeness, lacks one floating rib -
removed at some point, cleanly, with a God-
like skill and with no trace of scar or wound.

This week we screen three Specials from our Talk
is Cheap discussion series, featuring
professionals from many walks of life
including faith and science, airing views
on topics such as; What Do We Not Know?
and Does this Make a Difference? and Is
There Evidence For This As Evidence?

© David King