Sasquatch - Mike Nassau (top reads txt) 📗

be used for many things. He had collected frozen embryos of many types of humans as well as spider monkeys, gibbons, bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, cattle, dogs, horses, sea lions and dolphins.

3387 reported that the social scientists had finally understood some human languages after finding a deaf woman who taught them a sign language which had some similarities to their own. There were machines which could convert some spoken language into writing, which was much easier to learn than speech. Some hybrid children, half human, half our People, had been produced and they could easily learn both human speech and the sign language of the People. An impressive collection of human knowledge and writings had been amassed. The profusion of human languages was amazing and bewildering, the People must be grateful that the educational system provided by the Masters kept everyone using the same sign language. Information including teaching videos had been collected on the eight languages which were believed to be the languages important enough to survive the consolidation which was resulting from the internet and other electronic communication (Arabic, Chinese, English, Hindustani, Japanese, Malay, Russian and Spanish), but the principal effort was on English, which seemed to be dominating international communication. If the People were to be modified genetically so that in the future they could communicate by speech like humans, it would be suggested they learn English.

The most serious part of the report was on the destructive tendencies of humans. They reproduced without planning, producing more children than they could feed, educate or find jobs for. There were only about half as many humans as there were People on the home world, but Earth was smaller and the humans were much more crowded. Humans were destroying their environment and using up their natural resources. Worst of all, they killed and maimed each other intentionally. It was the consensus of the social scientists that they must ask the Masters to take the Earth into protective custody as soon as possible and institute a program of benevolent control.

The group agreed to a report along these lines and sent it to the home world. Then they began the lengthy transmission of all the information they had collected, while their ship was progressing on the long journey home.
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Malcolm Goins had managed to obtain a tranquilizer gun which shot darts which would anesthetize animals. When his vacation time came, he headed for the Cascade Mountains of Washington state. He rented a Landrover which was supposed to be able to go nearly anywhere on land. He bought a lot of camping gear. He even got a liquid nitrogen tank used by dairy farmers to store semen for artificial insemination to keep his tissue sample in. He was determined to find a Sasquatch and get a tissue sample of his own that he could report on.

Unfortunately, he was not only in the wrong state for where the liver tissue sample had been taken, he was on the wrong planet going around the wrong star to find the People he was looking for.

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This story was originally written in 1997 for the fiftieth anniversary of the famous crash at Roswell, New Mexico. This is a later version, recreated from memory in 2004 after the original was lost. It is intended as a tribute to Robert Sheckley and the ironic tradition of Saki and O. Henry which he has so ably continued in science fiction. It is available on the internet at:
www.nassausasquatch.webs.com

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Publication Date: 06-30-2010

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