Neanderthals
The Director pointed at the large screen.
“You say these are Neanderthal markings and that you have decoded them?”
“Correct,” I reply.
“What do they mean?”
“We believe these long scratches are the Neanderthal equivalent of a Gantt chart for planning a project.”
“What about these figures here?” the Director queries.
“We think are Neanderthals. See how those others over there have different shapes and patterns? Our guess is that they represent Cro-Magnon humans. Us, basically.”
“Now, look over here. We see one bigger Neanderthal. This was probably their leader. You can see him talking a lot from those wavy lines. There are many groups of Neanderthal figures along most of the chart. This would represent meetings. After a while, the leader is shown talking out to many groups. We suspect that this is their publicity phase.”
“Quite extensive,” remarks the Director.
“Here, towards the end, you can see them talking to the Cro-Magnons. The groups are surrounded by circles.”
“Thought bubbles?” asks the Director.
“Possibly,” I reply.
“What’s this short scribbly bit at the end?”
“The implementation phase. We don’t think they ever got to it.”
“What happened?”
“Cro-Magnon humans wiped them out.”
The Director laughs.
“It wasn’t a very good plan then, was it? Well, excellent work! We had better organise a meeting to present this to the committee. I’m sure they will be most interested. We’ll probably get a press release out of this!”
“Did you know,” I say to the Director, “Many people have about one or two percent Neanderthal in their genes?”
As they left to share the news, a colleague turns to me and adds, “Some more than others.”