2025.10.18
Jane passed through the sanctuary at dawn, where the air glowed with the memory of a thousand ancestors. Each morning, he greeted the creatures not as study specimens but as fragments of a shared ancestry. In the gentle gaze of a primate, he saw the pulse of ancient understanding—the rhythm that once bound together tree, air, and breath.
He believed that evolution was not a ladder but a spiral, a gentle looping of consciousness. As he played his wooden flute, his tone drifted away from the vegetation like a forgotten dialect. The monkeys responded, not in imitation, but in resonance. It was like the sound of memory itself – soft, unguarded, unbearable.
Gene’s job was not to preserve the species, but to return to that place – where thought becomes instinct, and care becomes heredity. He recorded stories not of figures, but of gestures: a shared glance, a small offering of fruit, a breath that separated centuries.
Sometimes he wondered if the face he saw reflected in the sanctuary glass was entirely his own. Boundary blurred – skin turning to fur, breathing in the forest air. In this unhinged number, Jane is not harmed, but returned.