05th anomaly ; video ; open

[dinosize]

Have you ever wondered what comes next? Evolutionarily. After humans.

[ Stephen is in his own cabin, a light and airy space that doesn't really seem to suit him. The camera is propped up on the edge of a sink, where he's washing out blood and dirt from the clothes he wore while out in the port.

He's not really looking at the camera. ]

Do you think humans could ever be a food source for another animal?

Comments

[dinosize]

We work a bit faster than evolution.

[visetvires]

That's the argument that people use to make themselves feel better, yes. But evolution is really just a series of flukes, one after the other. Eventually, I do believe something out there is going to find a shortcut and catch us off-guard.

[Something curious about the way she says believe. It's not a figure of speech. She has faith that evolution has not become obsolete, because it's, in its particular way, a creation of God. How could a creation of God become obsolete.]

Some places - lots of places - it probably already has.

And you believe what I believe, too. You said what comes next, not does something come next.

[dinosize]

[ She has him there. He did say what comes next - he's run into at least two anomalies that lead into the future. There never was a shark with a grasping tongue in any era of natural history he knows. ]

I think on the time scale I mean - even if humans survived, they wouldn't look or sound human anymore.

[ But there was no sign of bipedal primate mammals.

Granted, there's not much sign of bipedal primate mammals if you step out into, say, the middle of a forbidding mountain range. It would be hard to completely cover the globe. ]

[visetvires]

A loss of intelligence and language, you mean? A loss of sense of self? Theory of mind? Or something else?

[She is eager, almost violently so. Almost hungry. Debating this on an intellectual level makes it less real. It causes her to forget, if only temporarily, what her own flayed muscles looked like and the way Olivia looked licking blood off the corner of her mouth.]

[dinosize]

I mean, after millions of years - who knows? We could have double sets of lungs, or be no longer corporeal, or have brains the size of oak trees. Or we could look about the same. Or we could be gone.

[visetvires]

Or we could be dinner. Millions of years isn't so long, in the grand scheme of things.

[dinosize]

Doesn't seem to be the most likely, to me.

[visetvires]

Then what does?

[dinosize]

That we destroy ourselves.

[ Simple, and blunt. ]

[visetvires]

Before something else can destroy us.

[dinosize]

We adapt faster than evolution, but that's our problem as well as our benefit. Evolution can't keep up. We'll ruin the planet.

[visetvires]

There are people here who've moved beyond the planet, though. Does that count as evolution?

[dinosize]

Sure. I don't know. Maybe on a galactic scale.

[visetvires]

You're not interested in a galactic scale?

[dinosize]

Seems a bit too big for one person to grasp.

[visetvires]

And the future of human evolution isn't?

[dinosize]

...you're right.

[visetvires]

I usually am.

[dinosize]

I've seen a little bit of the future, though. Not humans. Other things.

[visetvires]

Tell me about it.

[dinosize]

I don't -

There were things with bat DNA. Roughly bipedal, though they traveled more often on four. Hunted via sonar.

There was a mammalian creature, seal-like, sheds its skin. A shark with a grasping tongue, three appendages with teeth.

Something that used pheromones.

[visetvires]

"Something that used pheromones"?

[Elaborate, please.]

[dinosize]

It's a bit. Indescribable.

It was controlling ancient marsupials, sort of like cats. Attacking villages in the Amazon.

[visetvires]

Villages. So humans have been preyed upon in your experience.

[dinosize]

Yeah. A lot.