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

[fireincarnate]

Homo superior. [Her nose wrinkles a little.] I didn't come up with it.

As far as we can tell, it started a few decades ago - babies being born with features no other humans have. Mutants. We've isolated the genes that cause it - it all comes from the same place, but it expresses in different ways.

[dinosize]

A mutation from humanity, then?

That's not really what I meant. On this sort of scale, humanity probably wouldn't look much like humanity anyway.

[fireincarnate]

Some of us already don't. It's hard to say what we'll be like a hundred years from now.

But I get what you mean. The Cro-Magnons didn't prey on the Neandertals.

[dinosize]

No. Just competed.

[fireincarnate]

Yeah. [Her expression shifts; becomes darker, grimmer.] Same outcome in the end, though.

[dinosize]

Not necessarily inevitable.

[fireincarnate]

No. [And now, she looks determined.] It's a choice.

[dinosize]

Not necessarily a choice, either. Hardier genes resist disease, mutation, starvation... It might not be under either species' control.

[fireincarnate]

That's true. I think - I'm pretty sure mutants will replace humans, eventually, and we'll keep evolving from there.

But there's no reason to speed it up.

[dinosize]

And who knows, after that.

We fall into a trap of thinking that we are the story, that everything else was prologue.

[fireincarnate]

[That draws a smile, grimly appreciative.] It's easy, I guess, thinking your people are the centre of the universe.

[dinosize]

Easy but wrong.

[fireincarnate]

Always.

[She's quiet, for a moment.]

...I don't think it's a bad thing, to focus on your own. To make sure everyone is happy and safe, as much as you can. But you can't forget that other people - other species - matter, too.

[dinosize]

Or that the world doesn't care about you.

[fireincarnate]

[Her lips twist into something like a smile, wry and worn.] How are we defining "world"?

[dinosize]

Not just people, that's for sure.

[fireincarnate]

Okay, then I might agree. [Some people care, she knows that, but society as a whole - not yet. Maybe not ever.]

I guess we're all Earth's children, when it comes down to it.