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

[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.

[visetvires]

Then your question's somewhat disingenuous.

[dinosize]

I phrased it a bit poorly. I meant a main food source, for another animal.

[visetvires]

Mm. So the village was a matter of convenience?