It all started with a birth.
Not a ‘natural’ birth by any means; the incubators of the year 30XX sure gave sensations akin to the real thing. Despite being a bed inside a plasteel encasing and a windowed hatch on top, the inside was filled and warmed up by a genetic-rich liquid that promoted growth through a chain reaction of whirling and clashing biological elements until fully matured humans were literally bred out of them. From an outside vantage point, the incubators looked like mad science the moment its sequence was activated, flashing a stormy and blinding light on its sole window and dimming the whole illumination system on and off.
Then, there had to be a name.
“Subject 1993, nineteenth series. Name in the registrar: Jacen Voth,” said a stoic but soft female voice, “Time… it seems this man was born during the Digital Age but anything from that time was destroyed at worst or fractured at best.”
“I believe they called it the 21st century,” said a thoughtful male voice.
The person within the incubator remained seemingly in a vegetative state, completely ignorant of the four figures talking over him.
“It doesn’t matter how they called it, Zemo” said the most authoritarian voice, “Lania, what do you mean by ‘all information was destroyed or fractured’?”
Lania kept her eyes on the holographic interface displayed by the incubator, “Well… our historians state it was right before the Singularity Crisis.”
“Ah yes, the morons inadvertently woke up an artificial intelligence by emptying their minds in digital media and entertainment,” said the last person. By modern man’s perception, this one would look like a ghost with cubic digital fragments emanating from its tail. To 30XX people, they would completely dismiss it as just any other ‘Holoborn’.
“Look who’s talking, Helveticus” Lania said.
“Hey, at least we Holos did not cause the Second Dark Age, we are our own thing,” replied the ghostly Helveticus.
“I believe information became really scarce once the Singularity was defeated, it is said it held the vast majority of data back then, having monopolized their own concept of digital space.”
“Shut it, Zemo,” said the superior officer again. She really did not like history class.
“How come Helveticus can say his share of the story?” said the man, frustrated.
His superior directed her attention to the incubator, feeling tempted to peek at the hatch window.
Helveticus stopped her by flashing his hands in brighter light, “Careful, director, don’t see the body just yet. Not until Lania finishes the diagnostic and it gets approved by me on the final activation sequence."
“He’s right. Our perception of him might change from being a mere product,” Lania complemented.
“Right…” the director said, coming back to her initial position.
“I detect no augmentations on this one, not even from the metahuman age from the year 12XX, I can confirm this is by all means an ancient specimen, director. He even has a rapid aging life-cycle.”
“I’m starting to regret trying to reach DNA from so far in the past,” said the director.
"We had to consider all of our options, director," Lania assured.
“Well, it’s normal, director Armentiti. People did live less back then, like… a lot less. They lived at most 120 years if they took care of their health. and they were akin to iron age humans, there were a lot of cannibalizations at the time and I think the religion surrounding the Singularity was still…”
“Zemo, one more expository dumb like that and I’ll put you on one of these while the genesis process is ongoing,” said Armentiti.
The tall, pale human that was Zemo had pitch-black eyes, and these looked at his greener superior, who was just going about the panel Lania had, with assailing job fatigue. Zemo wondered why would the Solar Council hire a historian for this project in the first place, and why, most important of all, would they place him with a Marsborn who had developed an aversion for history—or him, he could no longer tell… maybe it was just him. Maybe it was his voice?
“Should I terminate this subject, director?” Lania asked.
“This Jacen Voth seems to be the most useless, director, maybe we should just waste this one and proceed with the next tube,” suggested Helveticus.
“Are you mad?” said Armentiti, her eyebags showing as she looked at the Holoborn in apparent disbelief, “do you know how much was invested in this project? How much of that investment has been wasted already? How important our success is and what it means for humanity? Should I continue to stress it out? Come on Lania, let’s do it, start the genesis process and let’s see how this one wakes up… Zemo!”
The historian rushed to the director’s side like a lap dog, still questioning his job and life choices in general as he walked.
“Heh,” Helveticus laughed, “I’m telling you those two are in love.”
“What do you know about love?”
“I’ve read everything about love, sweetheart.”
“And I’ve read about how a Holoborn reproduces,” Lania commented, her voice as robotic as ever, “Or at least I tried to, but self-love isn’t really my thing. How can a human who reproduces by pleasuring himself until he conceives understand intercourse.”
"Well science is not that hard to understand. In this case, it's just gross."
"I bet intercourse is not gross, but the notion of your so called intracourse is."
"It's thanks to people like you that wars exist," Helveticus’ boastful grin died out, and he began floating towards the next tube with the rest, “let me know when the process is complete, I’ll come to finish the paperwork on this one.”
Lania agreed, “What are you making him do?”
“Well, depends… will he shout uncontrollably when he realizes he’s not where he’s supposed to be? This one is not going to the Deep Shroud. As soon as our superiors see him, with all his faults…”
“They’ll send him to the sphere construction site…!”
“Maybe, our situation is dire as it is. Outer Space is not for ‘20th-century screen suckers’ like him.”
“It’s the 21st century, actually.”
“Whatever, I bet my non-existent ass he’s not the one we’re looking for.”
“Still Helveticus, you have to do something! He does not deserve a life like this.”
“What? It’s kind of fair, operating drones could be his thing, they had them back then apparently.”
“He’ll be confined to a desk office, monitoring drones from miles away.”
“Which is probably what his kind did most of his life: staring at a screen for hours.”
“His kind? He’s technically human as well.”
Helveticus stopped and turned around for a moment, “Don’t be mistaken, Lania; he’s not like you… and doubtless, he is not like me. Tell me when the genesis process is complete,” he deactivated its hard light body and was suddenly reduced to a mere hovering ovoid probe with countless emitter-dots that dimmed out and gave way to a surface so smooth it became a perfect reflector of its surroundings, “Tell me when the process is complete, yes?”
Lania nodded, and the probe went away, leaving her to tap several holographic keys and sliders to increase the potency of the incubator, which began to glow inside.
The light ceased, and a new screen popped.
“Do you wish to finish the procedure?” it said, with a horizontal slider holding ‘YES’ and ‘NO’ on opposite ends.
The woman looked at the hatch by accident.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Do not see the body until he gets approved by me, Helveticus’ words rang in her head. She shrugged it off.
Alas, temptation dances on the same floor as prudence, and it could be said it is prudence’s forbidden love—the most seductive type of love.
Lania resisted the urge to look for what seemed an eternity. Her head slowly approached the hatch, her eyes fixated on the window which was perfectly and conveniently placed where the man’s head would be.
She cursed her own weakness, why would they make these incubators with hatches anyway? Helveticus was there precisely to analyze the body and look at the subject without any unnecessary feelings—not that he had suppressed them, they could clearly self-love themselves into replication. He interacted with real space through projections of hard light, with the sense of touch heightened by a complex illumination system akin to bioluminescence in lifeforms.
That was his job: to not stare at the hatch.
And yet, there she was, gazing at the vegetative human in front of her.
They say mothers instinctively feel love, a sense of affection for their offspring. She would not know, she was a Lunaborn, a simple clone of one of the great houses’ narcissists.
There was something more than just affection—she thought the guy was… attractive.
What a disgusting feeling for a mother to feel.
Lania assumed that there was no record of mothers feeling an intense need to reproduce with their offspring, what a silly idea. But then again, she had never been a mother herself, she was just a clone. Now she was confused about how she perceived herself.
After some time, the woman gained composure again.
She was no mother.
It was just attraction.
She was a clone.
Just attraction.
She peeked again. The guy’s head was completely bald, yet he had sharp features along the nose, chin, and gentle eyes.
Who knew 21st-century humans were bald like all Lunaborn?
She wondered why was she getting these feelings.
This is why you don’t look at the hatch.
Nobody warned her about a possible love-at-first-sight scenario when looking at the hatch. Perceiving someone as human definitely did not lead to romantic feelings.
She then remembered the anthropomorphic animal-lovers who lived in Charon, right at the edge of the Kuiper belt's beginnings. She wondered how and why was she remembering that small piece of information. Maybe her sudden attraction to the man forced a neural chain reaction that sought any sign of evidence that would justify her feelings.
But she was no Charonite.
Jacen Voth, the man in front of him, certainly was not an animal.
Why was she thinking like this?
Now Helveticus’ unusual knowledge of love and his actual job as a psychiatrist kind of made sense. She still disapproved the whole intracourse concept in Holoborn.
Lania stopped again, controlling this ridiculous, spiraling stream of consciousness, and returned to her control panel.
YES—NO
Simple choice, right?
Her finger zeroed in on the slider cursor.
Let’s get done with it.
“Is the process complete?”
Helveticus’ voice was heard from afar.
She slid NO.
The light turned again.
“Not yet.”
Helveticus’s bodiless probe remained there, floating, “what’s the matter?”
“There was a glitch during the genesis process, I need to run a quick scan and see what was done.”
“Glitch?”
“Yes, a glitch.”
“A… glitch glitch?”
“A glitch glitch.”
Helveticus still floated there, despite his faceless body, he was visibly confused.
“What’s the matter,” Lania asked, not wanting to look.
“It’s the first glitch we’ve ever gotten.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, correct me if I’m wrong.”
Lania gulped, “You aren’t.”
“Was the product damaged?”
Her eyes looked intently, trying to come as a very focused person, she even delayed her response, “It seems it wasn’t.”
“Helveticus!” yelled Armentiti from another incubator’s place.
Helveticus floated again towards the rest of the team, “tell me when it’s truly done.”
Lania looked at him go and materialize his blue hard light body again, then she went back to the panel. There she saw the whole schematic of the subject, displayed as mere information bars and text. She opened a new tab and opened the whole data set for genetic augmentations.
“What are you doing, Lania?” she asked herself, as her fingers typed and slid relentlessly. She selected an augment and then finished the process.
The light on the hatch dimmed again.
“Helveticus, I’m ready.”
The ghostly body moved on top of the incubator, releasing a holographic scanning beam on it as if he was launching a light attack on the machine.
“This is interesting,” he said.
“What?”
“His arms, they’re… different.”
“O-Oh?” Lania reacted.
“Did you do this?”
“I left the subject as it was.”
“How come you never highlighted this while the team was here?”
“I assumed that it was the norm in 21st-century humans.”
“Plasmic circuitry on its arms? Why would he have an ability from the Metahuman age?”
“Beats me,” said Lunaria, trying to look as dispassionate as always.
“I do not recall augmented humans of this caliber in my read of the Digital Age.”
“Perhaps it was lost to time,” Lania said, “remember that Singularity took all the information with it when it was defeated.”
“It could be the glitch as well,” the Holoborn theorized.
“Yes, yes! That could be.”
Helveticus looked at her, remarking on her sudden excitement with his code-filled eyes, “But you ran a diagnosis.”
“T-then no, it could not be.”
“No, it could not…”
Lania cleaned the sweat out of her bald head with the sleeve of her tight white body suit.
Helveticus clearly noticed this, “Are you okay, Lania?”
“Yeah, why?”
“What’s the hold-up?” asked Armentiti, coming back from her inspection.
The Lunaborn and Holoborn diverted their eyes toward their superior, but Lania’s heart skipped a beat.
“This subject has a plasmic arms augmentation, director, it was overlooked during its initial diagnosis.”
“Was it not normal back then?” the director asked, curious.
“I don’t recall ever reading about this in what’s left of the Digital Age.”
Lania cleared her sweat again.
Armentiti closed her eyes, releasing a very loud sigh.
“Zemo…”
The historian’s eyes lit up.
Lania’s sweat suddenly turned icy cold.
Zemo focused with all his might, scanning his own brain. As a child, a mere Ceresborn kid, he always collected file after file of history. He had read about the Dome Age—affectionally dubbed the ‘domage’as a portmanteau between ‘domain’ and ‘age’—when humanity lived on Earth’s high orbit for two centuries. He had seen holo-recordings of the Metahuman Age from two millennia ago when augmenting yourself into having superpowers was the new drug. About the Expansion Age where the celestial objects around the Sun were colonized, and finally the Energetical Revolution Age, where the worlds of Sol sought to govern themselves and developed their own cultures, just a thousand years ago.
This was his moment.
“Zemo?”
He blinked.
Shit, I zoned out!
“After all this time? Are you really going to stay quiet when I ask for your assistance?” Armentiti said.
Both Lania and Helveticus noticed a dismayed tone in her ubiquitous authoritarian, bolded voice.
Zemo thought about it for a second, then smiled, “I think I have the answer.”
Everyone leaned forward to hear it.
"Comic books."
"Comic books," everyone said, amazed.
"Yeah, comic books."
"Wha'ts a comic book?" wondered Armentiti.
“Back in the Digital Age—or 21st-century as they called it—humanity used to record its history in the form of publications that consisted of art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represented individual scenes. Panels were often accompanied by descriptive prose and written narrative, usually, dialogue contained in word balloons emblematic of the art form. I glanced at these records myself during my time at the Solar Academy,” he said as he caressed the incubator proudly, “in these fascinating tales, part of humanity’s mythos was uncovered, revealing that they worshipped metahumans akin to those of the Metahuman Age.”
The team remained silent for a moment. Only Armentiti seemed to have a headache, one she strangely enjoyed bearing.
“The screen-addicts had gods?” Helveticus asked.
“It would seem so, perhaps they were precursors to the more… modern Metahumans of that time, but the salvaged piece of art depicts a man flying and possessing the strength to lift impossibly heavy objects. There is a theory among us historians that suggest their DNA remnants could’ve potentially created the metahuman drug two thousand years ago.”
Helveticus looked at the vegetative, bald man in the incubator, “Could enhanced humans truly be that old?”
“It’s likely that he will re-define our understanding of humans during and prior to the Digital Age.”
“D-director, it seems this subject is more valuable than what we previously assessed.”
Helveticus looked irritated at that remark, “So what? He’s got plasmic arms, congratulations to the Plasmic Pious Order on Venus, their genetic forefather has probably arisen. His mind is still too ancient, he will not survive within our complex society. He is not capable.”
“Director Armentiti,” Lania called, “I am compelled to let this subject be part of the program for the Deep Shroud.”
“So you say,” the director said, “but Helveticus has a good point, his psyche might not bear our technology… and our society alone looks a lot more diverse than that time by what I understand.”
“He just needs a guide, someone who would help him adjust and be a great member of the Solar League.”
The Marsborn titled her head at the idea, first doubtful.
“Imagine, the first human from Earth to ever live in our age.”
Armentiti now smiled at the idea, “I never thought I’d see you trying to convince me to do something, Lania.”
“I-it’s just that I am intrigued by this human.”
“I suppose you are volunteering yourself to be the guide.”
“Y-yes ma’am.”
“H-hey!” Zemo complained, “I am the historian, I think I am best suited to be the guide, given how I can easily explain to him our customs and all, you know?”
Armentiti looked at him, eyes staring rather fatigued, “You’ll just bore him with your serious ‘exposition-dumping’ problem. If he goes with you, he’ll certainly go mad.”
“Director!”
“Very well, Lania, you’ll be this subject’s counselor, I’ll arrange all the transfer orders, it hurts me losing you, but I suppose your progenitor back in Luna can supply the laboratory with another... you. Your house will be honored by having a Lunaborn from their gene pool going to the next mission to the Deep Shroud.”
“T-thank you, director.”
The sweat was now back to normal temperatures, but still uncontrollable.
Armentiti looked at the Holoborn, “Initiate the activation sequence.”
Helveticus’s eyes were pinned on Lania, trying to detect any deception from her.
Lania was, although the ever the prolific sweater, incredibly inanimate in her body expressions.
“Helveticus?” Armentiti repeated.
“Right away, director.”
Helveticus’s hands again shot the scanning beam, which energized the incubator and opened the hatch. The genetic liquid receded to the sides of the body. Steam came out from the once-warm container.
It all started with a birth.
Then, there was a name.
Followed by a pulse.
And there was breathing.
Honey-colored eyes opened.
Lania gasped.
Armentiti approached the side of the bed as the man got her bearings back. She looked at the Lunaborn, who proceeded to run a quick scan of his vitals, “proceed, director, he’s stable.”
“Jacen Voth, codesign 1993, welcome to the year 30XX.”
The man named Jacen blinked several times, adjusting his eyesight, he then looked at the strange green-skinned woman in front of him. He opened his mouth, and everyone leaned to hear his first words.
“Huh?”
Their expectation dropped.
Little did they know, however, this was also pretty normal in 21st-century babies, for they did not utter words until they were a year-old or so.