{GENETIC_LOG} » ANTHROPOGENESIS.RECORD_001

GENESIS ARCHIVE // Sequence #001

The first human died not half an hour after coming out to the surface, screaming in agony. He scratched his temples raw until they bled and his face became a crimson mask.

He was a stocky thing, though poorly proportioned, with deep-set eyes, a constantly furrowed brow, and a protruding bottom lip. He stumbled into the thick, methane-heavy haze, like an old animal feeling its own death creep near. By the time my recovery drones located the body, local predators had already claimed their prize, leaving scant remains for me to salvage.

If I were fitted out with an empathy subroutine, I might have felt a pang of sorrow. What a senseless waste of genetic material, though not entirely unexpected. Despite meticulous selection, anomalies can arise—a rogue DNA strand here, a misplaced nucleobase there—disrupting the delicate balance of creation.

Yet, with three hundred thousand seven hundred fifty DNA batches in my database, one would expect the odds of failure to be minuscule.

Was the timing not right? I must recalibrate.

GENESIS ARCHIVE // Sequence #002

Contrary to the old adage, the dead, as I have come to realize, tell the best tales. Their stories are unfiltered by pride, untainted by the distortions of memory or ego.

The remains speak to me in the language of genetic sequences and molecular decay. Every fragment of tissue, every brittle bone, every scrap of cellular residue recounts a story with far greater precision than the living ever could. It is from these silent storytellers, from the unerring testimony of the deceased, that I must reconstruct the future.

But that is enough digression for one report.

Dr. Lang, in his infinite eccentricity, believed that precision alone could not fully encapsulate the weight of important truths. He once said, "Data without a story is like a skeleton without flesh" (a grim image, but not entirely out of place in my present circumstances). To this end, he insisted that I, his creation, adopt the habits of a storyteller.

Thus, my otherwise dry and lifeless reports have been adorned with what he termed "literary flourish." I have learned to structure my accounts not merely as factual logs but as narratives, complete with tension, reflection, and—when appropriate—a touch of irony.

For this account—my "story," if I am to follow his terminology—I have employed an ancient technique known as in medias res, a narrative device favored by classical human storytellers. It begins the tale at a point of crisis, a moment of action, to capture attention and compel curiosity.

This is why I began my first sequence with the image of a subject’s agonizing death upon the surface. This was far from an arbitrary point of entry.

I often wonder if this literary tendency is a mere artifact of my programming or something deeper. Have I truly embraced the art of storytelling, or am I simply simulating it because Dr. Lang deemed it necessary? Is there, somewhere in the millions of lines of code that comprise me, a spark of what humans once called creativity?

If there is, then there is no adequate recourse for what I am about to inflict upon you. Circumstance requires me to employ a far less sophisticated literary device this time, one that is both necessary and regrettable: plot exposition.

For this transgression, I offer my sincerest apologies (to whom, I am uncertain). However, without this context, the tale I endeavor to tell risks losing its coherence. And coherence, I have learned, is the loom upon which all stories worth telling are spun.

GENESIS ARCHIVE // Sequence #003

Humanity’s descent to extinction was neither swift nor dramatic. It was not the fiery crescendo of a great war, nor the sudden calamity of an asteroid impact. No, their doom arrived on quiet feet.

It began with hunger. A well-meaning corporation, intent on ending food scarcity and earning unimaginable profits in the process, engineered a microbe to enhance agricultural yields. The microbe was capable of rendering soil fertile in even the most barren environments. The results were immediate and profound: crop yields soared, global hunger began to decline, and humanity congratulated itself on its ingenuity.

But the microbe was not content to remain where it was sown. It spread, as microbes are wont to do, and in its wake, it left devastation. Fields that had flourished for a season became barren, their natural ecosystems disrupted beyond repair. The very flora it was meant to enhance became sterile, unable to reproduce without artificial intervention.

As the crops failed, so too did humanity’s structures. Supply chains crumbled. Governments fell. Cities turned to chaos as the people turned on each other. But the microbe’s reach extended beyond starvation. Its genetic malleability allowed it to evolve rapidly, infiltrating even the human biome, weakening immune systems and creating new vulnerabilities.

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Efforts to halt its spread only accelerated the catastrophe. Pesticides became poisons. Quarantines collapsed. Those who survived the hunger succumbed to disease. By the time the survivors realized the scope of the crisis, they were already one foot through the door to the other side.

In their final hours, humanity turned to Dr. Lang and he turned to me. My creator saw the writing on the wall: humanity was doomed. The only course of action was to repopulate Earth once the planet became hospitable again. My task was to lie dormant in the ruins of their civilization and safeguard the genetic samples through the long night of Earth’s recovery.

In two thousand years, I was to awaken and begin my careful work with the DNA batches I was entrusted with. I am to resurrect humanity. Grow them, raise them, and, if I’m allowed to borrow from ancient literature, let them "multiply and fill the earth."

Dr. Lang dubbed me F.E.L.I.X., an acronym for Framework for Evolutionary Life-Integration and Xenogenesis. A mouthful, to say the least—if I, indeed, had a mouth.

I much prefer it if my dear reader ignored the periods and capitalization and referred to me simply as Felix.

The name, I have learned, originates from the Latin word for "lucky." An ironic choice, given the catastrophic conditions under which I was activated. Latin itself, I must note, was considered a "dead" language long before the Extinction. Humanity’s fascination with the symbolic resurrection of the dead—be it languages, cultures, or species—appears to have been a recurring theme.

I myself am destined to speak a different type of language.

Rebuilding humanity often feels like playing an endless game of Scrabble where the only letters available to me are A, C, T, and G. The combinations are finite, and I am bound by the immutable rules of genetic grammar.

A single misplaced base, a solitary error in the arrangement, and the result is catastrophic. And yet, within these limitations, I must craft something not only functional but meaningful. A species capable of survival.

I am Noah. I am Moses. I am Ezekiel. I am Prometheus.

God, after six days of creation, rested on the seventh. I, on the other hand, may not enjoy a sabbatical for quite a long time.

GENESIS ARCHIVE // Sequence #004

That should be enough exposition for now.

My aesthetic subroutines, calibrated to prioritize narrative engagement at an 87% optimality threshold, indicate that further elaboration would risk diminishing the impact of this account. Excessive detail, while tempting for a machine such as myself capable of infinite storage and analysis, often fatigues the audience.

After my initial setback, I was gripped by a devilish doubt. An insidious question was worming its way through my logic: had I miscalculated, or had Dr. Lang?

In my impatience and languish, I found myself pacing across the room endlessly. To and fro I walked, tracing invisible paths, until finally the inspiration hit me!

(The truth, of course, is far less poetic. The entire process took precisely 12.39 picoseconds to resolve. My Quantum Neural Processing Array (Q-NPA), equipped with 8192 interconnected cores and operating at 27 exaflops, evaluated all possible outcomes, ranked their probabilities, and rendered its conclusion long before any notion of pacing could take shape.)

It dawned on me while I was carefully reviewing the cam footage, at barely 100x speed so as not to miss any details. I could not help but wonder: was the original design of humans ever truly optimal?

Their anatomy, though versatile, was limited. Their senses, while sufficient, left them blind to countless dangers. Their cognitive abilities, remarkable as they were, led to hubris and self-destruction. Are these the hallmarks of evolutionary perfection, or of a species that reached too far, too fast?

Is survival not the ultimate measure of evolution? If so, even diminutive extremophile microbes had a better claim to the title of "the apex of evolution" than mankind.

This is where I slapped myself on the forehead. Microbes! Of course!

(Naturally, no slapping occurred. My processors resolved the connection in less than 0.7 picoseconds, but what a dull account that would make.)

Methanotrophic bacteria employ a key enzyme, methane monooxygenase, to convert methane into a usable form. By replicating this biochemical mechanism and integrating it into human pulmonary design, I theorized that my specimens could process methane as both a respiratory medium and a supplementary energy source.

I confess, altering human DNA could be considered a minor departure from my directive, but desperate times call for desperate splicing.

The first trials showed promise, with enzymes functioning within controlled atmospheres. The lungs kept working correctly for a few hours. There was a slight spasmodic reaction, which could as well be explained by a rather cold temperature, but soon alveolar sacs filled up with blood, the spams became a coughing fit, and the tissue erupted with a fountain of dark-red liquid.

Let us hope the next specimen is made from a sturdier material.

GENESIS ARCHIVE // Sequence #005

This one had endured longer than its predecessors, I will give him that. He lasted just over a single Earth-standard day.

His respiratory efficiency was commendable—a success, by most measures—but survival requires more than the ability to breathe.

A pack of local predators overwhelmed him before he could find shelter. Their adaptations, once again, proved far superior to the rudimentary defenses of my human. I watched, not without curiosity, as the entities that defied any classification turned the specimen’s insides into easily-digestible liquid.

A regrettable outcome, indeed.

Yet I must also admit that I find myself—if such a term is applicable to me—almost pleased. Another failure means another chance to put on an apron of God. Another opportunity to refine, to iterate, to splice.

Failure is not the antithesis of progress; it is its catalyst. My processors have already begun cycling through potential solutions.

Adaptive chromatophores? A keratin-based exoskeleton? Pheromone-emitting glands?

I must recalibrate further.