“Hi, student,” Mr. Collins told the group of students. “Welcome to the first year of Anthropology.

Ben did not have any expectations of the first class if one considered so. Ben already assisted the faculty welcome speech, but now was the turn of every subject he was enrolled in. Ben did like anthropology, or he wouldn’t be here otherwise, it just was that introductory classes felt awkward and slow, it didn’t matter if this was high school or college.

“As you know,” Mr. Collins started speaking to the class while looking at them from his desk. “Our race is classified as Homo Sapiens Hestia. We weren’t always that way, and the change wasn’t a long time ago either. It is an interesting story about how we changed our taxonomy.” Mr. Collins and the whole class got themselves comfortable as this looked like it would be a long story. “In the last century alone, humanity has faced a lot of natural disasters: typhoons, earthquakes, two pandemics, one catastrophic meteor rain, and the almost collapse of the ozone layer. I could go on, of course. But what matters is that things didn’t stop there. We also confronted socio-political human problems. It wasn’t a good century, but humans came stronger once the storm settled. We have progressed scientifically and technologically, but we didn’t stop there. As a result of so many hardships, humans have suffered a spontaneous evolution, similar to a metamorphosis of a tadpole to a frog. As you know, evolution is a long and constant process, it is not something that can happen in a single generation. Which it did. Jean-Pierre Borges, an anthropologist-biologist, was the first one to discover this sudden change.” Mr. Collins stopped to drink a bit of water and continued. “Does anyone know what this change was?”

A blonde girl with an ‘I-want-to-speak-with-the-manager’ haircut raised her hand. “Our extended lifetime?”

“That was more of a side-effect.” Mr. Collins explained. “Even then, people dying less wouldn’t be the fastest nor easiest way to find this. What Mr. Borges found is that babies started to be born with more healthy bodies, but also frailer bodies. This may sound paradoxical, but it has some sense. This new type of humans was named Homo Sapiens Hestia by Mr. Borges when he saw that no-more babies were born with deformities, but they had weaker lungs. Not only that, but the new humans were more resistant to heat and sunburns, a consequence of the new ozone layer. Because the new humans were more resilient to UV rays, the formation of carcinogenic cells by this source became nigh-impossible. But the weaker lungs meant that children had to stay more time at home than previous generations. Therefore Jean-Pierre Borges called the new generation Homo Sapiens Hestia, in honor of the Greek goddess of hearth and home, as the new humans had similar qualities. There was a lot of discussion back in the day about the name. Some people thought that the name should be Homo Sapiens Vesta as taxonomy is written in Latin and Vesta was the Roman counterpart of Hestia.”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

In the end, it turned out that Anthropology was the best class of the day, or so Ben thought. Because he had a lot of subjects today and started late, so Ben finished at sunset. ‘I don’t want to go home yet.’ People now tend to stay at home, but Ben tried to be outside every time he could. Before going out of the university main building, Ben put on his mask. Ben did not need at the classes because they had air purifiers and extractors every room and corridor. He wished that someday he could breathe outside without the need for any machine or mask.

His destiny when he got out of the university’s perimeter was the park that was nearby. Ben sat at the bench, his mask still on. He watched a man who was sitting on the bench in front of him. The man looked tired, his glasses were foggy, and he didn’t seem to matter. ‘I am tired too, buddy’ Ben thought with empathy. Ben took a deep breath, but before he could exhale something happened. The man who was in front of him vanished. He did not walk away, but disappeared out of thin air, leaving a puff of white smoke.

For an instant, Ben thought that he was some sort of magician or illusionist, but he thought otherwise when he saw another puff of white gas next to a dog which leash was thrown at the ground, no sign of the owner.

“What the f…” Ben stopped himself from finishing the sentence or was forced to stop.

The world that he knew started to break apart, white smoke pouring out of the soil, trees, concrete, everything. The world was evaporating. Ben looked at his hands, no sign of smoke. The bench beneath Ben was also gone, and Ben closed his eyes when his butt hit the ground.

The next time Ben opened his eyes, Earth disappeared. Instead, unlimited Earths were in front of him, floating in endless space. Ben pondered if he just saw more humans floating in space just like him, but they vanished in an instant, just like all Earths. He was now alone with his own planet.

“What the fuck.” Ben cried now. He did notice that he heard his voice even though he was in space.

The sight reminded him of a really old movie, Interstellar. The scene when the main character was at the tesseract, where time and space seemed to collide and the laws of physics disappeared. Surprises didn’t stop there.

Hi, Ben. You were randomly selected by the Arcane Record to be the representative of the Homo Sapiens Hestia. You will administrate the future of your whole race.

Now Anthropology wasn’t the most interesting thing to happen to Ben today.