It’s been five days since I first met Jack and Nordon. I have also started my lessons with Nordon though he has mostly been figuring out just how much I don’t know. Unfortunately, when I tried to scan his mind for the answers to all the questions he was asking me, I felt a strange kind of cerebral kickback. After the glare he gave me, I decided not to try that again but he did seem at least slightly impressed with me.
It was only yesterday that Nordon finally starting teaching me something; history. Initially I had to question why history was the first thing he taught me, but when I asked why history came first he simply replied “because it did”. This made the maid snicker but I didn’t catch the joke.
We started with human history; probably because I look human though I’m sure that Nordon has his suspicions about me. He taught me about the four great Earth Wars, though most people consider there to be only two wars and two “Afterwars,” which were started in less than fifty years of their initial less significant counterpart.
Hitler became an icon a few decades after the end of Earth War I and his image was used to remind humanity of the cruelty of war. This did not manage to stave off the coming of Earth War II for very long however, four hundred years later the second Earth War began. At the beginning of it, there were seven factions, one per continent, but in the aftermath Asia and Africa splintered into smaller factions with North America following shortly afterwards. The entire ordeal began as a quarrel over natural resources such as crude oil and other industrial materials. Oceania attempted to use the splitting of factions to dominate the world, the splintered factions retaliated and Europe ostracised them, calling the other countries to arms against the brutish politicians of Oceania, sneakily putting itself at the head of the supposed defence council.
Not everyone failed to notice how Europe aimed for world domination in their own way, those that disagreed ended up joining Oceania of their own accord. Other than South America, no one seemed to notice that this was the start of a new World War.
South America called for peace, trying to warn people of the rising world war and prevent it but, unfortunately, their pleas fell on deaf ears and the war gradually came into full swing, causing the severely strained ecosystem to finally collapse. In fear of the worst-case scenario, South America had already been preparing for the war and had managed to build habitat domes which later became the founding science of terraforming technology. They called out to the other nations to cease their feud before the situation became irreversible, but the other nations would not hear it and instead attacked South America out of jealousy and spite. In return South America began to evacuate the citizens willing to look past the wars and preserve their culture, granting each of them their own domes to live in.
The war created rapid consumption of natural resources in order to build and move the numerous machines of war, this further strained the limited resources in their counterproductive activities. Soon after the worldwide collapse of the ecosystems, South America declared itself as the Independence and many of the dying countries tried to beg them to allow access. The Independence refused and stated that the ecological collapse was the fault of the warring countries and that they needed to find a way to undo what they had done. Oceania was the first to lash out at them, launching a tactical missile at one of the great domed cities. Everyone in the city died.
Initially, Oceania celebrated the destruction of one of the Independence’s City Domes. That was until they discovered that the city had been filled with fleeing Oceania Citizens. They had killed millions of their own people and, rather than jubilee the entire nation fell into mourning and chaos.
After what later became known as “Judgement Day,” the Commanders of the Defence Force called for a worldwide attack on the Independence only to find that their own soldiers were turning on them. Nearly half of the human population died that day followed by most of what was left, who died from suffocation. Even those who lived in the domes were not entirely safe, some of them dying incapable of dealing with the shock to their systems. In the end, only about 12% of the population was left.
After more than half a millennium, the planet Earth finally started to recover and became, albeit barely, able to support human life once again. Humanity, not wanting to kill their planet entirely, restarted the space program in full force. This time they aimed to use the biosphere technology they had perfected over the last five centuries to colonise – and potentially terraform – Mars. They started with a test colony on the moon, successfully claiming it as their own in under a century. This success drove them to fulfil their original objective, but Mars proved to be a greater challenge and it took them almost two centuries to successfully settle on Mars.
Once they had done that they began to look further, out into the stars, and they began to wonder if it could be done. Eventually they succeeded and they began to explore the galaxy. Humankind had finally become a spacefaring species.
With that, the lesson came to an end and I went to train my body.
I made sure to work every muscle on the human body during my workouts and eat a kilogram of raw meat straight afterwards – the request for raw meat confused the maids but they still obeyed. Nova would use the meat as materials for rebuilding my body instead of other parts of my body. Admittedly she did cheat a little, she kept my body beautiful, rather than letting my muscles expand to achieve more strength she condensed them… she may or may not have also shifted the what little fat reserves I had to places generally deemed more attractive. I look like something sculpted by the gods, or so the maids say, though that may have just been an exaggerated compliment. I’m not sure how I feel about the whole issue, but I do somewhat enjoy the looks of awe people have started giving me recently so I won’t object to it.
My physical today workout was focused around body weight training and included some resistance training, using rubber bands to hinder my motions, but I had avoided using weights since Jack told me that weights are a bad idea before puberty. I’m not sure if I will ever go through puberty since that’s a distinctly human thing, but other species have their own versions of it so there will likely be some sort of maturation process. A few days ago, I struggled to do even a few reps of any of these exercises, but now I was performing them fluidly without tiring quickly. Nova can work wonders, it would usually take normal people weeks to make the progress I had achieved in a few days.
I grabbed a towel after my workout to wipe away the perspiration; while it wasn’t a particularly intense workout it was still a lot of work. Afterwards I sat down and began to stretch all the muscles I had worked, keeping myself flexible. Apparently, stretching also makes Nova’s job somewhat easier so I’ve made it habit to always stretch myself.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
As I was finishing up, a message popped up on my Digita, “1 New E-Mail!” As I was not done yet, reading the message was put on hold.
The message was from Jack, saying that Chesnokov was about to arrive. His ETA to the district was five hours from now so I sent Jack a message telling him to organize the meeting two hours later.
I went to clean up in the bath before heading off to bed, giving myself five hours of sleep before going to meet my new instructor.
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Walking down a foreign hall in an unfamiliar place, people practically jumped out of my way as I walked. Glancing around I noticed that everyone around dressed in one of three uniforms; black combat suits, baggy overalls, or white coats. Their uniforms were indicative of guards, dock workers, and scientists respectively. I did not recognise the place but it felt like I visited daily.
I tried to stop and ask a worker where I was, but at that moment realised that I was not in control. It was like a dream, but not quite, if anything it felt more like memory than imagination. It felt like my own, yet also foreign. Somehow, whoever I was made me scared.
I tried to calm down and avoid panicking, but my attempts were all in vain; as there was a mirror on the other side of the next room. What I saw was not my own lithe body, what I saw was a tall man with raven black hair and a stern face. My reflection incited an instinctive fear in myself.
‘I’ continued through the next hallway and approached a female scientist, grabbing her rear as I arrived. She spun around in rage, but froze in fear as she saw me. She was caught between not wanting to let me continue and fearing what would happen if she stopped me.
Oddly, I felt nothing of her fear, neither pride nor pity. I felt emotionally detached from the current situation. I felt even more detached from everything than one would to a bad movie, though I could still almost ‘sense’ the emotions of my ‘host’. It was honestly rather unnerving.
After my host was satisfied with his groping he let go and grinned at the woman. She had an average face and disappointing breasts, but her fantastic lower half compensated for that. I wasn’t sure how I knew such facts, but I knew them.
My host grinned at her and said “Show me their progress.”
The very sound made an overbearing sense of terror well up inside me.
“Of course, sir, follow me,” she said with a grimace.
We then walked through into another passage lined with familiar cells. I recognised the cells, I used to live in one, though whether I was in one of these cells or in a different facility altogether is uncertain.
She stopped in front of the first cell and started explaining, “Subject 1 has developed strangely, we fed it mixed samples of meat. It seemed to have assimilated attributes from various places, but attributes that numerous species share seem to be more prominent while things unique to certain species are non-existent. This confirms that Kronos Cells are capable of evolving via genetic assimilation, and is also indicative to some of the patterns influencing the evolution. As you can see, it formed a body overall resembling bovine creatures, but also developed scales and even claws on three of its legs. The lack of symmetry raises a few questions, but those can be answered in later tests.”
I glanced inside the cell and saw the creature mulling about mindlessly before we moved on.
She stopped in front of the next cell and began another explanation. “Subject 2 was fed only canine meat. This resulted in the subject developing into a full-blown canine. Though due to being fed mixed canines the subject cannot be seen as any known species, one of the other researchers said ‘it looks like someone mixed breeds for ten generations’. This was met with laughs but after using face merging apps repeatedly on their own results his words proved strangely accurate. This shows that what genes they assimilate work similar to how a child’s genes define his appearance. These results helped us understand the nature of the cells evolutionary ability.”
With that said we moved on to the next cell where she continued, “Subject 3 was fed pigeon meat exclusively. We chose to use pigeons as they are one of the few Terran species that survived the environmental collapse in great numbers and so they are not limited in quantity and also easy to acquire through official channels. The result is… well, a pigeon.”
“Just… a pigeon?” my host asked dubiously.
“Yes, just… a pigeon… everything from its behaviour to its habits. We have yet to perform a biopsy but for all intents and purposes it appears to be a pigeon, a female pigeon more specifically.” She said furtively.
“… and nothing out of the norm for a pigeon?” asked my host.
“As of this morning, no. This morning it stopped noticing the meat we fed it, after a while we discovered it had finally assimilated a pigeon’s eating tendencies and now prefers seeds. It is unknown whether the consumption of plant matter will have any effect on its evolution.” The woman said weakly.
“I see… Use the next batch that comes in to test if plants can be used as a base for their development.”
“Understood,” she responded in acknowledgement, “Anyway, moving on to the second batch of specimens, as per your orders we submitted them to acid baths each day. The results, surprisingly, differed quite significantly.” She said in a business tone.
“Differed significantly? How so?”
She froze and pondered for a moment before answering, “simply put; one became while the other resisted. Subject 4 should be going in for more tests right now, would you like to watch?”
“Yes,” said my host, “Show me the tests.”
“This way, sir,” she formally replied before guiding us behind the cells where a team of scientists sat behind holograms debating reasons and outcomes. On the other side of a glass wall was a tiny moving lump of slime, Subject 4 – a ‘raw’ Kronos cell.
“Start the spray at 2% concentration!” shouted one of the scientists, at two mechanical arms with spray nozzles appeared from above and aimed at the lump of slime.
The slime jiggled in response, it was enjoying the acid. Unfortunately, something unexpected happened when they stopped the flow; the slime went searching for more, reaching up and grabbing the nozzle. The slime climbed onto the arm and started dissolving it.
The man in charge of the arms panicked and tried to throw it off. This only resulted in breaking the front end of the arm off at high speed, throwing the nozzle into the glass with high velocity.
A female scientist ran over to try control the situation, only to be bowled down by a male scientist who had the same idea.
As the scientists were trying to stop the panicking man the slime reached two cylinders and started dissolving their surroundings.
Oblivious to the danger the slime dissolved a valve, resulting in a translucent blue liquid leaking out of one cylinder. The blue liquid burnt the slime, writhing in pain the slime started to slip down the cylinder.
At this point the arm was still swinging wildly and the cylinder broke off thanks to its weakened connections.
The slime went flying towards the ground with the cylinder. The container, shattering on impact, spread its contents all over the slime.
The slime writhed and rolled around in pain as the more powerful acid burnt it. Soon the slime turned into a motionless lump of goo and the room went silent, staring at the scene; even the guy in charge of the arms was frozen in place.
After a few moments of silence someone spoke up, “Subject 4… deceased.”
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I bolted upright in my bed, dripping cold sweat and breathing heavily. I looked at the time, 2:30pm, but in these slums, it may as well have been 2am.
I calmed my breathing and reflected on my nightmare. What was that? It seemed like more like reliving memories than having a dream, the fact that I still remember everything clearly is proof that it wasn’t a simple dream.
I decided to get going with my ‘morning’ routine as I would on any other day, and since my meeting with Chesnokov is in about three hours I planned to spend that time in preparation.