Latter-Day Prometheus - See Fan Fiction

 

From space the Earth looks beautiful, the blue of the oceans the green of the forests and the browns of the deserts all teem with life. But I find myself circling the world of my birth seeing it as a graveyard. I arrived home to find the greater mass of humanity having been killed in a plague that my instruments and sensors tell me happened over six-hundred years ago after my recruitment into the Cohort.

From a population that must have peaked at over eight-billion human souls before the plague, my sensors say there is only a little under ninety-million people now scratching out a near neolithic existence on the surface. After analyzing my findings, the simulations I've run suggest that the human population more than likely dropped to around two-million at its lowest point.

I came home believing I'd find my species having expanded out into the solar system. That given what the Cohort had judged as Homo sapiens probable technological growth rate, that humanity by now should have primitive starships running between the Sol system and several of the nearby stars with planets that could easily be colonized.

Instead, I find my species on the edge of extinction with no way to protect itself from what fate or circumstance might throw their way. Any number of events could occur and end all hopes for humanity eventually reaching its potential.

My Cohort training comes into effect and I send dozens of sensor pods down to the surface to try and find out what happened. As the pods descend into the atmosphere, they release billions of tiny sensors no bigger than motes of dust. These instruments would float on the wind and embed themselves on anything they touched. This included all living things and especially human bodies. In the span of days I would have a comprehensive genetic analysis on everything living.

The results come back as expected but they are horrifying nonetheless. It was a virus that destroyed civilization by killing billions all across the planet. No surprise there, but what was unexpected was that of those very few that survived the initial outbreak it burned out the visual centers of their brains leaving them blind. Worse yet, the virus was still active and is passed from mother to child. Except for the possible but rare mutant immune to the virus, the entire human race on Earth is totally blind.

The sensor dust I released is also able to record video and audio signals. With that data I am able to determine that a sight-less culture has naturally emerged among the various survivor communities. Something that could easily be predicted but the as with everything else involving my species it gets complicated. In all these blind cultures the very concept of sight is something akin to myth. In others, namely the North American continent, the blindness is considered a punishment from God for Man's sins.

From this video and audio data, I learn that fanatical groups of religious zealots scour the countryside looking people who might be sighted. The similarities to hunting for witches in North America and Europe are haunting. My sensors collect video of people having been burned at the stake.

Curing this virus-imposed blindness isn't a problem, my medical systems can analyze and develop a safe cure in a few weeks. Synthesizing the counter-virus and deploying it across the planet could be done with the dust sensors. Adults humans wouldn't regain their sight, but young children and everyone born after deployment of the cure would would be able to see.

The problem is all these blind cultures, especially the religious ones. Thousands would die at the hands of the fearful believers in God's wrath, especially the children born to sight.

It is a conundrum my Cohort mentor, Janai, would find funny in a cosmic way. It reminds me of a situation we found ourselves in just a few years ago in another part of the galaxy.

***

Janai found me on the shore of one of the lakes of liquid mercury the Sgrang use to breed their young. The Sgrang are a species composed largely of mercury and other elements housed in a silicon/carbon matrix and require exacting conditions for successful reproduction. Out of trillions of planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone, their home world was incredibly unique. It had evolved a hydrogen/nitrogen atmosphere, something quite rare by itself, but what really set it apart was its geology. The planet was improbably rich in heavy metals all the way up to uranium and other heavy elements that didn't exist on Earth.

The evolution of life on the Sgrang home world took advantage of both the heavy metals and its above average vulcanism. So much that when the Sgrang realized one of their neighboring stars would go supernova they called for the Cohort to help them find another planet to live. The coming supernova, less than three lightyears away, would utterly sterilize their world.

The conditions on the Sgrang home world didn't allow either Janai nor myself to set foot on the surface. The Cohort had environmental suits that could stand the incredible pressure and heat, but it simply wasn't worth the risk. Instead our minds were linked to mechanical avatars allowing us to interact with the Sgrang. Beings that looked like stone caterpillars with spikes of clear crystals for eyes covering their bodies.

“Has the council come up with any ideas on where the Sgrang can go?” I ask after turning towards the ridiculous looking mechanical cephalopod standing beside my equally weird looking humanoid form.

Despite her extremely alien shape, both mechanical on the surface and biological up on the orbiting starship Janai chuckles just like a human. “The council is dumbfounded, twenty-million worlds extensively cataloged in this section of the galaxy alone and none meet the requirements. The planetary vulcanism isn't a problem, it's the Sgrang elemental composition. None of the known worlds have quite the exact composition, most have too little of the heavier elements. Too much and the young Sgrang emerge from the lakes of mercury without the normal mental capacity.”

“Has the ship contacted the Cohort Motherbases, maybe one of the central libraries knows of worlds in the one of the smaller satellite galaxies like the Large Magellanic Cloud or even all the way to Andromeda?” I ask my mentor as I watch Janai dip one of her ten tentacles in the mercury lake.

Unlike the fictional interstellar governments from the science fiction I read and watched on Earth, the Cohort is not based inside the galaxy. The Cohort mainly existed on gigantic bases built out in the intergalactic void. Most advanced intelligent species consider galaxies insanely dangerous places with all sorts of disasters ready to befall any lifeforms unwilling to think beyond the surface of their home mud balls.

Membership in the Cohort, something humans would not be ready for probably a millennium, required a mass relocation to one of those bases. The benefits included technology originally developed by the Elder Races and exposure of cultures of hundreds of other species. Living condition are idyllic on the residential Dyson Spheres with the extremes of planetary weather carefully controlled. Plus each member species gets living space of about the surface area of ten Earths. As long as the members behave like rational beings and control their numbers, everyone get along quite well. Plus evacuating the planetary home worlds gives evolution a chance to proceed allowing near intelligent-species to make the jump to full sentience.

After a long silence Janai finally gives her answer. “ The council is purposing a different solution.”

“What other solution is there besides seeding the Sgrang on another world?”

“Ah, my young protege, you need to stop thinking so three dimensional.” Jania says in her soft voice that usually means I'm about to get a lecture.

After she tells me her answer it is my turn to be dumbfounded. What the council wants to do violates everything I understood to be right and wrong. Janai reminds me that to be a successful Cohort diplomat I have to reserve the right to change the rules of any game I find myself playing.

I protest, but being the only hairless primate from an insanely primitive planet in the Cohort, I am ignored. At least Janai sees fit to give me several decades to think about the situation. After all, the Sgrang are vital to the science of thirty dimensional physics.

Several days later, Janai is at the main hangar of our starship to see me off for my sabbatical. “Where will you go Jacob Reese?” She asks obviously worried over her sad protege.

“Probably Earth, my dumbass people should well off the planet by now. Who knows, maybe they've crossed the threshold point for initial contact.”

“Remember Jacob,” she says stroking the hair on my head with one of her real tentacles like any concerned mother, “the universe loves to play practical jokes that cross all of spacetime.”

***

That memory occurs to me as I run the simulations on my ship's main computer. Despite my ship's small size the hyperdrive it uses to cross interstellar space is no different from much larger cousins. Instead of using it to cross distance though, I am forced by the situation on Earth to consider crossing time.

Deploying further dust sensors on Earth allowed me to access century old records sitting on the hardrives of ancient computers rusting away in forgotten facilities. This has allowed me to narrow down the year and month the plague first emerged.

The main purpose for the Cohort's existence has always been to reduce suffering among intelligent species and promote the expansion of life and civilization. And in the case of the Sqrang, that even means going back in time and altering their biochemical evolution just enough so that one of the cataloged worlds meets their requirements.

The science of temporal adaptation is what the Cohort calls it. Being that the Cohort is over two-hundred millions years old means they have plenty of experience in closed-loop time travel.

I am still uncertain though, if I alter time and prevent the plague from occurring I will effectively kill millions of people dooming them to a form of oblivion incomprehensible to most thinking beings. On the other hand, if I introduced the cure now it would almost certainly cause untold bloodshed with the newly emerging sighted people being persecuted by superstitious and religious types. Because if there is one constant in the universe it is backwards ignorant beings believing they know the mind of God.

In the end, saving the billions who perished during the plague and those that would have been born after is my first priority. And yes, I am not blind to the knowledge that my actions are more than a little self-serving. I want the civilization that produced me back probably most of all.

With one touch to the command screen, I bring up the holographic display and input the required codes to initiate temporal travel. I input the destination going back two-years further for a safety measure.

The holographic icon that will activate the hyperdrive floats a few centimeters in front of my hand. Swiping left will begin the operation, to the right will cancel it. My certain falters, I think of all the humans on the surface living and loving, making the best of their lives. Do I have a right to wipe them all way, not even leaving a trace that they ever existed?

Clearing my thoughts, I swipe left sending my ship and myself to that critical pivot point in human history.

Author's notes: Yes, this is a form of fan fiction and yes, my wife and I spend way too much time watching television. Our explorations of the internet entertainment channels and their offerings is embarrassing even in these Covid-dominated months. Still though, it was subscribing to Apple TV that I stumbled across one of their original shows called “See”, staring Jason Moma. The show's premise is essentially what I wrote in my humble story.

A plague sometime this century kills off the vast majority of humans. The survivors, about two-million, are all blind as a result, and so are the children that comes after them. As apocalypse entertainment goes how the producers go about building this blind world is fascinating. The viewer gets incredible hints at the complex cultures and adaptations that would arise if such an event every happened.

Humans are highly adaptable creatures but a state of blindness effecting the entire species is a form of Hell all by itself in my opinion. On the show most humans appear to live in a near neolithic state with any leftover technology akin to sacred religious relics. Even worse, being blind the sun is technically unknown to them and is worshiped and called the “God Flame” for the heat it produces. It goes without saying the survivors have no idea the moon nor stars exist. Leftover metal is called “God Bone” and is highly prized. No, there isn't any evidence that they can produce metal themselves.

My attempt with this story was to create an ethical dilemma for my character. That given the ability to change history and save billions of lives is condemning millions to oblivion less of a crime? I obviously made my choice, I'd like to hear what others think.