HUMAN ABSCISSION

By Whitney R. Holp

 

In the beginning, there was darkness, a darkness to which there seemed neither a start nor an end. Then the hiss of airlock, and a word, and that word was AWAKEN. Upon hearing the sound of it spoken, we were then able to open our eyes, and there was light, a light that became a pulsating blur that faded into definite shapes accompanied by an array of minor sensations.

Emerging from our somnagenesis, we found ourselves in a chamber, suddenly existing in our respective permutations of the human form. There were four dozen of us. We climbed out of our individual fluid pods, naked into the air, the liquid cooling on our skin. We looked around and at each other, blinking, gazing stupidly. Despite that this was our first time actually being conscious, nothing truly came as a surprise; we merely experienced a mild shock at having finally arrived.

Towels were stacked on a circular table in the middle of the chamber and we went to them and dried ourselves. Our skin was saturated with moisture from submersion in an amniotic-saline solution. Tacitly we understood that the purpose of these neatly folded bundles of rectangular fabric on the elevated surface was to wipe away liquid in order to make something dry. We were not stupid of course, but there was much to be learned.

The twelve years following our collective test-tube birth were spent in an incubatory slumber while our bodies grew, our minds inundated with basic information the entire time. Kinetic spasms administered to prevent muscle atrophy, this done in addition to other subtle treatments, we newborns were ready-made humans. From here we would quickly grow into fully functional adults, each capable of committing any action as easily as anyone else.

Near the exit enough robes were left hanging that we were all attired, exchanging cursory greetings as we did, then proceeded into the adjacent room. In it, chairs and sofas were arranged around a window, and through the quadrupled panes of this window we could see an elm tree outside, upon the stark branches of which the tiny buds of new leaves were just beginning to form.

 

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A sexless voice, its serene intonations descending from overhead speakers, commenced to deliver this monologue shortly after we had all gathered in:

“Greetings, and welcome to your life. By the time you are hearing this I will be long dead. Perhaps a whole millennium, or even more, will have passed between the time I’ve said what I am going to say and the time of your hearing it. Should we be so lucky, that is. But perhaps no one is actually hearing me say this, and it is all vanity. Regardless, if indeed this is being heard, then all has been a success, and at this critical juncture there is no more important fact I could remind you of than the fact that though right now you have just entered into a state of sentient consciousness, so too will you die, as I surely have. What it means, to be dead, has not been precisely determined as yet. Perhaps it will be your generation that discovers this. One thing that is for certain, however, is that you will all die by the age of.…”

It was a recording, activated by the motion of our entering the room. Beyond the tree, visible through the dense network of its branches, was a meadow rife with weeds and wildflowers, birds and insects zipping around out there, the sky bright with the light of the sun. As we listened, we had the prevailing sense that none of this was new to us, that we were not actually learning anything, but rather simply being reminded.

The voice went on for some time before completing itself, and when it did, a number of adults then came into the room. They explained that they were to be our teachers, having already gone through much of what we would, and guide us through the first few years of existence, before leaving us to our own devices. They explained that we were not alone, that at this moment others just like us had also awakened for the first time. They explained that the reason for our creation and subsequent consciousness was that we had been made to take up where humanity had left off on the previous round.

And as they explained these things, they took us on a tour to see the extent of what was to be our home, leading us through the various underground control centers, engine rooms, storage and processing areas, through the greenhouses, the conservatories, the enormous solarium that was situated at the very heart of the compound. Its corridors and many chambers were evidently vacant for a considerable time, their contents seeming to have acquired additional gravity from being stationary for so long.

They explained that places like this were once called “mega-cities,” and that there were hundreds located across the continent, thousands across the globe. The railways connecting one mega-city to another were still intact, spanning the land in a vast grid-work of steel tracks. Designed to host dormant life-forms for periods of indeterminate length, they were built in such a manner as to make them largely impervious to any foreseeable sort of terrestrial phenomenon, be it tectonic shifts or ocean-level fluctuations; whatever was inside, it was safe.

Along the way we encountered groups of others, those who awoke simultaneously to us, but in other sectors of the complex. At the end of the tour we were led outside for a better view of our immediate environment. There, standing on the rocky shore, gazing up at the stoic shapes of this massive edifice, we struggled to take it all in.

The whole thing seemed almost unreal, like a dream, its glass walls framed by titanium and concrete, its solar panels shimmering as the sun slowly rose ever higher into the sky, the air resonant with the hum of the gigantic hydro-converters, the rows of turbines stretching down the coast, churning away in the ever-present wind; all this done to channel in as much energy as possible to ensure the facility could never fail in its function. Standing there, dwarfed by this place in the post-dawn light, one had a sense of limitless possibility readying to blossom.

A new day had begun.

 

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For over half a decade they were with us, offering what instruction and guidance they could, giving clues to further routes of inquiry. Few were designated for this role, that of teacher, for, as they explained, it reduced the overall length of one’s lifespan. They explained that aging is the result of a gene, and that once this gene was removed, one no longer aged; thus, for those on whom this procedure had been conducted, the only possible cause of death was either trauma or terminal disease. Few people besides the teachers were left over from the previous generation, having elected to sleep rather than live out the rest of their life in one shot. It was mandatory that at least a certain number did so that they could wake with us to ensure everything went more or less according to plan.

First we were put on a heavy regimen of exercise, study, and sleep, the latter encouraged with a nebulous imperative. We were shown how to plant crops and construct things soundly, how to extract minerals and refine them into useful things. We were taught the scientific method and how to re-establish means of production, about the food chain and the ecosystem, the Big Bang and the history of our planet, and the process of evolution that culminated in this present moment, how the dual ideologies ― religion and the economy ― propelled our species on a path toward self-induced extinction. They told us these things and many more, more than could be easily summarized within a single paragraph.

Then we were made to demonstrate our grasp of this knowledge, and in the last four years they simply shadowed us as we went through the motions, though continuing to elucidate various other, sometimes less tangible, concerns. By the end we were all equal in at least one respect, and that was that each and every one of us knew exactly as much as everyone else ― that is, everything that was then possible to be known.

After those seven years our teachers retired from their duty, returning to slumber in wait for the generation that was hoped and expected to follow, and whatever happened after that, it was out of their hands; the fate of the species was in our hands now. All of us newborns suddenly just left alone here on Earth, the world, us and everything, it was all a ripe subject for whatever we would do with it while we were here.

 

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And so, we lived. We ate and breathed and excreted our intakes; we were asleep and awake intermittently, and found ways to occupy the many hours of the days and nights that were allotted to us. We slowly grew old, our bodies aging into maturity, our minds broadened and refined. We were quiet and efficient, living out our lives, and we too would build monuments proving our existence.

After the age of 23 suicide was forbidden, punishable by permanent incarceration. This was not for any reason other than because by that age all dissidents had already taken their leave and thus a harmony was achieved among the survivors, a stasis that would be disrupted by any additional departures. Aside from that one stipulation, and provided the duties necessary to run society were fulfilled, everyone was otherwise almost entirely at liberty to do as they pleased.

And because each person was as capable as the next, nobody was restricted to doing a single job for any longer than they wanted to. Indeed, to implement and exercise the full range of one’s abilities was strongly encouraged. Let it not be mistaken that we were clones, rather that simply a tacit consensus existed among us all: physiognomical and psychic traits and tendencies remained of variance.

But what was most important of all was that we were alive, that we continued to prove ourselves the greatest anomaly by perpetuating the species on our island Earth within the void of the great emptiness called Outer Space. With no solid evidence to the contrary, we actually are the only sentient creatures in the entire cosmos, and may possibly be the only to ever exist, for the precise coincidence necessary seems to happen according to a catch-as-catch-can policy: it might happen again, but also it might not. Knowing this, it then seemed to us as our responsibility to persist in this. If nothing else, we existed to serve as witnesses to the existence of the universe.

The very fact of us being here at all, however, stood testament to more than the tenacity of the will-to-live necessary for an organism to endure, it also demonstrated the sheer power of human ingenuity. Five hundred and fifty years ago our ancestors, after the unrelenting expansion of prior centuries, faced the onset of a global catastrophe induced by the accumulation of human action. Earth was getting ready to purge itself of the blight our species had become. With mass extinction immanent, an alarm state was declared, and everyone quickly was ushered into the makeshift cryogenic facilities to wait while the mega-cities were built. It was postulated that if all human activity ceased right then, the catastrophe would be averted and the planet would recuperate in the wake.

Comparable to a smoker’s lungs, three hundred years was deemed sufficient for a full recovery, at which time everyone would be allowed to wake up again and resume living through to their death. Some nations could not afford to implement these measures, and what happened to them is unknown. Certain overpopulated nations even built phony cryogenic facilities wherein one was put to sleep, but without any intention of ever being reawakened, thus making the whole endeavor a sort of consented genocide. It was obvious then that to carry on in the old way, with each generation overlapped by its successors and predecessors, was no longer feasible, and thus a new model for continuing human existence had to be conceived, something with an eye toward maximum sustainability. Which is what we were: we were the first born under the new system.

For that reason our primary goal while we were alive was to further human discovery and to pave the way for those who followed. Though the future of the coming generations was secure, even that would not last forever. Earth was habitable for only as long as the sun burned, and a new home must be sought well before it goes nova. Already we have sent out a number from among us to voyage into the void, those who go to its outermost limits and report back their findings; such distances they would pass through, it will be our descendants rather than us who learn of what they found out there.

Time travel and teleportation are therefore also subjects of related concern. (Some endeavors, however, were undertaken in the spirit of sheer novelty, for we still revel in the joy of anything strange and new.)

And so we lived, and we lived in this manner until it has become time for us to shut things down in preparation for our collective death, like leaves falling from a tree in autumn, so that another quarter-millennia can elapse over the winter fallow before our extracted chromosomes unite for the next round.

Now it is time to end this, both this document and my life, and go into the dark with the others, those with whom I have shared my time. This document I will now send to the past, to you, dear reader, in the hope that you might be inspired to actualize the circumstances it depicts and in effect cause my cohorts and I to really one day exist. Regardless of whether or not any of that happens, it is no matter to me now, for through the window I see that the first winter’s snowflakes have already started to fall.

 

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