Primal Estate: The Candidate Species

by Samuel Franklin

  Nwella chimed in. “But in the process they don’t identify or correct the original problem or deficiency, so it persists.”

  Synster continued, “Exactly…affecting the other organs that are deficient but not symptomatic, they continue to atrophy while they suffer additional side effects throughout their other systems from this foreign chemical they added to the body.”

  Synster paused to access some information from the panel on his desk. “Some of the drugs they take don’t even actually help the problem they take them for. They may help to mitigate the symptom, but for reasons often unknown to the human. The medications then cause other damage in addition to what they’re suffering. And you know what the crazy part is?”

  “That’s crazy enough; is there more?”

  “They know most of this,” Synster said, exasperated, his voice rising in pitch.

  “Know most of what?” asked Nwella, afraid he was going to say it.

  “What I’m telling you, that their drugs don’t help the problems they take them for, and may even hurt them. It’s all in their own literature.”

  “If they know it, then why do they keep doing it?” Nwella asked, now believing that her father was somehow misinformed.

  “Their own studies clearly state and show proof of these issues, and yet some of the best studies are ignored. It appears they’re very slow in changing anything that has to do with diet or medical research. It is very difficult for them. Also, the interpretation of studies is left to humans that the masses consider experts, when those experts are operating from the wrong foundation -- a presumption that chronic disease originates from somewhere other than nutrition and immune system function. Most of their doctors don’t even study the effects of nutrients and anti-nutrients on the body. Can you imagine trying to correct a failed system that lives and dies solely by nutrient absorption without studying, or even considering nutrition? That’s like trying to solve equipment malfunction without a power source. On top of that, individuals don’t pursue the information themselves. They leave it to others.”

  Nwella looked at him as if he’d gone insane. She couldn’t comprehend why beings would ignore their own nutritional responsibilities and instead opt for the addition of a foreign substance, which would react with all systems unpredictably. And they would do this in preference to optimizing their body’s own repair systems. Nwella thought she might joke with her father that they’d better not eat their brains because they’d have virtually no nutritional value, but then thought better of it. This issue was too serious. Their very lives were hanging in the balance.

  When he continued, she was glad she hadn’t joked.

  “So when their bodies have a systemic failure, which is almost always due to a failure of their nutrition, they try to add chemicals to achieve the outcomes they hope to see. They may often achieve a single outcome and reduce symptoms, but their interventions change a multitude of systems in the body that alter outcomes they don’t see. Some of these chemicals change the actual qualities of their organs and flesh. They treat physiological failures the same way they treat infectious disease. They think they can use a single or even multiple compounds to kill the problem.”

  Synster stood from his desk as he became agitated. “Their liver, heart, lungs, all of them are tainted to a degree that they may be useless to us.” Synster paced as he spoke. “Their flesh for instance, is corrupted by a drug they use to inhibit their own liver function, known generally to humans as statins, to the point where they are breaking down their own muscle tissue while they still live. This drug promotes the destruction of their liver, kidneys, and brain.” Synster hit his fist on his desk. “It’s insanity, and they know it.” He looked up and realized he was scaring Nwella. She had a horrified look on her face.

  “Does this mean we’ve failed?” she asked. Nwella was fearful for the Project. All the organs he’d just listed were vital to the Provenger and the Union to make the Project viable. Without them, he would be terminated from the Project and effectively everything else. But she was also concerned about her future as well, as the time she may have wasted going through all these socially obscure ceremonies that made her feel both alienated and insecure. All she wanted to do was be free of her parents and start her own life. Even if it was in obscurity, she almost didn’t care. It sounded as if their family might be ruined. She rose to her feet.

  “Are you telling me there is no harvest?”

  “No,” Synster said, now aware he’d upset her. “There will be a harvest; it’s just going to be a little more complicated. We have to correct some of these issues. Patience is the key. We have the population we require; all we need is to correct these issues.”

  Nwella started trembling. Synster mistakenly thought she was concerned for the family. She was not. Nwella was enraged over the last ten years of delay, the false hopes about her future, and getting on with her life.

  As Synster looked at her, he realized how much he wanted for her. She was so beautiful, and he was so proud of her. She was the only daughter, probably the last, who had not yet established dominion over a male. She would make a great spouse. Her fitness level was immaculate, her health was perfect, and she was intelligent enough to reach top levels in the science community. His only concern was her love for adventure. She was a risk taker, a rebel, and he knew that this only served her self-image. It wouldn’t have much bearing on social or professional achievement. He was determined not to let her down. He took control of himself. “I have a plan for this. Don’t be afraid, Nwella.”

  She studied him and didn’t know what to think.

  “You need to control yourself better,” Synster said as he walked toward her. “This will work itself out. This is a big project and not everything can be expected to go perfectly. Don’t be afraid.” Synster took her hands and looked at her palms. “Things will be right.” He flipped them over and saw her fingers, “You need to do something about these nails. They don’t look good.”

  Nwella nodded and moved to sit back down, “I’ll stay while you eat.”

  “No, go. I need to get some things done first anyway.”

  Nwella left the room feeling empty. All that she had hoped for seemed to be slowly slipping from her. The Project seemed to have started so well. When they arrived the first time in this system almost ten years before, she had been thrilled. The carnate were delicious and exciting. Nwella recalled the feast which celebrated their departure, to honor those Provenger who would stay permanently and live out the rest of their lives on Earth for the sake of the project.

  On the first trip to Earth, before the Provenger Nation Ship departed, a banquet was held for the team remaining on Earth. The carnate collected for the event were treated to remove all parasites, well fed on a diet of grain to fatten and soften their flesh, and scrubbed and washed daily by young Provenger detailed for that purpose. They lived in luxury and comfort for twenty-four days. They thought they were to become gods.

  For two days before the banquet, they were given nothing to eat, a fast they were told was to prepare their bodies for the ceremony. They were then led away to a room where they were washed one last time and sedated. Each was lashed to their own circular frame that left their bodies suspended in the center, limbs stretched out to their extremes. These circles were then freed from gravitation and allowed to float freely in the center of the banquet hall, where the carnate once again became fully aware.

  They held out hope for some kind of a religious ceremony. When they noticed the knifed gauntlets beneath the Provenger’s robes, they all knew what they were really there for but didn’t dare to think it. None wanted to scream first, for that would make it all too real. The carnate were silent, except for some crying. The only obvious noise was from the Provenger, talking and laughing, while pointing out features on the carnate, planning for where they would cut first and how they would eat. Some were interested in sucking blood out of their victims whereas others wanted flesh, and still others would make a race for the organ
s.

  Music started and the floating circles began to slowly rotate around the room, displaying the carnate meals. In other locations around the ship, similar banquets were being held for each Provenger that was to be left on Earth. This particular team and their guests had decided to choose their victims at random, although the female Provenger were showing most interest in the male carnate, while the male Provenger were congregating around the female carnate. The music pulsated through the room as the tempo and volume increased. The Provenger could feel the energy building as they grew more excited for events to begin.

  Twenty-seven-year-old Nwella stood aside from the various groups, not speaking to anyone, only eavesdropping.

  “This is so exciting. We’ve rarely banqueted on beings so similar. They look like us in almost every way.”

  “Yes, I know. That came into consideration during the preparation, I heard. Even though we don’t prefer eating through hair, they decided not to shave them. Otherwise, they’d look almost exactly like us.”

  “I think it’s creepy”

  “I love it. It’s so close to deviant behavior without actually being so, it’s wonderfully consistent with the nature of the festivities.”

  Nwella walked away, in full agreement. It was exciting. She was certain the banquet would bring her to ecstasy.

  Nwella was there as a friend, but she didn’t really fit in. Her father was the Director of this project and she had to be invited to one of the banquets. This was the one. Some approached her to ask about her father’s accident during a hunt and how he was healing, but otherwise she had no one she cared to speak to.

  The change in music was a cue. Nwella knew it was about to begin, and that most Provenger would remain watching and talking even though the time to begin mounting and eating was near. As the moment was close, they all turned to the wall, removed their robes, and hung them on hooks. Tradition held that clothing was bad luck, both for the victim and the Provenger, and unnecessary in a feast of living blood and flesh. It got in the way, could interfere with cuts, become very slippery and cause snags. It could hide wounds if a Provenger was accidentally injured in the melee, and tended to look like the victim’s flesh when fully saturated with blood, causing some to mistakenly sink their teeth into a layer of fabric.

  Nwella had completed a skin toning treatment and had her nails done for the event. She wanted everyone to admire her. She strutted out in front of all, displaying for the males while trying to make the females jealous. Like all Provenger, she was trim and muscular, her fresh skin bronze with a glowing sheen undeserving of the imminent dowsing of blood. Her long nails were shiny and painted black, and glinted in the bright light. Her head was beautifully shaped from her round dome to her square jaw.

  Nwella turned her flashing eyes away from the assembled Provenger and trained them on a particularly attractive carnate male suspended within his circle. He looked back at her with fear in his eyes when he met her gaze. Nwella raised her short, curved knifed gauntlets, the style designed especially for the banquets, her only raiment, and made fists that she positioned before her face. She clinked the blades together as the young man hoped for mercy. Nwella let out an open-mouthed hiss, sourced from the back of her throat, baring her teeth, intending to terrify him. To her disappointment he did not scream but only watched in horror.

  The circles were floating freely and each movement of the victims’ arms and legs struggling in their restraints changed the course and spin of their circular rack. In a moment, they were floating in every configuration. This would make them a challenge to mount with elegance.

  Half the Provenger began to move in on their meals as the signal was given, just a subtle tone shift in the music. Nwella, aiming herself at the young man on the rack in front of her, jumped into the zero gravity field in a single leap. Tears and whimpers gave way to screams. What all the carnate knew and feared most was now real.

  Nwella caught him in the side of his rib cage with her right blades first, then pivoted on that stick, swinging to his opposite side, while grabbing him with her legs wrapped about one thigh and finally sticking in her left blades, in a razor-hooked bear hug around his torso. Her contact with him in the zero gravity field sent the frame and its two occupants gyrating, spinning wildly.

  With her left fist clenched to get her fingers out of the way she plunged the curved blades deep into the connective tissue between his ribs and twisted, locking the blades in place. With the opposing forces of her left blades sunk in his ribs and her ankles locked into his groin, she removed her right blades from his flesh, raising them up near his neck. She paused. They looked into each other’s eyes. Had one seen only that image they would have looked as lovers in the throes of a passionate goodbye. He let out a groan of agony straight from his fear of death, a disbelief of the inevitable, and a sorrow at the realization that such a lovely thing could be so cruel.

  As the other carnate secured on their floating frames looked on and screamed, Nwella’s victim became quiet, until she crunched her teeth into his lower lip. Violently shaking her head, she bit it off his face and chewed. He emitted the pale cry then the shrill scream of a man quickly learning new definitions of horror. She swallowed. A moment with his head thrashing about, attempting to escape, and she cut his neck at the carotid artery with both blades, careful not to sever the wind pipe, allowing him his continued agonized shrieks.

  She took a deep breath and plunged her face into the lower cut, imperfectly sealing her lips on the wound, blood pumping from his heart, down her open throat and into her stomach. Pressurized by his rapid heartbeat, the blood flowed freely from the second cut, and it filled the air around Nwella, floating on zero gravity, liquid bubbles twisting and bowing from the wave action within. When these wafting balls of blood reached the edge of the field, they fell to the floor, soon pooling together beneath the doomed. Nwella managed an inadvertent swallow now and then, as the blood pumping into her slowed. The screams reached an infectious din as other Provenger jumped and clung and ate from their chosen.

  Slowly the screams changed to moans and whimpers as the victims watched their own and their neighbors’ bodies become torn and disemboweled. It had been bad form for Nwella to cut the artery so quickly and deprive the others of a lively struggling meal. But that is why others didn’t like her. Poor table manners aside, she was selfish and always seemed to break the rules.

  Given the large amount of meat, organs, and blood to be consumed, the event was surprisingly short. As each had their fill, they released themselves from their victim, pushed away and out of the gravity-free sphere. They dropped to the floor splashing in a puddle of blood. Nwella was among them, naked bodies all, saturated inside and out with the blood and flesh of their victims. As they hit the floor, they stripped off their gauntlets and threw them to the side of the room so that the others who fell would not be cut or impaled. What happened next defies a rational explanation, given the usual sophisticated behavior of the Provenger.

  In the smell of the blood and its slippery silk texture, they had driven themselves to a frenzy. Bodies writhing in masses on the floor along with chunks of their victims flesh, covered in blood, most Provenger blinded from it stinging their eyes, they indulged themselves in whatever debauchery occurred to them. This was their custom.

  Nwella, with her prancing about, had caught the attention of many of the Provenger, male and female. Her show was a challenge and an invitation to them. They had kept track of her location during the feeding and, though it was now difficult to recognize anyone, they crawled through each other to get to her. Some desired to hurt her for the infraction of a killing cut so early in the feeding, while others were bent on her pleasure. The most any of them got was a part of her, while the whole of her enjoyed it all.

  Nwella recalled it all as though it was only yesterday and yearned for another banquet to indulge her lusts.

  With Nwella gone from his office, Synster began to formulate a plan. Before he could report complications to the
committee, he must get some samples and see for himself exactly how bad things could be. He called in Layrd to order a harvest of humans from three different locations. He needed samples from locations where the tainted flesh would be the worst. The North American continent would probably be the best source based off of the initial information he had. He made the order.

  Layrd informed him there was an additional concern about their scans. “I think we may have been detected but not identified.”

  “Explain.”

  “When our probe was orbiting, it passed in front of one of their satellites. It was fully cloaked, but it may have caused a wave shadow. Subsequently, an entire series of signals emanated from multiple locations on Earth. These identical signals seemed to be looking for the phenomenon again, or trying to establish conditions that could simulate it. That we know of, none of their technology is programmed to look for such a phenomenon. So we suspected it was a single human that observed it. Not likely, I know, but it was our most logical conclusion. We followed the signal to its source for the initiation of the series and isolated an identification number that is commonly assigned to individual humans, in this case, a number authorizing these transmissions. We traced it to this human, Richard Thompson. We have this address. Shall we terminate him?”