by Allen Stroud
My analysis of the creature’s physiology determined its DNA structure held specific components that exploited inherent weaknesses in the compared DNA structure of humans; the trail component originating in the grub’s blood. Workers in the forestry programmes found the only preventative was continual exposure and the building of a tolerance.
Once again, amongst the menial, I found a blind unshakeable faith in the work of their societal superiors. My long and serious study of those products of mediocre education and learning revealed much disguise, self-overcoming, familiarity and hidden motive.
If he is fortunate, a favourite child of knowledge will meet with suitable auxiliaries who will shorten and lighten his task. These individuals are not the self-styled intellectual guardians and protectors from before; instead, they are supportive without explanation, trusting through a social contract of practical worth. Such individuals are rarely intellectual equals or comparators, but indeed, the value of such company is questionable owing to their institutionalised tendency to critical reason rather than accepted favour exchange. The intelligent are less useful than the unquestioning, owing to a misplaced value in their own worth.
In my time amongst the loggers, few of these intellectual charlatans materialised, so my social transactions remained, at least superficially honest with those seeking to satisfy their own basic needs for comfort and security.
I travelled between these small communities, focusing on the presence of this virus, known locally at the time by several different names: ‘Newcomer’s curse’, ‘Outsider’, ‘Tree cramps’, etc. I analysed symptoms and the means of infection to determine its origin, duration and severity. Whilst I could not affect a cure for the virus, nor replicate my own immunity in vaccine form, my work increased understanding of the infection between communities, sharing the best practice in recovery and management of symptoms.
Revelation
I returned to Ashoria late in 3124, having concluded my emotional well-being and security could tolerate a further meeting and interaction with my parents. A visit to their house found it abandoned. Further inquiries revealed my father had died three years previously and my mother, subsequently been admitted to the Artaud asylum in the Kadian Islands. The signed paperwork and permissions were by her established guardian, one Hans Walden, whose juvenile signature proved almost identical to my own.
My first meeting with my clone, hereafter known as Hans Walden II, occurred some three days later, when I was able to visit the municipality school on the pretext of delivering a talk on Firstfall rainforest ecology. My pseudonym and falsified credentials withstood official scrutiny and on a wet afternoon in a large assembly hall I presented a forty-minute lecture on my rainforest discoveries to eighty students aged from ten to fourteen years.
I recall the three-dimensional slides being a novelty for the children at the time and the interactive holo recording of one of the loggers being another highlight during the question and answer session. However, I remember little of what I said. Throughout the session, my eyes roamed the hall, looking for my sibling replacement. When I located him, I completed the talk and engineered a moment of proximity. In this altercation I was able to covertly acquire a DNA sample and plant a rudimentary tracking device. I then made my excuses and left.
Walden 2#
DNA testing of my sibling proved our artificial familial relationship, which I had suspected owing to a) resemblance b) my mother’s advancing years and c) my father’s indolent decrepitude. However, it is quite a moment to discover you are a clone or at least, the first of a series of clones and that you are the product of an illegal research experiment. On reflection, I suppose I might have guessed. Her frustration at the lack of support for her work had rendered her clinically insane. Without funding or facility, she had experimented with what she had available, namely her own biology and DNA. I was later to uncover several of her botched experiments to restore my father’s physical condition and how these experiments hastened his decline.
Using my pseudonym, I obtained copies of my mother’s published research, formal requests for funding and equipment, filed correspondence, etc. Everything I could lay my hands on to better understand her thinking. As an adult, returning to this context with my own studied conclusions, I found I had a greater ability to examine the matter dispassionately and from an academic standpoint. My curiosity over the derived immunity to the grub virus fuelled my investigation at first and culminated with my journey to the Artaud asylum on Ithas Island, where I saw my mother for the last time.
I remember it was a sunny, cloudless day and we were sat at a table on a perfectly manicured lawn whilst a ‘human support technician’ remained in attendance nearby. Our conversation was brief, owing to her incoherence and failure to recognise me. We shared tea and I furthered my own research by lacing her drink with an enhanced variant of the grub virus. She died three days later, leading me to conclude, the immunity in my own cells must have been artificially derived.
Perhaps you judge me for this action? It is worth remembering, my whole life has been an experiment derived of my mother’s research and indeed, to reverse the proposition, making her a part of mine, might seem a petty revenge, but in actuality, the two contexts aligned. I required a test to determine the source of my immunity and the perfect genetic subject was available. The misguided but brilliant woman I once knew and still hear in my mind, would not have wished for an inconsequential life, so I made her consequential at her end. Her ability to continue her own research was long lost, so what better substitute than to be a part of her descendants?
A fitting tribute.
I returned to Ashoria and struck up an academic correspondence with the juvenile Walden 2#. As I recall, the letters were initiated by him, impressed by the content of my long forgotten lecture. I continued this discourse, treating my younger semblance as the equal I had wished to be treated as and thus, winning his respect, prior to revealing the truth about our natures.
After six months I judged the time right to divulge this information to him, as my research required another relocation, this time, into space. After some initial shock, he became acutely curious for the details, so I provided him with access to my apartment home and active research records then left so he might derive his own conclusions from my amassed documentation.
Space
My initial foray off planet was an essential progression in my test of the grub virus. Using new pseudonym credentials, I obtained a work placement on Lave Station, at the time, known as Lave Orbit I, owing to the continual insistence by the system authorities that further orbital space stations were planned.
My father’s previous career credentials could not be used to assist my application, so I began my time aboard the Coriolis as a docking support technician. However, this menial role suited my needs admirably.
After substantial sampling on Lave, my research required I test refinements of the grub virus on individuals who had never been to the planet. At the time, planetary landing permits had been issued, ostensibly to regulate exploitative tourism, but in reality, to restrict information exchange. For all its pomp and prestige, the Galactic Co-operative knew the comparative living standards on its planets were vastly different to those enjoyed in its Interstellar communities. Planetary trade and export had begun to fuel this galactic elite and very little of this wealth returned to the world-bound populations. On reflection, the matter of parity and understood stratification in society has been handled in a much better way by both the Federation and the Empire. In the former, financial status offered an easy means to rate an individual’s standing and in the latter, the standing of each individual is always clearly indicated. The concealment of the disparity in Galcop, was an unintentional consequence of homeostatic necessity, but also became a weighty burden when coupled with the need for information control.
Nevertheless, this means of societal control was worthy of additional study and became a diverting focus of my time. In my periodic contact with Walde
n 2#, I was able to impart the future necessity for a new form of information control on Lave. Thus, he began extensive research into this area.
In 3125, I recall a chance encounter with a young Peter Jameson, who had newly purchased a Cobra Mark III from the Faulcon deLacy outlet on Reorte and taken delivery at Lave Station. I remember little of him, only that he was nervous and careful with his credits in the station bar.
Empowerment
[Editor: The following sections are published from a second archive found on Sark. They follow in historical order to the first account and as such, have been included here for your reading. The presence of a second voice is clear within this writing. Whether it is a second ‘Walden’ as claimed, cannot be independently verified.]
Whilst my elder incarnation remained on Lave Station, I completed my municipality education in Central Ashoria, being the first Walden of our generation to do so. This perverse achievement held significant research value as it enabled me to observe the development and interactions of my societal peers.
After this, I began research in a different area, namely the principles of electronic communication. The rudimentary systems established during the previous millennia had sufficient nodes for limited settlement spread across our world. However, with the expansion into the Kadian Sea and the mountainous Ardu region, a more diverse infrastructure was necessary.
When there is honest speech that describes the human condition as base, the enlightened individual should listen and inquire. The discourse will turn to the wants and needs of the ignorant as they try to preserve their homeostasis and often the focus will reveal their own inner obsessions. Understanding these unfamiliar concerns gives the enlightened one an opportunity to devise strategies of amelioration. When determined, these proposals can be subtly introduced and bartered to the ignorant.
If carefully webbed, the multiplicity of such proposals becomes a network of loyalty. Such exchanges are common place amidst the corporate and capitalist, but often accompanied with direct personal interest, which gives the illusion of honesty. However, the position of the enlightened must remain strategic, above and impersonal. The sought benefit of exchange must not be revealed and must be a gain of significant distance to best exploit the transaction.
My work amidst the evolving electronic information exchange of Lave afforded many opportunities. Whilst the majority of society remains inane and uninformed, communication of inanity is prized. Within the mind of the dullard, there is no understanding of irrelevance. The two states remain mutually exclusive, despite some initial indications of staged understanding related to privation and homeostasis. Once secure, the dullard explores diversion, or is seduced by its illusory priority. There is little attempt to protagonate and if there is, this is a sign of psychological metamorphosis, rendering the individual: a) enlightened and b) useless to our needs.
As a gatekeeper of information, I became prized. I traded need fulfilment for future status and favour, operating within the prevailing laws of Lave and when necessary, beyond its reach. The two states remained either side of a road with myself the only pedestrian permitted to cross.
Positioned like this, financial reward became an obvious attainment. To begin with, I too felt the lure of material concern, but my reasons for purchasing its trappings were wholly different. The need remained to obtain the use of others and by posing as one equally uneducated in this society of lesser aliens, I became a part of its structure; a necessary duplication, within each of my contexts and for each of my physical forms through the last two hundred years.
Democracy
The illusory promise manifests itself amongst many societies in the form of democracy, the ideology of majority opinion and rule. This structure has existed since the ancient days of Earth and even then, held notable critics.
The notion of equality promised by suffrage is base at best. The romance indicates both you and I can achieve influence, can choose to whom we abrogate and subject our freedom. Surrender our right to self-governance with a mark in a box.
The ideology of the democrat is to convolute freedom with defined choice; to suggest participation through the most insignificant means. By the time that choice is offered, the rights of governance have already been surrendered.
Democracy grants privilege to those who best know how to smile and promise nothing. It engenders paralysis when meaningful action is needed and conflated discussion with dispute when action must be taken. Democracy renders the ignorant equal to the informed and simplifies what should, by rights, remain complex.
I have no wish to surrender my sovereignty to an individual chosen by mob assent. That way lies the self-interest of others and through this, corruption. A vote considered insignificant may be bought and once bought, bought again, hundreds of times, particularly when the buyer holds a worth to exchange. The purchase of one tick is nothing, the purchase of a million, creates government. How this purchase is accomplished, through policy promise, credit exchange, favour, bribe or otherwise, does not matter, it remains a purchase and the clear enemy of the promised freedom of choice democracy is supposed to grant.
This is the way of the Federation, where the dilution of power is a celebrated fantasy. Behind the veil, corporate interest is served by each puppet face in the president’s chair. At least our Imperial cousins remain honest about their dictation.
No enlightened individual would willingly surrender their freedom to democracy’s claws.
Legacy
Within months, an additional benefit of my placement surfaced. A chance discovery of hitherto concealed research assets became particularly interested when their architect was revealed, one Sibyl Walden, trainee doctorate research candidate of the Faculty of Central Ashoria, my mother.
These assets had been well hidden on Ithas Island, near the Artaud asylum to where I consented her commitment after a violent episode. The childhood memory is sketchy at best, but it holds no guilt or shame for me when considered in the wider context of my upbringing.
When examining the evidence at the time, it became plain that my mother had been at least partially complicit in her commitment. A concealed laboratory storage facility would not have been prepared by a woman prepared to resist her enforced confinement in an asylum facility.
Though tempted, I did not journey to the island. Instead, through a subsidiary holding firm, in the face of some resistance, I acquired the inventoried assets. On reading the catalogue I realised what a bequeathment I had found; gold or the most precious gem to myself, but worthless biological compost to anyone else.
[Editor: The fragmented file ends here. Our attempts to recover further data from the preserved electronic sources have proved inadequate. Walden’s encryption methods are robust and each attempt at access encourages further data decay. We can only surmise what legacy had been found. Perhaps further clone samples? Certainly our research would indicate the presence of at least three Walden personas, perhaps more, to enable a continuous rule over Lave for more than one hundred years.]
Evolution
The 19th century Wallace and Darwin proposition of biological development and transition that occurs through each generation of living creature, noted in old Earth journals as natural selection is a truncated paradigm when applied to the human condition.
We are, by comparison if nothing else, an apex predator within each environment we introduce ourselves to. Only the Thargoid exists to challenge our dominance and the contexts of our meetings rarely involve a competition for resources. With advances in medical care, we have all but eliminated the process of selection from our generational advancement, thus our plethora of mutation is retained, whether an improvement or not, leading to an increasingly diversified galactic populace.
The human body remains a wonderfully adaptable vessel. Local exposure and consummation of substances leads to enzyme production and reduction of the symptoms of tolerance.
This prevention has only developed in the last few thousand years, meaning our genetic stagn
ation has not, as yet, held sway for as long a period as our development. However, the effect, when analysed from the outside, provides alarming data. Amid the stars, humanity expands and thrives, pushing back the boundaries of colonised space. Thankfully, the universe petri dish we exist within, is vast and beyond full comprehension, but then it would be impossible for humanity of a thousand years ago to define the reality we live in now.
However, the legacy of our origin remains. We still fight for survival, greed, a flag or retribution, along with countless other causes. This instinct is retained from our earlier form and remains important as a behavioural determination factor.
The restoration of natural selection is an imperative for humanity to advance in evolutionary terms. Colonisation and resource exploitation is not an applicable development in this context. Instead, it is a symptom of our stagnation. For us to transcend our current state, we must find a means to rarefy the human condition and eliminate the redundant traits of our physiology and psychology. My appraisal of our current state, suggests the weakness lies in our psychology at this time. Our abrogation of responsibility, obsession with comforting apathy and unspoken conformity provides clear evidence of our deviation from the evolutionary path. There is an incorrect value placed on the innovator, thus we find ourselves stagnant.
When discovering the bones of creatures far bigger than those they knew of, historians of old Earth examined their own planetary past to determine what could have eliminated these beings. In part, this examination led them to the Darwinist principles they came to adopt, but also to determine that a cataclysmic event must have occurred to change the ecological balance of their planet so drastically. In tracking the consequences of this event, many analysts decided, somewhat gratefully, that humanity in its current form could not exist without such an event.