“What type of native animal was used as the carrier for the hybrid?” the Site Inspector asked as the ship prepared to descend into an orbit of the former mining station.
“It was a semi-arboreal primate. We used it because it was capable of a bipedal gait and it required surprisingly few genetic modifications to give their hands the dexterity necessary to use the controls on our mining tools.”
“So, we should be able to distinguish them from the rest of the planet’s fauna because they walk upright, much as we do?” the Site Inspector asked.
“It should be even easier than that. They wear garments.” The Site Inspector’s eyebrows shot up.
“You mean pieces of natural material that they hang over their genitals when they’re not in heat? That’s hardly…”
“No. I mean actual clothing that is woven from both natural and artificial materials.”
“That’s odd. The protocol for hybridized biological assets is that they are deprogrammed once the mining project has met completion. Who was in command?”
“It was two million years ago. The commander gave the orders to follow the proper Exit Protocols, but the junior officer in charge of executing that order saw matters a little differently.”
“Who was that?” The Site Inspector demanded. “Are you saying that they disobeyed orders?”
“It was a new species. You can’t believe how well they took to the neural upgrades. Not only was their working functionality increased, but they became… companions… for many of the crew members. They used the gene editors to make them resemble their wives and lovers from back home. They were funny and clever. As a safety mechanism, we added a telomere fuse so they wouldn’t last very long. They would shrivel and die well within a hundred years.” The Site Inspector’s mouth twisted with revulsion.
“Members of the mining expedition had sex with the work animals?”
“They were creators. When we took their mining tools away, they created their own using stone scraps from our mining operation. When we took away the technical manuals, they were able to create their own symbolic language to plan and communicate. They created art. They created music. We didn’t give it to them. They created it, so we had no right to take it away.”
“You keep saying ‘I’ and ‘we.’ Were you on that mission, Officer Theus?”
Just then, the ship descended invisibly over a busy Northern California city. Paved streets teemed with people and vehicles.
“What have you done, Prome?” the Site Inspector gasped. “So, instead of letting them die out mercifully, you’ve allowed them to overpopulate the planet and, because they received the slave programming, they don’t even have the necessary Executive Functioning skills to govern themselves!”
“I don’t understand,” said Officer Theus. “When I last sent a ship to check on them, around 900,000 years ago, there were less than two-thousand of them. Should we start a cull?”
“No need. According to the data I’m collecting, they’re taking care of it themselves.”
Literature in Small Doses 