The Humans

“Uh commander we have an issue with our human experiment.”

“Yes?”

“The er, the humans well there appears to be a slight problem. The appear to have been as intelligent as designed, even more so. Many millennia ago they appeared to have put down their sticks and stones and built something of themselves. From small neolithic villages to vast empires spanning from one continent to another. Their technological and societal growth surpassed our own specie’s history. Just as planned. However…”

“However what?”

“We appeared to have made them too much in our own image, and I’m not just talking physically either.”

“And that means?”

“Do you know why we built them in the first place?”

“I’m rusty on it. Why are you stalling?”

“Back in the days of our ancestors we designed the humans to be functionally like us. We put them on a similar planet to our home world. We gave them our body plan, and even similar DNA. We only made three alterations. The first it appears we got right, we made them smarter than us. We allowed their brains to work at a faster pace and make more unique connections on average than our people can. The plan was always that we’d check back in ever few hundred years to watch their evolution and use their discoveries to improve upon our own technology. We got many fruits from this side of the experiment: nuclear energy, a deeper understanding of universe’s laws, and Velcro.”

“Are you telling me that our people weren’t smart enough to invent Velcro?”

“I’m saying that we were not creative enough thinkers to have that technology ever cross our minds.”

“Huh. You said something about a second modification?”

“Yes, the second one was giving them shorter lifespans so that way their society had to progress at a faster rate than ours.”

“Interesting. And the third?”

“Our ancestors modified them so that the humans wouldn’t have freewill. Well it appears our ancestors were smart enough to make the humans smarter, but not cleaver enough to remove the freewill from our genes. This has been a grave mistake.”

“How can that be?”

“Well, it’s either one of two things. Either free will and intelligence are much more intertwined than we once thought, or we missed a few genes in our genome that grant us freewill and those propagated through the humans. My bet is on the latter. Anyways, for centuries the topic on whether humans truly have free will has been a heated debate across the humanologist. We’ve abducted them and even sent in agents to live amongst them. In the end their findings were muddied by their own biases and no solid answer came from their expeditions. But I believe that the latest state of human society has given more credence to them having free will.”

“And what’s that?”

“Do you remember the crash in that human desert in what they call, uh it’s here in my notes, Roswell?”

“I’m aware of it, yes. Such an embarrassment. The ship was sent to self destruct upon contact though, right?”

“That’s the general consensus yes. But it appears that the humans were craftier than we thought. Their space technology has accelerated at an astounding rate since then, within twenty years they were able to reach their moon, and then just a hundred years later they built their first colony on another planet. Mars they call it, I believe. It is an incredible achievement. However, it appears that they have been building something in secret.”

“Are we finally getting the part where you stop stalling?”

“Yes, in a manner. Well commander, they appeared to have been building a special weapon based off of our technology discovered in that crash. A weapon heading directly towards us faster than light. I have no idea what it’s capable of, but something tells me that they are very very angry to have discovered their true origins. Which, going back to my theory, is evidence that humans have free will.”

“Are you telling me you gave me a whole lecture before you mention the fact that there’s a weapon heading right towards us? You idiot!”

“Well, as you know commander, we aren’t a very smart species.”


Originally submitted for this writing prompt.

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