We saw footage of what was happening in other parts of the world and a history lesson on scientists saving our planet through genetic manipulation in the past. There were hints that something similar would need to be done again.
I got chills partway through the lesson. What kind of manipulation were they talking about doing this time? The transition was never easy.
We saw video that had been preserved from the past: footage of raging storms and massive fires and floods. It was from the epoch labeled the Near Apocalypse by historians. To those who had lived in those times, it must have seemed like the actual Apocalypse, the coming of the end times.
A family stood in front of a burned house. The bottom section—made from wooden beams, as trees were abundant enough to do that back then—was charred and disintegrating. The interior was a pile of ash. Whatever the family had owned, all the things they had purchased and collected and treasured, had been turned to gray ash. A woman was holding up a few photographs and crying. She said to the reporter, “These are the only photos we found. All the rest were destroyed. This is all I have left of my kids’ childhoods.” The reporter asked, “Are your children OK?” Wiping tears from her face, the woman said, “Yes, thank God. Really, we’re incredibly blessed. We’re very lucky.”
From a different time and place, that sounded so odd. That woman and her family were some of the unluckiest people on the planet. Faced with overwhelming tragedy, human beings have the unique talent of only comparing it with worse tragedies, rather than with better, happier times. It’s a survival mechanism. We feel that we’re lucky, rather than cursed. We convince ourselves that our luck will only increase in the future. It helps us move forward. And for those who get stuck, we’ve invented all kinds of medicines and more recently, implants. Unfortunately, all of this dulls the potential impact that tragedy has for teaching us important lessons. The human race never seems to learn from all of its mistakes.
The reporter explained that one hundred and twelve homes in that family’s area had been destroyed by a forest fire that came down from the mountains and raged on for two weeks before firefighters got it under control. He said that luckily the fire was now completely out and families were returning to look for anything that remained of their home and belongings.
Next, there were scenes of flooded streets in what was then Miami, Florida and New York City, New York. Cars floated upside down in the middle of flooded streets. The numbers of people who drowned were staggering.
There was aerial footage of people in a place called New Orleans, Louisiana stranded on rooftops spelling out messages asking for help. Their homes were surrounded by floodwaters as high as second floors and attics. It was haunting.
The tune-out device had been invented to lower the intense empathy that came with our mutated genes. I’d wished we could turn them back on. They never eradicated decent amounts of empathy. They just lowered it to a comfortable level when dealing with extremely painful situations others were in. Too much empathy often rendered it impossible for us to help in situations where action was needed. We became paralyzed.
The film showed a wide variety of weather-related tragedies that occurred in the Near Apocalypse. Fires and droughts in food-producing parts of the world led to mass migrations of people desperate for enough food and water to survive. Countries began enacting laws to keep foreigners out. People died by the thousands. Scenes showing people starving to death—their faces gaunt, their eyes and stomachs bulging, bones clearly outlined where they would normally be covered by layers of fat and skin—were especially hard to watch.
The most painful part of the film showed emaciated infants dying in their mother’s arms—veins protruding beneath the skin of their skulls, ribs pressing against taut flesh, arms and legs as thin as sticks, eyes bulging with a look of horror at the only reality those infants had ever known. This part affected me so deeply that I experienced terrible nightmares after going to sleep that night. I woke up covered in sweat and screaming. In my dream, I’d traveled back in time to a village where there were hundreds of infants in this condition. Their mothers had begged me to give them food and formula for their babies. I refused to do it. I told them rather haughtily that I could not violate the Law of Noninterference. I treated them as though they were immoral for asking me to do that. When they continued to beg, I turned down my empathy, swallowed AgStim and murdered their children. I woke up gasping for air.
The instructional film showed mothers and children crossing miles of desert—on foot, riding even on the roofs of trains or in the trunks of cars—and families risking dangerous boat rides across miles of ocean to bring their families to places where they could thrive. They were repeatedly turned away for not being legal citizens of the places they were trying to enter.
A Mexican boy and his mother, exhausted and dirty after walking miles of desert in extreme heat to reach the United States, were shot by a guard on the U.S. side of the border before they even crossed it. Their bodies were left to bake and rot in the blistering sun. Bobcats and wolves and coyotes found them and fed on their flesh. For the non-human animals, it was a feast, a celebration. It was the natural law of survival of the fittest.
I pondered laws. People back then had tribal laws designed to protect their own kind. We have the Law of Noninterference. We aren’t allowed to kill people from a different time period, but we can certainly watch them die and do nothing to help. We’re expected to do that. What if the Law is wrong? What if the universe is a test? What if we’re supposed to right the wrongs of the past in order to fix the universe and pass the ultimate test? If this is true, our generation will fail, as all the generations before us have failed.
Twice, I had watched my father die. I had been there when I knew he was about to be poisoned. I had done nothing to help. What if that was my own personal test—not only from the TTA, but also from the universe? What if the universe’s test was more important?
Dr. Molyneux turned off the video downloads. Our contact lenses went back to normal. She said, “That was tough to watch, I know. It was important, however. It’s a history lesson to prepare you for your first two missions. It showed you a few events from the first Near Apocalypse caused by the human race. As those situations accelerated and got much worse, scientists worked on a variety of ways for the human race to adapt and survive. A few settlements were established on Mars, but they didn’t succeed. Everyone perished due to accidents in the inhospitable environment and countries lost their motivation to fund additional settlements. We’re the result of another experiment: major changes made to the human genome, so that we create some of our own food through photosynthesis. A major side effect of the photosynthesis: our skin color changed from shades of tan to shades of green. But it solved the food shortage problem. People used to eat three huge meals a day plus snacks. They had sandwiches that were 1,000 calories each, even drinks with that many calories. Can you imagine?”
No, I could not. I felt queasy just thinking about it.
Dr. Molyneux continued, “We’re now facing the second Near Apocalypse caused by man. You know what the world is like outside of elite enclaves like this one. People are once again starving. We’ve had a huge population explosion generation after generation. And we’re encountering a serious issue that the scientists of what is now known as the Green Genome Project did not foresee. Having plant genes spliced into human genes has over time bred too much passivity into us. Drugs like AgStim were supposed to be the answer, but they’re not a long-term solution. They cause mental illness and cancer. These drugs have led to extreme aggression and homicides. And they’re addictive—not immediately, but definitely after continued use. So, you are all going back to different points in time before the Green Genome Project occurred to collect blood and tissue samples. These will be used to splice modified genes for human aggression back into our gene pool. If the human race is going to survive, this needs to be done.”