A Savage Life

During the remainder of the trip, I tried to come up with conversation starters, something not so easy when the person you are talking to is an alien, and you sound like a marathon runner who had just jogged up Mount Everest (No thanks to my pet, In The Way), so I, with the best of my ability, attempted to discuss one of my favorite hobbies- fishing! I’m not going to tell him about Lana yet. Not until we become close. Or until we’ve faced enough situations The Hooded Woman comes to our aide, once again.

Readoldd’s response: “Oh, what a delightful hobby. Too bad I don’t possess the knowledge upon how to swim or perform such a task.”

Instead, sensing my intent, gave me a history lesson (when in reality, I just wanted to talk about fishing):

His people once colonized Earth before the Radiation Leak of 3054 sent them scurrying away back to their home planet. Sasha’s people are all that’s left of the descendants- those that chose to stay here on Earth. It was by their disbelief about the events coming that caused their own near extinction, but thanks to Darwinism, the race thrived into a band of mutants like Sasha. The vast majority of his people had foresaw this coming before the major events that would soon come to be afterwards.

He further explains that in the year of 3054, Nouth America had settled it’s differences with the continents of Chaiwan, Northern and Southern Africa, and Australica over the morality of using pure, nuclear waste to experiment on people and the Earth when an earthquake had struck and destroyed the base where all the deposits of nuclear waste was located, spilling it out into the world and it’s oceans.

They had amassed so much nuclear waste, that when the waste fell into faults on the sea floor, it warped the tectonic plates, causing volcanoes to erupt not only magma, but radiation. And there were lots of volcanoes, thanks to the Earth trying to reform itself back into Pangea.

When these atrocities of destruction happened, the atmosphere was changed forever. Natural disasters were no longer natural disasters, as warm tsunamis erupted into blizzards, and hurricanes formed from deserts. Rivers were laden with salt and fish began to walk on land as the birds became one with the sea. Never mind the fact that there were already mutations affecting the ecosystem thanks to the government.

Mass chaos ensued. The people who survived were left barren and severely mutated, almost too weak to survive, and the governments across the world grew scared about the waning human population and set up implements to change the fate that was rocketing towards them with vengeance. Not only that, but humans had evolved to rely on technology so much that they all almost starved to death.

This state of barrenness and hunger was known as, “The Breeding Crisis.” Basically the human race was starting all over again, until a scientist known as Ignacious Greston found a way to make hybrid people to mate with the last five hundred fertile human beings and regain the population back to the position of power in once sustained over the land. But Ignacious had other plans- plans to for humans to not only have dominion over the land and sea, as the Good Book says, but also over the willpower of the lesser.

Ignacious invented the breeding humans with the same abilities the experimented humans had- enhanced endurance, inability to get sick, longevity, enhanced strength, enhanced intelligence, adjustable perception to all forms of light and colors, no deteriorating chronic illnesses like arthritis, and a knack for primitive skill crafting. These were to be the ultimate beginners of the new human race. A better human race. Those who were unable to breed found themselves ostracized and forced to become nomadic at gunpoint. And yes, the government did inject a GPS system in them to see if they were still continuing their nomadic ways.

These new humans did their job so well they started to gain a consciousness, a form of deeper morality, and they began to defect what they were originally programmed to do, and reprogrammed theirselves to building their own lives; they took on jobs, married into families, formed laws, and the basics of civility. They grew up, became more than just breeders and established their own state of consciousness, but some governments couldn’t stand that the new breeding cows Ignacious had designed were gaining a consciousness that there was more to their lives than mating to have children, and set out to find their own paths. And eventually all eyes turned to Ignacious Greston who simply stated that they should be killed off before they take over the planet, and new experiments be processed on. Newer experiments that obey without a conscious, and so a new event, The Great Hunt Of 3062 began.

Under the regulations of The Great Hunt Of 3062, all of those that Ignacious had created to save the human race from extinction had to be exterminated-with a great big smile across the hunter’s face, no less.

This event dissolved into stupidity and chaos, with random people in the streets being shot just for being suspected to be one of the breeders, especially pregnant and nursing women. The bodies were discarded in some remote location, left for the birds and whatever else took a fancy to eating the corpses. They couldn’t get all of the breeding cows Ignacious had made because really, they were hunting humans without fertility issues, and eventually, they had to disband The Hunt, and the government, like always, swept their actions under the rug and continued to experiment and store radiation in places radiation should not be stored despite all that had happened in the last ten years.

I almost fell to shock after hearing that tale. And then I remembered something very important. Something that lead to a life or death situation for me (Despite that fact being a tribute to my whole life). Sabine! He was one of those breeding cows they had. No wonder his daughter was after him, he wasn’t supposed to be alive, and neither was she. Then another realization hits me: I’m standing on enough radiation to kill half the universe right now? How...how am I alive? Maybe Readoldd has the answer, so I ask away.

“Wait, this means I’m standing on pure radiation! How am I surviving it?”

“If I could assess your body’s compatibility with the environment, I could tell you just that.” Readoldd answered me.

I didn’t know whether to take the bait or not. I’m almost afraid of the answer, but I let him anyway. He pulled out a gadget that looked cross between a hairdryer, a laser rifle, and a computer and analyzed me, making obvious “Hmms” and “Oh mys” while he studied my body.

“My, my. You should not even be alive,” Readoldd gasped. “I am examining previous wounds, and other than the current wounds sustained over the course of two weeks, including the fresh ones, it appears that you have been pricked by a needle some time ago. Why did you need this vaccination, and who done it?”

“Sabine, a friend I had a long time ago, shot me with a needle a strain of the H1N1 virus when the men from the laboratory came to get me.” I answered straight away.

“Actually, I believe not.” Readoldd answers me plainly.

“W-what?” I choke. What did Sabine inject me with? Do I even want to know?

“Looks like your friend did you a favor,” Readoldd answers me and I stay silent. “Your blood history brings up the fact you were dying of radiation poisoning and would’ve been dead by morning. Your friend injected you with Radiation Adaptation Serum, no doubt stolen from the laboratory he likely escaped from, meaning, you would adapt and survive with the only drawback being fatigue when you woke up. You really should be dead by now, and I guess your friend lied to you to keep you from doing this freaking out, because of your ignorance of where you are and what has happened in the past two decades.”

So Sabine really was my friend after all. I hope he’s in a warm spot somewhere up in Heaven smiling all the time. I hope he has a soul to go there, because he deserves it more than anything.

“So... I belong here now?” I ask, curiously.

“In a sense, yes,” the alien answers me. “In the whole truth, no. Really, you’re a walking parasite. A species out of place from it’s natural habitat. You must have been smuggled here.”

“Like an invasive species?” Damien adds, sitting beside me with Sasha in his lap and combing her hair with his hands.

“Affirmative.” Readoldd responds.

“But why?” I ask.

“Do you think we extraterrestrial organisms possess the knowledge of the future?” Readoldd asks dryly.

To a degree, I hope he did. To another degree, I had secretly hoped he’d be an alien gypsy.

“I was hoping you did.” I say sheepishly.

Readoldd stares at me for a moment before snorting, “Preposterous! No species contains that phenomenon!”

“Unless they do.” Damien speaks out.

“Fairies do!” Sasha squeals out, igniting a laugh from Damien, Readoldd, and I.

“Yeah they do!” Damien exclaims, snuggling the girl in his arms.

I give Sasha a great big smile, as does Readoldd, before he calmly says, “We still have a destination to reach. We should continue our journey.”

And I agree.