The Nature of Predators 2-99 [Final]

Memory Transcription Subject: Adam Meier, Terran Citizen

Date [standardized human time]: September 3, 2165

Running was a tireless process to me, though I kept my body keeled toward the ground and clapped my hands together. This was what a predator species with a fully-honed chase instinct looked like. Little claws tore through the grassy yard, leaping up to sink tiny teeth into my hand; that might trigger pain for most humans, but the metal skeleton could take it. I laughed as Launa held on tightly to my knuckles—what an adorable, precious angel she was. I hoisted my hand slightly, lifting her off the ground and spinning her around.

Launa flailed her head about emphatically, in an attempt to pull me back to the ground. I allowed myself to be felled, careful to roll onto my back. The Jaslip—with brown eyes the size of moons—walked across my chest, licking my cheeks with affection. Life was good. I smiled and tickled her ears, enjoying the sight of the little boots I’d gotten her to wear. She’d grown up so quickly that it stabbed at my heart to be sending her away. Was this the hardest part of any parent’s existence?

“I love it when we play, Daddy, even though your metal skeleton hurts my teeth sometimes,” she yipped, wagging her tail. “The den-tist complains. I don’t like the dentist. Why don’t you ever have to go to him?”

I knitted my eyebrows together. “I’ve explained that I was…someone’s memories put into a computer body. I require different kinds of maintenance. You don’t need teeth if you don’t need to eat, Launa. You don’t want to not have food, do you? How would you bite me if your teeth fall out. The dentist is better than that.”

The Jaslip pouted, ears sinking down and tail drooping between her legs. “Okay. I guess you’re right.”

“Sorry, darling. Sometimes, we have to do things we don’t like, so we can enjoy the things we do. You might not have fun with every subject in school, but they’re all going to pack your brain full of knowledge—so you can be smart and do anything when you grow up. Do you remember what I told you?”

“‘Don’t bite any people at school. It hurts humans without metal skeletons.’”

“Good girl. Here, take your lunch.” I placed the lunchbox into her tail wagon, which included two cans of tuna and a few hard-boiled eggs. I checked one more time that all of her books were there, as the school bus pulled up by our driveway. “Alright. Run along to catch the bus. You’re going to do great, and I’m a phone call away if you need anything!”

“I’m excited. Bye, Daddy! I love you.”

“Love you too, Launa.”

I pulled out my holopad to record her going onto the school bus for the first time, skipping with excitement to join the other kids. The Jaslip child glanced back over her shoulder at me, and I waved at her for encouragement. I paused the video once she disappeared into the vehicle, and watched in a bit of a sad silence as my daughter was driven away from our home. My hands found their way into my pockets, leaving me to stare at the horizon; I missed her already. What would I do to busy myself when she was gone?

“Mind if I join you, old friend?” a voice asked behind me.

“Huh?” I swiveled around, finding myself looking at a hobbled-over, aged Erin Kuemper, clutching onto a cane. “I’m sorry. I don’t go by Elias anymore.”

“I know. You’re him to me, and always will be. But I respect that you don’t believe you’re him…Adam.”

“Thank you. I…I’d love to catch up. What’s got you in Austria, not counting cacti in Arizona?”

“I wanted to check in on a friend who I’d missed dearly, and admired so much. I wanted to see how the years are treating you. Being Secretary-General, it aged me far faster than I liked. You: you still look the way you did 3 decades ago. You don’t know how…funny that feels to an old woman.”

I led Kuemper back to my porch slowly, helping her with the stairs. “I look different on the inside. To some people, they would say that’s what matters.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. What’s on the inside is a lot more important than how it looks. And speaking of wrong, do you know where you showed me I was wrong?”

I arched an eyebrow. “The Ship of Theseus, I’d hope?”

“No,” she chuckled. “I said that there was never an option to be moral and just in the Sapient Coalition. But that wasn’t true. The option was you. Elias, or at least his soul, was the only one who could be true to his beliefs no matter what.”

“Now, I don’t agree that I was the only one capable of that. Secretary-General Osmani has done an excellent job, avoiding the pitfalls his predecessors ran into after the Federation’s collapse. His reserved dignity has shown that he’s perfect for the job. I don’t miss that life one bit.”

“You truly don’t want to go back, do you? Even you tire of the burden.”

“It wasn’t that. I loved helping humanity, but I wanted to see what it was like to take care of—just one person. To have that be the entire world that I looked out for.”

Erin Kuemper rocked back in the chair, binocular eyes growing misty as she stared out at the horizon. I still remembered the young, snappy scientist who was trying to spoonfeed Elias information, and thought he was just any old politician that could bungle up first contact. She’d been there throughout the most stressful months of his life, on the front lines of first contact. It was difficult to see her growing old, though I figured that I would have to get…used to outliving the people I cared about. I had no context of what it felt like to have your body begin to break down.

That’s the worst part of loving anything, if I choose to believe that a digital reincarnation doesn’t bring them back. What if I just blink and Launa’s life is gone? How will I know when I’ve existed too long, when I know even now that there is pain in my future?

“Erin,” I croaked. “I’m afraid.”

My old friend continued staring at the horizon with clouded, weary eyes. “Of?”

“Losing everyone I love. Forgetting them. What happens when you’re…gone?”

“Oh, goodness, death is only the beginning; I intend to join you in immortality. I signed a consent slip to be digitally resurrected, and I believe it’s me. Is that enough for you? Can you respect that, just as I respect that you see yourself as Adam?”

“I’ll accept that it’s a part of you. I hope you’ll come find me. We can tell Launa and her human friends, who can’t imagine what it was like, how the world was when we didn’t know about aliens. Earth before we met the Venlil; Earth before it was a ‘predator world.’”

“Earth was always a predator world, Meier. It’ll eat you up and spit you out if you’re not strong enough.”

“That’s living; that’s every world under every sun. It was never about predators or their nature. It was about the beliefs people have, and use as the pretext to insist that others carry on their hatred. That’s what I pushed the SC to finally see.”

Erin swallowed, choking up with emotion. “I know. Your speech opened their eyes, and you dared to call them out when no one else would. For all of the works they put on your statue, that’s the best thing you’ve ever done.”

“No. The best thing I ever did was adopt an Osir.”

A lengthy future was stretched out before me, but in this moment, there was peace in the love of a father. I would sit here and reminisce about a life that was not my own, and what the future might hold in store for the Sapient Coalition. Overall, I saw a multitude of reasons to be optimistic. 

Esquo had several regions restored for Jaslips to live on, and they even welcomed in Consortium refugees to reside on orbital rings. Launa would have a homeworld to visit, and I hoped to take her when she got old. We’d enhanced our own capabilities after studying the Krev’s architecture, with orbital rings now encircling many SC worlds, including Earth, Skalga, and Leirn. We needed somewhere to house revived, synthetic beings, given the swelling populations. In the Venlil’s case, they could use a little extra space to expand, given they only had a small strip of habitable land on their tidally-locked World of Death. 

Aafa was in the rebuilding process too, with Kolshian refugees flocking to human colonies as full SC citizens. Many Shield members had assimilated into the Sapient Coalition, cutting ties with the Remnant states that were under a rehabilitation program; the treachery of intending to wipe out any species that ever ate meat, and concealing their true backers all the way, was a bridge too far. Despite the neutrality, they split from the Federation in the first place because they abhorred the conspiracy. Dual membership made it easier to join us, though about a third—including the Ulven and the Racads—still valued total independence from the predators.

The Arxur had opened exchange programs with every member species, including humanity; there were Venlil, Duerten, and even Thafki citizens bonding with the reptilians. Positive recognition in Sapient Coalition media became commonplace, turning public opinion to at least acknowledge all that they did to defeat the Consortium and their ghost Farsul puppets. In a vote that was expected to be contentious, two-thirds of the assemblage had passed the Arxur Collective’s official membership bid in 2164. Elias never would’ve imagined when he first sat in that briefing. He would’ve never imagined he’d even want it, despite the fact that it wound up being his last wish!

Tarva did it in the long run, memory man. She did enough to make it possible to have peace with the Arxur, and reached out when it wasn’t easy; not to mention sparing us. This all goes back to her.

The world had changed a lot since the good old days of 2136, as evidenced by the fact that I was sitting here carrying the memories of a dead Secretary-General. I was far from alone in my situation, with the mind uploading technology being rolled out to include more and more species by the month. Progress was making society unrecognizable in many ways, but we used our forward-thinking ideas to help improve the lives of sapients across the galaxy. The predatory viciousness observers saw on Earth was used to protect the ones we cared about with ferocity, and to take on nature itself if need be. We’d tussle with death itself! 

“I’m going to wait for my daughter to come home. She’s the reason I want to be around to see the future. Because it’s hers,” I whispered.

Erin patted my leg. “I think I’ll stick around to meet her. I knew you’d be a great father.”

“I’m just glad I had the chance to prove it.”

The two of us, shadows of the old UN officials who took our first steps into the galaxy, sat in comfortable silence on a cozy porch. After all of the years that had gone by, it was a wonderful treat to enjoy the peace that we’d fought so hard and long to attain.

A/N - The grand finale of the NOPverse! Years later, Adam has settled down with an Osir daughter and considers being an adoptive father his greatest achievement. He’s visited by an old friend, and they reminisce on old times despite philosophical disagreements. We hear some optimistic news on the future of the Arxur getting accepted to the SC and bringing people around through exchange programs. We also hear what happened with Esquo, the KC, the Shield, and Aafa: it’s not perfect, but the future is bright!

What do you think of the ending and what the future looks like for the SC? How do you feel about each of our characters’ endings?

Alright, so I’ve got a brand new book called Prisoners of Sol, coming out on our next main update day, so I hope you’ll stick around to see that! The last time I moved from an IP, we got NOP, and I think each series gets a little more badass! There’s a lot to spark your curiosity: humanity is locked in a pocket dimension, and we must find out who did this and why. There are birds, there are snake people, there are mysteries and moral conundrums—and I think people who liked the interactions of NOP1 will take to this, because a new kind of culture shock is definitely there.

I really hope you’ll be there in a couple of days to give it a shot, because I have so much conviction that it’s my best writing and will be a new, fun sandbox with zany corners of its universe. As always, thank you for reading and supporting; whether you’ve been here three days or the whole three years, you have kept me going through what’s frankly been a pretty dark, painful year. I will always love you guys and hope to be able to put out fun content for a long time to come!