Spectember D8: Artificial selection
66 million years ago an extraterrestrial object landed on earth… not collided… landed.
It was itself artificial in nature, intelligent, very large and ready to prepare this world for occupants that were never going to come here, this machine was throw by an already extinct civilization that was colonizing the galaxy millions of years ago, leaving these behemoth terraforming drones that readjust the biosphere of a whole planet to be turned into a Arcology structured Ecumenopolis which can let them colonize the new alien planet. The artificial construct is not high intelligent, is more automatic than anything so this would only keep going for what was programmed without the ability to learn anything more of what it needs to maintain the global Arcological cities on the end cretaceous earth, even if it remains millions of years on the same task, following the same protocols and only adapting to an extend.
This has turned the history of earth into a new age, one where a civilization formed without its residents, now affecting the biosphere of the late cretaceous earth and carrying it into a strange new period, this causing a transformation on ways that benefited the survival of no avian dinosaurs and other animals and plants that could have perished if the asteroid collided as this whole system would protect them of the asteroid impact as part of its protocol of preservation. However, the existence of this artificial being would shape that fauna in ways that only could rival to changes made by geological and climate events, the machine would focus its goal on trying to adjust the animals that now live inside the cities to regulate their impact.
On what would be called reserves formed a more fragmentary ecosystems, pockets and islands between cities they are the most natural place on earth, they would see the evolution and extinction of new animals, meanwhile inside cities, there has been two trends: either these animals just adapt to the urbanized the environment remaining almost like their reserve relatives or the machine has modified the animals that tried to pass or live there to accommodate into specific tasks that benefit the infrastructure, indirectly domesticating them by artificial means and indirectly modifying their genes at long term by breeding, though these domesticated fauna sometimes would became extinct for a unexpected catastrophic event or are replaced by another group that the same global machine reshaped into a similar niche. Herbivores that feed on gardens and maintain them clean, predators that hunt animal plagues and balance the population of the other non-domesticated fauna, scavengers that keep streets clean from other animal remains. Although this machine has an army of small drones and systems that self-clean and maintain the cities, it didn’t stop to create its urban ecology to keep everything in check outside of the synthetic drone hands.
With all of this, it was possible that if there was not sentient species going to colonize this new earth, properly a sapient one would evolve inside the cities? Would even the machine would welcome its rise? In sort of way… it happened, but not in the way you could expect.
After 66 million years of constant modifications of these urban ecosystems, and jut since 6 million years ago a unique theropod species evolved, this is the Mockery folk (Scoptosapienoides), derived from a branch of oviraptorosaurs that evolved to hunt down perching animals on the tall building, it lives in these mega cities built and mean to host the long gone alien colonizers, and these theropods are capable of use the shelters with their rooms and beds, and sitting places to rest; these can go away from their specific home to “work” in hunting down the small animals that invaded the gardens of the tall buildings, often taking the transports, they can walk around streets too but they are taking the advantage of these special “elevators” to avoid wasting energy. They work out a whole day on their hunt, in a way this was their whole reward, a good hunt to eat food; they reach up their main homes to rest on the night, they are able to recognize their own houses, marks on them or simply by memory; they normally live solitary unless they establish a monogamous pair with a member of the opposite sex, which can nest and then raise their young in one single shelter until they reach age adult, at that point the monogamous couple separates and lives their lives as before, usually in a span period of more than 5 years; the mockery folk lives accommodated and in the case some of these get sick, old or crippled, these are cared properly if needed by the machine system.
Populations are largely limited to tall building apartments, normally only moving away when population overgrow the shelter amount or if one of the couples of the original family or the children leave and there is no way to properly way to establish a home nearby, normally remains homeless for days or week until they are guided by the machine to a new available building to live.
Their lives are easy, sustained by their hunting an interactive activity outside they can relax and sleep mostly in their shelters, the machine maintains its basic necessities including cleaning of these homes; the machine identifies these as residents of the buildings rather than animals, both collaborating and receiving the actions done, which the machine interprets as sentience acting, but is not, these animals are barely grasping a intelligence higher than a 4 year old human, they are as smart as a parrot and the majority of actions correspond to instinct and beneficial gain, and has been for the last 6 million years without really much advancement except more skill in using the systems of these cities.
The machine itself created them nudging its behavior, a product of mutual improvement and accommodation that produced at the end animals that could fill up a niche other organism couldn't fit, the one of the colonizers, to an extent of course because the machine itself is not capable of uplift these creatures, just to fulfill their needs and the mockery folk corresponds this for their own advantage, but not developed further for the mundane and dull life they obtained.
They became domesticated “people” which took the activities and tasks sapient beings were supposed to do, doing things they were planned to accommodate these unknown creators, though not fully guided by consciousness, they cannot understand why they can live in homes, or how these systems work, they cannot use things above simple color panels which they can touch with their derived finger in order to do an action, they cannot gather information or have a language, or history, they just live and die. There is no way to know if something might help them to evolve of being accommodate being in this artificial world, and the machine is likely not going to push this animal, just to let them live a sort of luxurious life until they all die out like with many other species.
