Post Human Studies as a discipline does not strictly look into the existence of species descended from homosapiens, such homo florophagi or homo radiogensis It can also involve the study of socities and cultures that emerged after Galatic Springtime and the dissolution various human polities. (Tembrem et al, 3419 GC)
One such polity that arose was the Church-State of the Progress Cult. The Progress Cult was originally centered on Alpha Centauri, one of humanity's earliest settlements outside their cradle system. It was renamed by the Cult and will be heretofore referred to as Center and Proxima B to Lux-Mundus. The Progress Cult blended all forms of temporal and spiritual power in a manner not seem since the brief establishment of the Neopapcy. It was headed by the Provost Major. They even embraced the term and self labeled as a cult.
The main tenet of the Progress Cult was the study of be information new methods by any and all means possible, as fast as possible. It was s largely Futuristic and Accelerationist society that burned brightly and briefly. The Progress Cult also advocated for the violation and abolishment of all former ethics, safety codes, and even by some radical members knowledge. It was all to be thrown out for the radical reordering of society. Proxima now known as Lux Mundus was transformed from a beautiful example of the First Wave Human Colonial Architecture to a radical avant guard style blending advances in building techniques with whatever fancy crossed the architect's mind.
The use of autofactories and other advances in robotics allowed rhe Progress Cult to exist for roughly 309 standard Earth years without the existence of a prolieterate class. While the advancement of knowledge at all costs did create some achievements that are still around today such as the rejuvenation protocols, homo florophagi, and extrasolar cows most of their creations their wunderbare Ideen have by and large been either replicated without the loss of life involved or dead ends. The Progess Cult collapsed 8 years after the death of the first and only Provost Major when their famed rejuvenation protocols finally lost their efficacy after half a millennium. After their death there were several pretenders to the title across the systems that the Cult controlled.
The Progress Cult hurtling full speed ahead at all times has consigned itself to the dust bin of galactic history.
Many post human species have rather natural origins: a colony of human stranded on a world over thousands of years into the millions adapts to their circumstances, high gravity causes increases in bone density or toxic atmospheres creating more able to filter out toxins at the cost of low oxygen intake.
Homo Florophagi or the Human Locust are in fact not the result of quiet Evolution taking its course upon the human form distorting it into whatever brilliant new arrangements are possible. No the human locust are examples of homo sapiens’s folly, the idea that all outcomes can be predicted. That with enough information anything can be accounted for. Because the one thing that was not accounted for with the genesis of these locusts was human error.
To err is human too forgive is divine. The creators of the human locusts were profoundly human. When mankind first left Earth one of the questions that arose was how best to suit planets the ecological state of terra formation. Dead worlds or worlds without any noticeable atmosphere and few traces of native life contatry to most popular beliefs where some of the easiest to be settled during the spring time of mankind. Then came the question of those that already had complex ecosystems. Another common misconception is that mankind's colonization efforts were United under one single entity. This is incorrect mankind has never been united and with the events of the Fall of the Galactic Order it is very unlikely that they will ever be as they are now scattered to the stars.
To make a long diatribe short one of the proposed solutions to worlds with already established ecosystems were Homo Florophagi. An offshoot of baseline humanity mixed with xenotypical, chortoicetes terminifera, coptotermes formosanus, ornithorhynchus anatinus, as well as other similar species.
The base idea behind them was this: if we can introduce a pest to a world that has a virgin ecosystem that is so divergent from Earth it would make sustained life more difficult than once the ecosystem is sufficiently destabilized invasive species can be introduced to restabilize the planet in a more earthlike direction. The question then went to what is the basis of most ecosystems and that went to the plant. Now the plant is a life form that has emerged again and again across the universe it is seemingly one of the simplest forms of complex life to emerge.
Thus the florophagi - a species with the relative intelligence of humanity, the eusocial behavior of most insect species mixed into it, shortened gestational periods in leathery eggs, and the ability to devour any and all plant life it finds. Its face, limbs, and digits work extended it's teeth reduced more to protruding clicking buck teeth. The human locust no longer walk upright for prolonged periods of time however the increased strength given to most of its limbs allows it to climb on surfaces in search of food long denied to bipedal mankind. Jaws that one might find in North American Beaver with multiple lines of molars to grind down food forming a jawline that is constantly growing new teeth as old ones are worn out. Because of the way their eggs function as an added benefit they are born hungry.
A human locust will emerge ready to devour anything in the vicinity including other eggs and then swiftly move on to join the rest of its colony in devouring whatever plant life it can find.
Such a destructive species in field testing did in fact destabilize most of the ecosystems it was present in. Once all available plant life was consumed, colonies would go on to devour animals, and then each other. Within approximately one decade, a colony of one hundred expanded to one three hundred million and had completely rendered barren landmass the size of Old North America. Within a year of the last other food sources being gone, the colony collapsed in on itself and the example specimens functioning exactly as intended. They were born hungry and they would die hungry.
The human locust would in most cases be considered arousing success by its creators sending it to frontier worlds waiting for the population boom and then collapse and then stepping in once all were confirmed dead to rebuild the world in Old Earth's likeness. Many other human factions objected to the use of the human genome in such a way but the Creators only pointed to their successes.
Until a colony got loose.
AlI it took was one cage improperly closed.
And all those hubris the creators of this monster and it is difficult to call them a monster for though they are destructive it is not by choice and it is not their fault they did not desire to be created as such but the one thing that their creators forgot and all their humorous was that they had given their children human intelligence. The ability to exchange information, the ability to speak and dirt though much changed by the protruding jawline, jutting joints, and hairless skin.
All it took was one colony getting loose on a ship that they were able to observe how to pilot and they would never go hungry again.
To this day the descendants of the original homo florophagin remain a pest across two galaxies.
This week, students, we return to the concept of Post Human Polities - PHP - as opposed to Post Human Species - PHS - as established in our previous lecture on the Progress Cult. As loathe as I am to bring up the maniacs behind the Progress Cult, if you can all forgive my editorializing, today's lecture deals with one of their successor PHPs, the Unreal State. The Unreal State most likely has deep ties to the social thought behind the Progress Cult which was Anarchoacademic Liberism.
For reasons you will come to understand, I hope, most of today's statements regarding the Unreal State must be coached in uncertainties. First however, let us discuss and attempt if not to define than circle a definition for Anarchoacademic Liberism. Anarchoacademic Liberism is an attempt at a revival of old Earthen ideologies of futurism and anarchism as understood by the Provost Major of the Progress Cult. To his understanding, anarchism was simply abolishing any and all social taboos and understandings as well as abolition of most state functions and futurism was putting ultimate faith in any and all new emergent technologies regardless of ethics behind them. As a student of Earthen and Human philosophies and ideologies, I must question where the Provost Major gained his understanding. The Provost Major thusly structured what remained of the Progress Cults state apparatus after various academic institutions supposing they would be best at encouraging the acquisition of information.
After the Applied Military Theories and the dissolution of the Progress Cult's holdings following the Provost Major's death, one of the break away polities was the Unreal State. The Unreal State was like many other successors to the Progress Cult, charismatic leaders putting their own spin on Anarchoacademic Liberism. However, the Unreal State took it one step forward, and began an assault against the very fundamental laws of reality.
This is now where things will have to enter supposition. Everything after this is conjecture. There are three possibilities to what the current Unreal State is.
The first is this, there is a pocket of space in what was once a Progress Cult controlled system once was. The Unreal State as much as it exists exists there, in space that no longer follows the same rules, if any, as the rest of reality if the space follows any rules at all. The Unreal State has managed to create a rupture in reality that in a system whose name can no longer be recorded on any form of media, believe me experts in the field of memetic hazardous storage have tried. Now that we have established that Unreal State now lies entirely within this rupture and potentially other ruptures comes the questions of those people who claim to be from the Unreal State. Those individuals we met claiming to be Citizens of the Land That Isn't and are displaying high levels of universal dissociation are from this Unreality and seek to spread its dissolution of reality with a fever that rivals adherents of the Green Orthodox Bible. Attempts to enter these gaping holes in reality, which now include what once was Mercury of the Sol System, more or less than resounding failures with to this dates no contact being able to be established or return trips emerging.
The second is this there is a pocket of space in what was once a Progress Cult controlled system once was. The second possible explanation is that these ruptures in space time are actually more akin wormholes, portals to a place we do not yet understand where only those who have spent long periods exposed to the Unreal State can survive, or those become citizens there. We have heard reports from surviving Citizens that have return that the state is engaged now and not just the war against the very fabric of reality but against those that maintain it and those beyond the veil. They claim knowledge of Cthulhiods, named after the Old Earthen Occultist’s Erotic Creation’s writing, and other creatures of the firmament such as Angels of Vangel. These citizens that they alone of humanity take the war for liberation to new fronts, they fulfill the work in words promised by humanity for years before. Whoever is part of this work they have emerged to changed, part of the universal disassociation is that in parlance some of you might laugh at they seem to clip through objects that were steady as possible they no longer react in the right ways on a physiochemical level to external interactions. Most worrisome part of this is that this does not seem to be isolated and is capable of spreading it is how Mercury once a famed center of medical research was dissolved and in the place where it once rotated now is a gaping Mall visible through the solar system at all times. It has made Earth's first colony Venus, turn itself into a fortificated world and reinforce the paranoia in isolation of the Martian gardeners. That of the four cradle worlds of mankind, on has been lost already, is a portent of doom.
The third is this there is a pocket of space in what was once a Progress Cult controlled system once was. This one is the most comforting one to me, all individuals claiming to be from the Unreal State are charlatans and delusional. The Unreal State does not in any form exist and it is merely a galactic Boogeyman. That all previous suppositions can be simply explained away through a clever trick of the hand and a heavy heavy dose of ignorance. This however is the least likely.
The one confirmed fragment I have found consistent is this.
"In the Unreal State, the whole of the law is this: There shall be no Law, neither against murder nor that yoke of gravity, and to oppose all other laws shall be your duty."
Even speaking of the Unreal State is fraught with the fact almost nothing is confirmed there are many suppositions many ideas of things that could be known but in the end what is confirmed is a little more than dust in the wind. I hope against hope to whatever deities that there truly are if they are benevolent in this world, that the Unreal State is simply a fiction of already unstable cultists. For the consider anymore of what it's potential truths imply makes me jealous of those with cybernetic implants who may cleanse their mind.
Now students, if any of you here are truly real or here, the lecture is over. Class dismissed. I hope to see you in some form again soon. I need a drink of coffee. Is this still recording?
Homo Radiogensis do not have any common name I can use in this lecture that does not have an extremely negative connotation. Homo Radiogensis are one of many post human species and among a select grouping that have emerged artificially. As a reminder, the key definition of a "post human" species is that it has its roots generic roots at least partially in homo spaiens and post human cultures most similarly have their roots in cultural groups that existed within human space before the Galactic Springtime. It is possible to be post human culturally but not specially and post human specially but not culturally.
Thankfully for today's studies, Homo Radiogensis fulfills both critiea. Homo Radiogensis owes it's orgin to a group of humans known as the 'icenecks'. Icenecks were extreme survivalists who lived on the edge of society mining asteroids and meteors for that most precious of substances: water. That culture that flourished as extreme isolationists, only interacting with the greater galactic community when needed to deliver ice to their planet and station bound clientele. Spicers had already grown into the wider subspecies known as homo sapien inanis, one of the first subspecies to evolve a true adaptations to the void in devoid of almost any form of melanin long soft bones soft by bone standards not truly soft as would evolve in later generations, and and decreased muscle mass.
It was from this particular crop of humans did the first homo radiogensis take form. The isolationism and survivalism of their culture saw any form of accepting help from outside as anathema to all that they stood for. It was at this time that one of the Iceneck's number rediscovered the properties of Deinococcus Radiodurans while cleaning out a hydroponics lap. Deinococcus Radiodurans is able to synthesis celluaral energy from radiation alone - at least that is how that icenecks related it and understood it. At once readily available genetic manipulation technology because you be used to modify at first one clan with these genes making them less dependent upon hydroponics. In the sector of space of that they were in this triggered a genetic arms race of other icenecks incorporating genetics from xenobacteria, xenofaun, xenofungi, as well as their Earthbound equivalents into their genetics for the ultimate arms race of being the most independent and free from influence, shells made of lead began to be introduced as bones withered away so that nothing but the feeding portions would be expoded to radiation in some clans while others embraced tht destruction of their skeletaal system entirely.
Homo Radiogensis is an incredibly phenotypical diverse species but some common traits include fingers that stretch upwards of three meters, extreme expanded craniums, withered eyes and bones, radio- auto- and homophagi being incredibly common traits, reinforced teeth to be able to protect their dwellings, mergers with whatever technology remains on their derelict stations, and a stiff phobia of those from outside their immediate area.
Homo radiophagi often form the backbone of whatever voidborne ecosystem they can be found in acting as a keystones species yet their appearance and often fierce territoriality has lead to them being cast as well as a boogeyman in many cultures stories about abandoned wrecks or stations that are floating between the void.
Should you ever find one between the stars, ensure it is truly empty. Though homo radiophagi maintenance independent spirits I have never known one to be adverse to adding more resources to their foodweb.
