Dec 22, 2018

Creative writing course - Week 5 - Postmodern Science Fiction?

My name is Lei. In fact, we are all called Lei. I am the only human left in this planet. I am not sure at what point in time I stopped being what I used to be or whether I have changed so much that I am now a new species, yet all my different forms are one, are Lei. When you left Earth, 1.5 billion years ago, there were so many different types of people, so many different species. Today, it is just me, Lei, and the other 355 million copies of myself. Do not be puzzled friend, as a species, our way of reproduction has changed. My children are usually identical to me, but once in a while, errors do happen. The oldest isolated Lei today live in a remote island. There, I have been physically isolated from the rest of myself for more than 400 million years. If you saw me there, you would not recognize me, but rest assured, it is me. There, I am diminutive, furry, and nocturnal. For complex animals like us, asexual reproduction used to be disadvantageous in a constantly changing world, but that is no longer a problem. This world does not change as it used to change. I am the sole master of geological cycles. I choose when continents move, or how fast mountains rise, or how much ice there is at the South and the North pole at any given time. So, I can evolve slowly: parts of me have changed, but I am still the same. The reason we are clones is because the mixing of genomes between two different individuals, like in you and in other archaic humans, would have quickly destroyed the genetic structures required to achieve a unified mind. Do you understand? I had to sacrifice all of Earth’s diversity to achieve infinite dominion over time and space.

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