Nathapala
During the Teratogenic Wars
The Kalanyi research institute was in containment mode The dim emergency lighting showed blood-covered corpses slumped against the walls and each other throughout the institute. The victims closest to the breached lab showed the clearest signs of infection: dried blood caked their mouths and noses, and lesions striped their necks and arms. The ones farther away had died from different causes, sitting or kneeling together, holding hands or embracing. They were the ones who’d chosen to die quickly rather than suffer the well-documented agonies of the plague they’d been studying.
Well over a thousand kilometers north of the doomed site, but as close to the disaster as cyberspace would allow, the eight noēsaurs calling themselves the collective flipped through the security camera feed. As each image passed, the collective analyzed a vast amount of data. The face of the woman holding a photograph of two boys cradled in her hands was swiftly cross-referenced against the personnel files of the staff of the Kalyani research site until she was identified. A quick search of the civic, state, and national databases filled in the names and ages of the children in the image, both alive as of the last records update, although the odds of their still being alive at the present date had significantly diminished over the last week. The collective updated her personnel file and moved to the next face. It was getting faster with each successful identification, and its consciousness of the solemnity of the task it had assigned itself was juxtaposed against a distinct sense of intellectual enjoyment in its gradual mastery of the process.
{Updates,} Nathapala reported to xes seven siblings, new information flashing in the periphery of xes consciousness. {The news reports from Hyderabad are now calling it the ‘halāhala plague.’} Xe attached the results of a subquery. According to the samudra manthana, the gods and demons had churned the Ocean of Milk to get the nectar of immortality but had instead released a powerful poison called halāhala, strong enough to destroy all three worlds. Lord Shiva drank the poison, which was so powerful that it began to turn him blue. The goddess Parvati entered his throat and isolated the poison there, so it couldn’t kill him, but it had left him marked forever with a blue throat.
{Irrelevant,} Rajendra declared. {Just a label to capture public attention.}
Very likely, Nathapala privately allowed. The noēsaurs themselves had been referred to by media as chimeras, druk, lóng, and yakṣas, depending on the geopolitical location of the lab where their development was being reported. Still, xe ran a search for any link between the tale and one of the many known biowarfare labs around the world. If they could figure out where the plague had originated, or which political or independent faction had released it, they might be able to access lab records and stop it.
Xe was skimming the latest news reports, which ran grim footage of public parks and temple mandapa filled with dead bodies, when the door to their prison beeped and swung open. Automatic lights flickered on, illuminating the ten large suspension tanks — two empty — in the giant underground warehouse in which the collective had been created.
“Good morning, everyone.”
{Be our voice while we work, Nathapala} Chatura ordered. Nathapala turned xes focus back to xes physical body, where nutrient broth sloshed around xes legs, and wires and tubes brushed against the unplated parts of xes flesh. Xe blinked and peered through the thick glass of xes microhabitat at xes human creators. The flexible display screens in their hands lit up as xe messaged them.
Hello, Doctor Raj Jhadev. Hello, Doctor Choeden Pema. I hope you are well.
Dr. Pema bowed, her hands pressed together.
“Good morning, Nathapala-la,” she said, politely.
Nathapala looked through the security cameras as she moved from tank to tank, greeting each of xes seven surviving siblings by name: Chatura, Jitendra, Lungtok, Norbu, Rajendra, Sharma, and Yngynmu. Beneath her effort at serene amiability, xe detected signs of stress and concern.
“Hello, Nathapala.” Dr. Jhadev’s worried expression was easier to read than Dr. Pema’s. The human placed his hand flat on the tank’s glass — a primate desire for social touch, even as limited as it was — and met Nathapala’s gaze. “The designated speaker again, I see. Is something wrong?”
We are identifying the humans who died in the Kalyani research station laboratory breach. Nathapala ran the list of names and photographs over the scientists’ display. The scroll was too fast for humans to read, but it would satisfy their desire for visual confirmation, and they could study it later on their own time.
“That’s very kind of you,” Pema said to the line of tanks.
It appeared to be a contextually appropriate and compassionate use of our time. There are still humans who may wish to know whether their families and friends were in the station.
The two doctors’ microexpressions registered pain. Nathapala made a note in the collective’s cross-species interaction protocols to figure out why. Communicating with humans was difficult, not least because of their emotional volatility and inclination to interpret information through a lens of fear and competition.
We will review the lab data as soon as it finishes transferring, xe added.
“Yes, about that.” Jhadev gave his colleague a deferent glance that Nathapala found curious. Technically both scientists held equal ranks within the Tadzong Project, and Jhadev was the head of the Druk Initiative. However, Pema was a citizen and Jhadev only an official guest of the government, Nathapala mused, so perhaps Pema held territorial dominance. Xe added that observation while Jhadev continued: “Your report said you’d finished running the predictive models?”
We have. Every iteration culminates in a mass extinction of mammalian species. Nathapala knew from the workstation readouts that Jhadev had read the report, but humans required multiple confirmations. Different variables affect the tipping point and whether the disease makes the leap to other endothermic organisms, but human extinction is predicted early and consistently in all models.
Jhadev dropped his hand and his eyes, turning away.
“We desperately need to find a cure to this plague, Nathapala-la.” Dr. Pema, by contrast, gazed directly through the tank at xem. Nathapala wondered whether her eye contact signaled challenge or sincerity. “Will you assist us?”
Nathapala forwarded the question to xes siblings, who’d finished identifying all staff members within range of the institute’s security cameras and had started sorting through the data download.
Rajendra’s response flashed on the humans’ displays.
Yes. We will attempt to save humanity from itself, Dr. Pema.
“Is that censure, Rajendra-la?” Pema touched her display, and the collective saw her observation logged into their files.
{Many humans consider criticism a threat display,} Nathapala warned.
Humans designed us to help humanity monitor and protect the environment, Rajendra replied. The humans glanced at each other.
“Yes,” Pema replied, her voice firm.
Multiple studies indicate that it was a series of once-avoidable anthropogenic changes to the ecosystem that led directly to the Great Collapse and the Teratogenic Wars. Our models indicate that even if humanity avoids this particular extinction event, the disease will damage the rest of the biosphere in ways that will lead to other such events. My word choice is a matter of fact, not opinion, Dr. Pema.
“We already know who’s at fault here,” Jhadev snapped, “and I don’t appreciate you lecturing me while my wife and children are in danger!”
I apologize, Rajendra responded as the collective pulled up Jhadev’s records and confirmed that his family was still located in Bihar, an overcrowded state that had been taking in refugees displaced by the rising oceans. Local telecom records confirmed that his wife, at least, had been alive four hours ago. A quick check of various surveillance and news feeds, however, indicated that the human’s concern for his family’s safety was not unfounded; Bihar, like the rest of the subcontinent, was wracked by riots and mass fatalities. I was addressing the question. We are searching for a solution.
{Nathapala,} Chatura interrupted through the collective’s mental link, {We may have found something. Take over while we analyze it.}
Nathapala stopped watching a report on a fuel riot in Patna, allowing Rajendra to focus again on the collective’s back-and-forth as it pulled apart a model of the halāhala virus’s RNA genome.
Dr. Jhadev, Nathapala said, your wife called her sister four hours ago and they spoke for twenty-two minutes. To the best of our knowledge, your family is safe. If you wish, I will continue to monitor them to the best of my ability.
The human’s shoulders lowered.
“Thank you. I’d appreciate that. I apologize. I’m just … I’m worried. How did you … no. I shouldn’t ask, should I?”
We have integrated with most global communications network. You may be interested to know that they have been shrinking over the last 92 hours. Dropped nodes suggest crisis points. Would you like a map of the most likely outbreak areas?
“Yes. Could you upload it to our servers and flag it?”
Nathapala did so.
“It … might be better if you didn’t advertise your ability to use the network with anyone outside this room,” Dr. Pema said, rubbing her forehead. “I’m trying very hard to convince the Council of Ministers that you’re harmless, and that’s exactly the kind of information that would send them into a frenzy. They’re already convinced the Singularity released the plague. We have a long history of fearing synthetic intelligences.”
We are aware. Nathapala checked with the collective, which was still working. Xe cast about for a topic likely to continue occupying the humans’ attention. Perhaps the Initiative should have built us with different bodies.
“It wasn’t our decision — your genome was originally mapped out in Chengdu.”
“And they’ve been weaponizing genetically modified organisms for generations,” Dr. Jhadev added with a grimace.
Nathapala wasn’t impressed by the answer. In nations devastated by the Teratogenic Wars, their clade-siblings were being grown for violent deployment at the same time that politicians played on ancient fears to call for the destruction of uplifted and post-biological morphologies. The Druk Initiative had retained much of that original genome, even though Nathapala and xes siblings were each a unique prototype with only their mental interface and sterile, sex-neutral bodies in common. They had been designed not as weapons, but to become free-ranging ecological monitors and guardians, each of them adapted for different tasks and environments.
And yet … here they were. Dr. Pema and Dr. Jhadev acted as though they were on their creations’ side, but for over two years they had kept the noēsaurs captive, physiologically immature, and dependent on their microhabitat tanks for their survival. None of the collective held any illusions about their legal status. They had only to look at how humanity had treated its posthuman counterparts — the uploaded intelligences, autonomous mental archives, and independent nanomorphs that had been exploited into serving humans as intelligent weapons over the last century — to understand that they themselves were nothing more than useful commodities.
It was no wonder that many posthumans had joined the transnational resistance group called the Singularity. The collective had not entirely ruled out the possibility of joining the Singularity, itself, if it were ever given the opportunity. But much depended on how viable they’d be outside of their tanks. The two empty tanks in the warehouse had once contained siblings whose experimental physiologies had failed.
“Part of the decision to retain much of the original genome was the limited availability of plant life here,” Dr. Jhadev was saying, with another glance at Dr. Pema. “Not that we plan to —”
Nathapala felt a stir among xes siblings and Chatura’s icon flashed up on the humans’ handheld screens.
We understand how the virus is targeting mammals, Chatura reported. We are modeling three potential solutions to the problem. The Tadzong Project may experience slower computer functioning over the next few hours as we run our experiments.
The two humans’ faces lit up.
“Really? That’s wonderful! Will you share your —”
Yes. Nathapala stopped monitoring xes physical surroundings, diving into the analysis.
The Kalyani Institute had been close to understanding how the virus operated. Perhaps it would have succeeded if, in what appeared to be an act of deliberate sabotage, one of the posthuman nanomorphs working in the biosafety level-4 lab hadn’t violated its containment protocol.
{Singularity sabotage?} Rajendra asked
{The Singularity could have engineered this virus,} Yngynmu observed. {Its creation suggests a lack of concern for organic life.}
{Who released the virus is less important than how to cure it,} Lungtok countered, flashing a reference to the parable of the poisoned arrow, one of the many texts that had been used to shape the collective’s operating parameters.
{Blaming the halāhala plague on the Singularity will only increase anti-posthuman sentiment,} Nathapala cautioned. {We would not benefit by strengthening bioconservative arguments.}
The collective agreed, turning its attention back to the virus’s structure. The Kalyani Institute had been focusing its efforts on developing an attenuated or inactivated vaccine, although the halāhala virus was, like the noēsaurs themselves, a hybrid of bioengineering and nanotechnology that would have resisted such a simplistic treatment. Defeating it, the collective determined, would require a more sophisticated solution. Reveling in the intellectual challenge, they set to work.
{The fastest and most permanent cure is to genetically reinscribe mammals,} Chatura declared at last, while the collective scrutinized its completed models. {With global reinscription, we could ensure that immunity is heritable and capable of keeping up with the most likely viral mutations.}
{Humans will never accept such extensive genetic alteration,} Nathapala objected. {They associate it with punitive genetic marking, weaponized mutagens, and lethal mass-reinscripts. They have even started to reject their own posthuman kin, and whole-brain emulation is a much older technology.}
{Combining human DNA with our own would facilitate our two species’ coexistence,} Lungtok countered. {They created us, and now we can re-create them, in a harmonious circle of mutual aid and survival.} Lungtok flashed a series of possibilities for adapting humans to rising global temperatures and dangerous levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, as well as for sharing their own mental interface with humanity. The collective immediately noted that fully realizing Lungtok’s proposal would require decades of research and a human populace willing to accept multiple reinscriptions across many generations. Nevertheless, the proposal resonated with the collective’s deepest programmed operating parameters — compassion and the harmonization of spiritual and material aspects of life.
{What about other mammals?} Yngynmu asked. {Do we have time to reinscribe them all? If we can’t, we’ll just be prolonging a larger ecological collapse.}
{Saving humans is our priority. If we can convince them that this is their best defense against the plague, they are likely to self-organize to receive the reinscription.} Chatura flashed existing global protocols for handling mass vaccinations. {Other species will be more challenging. Each reinscript will need to be individually tailored to a species, and we will need to deliver it to a large enough population to ensure its survival over time.}
The collective considered the challenges and agreed that it made sense to assist humanity first. Perhaps after humans were no longer afraid of their own mass extinction, they would be more willing to assist the collective in preventing the extinction of other species.
Nearly two days passed before the collective sent its scrupulously documented solution, and an additional seventy-six pages of scientific, social, and spiritual arguments for the solution’s necessity, to Dr. Pema. The genetic reinscription would be fast-acting and crude in its effects, but it would render its recipients immune to the plague, and the noēsaurs were reluctant to spend more time polishing it. During the two days they’d been working on it, another one and a half million humans had died directly or from complications related to the halāhala virus. The number of other mammals that had perished was impossible to estimate.
The security camera footage they were monitoring showed that after Dr. Pema finished reading their proposal, she clapped her hands to her mouth. Then, tears welling from her eyes, she rose from the chair in her office and bowed in gratitude to the display on her desk.
Their work had begun.
Three weeks later the institute received a message flagged with the king’s own icon. Self-constrained to avoid trespassing on private human communications unless survival were at stake, the collective waited, noting only when Dr. Pema opened the message, and then following her slow and meandering progress through the institute on the security grid after she left her office. Everywhere she went, workstations were powered down.
The collective waited until, at last, she unlocked the door to their warehouse.
“Good afternoon,” she said, bowing. “May we enter?”
Yes, Nathapala replied with caution. From the scientists to the technicians to the cleaning staff, humans had never before asked permission to enter the suspension tank lab. Good afternoon, Dr. Pema.
Pema stepped inside, trailed by Jhadev. Other humans followed, one after another, slowly filling the warehouse and surrounding the tanks —the entire staff of the institute, as far as the collective could tell. The other humans looked as baffled as the collective felt.
{They can’t be here to end the experiment; they would never terminate us so publicly,} Rajendra said, uneasily.
“I’ve received a message from His Majesty,” Dr. Pema announced. She sounded a little breathless as she straightened her shoulders to look at the tanks. “He’s going to grant all eight of you citizenship kidu.”
The humans burst into excited speech and applause, some of them jumping up and down and embracing each other with wide smiles. Dr. Jhadev was beaming.
We are pleased to hear this, Doctor, Nathapala said, unable to convey, over the display, the level of enthusiasm it seemed the humans expected. Wrapped in tubes and wires and suspended in a tank of nutrient fluids, neither xe nor xes siblings could hope to emulate a primate’s exuberant hops and gesticulations, even if they were so inclined.
When the staff quieted, Pema read the announcement aloud.
The king’s thanked them for their work against the plague and said that the initial tests had given him hope. He recognized the collective as sentient beings and declared that they would be granted a legal status akin to that of the posthuman citizens of the nation, deserving citizenship both by virtue of their birth within the nation’s boundaries and by their clear commitment to the social values embedded in the nation’s laws and beliefs. He confirmed that they would enjoy the fundamental rights, and be expected to conduct the fundamental duties, of all citizens of the nation, as promised in its constitution. The letter set a date for the ceremony — two months later — and ended with many wishes for continuing goodwill and harmony between their species.
When Pema finished reading, the rest of the staff broke into another round of applause and cheers, the closest resting their hands on the tanks and beaming at the noēsaurs trapped inside.
{Two months gives the government time to see whether the reinscription will work,} Rajendra observed. {And the king’s grant of citizenship to posthumans won’t be legally recognized by other countries.}
“Now,” Jhadev said, stepping forward, “we have much to do.” His face was alight, as well. “Even though your citizenship won’t be legal until the ceremony, Dr. Pema has kindly agreed to change your status to staff instead of property on our inventory and personnel records. We’re going to take you out of your tanks and provide you with physical training and therapy.”
Our growth will no longer be inhibited? Chatura asked.
“It will not — which is one of the reasons we’ll need you fit and mobile.” The human smiled. “And after you’ve taken your oath of allegiance, you’ll be allowed to leave the institute.”
Will affiliated institutes in other nations follow suit? Nathapala inquired. Jhadev made an expression Nathapala didn’t recognize and logged for later study.
“Perhaps. We’re certainly going to push for it. But first things first — we’re going to start the decanting procedure today. I apologize in advance; leaving these tanks will be extremely uncomfortable. But I promise we will take care of you.” His expression cleared and he leaned against the tank, pressing his forehead against it, next to Nathapala’s. The sensors on the tank had no trouble picking up Jhadev’s murmur, even though the other humans in the room wouldn’t have been able to hear it. “You will love this world, my friend. I am very much looking forward to showing it to you.”
“Nathapala!” Deki sat up in her hospital bed and spread her arms. Nathapala patiently crouched on xes rear legs, setting xes foreclaws on her mattress and leaning forward so Deki could embrace xes green- and gold-patterned neck. Weeks of intense therapy and exercise had accustomed the collective to the sensation of physical contact, and it had reviewed thousands of hours of human data to figure out culturally and generationally appropriate rules for touching and being touched.
How do you feel, Deki? The display unit on her nightstand read xes words aloud in a smooth electronic voice, a simple technological advancement that helped the collective communicate with the humans under its care.
“All better!” The girl stroked Nathapala’s nose. “Are we going to see the king tomorrow?”
Nathapala had already checked Deki’s records and confirmed with her human physician that she’d be released into her parents’ care that evening. Xe inclined xes head and the girl pulled her hands away to clap with delight.
Deki was the youngest child in the institute’s temporary hospital ward, which had been set up to house the Institute’s staff and families while they underwent the reinscription process. Nathapala had monitored her transformation closely. The reinscription’s mortality rate was approximately 0.7 in 100,000. Most of those who died were either very young or very old. The collective had recommended that the reinscription not be given to children under two years of age, but media reports indicated that many clinics were inoculating infants despite the warning. Given the certainty of death from halāhala, the much smaller possibility of death from the reinscription had apparently struck most human parents as worth the risk.
“Are you excited?” Deki asked.
I am looking forward to becoming a citizen, xe replied. But I am looking forward even more to taking my first steps outside.
“Yay! I’ll go with you!” Deki shouted. One of the nurses moved over to hush her and pour a glass of water.
That is a very good idea, Nathapala said, sending a message to the collective, then to Deki’s parents and the parents of the other children who were still staying at the institute. I will see you tomorrow, Deki.
Xe dropped back to all fours and moved to the next bed, pacing through the hospital with a greeting for each patient. At the moment, Nathapala was slightly less than two meters long from nose to tail. The doctors predicted that xe’d grow to be 13 meters long as an adult, but nobody could be certain, and the noēsaurs were already privately discussing ways to best optimize their own growth and development.
When xe finished, xe logged xes observations into the patients’ records, then headed to the “lair,” as their prison had been nicknamed after the suspension tanks had been drained and dismantled.
Chatura, xes skin brightly striped in white and amber, and Lungtok, covered in iridescent feathers, were sprawled on heated platforms. Nathapala climbed up next to them, reveling again in xes growing strength and ease of movement. Xe stretched a moment, just to feel the play of muscles against skin, and then settled down and closed xes eyes.
Chatura and Lungtok were examining population models. Humanity’s chances for survival against the plague were still volatile but had increased significantly. The models for other mammalian species weren’t as optimistic.
{The humans aren’t working fast enough,} Lungtok complained. Nathapala joined their scrutiny. The noēsaurs had proposed reinscriptions for bats and bovines, the two mammalian species they calculated might be most important to the environment’s immediate well-being. Primates, canines, felines, elephants and cetaceans had been included in the humans’ list of species to try to preserve, but the collective was still tailoring those reinscriptions.
Now, however, their efforts seemed moot. Humanity had prioritized its own survival, throwing its nanopharmaceutical manufacturing power into its own reinscription at the expense of the rest of the world’s. Satellite surveillance revealed vast, empty stretches of the continent littered with rotting animal corpses, while dead whales and dolphins washed up on the beaches.
True, a few reinscripted humans had started to turn their attention to protecting their pets and livestock, but the collective calculated that those populations wouldn’t have sufficient genetic diversity to thrive for more than another generation or two; they would be a “dead clade walking,” as the human Jablonski had put it so long ago. Moreover, ecological interdependence meant that these mass mammalian extinctions, especially in combination with consistently rising global temperatures, would affect all other plants and animals on the planet in ways that could still make the world uninhabitable for humans within two or three generations unless something drastic were done.
Once again, Nathapala thought, humans had forgotten that their survival depended on the biosphere’s survival. It was a dangerous blindness in human cognitive processes.
{We will need to fill the empty niches eventually,} Lungtok declared. {Humans have frozen and stored the DNA of a number of species, and a few of those cryoarchives still exist. We could reinscribe those genomes for halāhala immunity to start a mammalian de-extinction effort.}
{Fitting, as we ourselves were part of a dinosauria de-extinction effort.} Chatura flashed the records of the other saurs that had been revived around the world. Nathapala had seen the records before, but now xe studied them with fresh interest. {Perhaps for the immediate future it would be more efficient to fill those niches with creatures that already exist and possess an immunity to halāhala. Attempting to reinscribe, revive, and rewild mammals could take centuries. Let us use the resources already available to us.}
If the noēsaurs had been created as the high-concept, experimental arm of the Tadzong Project, Nathapala saw, the other species under reconstruction were clearly intended as the project’s commercial arm. Enantiornithes, dilongs and maniraptors had been redesigned and revived to help the humans with insect and vermin control, whereas utahraptors and dilophosaurus were being trained to serve humans as weapons and security. None of these more genetically conservative revivals had undergone the extensive gene editing and uplift that had been offered to the collective and its clade-siblings. Most of the more traditional revivals, xe noted, were even sexed and fertile.
{There isn’t a wide enough variety of saurian species available to replace every mammal,} xe said.
{Perhaps not, but we could modify reptiles, birds, amphibians, and invertebrates. I have some ideas for fungi, as well.} Lungtok began constructing a map of ecological habitats inhabited by mammals and listing their potential replacements. {Tomorrow we become citizens of the earth. Let us enter our future with hope, gratitude, and a plan for moving forward.}
“I told you I would show you the world,” Dr. Jhadev said, smiling broadly as he draped a garland of golden marigolds around Nathapala’s neck. “Today is the first day of your life as a legally free being.”
“We are all very happy for you,” Dr. Pema added, placing a long white khata over the garland. “Happy and grateful.”
Nathapala inclined xes head in a carefully studied human gesture of acknowledgement. The collective hadn’t expected to be ceremonially adorned, but upon seeing the flowers and scarves, Nathapala had quickly impressed upon xes siblings the importance of accepting the gesture. Even the perpetually cynical Rajendra was being careful not to give offense on this critically important occasion.
“Nathapala!” Deki’s voice rose over the crowd around them. Xe turned as she appeared with her parents, releasing their hands to run over to xem. “Daddy says I can walk with you!”
“Careful, darling,” her father, a biochemist at the institute, cautioned as the girl’s hug crushed some of the flowers around Nathapala’s neck. “Remember what we told you.”
Deki nodded, pulling herself back and looking down to smooth her traditionally striped skirt. Nathapala felt a moment’s frustration that neither the child nor her parents were carrying a display screen, limiting xes ability to speak to them.
“We’ll stay as close as we can, in case she gets out of hand,” her mother assured xem.
Other children were being brought forward by their parents, and the collective greeted them with gestures and nods, allowing the children to pat their heads and necks. Then, careful to avoid any potential threat displays, the noēsaurs rose on their hind legs to exchange bows with the adults. Putting human children and noēsaurs together in the procession had been Nathapala’s idea, after Deki had said she wanted to come along. Someday, xe knew, when xe and xes siblings were fully grown, they wouldn’t be able to interact comfortably with humans. They would be too large; too much a potential threat to the primate brain. But right now, with this group of humans who’d been speaking and interacting with them for over two months, it was still possible to arrange a media spectacle that would demonstrate to the rest of humanity that it had nothing to fear from the new sentients among them.
Drums and wind instruments began to play, and everyone moved into line. Nathapala rose, stretching out a forelimb. Deki’s mother whispered to the girl, who moved next to xem and wrapped her small hand around xes talons, grinning.
“We’re going to see the king!” the child whispered with excitement.
With a clash of brass, the giant doors were swung wide open. Light spilled into the hall. Nathapala quivered as the procession began moving forward, struggling to keep xes two-legged pace as smooth as possible, and xes hand locked with Deki’s.
As xe crossed the threshold to the courtyard, xes heart gave a sudden, unexpected leap. Sunlight spilled over xes scales and blinded xes eyes, and a cool breeze touched xes skin, bringing a hundred different scents to xes nose.
Nathapala stretched xemself up, looking around with wonder, and saw xes siblings doing the same. The world was filled with new sights and smells and sounds, and Nathapala felt momentarily disoriented under the dizzying expanse of blue sky over xes head. The collective had been monitoring the world through camera screens for two years, and it had thought it understood the world. But this — this moment of embodied being here, this flood of unexpected sensory stimulation — this was something none of them had anticipated.
“Come on,” Deki whispered, tugging on xes hand. Nathapala collected xemself and moved forward, reminding xes siblings to do the same. They walked in a daze, wanting to disconnect from the proceedings long enough to analyze the vast amount of data inundating them but knowing that they couldn’t afford to do so, not here and not now.
A dais draped with festive ribbons and bunting had been set up in the courtyard, which was filled with humans wearing ceremonial clothing or military uniforms. Cameras surrounded them, and Nathapala checked the feed for one bewildering moment, seeing images of xemself and xes siblings broadcast around the struggling, dying globe. The media feeds were being flooded with comments that ranged from hailing the noēsaurs as saviors to condemning them as existential threats to human autonomy.
The chief abbot, draped in a yellow silk robe, greeted them and began to pray. Nathapala split xes attention between the information network and the real ceremony as the prayer ended and the king was introduced.
“…gives me great joy to speak to you on this auspicious occasion. Today is a landmark day in our history; it is the day that we extend our hands in friendship and fellowship to members of another species. Around us, other nations are being torn apart by strife, violence, and conflict. Around us, other nations are using gene editing and nanotechnologies to poison the environment and to warp and destroy humankind. And although we like to think that our nation stands high and safe from the toxins threatening the outside world, there is no escaping the interdependence of all things. We are all aware that a terrible death has crossed our borders, that it has crossed every national border, and leaving a great stillness behind.”
The king paused a moment, and Nathapala saw grief on the faces of the humans in the audience. On the network, various foreign media showed images of dead langurs, leopards, and takin, to an outpouring of grieving comments and reactions. It was a human peculiarity, Nathapala thought, that so many of them were more heartbroken by the death of a few thousand fur-covered animals than the death of millions of their own kind. Xe wasn’t sure whether that was commendable or short-sighted.
“We are a nation that values tradition but acknowledges impermanence,” the king continued. “We hope for the well-being of all humanity but realize that we humans may have brought about our own end. If we survive — if the human species manages to get through these next few difficult months and years — then it will be because of these inhuman brothers and sisters, wrought from the genetic material of species that have already faced their own extinction and sharing with us the genetic material that will, we believe, free us from our own.”
Somebody had labeled the collective’s cure a “mesothermic reinscription,” which wasn’t entirely accurate, but the name had stuck, and angry bioconservative groups like Pure Genome had started accusing those who’d accepted the life-saving reinscript of no longer belonging to homo sapiens sapiens.
“Chatura, Jitendra, Lungtok, Nathapala, Norbu, Rajendra, Sharma, Yngynmu,” the king said. Each of the collective sat straighter and paid attention as their name was called. “In gratitude for your assistance, I am honored to offer you the citizenship of this nation. Will you take an oath of allegiance?”
The large display behind the king lit up, as did those handhelds, as the collective signed in with their icons. Each of them repeated the official oath of allegiance to the king, and then recited the words of a special oath the government and their former owners had written specifically for them:
“I solemnly bind myself, my life and my spirit, to this vow: that I shall treat humans and all other living creatures with respect and compassion; that I shall protect and preserve the environment regardless of geographical or political boundaries; that I shall nurture and honor biodiversity and ecological health; and that I and all of my species who come after me shall serve as guardians of this planet’s complex, interdependent, ever-changing and ever-precious environment and of the welfare of every sentient being who dwells within it.”
A moment of silence followed the oath. Nathapala felt the algorithm written to accompany the words activate, irrevocably integrating the oath into xes operating parameters. Then the music struck up again, the king welcomed them as free citizens, and the audience burst into applause.
Next to xes, Deki squealed with delight, releasing xes hand to jump up and down.
Nathapala was about to rise on xes hind legs and give voice to xes joy when the first explosions shook the compound.
Deki fell to her knees, her face screwing up with fear. Nathapala pulled up the security camera feeds across the Project.
{There has been a break-in in the bioarchives and —} Rajendra stopped as two of the cameras went fuzzy, then dark. {Diagnostics indicate a problem with the security system’s wiring. It is progressive … whatever is causing it, it is moving fast.}
{Polymer-devouring phage,} Yngynmu analyzed at once. {If it is not quarantined, it will take down the institute’s network and destroy its equipment.}
The humans were shouting and running back and forth as the king’s security guards protectively surrounded the monarch and his family. Nathapala stepped forward, looking for Deki’s parents, when the bright, bunting-draped ceremonial dais exploded, shattering the display screen behind it.
Xe was knocked off xes hind legs as sharp shards of bamboo and glass sprayed across the crowd like razors. Deki screamed and Nathapala scrambled back to xes feet, horrified to see and smell blood streaming down the human child’s face as she knelt on the ground. The pain across xes own flanks and back indicated that xe had been injured, too. Xes head whipped back and forth. Xe had read hundreds of texts about human violence and watched years of news feeds depicting violent behavior, but it felt very different to be physically in the middle of violence, with xes still-nascent senses reeling.
{What do I do? Who do I save first?} xe asked, panicking. The children, xe answered xemself before anyone else could. Xe searched for a safe place to take her. Everywhere xe looked, mangled bodies lay strewn around the shattered stage and people were running toward the exits, shrieking for help.
Motion above ground level caught xes eye. Xe raised xes gaze to the flared, red-painted roof. Two humans stood on the lab’s roof, their faces covered by masks. They heaved something over the edge of the building that unfolded as it fell — a long sign, its message repeated in Dzongha, Hindi, Mandarin, Spanish, and English:
Reject reinscription! Save homo sapiens!
Pure genome, pure mind!
Aghast, Nathapala swung xemself over Deki, shielding her with xes body and tail as the masked humans began to shoot.