For daemonmuses.

[acts_of_gord]

"After man there would be the mighty beetle civilisation, the bodies of whose members the cream of the Great Race would seize when the monstrous doom overtook the elder world. Later, as the earth's span closed, the transferred minds would again migrate through time and space -- to another stopping place in the bodies of the bulbous vegetable entities of Mercury. But there would be races after them, clinging pathetically to the cold planet and burrowing to its horror-filled core, before the utter end."

-H. P. Lovecraft

Seattle Public Library
Ballard Branch
July 22nd, 1992

The illustrated Man After Man sat open to the last page on Gordon's lap. He half expected it to bite him.

"That's the most revolting thing I've ever read," he finally murmured, not quite ready to close the book. That would require touching it.

"Why did you finish it?" Sati murmured, the daemon's voice just barely audible in his left ear. She'd clambered out of her test tube after about the second chapter. Even that tiny layer of glass was still a barrier, and she knew when her human needed her direct contact.

"I don't-" He shook his head. "I don't know. I thought it would get better. I don't know."

"At least somebody survived?" Sati suggested. "The deep-dwellers? That's a start, right?"

"I'm not sure they deserved to survive, frankly," Gordon muttered. "I don't think anybody in this book deserved it. Humanity did that to themselves on purpose."

"You can't blame a whole species for the crimes of their ancestors," Sati pointed out. "Just because the people who created the Aquatics figured out how to modify people to be born without daemons-"

"Anybody who can do that on purpose doesn't deserve a future!" Gordon burst out. Across the room, the librarian's genet daemon chattered angrily at him; he lowered his voice. "What kind of person makes human beings into animals- monsters- just to prove a principle?"

"You know your history, Gordon. Human beings've done terrible things in the name of science before."

"Not like that," Gordon murmured, shuddering. "Not like this. Hurting people's one thing. Destroying part of human nature forever…"

"I know," Sati answered. "I know. "

"People who can do that don't deserve to live." Gordon closed the book and rose to his feet; he wanted it as far from himself as possible, because if he had to hang onto it much longer, he'd be throwing it across the room.

Comments

[vance_prime]

[ooc: Now I'm wondering if Breen would claim that the loss of daemons is a desirable state, as part of the whole fight against "instinct and superstition"...]

[acts_of_gord]

[OOC: I'm almost certain that that would be the criterion for turning the reproductive cycle back on, regardless of his claims about immortality.]

[midnightlurker.livejournal.com]

(OOC: I liked (and still have) After Man, but Man After Man was just squicktastic.

...I hear Dixon had a hand in an After Man-like Discovery series. Need to check that out.)

[acts_of_gord]

(OOC: I've seen After Man in stores, and paged through it once or twice. It looks fascinating. Man After Man engenders the same fascination in me that the teratology section of the medical school library did when I was in college. Namely: probably safe to look through once or twice, but best not to stay there very long.)