Homosapien, noun of Latin Origin.

            Describing our late ancestors of the Hominidae family.

            See also: Human, wise man, extinct.

Earth, noun of Anglo-Saxon origin.

            The name of the origin planet of our late ancestor, Homosapien.

            See also: Terra, Gaia, Nchi, Tellus, home.

I scanned through the data package projected onto my holograph; a series of mind-numbing definitions and quotations. My crewmates and I, twenty of us in total, sat around a three-dimensional projection of the planet Earth. The crisp cadences of a digital female voice narrated the geography and topography of the planet – what remained of its oceans; how the great Pacific garbage patch now dwarfed the total land mass; the toxicity of its atmosphere.

Despite much protest, protocol mandated we are taught of our origin planet and our late ancestors who inhabited it. Two hundred and sixteen generations had passed since departure. No one on the ship had ever breathed unrecycled, unfiltered oxygen, nor felt anything but the coolness of metal beneath their feet.

“ – and here we see what was once the continent of Asia. The original land mass has become fractured due to the natural movement of the tectonic plates,” the voice continued on.

I felt no connection to this world nor its inhabitants. The tragedy which befell them stirred nothing within me, only a faint irritation that I should be required to sit here and waste time which could be better spent on ship maintenance. The oxygen saturation in corridor 2C had dropped half a percentage, the unknown cause an un-scratchable itch in the back of my mind.

“It took just fifty years for a species with a population density of twelve billion to be brought to the brink of total extinction.” I groaned at the thought of the monologue that would ensue, a speech written over four hundred years ago that we could all quote verbatim.

“The United Federation for Homosapien survival created ‘The Womb’, a ship that would deliver the remains of a dying race to a new home planet, Rossetta 25B. A journey which would take an approximate three thousand years, delivering us to a place where humanity could not only survive, but thrive –.”

The voice abruptly died with a static whine from the overhead speaker.

“Well, that’s quite enough of that,” Armstrong said, the wiring to the audio system dangling from his fist. The crew all chuckled in relief.

The projection of Earth continued to rotate, casting their faces in a pale-blue glow. Crewmate Baldwin, the youngest of us, began fiddling with the interface, zooming in on aerial satellite footage dated back hundreds of years. The projection flickered between a series of cities, towns, and faces as he furiously swiped.

“Hairless apes,” he muttered. “It’s a wonder that they managed to scrape together the intelligence to build this ship. Just look at them!”

I shuffled forward in my seat, trying to focus my eyes on the series of flickering projections.

“Look at that one!” he exclaimed, his voice nasal and sour. He zoomed in on the footage of an old man holding the hand of a young boy. “It’s unnatural, subjecting that poor child to the sight of him. He should have volunteered himself for expiration.”

“They had no such thing,” I replied coldly. The hours were getting later and I would be obliged to stay until his little tirade was over. His youth made him impetuous, and despite everyone’s annoyance, it was a flaw we collectively entertained.

“So what? They just had to wait until their bodies decayed enough to let them die? But that’s so primitive.”

“It was natural to them.” Tiring of the history lesson, I went to the main control panel and switched off the projector. Baldwin looked up in a huff, inflating his chest as if to say something before he was cut off.

“Any updates on the situation in corridor 2C Vera?” Armstrong inquired.

“That’s a negative sir,” I replied. “The Nanobots have been unable to locate a cause as of yet.”

“Well then, I think it best we move to address that as soon as possible,” his eyes searched the room, looking for disagreement.

“Yes sir,” we all answered, even Baldwin, though his disappointment was evident.

The crew all filed out of the room, murmuring between themselves, leaving me in silence. I flicked the projector back on, the room once again saturated by the blue glow of Earth.

Walking around the projection, I observed the contours of its land masses, pausing at what once had been, around two thousand years ago, Germany. Using my thumb and forefinger, I zoomed the image in further, revealing a street somewhere in a city that no longer existed, situated in a country that is now nothing more than a wasteland.

Zooming in further, the crooked body of an old woman filled the screen. It was a strange sight to see. Nobody onboard the Womb had ever lived past the age of forty-five, with most choosing to expire at their thirty-fifth year when the body was no longer at its optimum. She looked so different to us. We had adapted and evolved for space travel. Her eyes, compared to ours, were narrow and too close together, her body short and stubby. Over the years, our bodies had become elongated, as the gravitational forces compressing our joints and suppressing growth had lessened. The wrinkled skin of her face had been both darkened and aged by the sun, reaching an almost olive complexion. Whereas we, without sunlight, are so pale that the network of veins is visible beneath our skin.

Could we even consider ourselves to be human anymore? Would the womb deliver the last of a dying species, or a completely new one?

•  

The artificial night approached quickly, but I found sleep to be elusive. Lying back across my bed, I stared up at the dull metallic ceiling. The haziness of my reflection stared back, a formless smudge of beige and shadow. Sleep approached slowly before swallowing me in its waves, engulfing me in the watery haze of mangled consciousness.

I felt my body retreat into a numb stillness. Only my mind remained aware – a flickering light in a vacant house. I stretched out but felt only the heaviness of unmoving limbs. The room contracted and expanded around me as if breathing. I thought myself a particle of dust caught within a great metal lung, about to be exhaled into the cold depths of deep space.

My still and silent twin stared down at me, and I at her. From that blurred formlessness emerged the solidity of geometry, of line and shape. Sweat beaded and trickled across my brow. I attempted to scream but felt only the faint exhale of breath catching on my bottom lip.

The ship was silent other than the faint hum of machinery. Calming myself, I thought of my crewmates sleeping in their own ports. I thought of Baldwin, of Vera and Lovelace. I thought of Rossetta 25B, of the great grassy plains, rich fertile soil, breathable air. I thought of rain, and song, and fire, and dreams.

Dreams. One of the few things that connected us to our late ancestors. No matter how much we optimized our brain functions, we still dreamed. Our ancestors believed that dreams were messages from the divine, or from their own ancestors, long dead, held silent within the womb of the earth. They believed them to be sacred, to be studied for each pearl of wisdom formed in the mysteries of sleep. But we now know what it really is.  Random neuronal firing producing a series of unconscious associations in the mind of the sleeper. It was chemistry, neurones and synapses, transmitters and astrocytes. I pictured the chemical processes, mapped out the interactions between stabilisers and inhibitors, the folding of proteins and the crossing of channels. But still, she stared at me. Her mouth a thin-set line of stone.

Fear gripped me as I felt the faint brush of fingertips across my cheek. I saw in my reflection a pair of withered hands without owner, lazily tracing the contours of my face. With the tenderest affection, they tucked my fringe behind my ear, and I saw in myself a wide-eyed terror.  I watched as they pinched my cheeks and then pulled with a violent ferocity. Grabbing at my skin, twisting and tugging it loose, until it sagged away from the bone. My hair lightened to a cold grey, before eventually falling away, leaving only tufts of wool-like clumps. I saw myself ancient and haggard, the wrinkled face of an old woman. Only then did the hands disappear.

I watched tears gather and well, spilling down the etchings of wrinkled skin.

Darkness bled into colour, and colour into form. The vague outlines of both humans and animals appeared like pencil sketches. Before me, I saw the blur of a thousand faces. Youth sagging into age, age crumbling into ash. I witnessed the glow of childhood turn bitter and despondent; the acceptance of age contort into resentment.

I saw the bloated bellies of starvation, gaunt faces and bulging eyes protruding from their skulls. Their mouths were full of teeth like great white tombstones, as if the flesh had shrunk around them, giving them horse-like prominence.  I smelt the repugnancy of excess: the fruit which was left to rot on its branches, the grain that was allowed to spoil.

I watched as the first common ancestor between man and ape lifted a stick to the sky, and I stared in wonder as it took off. A rocket destined for the stars. Empires formed and fell like the crashing of waves upon the shores of history, leaving only trinkets of proof that they were ever there at all.

I saw a crooked old woman bent over with age, hair like a crown of wiry grey tufts, pulling a primitive wooden plough. I could feel the grit of dirt on her fingers, could smell the scent of raw upturned earth.

I heard the song of man from the squeals of infancy to the groans of death, and I felt myself cry with them. Their voices were my voice, and my voice was theirs.

I am they. They are me. They go before me, behind me, and within me, for we are born of the same dust.

Humanity lives on in us, sons of Adam and daughters of Eve.

My heart pounded furiously inside my chest, the beating of a drum, chanting, singing, dancing, and then – silence. The dull grey ceiling. An empty room. Bedsheets twisted around my legs. I felt clammy and hot, the nausea of fitful sleep settling in. I sat up, rubbing my eyes with the heels of my palms until my vision blurred.

Stumbling over to the sink, I splashed my face with cold water. Forming a bowl with my hands, I gulped it down, water trickling down my chin. I looked at my reflection in the mirror and saw the dark circles of sleeplessness bruising my skin. Tracing the contours of my face with the pads of my fingertips, I looked at myself in a way I had never – as a stranger.

Then I saw them, the faintest lines jutting out from my eye, like the foot impressions of a small bird. I saw them, and I smiled.

A.M.B. is a Creative Writing and English Literature student in her third year at York St John University.