Slowly, I started to feel heat. Nothing more - but pleasant nonetheless. Slowly, I opened my eyes, but I couldn't see anything except for weak, indistinct light coming from all sides at once. Too weak to actually see anything. At the first moment, I didn't even realize that I should be dead. Unfortunately - I was. Although my eyes were wide opened, I couldn't see anything. This was disturbing. I was crouched with my knees under the chin and arms crossed on my chest, but when I tried to free myself, my elbows found something that resisted. I was carefully trying to find what's going on, but it looked like I was encased in some sort of plastic bag or what. I still felt as if I was underwater - I wasn't actually choking, but the increasing feeling of being constrained was getting more terrible every second. I was never claustrophobic, but this was simply unbearable. At least if it would persist for a long time. I tried my elbows, no luck. I tried to push with my legs, but the plastic bag that enclosed me was very durable. It was like rubber, it pushed back and squeezed me even harder. I felt myself panicking. I tried to
break through the bag by sticking my fingers in the front, like
two battering rams or blunt knives; who knows why did I decide
to do just that, but it was the right thing to do, and I felt
the durable material giving way at last. I did it again,
with all my force - and suddenly one of my arms got through
a crack outside, and then the other. I swinged in the
space, I grabbed the edges of the crack and completely tore
the plastic. Feverishly, I was pushing outside, my arms,
then my head. Finally I freely breathed in and opened my
eyes wide open.
I was lying in a giant wire basket, carefully laid with some sort of blanket. The torn dark-green casing I just escaped from was leaking slime. I was covered in it, but it didn't feel unpleasant in any way. I didn't really mind. Light shone on me from above, but not sunlight - it came from two large light fixtures on the ceiling. Puzzled, I looked around the big hall with bare concrete walls painted green. For a while, I coughed in spasms. Some mucus came out of me, the air around me was hot, but I was breathing freely, and that was the most important thing right now. After all, the coughing stopped in a minute. I wanted to get the slime out of my eyes, but as I was doing that, my hand appeared in my field of vision. I bulged my eyes - and I had a good reason to. This - is surely not a human hand! For one thing, it's violet, for another, there are only three fingers opposing the thumbs, not our, for third, the shape is completely different - nonhuman! I was turning my hand in front of my eyes as much as I could. I couldn't believe I'm really seeing my own hand. "Oh, Mr. Prague Man has hatched!" said someone behind me. I immediately turned around after the voice. What I've seen did nothing to calm me down. There was a giant man, at least four metres tall, with inhumanly green face and green hands, like wassermann from the fairy tales. "My God!" I gasped. And I felt, once again, as having suffered a punch between the eyes. I was almost knocked down by my own voice - I never expected something as squeaky as that. "Well, Mr. Míča, according to your documents, you used to be a biologist," said the green giant, altogether ignoring my consternation. I didn't answer. I didn't consider tactful him talking about me in past tense. Why, I am doctor of biology! "That is very pleasant," he continued. He was speaking in normal conversation voice, as if nothing strage was happening. "At least we can talk on expert themes. I have nobody here to chat with. Heavens themselves might send you to me." "Who are you anyways?" I blurted - but again, it was so squeaky I got shivers. "My name is Jaroš, Dr. Karel Jaroš," said the green man. "You're a biologist, maybe you've heard something about me." "I've never heard about you!" I squeaked with clearly hostile tone. "I've never seen a doctor so big or so green! Why, you're not even human!" "You'll get soon used to that," he said. "From now on, you will live among green men. To make it clear, dear collegue, I am not an extraterrestrial, although I might look that way to you. My skin coloration is normal, even a bit paler than average in this country, as I spend lots of my time in places where sun never shines. Of course you would see me a little bit in the green tone, but you will just have to come to terms with that - as many others did." "You are periwinkle-green!" I told him animously. "That's because your eyes have changed," he explained. "Your visual range has shifted, and even broadened. Grass and tree leaves will look blue to you, human faces green, and red poppies clear yellow. You can see further in both infrared and ultraviolet part of the spectrum. That's no defect, it's just a feature. "What did you do to me, you space monsters!" I squeaked. "What? Space monsters? I assure you that I am human, Czech even. On the other side, you are now a creature looking just right for it to come from outer space. But never mind that." His yellow lips widened in an amused smile. Well, he was sure amused, I wasn't. I was silent with a scowl. "I think that maybe you could tell me how did you manage to mangle yourself like that!" He was speaking calmly and to the point. "Nobody can identify you by anything else than the documents we will have to send with your body." "With my body?" "Yes, with your body, made into sausage meat," he continued, and now his voice was significantly stricter. "Just so you know, Mr. Míča, you had an accident. Maybe you remember that, unless your memories have gone. You was mangled as well as your car, and no doctor could put you back together. Would you like to see what's left? Get out of that basket, you are surely all right and in full force - and look here!" I lifted myself up - and looked where the giant green doctor pointed at. Next to the basket, there was something big on the ground. Covered by a sheet. Once the doctor peeled it away a bit, I cried in terror. It was a human body. Giant, like the doctor, but fortunately not of that terrible green color. It was much more yellow, nearly ochre. But it was terribly mangled. Right arm was completely missing, legs from knees down were gone, the stomach was torn and flat - no innards, obviously. The head was lacking hair, eyes, nose, and teeth. It would be quite hard to recognize the original face. "Oh yes! That is you!" said the doctor. "This? This - torso?" I shivered. "Of course," he nodded. "Can't recognize yourself? Well, that's what you get for being hasty! You were going like crazy, and you didn't notice that the water brought down part of the road. You Prague people only ever drive hastily - and this is how it ends. Of course you've succeeded - you suicide!" "That's not true!" I squeaked and in a desperate voice I started to explain to the green doctor that I was driving slowly, I stopped in time, and then the road gave way under my car, which can be hardly my fault. "All right, maybe it wasn't your fault," said the doctor. "It's possible, no problem, I'm taking that suicide back; still, it looked like that on the first look. You've improved your standing with me a lot - but wherever you got there via your own fault or just a quirk of fate, you had very bad luck. When they brought you, you were dead, mincemeat even, noone could do anything about you" "But... what am I going to..." I was stuttering squeakily. "Look, dear colleague: you can accept what happened to you either as gross misjustice of the fate you can't do anything about either way, or - a new chance in your life." "Chance in my life? What do you mean?" "What I say. I'm not claiming that you were reborn; you should know best that you hatched from an egg a short while before. In short, you are - a newt. But you are still alive, only in a body that's a bit... simpler." "That's impossible!" I blurted out. "You can look at yourself, we have a mirror in the next room," he offered. I didn't answer. It was too unreal for me to believe. "Of course you are interested in what happened to you after you died," he continued in calming voice. "I have explained it enough times to recite it in my sleep, but you might be the first person to actually understand. Of course I'm not going to start with the moment you fell in dirty, raging water, it all started much earlier. I hope you can still remember what DNA is." "Of course," I answered. "As long as you mean the base of heritability and not some other abbreviation." "Excellent, that is what I meant," said the doctor. "This makes everything easier. And surely you've heard about cloning, right? It's simple thing compared to what I'm doing here, but we can start explanations here. As a biologist, you're sure to know something, you are not some countryside bum." "Who wouldn't know? But I wouldn't dare to claim it's simple," I opposed. "As far as I know, top scientific laboratories of the world are working on it for years." "But all they do is transferring DNA from one source to another. To egg cell that develops according to inputted information." "Isn't that enough for you? It's amazing by itself." "It's not enough! What's that difficult on transferring completed DNA? I did that twenty years before that first sheep. But I never published it because I wouldn't be able to work in peace." "Why didn't you publish? If you're right, you would be the first person in the world who did that! But if you did it, and didn't publish, all the fame went to those who caught up with you! Why should anyone believe you now?" "Look, dear colleague," he frowned a bit, "what's there in fame? My goal was much grander - and to reach it, I overcame much more complicated obstacles before I got to important successes." "Like what?" I asked, disbelieving. "Like yourself, dear colleague!" he ensured me. "Isn't your new life enough? And it's life in a body of creature that never appeared on Earth in billions of years!" "Never?" I blinked. "Never!" said the doctor calmly. "I repeat, you became a newt. Not an ordinary newt, not even a cloned one, do you understand? That would be nothing, everyone is cloning these days, but they all use completed DNA borrowed from elsewhere. Not me! I have made up even your DNA!" "Made it up?" I repeated, not understanding. "That's right - made it up," he calmed me down with his voice. "Not to the last detail, that's not even in human abilities to memorize, but what would be the computers for, then? I have directed everything, starting with first primitive bacteria to the current goal - my newt children! I became a creator of different kind of life, even capable of sentience. Now you are my creation - intelligent newt Salamandra Sapiens, do you understand?" "The nature got further then you." I simply couldn't refrain from jabbing. "Nature!" he smirked. "Nature had billions of years, it left us mountains of trash - aren't the limestone rocks often formed from tiny shells? - but I - I have started just thirty years ago, and today? In thirty years I got not only to protobacteria, but to creatures capable of bearing intelligence! Do you understand me? I have thought you up, every one of your cells!" "Yes, but I am... or used to be... human?" "Yes," nodded the doctor. "Unfortunately, you have died - putting the way it happened aside. I let you reside in one of the bodies that was soon to hatch. Don't think I couldn't do it without you. I would simply get a new newt, like three more before you this week. There will be more after you, it's just that there's more to do with them. They have to be raised from beginning like human babies. On the other side, they don't pine for their human bodies, as they never were humans in the first place. There is an upside and downside of everything." "But how come that..." "Of course I can do much more than just transfer pre-made DNA like those fools who are proud about their stupid sheep," he smiled. "Today, I can transfer - or clone, if you want - not just information how a creature is supposed to look, but even information that most of religions calls 'soul' - the faint, fleeting weave of thoughts in heads of sentient beings. I've never seen a human soul, but I'm certain I know more about it than others. I like the comparation to holography the most. Have you ever seen one? On the first look it's regular gray board - by the way, it's the same color as human brain cortex is traditionally supposed to have - but that ugly gray matter contains incredible amount of information. With holography, 3D images, with brain - memories. Everything - since early childhood to very old age - sometimes we surprise ourselves with what we remember. Not just with humans 'Homo Sapiens'! My newt, Salamandra Sapiens might be less complex in its body, but it is capable of sentience, you can easily test it with yourself. Human soul can be copied - like a photograph. The neccessary machinery is three orders more complex, but not even that is beyond human abilities today. "You mean - you have copied me - like in a copier machine?" "If such a primitive comparation works for you - sure. Of course it's really much more complicated, but you have to admit it is possible - otherwise we couldn't chat amicably like that, right?" "So I have to stay as - a newt - my whole life?" I blurted out something I have only now worked out. "Unfortunately - yes," he nodded in agreement. "You lived your first life as a human until your death, but that has already passed. In your next life, until you die again, you will be a newt. You've never heard about reincarnation? The followers of certain religions count on this since ancient times. They would likely tell you: 'Be glad you're not a worm.' Fortunately I'm much further than that, the evolutionary stage of worms was surpassed about twelve years ago. They wiggled to all corners of the lab... today we feed them to frogs, but that's not important right now... Of course, a worm neural system doesn't allow for intelligence, they don't have a brain. If you don't like the perspective of a newt's life, I'll tell you one thing - wait until I manage to create something better. But don't ask me to give you back your original, human body - as you can see, that one is down for the count. He peeled the sheet back a bit again. I understood - slowly, but surely. My human life has ended. I've died in the wreck of my car and raging waters... I was feeling powerless, like I was standing in front of unjust, prejudiced trial whose sentence can't be appealed. So I am dead - and yet alive, though... is this really a life? How could I get used to notion so absurd? A life in a body of animal, more to the point - an artificial one? "See, dear colleague," said the doctor, "you can't take it to heart like that." Since I was silent, he started with the calming tone again. "As a human, you might have some plans, but with your death, you've lost those. Sad thing to happen, but neither you nor me can change that. Your family will cry, bury or cremate your body and forget - in time. You're simply dead, period, amen. Nobody of your friends and acquaintances will probably ever know that you're still alive - don't tell me you will come to them as a newt and you'll want them to take you back. If not for me, your life would end for good. Now, you've been reborn, or hatched to be more precise. There is a new life awaiting you." "Life of an animal?" I moaned. "Please, don't say 'animal'." He shook his head. "Animals don't think. You are a sentient being - not a human, but on a similar level. The question is how the original human society will accept you, my children, but whatever will happen, newts are reality, they exist and they think like humans - I think they have the same right to live as Homo Sapiens. But you can be ensured you're not in this alone. You are one of many - before you, I have revived several dozens of former humans, you'll meet them soon enough!" |
26.12.2005 10:41
