One Last Evolution

A Brief History

   When the science of biocybernetics first came to light, it was viewed as the Next Step in human evolution. Imagine a chip, inserted surgically into your hippocampus, that reconstructs itself and your neural pathways, so that whatever was on the chip is now integrated into your brain. You wanted to learn to knife fight? You now know how to knife fight. A chip inserted into your pituitary gland could give you the extra two inches of height you'd been wanting. A chip put into a criminal's medulla could ensure that she could be instantly taken care of if she ever attempted another crime.

At first, most people were thrilled by this new technology; at the futures it promised. When the first free chip, NeurEvo1, was made available to the general public, over three million people flocked to the clinics for their evolution.

Then people started to notice that those who had spoken out against the chips were disappearing. A college student at a community college stole a chip out of a lab and took it home to study. His article about the frightening array of nondisclosed functions on the chip was erased off of all public databanks so quickly that almost no one read it. Those that did were strongly advised to forget about it, and soon no one remembered it at all.

The college student was killed in an accident a week later.

Over time, there were fewer and fewer who refused to join the Evolution. They became a small fringe society, carefully monitored and allowed very few freedoms.

The rest of the world sprinted further and further toward a more perfect evolution, until World War III began. The countries fought tooth and claw over and with their new resources, until one decided to deploy a very specific sort of EMP over New York city.

The EMP did what it was designed to do, and fried the circuits of every active chip. It should have killed every evolved human in the city, but instead their brains' functions increased. The effects of the chips were unchanged. Science was at a loss for words, but all countries involved in the war proceeded to deploy the N-EMPS over every major city on the globe.

When the war ended, the world was split into three factions. Unevolved, who had never had the chip; Puras, who had escaped the N-EMPS and whose chips still functioned as intended; and Cybio, whose chips had been permanently melded with their brains.

The real shock came a few years later, when people realized that the children of Cybios were inheriting the traits on the chips. Women who had used the chip to alter their hair or eye color passed those traits to their children instead of their original genes. Men who had heightened their sense of sight had children who could see clearly for miles.

Society suffered intensely after the repeated shocks, and many ruins left by the war were not repaired. Cities all over were left in rubble, and those left standing had to find new ways to survive.

Cybios and Puras distrusted each other, and built new, fortress-like cities on the ruins of the old, where they were free to continue their experiments in relative peace, or wage petty wars on each other for meager resources.

Many Unevolved fled to the wilderness, where they lived in hidden places and trained to defend themselves against Cybio bands of raiders. Others came to the Evolved cities and attempted to build homes in the fringes, but Pura Cities enacted laws requiring all Unevolved to be implanted with NeurEvo13 or leave. Most left.

The Cybio allowed Unevolved over twenty years of age to bind themselves to Cybio masters in exchange for shelter and protection, and offered a sort of citizenship to those with the money to pay for it.

Those who were ineligible to apply for patronage (mainly orphans and runaways, and Unevolved children existing beyond the quota) were forced to fend for themselves, and created a society of roving bands. They lived in the ruined suburbs of cities, and if they survived to the age of twenty, they were free to apply for patronage.