Humanity Alone

Humanity had spread across the stars, populating the entire galaxy. As they spread they found themselves, despite all mathematical probability, utterly alone.

No other life teeming on distant worlds. No ancient crumbling civilizations of ancient, wise beings. No dangerous empires of fierce warmongering aliens. Nothing but humanity, alone against the cold black vast emptiness of space.

Religions throughout the galaxy that touted humanity’s superiority, humanity’s special place in the divine plan, humanity’s specialness to that great celestial being that created everything, throughout the cosmos, naturally found reason for justification and celebrated accordingly. Hundreds of years of speculative fiction, of accepted scientific thought, were put to question, open to ridicule, denigrated and despised.

So humanity found themselves alone. And when the celebrations were over, the overwhelming nature of the realization caused mass hysteria. Thousands went mad overnight, as they struggled to accept that humanity was alone, all alone in the universe. No one else. No ancient civilizations to learn from, trade with, war against, conquer or be conquered by. No little green men or flying saucers. The lights in the sky had been figments of imagination. The stories told for centuries of visitors from beyond were just that, stories. Demented ramblings of professional liars.

The madness grew. Massive suicide cults grew and died rapidly. Alone in the cosmos, with only their conscience as a guide, humanity strip-mined entire solar systems, devastated alien worlds, reaped all they could without thought of sowing against future deprivation. Why bother? There would always be other planets to sustain and provide, to rape and pillage. And humanity, ever-adaptable, would move on.

An adapt they did. Terra-forming was cost-prohibitive. Much cheaper and easier to adapt humanity to the needs of the planet, rather than adapting the whole planet to humanity’s needs. After all, the planet would be devastated in three or four generations, so why bother re-tooling the whole world when it saved time and especially money to vat-grow or surgically alter a few hundred thousand settlers? Bio-sciences thrived. Genetic engineering and re-engineering. Cybernetic implantation. Crossbreeding with other Terran lifeforms. Adapting humanity to thrive on a thousand thousand worlds, under a million million conditions. Changing and re-sequencing. Morphing the human form into a billion shapes and sizes, each uniquely suited to a new world.

But after a thousand years of genetic alteration and planetary plunder, the various new humans across the galaxy no longer wanted to destroy the ecological conditions that were specific to their exact requirements to go on living. And so there were rebellions and war erupted throughout the galaxy, as planet after planet sought independence and a place of their own.

When the wars were over, humanity, such as it was, looked around. They saw neighbours of every shape and size. Many came from planets that had developed their own languages, cultures, religions, technology. Nearly all of them had been completely genetically altered. Though ostensibly of human stock, they were no longer even barely recognizable as humans.

Humanity rejoiced. They were no longer alone.