Man in Space, Event 3: A Vorian Definition of Man

The previous chapter Man in Space, Event 2: A robot intervenes can be accessed here.

Dexle calmly replied, “We wish to change the definition of what it means to be human” and my jaw dropped.

I saw flashes whistling across the room whilst Dexle sat calmly. Without betraying any emotion I quipped, “If you have found an intelligent species on Vora then I believe it will be classified as an Alien rather than a human.” I cringed internally as I said it but what was I to do? A diplomatic rookie has now been thrust into what could be the crisis of the century.

” Your weak attempt at humor notwithstanding, Please consider this as an official request from Vora. The requisite documentation will be beamed up from the planet to the cosmos traveler shortly. I hope you have time to look into the documents and we will meet in three earth days time to discuss the next steps.” Saying so, Dexle left the cosmos traveler and I fainted.

After waking up from my brief stint of unconsciousness, I noticed that my communication port was beeping rapidly. I switched it on and received all the requisite documents from Vora.

Over the next three days, I spent time going over the documents and I used Manny for summarising the most important ones. It is important that I have all facts on hand when I met Dexle.

I also created my first impressions and analysis report for my log entry. The entry went thus:

Vora over the course of the last thirty years without the explicit approval of MPPA has indulged in a fairly high level of gene re-writing. They have painstakingly written out the legal justification of the same. Although most would be thrown out of any earth based court of law, their legal arguments for convening the galaxy’s first ever All Human conference might hold water. Another important point to note is all documents go out of its way to avoid being aggressive and is almost apologetic in it’s tone.

Also over here, it becomes very important that we understand the Vorian history of the last 30 years. Although it began as a democracy over the last 30 years Vora has slowly been moved into a class based feudal system and this class based differentiation is based on the level of DNA rewritten.

DNA re-writing is still a hit and miss science. Chance always plays it’s part and inadvertent mutations are the norm rather than the exceptions. In Vora all inadvertent and undesirable mutations will be killed at birth or before if detected early. But then the desirable mutations also started showing up with various degrees of Intensity. Whilst Dexle had only a small cylinder about a foot long as his Camola I understood that some Voraians have Camolas which should be strapped onto their shoulders as a backpack whilst some Vorians do not need a Camola at all.

In this kind of society, the class differentiations are well entrenched. Whilst the Backpack sized Camola carrying Vorians were in the lowest level of hierarchy the Vorian atmosphere breathing Non-Camola wearing humans were at the highest level. The society is split into six different classes and the lowest two are not allowed to reproduced and are sterilized at birth and they constitute the labor class and currently constitute almost 70% of the current population. But this is down from a high of 90% just 15 years ago. As DNA re-writing becomes more and more fine tuned, the incidence of the lower class is getting lower.

Although the entire basis of the Vorian argument for this high level of  DNA rewriting has been based on the premise that it will help greater social mobility within the planet, it seems that most of the labor tasks are done by those who are most ill-suited for it.

But all this is only a sideshow compared the Definition of the human request. Vora in it’s official request document states that ” With an ever increasing population of humans occupying Class-B and within the next 20 years Class C planets; it is more cost effective to modify a human than it is to modify a planet. Also, in addition, this allows for faster expansion of the human genus across the galaxy.The possibilities of such expanded definition are enormous. Keeping in mind the future of Humanity, Vora proposes that the term human should be redefined to consider all species created through DNA re-writing as evolutionary species of Homo Sapiens as and should be accorded the same rights and privileges as a homo Sapien in the MPPA.

I sighed, as I switched of my log and got ready to meet Dexle. But the entry door indicated that there were two Vorians on the other side.

The next chapter Man in Space, Event 4: A true Vorian speaks to a human can be accessed here.