The woman’s cold fingers twitched as the doctor worked on her. I could not see what he was doing because he stood in front of her with his back turned toward me. He hummed as he worked. Finally, he turned around with his two hands holding out a dark red hunk of an organ. “Her heart,” he said. I nodded and looked at the cadaver woman as the doctor placed the organ into an opaque white canister.
She was beautiful, with long flowing blonde hair. She must have been in her twenties. But now she lay on the operating table, bare-chested, with her breasts removed and abdomen gutted. Her organs and intestines had been removed, leaving a gaping cavity just under her rib cage.
The woman’s eyelids fluttered open. Her eyes glanced back and forth as she regained lucidity. Then she sat up on the operating table. “How… how long was I out?” she said.
I looked at the doctor. “Curious,” I said.
The doctor walked to the side of the operating table and haphazardly tore various surgical tubing from the woman. “The plastic surgeon will be here in a few minutes to tidy you up.”
I cocked my head inquisitively at the doctor. “How does she still talk?” I asked.
“You don’t need a heart to talk,” he replied.
***
The visit to the hospital was enlightening. It was not filled with the sick and dying as are the hospitals on my planet. Instead, people come to the hospital here to relieve various types of discomfort. The most popular procedure was the one I had just witnessed. The surgeons would remove various organs from the body, such as the entire digestive system and circulatory system, then refill the body cavity with artificial organs that had no function at all. The body parts were stored in durable containers for the patients to take home and keep, just in case they ever needed them again.
The doctors removed the circulatory system so that they could replace the blood with nerve-blocking agents. As a result, people who underwent the procedure no longer felt pain on most of their bodies. Without the circulatory system, they could also keep the nerve-blocking agents localized to certain parts of the body so that the patients could still have feeling on the surface of their skin and extremities.
Removing the digestive system meant that people no longer needed to eat. Hunger is an enormous problem on this planet. Although people could not die, they could still feel the pain of hunger. With the planet overpopulated with immortal people, there was not enough food to go around. Only the rich could enjoy eating food, while the poor would suffer going weeks without eating.
The newly rich would sometimes go to the hospital to have their digestive systems put back into their bodies. That way, they could once again enjoy the feeling of eating good foods that they could once again afford. The prices for meat are exorbitant because while people were immortal, the animals and plants can still die.
***
The automatic doors slid open. Outside, across a long metallic bridge, rose the silver towers. “Recombination silos,” Bilko said. He motioned for us to follow him as he stepped onto the bridge. Our small delegation of four Auditors followed him out and the automatic doors silently slid shut. As I neared the center of the bridge, I looked up. These towers were taller than any building I had ever seen. This was the place I most wanted to visit during the two months I was here so far. Now I was finally here and I could look directly up from the base. With the sun glinting off of the side of the building, I couldn’t get a good look, but it appeared as if the buildings went straight into the clouds. I wiped a my watery eyes with the back of my hand and caught up with my group, who were just about to step into the doors of the silo.
Every corner of the lobby seemed to be made of polished marble or metal. Bilko waved his hand toward one of the uniformed men standing behind him. “As you can see, this is one of the few places in the city where we still require security. Crime in our city is largely a thing of past. We are a highly advanced and civil people. We only require security in the recombination silos because some still cling to ancient grudges and object to the noble work we are doing here. Please follow me, one by one, through the security screeners.”
We passed beneath the security screener portals under the watchful eyes of the security officers. Once we were all through, Bilko led us through a set of large double doors near the center of the building. Inside was a marvel to behold. Wide metal pipes went up and down as far as the eye can see. We stood on a mezzanine at the center of a massive network of catwalks, balconies, and glass-enclosed control rooms. At some points along the pipes, backlit windows provided a glimpse of the bubbling liquids inside.
Once we were all settled on the platform, Bilko continued his presentation. “All partial human biological matter, what we call PHBM, that are discovered are sent to this facility. As I’m sure you know from your own civilizations, our ancient times were also quite uncivilized. Some people were not lucky enough to live until now as fully intact, functional people. It is our job at the recombination silos to match PHBM and recombine them back into functional people. So far, we have had twenty nine success cases, and those people have been able to get their lives back and rejoin society.”
One of my colleagues, Lazar, raised his hand with a question. “The so-called PHBM in these silos, sir… how many different people, how many different people are in there?”
The smile dropped off of Bilko’s face momentarily as he paused and thought about his response. Then as quickly as it had disappeared, the smile came back to his face. He clapped his hands together and said, “Ahh, yes. Great question! As I was saying, like every great civilization, we had a few times in our ancient past that we are less than proud of. After all, we have had a couple of unfortunate nuclear events in the distant past. To answer your question, the exact number escapes me, but I think it’s somewhere a little more than a few tens of thousands… but, our work here, we are accelerating toward a future where all past inhabitants are fully restored. Thank you for your question. Now let’s continue our tour at the main science lab over here.” He motioned for the group to file across one of the catwalks on the left that led into one of the glass-enclosed laboratories.
Listening to the normally glib-tongued Bilko stumble on those words made me imagine that the true number of people who were violently vaporized and effectively “killed” was probably much more than “a few tens of thousands.” What poor Bilko didn’t know was how little we Auditors cared about the sins of his people’s past. We were merely there to assess what needed to be done in order to bring this planet up to par with Federation standards. We had less than a week left to make a final decision on the Gift.
***
The “Life Force,” they called it. Molecules of living people were held together by bonds between atoms stronger than any other bonds in the universe. The molecules themselves, when combined into the cells of living people, were held together by a thus-far unexplainable force. Even if a living cell is separated mechanically and transported hundreds of miles apart, it would reform, as if the parts of the cell teleported and recombined back into the intact cell. The best theories surmised that quantum mechanics were at play in forming the bonds.
While single human cells could not be destroyed, the cells could be separated from other cells. Therefore, while a person could not die, the person could be separated into parts. Separate a person into enough parts, and that person would no longer be able to function. That is death in this world. The cells are still living, but they are so separated that the person cannot function. They call these people “scattered ones.” The sole purpose of the recombination silos is to find which cells belong to which people and recombine them to make the scattered ones whole again.
A curious side-effect of the fact that the human cells of this world cannot be destroyed is that disease is unknown to these people. Blades and explosives are the weapons of choice for war, as they are efficient at separating cells from each other. All manner of blades and explosives and even bladed explosives and explosive blades were conceived and used as weapons of war on this planet. It would not take me by surprise if I were to discover that hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of separated ones existed on this planet.
***
Our host on our last evening on the planet, Korbin of the Four-Thousand-One-Hundred-and-First Altrops, introduced to us one of the First Elders, “Ras of the First Lanns, Supreme First Elder of the Southern Region of the Takaraks, and Knower of the Whole History.”
Korbin had briefed us earlier that Ras was from the first generation, the First Elders. The First Elders were an ancient group of people who now served as monarchs, ruling the entire world. There were thirty seven First Elders. Although her exact age was unknown, her official age was 210,112 years old. The startling thing was, just like every adult on this planet, she looked as if she were in her twenties. But her eyes were still and her gaze deep. They betrayed the fact that despite her youthful appearance, she had seen more horrors in her lifetime than entire civilizations had seen on my home planet.
We knelt and bowed our heads before Ras the First Elder until she motioned us to rise. Around her stood about a hundred members of her closest family: her sons, daughters, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren, great-great-great-grandchildren, and so on. They were all from the first twenty or thirty generations, and each over 200,000 years old. In the courtyard of the palace below the grand Stairway of Ancient Grace stood one hundred thousand people, each standing silently with arms outstretched, to show respect in the custom of their people.
Ras the First Elder, with the aid of a vocal transmitter, addressed the audience that had gathered in the palace courtyard. “We are here to celebrate,” she announced, “the acceptance of our people… our planet… into the Inter-Galactic Federation. It is a great honor and a great responsibility to be accepted into the inter-galactic community. The Auditors have accepted us, on the condition that we first accept a parting gift. The gift would lift us to equality among our peers and bring us the respect we deserve in our Universe.” Her voice echoed through the courtyard as she continued on about the rich history of their peoples and how they will rise to become a great power in the inter-galactic community.
After the First Elder’s last words rang through the courtyard, more than one hundred thousand people shook the palace walls by clicking their tongues in approval, as is also the custom of their people. I and the other Auditors boarded the taxi craft that would take us back up to the Mothership. We had decided on the perfect Gift.
***
When I was a kid, I had always thought of aliens as little green men with big, bulbous eyes. Then as I grew older, I thought it made more sense that aliens should be very different from us. Perhaps they were squid-like creatures, or insect-like, or even something like I had never seen before.
Soon after I turned 22, IGF Auditors arrived on my planet to assess our planet’s suitability to join the Federation. It was our planet’s first contact with extra-terrestrial beings. It seemed that the whole planet was surprised about how much the alien Auditors looked, talked, and dressed like regular humans. Many plausible conspiracy theories were floated around alleging that they weren’t aliens at all, but clever con-artists just trying to pull a fast one on us. But in the end, they proved that they were the real deal by showing us technology of the likes we’d never seen before. In fact, our planet was deemed technologically backward and not up to par with IGF standards. They offered our planet acceptance into their inter-galactic community under the condition that we accept a gift from them. Our world leaders at the time deliberated and eagerly accepted the Gift, whatever it was. It was a surprise, a secret, and the IGF assured us that accepting the Gift would put us on equal footing with the rest of the IGF community. The Gift turned out to be a gift of technology. It was the knowledge of how to build quantum hyper-drive warp engines, telepathically-controlled artificial intelligence systems, super-cooled plasma-string logic gates, and the like. We finally had the technology to explore the universe.
It was soon after that visit that I became one of the first from my planet to work directly for the IGF. I was taken to their inter-galactic headquarters and trained as an Auditor. I’ve spent the last twenty years of my life visiting different uncontacted planets and assessing their fitness to join our community. Through all of it, I’ve learned that alien races are much more similar to us than we had ever imagined. I’ve traveled lightyears across the universe and visited dozens of inhabited planets over the course of my career. Across the universe, all the intelligent civilizations take on the basic human form. Even their technologies, cultures, histories, and languages evolve in similar paths. It seems that DNA is the universal building block of life across the entire universe. Even between different planets, we are all humans. We’ve all evolved the same, except for some variations between planets.
But this planet… people cannot die. I had never seen that before.
***
“The Gift arrived from headquarters last night, sir,” the Advisor said to the Commander. “We had it attached to the macro planetary beamer this morning and it’s ready for execution.”
I was sitting at a terminal a few rows back. It was not my position to interject my thoughts on the matter, so I just sat there, watching. They’re definitely not going to like this gift, I thought, but it’s for their own good. I had always enjoyed this part of my job the most. At the end of the planetary audit, we would decide on the one gift we could give the people of the planet that would change everything for the better. For instance, Kikko people lived on a planet that was over 99% water. The Gift for them was that we sucked a quarter of the water off their planet so they had more land space to use. In another case, the Vualu people had almost no rare metals in their soil. We gave them the Gift of metal. In rare instances, the Gift was abused. The Tusutulsov people took our gift of technology and used it to develop weapons to wipe out their enemies. We promptly revoked their membership to IGF and vaporized their planet.
The Commander straightened up and gave the order, “Execute macro planetary beamer in twenty five minutes.”
“Timer set,” his assistant confirmed.
The twenty five minutes seemed to take forever. I just relaxed and watched the video feeds on my terminal. I had set my cameras on some of the main thoroughfares of their major cities, the recombination silo, and on the Palace of Ancient Grace where the Elders of the Southern Region of the Takaraks lived. I was genuinely curious about the effect of our gift on the most ancient of the planet’s people. It was almost a morbid fascination of what may happen. Or, perhaps nothing would happen immediately.
Finally, the time came. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. The entire ship began to vibrate with energy. The lights dimmed briefly, as 96.2% of the ship’s energy was channeled into providing the Gift to the planet. The ship made one last big shudder, then all went back to normal. I looked at the video feeds. There was a flash of light.
In the crowded streets of the big cities, more than nine in ten people just seemed to melt to the ground, their bodies dissolving into nothingness. Of the survivors most of them appeared to age suddenly, and I have to admit, the sight was a little hard to watch. Most of them started screaming and grabbing at their faces. I felt like a parent presiding over my kids as I administered some tough love that I knew would be good for them in the long run.
Things were calmer at the recombination silos and the palace. The silos stood silent with nobody in sight. They didn’t blow up like I had thought was theoretically possible. The palace was bustling with people before the flash of light, and empty afterward, save for the articles of clothing and personal items strewn about the floor. The people living in the palace were so ancient that when biological time caught up with them, they simply vanished into the air.
“Gift delivered,” the Commander said, breaking the silence. “Let’s give them a couple years to sort out their new world order, then we’ll come back for them. Set quantum hyper-drive warp destination to headquarters. We’re going home.”