"Homeobox" - A Story For Earth Day
When regression with transgression is the best form of expression.
Hi there.
“The Future of Nature” is an Earth Day community writing project for fiction writers to explore the relationship between humans and nature within a short story or poem. Organised by
and , the initiative was supported with the expertise and advice of scientists and .The short story below is my contribution to the project. I wanted to create a visceral, lyrical, and thematically rich tale, taking both my reader and protagonist on a journey through the spiral of life itself. From conscious, sentient beings to base primordial matter, we continue to search for a universal, biological truth, which we still believe the cosmos must hold — and might even one day reveal.
You can find all the other stories in a special Top In Fiction Disruption edition, thanks to publisher
.Until next time…
Homeobox
“If I could walk with the animals, talk with the animals.” - Bobby Darin (1967)
‘To save a species, become that species.’
‘Suppress humanity, sustain life.’
‘Sentience is a natural state, not a human decision.’
‘Consciousness isn’t human – it’s universal.’
‘Erase past selves, express future survival.’
‘Species attachment requires human detachment.’
‘Species recognition requires human contrition.’
‘Don’t bite the planet that feeds you.’
These were only some of the germline mantras propagated by the Greenware BioCollective, and Sho took her role as a Biome Saviour seriously. Her DNA had been repeatedly sliced and re-spliced until she no longer passed a ‘species-compatible human’ test. She had crossed into the interstitial domain of ‘Other’, her genome now unique, non-transmittable and utterly alien. As with albinos coveted by muti-believers, it was also very valuable – both to the Collective and to the many species plagued by the worst of humanity; who either teetered on life’s edge, or were already deep-frozen, preserved in the hope of avoiding permanent extinction.
Sho sometimes wished for her role to be reversed. To exist as, say, a natural cetacean, and then be spliced with a slice of questionable humanity.
But her therapist had reminded her that was only dolphin-talk, which had made her smile at the memory of being spliced as one. Their real smiles were hidden within their oceanic echoes, not reflected in the bright sunlight under which gawking people lived.
Anthropomorphism was revealed as an anachronistic barrier when you subsumed a genome and sublimed into their connectome. Sho, of all her distinct kind, could appreciate the expressiveness of a genotype, with or without a corresponding phenotype. Epigenetics had let Larmackian thinking bloom, and you didn’t need to mind-read when you could spit nucleotides for breakfast. Which she now did willingly and often.
After her volunteering, had come voting and promoting, until the Collective had let her ribosomes ride endangered genetic data like a demented lover. Every gene in her body might have already divided a billion times – some for a half-billion years. Yet, whenever her helices parted for an assignation, they still replicated the bliss of a seeded merge. She’d hugged helices with protein arms and temporary bonds and gasped in wonder at the knowledge they came with. For the memories of biomes past were held only in the oldest alphabet of all.
But true elation could only be found in the righteous salvation of an interspecies spark. One which ignited her body when their consciousness rose within hers; their senses mainlined into her cortex; and her behaviour warped to replicate her latest embraced species. Only for them would she release the need to be wild, untamed and free of her humanity. For what mattered most to Sho was that the precious genes she imbibed, learnt and reported on would survive in the promised new wilderness; thrive in a future which gave hope to every species which now barely knew what living was, every organism which had been catalogued, caged, enclosed and frozen. Except for one. For Sho secretly wished her own species would curl up, wither and die.
Today promised to be extraordinary, even by the extreme standards of Sho’s chimeric, biomimetic life. She would be attempting to reveal the Beginning. And, for the first time as a Saviour, she was scared.
The Beginning still remained hidden within archaic time and genomic space. None had dared to explore the spark from which every living thing had sprung. To know might be the end of Sho, the end of hope, the end of the Collective. What might be revealed was beyond any preparation. To even believe the Collective might easily comprehend such a revelation would be arrogant and naïve.
Special people were required for this day to dare be declared a success. One such person was her therapist, Maia Tagalac. Maia was special because she’d been the first to save a species using genetic mimetic transfer; to become less human than human; to be subtracted from rather than added to.
Today she was going to help Sho subtract so much of her self that she risked becoming a mathematical abstraction, with so few genetic beans left in her bag of probabilities, only equations might describe her state. The Collective’s extremophiles had endlessly preached this nirvana, where even the term ‘singularity’ was perhaps excessive, but no-one had achieved it. No-one had dared.
Maia entered the sterile laboratory with a confident stride, her eyes meeting Sho's with a mixture of determination and trepidation. The weight of their mission hung heavy in the air, suffocating any semblance of casual conversation that might have otherwise passed between them.
Sho knew the risks of delving into the unknown, but the allure of uncovering the secrets of the Beginning was too potent to resist. She had spent countless cycles preparing for this moment, mentally and physically conditioning herself for the ultimate transformation. And now, as she stood on the precipice of uncertainty, with Maia by her side, she felt a surge of adrenaline mixed with dread.
"Are you ready, Sho?" Maia's voice was steady, but a flicker of uncertainty danced behind her gaze.
Sho nodded, her own resolve firm despite the knot of anxiety coiled in her stomach. This was uncharted territory they were stepping into, a realm where the boundaries between species blurred and the very essence of existence seemed to tremble on the precipice of revelation. The machinery around them hummed to life, metal surfaces gleaming under the harsh light, life-support carapaces casting elongated shadows across the tiled floor.
The chamber where the ritual would take place was filled with a single carapace and flickering screens displaying dense streams of genetic code. They were an abstract of the intricate symphony of data that hinted at the hoped-for deeper truth hidden beneath layers of biological complexity. Sho could feel the weight of expectation pressing on her shoulders, a scientific and existential burden which threatened to break her resolve.
Maia's presence would be a comforting anchor to allay Sho’s doubts and fears. The therapist’s steady gaze and reassuring smile conveyed silent encouragement. They had travelled far before, sharing thoughts here and feelings elsewhere, and they were now Collected together, whatever the future held.
With a final trusting glance from one Saviour to another, Sho climbed into the carapace and let it embrace her body and inveigle her mind. Its surface shimmered into opaqueness as the interfaces engaged, and the reality she knew, but had never accepted, dissolved into familiar double helices without end.
“Sho? You're stabilising. Can you hear me?”
I hear you. But less of me than before. The cortical layers are thinning. I just shed my Broca area. No more speech soon. Only song. Only sonar.
“You're in the cetacean frame?”
Not just frame. I’m echoing. Deep call. Ocean-memory. No sight, just sounds. Maia, their grief is saltier than the sea.
“Hold on to that resonance. Remember: you are a Saviour, not the saved. Descend deeper. What is next?”
I am scales and teeth and ten million divisions. But my wings are gone. And all my eggs.
“Such reptilian expression must be brief, Sho. Do not linger in that landscape.”
My descent continues. My vertebrae dissolve. My lungs contract into sacs. Amphibian now, limb-hopeful, gill-weary. The smell of swamp in my bones.
“That’s good, that’s good, Another threshold. You'll feel the pull to dominate the land. Resist it.”
Gone already. Cold-blooded arrogance evaporates. I’m writhing in the wet mud of memory. Maia, I’m... I’m worming my way through soil. Around me, within me. I make the earth.
“Annelid?”
Segmented simplicity. Everything is through-gut. Input, output. No more choices, just flow. A perfect honesty. I envy it.
“You’re close to genomic transparency. Do you feel the shift to non-bilateral symmetry?”
Yes. Radial now. Cambrian explosion and its vast echo. Pulsing. Floating. Neural nets shimmer within me. I am hydra, a scattered constellation of maybe-thoughts. I sting and drift and I…I forget.
“Good, Sho. Very good. Keep going. You’re almost pre-metazoan. Do you still know your name?”
No. No name. Just membrane. Lipid logic. I...I divide without reason. Amoeboid bliss. Nothing matters but osmotic pressure and the smells my pseudopods sense. I am haptic and taxic with my embrace.
“You're almost there, Sho. Listen to me: can you perceive the alphabet of the Beginning?”
Yessss. Not chromosomes. Not even genes. Just pattern. Some repetition. A code that breathes. I am RNA dreaming itself into protein. I am heat and metabolism and coincidental collision. I am... chance and latent possibility.
“So very close now, Sho. Go deeper. You must sublimate below replication”
No self. No other. Only spark. Only carbon breath. Only—
“Sho?”
We descend. A... T... G... C... We can forget what they mean. They are now all we need to be.
“Where… what are you now, Sho?”
I am U. I am all of you. My name is LUCA and I live on the ocean floor. You have never seen me before. I am your origin; your Eve; your first mother. I am the mother of all.
“Oh, Sho. You are there. You’ve made it. Where have you come from?”
From another Beginning. When an alien other fissioned to form the alien us. But despite being divisible, we remain one; tied by countless divisions; bound by common language; connected by passing energy.
“Are you ready to return, Sho?”
No. There is no return. Only the cycle. Meatball me. Metabolise me. Sublime me. Return me to the stardust I was and will be.
“Sho, can’t you come back? Please come back.”
Thank you for showing, for sharing, for shattering what is me.
The Beginning has no End.
Yes, we will return. To start again.
Silence filled the chamber.
Not the sterile silence of laboratories, nor the hush of failed transmissions, but something older than even primordial soup.
Maia stood alone, hands trembling, eyes wide, tears tracing two lines down her face. Sho’s body was quiescent, suspended in its nutrient haze, a soft bioluminescence pulsing under her skin in unfamiliar rhythms. Her vitals were unreadable. Her genome scrambled beyond any sequencing protocol.
But something else now lingered within her.
A low harmonic pulsed through the chamber’s floor. A resonant echo, neither mechanical nor electrical, but biological. A memory. A presence. Not just Sho, but also everything she had become. A chorus of ancestral breath and alien grammar. LUCA had not left. LUCA had become her, and she was now LUCA. They knew us all – and what to do.
The Collective’s servers lit up without instruction. Code streamed into existence, untyped yet exact, more poem than program. New instructions. New directions. A map that led not forward, but outward, to a wilderness no longer bounded by species or self.
Sho had returned. Not as the ultimate Saviour. Not as the saved. But as the Seed.
From her altered cells, forests would be born that remembered fish. Fungi would speak in pulses of ancient tree-connected dialects. Even the wind would carry her, tasting faintly of sea salt, of teeming swamp, of stellar plasma. Of the songs we sang before an excess of pointless words and meaningless speech.
Maia stepped back to stand at the chamber’s entrance. She then bowed, not in grief, but with reverence.
The Beginning had indeed no End. Only an echo. Only iteration. Only life, reborn as its own Mother.
Now, at last, this stripped and savaged planet would breathe again.
Really beautiful. But did you put the "My name is Luca" song in as a little musical wink there? I'm going to have it in my head all day 😂
Nice work on this one, Johnathan! I love the exploration of origin as alien, and the idea the alien species or consciousness could return and re-introduce itself.