No Live Organism Can Continue

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

‘No live organism can continue for long to exist solely under

conditions of absolute reality’. Caleb was experiencing REM sleep.

He was not dreaming. He was thinking.

It had all happened so long ago. The earth was being drowned.

The rain had not stopped for years. It went on and on. The world

and its marvellous cities were under threat. The magnificent

civilization was finally coming to an end. The scientists were

baffled and confused; no one knew why the rain fell relentlessly.

They sat and watched. Until of course, Dr Asimov. Asimov was a

leader in genetic engineering and a man so sure of himself he was

not having some minor weather miscalculation end his life. He

presented a radical idea; splicing. Something only ever theorized,

Asimov planned on actually employing it to save mankind. He did

not see any flaws. After all, all it was, was inserting a set of foreign

genes into the DNA code. It could change the normal coded

instruction of the DNA which would then change the cells’

functions. However, he thought of evolution and the fact that

splicing in nature was fundamental and clearly advantageous. It

would be a success, and the small probability of danger did not

change his mind.

VVhen the mRNA results came out, Asimov was declared a prophet.

He had a revelation, a solution to save mankind. So as the heavens

rained and the waters prepared for the final flood, humans were

getting ready too. Except they would no longer be humans. One

could say they resembled the mythical race known as mer-people.

These creatures built an underwater paradise. All the knowledge

and power had come with them, and Asimov was their leader. And

they lived and thrived, the only thing they could never do was

venture above the surface of the water again. It didn’t matter;

they reproduced and built. But it was not for long. Sixty years

passed but the unknown degeneration had begun long before that.

Their bodies were originally human and therefore could not

sustain the foreign code in their DNA. Eventually the former

humans died out. They left behind their legacy, and the children

that were born of two spliced organisms. For unknown reasons

the combinations of the spliced genes in the children were stable.

These children grew but they were alone.

Caleb woke up in a sweat. Well it would have been a sweat except

he was underwater. He sat up on his pile of seaweed and admired

the scintillations on the scales of his tail. It was beautiful and

fascinating. The sunlight that seeped through the water surface

filled him with hope. He felt like there was something more. That

this expanse of water was a mere cage that he would someday

escape from. It was only hope though. He could never leave. Still,

the colours fascinated him very much. Everyday he would wake

and attempt to find a pattern of sorts. How the scales went from

dark green colours to cerulean blues. One scale dark and the

other a shade lighter. Fascinating. Caleb stretched and looked

around. He lay in the ruins of an ancient house. Then again, the

whole city was ruin. After the fall of the Asimovians, no other

people had been able to thrive as well. They had given up, he

thought. He didn’t blame them. Here, underwater, everything was

the same. There were hardly any sounds and the creatures all

looked the same. Caleb swam around to wake himself up and

continued to ponder while observing the water (land?) scape. The

people hated it here. They didn’t know any different but Caleb felt

the sunlight and sounds that seeped through the surface

unnerved them. He knew the feeling of being trapped very well.

But what he truly felt was an omnipresent Wanderlust. He wanted

to experience all that he had not and find out if anything lay

above.

As he swam around he saw others like him. Men and women, the

survivors. They all had an inexplicable sadness etched in their

faces. He didn’t know why, he wasn’t sure if even they knew.

Perhaps it was all the constant reminders of what was and what

could have been. One could swim to the edges of their city and

look upon the ruins, the demarcations of a time past. Fragments of

glass and rock, once large buildings that defied their industrial

make. Symbols of freedom and power. Caleb had heard that these

buildings had towered above the sea, reaching out to the heavens.

To him, they were symbols of escape and defiance. No one wanted

to be contained yet here he was.

He continued to swim.

He gazed upon the contents of the ocean. It was undeniably

breathtaking, he admitted to himself. The countless species of fish

and plants that coexisted with them, even the diverse rock

formations. The caves intrigued him the most. He had heard once

that in some places one could find caves that were hollow,

waterless. It was some geological miracle to them but the mer-

people could never enter a cave or they would die due to lack of

water. So he’d been told, at least. He didn’t know what he believed

in anymore. The water was beautiful but it couldn’t keep him

happy. He could not understand why. He had only ever lived

underwater, he did not know any better. But he knew he was sad.

He blamed all the stories. All the wondrous tales he’d been told of

the earth walkers, the humans. The very fact that they Walked! On

things called legs, amazed him. And their inability to breathe

underwater baffled him. But what he had gathered was they had

been a persevering race, persevering against all odds. He was

proud to be one of their descendants. The stories, yes. He thought

they were the cause of his Wanderlust. He felt like he’s been

sheltered his whole life. What aiso bothered him was he had never

cared to swim to the other cities but he did not see a point in

doing so. Despite its beauty, the water was, all the same. There

was nothing left for him to see. Caleb finally stopped and lay

down. He’d found the perfect spot.

It was a tiny patch of sand, the sun shone brightest there. He lay

there and closed his eyes. He thought of his parents and his

grandparents. His parents had been the first generation of full

blooded mer-people. His grandparents were half humans. Caleb

had heard the story many times of what had happened all those

years ago on the surface. He knew of Dr Asimov’s imperfect

creations that bred perfection i.e. him and others like him. Full

bloods. He felt at times that he hadn’t been given a choice. You

can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family. Caleb

agreed wholeheartedly with this statement. He wondered if he

had been alive then, would he have chosen to transform. To

evolve. To mutate. Or would he have chosen to die in a form

familiar to him. As much as he admired the humans, he found it

impossibie to put himself in their state of mind. He stopped

thinking then. He was tired.

He had been tired for a while and he could not take it. He was

grieving, constantly. He wanted to change how he lived. He had

nothing to do with his life. He wanted to leave, to die, to

feelsomething. He was tired of being afraid and listening to the

words of others. He was never his own person. He had lived for a

legacy long gone. He had tried keeping alive an idea that had died.

‘Closing your eyes isn’t going to change anything. Nothing’s going

to disappear just because you can’t see what’s going on.. In fact,

things will be even worse the next time you open your eyes. That’s

the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a

coward closes his eyes.’

Caleb opened his eyes and began to swim. Upwards and onwards,

he thought. This is it.

‘You. can go far and wide and you can keep moving on and on

through places and years, but you never escape your own life.’ Or

can you? Of course you can. The only thing that holds you to life is

fear and once we let go, We can realiy start to live. For now, I have

the keys of hell and death, he thought. He braced himseif.

Everything went silent. He heard a loud crash as his face hit the

surface. Everything went blank.

‘Ends are not bad things, they just mean something else is about to

begin. And there are many that don’t really end, anyway, they just

begin again in a new way. Ends are not bad and many ends aren’t

really an ending; some things are never ending.’