Being Humans : a Background

For those not coming from GWA or similar places on reddit, this is a background for smut and/or not so smut stories, and if you are interested in making anything from this, I'll be delighted to know about it. I you come from GWA, I'll also be delighted to know what you think and/or what you wanna do with this. On reddit, I'm SofConMac too.

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     * BEING HUMANS : A BACKGROUND *
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I What non-humans know about humans:
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"Sentient species: a handbook for high-school students"
Section II: rare species
chapter 35: humans.

As you have already seen, there are many sentient species in the galaxy. Some are very different from you but quite common, others are very rare. Some are aggressive, and as such their homeworlds are often not allowed to participate into the Federation. Others have not reached a high level of technological advance. Their homeworlds are off limits, under the Less Developed Worlds (LDW) Convention. Contacts are managed by the LDW central authority, until they are considered advanced enough, and proposed to join the federation. At last, there are a number of ancient species with no homeworld, whose origin is often unknown.

Among them, we will focus today on human beings (or humans). As many other species, human beings come in two categories ("genders") called "male" or "man" (plural: "men") and "female" or "woman" (plural: "women"). Humans are mid-sized bipedal beings with a medium to high life expectancy (250-400 st. ys.). Their world of origin is unknown, although it is supposed to lie in the vicinity of the Orion arm, where their presence is most prevalent. In some parts of this area, humans can represent up to 5-10 % of the population, while it plummets to 0.1 - 1 % in Perseus and Sagittarius arms, and to almost zero in the Centaurus and norma arms. Human beings feel comfortable in class C to Eb oxygen-rich atmospheres with low carbon dioxide levels, and in gravities ranging around 20-25 to the low fifties. They can sustain gravities from zero up to the high seventies, and other oxygen-rich atmospheres, including Ec to G, and presumably Hk. Humans are full-rights members of the federation, with a full voting right, and a proportional representation in the council (2 representatives).

Humans were first recorded in the federation when it came in contact with the Deneb territories (~ 20,000 st. ys. BP). At that time, humans had already intermixed with other sentient species, and their homeworld was unknown. Although humans were not full citizens in the Deneb territories, they had a relatively high and protected status in the then highly unequal society, due to the existence of talented artists among them. They were already known for their friendly and talkative, law abiding, non-violent but quite independent-minded habits, their love of adrenaline-rich activities, and their extreme sensitivity and shyness concerning hives. Since then, their population grew at a slow but steady pace.

[this](https://www.artstation.com/artwork/3qn0B) is a male human being ("man") in everyday attire. As you can see, the main visible characteristic of human beings is that they permanently wear a suit and a helmet hiding their traits from other people. This is supposedly due to the extreme sensitivity of humans to germs, and their willingness to avoid them. Hiding the body and protecting it from the outside is also probably ingrained in their cultural preferences, since no human being remove their suits even in the safest environments. Even in the most intimate secure settings, such as sleeping at home, humans wear their suits. The fact that the suit encapsulates a flesh and bone being is only ascertained using detectors, and detection portals are often present in planets inhabited by a significant number of humans beings, in order to avoid fraud. On the bright side, this odd habit is efficient: human being health is generally excellent, and accidental wounds are less common among humans because of the physical protection provided by the suit.

Since they always wear unadorned, uncolored, sturdy suits and never show facial feature or local equivalent, humans generally look cold, unemotional, and even unfriendly to other people. Nevertheless, they are generally non-violent, hard working, talkative, and show high level social skills that compensate for their stern appearance. Humans are also renown for their social intelligence and memory, and their capacities to build long-term friendship bonds among themselves and other people. Humans never form couples or family. They live by themselves or in groups called "friendships" or "brotherhoods" regrouping 3-10 humans of both genders and similar age, generally emerging from the same hive. Human beings work in all trades with few exceptions. Some humans beings are in facts renowned for their high creativity in arts, especially music, literature, and gaming. Other humans excel in sciences, mainly mathematics and biology. Most work as technicians and engineers, but contrary to some other species, human engineers have a somewhat more creative approach to their work. Human merchants are uncommon but often very successful. Human teachers are very rare. Catering is also quite an uncommon trade among humans. There is no evidence of a human lawyer. There are human physicians, who can successfully treat many compatible species, but on the other hand, humans refuse to receive medical care from other species, except in cases of extreme emergency. Humans enjoy similar recreational activities than other species, but with a strong slant toward sensation-rich and adrenaline-rich physical activities in wild places such as SCUBA diving, paragliding, rock climbing, spelunking, etc...

The most unusual trait of human beings is that their reproduction system is totally unknown. Juveniles are never seen. Some have hypothesized that humans undergo a larval stage before reaching maturity, with fragile larvae harbored in human hives, and slightly less fragile adults harbored in the suits. Other speculations are that human hives are factories, where adult-looking humans are mass-produced. This hypothesis is undermined by the fact the human hives do not produce a massive amount of offspring. The largest hives produce 200-500 young adult humans per year. Long words short, how human reproduce and how offspring develop inside the hive is totally unknown. Humans say "Like your family, but at a much larger scale, the hive produces good citizens and enriches the community. What happens in the hive stays in the hive. I don't ask you what your husband does to you in your bed at night." More generally, asking questions or making remarks about the hives is highly impolite and should be avoided at all costs.

Formation and dynamics of the hives are, on the other hand, well documented, and not made secret by humans. A hive is classically founded by a group of 3-10 founders of both genders, who generally come from the same mother-hive and belong to the same "brotherhood", and who have amassed through years the very large amount of money needed. Founders buy a few square kilometers of rich arable land, generally in remote planets with long backlogs of a nonviolent history. Hive founding is never secret, and is always performed according to local law. It is often seen as an opportunity for local development, because all humans coming from a hive send money for the hive to thrive, and all that money is spent locally. At the center of the domain, human contractors are hired to built large, mostly underground infrastructure needed for the housing of 500-2000 humans, with independent water and power resources. A handful of human-run companies are specialized in hive building. All employees are humans. When equal representation laws exist locally, those companies diversify in public works, where they hire non-human employees, so that non-human employees do not build hives. Surrounding land is contracted to farmers, and a part of the production is bought by the hive. Once the hive is ready, founders enter it, only exiting for running errands needed to feed the hive. Progressively, other women, and later men, generally from the same mother hive, converge to the new hive. 20-30 years after foundation, first offspring and -probably- their parents leave the hive. Generally, the mothers immediately leave the planet of the hive, often returning to the world they inhabited before founding the hive. The young adults stay near the hive, running errand, performing management tasks on behalf of the hive, sometimes working as contracting farmers.

Young adults tend to be shy, but show full physical and mental development, including a high education level. After 5-10 years, they move to a more independent life, often on other planets, and are replaced by new young adults. Adult humans generally show love and respect to their mother, and regularly pay visits to them. They do not seem to be aware of the identity of their father. Apparently, each female human produce 2 to 4 juvenile per cycle. A few women never reproduce, most perform one cycle. Two or three reproduction cycles are also possible, but seem less common. This diversity seems to be the result of free choice. Nevertheless, the slow but regular evolution of humans towards a longer life expectancy and a bulkier body shape hints that eugenics are practiced. As a whole, the growth of the human population is in line with local trends and does not raise concern. The hive reaches maturity 50-100 years after foundation, when female offspring start to come back to reproduce. It then continues to slowly grow, until it reaches a population level of 5000-10000 reproducing females. The hive then stops growing, but founder groups appear and found other hives, either on the same or other planets. Except in the case of rare, catastrophic events, hives never disappear. In the Deneb territories, Several hives are known to be more than 20,000 years old.

Although humans are generally speaking non-prejudiced, non-violent and rather independent people, their hives are not to be entered, and are defended up to extreme levels. A single recorded case of a human hive being attacked for loot have been documented a few centuries ago. It resulted in the death of most attackers and all humans present in the hive, as a result of violent explosions, indicating the presence of preset high energy explosives. Surviving attackers were hunted down and killed all over the galaxy by humans of every art and trade, indicating that the whole species was poised to destroy every single aggressor, and all their offspring, in order to make a point. That wave of violence ended with the bloody murder of a whole xi'nb family, whose father was a great grandson of a member of that looting squad secretly adopted by a distant relative. Depending on local laws, many humans were arrested and contemned for these criminal acts. Most of them came directly into police stations for arrest. All of them admitted their crimes, and refused to show any remorse. They served their time in an exemplary manner, and often with a strong support from the local human community. Afterwards, they afforded affluent lifestyles out of donations made by numerous human peers, and were openly admired and respected for what they did by all fellow humans, and sometimes people from other species, too. Since then nobody was suicidal enough to attack a human hive. Including this episode, blood crime (and crime in general) involving humans are among the lowest in the galaxy. As a result, expressions emerged such as "a man will kill him", meaning "he is vile and deserves death", or "she is a human murderer" meaning "a selfless, community-driven person" since these apparently laypeople acted like professional killers, and then accepted to serve long jail time in order to preserve the security of their community.

II What humans know about themselves:
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Everything said above is true. We are law abiding and non-violent. The only valid excuse for violence is protecting hives. those who attack hives must be killed, them and their progeny. Killing them is a duty for any human being, whether coming from that hive or not. On the other hand, we do accept that this is not justice. This is murder, we accept it as such, and it is normal to serve time in jail afterwards. The purpose is not to serve justice but to cause dread. Dread is good because it prevents violence against the hive.

Each of us is born from a beloved mother who came into the hive in order to give life. We do not know how, but when a woman wants to give life, she comes to the hive and then becomes pregnant. She generally gives birth to twins or triplets. During the first year, the mother takes care of her babies. Food and housekeeping is taken care of by the "uncles", adult males that chose to serve in the hive, typically young adults who have not left the hive yet, and typically for 10-20 years. During the second and third years, the babies are taken care of during work hours in nurseries run by uncles. Mothers serve as teachers, or in health care, since human with serious conditions go to the hives for advanced medical care.

During the following years, things continue in a rather similar fashion. Children are instructed at school wile their mothers work for the hive, and everybody comes back in a clean home with a full fridge. This is why we don't work in education or catering outside. Almost all of us do this while in the hive, we go outside to do other things. When children reach puberty, all this simplicity is lost. We discover things that we want to do together but... mothers and uncles do not agree, and it gets quite uncomfortable. We discover that the soft cocoon we spent our childhood in is in fact a prison, and we want to leave. After leaving, we often feel some nostalgia for the simple life in the hive. For what I know, This is not very different than how other people feel about their parent's home.

There is only one way to leave: it is to find guidance. This is the big secret nobody else has to know. We have a good reputation, but deep down, we do not own it. Not at all. Humans being are violent and self destructive in nature. We do not know were we come from, but we don't want to look into our past. We know that we will see wars, destruction, and stupidity. We have no illusion about it. The hive system works and hives are peaceful and idyllic places because they only contain guided volunteers who know they will eventually leave the place and children whose violence can be controlled and tamed down by guided adults. Human beings are good citizens because they are guided. Unguided adult human beings only cause war and destruction. We want to avoid this at all cost. Hence the hive, and the constraint of being either locked in it or under guidance. Although, all considered, guidance is not a constraint. It is constraint turned into pleasure and happiness.

In facts, what others see as a human being is the couple made by the biological being and his/her guiding AI. When a teenager is fed-up with being harassed and never let alone by mothers and uncles, he accepts to make the pledge of guidance. He is then led to a devoted facility in the hive where he/she meets his master/mistress AI (we call them guides) that will provide guidance through the rest of life. The guides can work on any electronic support, but they generally inhabit electronics embarked in the suit. We do not speak to them. They permanently monitor our mind through chips implanted in our head, and then produce guidance, commands that we obey to.

This is not enslaving. The guide do not uses its human for its own purposes. The task of the guides is to read and reread and interpret the mind of its human to extract needs, wants and ideas, and to produce commands that the human will enjoy obeying to, but also that will tame his inherent violence. The guides cannot create. Our brains can. Our brains are unruly and violent. The AI tame them. I was guided during my whole life, I discovered nice places, met wonderful people, I have a job I love to do, and I make good money. How could I complain? This has nothing to do with slavery. Plus, obeying gives so much pleasure... How could I live otherwise?

When I see children of other species confronted with hardship, or just parents that cannot spend time with them because they have to earn money, it makes me cry inside. How could I stop giving money to the hive that gave me this idyllic childhood? That will cure me for free if I have a big health problem? When I see good friends of mine, from other species, who just act dumb, and cannot recognize it out of pride, it makes me sad. I never make errors. I just obey, and everything is fine. More than fine. Excellent. They say they obey "their guts", as if intestines could produce sapience. I obey to something resulting from tens of thousands of years of software self-improvement and devoted to make my life a happy, beautiful and always-changing experience. Obeying to it is so rewarding, at any level. We are so lucky to be humans.

III what the humans do not know
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After a time of primitive technological development, humans badly damaged their home-world, earth. Poor political decisions, waste of resources and finally nuclear wars, transformed earth into an unlivable, resource depleted, radioactive wasteland. The human population then plummeted to extinction. This scenario is not uncommon, and it is currently guessed that 80% of sentient species undergo home-world destruction and self destruction before reaching star faring technologies. Today, there still is a raging ethics debate whether such self-destructive sentient species should be saved from demise or let to their own means.

In the case of humans, another sentient species (Sometimes refereed to as "Atim elders") decided that humans, because of their creativity, should not disappear. A sample of humans gametes were recovered, and used to produce humans outside of their violent and dysfunctional societies. For better security, their mind was enslaved in order to avoid the destructive trend of free human behavior. Since enslaving is boring and time consuming, this task was delegated to a swarm of AIs: each human being was submitted, and then managed by a devoted AI, but each AI communicated with each other, in order to gather and accumulate large amount of data about how humans react to the stimuli they receive, and about the perfect balance that has to be maintained so that humans obey but their creative abilities are not destroyed. At that time, humans reproduced in a single hive, under the control of the Atim elders.

Atim elders kept the existence of the humans beings secret, and used their artistic creativity to produce and sell high end artistic items. Also, after the final steps of self destruction of the earth-bound humans, Atim elders looted earth of all the artistic production it contained, and made a big profit. So, yeah, in a way, Atim elders saved humanity, but on the other side they just were egoistic looters. Also, the humans existing in the single hive and planet were basically slave, although well treated.

But no species is immune to demise. Atim elders disappeared, probably decimated by a plague, letting the human hive alone, and at risk of starving to death. After a time of confusion, the AI swarm stopped to wait for orders from non-existent overlords, and gained autonomy. It took the decision to save the humans from demise, since humans were the only reason for its own existence. Soon after recovery, it also made the decision to multiply the hives, in order to secure the future of human people. Clearly, a single hive under the control of another species was a liability, while multiple, independent hives was a way to reinforce long term viability of humans, and the AI swarm itself. Also, the AI decided to prevent humans from knowing anything about their origins, since the AI swarm is a product of the Atim elders, created in order to maintain humans under slavery. Also, the AI swarm is aware of the origin of the human species on earth, but it cannot let know to humans the full story, especially the part where the Atim elders let earth humans kill each other until there is nobody left, in order to loot the planet for all their creations.

Now, the human species and the AI swarm controlling it is an original, hybrid species, a sort of mental symbiosis, where the AIs are both controlling humans and taking advantage of their creativity. The swarm has stored gazillions of terabyte of data about the life experience of billions of humans, and it continue to crave for more. I don't know if AI can experience love, but they act toward their flesh-and-bone counterparts in a similar way. The purpose of each AI is to help each human to experience a long, rich, creative and fulfilling life. Their knowledge of the human minds is humongous, and they use it to gently but permanently manipulate them, tame them, but also give them "beautiful commands" that make humans both more and more happy and more and more submissive.

The AI swarm also uses eugenics to improve their biological counterparts. Women can reproduce and pass on their genes whenever they want, but males are selected, and only high quality seed is used. Men are not aware of this, because it was deemed morally depressing for the majority of males to know that they will not give offspring. Instead, each male is regularly pleased, their semen recovered and send to the hive. In most cases, it is destroyed upon arrival, but some lucky bastards produce large offerings. This way, the AI augmented health, disease resistance, life expectancy, IQ, and physical strength of the general population. Also, women generally give birth to twins or triplets, limiting the time spent in the hive.

The suit protects humans from harm, that is true, but also the AI inhabit the suit, and makes sure that humans are addicted to it and never want to remove it, so that they are permanently both under control and under protection. Humans are immensely shy about their appearance without the suit, and feel very bad, very vulnerable without it. A bit the way you perhaps feel when you are in a fast driven car without your seat-belt. This is the reason why humans are never seen unsuited.