The First Superhuman: Rebuilding Civilization from the Moon

The ecological terraforming plan sounded incredibly grand on paper, but the actual construction progressed slowly simply because the Federation didn’t have enough resources.

Artificial oceans, lakes, rivers, and massive forest parks, without sufficient water, soil, and mineral reserves, they were just blueprints. It took months of labor and countless automated drones just to excavate the vast empty caverns that would eventually house them. The rest would require a staggering amount of raw materials to fill.

Still, even an empty shell was a good thing; it would be used eventually. More importantly, it gave the population tangible hope for the future.

It was now August of the Year 0004 in the New Human Era.

Time was flying by. So much had happened since the day the Earth was destroyed. But there was one thing advancing even faster than the calendar: the rapid development of human society!

In less than five years, humanity had bid a tragic farewell to Earth, the Moon, Mars, and even the solar system itself. They had left their entire history behind and embarked on a perilous journey through the deep unknown.

Humans, these insignificant creatures had originally lived on a small, ordinary blue dot. They had remained largely unchanged for millions of years, happily ruling their tiny domain. Now, they were all hiding in the belly of a starship.

Not long ago, people had only dreamed of the day they might finally set foot on Mars. Now, they had not only built a colony there but had ventured far beyond the bounds of their home system. The sheer velocity of these changes often left people feeling like they were living in a surreal dream.

While unexpected disasters had forced this rapid evolution, ’Science’ had played the crucial role in keeping them alive.

Without science, humanity would have remained ignorant and foolish. They would have stagnated for thousands of years, their minds dominated by religious superstition. Ever since Copernicus proposed the heliocentric theory during the Renaissance, humanity had finally broken free from those shackles, choosing to explore the universe through logic and reason. The subsequent Industrial Revolutions and the birth of the Internet Age, each technological explosion had brought earth-shattering changes to human life.

The so-called "God" was nothing more than nature, the cosmos, and the fundamental laws governing its operation. It was these very laws that, completely by accident, had given rise to life.

Science was the window through which an ignorant species finally saw the world clearly. Through it, they glimpsed the grandeur and wonder of the universe, realizing it held infinite possibilities.

*Damn it... what a pathetically useless race,* the alien entity known as "Black" grumbled incessantly in Peter’s mind.

Perhaps it was the long-term exposure to Peter’s inner thoughts, but the alien had become incredibly foul-mouthed. Or perhaps it was simply because it hadn’t actually spoken to another living creature in millions of years, causing it to repeat the same frustrated phrases over and over.

The sheer thought of having to live out its long life trapped inside the body of such an inferior species filled Black with overwhelming despair. After all, it seemed to be the very last survivor of its ancient civilization.

According to its strict agreement with Peter, exactly 4.8 hours out of every 24-hour cycle belonged to Black.

Since Peter was currently fast asleep, Black couldn’t wait to seize control, not caring if it slightly exceeded its allotted time! Since becoming a ’great scientist,’ Peter had become incredibly lazy. With no one breathing down his neck for results, he slept whenever he pleased.

For the past few days, Black had been behaving itself, staying cooped up inside the dorm room. It didn’t know if that paranoid idiot, Peter, was secretly monitoring it from his subconscious. According to their truce, Black wasn’t technically allowed to leave the room while in control; it was only permitted to browse the internet and watch television.

But right now, Black was certain Peter was in a deep sleep. The odds of the slacker secretly monitoring his own brain waves were microscopically small. The boy didn’t have the willpower to stay vigilant for that many days in a row.

Black desperately wanted to understand this strange human race. However, there was far too little useful information available on the civilian networks. The public internet was mostly clogged with video games, social media brain rot, old nature documentaries, and ancient soap operas.

Please. You’re a space-faring civilization now. What can you possibly learn from these ancient, fictional dramas? Black couldn’t comprehend why such utterly useless content was created for entertainment.

After stretching its limbs and testing the sensory feedback of the human body, Black was left speechless by its sheer inadequacy. This species was physically weak, simple-minded, and intellectually deficient. They were practically a joke of evolution.

The physical brain imposed a massive, inescapable constraint on the alien’s consciousness. Peter was a slacker, and by extension, Black, despite its vast spiritual intellect was forced to operate like a slacker. It was physically impossible to break through the biological limitations of the human brain to just instantly become a genius out of thin air. Having lost its original alien form, its god-like mental processing abilities were gone.

Initially, Black had intended to quickly write a virus program to breach the Noah’s central network. It had wanted to create a little chaos, mostly just for the psychological thrill of revenge. Black had gleefully fantasized about the panicked expressions on the humans’ faces especially Jason’s, thinking: Take that, you bastards! That’s for destroying my real body!

But... this human host was just too stupid. It took Peter’s fleshy brain tens of seconds just to calculate simple three-digit multiplication. How could it possibly code an advanced alien virus?

After spending half a month painstakingly trying to develop the code, Black realized its program was completely ineffective and riddled with primitive bugs. It decisively abandoned the cyberattack. Constrained by this damned, fragile brain, Black felt its intelligence had been reduced to less than a ten-thousandth of its former glory. It had been reduced to a complete idiot.

"What an idiot! What an idiot! Aaaargh!"

Black screamed out loud, the voice echoing through the dorm room. It was unclear if the alien was cursing Peter, or lamenting its own pathetic state.

"What an idiot! What an idiot! Aaaargh!"

Black was drowning in regret over ’resurrecting’ inside such a pathetic creature. Its wailing howls actually reached the hallway outside, startling a few passing researchers.

...But, since Peter was the ’great scientist’ who invented the room-temperature superconductor, the passersby just assumed it was a quirk of genius. Perhaps he’s just stuck in a research rut and venting his frustration? they figured, and kept walking.

"No, I need to get out. I have to get out of this room!" Black thought for a long time before finally making a decision. Staying cooped up in this tiny box was too suffocating.

It was going out. It absolutely had to go outside. Even if Peter suddenly woke up in the middle of the night and realized what was happening, Black could just make an excuse: I was hungry. I needed to get some food...

You spend half your pathetic lives sleeping? You have to constantly inhale this crude gas just to live? You have to consume biomass when you feel ’hungry’? You have to leak fluid when you need to ’pee’? And if you consume too much biomass... you have to expel it as waste?!

Black found it utterly incomprehensible. Why do you spend all day dealing with these disgusting physiological needs? Why not cybernetically enhance your forms? Why not install a nuclear-powered heart? Why not just use intravenous nutrient feeds?

Having been trapped in stasis for millions of years, only to awaken confined to this useless biological shell, Black felt like it was losing its mind. It had personally dissected countless lower-level civilizations just like this one. But now that it was actually forced to live as one, it experienced a profound sense of unreality. It felt like a human who had suddenly been transformed into a mindless caterpillar, unable to do anything but slowly nibble on a leaf. It was maddening!

Black’s ego couldn’t accept it. Deep down, it still believed it belonged to the superior, god-like race it once was.

It staggered out of the dorm room. Because it only had access to 20% of the body’s motor functions, its movements were incredibly stiff, walking down the hall like a poorly programmed robot.

But with Peter completely unconscious and not fighting back, Black quickly adapted to the bio-mechanics. Before long, it was literally doing parkour through the empty corridors.

When it saw a railing, it vaulted over it perfectly. When it saw a potted plant, it kicked it over. It violently kicked anything in its path.

This... this feels incredible!

"Freedom! This is freedom!"

Run! Jump! Sprint! Vault!

After being trapped in the dark for eons, it was finally out!

Black’s thoughts began to race wildly as the human body’s adrenaline kicked in. In reality, its original alien form hadn’t possessed a chemical endocrine system and wouldn’t have ever done something so foolish. But this was Peter’s body. The physical form fundamentally influences the mind, that wasn’t just a philosophical theory, it was a biological fact!

This was the first time Black had ever experienced the intoxicating rush of human adrenaline. And... it completely lost its mind. Its consciousness couldn’t withstand the sudden chemical stimulation. It couldn’t stop.

The sheer trauma of being trapped alone for millions of years, suddenly mixed with human neurochemistry, was overwhelming. It almost started crying, which only caused its adrenaline to spike even higher!

"Freedom! This is true freedom!"

Down the main corridor of the residential sector, a lone figure sprinted at breakneck speed, laughing and sobbing like a complete madman...

A long time later, Black finally skidded to a halt, exhausted and gasping for breath. It made a strange, gurgling sound in its throat, trying to force the human vocal cords to articulate its complex thoughts.

Speaking through meat was incredibly difficult; it required extensive neurological training. After struggling for a long moment, the alien managed to utter a weak, stuttering sound: "Ma...ma...ma!"

Sensing the violent physical exertion of the body, Peter’s subconscious began to stir. He was waking up. Panicking, Black quickly calmed its heart rate and retreated back into the depths of Peter’s mind.