Chapter 472: Project Ape
According to the humans of Planet Kareem, or according to their history books, the first human civilization formed about ten thousand years ago.
Humans in general may have been existing much longer than that but that was when the first civilization was recorded.
It was also because of this that they had a ten-thousand-year-old calendar.
Many societies believed different things when it came to the origin of humanity, but none of them were ever truly correct.
Some said humans had evolved to that point, others said humans were a product of a divine entity’s creation, and there were those who claimed that humans were seeded on this planet by space aliens.
If one checked, they would find that there was an atom of truth in all those claims. They just weren’t worded right.
As Kael read the documents of the Project Ape folder, he began to understand and his horizons were broadened.
The humans, as they all already knew, were not an original race. They were byproducts, prisoners, creatures who were born limited.
Long ago, so long that Kael couldn’t imagine, the Monkey Civilization had reigned supreme over the universe.
Kael couldn’t tell how they did it, but the Monkeys had been the apex of the universe that time even though it didn’t seem like they were the tyrannical type.
They had focused on science and technology and their Primordial, the Great Sage, had led them to a period of prosperity.
During their time, they had invented many things, so many to the point it looked like there was nothing to invent again.
They were restless.
Among the projects they had decided to start at the time of the Period of Restlessness, Project Ape was one of them.
The sage scientists who focused on Project Ape had one goal, Devolution.
Indeed, while most creatures would be focused on evolution, the monkey sages were so restless that they began to engineer their own devolution.
They had used their humanoid forms as inspiration, aware that humanoid forms caused one to possess less power than their true forms.
Back then, it wasn’t called humanoid forms. Even now, it wasn’t always called humanoid forms. Kael was the one who usually translated the phrase in his mind to something he was more familiar with.
There was a phrase for it in the lion linguistics that if translated to human language, would sound more like ’anthropomorphic form’.
The monkeys used these forms as inspiration and experimented on the dregs of their society, those who did not contribute anything.
They had experimented for some time before eventually creating what they called Apes, a series of lesser monkeys as they were called.
Alas, although they had succeeded in creating the Apes, the success of the experiment led to more discoveries and inventions.
With the logic of the monkey sages, they had reasoned, if they could devolve themselves, then they could probably devolve other creatures.
Once the thought was in their heads, there was no going back, they had to try it out.
And so they began, capturing the creatures for the purpose of devolution.
Still, they used the humanoid forms as inspiration.
And that was when they realized that they could reverse the power of all creatures to a state that locked them in a humanoid form.
Already, it was a wonder how creatures could share similarities in their humanoid forms.
The humanoid form of a shark was usually very different from the humanoid form of a spider. Hence the term, humanoid, they didn’t exactly look alike like they were from the same race.
But the monkey sages were able to devolve other creatures so hard that they crushed out every trait of their true forms and left nothing but their humanoid appearance.
This made it so that irrespective of the race any of them was from, once they had been devolved, they would all look the same.
They tested it on themselves and on the apes, it worked well. They tested it on other creatures, and it worked well.
Anything that worked well would be weaponized, that was the cycle of all civilization.
Now, they just had to figure out a way to make it permanent, like a seal, or a seed.
The monkey sages had no trouble creating this thing. The Devolution Seed was created by them, otherwise known as a limit seal to the lions.
With the Devolution Seed, the monkeys and their sages were able to convert a large number of creatures into humans.
They continued their experiments, tweaking the Devolution Seed to remove errors.
Finally, it reached a point where it seemed like they were deliberately trying to turn humans into an original race of the universe.
The Devolution Seed had been altered so much from the original invention that even the monkeys felt that the features were getting crazy.
For one, once a creature was turned into a human, they could copulate with another human from another original race.
That is, even if a wolf were to be turned into a human, it would mean he or she could mate with a shark or an eagle that was also turned into a human.
Another crazy feature was that the mating of two humans could result in the natural reproduction of a human.
And once a human was born, they automatically had a Devolution Seed inside them.
It was fascinating and also scary.
Billions of humans were born, stripped away from their heritage and powers before they could even fight for it.
The monkey sages seeded thousands of planets all over the galaxy with Devolution Seeds and human populations.
They watched the humans grow, having no choice but to stick together and create their own civilizations.
They grew, reproduced, and learned as though they were original races, completely oblivious that the universe never acknowledged their existence.
They interacted with the universe, but the universe never interacted with them.
The monkeys accidentally discovered another fact. Humans could exceed the average population limits of most races.
They easily exceeded a quadrillion if one counted all the humans from all the experimental planets.
It was discovered that there could be more than a trillion monkeys converted to humans and the universe’s will won’t notice.
Or it seemed like whatever was enforcing those rules chose to ignore the humans altogether.
This was great news for the monkeys. The Devolution Seed could serve as a weapon of warfare if used for its intended purpose, it could be used to raise humans who were not that useful to advanced races.
The Devolution Seed could then be used to produce more Devolution Seeds through the act of human reproduction.
Not to mention that if the universe ignored the humans, it meant that there was a lot they could get away with that other creatures couldn’t.
The monkeys desired the technology to do many reality-breaking things like time travel and leaving the universe, unfortunately, they couldn’t.
But the humans, theoretically, could.
Alas, the great sage and the monkeys never got to test out their theories with the humans as the calamity that almost wiped them out arrived before they could make further progress in their research.
Now the galaxy was littered with the remains of the ancient advanced civilization as well as the thousands of experimental planets.
It was unclear how many of these planets still existed in one piece since Project Ape happened countless years ago.
Even if those humans achieved interstellar travel and were able to interact with the original races of the universe, it wouldn’t change much.
The most likely scenario was the humans being turned into lab rats for study or direct annihilation.
Humans had no powers, no magic, no superior strength. They were on a stage where all their opponents could kill them effortlessly.
Planet Kareem was one of those experimental planets and it seemed like it had also been a hiding place for the monkeys who were hibernating in the facility.
As for why humans existed here on the planet at this point and had not yet achieved interstellar travel. It was very likely that they had not always existed here.
N’bayé did mention that one of the doors had been open, assuming that not all of the monkeys had been able to enter the facility.
It was very possible that the last monkey or monkeys had Devolution Seeds with them and died with them.
Then the most likely answer to the question was that some random dumb creatures had found the Devolution Seeds and had eaten them, leading to the arrival of the first humans on Planet Kareem.
That was the most likely answer to the question about the origin of humanity. It was nothing special, just some dumb creatures that devolved themselves after eating alien technology.
’Could Earth have been like that too?’ Kael asked himself, thinking of a certain forbidden fruit story from his past life.
He shrugged it off and refocused his mind, he continued to devour the knowledge concerning Project Ape from the terminal.
The steps on how to create the Devolution Seed were listed but it wasn’t practical. Creating just one costs a lot of energy.
It was better to just allow the humans to reproduce and then harvest the Devolution Seed when it was needed.
The Devolution Seed Kael got from Isaiah’s body came from Xu Ying which therefore meant that it came from heaven.
’Hmm,’ Kael narrowed his eyes, adding to his list the things he wanted to do once he got to heaven.
"This...is good," He said as he stepped away from the terminal, allowing N’bayé to see his face clearly.
"Prepare this place for extraction," He announced.