The shared history
Anethos/ Human

About ten thousand years ago, the Anethos discovered the Solar System and its various planets in a barren, isolated region of the galaxy. We quickly realized that no intelligent life was present there, only primitive creatures struggling to survive. One species, however, proved particularly aggressive. It rained a nuclear arsenal upon our vessels. We had no difficulty protecting ourselves from such hostility, as this “technology” was utterly archaic. It was like a slug attacking an elephant. But we had to take a firm stance with humans because, while this hostility did not affect us, it was having a negative impact on Earth’s ecosystems. In order to prevent the destruction of biodiversity, we decided to fully subjugate humans and confine them in large detention camps while we studied the rest of the planet—much like a beekeeper who smokes the hive before harvesting the honey.

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After analysis, Earth revealed a biodiversity so rich that it was decided to establish a permanent colony there in order to study it in detail. This colony would later become one of the wealthiest and most influential corporations in our society: “Happy Human.” Part of its research, eventually the very core of its business, focused on the nutritional and gustatory qualities of the planet’s animals. They began with small mammals and fish, until it was time to turn to humans. To general astonishment, the flavors provided by animal flesh were incomparable to any known dish in the galaxy. Earth DNA, and human DNA in particular, was likely at the origin of this inimitable taste. A burst of unique flavors flooded our brains with every bite of human steak. A new cuisine was born.

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This information quickly spread throughout our society, and all our colonies paid a high price to secure a constant supply of Earth products—human products in particular. The offer began with meat but soon expanded to skin, used to make garments of unparalleled quality, as well as human milk, which made it possible to create cheeses with inimitable flavors. Through a marketing campaign and effective communication, the company “Happy Human” succeeded in giving all these products an image of terroir and quality. They were, and still are, recognizable by the “Terre” label affixed to all packaging. This demand had to be managed efficiently, and to achieve this, the first large-scale human farms were built on Earth.

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Imagine a field dotted with millions of wire cages, each with a volume of one cubic meter, duplicated over two levels and raised two meters above the ground. The site was so vast that these miniature prisons vanished into the horizon. Inside each cage stood a human. The metal framework was crisscrossed with pipes supplying each cell with water. The humans on the lower level received their food from below, where rail-mounted machines delivered their rations, while those above were supplied by drones constantly flying over the fields. The ground was made up of long, slightly sloped channels designed to collect excrement and carry it to a treatment center.

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Because the cages were stacked one above another, the humans below were constantly covered in the waste of those above them. When slaughter time came, small octopus-like robots, moving with speed and precision, fired a metal projectile into the humans’ heads. This phase, known as “stunning,” was intended to destroy part of the brain, rendering the human immediately insensitive. But it did not always work, and some humans were wounded and struggled for long seconds, sometimes minutes, before dying. These machines swarmed constantly over the cages like hundreds of ants at the entrance to their nest.

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It must be understood that there is an ideal age for slaughter, around 85 years. Slaughtering before this age resulted in products that were still immature and timid in flavor, though more tender, while later slaughter gave the meat a bitter taste and a rubbery texture. From the opening of these farms, human life expectancy dropped drastically. Breeders were unable to keep humans alive until the age of 85. The company’s revenue was therefore limited by this lower quality, but since consumer demand continued to grow, profits were not affected. Nevertheless, in order to increase its profits, “Happy Human” decided to invest in research to understand and solve this problem. An initial solution emerged when our scientists proposed a model describing human needs. In a paper entitled “Biological Imperatives of the Human Species,” they outlined the minimum requirements necessary to ensure survival until the optimal age of slaughter:

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1. Humans must have access to sufficient water and food in proportions defined by the latest research in human nutrition.

2. Humans require a living space of at least 5 m² per individual.

3. Humans need regular access to the outdoors, and more specifically to sunlight.

4. Humans must live in an area separate from their area of defecation.

5. Humans need to be able to develop social relationships with their peers, or they will develop acute forms of depression.

6. Humans need to believe that they are free.

 

The cost of implementing these measures was colossal, but the company could absorb the shock and anticipated far greater profits. The basic imperatives (nos. 1 to 5: food, space, light, etc.) have been extensively documented in the scientific literature. Hundreds of neurologists, nutritionists, veterinarians, and ethologists have written thousands of studies with converging conclusions on the subject. These needs are economically costly to implement but logistically simple to put in place. The final point (no. 6) is essential to understanding the evolution of farming in our society. A scientific article put forward the hypothesis that, in addition to the basic human biological imperatives (nos. 1 to 5), another must be considered a priority: freedom.

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Humans need to believe that they control their lives and their destiny; it is a vital need. Numerous studies have shown that if this belief is taken away—for example, by locking you in a cage—the majority of them waste away. They eat and drink less, they enter a phase of chronic depression, and they die after a few years. The solution, therefore, was to raise them while letting them believe that they were not in a farm, by giving them the illusion that theywere free. But this requirement for freedom proved extremely fragile, since it was shown that if they had even the slightest suspicion of our intentions, anxiety would set in and negatively affect their organism—and therefore the quality of their flesh and milk.

This seemed like an insoluble problem and a major challenge. Yet the company found an ingenious way to implement this solution. They embarked on the construction of a new farming system designed to respect the biological imperatives of the human species. They called it “The Farming Universe.” It is a computer-based virtual reality system managed by an artificial intelligence. Humans are individually connected to this simulation of the universe that was theirs before our arrival.

For ten millennia now, this new form of farming has been in place, and “Happy Human” regularly intervenes in the simulation to control the age at which humans are slaughtered. No death is left to chance, as long as the illusion of freedom is not broken. Every accident, illness, or “natural” death is calculated from the individual’s birth and triggered in such a way that it is impossible to perceive the influence of an external hand. They sometimes deliberately create natural disasters—storms, tsunamis, or earthquakes—when a large order requires the rapid slaughter of a significant number of heads. What matters most to them is that the illusion of freedom is preserved. It is in this way that Happy Human maintains the quality of the flesh and the freshness of the milk while respecting the biological imperatives of the human species.​