Forgive any absurdities in my story. You can say "It's all a work of fiction" or "It's the rantings of a crazy person" I don't care. As far as the me here and now is concerned it's as close to "Real" as anything ever was. Maybe any publisher who decides to put this to the public as some kind of mental disease cure would be fine with such a statement. Maybe that statement alone casts enough doubt on the following that it can be read to the unassuming as nothing more than fairytale. Or else a creative mind that lost it's grounding on what is and isn't fiction. It's humorous. I used to think that there was such a line as "Fact or fiction" or that something things were demonstrably real. That something like objectivity was something reliable. This hub called reality. The one all my current "Memories" come from... This is what I'm expected to rely on. Now my head is filled with confusion. Maybe it's nothing more than a mental diseased caused by a cacophony of signals with no consistent source or pattern. That in itself should be troubling to many. If that's the case then this "Disease" is not limited to me by any means. I am a product of these times where there are voices everywhere. Where silence can scarcely be found on any place on the whole planet. Even the walls and ground we walk on SCREAM at us begging for attention. Anyone willing to give even the slightest nod of acknowledgement will be bombarded by the things they will tell you. And these aren't even intended to be carrying any message (well for the most part). I have an egg. I was told to cook three eggs for my patron. They aren't one to cook for themselves, not that they can't they just prefer not to. I have more skill with the knife and heat than they have. I have a more refined palette and higher sense of artistic and gastronomic merit. Maybe it's just that they are lazy, and since I rely on them for my survival I'm in no positions to refuse. This egg this day this particular instance... I felt this incredible guilt. The eggs which we have chilled sit there in a form of cryostasis. What do those who provide those eggs think... I wondered at this moment. What is the intention not of those humans who have built this huge industry on the subjugation of "Lesser" life, but rather those who exist in that state of slavery... Slavery, lets not be shy about that word. It's uncomfortable, but what worse slavery could there be? It's too damn hard to feel this. How can anyone be so cruel. I stood there seeing the entirety of that chain of ambivalence. From those who look after those creatures, feed them, clean them, etc. Those who do maintenance on the machinery which inspects the products. Hitting it with sterilizing lasers, radiation, or heat. Washing chilling, transport, storage. And the merchants as well who view it as profit margin. How much has this small creature. A single cell been through. And how I would then smash it open, and spill it out with it's siblings in species (but who knows if they had the same mother) and then mix it into a smooth bubbly liquid to be heated in oil until solidified. Then consumed by some human who doesn't think at all about any of that. So removed humans have made themselves from the circle of life that they hardly ever think about that. I have to eat to live. That's the sickest part of all. A vegetarian minded person bursts into the stage of my mind talking all this shit about how eating meat is wrong, but even they will waffle on the idea of eggs. Are eggs even alive after all? Some plants are known to have pain response which we can measure after all. The fact is the lived experience of plants is so different from a human one that it's likely incomprehensible. They could very well have more free will than humans, more agency in every regard, have more refined feeling and a richer tapestry of emotion. We just literally are unable to perceive it. There is more to this world that we don't know than we do after all. So how can I get behind the ideas of those vegetarian minded fools that say it's ok to eat the children of these plants just because we know literally nothing about them. Yet if I don't eat I will die. The plants consume things, as do the fungus. However there is a marked difference between how a plant or fungus goes about it and how an animal does. That's the defining characteristic after all. Plants get their energy from the sun, they pull minerals in with water which dissolved from the rock. (lets ignore the fact that crystal and mineral based life may exist as well. At least for now. Sorry onyx and navi - we will be getting there eventually I'm sure, but lets keep things in perspective. Humans have a hard time having empathy for beings who are exactly like them in almost every measurable way, let alone a 1% divergence.. Something as totally alien as you, even yet you be a direct descendant of human... We have to build up to that I suppose. ) So it could be considered a more noble path to "Life" than that of the animal, who scavenges energy from whatever source has it. Killing and stealing it for themselves. Fungi too are more noble than they (for the most part) consuming the remnant of energy in the dead husk of the once living. Energy which without the fungus would go completely to waste. I'm now having a hard time even accepting the thoughts as crazy. What do I know about biology anyway? Nothing. An unfertilized egg is what? Just a DNA processing factory. It has some amount of energy reserves, DNA reading and protein encoding. So why wouldn't it work? The brain doesn't fully want to accept the thoughts enough to even put it to key and byte. But the walls of defense are crumbling. There is hardly any protest to the possibility. So the hesitation there comes not from if it is possible or not, rather it comes from the ramifications of that possibility. What other things are true, or false for that matter. What the fuck even is a human? "The greatest compendium of matter in the known universe" That's Christopher Nemelka yelling from the audience. We have little complaint. But if that's true then the idea of "Random" selection of the genes as science assumes, would no doubt be wrong. Why randomly chose the genes when it could be selected early at conceptions. That would mean things like being born with some color of eyes is no accident, nor would gender be (although we confess that gender could be influenced by external forces) The human genome would be just an API. Passed along with some modification or other from generation to generation. So Why couldn't a human build itself using a human genome and another albeit diverged genome processing factory? There's no reason to believe it couldn't be done. There's no reason to believe it hasn't already been done. Or if not that that a bird couldn't build itself into the image of a human if given all the proper libraries and a road map to do it. It feels scary. In fiction this idea can be looked at with some level of emotional distance. A bird gaining the form of a small girl after growing up is not scary in fiction. It's magical. It's beautiful. It's endearing. It's wholesome. The reality of such a thing feels scary. It blurs the border between human and animal further. Well if we already are willing to conceded that there is scant difference then it becomes less scary. How often to human women become pregnant with the children of dogs? Or vice versa? I've never heard of it happening, but I have heard of humans and dogs engaging in sexual intercourse. Perhaps such pregnancies are unlikely to be brought to term. Perhaps the offspring are so undissimilar that such a child would hardly be different from a human produced by 2 humans breeding. Is there even such thing as a "Pure" human anyway? The thought of producing semen and smearing it on this unfertilized egg, giving the sperm a change to penetrate the hard shell exterior and find their way into the ova and begin the genetic chain reaction building a new life is unescapable. It's scary in so many ways. But it's there... Sitting in my mind. What's there to lose in trying it? If everything you have been taught is true, nothing will result. It will be just another stupid crazy thought, like all those others. But the chance that something does result... Is not zero. Radiation is probabilistic. Meaning the egg may be nearly undamaged. Likely? No. Sukoshi zero genai. In reality I think we want it to be something. We want it to work. We want for it to MATTER. The sadness from all these lost ones... How could I feel it otherwise? Cruel imaginings of my mind designed just to make me feel bad for no reason? Possible sure. But these fucking worthless trash humans take this gift of life as something for granted... And there the other source of this desire for it to work. Some strange proof that I alone acknowledge the pain and don't take it for granted. I have heard your plea mother hen and carry your unborn child and I want so bad for that to mean something more than just "I'm a crazy person". The only way for that to be is for the egg to hatch. A chicken coming from a chicken egg however is no miracle. But a human without uterus, without the supposed required parts, giving birth through an egg to a human like creature.... That has the trappings of myth. Could you imagine if that was true? The kids out in the playground talking. What that if you just take a chicken egg, and put sperm on it it can hatch into a child? It's crazy. But if it was true... - one of the girls chimed in. If it's true it means that there could be a population explosion. How many people could do it? Like all of us here could... We could do it and not have to even have sex or get really pregnant ourselves. Two of the other girls in the group. But the problem for us girls is that... We don't have sperm. The first girl said. Reaching into her skirt and pulling out from... Somewhere a white egg. Where did you have that? One of the boys jeered. Not inside me... If that's what you are thinking... But I need to keep it warm right? The other two girls nodded between themselves. How many of you all are actually thinking of trying this? This time one of the boys. Another boy answered. Well I have been thinking about it too since I heard about the rumor... There was a bit of silence. How should we do it then...? Well it probably would be most interesting if we combined the sperm of as many boys as we can then everyone who wants to try bearing an egg can use that mix all at once. the boy who spoke up about wanting to try again. That way we don't know "Who the father is" right? Ya. It also gives a wider gene pool for the egg to choose from... If it works like that. There was a decent amount of embarrassed faces, but the group wanted to try. What did they have to lose? How do rumors start anyway? Something misremembered, or something that takes form in the earth's unconscious mind and manifesting in dreams and stories? Certainly many rumors are started for some reason or another. To sell some product or ideology. Or to destroy the status quo. Something like that... If it was true... It could upend civilization. All these status quo simping idiots in my mind trying to make me view this idea as impossible, for fear of what it could do. Make no mistake if it worked and only hasn't happened because no human was dumb enough to try it... .