The Humanimals

The story of the Humanimals is part of a much bigger history. It goes back a very long time ago, indeed before time existed, to another universe. The Shile were an ancient Elder race that had seen at least three different universe cycles. That is, the universe that gave birth to them had died. They had escaped this by slipping into another much younger universe and made new lives for themselves there. That's a long story in itself, but not for now. We are here to talk about the Humanimals. When the Shile civilisation finally came to this universe, they had a great migration in living world sized Seed Ships. All that they were, all the lives and creative power of their species was collected and recorded as genetic code. The Shile were great colonisers and terraformers. Their Seed Ships would bring life to new worlds. Other Elder races would hire their genetic services, get the new worlds ready for habitation. The Shile knew how to do that very well.

The world we live on, the Earth, wasn't a Shile seed colony but they were very interested in us. Another group of Elders, called the Vansadagaadians, had come to Sol and set up a couple of colonies. Earth was colonised by a Saurian race called the Torgar, Mars by some Humans. The Shile were happy to colonise the moons of the gas giants and they set up swarms of habitats out there, where their space whales could graze. They traded peacefully, and that was good. Then came the Pandemonium. They were predators and looters, raiding across the galaxy. They were eventually defeated, but at a great cost. The Shile, like a lot of others fell into a Dark Age.

Of course there's a lot more to tell, but that's the short version of the story. Some of the Shile had come to Earth and set up arcologies under the ground.

What had once been a great universe spanning civilisation was now scattered and divided and poor. What remained of the True Shile, in their arcologies underground, planned to find a way to become great again. Their plan was to create the Humanimals.

Humans had done a lot of damage to the ecology of Earth but the Shile recorded everything. The Great Birthing was about to take place!!!

All over the world, on one day, the caves appeared. In the caves there were large pods growing with life stirring within! Many appeared on each continent. One cave opened up in the Great Western Tiers, the central mountains of Tasmania, right next to the Great Lake. It was Mount Blackwood, where the Tasmanian Humanimals emerged. There were hundreds of them, different species, but they all spoke a common set of languages already. The language they spoke first was palawa kani, the indigenous language of Aboriginal Tasmanians, but in their minds they already knew how to speak English as well. Only hours old, these clans of Humanimals had minds full of knowledge, given to them by their creators, the Shile. They were hungry, so they ate what was left of the pods from which they emerged. They were thirsty after that and found water from the Great Lake nearby. It was there that they found the road, a Human made thing. It led them down the mountain.

Luckily there was no traffic that quiet morning and they finally came to a small town. It was Poatina. There was an instinctive understanding between them that they needed to seek out some Humans. The throng that were walking crossed the grid at the entrance to the village and found an area of grass between some buildings beside the main street. Most of them sat. Some of the Humanimals were flyers. They landed on the roof of the community hall or on a few of the houses nearby. It was still early but the noise was waking people up. Humans looked out their windows or their doors. It was all quite a shock! From the strange crowd a few individuals stood. A tall creature, dog-like with a long thick tail and stripes on his back, stepped out into the main road in front of the community hall. Another followed, stocky and barrel shaped and brown. A third flew down from the nearby roof, an insectoid with wings.

Humans were coming out of their houses, the brave ones at least. Some were on their phones, others were using their phones to take pictures. The three Humanimals standing on the street looked around for someone to talk to. The tall one was a bit concerned and impatient. He saw a male human approaching between the buildings in front of him. The Humanimal could smell his fear.

The man's heart was beating hard. He had no idea what he would face, but someone had to go and see what this strange event was all about. These, creatures, they were strangely familiar, yet also.... different. They seemed intelligent. It was obvious. The man had seen aliens before and these guys didn't behave like invaders. (Yes, the Earth had been invaded by aliens not long before this event! Yes, they were defeated, but that's another story!)

The Three standing in the middle of the road seemed like leaders. They were talking to each other in a language, yes, a language, he didn't recognise, as he approached. All the other creatures were sitting, very quietly, and watching.

The man could hear a voice in his earbud giving instructions and he knew there were protocols for this sort of thing. These creatures had come here, and this wasn't just an ordinary little village, but the man wanted to do all this peacefully.

"Ah, hello." he said tentatively.

The big one that looked like a Tassie tiger looked right at him.

"Hello." the thylacine said in perfect English.

"Um, I'm Kent, one of the village leaders." he said, "Who are you, ah, people?"

"We are Shile." said the one that looked like a giant bee.

"But you can call us Humanimals." the wombat added.

"Why are you here?" seemed like the next obvious question.

The three creatures looked at each other and whispered briefly in palawa kani among themselves.

"We are genetically engineered to protect the genetic diversity and all lifeforms on this planet." the tiger tilted his head to one side, and made a noise that sounded like laughter, "You Humans haven't been doing a very good job of that! We will help you."

The man was stunned. He then smiled at the strangeness of this whole situation, but a part of him was also really pleased.

"OK! Cool!"

This is just the beginning of the story of the Humanimals and there is more to come. Check out the Humanimals Project on Facebook!

www.facebook.com/humanimals.chris.beck.artist