All Tomorrows

In the secluded forests of a certain continent, a new parasitic species developed. They did not have the ballistic poison sprays, infectious stings or the grossly hypertrophied arm-claws of their relatives. Instead, these parasites offered a simpler bargain; an ability to think in return of total submission. Initially this relationship was more like a horse and its rider, but after a few hundred thousand years the Symbiotes could manipulate their hosts like puppets through a combination of tactile and olfactory signals.

A few more millennia and these combined beings developed an order not unlike our own, complete with countries, politics and even war, albeit reduced in the newly globalizing world-culture. In this age technology filled most functions of the hosts, but a thriving husbandry of these creatures still remained due to tradition and simple efficiency. An average Symbiote would begin the day on his business host, and move onto a more comfortable domestic one when he returned home after work.

And perhaps, on the olfactory television, he would smell news of the excavations of the million-year-old Qu ruins, of the marvelous discoveries salvaged from the Star Men wrecks, or of the enormous radio arrays that rose everywhere to listen to the stars.

It was a pattern that was being repeated all over.

A Symbiote poses on one of his several hosts. In the background can be seen some of their rural housing, with man-sized doors for the mindless hosts, and the smaller holes for their intelligent patrons.

Sail People (Descendants of the Finger Fishers)

The Finger Fishers were already among the most divergent of the post-human races. With harpoon-like digits and almost crocodilian muzzles, they looked nothing like their parental stock. But even this form would look conservative to their sentient descendants. With many small, scattered islands, isolated sub-continents and differentiated niches, their homeworld was an evolutionary cauldron where isolated members of certain species could, under the right circumstances, evolve into wildly different forms. This condition was similar to the island-realms of Madagascar, Galapagos, or Hawaii on old Earth, except that this time, it was on a global scale.

Some descendants of the Fishers, trapped on lonely islands, grew smaller and developed their fishing claws into graceful wings. Others took directly to the sea and became the analogues of whales, dolphins and mosasaurs. Within this evolutionary bubbling, one particular lineage gave rise to the ancestral Sail People.

They too elongated their fingers into wings, but these were not used for flight. Instead, they became sails that drove them effortlessly across the oceans. With fingers turned into sails, they used their mouths and extended tongues to catch their pelagic prey. These organs eventually assumed the role of the Fishers’ long atrophied, dexterous hands. The need to better navigate the endless seas put an inevitable pressure on their memories, and the Sailors’ brains grew correspondingly. It was only a matter of time until one of these navigators became smart enough to think.

Even when sentient, the Sail People still needed a long time to achieve any sort of social stability. Their scattered world made for a tremendous diversity of cultures, which competed and fought just as resiliently. Across generations, untold flotillas of tribal warriors battled each other in epoch-spanning, pointless conflicts. Nomadic warriors and pirate societies inevitably came into being, prolonging the uncontrollable cycle of violence.

Only when a certain warrior tribe developed warfare on an industrial scale, and the state society needed to support it, and then, only when this notion of modernity gave rise to an idea of peace did the Sail People finally manage to unify. Generations of blood had stained the oceans for far too long.

A Sailor goes hunting with his harpoon-wielding companion in the background. Extremely violent by nature, these people frequently resort to savage hunting campaigns to quell their bloodlust in modern life. Notice their tongue-derived ‘hands,’ and the accompanying flying creature, actually one of the Sail Peoples’ distant cousins.

Satyriacs (Descendants of the Hedonists)

Their pleasure-drenched existence, locked between their static paradise world and their inherently slow pace of evolution, seemed immune to change. Perhaps this was true for a million years or so. But on larger scales, complete stasis was a fable.