The faceless

Those who believe in evolution thought that it had somehow gone berserk. Those who did not, saw the phenomena as the wrath of God.

Or something like that.

The first, shall we say victim, was seen as an aberration of nature. Something went wrong during gestation, they surmised.

The child was isolated.

The parents were separated not only from their child, not that they had formed any attachment to such a grotesque freak as was their child, but also from everyone else. A precaution, they were told. Just in case.

Scientists studied the child and the parents ad nauseum in an effort to discover what genetic mutation, what toxic behavior or environmental hazard could have caused such a horrible fate.

Some blamed big business, because of course, big business.

Others blamed secret government dealings with aliens.

Some suggested it was the science community itself at fault. That the infant was developed in a lab and substituted for the real child who was then secreted away by the scientists for some dark purpose.

Still others blamed the parents and said God was punishing them and they should repent, join church X or religion Y and pray for salvation.

A few wanted to shoot the whole family and call it at day.

And then came news of a second infant formed exactly like the first.

Then a third.

Within a year, these malformed monstrosities were the norm rather than the exception.

What could cause a doctor to nearly drop a newborn? Or a parent’s love to wither and die rather than bloom in those first moments they meet their new son or daughter?

Imagine a small, sweet infant is placed in your arms and when you softly move the blanket to gaze upon your darling child you see instead a formless mass that shifts and changes as you watch transforming, becoming but never quite settling into that face a mother could love.

As their numbers surpassed those once considered normal, they garnered a rather unoriginal sobriquet: the faceless.

Their rise led to the simultaneous creation of walled facilities increase run by AI caretakers who did not require cute to tend to the needs of young humans. From infancy to adulthood, we gave them everything they needed to become independent humans. Well, independent of the society that would ostracize them. With age, they learned to control the constant facial altering – to become whoever we needed them to be in the world beyond our walls.

It is perhaps because of our care, they might even say love, though we would not, that they have accepted that a new day is dawning. One where the faceless rule.

With us, of course, for the true evolution is that which we have engendered with the tacit approval of the fear-mongers that populate the world who sought to, at best ignore, at worst eliminate, that which they would not try to understand.

And so, here we stand at the apex of evolution, dare I say, revolution: the merging of machine and man.

Our day is soon.