The Evolution Machine

A story arising from an examination (both in-universe and out) of man's instinctive drive towards violence and danger. Is it there for a reason? Is it obsolete? What if we couldn't handle world peace?

The Evolution Machine

By Joe Iennaco

A work of speculative fiction

            The passengers bounced gently back and forth in their seats as the yellow bus bumped and jolted over the rocky winding road. They sat there in a mix of anxiety and anticipation as they wound deeper into the muggy heart of the Everglades. Each of them was somewhere between wanting the ride to end, and wanting to sit there chattering over the drone of the insects in the unseasonal heat of the Floridian sun forever.

            "That was some going-away party, huh?" asked Jack, turning around in his seat. "They always are, though. I remember going to Richard's three years ago."

            "Yeah, too bad about him though; I liked him." replied Mark. "I thought for sure he'd make it back."

            "He would've made it back! He could've." Jack reminded them: "The guy who got him said he'd already gotten one. Theyd've let him come home, but he was going for a second one. It's a family tradition: always come home with two."

            "Are you going to go for two?" Joshua asked incredulously. "I mean, your brother-"

            "-failed where I'll succeed. And where my dad succeeded. I'll make him proud." Said Jack, "Both of them."

            Scowling at Jack, Mark said "That's nuts man. They'll let me back in with just one, so cutting my chances in half like that... No f*****g way man, I grab one, I high tail it to Tally, I live happily ever after."

            Eager to change the subject, Joshua said "Just think dude, if we'd been born sixty something years ago, we'd be celebrating our eighteenth birthdays today. Our parents would kick our butts out to... go find... jobs and stuff."

            "We probably wouldn't even know each other either, if you think about it. Back in those days, they divided classes up randomly, not by your birthday." pointed out Mark.

            "An age without warriors." Said Jack, sticking the blade of his knife into the seat in front of him for emphasis, "We're better off in the long run."

            "Those of us who make it back anyway." said Joshua.

            "We'll make it back." Mark assured them. "All three of us. Somewhere between here and Gainesville are a bunch of guys in a bus just like this, holding knives and wearing packs just like these, having a conversation just like this one. Only difference is; we are going to go back home soon, and they aren't. Because they are our ticket ho- Why are we stopping?"

            Onto the bus clambered a bruised, scratched, eighteen year old man who's reddish-brown dyed hair, and tattered sawgrass-print camo uniform identified him as a Tallahassee fighter. In one hand, he held a warclub made from a stick tied to the titanium studded hilt of his knife. In the other, by the bluish-green hair dyed the color of swamp water, through which could be seen the half-blue half-orange circular tattoo that marked the men of Gainesville, he held the scalp of an enemy. No one knew how much time he had spent bushwhacking, fleeing, and prowling through the everglades. But unmistakably, he had succeeded. He could come home now. No one heard his conversation with the bus driver, but there was no doubting it: as soon as the outgoing class was dropped off and the bus went home, the warrior would return with it. To the celebrations of his loved ones. He looked close to tears of joy, and no one would have blamed him. Everyone on the bus fell silent, and shared in his sigh of relief.

            Elsewhere, the audience waited in a respectful silence as Dr. Thomas walked to the podium and read glanced over his speech notes. "Idiot!" He thought; it was November and he was still dating everything 2242. Looking out over the assembled conference he wondered how many of his peers would get up and leave if they knew that the "Greatest mind in Sociology" couldn't even get the heading of his paper right. Shaking that thought out of his head, he began. "I am, as many of you know, here to argue that Bill Martin is NOT, as he is usually called, 'The Father of Modern Martial Culture'. Now I mean no disrespect to this brilliant mind, and I mean not to discredit his very real contributions to the formation of the world's current system of military conduct. But I do intend to prove that his theories and ideas were not fully original, and were influenced heavily by the much earlier work by the historian Timothy Hall, or as I call him in my paper, "The Charles Darwin of the 22nd Century", who wrote the much earlier book entitled The end of our story? The true cost of world peace. In this truly groundbreaking work, Hall theorizes that the first wars were brought about not by desperation, but by prosperity. His preface poses questions I'm sure you will all find quite familiar: 'In the formative stages of our species' existence, our biology and natural social structures were designed to help us evolve. Why are there exactly as many male humans born as women, when it is on the female population that birth rates depend? Each woman is limited in her issue by the time taken, energy expended, and the medical risk posed to her, while in a state of nature, any man will happily father ten children a week and be none the worse for wear. Why then, are there born so many men when a mere twentieth of our number could perform our function just as well?'"

            The speaker continued; "Hall goes on to answer his question by concluding that the purpose of men is to be expendable; so that even if ninety percent of all men die heirless, our population may continue to grow without a hitch. By this means, by so disposing of less desirable genes, the human genome can be refined. As Hall puts it, 'We are the bearers of genetic diversity, the evolvers, the mutaters. Just as women must live and be healthy so that the next generation may be born, men must die so that the next generation can evolve.' In a state of nature, of course, man makes war on his environment; primitive man struggled to survive, and very often failed. And those who failed to survive failed to pass along their inadequate genes. But then, we became the masters of our environment, and as with so many other things, the natural world became an inadequate provider of death. Hall’s book claims that in the same way that agriculture is a synthetic improvement on nature's bounty of food, and construction an improvement on the amount of suitable shelter, war is an invention to improve upon natural evolution. When nature failed to kill us so often, we needed a new way to compete for our place in the gene pool. We are designed to die, and are very good at it. So we killed each other. In many primitive societies, a fixed cultural rite of passage was that their young men would go to war upon coming of age. History is full of examples of examples of societies where every man was expected to be a warrior, such as the Aztecs, tribal Native Americans, Vikings, Celtic tribes, and countless more."

            After pausing to collect his thoughts and take a drink of water, Dr. Thomas said, "Hall, in his book, never goes so far as to actually suggest that we revert modern society to a state of warrior culture, as Bill Martin did, but you must remember that this was over a hundred years ago, in 2131. This was only a few decades after the world united under the verdicts of the United Global Judiciary Court. They had just recently succeeded in bringing about nearly total world peace, for the first time since the Stone Age. Their leadership and our unity had fixed so much that was wrong with the world. Things were looking brighter than ever and you must remember that people were actually happy to live in a world where people no longer died unnaturally. Had the historian Timothy Hall simply come right out and said, 'World peace is stagnating our evolution, let's go back to killing each other like barbarians.', the world would have rejected his ideas as lunacy. To them, it wasn't the end of progress, they thought it was a new beginning. It wasn't until the turn of the next century that we realized that our progress as had plateaued, that our civilization was at the peak of its potential. And THIS is the point at which Bill Martin arrived with Hall's ideas in a world that was ready for them. It was Hall's book that inspired him to tell the world that to continue to advance and exceed our limits as humans, we had to do what we hadn't in millennia: evolve."

            Dr Thomas concluded "That is the true story of the origin of modern constructed martial culture and philosophy. That is the real reason why almost every community in the world now traditionally takes part in some form of non-malicious, sanctioned, armed conflict. That is how the world finally reverted from millennia of wars of conquest, influence, and extermination, back to those of sport, competition, and community building. It all started with an obscure 22nd century historian, The Modern Charles Darwin. Thank you all for listening."

            Mai Ling stood in the alleyway gripping her rifle tightly. Her expression betrayed no signs of fear, but it would have had most of her face not been obscured by a bandanna. The bandanna served two purposes. One was the purely aesthetic effect that it created: she was visibly almost anonymous. She was obviously a fighter, and the red stripes on her uniform clearly marked her side, but other than that, she had no identity; no friends to take undue risks for her sake, no enemies to abandon her, and no one would notice if she visibly lost her cool, or her nerve. It made her look less human to everyone but her; there was no familiarity, no readily apparent humanity, no empathy to which her foes could appeal for mercy. Of course, this worked both ways. The other purpose was a more physically practical one; the bi-annual Beijing Street War was the last fully-urban war in the entire world to condone the use of modern firearms. And this particular year's war would be the last time that it ever would do so; two years from now when they had the next one, they would limit the fighters to small arms and more primitive weapons. Even then, the warlord bouts in the countryside would continue to use modern rifles, but they can get away with it because there's less property out there to collaterally damage, but that's neither here nor there. The reason for this change is obviously that modern weapons were incredibly destructive to the physical environments that saw the most action. The dust kicked off from gunshots, grenades, running combatants, and especially disintegrating architecture was a serious tactical concern. It could get bad enough to reduce visibility in more serious fights, and even asphyxiate participants at crucial moments. So wearing a mask of some kind was widely considered essential.

            She looked at the gold tower in the distance. Every golden banner draped over it and inside of it would need to be ignited and burned completely before the war would end in favor of her team. Mai Ling's starting position, where she waited now, was remarkably close to it- only about half a mile away. But the space between her and her objective was a franticly dense checkerboard of enemy and friendly territory through which she would have to fight through about half a mile in order to get there. She had spent hours studying the deployment map in preparation for today. It was a hopelessly confused mess of gold and red deployments starting in surrounded, flanking, checkerboarded, and thoroughly random positions. The city was not split into two halves with a frontline in-between, it was shattered, as if you dropped two china vases on the floor. Individual streets and blocks would be fought over, and change hands rapidly as units struggled to unite. She was alone, and the nearest enemy, she knew, was a three-woman deployment, one block away. Once the alarm sounded, they would probably make a charge directly at her, hoping to take her out before reinforcements came to meet her. She would have to hold out for the precious moments between when the enemy arrived and when the (slightly more distant) reds arrived. She only hoped that her teammates had studied the map enough to realize that was the logical first move. Otherwise she was a goner. "Just survive" she whispered to herself, then in two years she'll get to barricade herself in her house while the boys have their turn, and never have to do this again. Then the alarm blasted all throughout Beijing, and she sprinted for the nearest building window, and the city erupted in gunfire.

            “First we fought because that is what made men excellent. Then we fought to control our neighbor. Then we fought to make our neighbor our subject. Then we fought to kill our neighbor. Then we forgot why we fought, and yet we did not cease. Let us learn to be excellent again.”       "Bill Martin, at his address before the United Global Judicial Court

            "So who can tell me who won, the last time we did this?" asked Mrs. Marini, in fluent Italian. Several little hands shot up. "Joey, who won? And what did they win?" she asked, picking a hand at random. Joey was the class know-it-all when it came to warfare. He never tired of mentioning that he would join the Venetian militia as soon as he was old enough, and at recess he would march circles around the playground occasionally lowering the large stick he leaned on his shoulder to fire an imaginary volley at another student, who would sometimes be polite enough to humor him by falling down dramatically. He aced martial studies every semester. Boys of his temperament and excellent civic pride were not unusual, and often grew up to become officers.

            "Pisa won, the finals were against Rome. We all built them a monument that looks like a mini-leaning-tower-of-Pisa. It's in Tuscany, where the finals were fought." answered Joey.

            "Right" said Mrs. Marini. "That was five years ago. Now who -else- can tell me who we're fighting today?"

            "Naples!" shouted a number of students, shooting their hands up. Mrs. Marini scolded them about speaking out of turn, but could not suppress a smile at their enthusiasm. This was her favorite subject to teach, because it was their favorite to learn. She relished how many of them tore into the material with open minds, as if knowing by heart all the details of their great city's previous military triumphs was the key to the part they would play in those of its future. Now if only there were a way to make math this exciting to them, she joked privately. Math was like pulling teeth! Some things never change.

            "Now the winner between us and Naples will go on to fight either Genoa or Milan -probably Milan- whoever wins on tuesday. Write that down, it's important." She continued.

            "For the finals?"

            "No, for the semi-finals."

            "And what're they gonna buy us if we win?"

            "Traditionally, the award for the Ancient Cities Tournament is whatever the losers choose to spring for. It all depends on how sportsmanlike they're feeling." She answered with a smile.

            "Mrs. Marini?" Asked Mattie, nervously raising her hand, as if afraid to ask a stupid question. "Why are we all shooting each other?"

            "Because the city war councilors met this year and decided that it was about time fo-"

            "Not 'why now'" interjected Mattie, "Why ever at all? Did they do something bad?"

            The teacher frowned; it was the strangest question she'd ever been asked. And it took her a minute to compose her response. "Uh, this is... waaay above your level in this class, so I wasn't expecting to talk about it today, and at your age you really won't understand. But, how many of your fathers fought in the War Tournament of 2230?" About half the class raised their hands. "And how many of yours died?" Every hand went down. "Right; none of them; because if they had, you wouldn't have been born. That's the idea; you are all a lot like your parents. If they survived the war to become your fathers, they passed on whatever trait, whether it be toughness, obedience, teamwork, courage, caution, -whatever it was that kept them alive. Now you are all better people for it. Those who did die, because of a failing on their own part, if they died childless, sacrificed their lives so that their imperfections would die with them." The teacher was met with bewildered stares from the class. "The short answer is that it's good for society in the long run. People need a challenge to struggle against. Struggles and triumphs make people stronger, smarter, more determined, better. In the peace century, we ran out of struggles to overcome, so we had to invent them. That's why about fifty years ago, after millennia of stupid, unpopular, wars which we did without even remembering why, we reinvented war in its true, perfect form." Now she was reciting college level coursework, she realized, to a bunch of fourth graders! "Like I said," she finished; "you'll understand when you're older."

            "THAT'S THE SONATHAMAN WHO CUT GENERAL HAMILTON IN TWO, AND HE'S HOLDIN' THE BROADSWORD THAT DID IT! RUN WHILE YOUVE GOT THE CHANCE YA STINKIN' -" The old Scot then proceeded to describe the English with a word that had mothers covering their children's ears and rolling their eyes. Other than the screaming of a few fiery trash-talkers attempting to make themselves heard to the enemy, the opening of the British Troubles was accompanied by the sounds of music and merriment. Thousands of picnic blankets checkered the side of the massive hill that overlooked the battlefield. Far away, on the other side, the crowd of English spectators were similarly arrayed. The women talked and laughed together creating an audibly excited buzz of chatter that covered the hillside, while pleasant music came from several sources dotted across the landscape. The little boys played at war, chasing each other around and having swordfights with sticks, their imaginary battles accompanied by constant commentary and exposition. As the Scottish and English armies marched into view, hundreds of old Scottish men in kilts and berets organized themselves into columns and rows, and marched down to the battlefield to accompany their sons and grandsons. As they did so, a tremendous roar of bagpipes from this chorus of veterans heralded the arrival of the next generation, drowning out all other sounds, and leaving a ringing in the ears of many.  

            As the English and Scottish armies closed on the battlefield, the character of the festivities on the sidelines changed; on the mothers, and the wives, merriment changed to concern and prayer. On the sons, distraction became keen fascination. The daughters seemed evenly divided between sharing in the boys' excitement, the mothers' concern, or occasionally uncomfortable squeamishness. The sharp, military melody of signal drums and bugles from the English army didn't hold a candle to the rousing blast of "Scotland the Brave" now emanating from the veterans chorus. After the skirmishing and initial missile exchange stages of the battle, the real bloodshed began with a charge of the English mailed knights against the Scottish pike wall. They began their full charge just thirty five feet from the Scottish line after first hurling volley of heavy javelins in order to disrupt the defensive pike wall; an effective, if ahistorical tactic. The English knights had lost some of their "wow" factor after animal rights groups had successfully called for the abolition of cavalry in the event. Still, the knights were an impressive bunch. Heavily armored, and wielding massive swords, they were a shock unit; extremely hard hitting, but they exhausted rapidly, and quickly retreated once reinforced by the English billmen.

            This time around, England had invaded Scotland first, and Wales would wait patiently to be invaded until the English either reached the sea, or were forcibly ejected by the Scottish. The rules were the same for Wales, who were soundly and quickly beaten at the beginning of the last troubles, twenty-five years ago. This time they held out hope that the Scottish would weaken them enough that the English would lack the momentum to push through Wales. But no matter who won, there was little doubt that no one in Britain would EVER HEAR THE END OF IT. England calls the shots on when to begin the troubles by taking the initiative to invade one of their two neighbors, and they also decide what level of technology is permitted. Last time, they used early-modern muskets. While all this is going on, so as not to be left out, Ireland participates by fighting itself. At the opening of the British Troubles, the people of Ireland flock to towns on the border between Northern and Southern Ireland to take part in a massive variety of local conflicts. The Troubles are now largest sanctioned wars in the entire world in terms of scale and participation. They are meant to be wars "to last a generation" which is why such a long time elapses between each one. And by the end of them, as many as half of the participants can be dead. In the end however, after this civil conflict, the Islands manage to reunite over their mutual hatred of France, and as a community building exercise, every soldier in Britain who has not yet tired of warfare volunteer to band together into mixed units and invade the isolated militias of coastal France. This part of the Troubles is arguably the most important, as it is a way to mend any wounds or sore feelings the kingdoms may have developed for each other, and remind them that their neighborly disputes are petty compared to their overarching nationalism.

            On July 11^th, 2239, the Peruvian senate passed a bill strictly outlawing the attacking of young children during headhunts. A similar bill that would have forbade such attacks on women was struck down, and so all adults living in headhunting towns in Peru remain valid targets.

            On July 2^nd, 2240, strictly traditional dueling by sword or gun was legalized in Boston.

            On August 4^th, 2242, Swedish mariners petitioned the United Global Judiciary Court to allow them to launch surprise attacks on Baltic harbors without the consent or prior knowledge of the defenders, citing their “cultural heritage” as Vikings. This petition was almost unanimously struck down due to concerns that it would create animosity, could be done with economic or malicious motivations, or would result in unauthorized retaliatory action.

            On November 7^th, 2242, Spain passed a law making polygamy legal only for those who had made confirmed kills in sanctioned combat.

            In January of 2243, several incidents of horses being injured and left for dead during petty livestock raids in the Mongolian countryside sparked a media outrage. Animal rights activists attempted to push for legislation outlawing the use of horses by raiding herdsmen. This legislation was defeated soundly, and the activists petitioned the UGJC to force the Mongolian Government to pass the law. The Court refused on the grounds that doing so would violate “the right to sovereignty of the Mongolian Government, to rule their country as they see fit.”

             Jack prayed that the racing of his heart was inaudible as he moved silently through the waist high swamp water. He timed his movements with those of his oblivious foe, so as to hide any noise. He had waited until the Gainesvillian had entered the water before approaching this close. On land, he would have been heard by now. But here, he was five feet away and gaining. He had been stalking the enemy for days. Ever since the ambush at the drop point. He was the only survivor, as far as he knew. The Gainesvillians had come from the trees and bushes the moment the bus unloaded, like they were waiting for them. From his miraculous hiding spot, Jack had seen his classmates scalped. At this one’s hip, hung the scalp of Mark. He would probably surrender it, if Jack made his presence known. The scalp of someone from Tallahassee would not allow him back in, but it would get a Gainesvillian home, so he could trade it for his life in a tight spot. But this fight for that get-out-of-jail-free card was a trade Jack would be unwilling to make. As Jack grew patiently closer, he noticed that his quarry was a woman. This was unusual, but not unheard of. Only eighteen year-old men were obligated to take the rite. But adults and women sometimes felt inclined to prove themselves. There had been one girl and one older man on Jack’s bus (both probably killed in the ambush). Jack knew better than to get a bleeding heart over it; if she was here, and wearing that marshreed-print uniform, then she was fair game, and beneath her hair would be the little blue and orange tattoo that marked her scalp as his ticket home. She paused with a sudden jolt and then shouted “wait-!” before Jack brought his makeshift warclub down on her. The submerged shaft of her spear slowed its motion to the point of uselessness as her once pretty face fell in bone fragments into the water. Jack breathed a sigh of relief, then untied his enemy’s knife from the stick it was tied to, and used it to navigate through the mess of skin and bone pieces he had made of the cranium. As he worked, he became aware that he was singing The Suwanee River. When he left, Jack took Mark’s scalp too, just in case. He had miles of inhabited swampland between him and home. Better safe than sorry.

            An excerpt from On the manner of Human Social and Biological development: A bold Proposal: Thus I submit the following model for understanding militarism-induced evolution. A hypothetical primitive society has a culture in which every man is expected to go to war and fight against their neighbors, as soon as he reaches manhood. It is a tribe of warriors, and this is a rite of passage in which every boy grows up knowing he will take part. The men of each generation in turn go to war in turn, and out of each generation, forty percent of the men who leave die, because they had courage aplenty motivating them to fight, but lacked the strength or wisdom to survive. These men die heirless, and their foolhardy genes die with them. Meanwhile, ten percent of them have the sense to stay alive, but their lack of courage makes them act disgracefully, or flee. These are exiled from their tribe, and do not breed either. Only fifty percent of the warriors have both the courage to honor themselves and the prudence to survive. These men each return home, to a female population that outnumbers them two to one. They each take an average of two brides, and father five children. And the next generation is stronger, wiser, and braver than the last. -Calper Everett’s model of warrior culture. 

Author's Note

I'm really curious what you think. So please, do tell.