The Ship of Theseus: The Significance and Influence of Extraordinary Bloodlines
Author: Plutarch
Editor: Lampriyas
Revised in 3rd Era 169
————————
On the white sand beach of Athens sits a famous ship.
It was the ship of Theseus, the ancient Cyrean hero in the First Age. It had experienced extremely terrible naval battles, and was finally placed on the seashore by the Cyris people as a historical souvenir.
As time passed, the wood that made up the ship began to rot, so the Sirians replaced the old and decayed planks with new ones.
After a century, almost all the wood had been replaced.
So is this "restored" ship still the original Ship of Theseus?
Let's change the question to another one.
Assume that all the old wooden boards that have been replaced are stored in a nearby warehouse.
A century later, the Solomons who ruled the continent brought advanced science and technology, allowing these decayed wooden boards to be perfectly repaired and reassembled into another ship.
So is this "reconstructed" ship still the original Ship of Theseus?
If so, then is the ship parked on the beach also the original ship of Theseus?
——————————————
We turn our attention to extraordinary power.
Over the past few centuries, human purists have repeatedly debated a proposition:
Once you become a transcendent, can you still be considered human?
As we all know, if ordinary people want to become extraordinary, they must first embark on the road of blood.
From lv0 to lv10, each upgrade requires taking a magic potion, a total of 10 times.
When the extraordinary person successfully digests the 10th bottle of magic potion, all the magic potions in the body will merge into a special bloodline.
According to research from Ptolemaic University, the "Road of Blood" is actually the transition from human beings to a completely new species.
The human genome contains 22 pairs of autosomes, an X chromosome and a Y chromosome, and is composed of more than 3 billion base pairs.
These 3 billion unique base pairs of genes determine who you are as a human being, not as a dog, goat or lion.
There will be differences in genes between different human races, but the differences are not big. The genes of almost all strange-looking human individuals you have ever seen can be found in the human genome.
Except for the extraordinary.
According to research from the Department of Medicine of Ptolemaic University, the process of taking magic potion is a process of "pollution" of one's own genes.
One hour after an ordinary human volunteer tried to take the "Strong X" potion, scientists extracted a small amount of oral epithelial cells from a small amount of his saliva.
According to identification, it was found that 46 of the chromosomes had "gained weight" to varying degrees. The total number of base pairs increased from 3 billion to 3.6 billion.
The genes composed of these base pairs are not in the human genome at all.
Referring to the example at the beginning of this book, we can think of it as humanity's ship of Theseus, with a stack of planks added to it.
Could it be that if a sailor brought a stack of planks to the ship, the ship would not be considered a ship? This is simply ridiculous.
From a biological point of view, this volunteer can still be regarded as a human being, because there is no reproductive isolation between him and ordinary people, but the reproductive success rate has decreased.
However, as this new transcendent continued to upgrade, problems arose.
Every bottle of magic potion consumed will bring about an increase in chromosome weight for this extraordinary person, that is, the addition of a large number of heterogeneous base pairs and genes.
What's even more incredible is that this extraordinary person can still maintain the original human physiological functions unchanged, and the newly added alien genes do not conflict with the original human genes.
It's just that in the process of "adding", it caused certain functional disorders to the extraordinary person himself. Just like when your computer is upgrading the system, the programs that were originally running will be forcibly stopped.
From this point of view, the magic potion is much more powerful than the upgrade package written by programmers. At least it will not force the human body to stop working to cooperate with its upgrade.
After the extraordinary person completes the bloodline journey and is promoted to level 10, the total number of base pairs has reached an astonishing 150 billion, and they can still operate normally with each other.
The base pairs of genes belonging to humans only account for 0.2% of them.
Can he still be considered human?
————————————
Going back to the above example, if the sailor keeps bringing planks to the ship day and night until the number of planks is ten times, a hundred times, or a thousand times that of the ship.
Then he used these massive wooden boards to build a huge castle.
The original ship became a decoration on the central tower of the castle.
At this time, can you still say this is a ship?
Anyone with basic sense and judgment can conclude that "this is not a ship" and "this is a castle".
In a sense, the bloodline path composed of 10 bottles of magic potion forcibly evolved the extraordinary person from the original pure human being into a more advanced creature.
I don't know what "it" should be called, because the genes of different bloodlines are different.
The only thing that is certain is that "it" can no longer be counted as a human being, although "it" can still maintain the original human body shape, thoughts and behaviors.
But "it" has jumped out of the human category. There is no doubt that it is like a fish jumping out of the sea, growing wings and flying into the blue sky.
For itself, it is certainly a beneficial evolution. But what about the fish in the entire ocean?