kingnovel Chapter 432 Screening
Chapter 432 Screening
Four weeks ago
In the spaceship heading to an unknown destination, Howard was still reading the thick scriptures borrowed from Freya.
After being taken away by Joshua, Freya packed up everything he needed and sent it to him, including this unfinished book.
How should this world be saved?
Regardless of whether Howard is qualified to think about this question now, there is nothing wrong with thinking, whether it is for the purpose of killing time or really wanting to find the answer.
Howard once had a naive idea, but this idea was shattered by reality.
Now he understood that the problems in this world were far from simple.
The fact that the universe has fallen into the current situation where every life is suffering is not due to a single reason, but is the result of countless contradictions.
Then a very annoying situation will arise. Suppose you have a solution to a certain contradiction, but when you try to solve it, this solution will intensify other contradictions in unexpected places. In the end, although a local contradiction is solved, the overall contradiction will become more acute.
This universe is not short of ambitious reformers, but these reformers usually end up in disastrous failure, such as the Emperor and Horus, and their actions invariably cause the universe to fall into an even more hopeless abyss.
In comparison, religion is truly a mild poison that allows ordinary people to abandon their doubts, endure pain, and devote their lives in blind faith... As for the disadvantages of doing so, they are slow and imperceptible anyway, and being able to get by is considered a success.
Thinking of this, Howard's hand that was turning the page of the book froze for a moment... He was thinking about whether this question itself was also adding chaos to the universe?
So the fingers that were originally turning pages ended up closing the book.
This was the third month since he was taken away by that man named Joshua. After taking him out of the warp and handing him over to an imperial caravan that had been waiting for a long time, Joshua said goodbye. He said that he had more urgent things to do and could not stay with him all the time. However, before leaving, he told Howard that these people would arrange everything for him.
At this moment, the spacecraft vibrated slightly and the indicator lights in the room began to flash.
This is the signal that the spacecraft is entering the port.
During this period of time, this imperial caravan frequently traveled between various star fields through the warp jumps. Perhaps because Freya was watching them secretly, these warp jumps were very stable and no accidents occurred.
So Howard put the book back on the bedside table, walked up the stairs to the second-floor window, and opened the curtains.
His room is located in the best position on the spacecraft, so he can see what is happening at the airport intersection without leaving the room.
He saw boxes of cargo being unloaded from merchant ships into the airport, and at the same time, a large amount of new cargo was replenished. Among these new cargoes, one batch caught Howard's attention.
Because those goods are people.
There were people, lots of people, all young men and women, not a single old person or child, thousands of them in all.
These people were wearing rough clothes that could barely cover their bodies, with shackles on their hands and feet. They were lined up under the sticks and intimidation of the guards and were inspected by the spacecraft crew.
The crew members conducted multiple screenings on this group of people. The first one was height and body shape. People who were too tall or too short were eliminated in the first round, and those with ears in the wrong position were also screened out at this stage.
The standards for being too tall or too short here are different from the standards for selecting soldiers in the real world. Only those whose height difference is really beyond the normal human range will be eliminated. Among these eliminated people, the height difference between the tallest and shortest humans is more than five times.
In other words, the purpose of the first round of screening is to eliminate those who are less like "humans".
After the first round of screening for height and body shape, the second round is the screening for teeth. Those who passed the first round of screening opened their mouths for inspection as required. Those who had an abnormal number of teeth or a distorted jaw shape would be screened out in the second round.
This way, the number of people left is less than one-tenth of the original number.
In the third round of screening, the crew used a scanner. Those who passed the first two rounds of screening were sent to a dark room in turn for an X-ray-like fluoroscopic scan to capture their entire skeletal framework and test it. Anyone with extra or missing bones would be eliminated in this round.
After this round of screening, the team that originally had hundreds of people was reduced to less than a hundred, and they were waiting for the final round of testing: blood sampling, namely genetic sequencing.
The onboard doctor drew blood samples from the arm arteries of those who had passed the first three rounds of screening, and then dropped them onto many test strips. Most people's blood samples would change the color of two or three test strips, and these people were those who failed the screening.
Only a few people's blood can pass all the tests and no test paper will change color. By the time the tests are completed, there are less than ten people left.
At this time, the crew will remove the shackles on the hands and feet of those who have passed the test, put on white robes for them, and take them onto the spacecraft.
Howard knew they were looking for "pure human beings."
The 15th to 25th millennium of this universe marked a crucial period for humanity's advancement in cosmic technology. During this period, humanity achieved many remarkable accomplishments, including powerful and fully autonomous strong artificial intelligence, subspace navigation technology capable of allowing spacecraft to cross astronomical distances in a short period of time, and the now-prized STC template, all of which were invented during this time.
It is even said that humans during this period tinkered with some incredible things involving timelines and even "cause and effect". Therefore, in Howard's original world, fans of the Warhammer IP like to call this period the "Golden Age".
However, the so-called "Golden Age" has another name that seems not so "bright": the Dark Technological Age.
This period was also an era of unbridled technological development. Humans researched all kinds of dangerous knowledge according to their own wishes, carried out various genetic modifications without regard for ethics and taboos, and changed human genes beyond recognition.
To the extent that today, reproductive isolation may even occur between two "humans" in different areas of the hive.
There was once a joke in the real world by some Warhammer fans that a banana from the 40rd millennium era was genetically closer to humans than people from the 3th millennium era.
This statement is of course inaccurate, and is more of a complaint and joke, because as long as the humans in the 40th century did not transform themselves into plants, the genetic gap between them and the humans in the 3rd century would not be bigger than a banana.
But this at least illustrates one thing, that is, the genes of many humans in the empire today are not naturally evolved from the genes of humans in the 3k era.
Moreover, humans who have not undergone genetic modification or genetic mutation will find it more difficult to adapt to the environment outside the earth and will be less able to compete with genetically enhanced humans. Therefore, these "outdated" genes that cannot keep up with the development of the times will further decrease over time.
In today's empire, human genes that have continued from the 3k era to the present are extremely rare. Even those immortals may not be genetically pure, because psychic energy itself is one of the sources of contamination that distorts genes.