Microstory 1682: Starcatcher

< > Table of Contents

After the wars began—precipitated by a debate about what to do with the people on this version of Earth who were already infected with the sterility virus—a group of scientists figured that there was no way out of this. Now that the virus existed on their planet, there was probably nothing stopping it from getting out eventually. They could bomb the quarantined nation, and they could send people to bunkers, but their fate would eventually catch up to them. They decided that the only way to save the human race was to take it off world. But they weren’t trying to save themselves. They did not have the resources or technology necessary to send a significant enough population to the stars. They would only be able to send frozen embryos, and one individual young adult in stasis. There was also no guarantee that revival from stasis would work, because even though they had tested the technology in the short-term, they didn’t know if it would be able to last for what was potentially thousands of years. There were no sufficiently habitable planets within a reasonable distance from Earth. Neighboring worlds were always too hot, or too massive, or not massive enough. A human outpost could probably survive on these worlds, but again, this was a long-term project, and the people who would grow up in the colony were not liable to be able to advance fast enough in a harsh environment. Thanks to a boost from the solar sails, the ship was capable of traveling at about ten percent the speed of light. It would slow down over time as it hunted for the right world to settle on. Since they didn’t know exactly where the ship would be going, they called it Starcatcher. It was designed to use solar power to jump from the current star to the next, and just keep doing that until the right orbiting body presented itself.

There was no way to know whether their plan would work, let alone how long it might take. They just had to send off the embryos, and hope that Starcatcher found a new home eventually. As aforementioned, this could take thousands of years. They could program the AI to gather the requisite data for every planet they encountered, synthesize it well, and extrapolate a survivability factor, but so many things could go wrong. Again, the scientists would never know how the mission turned out. Even if Starcatcher did manage to find a world just next door, the trip was still going to take decades, and none of them was young enough to still be around. This was all about faith. They were right to have it. Fifty-six thousand years later, Starcatcher found a decent planet that was about 5500 light years away. It had a nitrogen-rich environment with healthy levels of oxygen, 85% water on the surface, and fairly reliable climate patterns. Things went pretty smoothly, but not perfectly. The Governess, as she was called, woke up from stasis, obviously still alive, but she wasn’t intact. She had trouble remembering who she was, and what she was meant to do. Fortunately, she didn’t try to mess with any of the embryos until her mind was better. It just took some time for her to acclimate to the future, and remember her purpose here. You may be wondering how it’s possible for a single woman to raise the 147 babies needed for the initial population. She didn’t start with that number. Experts had developed a complicated development plan for her, which involved starting out slowly, having the older children help raise the younger ones, and patiently doing this over the course of three decades. Humanity was able to restart here, and they never had to worry about the Ochivari again.

Microstory 1681: Dark Studies

< > Table of Contents

An Efilversal survivor named Nils Nilson was the one who ultimately taught the Ochivari how to start their antinatalistic movement. It was he who believed most passionately that the only way to protect life was to destroy it. He saw no irony in this. “To prevent suffering, one must cut the threads of existence before they get too long,” he was once heard saying. He was insane. But he was an excellent orator, and a very moving teacher. In exchange for his words, he asked the Ochivari to transport him to a new universe. He didn’t specifically say that he was going to continue to spread his message, but that was definitely what he wanted to do. His people were becoming extinct, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. If he wanted to mould a civilization into his image, he had to find one still with a significant population. That was what he really wanted, to turn people to his side, and convince them to do whatever he wanted. It probably didn’t matter much what he convinced them to do, as long as he would go down in history as the most influential voice of all time. It worked. The world he ended up on was falling apart. Wars and unregulated technology were threatening everyone in some way. There weren’t really even rich people who could protect themselves against the consequences. It was just a huge mess, and from just about everyone’s perspective, a lost cause. Nilson saw potential in them, though. If he could condition them to despise technology beyond a certain level, he could have his notoriety. He got to work. He used his charm to gather a few followers, and with the power they gave him, he was able to gather more. And more, and more, and then after that...more. It was never enough.

No one could stop him, even if they wanted to. Any government still standing at this point in time was wholly ineffectual, so there was no one willing and able to oppose him. Anyone who had some kind of principled stance against his ideas didn’t give him much thought. The reality was that he was not only the loudest voice in the crowd, but one of few who had any interest in using that voice to enact change. With little resistance, he banished sufficiently advanced technology, and killed anyone who did actively operate against him. Most people were too scared of him to argue. Yes, he was violent, but he was ending wars, because people no longer had the suitable resources to try, and they were all coming together under one banner anyway. Eventually, no one was left to fight, because they were either dead, or on the same side. Now, the Ochivari promised never to enter the universe where they left Nilson to start a brand new life. They had every intention of keeping that promise. Unfortunately for all of us, that kind of attention to detail can get lost when you’re dealing with bulk travel. Nilson died not too long after he arrived, which only augmented the mystique surrounding his philosophy. When the Ochivari finally did arrive, it was nearly thirty years later, and no one on the mission who made the original promise to him was even still alive. Despite their ability to travel through time, a generation for the Ochivari goes by quickly. Each time an individual tries to make a jump, there’s about a fifty percent chance that they’ll die, and past successes hardly increase those odds. Anyway, since their outlook was transformed, these humans were happy to welcome the Ochivari to their home, and were more than willing to join their cause. The loop is complete. The Ochivari gave Nilson to these people, which made them the confederates they would end up becoming to the Ochivari.

Microstory 1655: Linsetol Revealed

< > Table of Contents

Bulk traveler Joseph Jacobson came to me recently with a story about his adventures in Linsetolverse. He corrected some assumptions I made about the universe. It’s hard for me to get a good look at it from so far away, so it was nice to hear some details about the way they lived. He arrived, as he always does, as a human, shocking the Linsetol, who had never seen anything like him before. They knew it was best to keep this alien a secret, because they didn’t want to cause any confusion or panic. Joseph has the ability to navigate the bulkverse. That’s kind of his whole deal, so he could have made a deliberate effort to avoid showing up where his presence could negatively impact the development of the locals, but he usually just spins a metaphorical wheel, and takes his chances. He’s immortal, so he doesn’t concern himself with preparation, or vigilance. Anyway, things seemed to work out fine, and Joseph spent a few years there, learning about their culture. The language was the hardest part. As they were evolved from dinosaurs, the Linsetol have different vocal physiology, and produce sounds that are impossible for a human to replicate. With the aid of some engineers, Joseph actually managed to build a device that would translate his thoughts into a digital voice. It was not a linguistic translator, though. Joseph still had to understand the language in order for the device to not simply come out as English. He probably could have done it differently, but just didn’t feel the need. It worked both ways, allowing a Linsetol to speak in English, should the need ever arise, but this wasn’t something that Joseph needed of them. Once he was able to communicate with them effectively, he started learning their customs, because that was his favorite part about traveling. He was usually just going to a different version of Earth, so it wasn’t like the topography was particularly exciting. Understanding other people was the entire point.

As it turns out, the Linsetol are quite like humans. I was wrong about them being foreign. I think the language barrier was clouding my vision. They’re just as diverse, just as curious, and just as capable of doing terrible things. They measure time in the same way, though it’s different on prehistoric Earth, because the celestial bodies are moving differently. Shorter days, longer years. They developed fairly advanced technology, which I can see from my perspective, but they never got very far into space. Upon realizing how bad for their environment nonrenewable energy sources were, they outlawed them. They outlawed them across the globe, and pursued renewables like solar and wind power. Unfortunately, such things are not conducive to sending rockets up into space, so space exploration was pretty much off the table without fusion or antimatter rockets, which weren’t destined to be developed for many decades. They didn’t make it that far, because of their isolationistic habits. That’s one thing that I was right about. They were capable of demanding universal laws for the protection of their world, but they didn’t possess a spirit of cooperation, which stifled ingenuity, and slowed progress. They couldn’t last forever this way. They didn’t die out because they destroyed their planet, or succumbed to some pandemic. It was a population growth problem. Their drive to propagate the species was much lower than it is for humans. It was never zero, but it wasn’t enough, and over time, they just couldn’t maintain the species. Each generation was less inclined to bear children on the individual level, and that eventually caught up to them.

Microstory 1637: Wish Fulfillment

< > Table of Contents

I’ve not said anything about universes that contain a great deal of people with spirit abilities. Mine is like that, but throughout the bulkverse, we’re pretty rare. In any given brane, you might find one or two spirits in all of history. In Genieverse, there are many, though not quite as many as there are here in Voldisilaverse. The Voldisil are complicated in that we never all get together to make decisions. Each one of us tries to do whatever they believe is right, and sometimes that doesn’t work out so well, but we never decided to form some kind of governmental system. The spirits in Genieverse did. They were all born with the ability to find and recognize each other, and in the hopes of creating a better world, chose to found an organization that would utilize their abilities effectively. All spirits here were the same thing, though to varying degrees of success. They called themselves Genies, as you could have guessed, and I’m sure you’ve heard of them, but you probably know them to be slaves, or evil creatures of some kind. The real Genies can’t manipulate reality, or alter the laws of physics, but they can answer people’s prayers. And answering prayers is what they chose to do. They could have charged for their services, using regular currency, or maybe favors, but they wanted it to be fair. They opened their doors to all, and their only rule was that no wish could contradict someone else’s wish, or interfere with someone’s general happiness. Lots of people wanted the person they loved to love them back, but that would violate that other person’s agency, so it was off limits. It’s unclear whether they would be capable of such a thing anyway. They thought this simple restriction was all they would need, but there were problems, of course. It led them to prioritizing certain people over others—usually on a first come, first serve basis—resulting in an unfair system. It also resulted in chaos.

The Genies were powerful, intelligent, and knowledgeable. If two people wanted the same promotion at work, the person who asked for it first would usually be the one to get it, unless the Genies were aware that the second person was better suited. Well, this came with questions, like what were their parameters for job fitness, and what right did they have to circumvent the hiring manager’s decision? They were trying to become gods, while pretending they weren’t trying to be gods, while just making everything worse for everyone. They didn’t have any rules about how many wishes any one person was allotted. They didn’t think too far down the line at possible consequences for their choices. As long as a wish did not pose an immediate threat, and it was within their power, they made it happen. Society fell apart as people became obsessed with making their lives better without actually putting any effort into that goal. They believed as long as they didn’t ask for too much at one time, they would not be denied, and all of their dreams would eventually come true. It became impossible for the Genies to understand the ramifications of their actions. Soon, contradictions were popping up all over the place, and the solutions never really helped, because they always felt unfair as well. In two years, pretty much everyone in the world was unhappy, and there seemed to be no way out. The only reason it took that long was because not everyone believed the Genies were real right away. Unfortunately, it didn’t matter what they did at this point. No one was really wishing for the environment to be healthier throughout all of this, so the Ochivari came through, and wiped them all out, but it was their last successful mission.

Microstory 1636: Underverse

< > Table of Contents

As I’ve sort of explained, every universe that includes a populated Earth will begin at the same start value. This means that they should be accompanied by two planets closer to the sun, and another farther out before a small asteroid belt, before moving onto the gas giants, and icy worlds. And all of these celestial bodies should follow predictable patterns, and they should be the same for all versions of Earth. But they’re not. I don’t know enough about astrophysics to tell you why, but I have been able to see the consequences of these variations. On one Earth, astronomers uncovered the irregular orbital pattern of an asteroid from deep space, which was—apparently perturbed by other gravitationally-bound objects—on a collision course towards Earth. This gave them an eight-year warning, but that didn’t mean they could send up a bunch of space cowboys to blow the thing up. They possessed telescopic technology capable of detecting the asteroid, and the mathematical skills to predict its movements, but the space programs had barely reached the moon. Had this happened to them a few decades later, they might have stood a chance to stop it, but they had no hope of that now. All they could do was run and hide. Fortunately, the right people were given the latitude to jump into action, and preserve the human race. Private corporations and world governments started working together to an impressively harmonious degree. They built massive cities deep underground to protect them from the impact. The asteroid was destined to strike the continent of Africa, which meant their bunkers would have needed to be farther down than they were capable of digging. So other nations took in refugees, so the entire population of the planet could be saved. They didn’t even fight about it, they just did it. In only eight years, construction was completed. A few stragglers chose to remain on the surface, but very few of them were far enough away from impact to survive.

The reason they were able to complete the project in the short time allotted was that they planned the bunkers in stages. They knew that it was more important to finish the overall structure first, and stuff it with enough resources for the people to survive on. But they didn’t build individual units and rooms until later, in case it took them too long to finish Stage One. They didn’t build amenities until after impact, because they knew they could be okay until then. They just needed to get people down there, and they wouldn’t have been satisfied with anything short of the survival of everyone who wanted to survive. An impact winter reigned over the planet for decades to come after the incident, forcing the survivors to make their homes here, and forget about ever seeing the sky again. That was a dream that could be fulfilled by their children’s children, or beyond. Progress and development did not end here, though. They kept studying science, and coming up with advanced technology. They were able to tap into their undersea communication lines, and reestablish contact with each other across the continental divides. Within a couple decades, they were back to about where they were when this happened. They were just an underground species now. While they were down here, the Ochivari visited, and went on the hunt for evolved life, pleased to find this to be one world that they did not have to worry about. For some reason, they didn’t notice how few dead bodies were left behind, and foolishly concluded the humans were not a threat. But below, a source of recruitment into the Transit Army brewed.

Microstory 1635: Isoverse

< > Table of Contents

I already told you about Floaterverse, where just about everyone on Earth lives on artificial floating islands. Isoverse is similar to that, but taken to an extreme extreme. I didn’t repeat myself, the first extreme is an adjective, and the second a noun. The Floaters still maintain their communities, they’re just modular. They can shift them around, which serves to promote a global community. The Isoversals, on the other hand, stay almost completely separate from each other, and they do it in space. Civilization started out normal, but quickly diverged, both socially, and scientifically. Advancement became an obsession for these people, and contrary to popular belief, this is not normal. For centuries, most versions of Earth will develop technology quite slowly, necessity being the mother of invention, and all. Most will not form a drive to push forward regardless of true need until much later. Coupled with religious hangups, this can hold progress back rather well. These same obstacles happened to the Isoversals as well, but unlike others, it severely pissed them off. A resistance group of sorts rose to power, and banned all religion impressively early. I say impressive, but do not mistake that to mean I condone their violent behavior. It’s just such an unusual thing to happen in history, but all told, there was less violence here than in most other universes. The group also banned war, and were prepared to stoop to the level of irony in order to protect that mandate. This also had the effect of increasing the global population, which might sound like a good thing, but it came with some problems. It came with disease. It was worse than any pandemic on any other world, except for the sterility virus. The Isoversals were nearly wiped out by it, and it forced them to change their perspective.

The survivors continued to advance, and came up with ways to protect themselves against something like this happening again. Self-quarantining became the norm, and each passing generation was more and more used to the idea, until no one was left alive who felt that there was any better way to live. To maintain the species, they had to live separately. It was the only way, according to researchers. Innovation didn’t halt, though, of course, and soon they were reapplying their methods to space travel. This reached its inevitable state when every family was afforded its own fusion-powered spacecraft habitat that could orbit a planet, or a host star. If requested and approved, they could even be fitted with a propulsion system capable of delivering them to other star systems. When a child was old enough to go off on their own, they did so literally, by transferring to a unit only large enough to accommodate them. Obviously, the entire point of all this was to protect the species, but the price of not going extinct by some disease could not be going extinct by a lack of propagation. Instead of interacting in base reality, communities formed in virtual constructs. They kept their physical bodies, but spent most of their time connected to the network. When two people met, they would begin by dating each other remotely, and would even form a permanent union in VR. They would only come together outside of VR to start a family, and they were assigned a larger habitat in order to make that work. This was how they lived, and they never thought there could be a better way. They didn’t colonize space to protect the environment of their home planet. They did it because they believed it was the best way to insulate themselves from each other. But it protected them from the Ochivari just the same.

Microstory 1631: Confederates

< > Table of Contents

In the early days of the Ochivari’s crusade—from their perspective—finding out whether a planet was suited for sterilization was a difficult task. They had spaceships, but transporting these to other universes was problematic. Each individual, with exceptions, will be born with the ability to travel the bulkverse, but they can only transport so much mass. A ship requires a lot of sacrifices, extremely precise timing, and can only happen on the surface of a world with a breathable atmosphere. Basically what they do is gather a bunch of Ochivari who they are willing to let die, and they will all die. While only half of them need to die to open the portal, the destructive force of sending a ship through it will kill the other half as well. The ship, meanwhile, has to essentially fly towards the planet’s surface, and risk simply crashing into it. Many have indeed crashed while trying to figure out this timing. Even a portal large enough to accommodate something so massive will evaporate quickly, so it’s not like they can open one, and wait for the ship to be ready. Once the vessel does manage to get through a portal, and begin exploring the new universe, gathering information takes a lot of finesse. They have to watch any given planet from afar, hoping to understand their history, and predict their future, well enough to determine if they should let them live, or not. They’ve tried to infiltrate the native population, but most people in the bulkverse are human, and not enough cosmetic surgery can make an Ochivar look human. So they walk around in hoods, and hope that no one notices them. They often do, and it causes problems. Fortunately for them, infiltration got easier when they found a group of humans willing to help.

In one universe, the human population of a version of Earth was intentionally primitive. Their technology progressed just as it usually does, but they halted it, and went backwards, in order to protect both themselves, and their environment. Progress seemed to be creating more problems than it solved, including an untenable barrage of wars. The survivors of these wars collectively decided that it was not worth it. Their main drive to come up with new inventions was to make life easier, and even prolong life, but if fighting over resources killed too many people, then it didn’t really make much sense. Without modern medicine, and other life-supporting advancements, the death rate went back to where it was before the world wars. So too did the infant mortality rate. Now, normally, a species such as human will compensate for this decline by increasing the birthrate. They may not even be conscious of it, but a couple will have more children, knowing that some will die. That’s not what happened here. Parents will have relatively few children, and if all of them die, and they can’t pass on their legacy, then so be it. They will die themselves when it’s time—which could happen rather soon without the proper medical treatments—and their bloodline will just end. By the time the Ochivari found them, the population was at about a billion, leaving them well spread out across the globe, and impacting their environment to a minimal degree. Within two centuries, they would have probably become extinct, and they were perfectly content with this. So they understood the logic behind antinatalism, and were eager to help the Ochivari in their cause. They were a lot better at infiltrating other human planets, which led to better intelligence, which honestly, actually probably saved a few worlds from being unduly sterilized when they didn’t truly fit the parameters.

Microstory 1606: The Advantage of Diversity

< > Table of Contents

There is a special brane in the bulkverse that’s called Havenverse, because it mostly doesn’t allow crazy scifi things to happen. There’s no time travel, no aliens, no technology too advanced for a given time period. It’s, for lack of a better term, normal. There was a breach into this universe once, but the window was sealed quickly, and in general, it’s the safest place to be if you want to get away from whatever insane adventures you’re having. Of course, because it’s so pristine, it’s the hardest one to access, and it’s pretty well protected by outsiders who want to keep it as it is, and will do anything to stop it from being corrupted. All told, however, it is not unique. There are many universes like it, where its inhabitants tell stories about robot werewolves from another dimension, or fairies that live in your hair, but where these things are not real. Havenverse is different because it doesn’t allow such things to exist, but many others, for all practical purposes, are the same, because such things simply never came to be. There’s one in particular I want to talk about that is insignificant, except for an interesting prehistorical twist. Much like the Linsetol of the last story, a certain species managed to survive in their world longer than their parallel universe counterparts. They’re known as the Neanderthals, and while they did not last through the modern day, they did have a much greater impact on human evolution. On most versions of Earth, a human will contain up to four percent of Neanderthal DNA, indicating that the two hominids interbred, at least minimally, before the latter went extinct. Experts believe that homo sapiens out-competed their brethren for food and other resources, but had they become more cooperative, and less selective with their mates, co-existence could have persisted, for a little while, anyway. Like I said, Neanderthals did eventually disappear, but a lot more had to do with them becoming assimilated into the homo sapien population. Modern humans, thusly, found themselves walking around with anywhere between eleven and twenty-four percent Neanderthal DNA. Not only is this six times greater than it is on other Earths, but it also presents a much wider genetic gap amongst the population, which at one point threatened to generate a divide between different peoples in the modern day. This didn’t happen. Actually, the opposite happened. Upon learning more about their own genetic evolution, the humans of this Earth ended up uniting to form a singular society much earlier than other Earths. They recognized that diversity was a good thing, and a source of strength, rather than a weakness. They started working together more, and quickly abolished war. They staved off climate breakdown, and prepared for potential pandemics. Science progressed faster, and capitalism fell to a civilization defined by post-scarcity. It is for this reason that antinatalist species, the Ochivari ignored this universe. By preventing themselves from destroying their planet, they also kept themselves out of The Darning Wars.

Microstory 1605: Linsetol Evolved

< > Table of Contents

As I’ve explained, the closer a universe is, the easier it is for me to access. That’s why most of my stories are going to be about humans, and will mostly take place on some version of Earth. In truth, most universes aren’t centered on Earth, and in fact don’t even have an Earth. The ones that do, we’ll just say—out of no desire to fully understand the physics of it all—are considered spinoffs of the original. The first rule of probable reality is that any world that can be conceived—and whose consistent physical laws don’t countermine the laws that are true of every universe—can exist. Furthermore, if such a qualifying world is conceived, then it will exist. It may only be stable enough to last for a brief period of time before it collapses, but the very thought of it will conjure it into being, unless it’s something crazy and impossible, like many cartoons. It is important to understand this, because it’s possible for there to be a version of Earth out there where the mesozoic extinction events played out differently, and while most of the life during these times were still wiped out, the diversity of life that survived and continued to evolve was slightly greater than what you’ve learned about in your own universe. By cross-referencing paleontological studies from the more familiar branes, I have determined that the one we’re discussing today contains an intelligent species that evolved from what you would call troodon. While they resemble their ancient counterparts significantly, the similarities are not enough to draw a definitive conclusion, but they are very clearly not human, and the time of their reign as the supreme species on their world took place millions of years before humans would have evolved anyway. This is the troodon world, but from what I can gather about their society, they do not call themselves this. It’s hard to tell what anything they say means, since their language is unlike anything I’ve ever encountered, and I am not a linguist. I can make some assumptions about their history as I watch it unfold from outside of time, but I can’t get a clear picture, because their customs are so foreign to me. There is no true equivalent to how humans operate, and I can only understand so much about them. The Linsetol ultimately developed a highly advanced civilization before they met their final fate. They didn’t dispatch any manned missions into space, but they did send up satellites, and they had a pretty decent understanding of how the cosmos worked. Their history isn’t riddled with as much war as most human Earths experienced, but that doesn’t mean they were peaceful and kind. The Linsetol were isolationists, whose nations each stuck to their own corners, and kept mostly to themselves. They liked to be independent and self-sufficient. If they were living in a region without a particular resource, then they either found a way to live without it, or they moved somewhere else, as long as it didn’t interfere with any other group’s territory. After all this moving around, all the best areas were taken, and while they made attempts to develop more sustainable options, the population of each faction dwindled until the species went extinct. There was no reason to war against each other, because everyone was in the same boat at around the same time, so it would only delay the inevitable. They were unable to cooperate, so they were always doomed to fail.

Microstory 995: Panda Neglect

< > Table of Contents

This is a quite unpopular one, and is probably too negative for this list, and I realize that. You may be asking, why would you not want to save the pandas? Well, I’m not suggesting we go out and murder a bunch of animals, but we should certainly stop wasting all of our resources on protecting them. 99% of animals that have ever lived on this planet have gone extinct, a great many of them dying out in the third mass extinction event. To be sure, humans are the cause of a lot of death, but we can’t be blamed for most of this. When it comes to evolution, there are three general outcomes. The first is that a mutation can become a positive genetic trait, leading to an advantage which allows that species to survive. The second is a neutral trait, which doesn’t have that much effect in the long run. It often leads to subspecies, because the individuals who do not possess the trait are still doing fine. The third is a negative trait, and will lead to death. If it doesn’t help the species to survive, then the mutated creature will likely die before passing on their genes, and the rest of the population won’t have to worry about it. Then you have the panda. Pandas separated from the rest of the bear family tree about three million years ago, likely due to environmental restrictions. While they were originally well-designed for an omnivorous diet, scientists believe there wasn’t enough meat around, which essentially forced them to subsist on what was available. For as little nutrition as bamboo provides, it certainly grows quickly, and would have a hard time going extinct itself. The problem is that the panda doesn’t care how quickly bamboo grows. It prefers to eat the sprouts, which are about half as nutritious, which means a panda has to eat twice as much; ultimately half of their own body weight. Can you imagine eating *cough* thirty-six kilograms *cough* of food a day? The biggest argument against panda conservation is how much we’re wasting on breeding them when they’re better off doing it in the wild. We’ve all heard how dumb these animals are, and how bad they are at sex, but the reason they’ve survived this long is they’re actually not all that bad at it in the wild. They’re only bad at it in captivity, because....well, wouldn’t you be? If we want to save the pandas, then we should leave them be. The reason we have to work so hard protecting other species, like elephants, is because other forces are working against us, but there’s not a huge market for panda meat. That’s right, all your efforts to save them are actually harming them. We can’t change what they choose to eat, but we can choose to ignore them. Set the pandas free, and leave them alone. If they die out, then that makes me a saaaad panda. But also not, because I don’t care that much; they mostly did it to themselves.