The Darwin Project

The Darwin Project has been referenced many times but it was never formally defined until the middle section of The Ark Lords. We discovered in The Vuduri Companion in the short story entitled "Pruno Dreams" that Colonel Harmon Slayton and other members of the U.S. Space Forces were conspiring to "reboot the Earth" in their words. They created the Darwin Project to supervise the systematic death of over nine billion people. This was not genocide. This was essentially the extinction of the human race.

They called it the Darwin Project in honor of Charles Darwin who coined the phrase "survival of the fittest" but in this case it was not any biological or physiological advantage but rather who you knew. Here is Colonel Slayton's final words on the subject:

     “We have built some bunkers and self-sustaining enclaves to preserve our culture as best we can. We don’t know how long they will hold out.” The Colonel shrugged. “As far as the rest of the world, our psycho-historical research tells us that this will cause utter chaos and set what’s left of civilization back to the Stone Age. That is where you come in. You and your people have been sent away to preserve our technology and our way of life. Since you are watching this video, you have already completed your part of the plan. 100 Arks, 500 people per, an invading army of 50,000 with all of our best technology. When you get back home, the world will be there for the taking. You will reform the Earth in our image. You will make America the pre-eminent world power it once was. And never, ever let things get out of control again.” The Colonel leaned forward. “Before you launch, it is imperative that you learn about Strain 5. This is our final legacy to you, just in case.”

So now we know what was contained in the locker labeled S5 Vacc. It was a vaccine against the Darwin Strain 5 virus, one guaranteed to be lethal to all human beings, even those with a natural immunity to Strain 4. Here was Colonel Slayton's observations regarding Strain 5:

     “At last we come to Virus Strain 5. Strain 5 is an upgrade to Strain 4 with a prion delivery system and the H5N1 variant grafted on. While Strain 4 will be 99.999% effective, Virus 5 is guaranteed to be 100% lethal. No one, and I will say it again, no one will survive this that has not been immunized. All of your Arks have been supplied with an incubation kit for the Strain 5 vaccine.” Colonel Slayton pointed at the metallic container in front of him.
     “Wait,” Rome said as the video paused. “I’ve seen that before.”
     “What?”
     “That square canister with the white lid. There was one in Edgar’s back room. I saw it before he attacked me. That means your people have the S5 Vaccine. They obviously know what it is for.”
     Rei scowled. “MINIMCOM, keep going,” he said.
     “This is your backup plan. The purpose of this virus is to give you one more chance, should you arrive on Earth and find things have taken a turn for the worse. It will be here waiting for you. This will eliminate every human on the planet not of your choosing. We have tried to cover every contingency including one Ark that we can absolutely guarantee will return to Earth. It is possible that they will have already arrived by the time you get there. It is even possible that they have already deployed Virus 5. So it is critically important that you and all of your crew are inoculated with the vaccine prior to entering cryo-hibernation.”

So in the end, the Ark program was not just about colonizing new worlds, it was about isolating future members of Darwin and preparing them to return to Earth to take over. That is how the Erklirte were born. But where did they come from?

Tomorrow.