"Why did they do it? Why would anyone do it?"
Your xenologists have been asking each other...
Your xenologists have been asking each other...
Why We Did It (Metroid, short fic)
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"Why did they do it? Why would anyone do it?"
Your xenologists have been asking each other that question for a long time. Their bewilderment is understandable. Its a question that many of our own scholars have asked over our long history. Entire libraries have been written on the subject, though they are unfortunately now lost. I will do my best to answer it, for the benefit of your own understanding of my species, though I'm afraid the ancient writings would have been more articulate.
The real question, as you should know, is not "Why did they choose biotechnology?" That was simple pragmatism. As your scientists are discovering, there is a certain point in the advancement of technology where bionetics become the most practical option. Everything that can be crafted from sheets of crudely-welded metal or stone can also be grown, and biomechanisms have certain traits (self-healing, self-reproduction, telepathic sensitivity, and direct neural interface, to name just a few) that no other kind of technology can provide. Most advanced civilizations in galactic history have gone down a biotechnological route after a time. Your own species is beginning to do this, with the advent of the Aurora Units and their ilk. The question is not why we went biomechanical, but why we did so in a certain, unorthodox (by most standards) way.
The question, rather, is why our biotechnology is so needlessly extravagant. There are simple, efficient ways to create a biomechanism, and that is what most species employ. But as you know, this is almost never true of my race's artifacts. Eyes and fangs, slime and scales, endlessly twisting corridors of ribbed, living metal. Tentacles grow from orifices in walls to wrap themselves around the bases of user interface devices. Gigantic, exposed brains with functionally useless eyes and jagged spines. Ravenous, spike-covered arthropods roaming maze-like arteries. Why?
The question is why, instead of bringing our tried-and-true biomechanisms to new planets, we nearly always recreate them using native materials. Our colonists have left in their wake a galaxy with very few "natural" ecosystems remaining. Kihunters spit acid that eats through polarized steel, and their hives are built in symbiosis with a species of flowering vine that can fire pulse lasers from what an unsuspecting naturalist might assume were blossoms. Zebesians grow metal plates on their skin and carry an electrical charge of over 4,000 of your volts between their pincers. Rippers grow flat platforms on their backs to make themselves ideal for carrying cargo, and their underbellies have been made optimal for attachment to our grapple beams. We already had security systems, electrical maintenance units, and cargo transports when we settled these worlds. Why would we reinvent them out of the local flora and fauna instead of transplanting our old biotech to the new worlds? Why?
The question is why our infantry were - through invasive genetic and surgical procedures - given the ability transform themselves into ostensibly impossibly small metallic spheres, when there are so many saner ways to get the same benefit. The question is why SR388 is infested with creatures that feed on what you've come to call "life energy." The question is why we adopted an orphaned child of your species and, instead of returning her to her people, altered her genome beyond recognition and mutated her into a human-chozo hybrid?
In response to your question, I will pose you one of my own. Why do your people spread pigment on sheets of canvas?
There is something about sapience that seems to necessitate irrational, non-functional, neurotic behavior. Every sophont species expresses this evolutionary quirk in a different way. We've filled archives with examples from around the galaxy, and discovered some impressive variety. In the case of your species, the result was the extravagance of your art; the creation of sensory stimuli that have an emotional or visceral impact on other humans who observe them, beyond mere communication or commemoration. We also have what you would call 'art,' but our art is more functional and practical and less an expression of our irrational compulsions. Our buildings were built in geometric shapes to communicate their purposes. Murals and statues on our walls illustrated the purpose and ownership of the rooms they were mounted in. Our art would be subdued, drab, and monotonous by your standards, and has been viewed by most cultures in our history as one of many idle pastimes without much higher cultural value. Art does not occupy the same place in our racial subconscious that it does in yours; we do not have the same neurotic reverence for it. We have something different that fills that role.
On our original homeworld, there is evidence that our ancestors dammed rivers – not for irrigation or land development – but for no reason besides the desire to divert their courses. There are massive, ancient organisms – similar to your trees – whose shapes are irrevocably twisted by our primitive ancestors who used saws and hammers to carve shapes out of the living forms. Cities were built with structures that extended through the stems of living plantforms; if the plant could be burrowed and gnawed through in a way that allowed the struggling organism to keep itself barely alive despite having a stone house through its middle, the architect was praised.
You see, chozo have a fundamental desire to subborn the state of nature. It is part of what makes us who we are, just as the enjoyment of art and music is part of the human experience. Our psychologists have proposed a number of explanations; repressed frustration against a difficult universe, a way to grant us the illusion of control over the unpredictabilities of our lives, a sublimation of our desire for dominance within the social sphere - I could go on, but none of their explanations have convinced me. These pressures are equally present among all sophonts, but we are – to the best of my knowledge – the only ones whose irrational socio-neurotic behaviors take this form. To the question "Why do you adulterate life wherever you encounter it?" The only believable answer can be "Because we are chozo."
Only a chozo can appreciate the beauty of a species whose natural way of life has been stolen from it in a way that it will never consciously miss. Subtle viruses turning plants into walkways and animals into trash disposals. An ecosystem has its purpose taken away and a new one inserted, against its own interests, and it never even knows to complain. There are jungles throughout the galaxy that feed mercilessly on themselves to provide safe and comfortable living for chozo colonists who no longer live there, and are kept alive only by carefully engineered bio-control mechanisms; even without telepathic guidance, each subsystem continues to operate indefinitely. Some of the trees mutilated during our stone age are still alive, still disfigured; some of the rivers of our homeworld are still flowing the wrong ways, and they are still remembered as wonders of the ancient world! The existence of organisms like the metroids, every detail of whose existence is a rebuff of nature's sensibilities? Moving, sensational, and compelling nearly beyond words. I don't expect you to see what makes these things desirable, anymore than you could expect me to be impressed by the Sistine Chapel ceiling. I am simply explaining the world as we experience it.
There are some outliers, though even they could not fully defeat their innate chozo-ness. The Tallon IV colonists subscribed to an ideology different from that of most chozo throughout history. Respect for life and unity with the cosmos in a metaphysical sense was their objective, and to a certain extent they achieved it. But even they went about this reunion with nature in an unmistakably chozo way. Trees were guided – gently, lovingly, but still in conflict with their natural physiology – around the colonists' buildings. The indigenous fauna weren't worked around by the settlers, but worked into the growing habitat, even if they were not severely genetically modified. When the Tallon IV mystics abandoned their physical forms, they became one with the ecosystem they had transformed for themselves. Their consciousnesses still encompass the plants and animals of that world, the life energy of that ecosystem forming the medium that the ghosts inhabit. Tallon IV's tranformation was subtle, by our standards, but the planet's ecosystem as it is today is no more natural than those of Zebes or SR388. The other former chozo colonies you have discovered speak for themselves.
I cannot personally condone what was done to Samus Aran, but I am not shocked by it. Regrettably, the sentience - or even sapience - of an organism has not historically been important to the chozo who re-purposed it. Your child being taken and transformed into a creature only superficially human, without any thought to her wishes or those of her surviving family, without any concern for her future happiness, is but one of many such instances throughout our history. We have transformed or exterminated entire species of intelligent beings, through both social and biological engineering, to suit any number of purposes or none at all. We've even done it to ourselves, the morph ball technology being only the most persistent example that comes quickly to mind. Not all chozo societies would have done this to Samus, but most of them probably would. I take no pride in this part of my heritage, but I find myself reluctantly accepting it. I have learned to live with the unpleasant aspects of our nature, as I'm sure you have with the vices of humanity. Neither of us have been given much choice in the matter.
When you look around the galaxy in its present state and see what to you must seem like senseless horrors on every habitable world, it is only natural that you would ask "Why?" Why? Because we wanted to. And if we could do it all again, I am quite sure that we would be pleased at the opportunity.
I think the more pressing question you should be asking at this point is "Aren't you supposed to be extinct?" but as I suspect you'd be happier not knowing the answer, I shan't burden you with it.
Your xenologists have been asking each other that question for a long time. Their bewilderment is understandable. Its a question that many of our own scholars have asked over our long history. Entire libraries have been written on the subject, though they are unfortunately now lost. I will do my best to answer it, for the benefit of your own understanding of my species, though I'm afraid the ancient writings would have been more articulate.
The real question, as you should know, is not "Why did they choose biotechnology?" That was simple pragmatism. As your scientists are discovering, there is a certain point in the advancement of technology where bionetics become the most practical option. Everything that can be crafted from sheets of crudely-welded metal or stone can also be grown, and biomechanisms have certain traits (self-healing, self-reproduction, telepathic sensitivity, and direct neural interface, to name just a few) that no other kind of technology can provide. Most advanced civilizations in galactic history have gone down a biotechnological route after a time. Your own species is beginning to do this, with the advent of the Aurora Units and their ilk. The question is not why we went biomechanical, but why we did so in a certain, unorthodox (by most standards) way.
The question, rather, is why our biotechnology is so needlessly extravagant. There are simple, efficient ways to create a biomechanism, and that is what most species employ. But as you know, this is almost never true of my race's artifacts. Eyes and fangs, slime and scales, endlessly twisting corridors of ribbed, living metal. Tentacles grow from orifices in walls to wrap themselves around the bases of user interface devices. Gigantic, exposed brains with functionally useless eyes and jagged spines. Ravenous, spike-covered arthropods roaming maze-like arteries. Why?
The question is why, instead of bringing our tried-and-true biomechanisms to new planets, we nearly always recreate them using native materials. Our colonists have left in their wake a galaxy with very few "natural" ecosystems remaining. Kihunters spit acid that eats through polarized steel, and their hives are built in symbiosis with a species of flowering vine that can fire pulse lasers from what an unsuspecting naturalist might assume were blossoms. Zebesians grow metal plates on their skin and carry an electrical charge of over 4,000 of your volts between their pincers. Rippers grow flat platforms on their backs to make themselves ideal for carrying cargo, and their underbellies have been made optimal for attachment to our grapple beams. We already had security systems, electrical maintenance units, and cargo transports when we settled these worlds. Why would we reinvent them out of the local flora and fauna instead of transplanting our old biotech to the new worlds? Why?
The question is why our infantry were - through invasive genetic and surgical procedures - given the ability transform themselves into ostensibly impossibly small metallic spheres, when there are so many saner ways to get the same benefit. The question is why SR388 is infested with creatures that feed on what you've come to call "life energy." The question is why we adopted an orphaned child of your species and, instead of returning her to her people, altered her genome beyond recognition and mutated her into a human-chozo hybrid?
In response to your question, I will pose you one of my own. Why do your people spread pigment on sheets of canvas?
There is something about sapience that seems to necessitate irrational, non-functional, neurotic behavior. Every sophont species expresses this evolutionary quirk in a different way. We've filled archives with examples from around the galaxy, and discovered some impressive variety. In the case of your species, the result was the extravagance of your art; the creation of sensory stimuli that have an emotional or visceral impact on other humans who observe them, beyond mere communication or commemoration. We also have what you would call 'art,' but our art is more functional and practical and less an expression of our irrational compulsions. Our buildings were built in geometric shapes to communicate their purposes. Murals and statues on our walls illustrated the purpose and ownership of the rooms they were mounted in. Our art would be subdued, drab, and monotonous by your standards, and has been viewed by most cultures in our history as one of many idle pastimes without much higher cultural value. Art does not occupy the same place in our racial subconscious that it does in yours; we do not have the same neurotic reverence for it. We have something different that fills that role.
On our original homeworld, there is evidence that our ancestors dammed rivers – not for irrigation or land development – but for no reason besides the desire to divert their courses. There are massive, ancient organisms – similar to your trees – whose shapes are irrevocably twisted by our primitive ancestors who used saws and hammers to carve shapes out of the living forms. Cities were built with structures that extended through the stems of living plantforms; if the plant could be burrowed and gnawed through in a way that allowed the struggling organism to keep itself barely alive despite having a stone house through its middle, the architect was praised.
You see, chozo have a fundamental desire to subborn the state of nature. It is part of what makes us who we are, just as the enjoyment of art and music is part of the human experience. Our psychologists have proposed a number of explanations; repressed frustration against a difficult universe, a way to grant us the illusion of control over the unpredictabilities of our lives, a sublimation of our desire for dominance within the social sphere - I could go on, but none of their explanations have convinced me. These pressures are equally present among all sophonts, but we are – to the best of my knowledge – the only ones whose irrational socio-neurotic behaviors take this form. To the question "Why do you adulterate life wherever you encounter it?" The only believable answer can be "Because we are chozo."
Only a chozo can appreciate the beauty of a species whose natural way of life has been stolen from it in a way that it will never consciously miss. Subtle viruses turning plants into walkways and animals into trash disposals. An ecosystem has its purpose taken away and a new one inserted, against its own interests, and it never even knows to complain. There are jungles throughout the galaxy that feed mercilessly on themselves to provide safe and comfortable living for chozo colonists who no longer live there, and are kept alive only by carefully engineered bio-control mechanisms; even without telepathic guidance, each subsystem continues to operate indefinitely. Some of the trees mutilated during our stone age are still alive, still disfigured; some of the rivers of our homeworld are still flowing the wrong ways, and they are still remembered as wonders of the ancient world! The existence of organisms like the metroids, every detail of whose existence is a rebuff of nature's sensibilities? Moving, sensational, and compelling nearly beyond words. I don't expect you to see what makes these things desirable, anymore than you could expect me to be impressed by the Sistine Chapel ceiling. I am simply explaining the world as we experience it.
There are some outliers, though even they could not fully defeat their innate chozo-ness. The Tallon IV colonists subscribed to an ideology different from that of most chozo throughout history. Respect for life and unity with the cosmos in a metaphysical sense was their objective, and to a certain extent they achieved it. But even they went about this reunion with nature in an unmistakably chozo way. Trees were guided – gently, lovingly, but still in conflict with their natural physiology – around the colonists' buildings. The indigenous fauna weren't worked around by the settlers, but worked into the growing habitat, even if they were not severely genetically modified. When the Tallon IV mystics abandoned their physical forms, they became one with the ecosystem they had transformed for themselves. Their consciousnesses still encompass the plants and animals of that world, the life energy of that ecosystem forming the medium that the ghosts inhabit. Tallon IV's tranformation was subtle, by our standards, but the planet's ecosystem as it is today is no more natural than those of Zebes or SR388. The other former chozo colonies you have discovered speak for themselves.
I cannot personally condone what was done to Samus Aran, but I am not shocked by it. Regrettably, the sentience - or even sapience - of an organism has not historically been important to the chozo who re-purposed it. Your child being taken and transformed into a creature only superficially human, without any thought to her wishes or those of her surviving family, without any concern for her future happiness, is but one of many such instances throughout our history. We have transformed or exterminated entire species of intelligent beings, through both social and biological engineering, to suit any number of purposes or none at all. We've even done it to ourselves, the morph ball technology being only the most persistent example that comes quickly to mind. Not all chozo societies would have done this to Samus, but most of them probably would. I take no pride in this part of my heritage, but I find myself reluctantly accepting it. I have learned to live with the unpleasant aspects of our nature, as I'm sure you have with the vices of humanity. Neither of us have been given much choice in the matter.
When you look around the galaxy in its present state and see what to you must seem like senseless horrors on every habitable world, it is only natural that you would ask "Why?" Why? Because we wanted to. And if we could do it all again, I am quite sure that we would be pleased at the opportunity.
I think the more pressing question you should be asking at this point is "Aren't you supposed to be extinct?" but as I suspect you'd be happier not knowing the answer, I shan't burden you with it.
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Sakuya's Butler
A refined Butler to a knife wielding Mistress.
- Location
- ↓, ↘, → + Punch
I like.
- Location
- Patriarchova
In terms of the writing style, its inspired by George Orwell's essays. The character here is basically chozo!Orwell.
In terms of the premise, its just a more sinister take on the chozo that came to me, and one that nicely accounts for the Metroid universe's hyperconcentration of nope.
A pretty nifty perspective on the Chozo. I agree that it explains why so much stuff in Metroid-verse is lethal as hell.
It makes the Chozo seem very antagonistic, though. It's one thing to suborn nature, but the Chozo appear to enjoy torturing it, mutilating it without its awareness. It's a little more sadistic than I expected.
It makes the Chozo seem very antagonistic, though. It's one thing to suborn nature, but the Chozo appear to enjoy torturing it, mutilating it without its awareness. It's a little more sadistic than I expected.
- Location
- Patriarchova
Thanks.
That describes the chozo at their worst. However, the fact that the narrator is able to be cynical about his species proves that they have good in them as well, or else he wouldn't be haunted by this.
You're right about this version of them being antagonistic, though. This would make them responsible - directly or indirectly - for virtually every bad thing in the entire series.
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
To be fair, Samus doesn't seem to have too bad a quality of life as a result of her modifications.
Her lifestyle, maybe, but she seems to prefer it like that.
Her lifestyle, maybe, but she seems to prefer it like that.
- Location
- Patriarchova
Well, the question there would be why the chozo didn't just send her back to the humans. Or leave her in a place where the humans would be sure to find her, if they wanted to keep themselves secret.
Regardless, the Zebesian chozo were clearly not sadistic like some of the groups the narrator described. Samus' modification at least are functional and don't cause her any decrease in quality of life, they seem to have raised her as more or less an equal, and empowering her turned out to be in humanity's best interests anyway. Still, the moral thing to do would have been sending her back to the Federation as soon as they found her.
Think Old Bird was feeling rather guilty for leading the pirates to Samus's Colony and finding the only survivor was the girl he met prior to the attack when he adopted her.
Poor Old Bird, for being such an important person in Samus's life he gets like, three images in the games. Better than Gray voice though.
- Location
- Patriarchova
I found the manga pretty dissonant and unsatisfying in general.
Anyway, Metroid is so contradiction-ridden that your basically free to see it as a pick-and-choose canon.