"*That's* a human?" he asked, staring with horror at the chittering piebald ball of flesh with male pattern baldness and a nasty case of acne. "Once all the DNA you share in common with other animals on your planet is stripped out, as requested, yes. We did have to use a base template, since that alone was not enough to sustain life, but I assure you it was DNA neutral." "But that--that--I can't go back to my people and tell them that we will all look like that!" The alien emitted a particle shrug, which smelled something like cabbage. "The arrangement was to remove the animal portions of DNA from your kind. The non-human animal portions, that is, since of course the humans are themselves animals." "But this is not what we expected. We thought we would become more ourselves--purer, stronger, smarter!" "This is more yourself. Look at him. I have encountered your aid--does this not remind you of him?" He stared at the chittering ball. It did, a little.


Inspiration: "Headstrong" - Trapt
Story Potential: Medium
Notes: This bit itself is terrible, but a good flash story could be made from the idea...somehow.

The gatherers walked among us, though we did not know it. They did not bring with them their cameras, for we had long since grown clever in the ways of identifying those and refusing them entry. They did not bring anything that we knew we should fear with them. We did not realize that we should concern ourselves not with what they brought, but with what they would take away with them. He was not a frightening individual, and we did not guess that he was there to steal something more sacred than even our image: our very selves. We thought him merely eccentric when we happened to observe him scrounging in a scrapheap behind our houses. He was not the first of these anthropologists to do so. We tolerated all manner of foolishness in the hope that some--

Inspiration: A NYT.com article about the tribes refusing to allow scientists to collect their DNA.
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: There are lots of religions/cultures that have some serious issues with allowing others to take their photograph.