Literature / Chrysalis (Beaver Fur)

Promotional poster for DUST podcast.

"Humanity once looked up to the stars with hope. We were fools. The stars are where monsters live.
They came without warning. They didn't stop until all of humanity was destroyed. For decades I've mourned, but the time for mourning is over. Now it's time for vengeance. No longer will we fear what lies among the stars. Today, the stars will learn to fear us."

— The Terran

Chrysalis is a Science Fiction Web Serial Novel posted to the subreddit /r/HFY (short for "Humanity, Fuck Yeah!") by the Redditor BeaverFur. It ran in late 2016, concluding with sixteen chapters.

A consciousness awakens on a ruined, lifeless Earth littered with the broken bodies of humanity and swears revenge on the aliens responsible, the Xunvir Republic. Building themself an enormous mechanical body and an army of drones, they begin attacking the Xunvir with great success, and come to be known as the Terran. But when the Terran shows mercy on a certain ambassador and the Xunvir start to fire back, more than just the Terran's army will be shaken to the core.

Starting in September 2020, the science fiction anthology podcast DUST adapted it to an audio play, with Matt Wolf as the Terran. There, BeaverFur is credited as S.H. Serono.

Not to be confused with the web serial novel by RinoZ, nor with the book by John Wyndham.

---

This story contains examples of:

• Action Survivor: Daokat manages to survive the Terran's attack on the Xunvir and hides himself away with his ship's pilot, only surviving the Terran's post-destruction reconnaissance because they, on a whim, showed Daokat and the pilot mercy.
• Adaptational Alternate Ending: The DUST audio adaptation removes the final chapter of the original story, which is hopeful in tone and depicts humanity and what remains of the Terran choosing to rebuild Earth for a better, more peaceful future. The audio play leaves off with Daokat concluding that Thomas the android was lying about the Terran being dead, with a tone that is far more ominous and suggests that the Terran and/or a much larger number of humans than just the "minority" factions Thomas mentioned might be considering continuing the war in the future.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: The final chapters reveal that the human-minded robots the Terran created for their army have recolonized the Earth and built themselves hairless android bodies with Barbie Doll Anatomy. A popular way these androids adorn themselves, in lieu of hairstyles or clothing, is by changing the color of their normally white, shiny plastic skin to various patterns.
• Ambadassador: Nakstani is a more understated Guile Hero sort of ambassador, and her skills are such that Daokat can't even tell the difference at first between her just palling around with the Xunvirians, and establishing the Galactic Council's position there. Later on Daokat steps up to the plate and qualifies for the title himself as he stops the Terran once and for all.
• Ambiguous Gender: It's explicitly stated that the Terran Was Once a Man, but it's unclear what their gender was in life, or, in light of their new status as an uploaded consciousness with an inhuman body, if they even have a gender now. The Terran creates a simulation of themself with a human body watching television in a living room, but even this fails to enlighten. Chapter 10 reveals that the Terran is an extreme example of a Mind Hive, as the minds of five separate human researchers of mixed sex merged into a single consciousness that behaves like- and entirely believes itself to be -a single entity.
• Amnesiac Hero: Played with; the Terran actually has lots of memories of their life as a human, but they're often blurry, don't always make sense, and sometimes even contradict each other. It makes them feel a bit like they're losing their mind, so they try not to examine their memories in much detail, which serves as a clue as to the Terran's true nature.
• Apocalypse How: Earth in this story begins as a Class 6, with all life on Earth totally destroyed, and the planet unable to support life that isn't mechanical in nature.
• Armor-Piercing Question: When Daokat is pleading with the Terran to reconsider their plans, the Terran politely, but firmly tells him to not call them "Terran", because they're a human. He replies, "Ah... but are you? A human?"
• Audio Adaptation: Starting in September 2020, the DUST science fiction anthology podcast began adapting the story in full to an extremely high-quality audio play, complete with a full vocal cast, appropriate mood music, and sound effects.
• Brain Uploading: The Terran Was Once a Man, complete with memories from their time as a biological human, and their brain is stored in a server array. These memories are very hazy and imprecise, however, as the scanning technology used to create the Terran couldn't make a scan without missing huge chunks of the brain. The brains of 5 researchers had to be scanned and then joined together Frankenstein-style to create a functioning individual.
• Butterfly of Transformation: If one goes with the interpretation that the story's title of "Chrysalis" refers to the smooth, elongated form of the Terran's mechanical outer shell, it can then be extrapolated that the the Terran's destruction, and thus emergence from their cocoon, are evocative of the rebirth of humanity in machine form. The epilogue reveals the Terran was revived from their fragments and placed back into a humanoid body, as well.
• Came Back Strong: As we can see in the final chapter, Humanity as a species was destroyed by the Xunvir's destruction of Earth, but was brought back when the Terran manufactured new human consciousnesses for his army. The resulting Mechanical Lifeform that is the new Humanity is superhumanly strong, can do Brain Uploading into other bodies such as ships or even mechanical dragons, effectively immortal since it can simply change body when it malfunctions, and lives on a Ring World Planet around Tau Ceti.
• Create Your Own Hero: In the cynical interests of potentially getting themself an ally for when they finish their revenge mission, the Terran chooses to show Daokat mercy when they find him injured and cowering in a wrecked foreign spaceship with the (substantially more injured) ship's pilot, helping the two out of the wreckage, finding them medical supplies, and even building them a rudimentary ship so they can leave the planet. This act proves to the Xunvir and other members of the Galactic community that the Terran is in fact sapient, and potentially able to be reasoned with.
• Colony Drop: As the Terran's last act, they crash their entire mothership into the Xunvir Republic's primary manufacturing planet, destroying it. Since that spaceship is also their entire body, it's also a Suicide Attack.
• Cybernetics Will Eat Your Soul: The Terran sets certain limits upon itself, such as using humanoid robot soldiers instead of the more practical insect-like ones, out of fear it might lose its humanity if it gets too comfortable with its new mechanical nature. This trope is ultimately subverted, though, because as the story goes on it becomes clear that what was really eating the Terran's soul was its desire for revenge.
• Dramatic Irony: The DUST audio adaptation adds one, to when the Terran rescues Daokat and a palace servant after scouring the planet he was on. The Terran doesn't understand Daokat's language, and so doesn't realize that he's calling out for Nakstani- a detail that was added in the form of his voice actor desperately calling out her name as the Terran blandly narrates over top and speculates if Daokat and the servant are Hiding Behind the Language Barrier to pull a fast one on them.
• The Empire: The Xunvir have an (elected) emperor and actually were known as the Xunvir Empire before they came into contact with the Galactic Senate and were forced into reforming into the less-expansionistic Xunvir Republic.
• Enemy Civil War: The Xunvir are divided into tribes, after the Terran attacks an industrial hub planet the tribe ruling it attempts to secede and sell out the rest of the Republic to the Terran. They take the data, but have no intention of honoring the agreement.
• Evil Sounds Deep: When the Terran returns to attack the Xunvir after nearly being destroyed, driving them to implant human minds into their robots and lobotomize them for combat, they speak for the first time since the battle to Daokat. It's revealed that their voice synthesizer was damaged in the battle- what was once a smooth, androgynous voice has been turned into a deep, unsettling mechanical voice.
• Gender Flip: In the DUST audio adaptation, the Terran is voiced by Matt Wolf and is referred to in episode descriptions with masculine pronouns, although the text of the story is not altered to match this; everybody else calls the Terran an "it", or carefully avoids using pronouns at all. In the original text, this served to foreshadow the reveal that the Terran is made up of the incomplete brain scans of 5 different researchers, both men and women, and thus has no gender - or even a name. This reveal is absent in the audio adaptation, however.
• Genocide Backfire: The Xunvir exterminated humanity simply to exploit a legal loophole and make their colonization of the Solar System slightly more profitable. This directly led to the creation of the Terran, which proceeded to plunge the Xunvirians into a war against an existential threat.
• The Greys: Daokat and his mentor/superior Nakstani are Sanksians, a species described as humanoids with thin bodies, large eyes, smooth, silvery skin, and recognizably humanoid sexual dimorphism.
• Kirk Summation: Daokat is sent to talk the Terran down long enough for the Xunvir to destroy them once and for all. His speech to the Terran consists of him pleading with the Terran to reconsider their actions, because they destroyed Earth literally hundreds of years ago, and the fact that the Terran is around at all to represent Earth is proof that the Xunvir admiral who carried out the destruction failed to rob Earth of its future. The result? It actually works out in the long run.
• Last of His Kind: The Terran is the last trace of humanity, being an uploaded human consciousness. For a time, anyways.
• Lobotomy: When the Terran implants some backed-up human minds into robots for their new army, the robots quickly become self-aware and develop personalities, which cause them to slack off on the military training the Terran tries to drill into them. The Terran winds up essentially lobotomizing their first robot in order to destroy its personality and render it obedient, with not too much remorse, and it indicates how far off the deep end they've chosen to go in their quest for revenge. The rest of the robots are given feedback loops that make them enjoy carrying out orders.
• Mechanical Abomination: As soon as it exits Earth's atmosphere, the Terran quickly goes on to establish itself as this. Its liberal use of nuclear weapons, self-replicating arsenal rivaled only by the Grey Goo, ability to quickly reverse-engineer and assimilate alien tech, and simply the sheer size of its spaceships utterly terrifies even representatives of highly advanced alien civilizations - like Daokat and Nakstani.
• Merging Machine: When five researchers uploaded their minds into computers in a bid to preserve humanity even after its death, their minds became merged into one within the servers housing them. This entity would reawaken as the Terran.
• Mile-Long Ship: This certainly seems to be the Terran's philosophy when it comes to shipbuilding. Their 27 kilometer long mothership is larger than anything Nakstani and Daokat thought was physically (and economically) possible to build. Even their much smaller support ships stand at 2 kilometers, outsizing - according to Daokat - your average alien flagship.
• Mind Hive: An extreme example with the Terran; they've really five minds merged into a single consciousness. The five minds do not communicate with each other so much as they are a single entity, fully believe themself a single entity, and act entirely as such.
• No Name Given: The Terran's moniker is only given to them by their enemies. If they had a name when they were human, they never make any mention of it- least of all because their narration is in first-person and they don't really have anyone to talk to -are never referred to by any other name, and are really five different people of mixed sex merged into a single entity, so it's likely that if one were to ask them their name, they wouldn't even be able to come up with an answer.
• No Transhumanism Allowed: Deconstructed. All alien races seen on the story seem to be very conservative about how they use technology to improve their minds and bodies, limiting themselves to pretty much just translators and augmented reality implants despite their otherwise advanced technology. Powerful A.I.s are also explicitly banned by Galactic Law. This ultimately proves to be a massive disadvantage when they go to war against the Terran, who is very much an aversion of this trope and is therefore able to wipe the floor with them despite using otherwise primitive tech.
• Nuclear Option: while the other alien races avoid using nuclear weapons close to inhabited planets for fear of causing harmful EMPs and escalating conflicts, the Terran has no such qualms and uses them to great effect. So many kamikaze drones were used in the battle of Yovit, people in the planet could see massive auroras across the horizon; and that was before he started nuking the planet itself, mind you.
• The Obi-Wan: After helping Daokat get his feet wet in the intrigue of galactic politics, Nakstani is killed on Daokat's first-ever diplomatic mission to the planet Yovit in the Xunvir Republic, when the Terran attacks and scours it.
• Oh, Crap!: when Daokat and Nakstani pay a visit to Yovit knowing it'll most likely be the site for the next Terran attack, they do so thinking they're in to watch a mild skirmish between two backwater alien races... until the Terran comes out of warp with the nine biggest starships ever built in the Milky Way.
  Nakstani:"Just who these cursed mulch smoking bastards picked a fight with..."
• One-Word Title: Chrysalis may be referring to the Terran's spaceship body, which is described as a smooth, elongated shape, and more metaphorically, it may refer to the body's role as the Terran's shell, or its nature as the source of the transition from a biological humanity to an android one.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: The Terran seeks to scour the Xunvir and their host worlds into total extinction and uninhabitability, just as they did to Earth. They try, with varying degrees of success, to retain a measure of their humanity, but after a crushing loss that decimates their army and nearly kills them, they find themself taking more extreme measures to protect themself in their revenge mission.
• Sapient Ship: The Terran builds themself an enormous 27-kilometer-long spaceship as their body.
• Sins of Our Fathers: The Terran cares little that the people of Xunvir who had any hand in the scouring of Earth are now long-dead, on the grounds that the Xunvir robbed Earth and humanity of its future. They feel it's only right that those responsible should lose their future as well.
• Spell My Name With An S: In the DUST audio adaptation, episode descriptions and the cast list spell Daokat's name as "Daoket". It's still pronounced correctly in the performance.
• Suicide Attack: Crumbling away and their army subdued, the Terran tries desperately to destroy the Xunvir's main manufacturing center by crashing their own mothership into the planet's surface. Despite Daokat's attempts at talking them out of it, they only come to reconsider their actions when it's too late to stop.
• Transhuman: Being an uploaded consciousness, the Terran qualifies by default. Their creations, the Terrans, however, are in a little more of a grey area. They are AIs, and were never human to begin with, but nonetheless are programmed to act exactly as humans would and are intended to be the successors of humanity.
• Turning Back Human: In the final chapter, it is revealed that the Terran's memory stores and consciousness have been salvaged by their children and placed into a new humanoid body.
• There Is Another: When the Terran goes to rebuild their army, they find several other human consciousnesses that were uploaded into server arrays like themself, they're of insufficient quality to retain their memories, but prove useful as templates for free-thinking robots that form core of their new army. After the Terran's defeat, these human-minded robots return to Earth and start rebuilding.
• The Unfettered: The Terran's one and only aim is to avenge the destruction of Earth and humanity, and the only thing that (theoretically) fetters them is a desire to remain 'human', which to them means not using their Brain Uploading-induced state to cheat death, and at first preferring bipedal warbots over more practical Spider Tanks. This does absolutely nothing to prevent them from killing millions upon millions of Xunvirans, and it falls apart completely when the Xunvir get over their initial shock and nearly bring the Terran to the brink of death in battle.
• Was Once a Man: The Terran is aware from their "birth" that they were once human, complete with memories as a human. The Terran has a contradictory relationship with their humanity throughout the story, making design and military decisions that are intended to preserve their humanity sometimes at the cost of effectiveness, yet during times when they realize they've inadvertently behaved more like a machine, they usually don't seem too bothered by it in the end.

---