Atavism

Wartime survivors scrounge on a fog-shrouded island and uncover a battered, crash-landed alien craft containing a transparent cylinder with a preserved embryonic specimen named Erg, while on Mars a venerable intellect explains the deliberate reduction of Erg to undifferentiated cells for interplanetary travel and the plan for later differentiation. Martian discourse stresses eradication of atavistic traits, emotional suppression, shape adaptation, and telepathic control, and the collision of human desperation with detached alien doctrine foregrounds questions of identity, adaptation, and the costs of engineered evolution.