we can stay here (chapter 2)

'because she looks hungry on that tape
yeah, she looks so fine in the limelight
in the sickly green she might have been
A girl I know or a place I've seen'

Arif Mirabdolbaghi (Protest the Hero)

     These were certainly interesting times. Amidst the wake of several catastrophes struggling for dominance over the globe's attention, we saw a startling development in the area of human thought. The organizations were increasing in number by the day, and the plan must have worked perfectly, because nobody seemed to notice the world's (former) major religions toppling one-by-one.
     It's against this backdrop that we take a close look at one very particular development. One of the smaller organizations, perhaps an institution of sorts, gathered up enough funds to pay for some top-notch thought. This thought rendered the newly formed team of researchers and psychoanalysts operable, and together they formed the basis of the A.N.Hero project.
     It should probably be noted again for emphasis that these were terrible times. With the world's war structure crippling under the lack of geopolitical stress, the Earth became, possibly, the worst place to simply be human. That being said, what happened next was still kinda shocking.
     …perhaps I'm stalling for time but I feel an introduction is necessary. You probably don't know anything about who I am, but my name is Harald and I assure you I am well-known among those in my line of work. They call me the best at what I do, which is to retell these stories for the simple reason that they probably should be made common knowledge, but I'm not very sure that I'm really the best they have for the job.
     Anyway, back to the story. The team behind the A.N.Hero project decided to start an experiment, using a randomly selected group of individuals who otherwise would have been taken by one disaster or another. This was their excuse, of course, for what the individuals would endure. The purpose of the experiment was to create an environment in which suicide would become the only option and, more importantly, the most moral one. The timing was perfect because the world's population was already in chaos and morality was becoming more relative as it became less important.
     Since my research has been history-based, I don't know the exact nature of the procedure, but I can tell you that the researchers behind the experiment knew exactly what they were doing. Or at least, for a while, they did. The first batch of individuals yielded promising results; most offed themselves within a week, and overall thirty-two out of the original forty found some way to kill themselves. No notes were written; no tears were shed. As soon as a suicide was confirmed a new person had arrived to fill the empty slot. Although the individuals were allowed to engage in any way with each other, they never had any contact or exposure to the researchers running the experiment, and they were given no explanation of the purpose behind their situation.
     The research had set up two failsafes before beginning the first generation. These banned procreation and murder, but were not relayed to the individuals. Interestingly enough, however, the original hypothesis was proven correct: the rules were followed without ever being stated; no murders would ever occur, and although sex became rampant (discussed in chapter 4) no pregnancies were ever confirmed.
     However, just as the original group contained members that never committed suicide, so others would escape the seemingly decided fate. The catch was, however, that after a few more generations of new replacements, the amount of suicidal activity diminished and eventually vanished. Before the experiment was officially shut down, several generations of individuals had grown and spent the majority of their lives in captivity, completely breaking the experiment. Somehow the surviving members developed a system of sorts that was passed down to each successive generation, but without the notice of the researchers. Perhaps it was merely the fact that the original orchestrators died off and their successors were not cut out for manning the situation full-time, but most agree that some factor about the humans doomed the experiment from the start. Some new form of evolution took place amidst the death of humanity as we know it that occurred outside the confines of the experiment, but maybe that was the true purpose all along.