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Description
300 years hence, like any other day of a handle, those people who have chosen to take a job in the great machinery of the hitek, one in particular dedicated to archive in the history banks of the great informatic libraries is about to take the files of a large computer that stores important information, to put it on a desk, open files and compare them with others to fill a report on the little fauna and flora on the planet, although the task has been a little more varied since it has approached what would be the part of the megafauna, as he only need to fill just two files of the only one that live, the descendants of the genetically modified human workers of 100 years ago.

When humanity left the earth during the great collapse of civilization during the previous century and the interstellar migration projects were concluded with the dozens of generational ships in the direction of their unknown destinations there was nothing more to do than finish and leave, and with it, the genetic experiments that created the vanguard of the workforce to create the large ships were going to be closed, of course before this happened the genetic engineers managed to do a last task before the end even though not needed, they did wanted to do it, adapt that infetile workforce they had created to be viable, functionals creatures that will thrive, the aquamorphs and vacuumorphs, the creatures forged from humans.

With the Aquamorph was applied a more radical change in morphology, change legs by a tail with caudal fin, the frog/man shape was changed to a more hydrodynamic one, including head and arms and adding the ability to breathe underwater by the use of gills placed in their chest, and thus creating the Aquatic. The fate of the vacuumorphs however, unlike their brothers adapted to live in the ocean was likely going to be extinction, only adapted to exist in the vacuum of space and their inability to reproduce and unable to travel in those interstellar ships was an imminent death sentence to its kind, however some of the engineers had compassion and wanted as well the survival of these, with immense creativity they worked on a possible way to save these extraterrestrial human.
Eventually they found a solution that could work considering the lack of gravity they were exposed and make them unable to go to ground, adapting these creatures to inhabit the oceans as their aquatic relatives due to water being the best emulator of the micro-gravity environment, but unlike the pelagic post-humans, these would be bottom dwellers, creatures similar to crustaceans, like crabs, and shrimp that still haunt the muddy bottoms. Some of the adaptations from its space vacuum ancestors would make them suitable for the new medium, with slight modifications and adding new features that would allow them to survive without artificial means.

In this way, the Crabman (Cancrianthropus bethonis) would be created, and from then on they would reside on the seabed.

Basically being the living image of their predecessor, beings of spheric aspect adapted to live at a different pressure of the surface, with a hard and resistant shell that covers all of its body, with 4 limbs with articulated hands in each one, huge glassy eyes without pupils and with dozens of sensory whiskers around the face, however there are some new features in this new design, the first and most important was the re-grow of a functional mouth since the original vacuumorph had it fused into the skull since they were nourished by artificial means, but now that they are at the mercy of the natural world they need a oral apparatus to be able to consume food. The mouth of these has molars although it lacks incisors and canines, being in its place occupied by a sort of a beak, which is covered by what is a upper lip which is the only mobile opening. The other characteristic has been the hybridization of one of the two lung created for the vacuumorphs to convert it into gills derived from the aquamorph/aquatic model, which together gives it a quite efficient breathing and flotation system that allows it to navigate and stay in the water for really long periods of time and return briefly to land or breathe out of the water.

The eyes had been modified from the original human structure due to the few time given to modify them, becoming like the ones of a spider, simple, with more resemblance of the ones of a spider, able to capture the enough light in the deeps of the ocean, meanwhile its special whiskers with the only function of touch and comunication have become more important now in the water as with them these are able to feel the vibrations around. The skeleton is not as strong as the one of a human, being more cartilaginous with poor ossification, these now depends more of the hardened epidermis to maintain body structure, in that way they have become more arthropod than man.

This is what is known about these creatures, what the record history saved from the remaining studies of those engineers and the new studies done by investigators now, as humanity is reassembling the civilization that was once lost, as eventually the few people recover of the downhill, in the vacuum of the great ecology a creature of the vacuum of outside this world was given the chance to fill this.

Once, someone from those towns that had emerged from the ruins of the cities told to him something their grandfather had said about what these things were, that perhaps there were monsters in space, monsters in the seas, and weak were sent to the stars, but only here on earth are the true men and women, and just one hundred years after saying that, all the monsters now are in the seas. At the end humanity's fate may rely in genetic modifications to survive, but looking now at the creatures that roam the inner of our oceans, the human fish and the human crabs, makes you wonder how big should be the change for humanity to survive....

----------------------------------------------------------

I thought about doing this for some time considering the possibility of a "what if" of these creatures as in the book the vacuumorph became extinct, a bit based on those NASA exercises that are made underwater emulating microgravity, and thus thinking about water is the ideal place to put an organism that has lived all its existence in space.

Description
300 years hence, like any other day of a handle, those people who have chosen to take a job in the great machinery of the hitek, one in particular dedicated to archive in the history banks of the great informatic libraries is about to take the files of a large computer that stores important information, to put it on a desk, open files and compare them with others to fill a report on the little fauna and flora on the planet, although the task has been a little more varied since it has approached what would be the part of the megafauna, as he only need to fill just two files of the only one that live, the descendants of the genetically modified human workers of 100 years ago.

When humanity left the earth during the great collapse of civilization during the previous century and the interstellar migration projects were concluded with the dozens of generational ships in the direction of their unknown destinations there was nothing more to do than finish and leave, and with it, the genetic experiments that created the vanguard of the workforce to create the large ships were going to be closed, of course before this happened the genetic engineers managed to do a last task before the end even though not needed, they did wanted to do it, adapt that infetile workforce they had created to be viable, functionals creatures that will thrive, the aquamorphs and vacuumorphs, the creatures forged from humans.

With the Aquamorph was applied a more radical change in morphology, change legs by a tail with caudal fin, the frog/man shape was changed to a more hydrodynamic one, including head and arms and adding the ability to breathe underwater by the use of gills placed in their chest, and thus creating the Aquatic. The fate of the vacuumorphs however, unlike their brothers adapted to live in the ocean was likely going to be extinction, only adapted to exist in the vacuum of space and their inability to reproduce and unable to travel in those interstellar ships was an imminent death sentence to its kind, however some of the engineers had compassion and wanted as well the survival of these, with immense creativity they worked on a possible way to save these extraterrestrial human.
Eventually they found a solution that could work considering the lack of gravity they were exposed and make them unable to go to ground, adapting these creatures to inhabit the oceans as their aquatic relatives due to water being the best emulator of the micro-gravity environment, but unlike the pelagic post-humans, these would be bottom dwellers, creatures similar to crustaceans, like crabs, and shrimp that still haunt the muddy bottoms. Some of the adaptations from its space vacuum ancestors would make them suitable for the new medium, with slight modifications and adding new features that would allow them to survive without artificial means.

In this way, the Crabman (Cancrianthropus bethonis) would be created, and from then on they would reside on the seabed.

Basically being the living image of their predecessor, beings of spheric aspect adapted to live at a different pressure of the surface, with a hard and resistant shell that covers all of its body, with 4 limbs with articulated hands in each one, huge glassy eyes without pupils and with dozens of sensory whiskers around the face, however there are some new features in this new design, the first and most important was the re-grow of a functional mouth since the original vacuumorph had it fused into the skull since they were nourished by artificial means, but now that they are at the mercy of the natural world they need a oral apparatus to be able to consume food. The mouth of these has molars although it lacks incisors and canines, being in its place occupied by a sort of a beak, which is covered by what is a upper lip which is the only mobile opening. The other characteristic has been the hybridization of one of the two lung created for the vacuumorphs to convert it into gills derived from the aquamorph/aquatic model, which together gives it a quite efficient breathing and flotation system that allows it to navigate and stay in the water for really long periods of time and return briefly to land or breathe out of the water.

The eyes had been modified from the original human structure due to the few time given to modify them, becoming like the ones of a spider, simple, with more resemblance of the ones of a spider, able to capture the enough light in the deeps of the ocean, meanwhile its special whiskers with the only function of touch and comunication have become more important now in the water as with them these are able to feel the vibrations around. The skeleton is not as strong as the one of a human, being more cartilaginous with poor ossification, these now depends more of the hardened epidermis to maintain body structure, in that way they have become more arthropod than man.

This is what is known about these creatures, what the record history saved from the remaining studies of those engineers and the new studies done by investigators now, as humanity is reassembling the civilization that was once lost, as eventually the few people recover of the downhill, in the vacuum of the great ecology a creature of the vacuum of outside this world was given the chance to fill this.

Once, someone from those towns that had emerged from the ruins of the cities told to him something their grandfather had said about what these things were, that perhaps there were monsters in space, monsters in the seas, and weak were sent to the stars, but only here on earth are the true men and women, and just one hundred years after saying that, all the monsters now are in the seas. At the end humanity's fate may rely in genetic modifications to survive, but looking now at the creatures that roam the inner of our oceans, the human fish and the human crabs, makes you wonder how big should be the change for humanity to survive....

----------------------------------------------------------

I thought about doing this for some time considering the possibility of a "what if" of these creatures as in the book the vacuumorph became extinct, a bit based on those NASA exercises that are made underwater emulating microgravity, and thus thinking about water is the ideal place to put an organism that has lived all its existence in space.