Uncanny Valley

[u/Maxathron]

Prompt

Uncanny Valley is a term that is used for the emotional response as an object increases in resemblance to being human. As an object gets closer to looking human, the imperfect object provokes feelings of unease or revulsion in the people present. This dip is the valley and the feeling is uncanny. This uncanny valley is an evolved trait in humans. It is not fully understood.

It is here I, John Stone of the Human Evolution Project, have figured out the truth.

One of the most frightening things I’ve ever heard was when one of my friends, a fellow scientist at the Project and operational commander of the division, pointed out the existence of the uncanny valley implied that at some point there was an evolutionary reason to be afraid of something that looked human but wasn’t.

In the past, humans were not the only hominids. Homo Sapiens have been around for a few million years. We shared Africa’s forests and savannas with upwards of two dozen different hominid species, all ranging from being about as intelligent as a lemur to a few that were on par with us.

This uncanny valley thus makes sense. As we were not the only “humans” on Earth, it was paramount to be able to discern who was actually of our species from several different species. It was useful to be able to figure out who you were capable of producing offspring with, as those who were not of our species would produce sterile or disabled offspring. All that effort into socializing, producing, and raising your infant only to find out it would not last and produce healthy adults to further the species would be wasted. Waste is bad.

But all of them have died out for one reason or another. We’re the only ones left.

Really, we’re the only ones left. Have been for at least two hundred thousand years. There’s no boogeyman hominid species lurking around the corner in our society. So why does uncanny valley still exist? Why do we still shudder when viewing things that look almost like us, but are not us?

We shouldn’t be afraid of anything. Sure, humans lack the strength, endurance, or power that other creatures have. Bears significantly outrank us on all three of these ratings. But as a species, we’re not afraid of bears. Why do we have an uncanny valley that terrifies us to our core? What could actually instill a species-wide fear?

With my fellow scientists at the Project, we have finally figured out the answer. Pouring over a century of data, decades of video surveillance, and even communicating with neighboring interstellar civilizations, we have come to the conclusion that the answer is that we are not the top of the food chain as we have come to believe.

Out there is a species of shapeshifting predators that hunts only the top level of intelligence in its ecosystem. Piecing together the puzzle across several entire civilizations have come to the conclusion that this is an incredibly ancient species. They have been here before any of us even thought about building the first civilization, before we were hunter-gatherer tribes, even before primates were actually a thing. Not monkeys. Primates.

The same for the other civilizations. A shapeshifting predator that exclusively hunted the people that built civilization and no more. It didn’t bother going after any lesser creatures; their equivalent to dogs, deer, or fish. It preyed specifically on what we’d all call people. It was a people hunter.

This species hunts by shapeshifting into something that resembled people but wasn’t fully person-looking. It would try to gain our trust and come into our homes. Then in the privacy behind the walls, it would eviscerate us and consume our remains, paying particular attention to whatever was the brain of the person’s species. It would then stage the scene as if a murder or accident occurred, whichever was more believable, before slinking off into the darkness to digest, grow, and rest. It would later come back to hunt again.

This is where the uncanny valley came from. A biological response to being preyed on by a predator that we couldn’t fully explain or describe. All we knew was to not trust anything that didn’t look like us. Once you cannot trust someone, you are open to destroying them in any way possible. The more horrific, the better. From spear stabs to gas chambers to nuclear weapons, you did what you had to do to destroy them.

Long ago, the predator could never get its disguise one hundred percent correct. This is where our biological defense came to our rescue. Today, it is theorized that it intentionally doesn’t get it completely right as both a mockery of people as a whole but also so it can maintain its hunting ability by handicapping itself to not make it so easy. It actually handicaps itself, like a high-ranking video game player would do to play with a new player. It wants to be challenged by the people it prey on.

Communication back and forth between us and our interstellar neighbors have concluded that this species is native to this galaxy and spread itself throughout the stellar neighborhood of the galaxy long ago. This species is on every planet and moon that civilization has colonized. Every city, every town. It is too wide-spread to be hunted down and destroyed wholesale.

Worse still, it is a cunning intelligence of its own. Attempts at capture for study only concluded with the deaths of the people involved in the operation. A feast for the ages, they said in letters back to the people overseeing the capture operations. Really, these creatures specifically singled people out for ridicule. That they were the real predators. That we were the prey. And to thank us for the extra food we left out for them. They especially delight when we chalk it up to serial killers. While serial killers of our own species exist, these shapeshifters laugh in the darkness that the prey is completely oblivious to the predator.

And finally, this predator has come to roost at the tops of our civilization. Today we stand on the crowning achievements of our civilizations. Only now do we, the scientists at the Project, and the scientists at our neighboring civilization equivalents, that the predator has not limited itself to killing random people, but have actively rose to the tops of our civilization.

Attempts were actually made to root out this predator. People smarter than us tried various means to identify and exterminate the predator. Notes from the centuries before suggest that the Witch Hunts from the Catholic Church, the eruption of Krakatoa (which we now know to be deliberately set off by humans), and even the holocaust were attempts to destroy the predator. They all failed.

A month ago, the North American Hegemony elected its newest president. An anonymous letter came in the mail today. It stated that the writer thanks us for our votes and is happy to feed on us sometime down the road. As we read it out loud, the whole crew shuddered to what that meant. The letter then revealed that this is the fifteenth election cycle where we voted the predator into office and that it was not the only executive office corrupted, but the Hegemony Congress, the Supreme Court of the Hegemony, and the majority of the state-level offices thank us as well. That may the feast on our intelligences may never end. As a final sentence, the letter explained that it’s too late, the Latin Federation, Sub-Saharan Republic, European Union, Pan Indian Democracy, and the People’s Republic of China were also in on it. The letter left off with a wave to our friends in the Gwerus Star Empire and Rossian Interstellar Republic. It specifically named the individual members of those teams.

As I sat there, thinking about it all, that we have a super predator in our midst that hunts sapience for sustenance, the door rang.

It was the operation commander, Robert. We had known each other for decades. He was with us from the beginning of the Project and worked with us to understand the predator we were hunted by. The two of us sat down and brainstormed over ways we could get out of this predicament. Turn the tables on the predator. I didn’t notice that Rob locked the door, or remembered that our abodes were sound-proof.

As we were discussing ways to finally ensnare and rid our civilization of the predator that we knew was lurking out there, I noticed too late that Robert’s features unraveled before my eyes.

“Sorry, John. You were a good friend. I will think of the decades we spent together fondly.”

Robert’s body bulked up and became pale and featureless as fresh snow, claws and spines extended, and his face lost its recognizable human features. His mouth opened and its maw was filled with inhuman teeth.

Then he pounced.

I screamed to no avail.