Being

One important precaution of doing all those exotic experiments on another planet is: We should not have direct contact with creatures there. We do not want, by any chance, to contaminate our own genome (I agree that's very unlikely, but realistically that would be something strongly insisted by people with a superior moral standard). Neither do we wish - because of the very presence of us - to disturb the behavior of those lovely creatures.

With time, the artificial creatures would evolve (naturally, plus or minus some assistance by generations of our research students) and develop intelligence - the latter is defined as the ability to use tools, have a language, aware of their own existence, and ask themselves the very question: Who creates us ?

You see, we are coming to the center of the problem. Are we going to play god and do the experiment, or are we the synthetic creatures and the subject of an experiment ?

This is, alas, the sketch of a novel that I prepared some 20 years ago. The tentative title is Experimental Being.

PS. My idea actually roots from a very scientific question: Is the speed of nature (i.e. random mutation) sufficient to explain the rate of evolution observed in this planet ?