In the world of Materia, the Magic bias is negative. No creature in this world has a bit of magic, a soul, or a spirit. It has been said that 'Mind is meat' and here this is literally true.
Lets review a report sent in to the Paratime Commander of a tech-based civ having contact with fifty worldlines...
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Commander,
The local carnivores are Ligers, which are four-footed, striped pale purple felines of approximately six hundred pounds. These are the primary predator near Minsky City which we'll deal with shortly.
Secondary predators are the giant furred tarantulilids which combine moderate strength with ambush tactics and powerful poison; the quillogs which are huge and very aggressive predators that slam into enemies and jab them with the quills on their muscled bodies; and the slitac who bury themselves in mud to spring out at enemies.
Tertiary predators are coyote packs, and hairless hominid packs that resemble humans to some degree.
These hominids will send a chill down the back of anyone who meets them. In their eyes, you will see no kindness, no friendship, and no hatred. Before I joined the Worldline Patrol, I was an avowed atheist, but after looking in their eyes, and wondering what was missing, I realized it. The eyes are the gateway to the soul, and they have no soul.
As a member of the WP, my job takes me to many very strange alternate realities. I've seen magics, and had Sensitives read my mind. I've ridden a dragon, and been transformed into a frog. I've seen sights that would send a typical resident of Newton City, our blessedly rational home capital, into a state of shock. But nothing compared to the horror of looking into the eyes of the Hominids.
I'm not sure why I'm here. They cannot be trained because they combine extreme stupidity and an almost complete lack of imagination with base treachery. They've tried to eat me three times so far even though I've brought them food and healed some wounds with my advanced technology.
I'm virtually certain that no Sensitive powers will work here as I feel a numbness in my mind where my latency exists, or so I've been told by the Lady of the Green Eye, our ally on World 24. I know no magic exists...I pray, but it feels as if the heavens are brass.
The locals have a pack structure, but no culture, no technology, and no magic. They also have no fear of death which is I suppose a boon as they die like flies from every sort of damage and deprivation. Back home it is said of someone with problems that they are too stupid to come in out of the rain. This is literally true for many of the locals.
It is not that they inherently lack the ability to be intelligent. Its just that they're animals. There, I've said it. This place is driving me mad. No one is supposed to say what everyone thinks after they've been here a day. Its implicit. No one comes out and says "These have to be humans. They look like humans. They JUST have to be humans!" But they're not humans. They're less humans than the monkeys in the zoos of Newton City. Those monkeys can use a stick as a tool, and mourn the loss of a friend, and develop loyalties to their trainers.
Some speculate that animals have some vestige of an animal soul which is of a different order than the soul of a human or one of the Fey Races, but these, these have nothing.
To be more scientific and to be more rational I will try to be. I'm sorry, but like I say, this place gets to you.
The local Hominids tend to be four to five feet tall, and mal-nourished. They live in tribes of ten to twenty individuals, except using the word 'tribe' is incorrect as it implies many things they don't have. They are primarily scavengers of meat, and hunters of insects. They live in fear of pretty much everything, but no, let me correct that. They experience fear when a Liger appears, and they run around in wild panic with some of the smarter ones heading for trees. The Liger selects one to eat, and the rest come down from their tree or behind a rock, and walk away uncaring even as the screams of their former 'tribesman' sounds in the air. They know that the Liger's stomach is now full, and yet, I think that gives them too much credit.
I suspect the Liger exudes pheromones that tell everyone its not hunting. And with them, its even worse than out of sight, out of mind. They forget within seconds, and care not.
It has been said of our bovine hears on the North Continent that 'every time they blink, its a new day' and so it is with these Hominids. Keep in mind that in addition to the loss of the vital spark, and the total lack of a culture to train a mind, that they are also mal-nourished and so what potential their brain might have is deformed.
So, I've named my observation post Minsky City in honor of an early AI researcher who led our scientists of two centuries ago in a 'wild goose chase' for something that can't exist. Its only on World 17 that we discovered functioning AI's built by a wholly different principle. So I name this horrid place in his honor.
As I look out over the grasslands and watch a Liger take down a giant Roufasan with its six legs, and spot the hills laden with forests, and look down to the swamp where the giant tarantulids hang from trees and the slitac slither through the mud, and I see but a mile distant, things that should be Human but can never be as they prepare to eat one of their own who tripped and broke his ankle, I'm left with one request, Paratime Commander Lewelkin.
I've been here a month. Get me out of here now, and assign me to some other world, even World 9 with its endless trench war of man vs. robots, or else I quit. I'll resign my commission, and take my chances with a court martial.
Sincerely,
Worldline Observer and Emmissary-First Class,
Dr. James Edwards Martinson.