I wish this 3rd issue of the Vanishing Point story is bit longer. “Cell Structure” story ends at an unexpected point leaving behind few unanswered questions. Story only captures a snippet from a greater story arc. A lot had happened before the starting point of the story and it is going to continue on after the end of the story. I was well invested in the story, but it finished abruptly.
Expected twist
This story fooled me for a good while. It takes place in the year 6219 when humanity has contacted alien species. There is a huge glowing cube like structure floating in the sky. So when two people walked into that cube, I thought they were going to meet some aliens. But it turns out that the structure is a prison to hold alien species and people are experimenting on them. Normally, in stories aliens or rather green people are the ones who abduct people and probe them. So I was mildly surprised from this plot twist where humans are keeping a levitating prison/ research facility on the sky to experiment on aliens. Finally a story where humans has turned the table.
New humans
So when the people in the cube finally revealed their faces, I was taken aback a little bit, but wasn’t surprised. I thought that’s the way new humans look. It says that the appearance of the modern human hasn’t change significantly in hundreds of thousands of years. But the appearance of these people in the 6000s is dramatically different to the people in the 21st century. People in the cube are experimenting on literal aliens, so I assumed that they had augmented themselves with new technologies, causing their new look.
Real twist is that the new humans are not humans, and the aliens are not aliens
All the confusions were caused by the point of view of the story, and the setting. Story takes place on the Earth at 63rd century of the 7th millennium. And the story is narrated from the perspective of the people in the cube. Real twist is that these people are not human. They are visitors to our planet. An alien race who traverses the galaxy to find and experiment on other living beings. To them, we are aliens. Alien looking creatures in prison cells are the actual humans. After all, this story is a classic alien abduction story. On top of that, an alien invasion story where the aliens had won.
Alien conquerors. Who are they?
Story doesn’t give you direct information about the alien invaders. But you can try to infer some details using clues in the story.
They are from Proxima Centauri b
One test subject escaped and jumped down to the Earth. Aliens considered that incident as a contamination to their experiment. So someone higher up called to the commander of the cube and ordered him to wrap up the experiment and come back to Centauri. Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the Sun. Proxima Centauri b is an exoplanet which orbits in the habitable zone of the Proxima Centauri star. So it could be the home planet of the aliens or there could be another research base in that planet.
Evolved for long journeys
The narrator says this about the aliens, and their pursuit of knowledge: “The quest for knowledge marches on. And on. It’s a quest where we never arrive at the destination. But the quest continues anyway. For the simple reason that we evolved for long trips.”
So basically this alien species is evolved to endure long interstellar travel. And because of that they can keep on experimenting on other living creatures from various planets in the galaxy. Their thirst for knowledge is bound with this unique adaptation.
On the contrast, humans are adapted to partake longer journeys within our planet. But as a species we have to overcome lots of physical and psychological hurdles to adept for longer interstellar trips. 1st issue of this Vanishing Point series portrays such few issues.
They are closer to plants
Ok, this could be bit of a reach or a misinterpretation from my part, but there is a quote like this;
“…Where the distance between life forms is really put to the test. Places where the test isn’t survival, but simply how close together we can become before dying.”
By “where” the narrator is describing the Green Zone in the cube. That’s the place the escapee runs to get a map from another prisoner. So in that zone aliens are trying to bring captive test subjects into a closer form. Resulted creatures look like Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy. If you are not familiar with Groot, he is a plant based sentient life form. If the result looks like plants, then the question is what do they mean by becoming closer? It could be either they are trying to bring all creatures into a common closer form or they are trying to bring other creatures closer to them. I interpret it as they are trying to bring other creatures closer to their form.
They use different numeral system to us
This one is a no brainer. Of course their language, alphabet and numeral system are going to be different. But what makes me point out their numeral system is the size of their keypads on the prison cell doors. They are bigger than our keypads. With our decimal numeral systems, typical keypads have 12 keys in 3 by 4 key configuration. 10 keys for numbers and 2 additional keys. Aliens use a 4 by 4 key configuration with 16 keys. I’m not sure whether it was intentional or an artistic choice. If it was an intentional detail then it is pretty cool. However my theory is not rock solid, because there are few inconsistencies with the sizes of keypads in the comic.
The dead end and unanswered questions
I thought that the test subject getting out of the space ship is going to be a setup for a bigger story. But the story’s sudden end felt like hitting a brick wall. The escape is not some random accident. Escapee clearly had a plan and he had two accomplices. Starro looking one, who was imprisoned in the opposite cell to the escapee, gave him the codes to the security door. Then a prisoner from the Green Zone showed him a map. What was that map? Was that a way to guide him to sneak through the alien ship and reach the drop hatch? Or did that map show him a location on earth to go after his escape?
What was the escapee’s end goal here? Story says that aliens had already destroyed the dominant species of the planet by killing billions of humans. So there’s no one on earth for the escapee to go to. His escape do not benefit the rest of the prisoners on the space ship either. Narrator says “The goal of all evolution being escape.” So did the test subject escape to prove this point, but nothing else?
Experimenting on captured humans wasn’t the main task of the aliens. If that were the case, they could have just abducted a thousand humans and left the planet. They had to reset the planet’s natural order by removing its dominant, sentient species from the equation. What were the aliens doing on the surface of the Earth? Whatever it was, it was sensitive enough to abandon the entire research and pack up the project when a single contaminant dropped onto the surface of the planet.
Story name, Cell Structure has two meanings
As a part of their research, aliens were changing humans by introducing alien DNA into their cell structure. They were mainly testing the limits of the human evolutionary capacity. In the Green Zone the aliens were trying to bring creatures into a closer form. Whatever that means. So basically they were playing with biological cell structures.
All test subjects or rather prisoners are imprisoned in separate prison cells. These cells are guarded by phase energy fields. There are different cellblocks to separate test subjects depending on the research project. So this gigantic structure with prison cells was designed to conduct experiments on biological cell structures.
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