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Before we get down to the nitty gritty of how we’ve managed to integrate into wider transhuman society, it’d probably be helpful to take a closer look at the different uplift species and their peculiarities.
=Neo-Hominids= 
And the book of all truths sayeth: “First Man uplifted the chimpanzee.” Book of Jumbles, Chapter One, Verse One. When the mad scientists took it into their heads to make something better out of God’s humble creation, they started where they always start: with the chimpanzee.
It’s a common misconception that chimp DNA differs from //Homo sapiens sapiens// genes by only a single percent, but this number is apocryphal. In actuality, the degree of similarity of human and chimp genetic code depends mostly on how you count. Since all complex organisms from Earth possess great swaths of junk DNA inherited from a distant common ancestor, there tends to be startling similarity between many organisms. Sure, humans are like chimps—but they’re also like ﬂatworms and fruit ﬂies. (Which may explain some of the encounters I’ve had with biocons.) Also, it’s important to remember that DNA isn’t the sole determinant of genetic expression. Epigenesis (the changes in an organism caused by mechanisms other than DNA) plays a significant role in determining phenotype. And let’s be honest, apes that grow up on a diet of bananas and termites are going to develop differently than apes that grow up on a steady diet of Red Dye Number Five.
Despite all that, there’s little doubt that the chimpanzee is humanity’s closest relative. For one thing, you look identical. Ugly. And hairy. I can hardly bear to look close enough to tell you apart. And you share many of the same behavioral traits. (Though on the whole I’ve found chimps to be better mannered.) Given the genetic similarities, the intelligence and tool use, the complex social structures, and strong social bonds, it’s no surprise the various hominids were the ﬁrst species to be uplifted.
All of the neo-hominids walk upright, though some have been known to knuckle-walk or switch to all fours when injured or in times of stress. All are great climbers, and their prehensile feet help both with climbing and maneuvering in microgravity environments. They retain the body hair of their non-uplifted forebears, though it is a common cultural practice to dye, stylize, and otherwise manipulate their hair in certain communities. Transgenic vocal systems allow them to speak as humans do.
Of all uplifts, neo-hominids have assimilated most easily and thoroughly into transhuman culture. Most of them have no issue wearing the same clothes and using the same gear that humans do, without modification. Humans tend to acclimate to them more easily, and both tend to adjust relatively easily to each other’s morphs. Given the closeness, neo-hominids are also more thoroughly socialized. They laugh as easily (even if it sounds more like hoots), they emote similarly, they’re sexually compatible, and they tend to think in similar ways as humans do. It is perhaps all the more grating when neo-hominids have to put up with being called “monkeys” or “Dr. Zeus,” not to mention the institutionalized discrimination all uplifts face. Working in their favor is that many prejudiced humans seem to ﬁnd neo-hominids more physically threatening than other uplifts, giving them some extra leeway when playing up their big mean ape persona.
==Neo-Bonobos== 
Cousins to chimps, neo-bonobos are more slender and have longer legs. They also tend to have longer hair and a less prominent brow ridge. Though socialized as transhumans, matriarchal instincts still linger in neo-bonobos and females tend to have more inﬂuence, both individually and collectively, in their communities. The hypersexuality exhibited in pre-uplift bonobos is also still present among uplifts, and sexual contact for greeting, conﬂict resolution, and reconciliation remains common between neo-bonobos (and sometimes with others). The vast majority of neo-bonobos are bisexual.
==Neo-Chimpanzees== 
Uplifted from the common chimpanzee, neo-chimps are perhaps the most common uplift and the most well-integrated into transhuman society. Neo-chimps generally stand just shorter than the average human. Their legs have been elongated, closer to human dimensions, but still not as long as their lengthy arms. A natural photographic memory was a common trait identified in early uplift subjects and is a standard feature of many neo-chimp germlines.
==Neo-Gorillas== 
Male neo-gorillas are of average human height, though usually significantly sturdier and stronger. Females tend to be shorter (~1.5 meters). Males who achieve positions of authority and inﬂuence express silverback characteristics, growing larger canines and a silver patch of hair on their head and back.
==Neo-Orangutans== 
The smallest of the great apes, male neo-orangutans stand just shorter than neo-chimps, and females even shorter. They have longer arms, however, with a standard arm span of 2 meters. They retain the throat pouch physiology of their non-uplifted ancestors, allowing them to be quite loud when they want to be. Several neo-orangutans have made impressive artistic careers as singers.
=Neo-Cetaceans= 
Uplifting whales and dolphins presented a whole different set of problems, even though we cetaceans are smarter than chimps, going by encephalization quotient. (Don’t believe me? That’s because you’re a victim of your monkey-centric point of view.) We may be smarter, but we are also very //different//. When humans thought to muck around with our brains, in a very real sense they were dealing with an alien intelligence.
“But, Blue,” you’re saying. “You guys aren’t aliens. You’re from Earth. You’re even //mammals//.”
Sure, mammals. Right. We’re exactly the same. Think through this for a minute. What is the principal biological characteristic of human beings? //Standing upright//. You //walk//. You guys are the very definition of two-dimensional. But not us. Dolphins leap, dive, cavort, race, and surf. Our brains are //designed// to operate in three dimensions. (Which is why we are so wonderfully adapted to space, by the way.)
There’s more. Our use of echolocation is more than just another sensory input. We employ sonar to construct a detailed, three-dimensional model of space around us. The torrent of sensory detail that sonar provides has shaped our brains just as thoroughly as your visual acuity has shaped yours.
Finally, dolphin social order is radically different from human cultural hierarchies. A fair part of the difference arises from dolphins’ inability to keep secrets. If a dolphin is pregnant, if they’re ill, if they’re sexually aroused, if they’re digesting a ﬁsh, every dolphin in her pod knows it. There’s no hiding from sonar. As a consequence, dolphin culture is extremely open. Subgroups drift in and out of pods, pods engage in the communal rearing of calves, and we are less hung up on sex than you people are. Few things drive changes in neural architecture more rapidly than mating strategies.
Despite these differences, cetaceans were the second group of species to be uplifted after hominids. The difference between our brains means it took longer to uplift us and there were many more mistakes, even though we had the shortest way to go.
There are, of course, significant physiological hurdles to integrating cetaceans into transhuman culture. For one, we are aquatic creatures. On Earth, this was less of an issue, given the bountiful oceans and growing number of undersea settlements. PostFall, this is a significant problem. There are but a handful of aquatic habitats in the solar system for neo-cetaceans to thrive in their natural environment, and a few more extrasolar options. There is also the option of becoming a Solarian and swimming the solar corona. But if a neo-cetacean wants to visit anywhere else in a dolphin morph, they need to slide into an exoskeleton walker or micrograv sled to get around. Thankfully, some genetic tweaks to our skin keep us from drying out so quickly when not immersed in water. Second, there is size. Orcas and whales are //large//—too large to comfortably maneuver in standard transhuman living or work environments. Third, there is the lack of hands for tool manipulation. This handicap is easy to bypass with cybernetic implants, harnesses, exoskeletons, or simply by using robots and mesh commands.
It is rare that you will ﬁnd a neo-cetacean in a native morph outside of an aquatic habitat. In truth, there is more to this than just morphological challenges. Among humans—and shamefully among uplifts as well—there is an undercurrent of prejudice. Those who are more human are favored over those who are less. Humans ﬁnd us cetaceans to be odd at best, alien at worst. According to the stereotypes, dolphins are ﬂaky tricksters, orcas are creepy psychos, and whales are puzzling mystics. Even other uplifts look down on us, considering our aquatic specialization to be a handicap.
==Neo-Dolphins== 
Numerous dolphin species were uplifted: common, bottlenose, striped, spinner, to name the most common. Most neo-dolphins are genetic mutts, with traits from several species. Most are gray, blue, or black in color, sometimes with white underbellies, and average 3 meters in length. The most numerous neo-cetaceans, these survive primarily in [[Atlantica]] or [[Europa]]. They are the neo-cetaceans most gregarious with humans; many neo-dolphins have resleeved in human morphs and assimilated into mainstream transhuman society, though they often do so in traditional pod social units.
==Neo-Orcas== 
Neo-orcas get a bad rep for their predatorial roots. Technically, all cetaceans are predators; orcas just happened to be the only ones that regularly fed on big mammals. Their hunting may be responsible for their intelligence, though. The scientists who engineered them were allegedly careful to weed out any antisocial killer instincts, but there’s no denying that neo-orcas are the bad boys and girls of our little uplift family. What most people don’t know is that orcas had complex matrilineal social structures even as animals, and these were maintained through the uplift process. Neo-orcas tend to stick together, particularly with family. Most adhere in social groups centered around the mother who raised them, even if they only actually share a few genetic traits with her. This is true in all aspects of culture, from living arrangements to businesses, though as neo-orcas become more and more exposed to other transhuman social relations, larger numbers of them are breaking free from their instinctual and socialized ways and living differently.
===Solarchive Search: Deep Current Black Killer of Squid=== 
The most well known neo-whale is likely Deep Current Black Killer of Squid. Escaping Earth as an infomorph during the Fall, Deep Current had been renowned among his people as a hunter of //Architeuthis//—the giant squid. It turned out that what made him a brilliant hunter of squid—patience, instinct, and real-time quasi-mathematical modeling of a score of environmental variables—also made him a brilliant hunter of lost satellites, spacecraft, iceteroids, comets, and even corpsicles. Deep Current was the ﬁnder of all lost things, and that particular skill made him rich. After building his wealth as a post-Fall scavenger, Deep Current Black invested a substantial fortune into the establishment of the water habitat of Atlantica. While certainly the richest neo-whale in the solar system, he may be the wealthiest and most inﬂuential uplift in transhuman society. He consistently denies rumors that part of his fortune was earned by retrieving artifacts from Earth after the Fall or that he retains ties with criminal cartels.
==Neo-Porpoises== 
Porpoises are very similar to dolphins, just usually smaller, faster, and less acrobatic, with shorter snouts. They average 2.5 meters in length. Gengineered primarily from harbor porpoise genetic stock, they are less numerous than neo-dolphins and -orcas. They are primarily found on Atlantica.
==Neo-Whales== 
During the late 20th century, it looked like humanity would ﬁnally wipe out our larger cetacean cousins by excessive whaling and habitat destruction. It turned out that a partial ban on whaling and stricter protection of marine habitats rescued the whales … barely. When the ﬁrst humpback was uplifted, followed soon after by beluga, sperm, and blue whales, no longer did anyone have to speak for the whales—they could speak for themselves. It was to be a short-lived victory.
There was no doubt that the Fall was a tragedy for all the peoples of Earth—but the whales suffered worse than most. Most whales weigh north of 10,000 kilograms—and that doesn’t even take into account the weight of the water needed to immerse their massive bodies. The spacecraft hasn’t been built that could punch that kind of payload into Earth orbit. Even if such a creature could have escaped the clutches of the TITANs, where exactly would it go?
The neo-whales were wiped out far more thoroughly than humanity. Five calves did manage to escape (three humpbacks, a blue, and a sperm), carried up one of the space elevators while their parents waited behind to die. Another thirty-four uplifted whales escaped the Fall as infomorphs. In all, thirty-nine neo-whales survived the loss of Earth. Along with the 186 whale uplifts born and raised in the seas of [[Ceres]] and Europa, neo-whales were a critically endangered species.
The research of various whale uplift programs survived, however, along with several thousand samples of the whale genome. Luckily whales are a patient, mindful lot. They are conﬁdent that they will rebuild their numbers. Perhaps more than many other uplifts, neo-whales have adopted the transhuman mindset. Few retain their original neo-whale form, instead sleeving into Europan-adapted neo-whale morphs, with dozens more becoming suryas or sleeving into humanoid morphs. Some day, the mightiest creatures to ever ply the Earth’s oceans may become the ﬁrst species to become completely postbiological.
Unlike other neo-cetaceans, you’ll never see a neo-whale morph (carrying a neo-whale ego at least) with cybernetic arms or couched in an exoskeleton. Fine manipulation of objects on the human scale is simply … beneath them. If they require the use of tools, they almost always employ robotic aid.
=Neo-Avians= 
Though bird brains have some notable structural differences, the brain-to-body-size ratio of parrots, crows, and ravens is equivalent to the higher primates and they exhibit distinct similarities to human minds, particularly with the cerebral cortex and brain waves. Aside from increasing brain size and other cognitive upgrades, the primary issue for uplifting neo-avians was how to change their physiology, particularly the wings. In order to provide neo-avians with manipulative digits and hands, it was necessary to splice in bat genetics to change their wings’ skeletal structures. This had the added beneﬁt of allowing them to fold their wings better.
Along with their increased cranial size, neo-avians are much larger than their animal cousins, though still small compared to humans, roughly equivalent to a ﬁve-year old child. These physiological changes were not as simple as they seem. In order to sustain terrestrial ﬂight, neo-avians have to be light. To compensate for this increased mass, their bones are engineered to be both stronger and lighter. Still, neo-avians are not as nimble ﬂiers as their animal progenitors.
The same doesn’t hold for avians living in microgravity environments, of course. Like cetaceans, birds live their lives in three dimensions. Neo-avians thus excel in micrograv environments; another reason the hypercorps focused on them as early research subjects. This did require some esophagus modifications, however, since non-uplift birds require gravity to swallow and so would die of thirst in micrograv.
Compared to humans, baseline avians have superior visual acuity. Not only can they see farther and more sharply, they can resolve rapid and slower movement better, meaning they can see things that humans would detect only as a blur or as imperceptible movement. Neo-avian eyes can also see more colors than humans and are also sensitive to the ultraviolet spectrum. Their eyes are also protected by nictitating membranes.
Baseline parrots start out with clawed zygodactyl feet (four toes arranged in two pairs, front and back), while ravens and crows have three toes facing forward and one back. Both are dexterous and well-adapted for grasping. In some germlines a thumb-claw is added, effectively making the feet prehensile, and the foot is considerably strengthened.
==Neo-Parrots== 
The complex vocal apparatus of parrots allows them to use language, that most unique of human gifts. Even apes cannot speak as humans—not without some serious hardware changes, that is. Parrots talk the talk.
For uplift purposes, this is a bigger deal than it might at ﬁrst seem. It meant their brains were already carefully attuned to vocalizations. It gave them the opportunity for language to reinforce intelligence, an echo of the feedback loop that helped give rise to human intelligence. Where even today, some neo-hominids have trouble with language under stress, neo-parrots remain the most gifted talkers when it comes to uplifts. Stereotypes are often backed by fact, and there’s a reason so many neo-parrots do well as marketers, entertainers, and bartenders—and why you don’t want to get trapped in a corner by one at a party.
==Neo-Ravens== 
The common raven, //Corvus corax//, has the largest brain of any bird species, a fact demonstrated by its advanced behavior. Scientists have long observed sophisticated problem solving by ravens. The bird will call wolves and coyotes to a kill to get the canines to tear open the carcass for it. It’s also a trickster, building fake food caches in front of other ravens to protect itself from theft. And the raven is playful, another sign of intelligence. Ravens have been observed sliding down snow banks and making toys (twigs) for social play.
Neo-ravens have exceeded these expectations. As a species, they consistently score higher on sapience tests than many other uplifts. They have a reputation for being clever, witty, and scheming for a reason. It may also have something to do with their infamous unblinking stare. Just don’t rib them too hard about considering corpses a delicacy—some of them get a bit touchy about their carrion-feeding roots.
==Neo-Crows== 
Many people get neo-ravens and neo-crows confused. In truth, they are similar, both physiologically and culturally, and often intermix. Though baseline crows are smaller than ravens, neo-crow uplifts are nearly similar in stature to neo-ravens. The primary physiological differences are beak size and wing tips. Every neo-crow and neo-raven I’ve known acts offended if you mix them up, but I suspect they do this just to take the high ground.
=Neo-Octopi= 
Octopi are the only invertebrate uplifts and in many ways are the most fascinating case. At ﬁrst glance a mollusk would seem like an unlikely candidate for uplift. (Why uplift an octopus and not, say, a dog?) But it turns out baseline octopi are cunning hunters, brilliant problem solvers, and—sometimes—merry tricksters.
One pre-Fall marine biologist had an octopus in a tank and a crab, a favorite octopus prey species, in //another// tank all the way across the room. He left for the night, came back in the morning and found a very fat octopus—and no crab. Turned out the octopus had climbed out of its tank, walked across the room, climbed into the crab’s tank, //ate// the crab, and returned to its own tank. Cunning, brilliant, and playful.
So why are octopi so smart? First off, they are predators, well-versed in the complexities of the hunt. They are able to twist their ﬂexible bodies into fantastic shapes or jet off at high speeds, obscuring their retreat with a cloud of ink. The octopus brain is adept at deciding which strategy is appropriate for the tactical situation. Their vision is nearly as sophisticated as that of Homo sap. And a great deal of neural processing is required to operate eight independent prehensile limbs. It requires even more to control a complex network of chromatophores to produce astounding camouflage patterns for a variety of different environments. All these factors made altering the octopus mind the most difficult of the uplift projects—and perhaps the most rewarding.
There are many species of octopi, but scientists chose the Pacific giant octopus to uplift due to its great size. The Pacific normally reaches a size of ﬁfteen kilograms and an arm span of more than four meters, though specimens have been found that are more than ﬁve times larger than this.
Fans of the octopus say the creature’s all heart. While that may be a slight exaggeration, the octopus does have more than its fair share of hearts—it carries //three//. The two extra hearts are often called gill hearts, as they force blood though the gills to be oxygenated. The main heart sends blood through the rest of the octopus’s circulatory system. When you add in a transgenic lung system, everything changes. The ﬁrst and most important change is in the blood. Baseline octopi are true blue-bloods. And no, I don’t mean they play polo and look down their beaks at new money. The octopus transfers oxygen around his body by using the copper-based molecule hemocyanin, which gives its blood a characteristic blue color. Unfortunately, hemocyanin is not nearly as good at oxygen-ﬁxing as its iron-based cousin hemoglobin, meaning your average baseline cephalopod isn’t very energetic. In uplifts, hemoglobin is substituted for hemocyanin. In theory, this means an uplifted octopus has more energy than its baseline cousin. But it also means the creature has to extract more oxygen from its environment. This means more rapid respiration and a host of muscular changes to support it.
All of this is very weird, but not nearly as weird as what comes next. There’s another problem with air other than the inconvenience of having to breathe it. It does next to nothing to provide structural support. Many creatures that look beautiful and graceful in the supportive waters of the sea look like a stray scrap of intestine lying on the deck of a ship. Octopi evolved in an environment that provided their delicate bodies with inherent support. Transhuman habitats aren’t quite so kind. In order to move around in a gravitational ﬁeld, most uplifted octopi have been modified to include a ﬂexible sheathe of cartilage that protects the delicate organs in the creature’s mantle (the sack behind its eyes.) A careful system of powerful muscles joined to this sheathe allows the octopus to hold itself upright. The support requirement ends at the base of the arms—they are powerful enough that there is no need to supplement them.
Octopi also underwent a number of sensory changes during uplift. Baseline octopi have limited auditory senses via their balance-providing statocyst organs, which act like primitive cochlea that can only perceive low frequencies. For neo-octopi, this sensory organ was upgraded with transgenic modifications, enabling uplifts to hear similar frequencies as humans. In some germlines this audiosensory capability is limited, underdeveloped, or absent, but this is easily compensated with audio implants or external mesh-linked devices. Baseline octopi also lack a sense of proprioception for their arms—the only way they can tell what their limbs are doing is by looking at them. This was compensated for by adding neurofeedback connections between the arms and brain, but this sense is more well developed in some germlines than others.
On the other hand, baseline octopi have several sensory advantages that were kept. Their unique eye structure, which evolved separately from that of primates, is sensitive to polarized light, meaning they have better visual acuity for seeing things like stress fractures in transparent materials, transparent objects in water, and other patterns that human eyes—even with enhanced vision—cannot see. Thanks to an autonomic response, the pupil slits of octopus eyes are always oriented to be horizontal, which enables neo-octopi in microgravity situations to keep their orientation very easily. Octopi also have an excellent sense of touch and the suction cups on their arms are equipped with chemoreceptors, meaning they can taste whatever they are handling. I’ve heard humans complain about the feeling of shaking hands with a neo-octopus; well, you should hear what the cephalopods say about the taste of human hands.
One thing that many transhumans ﬁnd odd or unnerving about neo-octopi is that their arms have minds of their own—quite literally! These limbs are packed with neurons (over two-thirds of the neurons of baseline octopi are in the arms) and have a number of complex reﬂex actions that they engage in without control or input from the ego. While neo-octopi can of course control their arms as desired, when the brain isn’t issuing high-level commands to them, the arms simply do their own thing. In neo-octopi culture, this limb autonomy is an accepted fact, and never a cause for embarrassment, though I imagine it also functions as a convenient excuse on occasion.
Like neo-cetaceans, neo-octopi are carnivores, surviving on a diet of (faux) seafood. Though all baseline octopi have venomous saliva, this has been eliminated from most neo-octopi germlines. Most neo-octopi can still squirt ink (melanin and mucus) from their ink sacs; this is in fact a popular art form in neo-octopi culture.
Unlike humans and other uplifts, octopi are not social creatures. This is apparent among neo-octopi who exhibit solitary behavioralisms, value independence, and often shirk group activities, despite human socialization. Though they are not complete isolationists, your average neo-octopi simply prefers to live and work alone, and may chafe if forced into group social situations.
=Neo-Pigs= 
[[image:Neopig.jpg width="250" height="550" align="right" caption="Neo-Pig"]]It may seem strange that transhumanity chose to raise up pigs. Pigs? The creature that gives us ham and pork chops and bacon? Surely that can’t be right, can it?
It is.
Pigs are actually excellent candidates for uplift. They are omnivores with a long association with humanity. Scientific studies demonstrated that swine were smarter than dogs and capable of abstract thought. When given a symbol the pigs could remember it hours later. When trained to execute a voice command, they remembered the trigger words years later. They exhibit complex social lives, including caring for their young. And there was even some evidence that they were more focused in their attention than chimpanzees, perhaps because of the swine’s long association with humans. As previously mentioned, pigs were also heavily used in the early biotechnology days for growing organs suitable for human transplant. Scientists were already making pigs more human so that humans could use their parts.
Which only left the little matter of the pig being a food animal.
This had the potential to be a disastrous. Would neo-pigs resent the fact that their ancestors were a major food source? Would humans be able to interact seriously with a more advanced form of their morning meal? How would religious humans who considered pigs to be unclean react? These issues were enough to keep Earth-bound labs from investing too heavily on pig uplift, but out in the solar system, free from legal and ethical constraints, the hypercorps moved right on ahead. Fortunately, many of these issues are overstated. It wasn’t uncommon for humans to eat dolphins, octopi, or even apes in the past, but that had very little effect on their uplift. Most uplifts consider that the past anyway, and don’t see the point of holding a grudge. Due to the loss of farm stocks during the Fall, most meat today is either vat grown or produced by cornucopia machines. The neo-pig has been substantially modified, so it’s quite a different creature from its forebears. Of course, that hasn’t stopped the bacon jokes that get tossed their way, but everyone has their cross to bear.
Pig uplifts were raised from a variety of domestic pig strains. Neo-pigs walk upright like humans, thanks to a restructured skeleton and musculature, and stand just shorter than human averages. Some of the germlines still have trouble with bipedal balance I’m told. Transgenic hands and feet replace the hooves. Males grow tusks from their lower jaws, though it is common practice to ﬁle these down. Females retain ten or more teats for feeding their young. Some neo-pigs have a vestigial tail, though this has been removed in most germlines. Their sensory organs are roughly equivalent to baseline humans. Transgenic vocal systems enable speech.
Neo-pigs are not nearly as widespread as other uplifts. The current population is under two thousand, clustered mostly in a few speciﬁc colonies. Over half are corporate indentures.
=Neo-Neanderthals= 
[[image:neanderthal.jpg width="304" height="391" align="left" caption="Neo-Neanderthal"]]The story of //Homo neanderthalensis// may be the strangest of all. They are the only uplift species that was resurrected from extinction. Neanderthals were a lost cousin of humanity, a hominid that didn’t make it. They lived from roughly 300,000 to 25,000 years ago, when they literally vanished from the face of the Earth. Archaeological ﬁndings suggest that the neanderthals were geographically concentrated in the Middle East and Europe, until the cro-magnon humans either wiped them out or out-competed them. Neanderthals were very similar to primitive humans, and it seems likely they were just as intelligent; their brains were actually larger than those of cro-magnons. Neanderthals buried their dead and included ﬂowers and tools in the graves, a sign of ritualistic and abstract thinking. More importantly, it was a sign of love. You don’t bother to prepare someone for an afterlife if you don’t care for them. The discovery of hyoid bones in baseline neanderthals suggests they could speak. Neanderthals painted caves, crafted musical instruments, and carved ﬁgurines. So: families, religion, art, music, and language. Sound like anyone you know?
Like many other long-dead species, DNA recovered from fossils raised the possibility that neanderthals could be brought back. More than any other species, this issue was contentious. Not only were neanderthals potentially intelligent, but they were a species that had competed with humans. It was highly possible that humans had driven them to extinction. While others debated on Earth, a small hypercorp named New Day quietly acquired genetic samples from multiple sources and went to work in an offworld lab. Unlike other resurrection projects, New Day was not interested in bringing baseline neanderthals back—they went right for the money shot and pursued neanderthal uplifts. A few years after the Fall some evidence came to light that New Day had birthed and even raised some baseline neanderthals for testing purposes, but these were all terminated at young ages. New Day, of course, denies the charges. Seek the evidence yourself online if you choose. More to the point, at this time baseline neanderthals remain extinct; none living are known to exist. Neo-neanderthals, however, are alive and well.
As it turned out, neanderthals required surprisingly few modifications for uplift. A few cognitive enhancements brought their minds in line with the brains of modern humans. Physiologically they required little upgrade. Neanderthal bodies are sturdier and more robust than humans, with stronger arms and hands. They seem to have a natural gift for music, perhaps augmented by New Day’s cognitive engineers. As the most recent addition to the uplift family, neo-neanderthals are limited in population and distribution, numbering less than a thousand. They are primarily clustered in the habitat of Moustier and among New Day facilities. The oldest neanderthals are just over 25; most are significantly younger.
=Sidebar: Uplifts, Medicine, and Drugs= 
No matter how much uplifts have been crafted in the image of humans, our physiology remains quite different. Doctors and machines skilled in human anatomy may face challenges when diagnosing or performing ﬁrst aid or surgery on an uplift. Organs are in different places, may not exist, or may function differently, not to mention more complex biological systems. While healing vats may be easily programmed for speciﬁc uplifts and morphs, it is possible that remote facilities or medical practitioners may not be adequately prepared for treating sick or injured uplifts.
Similarly, many drugs that affect (trans)human biology will have different effects or no effect on uplift bodies and minds. This is especially true of the non-mammals. Hormonal levels may be different, neurotransmitters may be located in different places, neurological systems may be structured differently, proteins may bind differently, etc. As a consequence, some uplift-specific versions of recreational and smart drugs have been developed, with unique effects upon speciﬁc species. Some of these affect uplifts in ways that humans will never experience, such as the drug hydra, which enhances the autonomy and unconscious reﬂexiveness of neo-octopi arms, while limiting even further the ego’s high-level control over them.
=Sidebar: Why No New Uplifts?= 
Anyone who’s been keeping track realizes that no new species have been raised to sapience in over two decades. Why the break, especially when so many were uplifted in the three decades just prior?
The answer is complex and resides in many factors. The Fall and reconstruction sidelined research and consumed resources. Many hypercorps invested all of their efforts into particular species, requiring significant effort to retool. Even after success with a new species, decades of ﬁne-tuning were required to perfect the process. Many switched to providing services and continued upgrades to the uplifts already raised. And so on.
The major reason, however, is simply that all of the low-hanging fruit had been plucked. The majority of species whose intelligence level was in the range of transhumanity’s capability to raise to full sapience were modified and uplifted. All of the animals in the tiers below this required far more effort—for now, they remain outside of transhumanity’s reach. As improvements are made with various smart animal species, however, it is only a short time until we welcome some new species to the sapient ranks. The race is already on to see which will be next.

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