Huayu 05, our science fiction movie universe

Chapter 702 "The Leopard Man" - A Summer Blockbuster

The success of "Game Era 2" can be considered a great start to the 2021 summer movie season.

Although some moviegoers and netizens found the story of the film rather ordinary, as a decent commercial blockbuster, "Game Era 2" was still well-received by many ordinary viewers.

This popularity of the film continued throughout June.

The total box office of "Game Era 2" has also exceeded 35 billion under these circumstances. It seems that it will be a natural thing to exceed 40 billion by the time the movie is taken off the screens.

However, with the arrival of July and the start of summer vacation for students, the summer movie season has become increasingly popular.

Wang Hao's "Game Era 2" certainly couldn't dominate the entire summer season. Soon, several other films chose to be released in early July, preparing to seize the market that would be vacated after "Game Era 2" finished its run.

Among these films is "Antiques in a Play," a suspense film directed by Guo Zijian and starring Lei Jiayin, Xin Zhilei, and Li Xian, adapted from Ma Boyong's novel of the same name.

There is an animated film called "White Snake 2: The Green Snake's Calamity" produced by Light Chaser Animation.

It includes the well-known Hollywood IP series film "No Time to Die".

There's also the domestic fantasy film, "Turandot: The Curse of the Demon," starring Guan Xiaotong, Jiang Wen, Hu Jun, Sophie Marceau, and others.

Of course, Galaxy Pictures wouldn't let such a long summer season slip by.

They also scheduled a new movie to follow Wang Hao's "Game Era 2".

In mid-July, after "Game Era 2" finished its theatrical run, Galaxy Group's sci-fi film "Leopard Man" was quickly released.

Like "Game of Threats" and "The Hunger Games," this film is an adaptation of a novel of the same name, but it has also been integrated into the StarCraft Cinematic Universe.

The film tells the story of how, after the establishment of the World United Government, although humanity faces the crisis of an invasion by the Trisolarans, it still chooses to continue holding the Olympic Games in order to boost human morale.

This year's Olympic Games were held in Shanghai, China, attracting elite athletes from all over the world.

Even George, the alien gorilla from the United States, traveled across the ocean to participate in the opening ceremony of the Shanghai Olympics and performed with China's "Xingtian" mecha.

The subsequent Shanghai Olympics were also held very smoothly, and many exceptionally outstanding athletes emerged during the process.

For example, Xie Baofei, a Chinese-American athlete, broke the world record for the 100-meter dash with a time of 9.39 seconds in this international competition, transforming himself overnight from an ordinary athlete into a globally renowned sprint star.

Xie Baofei's life thus began to move towards a brighter future.

It was during his participation in the competition in Shanghai that Xie Baofei not only experienced a turning point in his career, but also a turning point in his destiny.

Through a chance encounter, Xie Baofei met Tian Ge, a Chinese girl. Tian Ge's gentleness and sincerity touched him, and the two quickly fell in love.

They watched game recordings together and planned for the future together; the sweet moments were so wonderful.

However, Xie Baofei would occasionally notice that something seemed wrong with his body.

His temper began to worsen, and his personality became increasingly volatile.

At first, Xie Baofei thought that his pressure was due to career pressure. After all, he had gained many endorsements after becoming an Olympic champion and often needed to participate in various competitions and activities. In order to maintain his performance, he trained very hard, so the pressure was naturally great.

However, his irritable temper led to rapid improvement in his sprinting performance.

The joy of this academic progress even overshadowed his anxiety about the changes in his own body.

Until one Mid-Autumn Festival night, as the bright moonlight bathed the apartment and Xie Baofei and Tian Ge were celebrating the festival together, a surge of rage caused him to suddenly lose control, and his reason collapsed in an instant.

When Xie Baofei regained consciousness, his girlfriend Tian Ge was lying in a pool of blood.

Holding his lover's cold body, Xie Baofei completely descended into madness. In his mind, his girlfriend's death was definitely a conspiracy.

Because of a recent commercial endorsement he accepted, he is embroiled in a dispute, which is very likely a scheme by his rivals to frame him.

Xie Baofei immediately contacted his girlfriend Tian Ge's brother, Tian Yanbao. After learning the tragic news from Xie Baofei and seeing his sister's cold body, Tian Yanbao was also devastated.

The two men formed an alliance to avenge Tian Ge.

However, in the process of searching for the murderer, Tian Yanbao gradually noticed something was wrong with Xie Baofei.

After a series of events, he finally discovered Xie Baofei's hidden secret and strangled the young sprinting prodigy to death in public.

Xie Baofei's death led to Tian Yanbao's arrest as the murderer, and he was prepared to pay with his life. Moreover, this high-profile "revenge killing case" unexpectedly triggered a "trial of the century" on genetic ethics.

In court, the positions of the parties were sharply opposed, and the secrets hidden under the fog were revealed one by one.

It turns out that Xie Baofei's father was Xie Kezheng, a well-known Chinese-American biologist, who always harbored a strong belief: to break through the limits of human physiology.

However, Dr. Xie had been unable to find a way in until the Trisolarans learned of Earth's location, until the ETO organization contacted their master, until the Trisolaran ETO organization sent some technological knowledge to the ETO organization, and until the ETO organization recruited Dr. Chen Ang...

Dr. Xie joined the ETO organization and gained recognition for his knowledge, which allowed him to access groundbreaking alien technology and solve his research problems.

In order to achieve his grand goal, he made a bold and controversial decision to implant a small amount of cheetah genes into his son, Xie Baofei.

He firmly believes that this gene-intercalation technology could give humans animal-like explosive power, opening up the possibility of the evolution of a "new human".

Indeed, just as he had predicted, the effects of the genetic modification gradually became apparent as Xie Baofei grew up.

Even in his youth, Xie Baofei displayed astonishing talent in sprinting. His legs seemed to possess the speed of a cheetah, and every movement—starting, accelerating, and sprinting—was precise and powerful.

Because of the success with Xie Baofei, the ETO organization applied the technology to its own soldiers.

However, neither Dr. Xie Kezheng nor Xie Baofei expected that this "foreign" gene hidden in the human body would also bring irreversible side effects.

Every full moon night, the cheetah's primal instincts awaken within Xie Baofei, making him frenzied and out of control, completely breaking free from the constraints of human consciousness. It was precisely this out-of-control behavior that led to Tian Ge's death that night.

Tian Ge was brutally bitten to death by Xie Baofei, who had transformed into a leopard.

That's why Tian Ge's brother, Tian Yanbao, strangled Xie Baofei in public.

Faced with this truth, everyone present fell silent. Judges, jurors, journalists from various countries, lawyers, and experts found it difficult to make sense of such a complex matter.

However, the families of both parties involved in the case, as well as other stakeholders, have very clear views on this matter.

For example, Gav Cordman, the personal lawyer for the president of Nike, who represented Nike in signing the endorsement contract with Xie Baofei, stated:

“Bao Fei did nothing wrong. He broke the 9.5-second 100-meter record and did not use performance-enhancing drugs. Bao Fei’s father did nothing wrong. He invented a technique to create geniuses and applied it to his son. Nike did nothing wrong either. They simply signed a contract that was beneficial to both parties and cleverly ruled out the possibility of a doping scandal.”

Clearly, Nike simply wants to distance itself from the public opinion crisis.

However, one thing was unexpected: although Xie Baofei was dead, the shoes and clothing that Nike launched in his name were extremely popular.

The young people's enthusiastic purchase and the conventional naming of it "Leopard Man" seems to illustrate that in postmodern society, young people all have a wildness that needs to be released.

Tian Yanbao's parents, family, and lawyers naturally wanted to protect him, so that he wouldn't face life imprisonment or the death penalty for murder.

As for Xie Baofei's family, Xie Baofei's parents actually felt guilty towards Tian Ge's family.

However, once the case entered the prosecution stage, the local prosecutors were unwilling to let Tian Yanbao, the murderer, go. In this day and age, blood revenge is no longer encouraged by law.

So the two sides engaged in a fierce verbal battle in court, exchanging blows and employing various tactics.

Tian Yanbao played the emotional card of seeking revenge for his sister, while the prosecutor wanted to portray Tian Yanbao as premeditated rather than impulsive.

However, Tian Yanbao's lawyer, Jacobis, delivered a decisive blow.

He admitted that Tian Yanbao's crime of murder was irrefutable and unforgivable, and that everyone sympathized with him, but sympathy could not replace the law.

However, there is still a small problem: was Xie Baofei, whom Tian Yanbao killed, the same person?

In the eyes of the common-sense public, Xie Baofei possesses all the characteristics of a human being: facial features, limbs, intelligence, the ability to speak human language, living in human society, having legal status, and carrying American identification documents in his pocket.

However, when he was still a fertilized egg, he was implanted with a gene fragment of the African cheetah.

Although Xie Baofei's body contains only a very small amount of alien genes, equivalent to only one ten-thousandth of human genes, it answers one question:
At what percentage of foreign genes would a person lose their legal status? Is it one in a thousand? Or one in a hundred?

Lawyer Jacobis believes that humanity must uphold the line of genetic purity and cannot back down even a step. Anyone with even a trace amount of foreign genes embedded in their body should be considered non-human!
Otherwise, if we admit today that a human has one ten-thousandth of a cheetah's genes, then if we bring in a four-legged leopard with one ten-thousandth of a human's genes tomorrow, would it be considered human?

The prosecutor disagreed, arguing that Tian Yanbao's murder case was beyond question and would not be altered by Xie Baofei's legal status.

Moreover, there are many humans in the world who have received animal organ transplants or have been conceived through in vitro fertilization, and these people have not lost their human identity as a result.

Faced with the prosecutor's aggressive questioning, Tian Yanbao's lawyer, Jacobi, brought in Dr. Eddie Kings, a geneticist at Rezoff University School of Medicine and a leading authority in the field of biology.

During the trial, he put forward a consensus that has been formed in the scientific community: that humanity is indeed experiencing alienation in the new era, and that this alienation is slow and gradual.

However, when humanity's efforts to transform itself transcend the 'supplementation' stage and enter the 'improvement' stage, human alienation exceeds the critical point. This 'improved human' that exceeds the critical point is less a human being and more a post-human being that transcends present-day humans.

So, do human laws still apply to new humans like Xie Baofei?
Before convicting Tian Yanbao of 'murder,' can the prosecutor provide authoritative evidence to prove that Xie Baofei has the legal status of a human being?

The courtroom fell silent at the question posed by lawyer Jacobi, realizing that they were indeed standing at a historical turning point.

But Yakulis didn't stop there. He then turned his attention to Xie Baofei's father, Dr. Xie, accusing him of being the one who should be tried, that he was the one who caused the tragedy, and that Xie Baofei was actually a victim, a victim in another sense.

Faced with Yakulis's accusations, Xie Baofei's father, Xie Kezheng, remained remarkably calm. He stepped onto the stage like a lone fighter and shared his views in response to the criticism.

Xie Kezheng first acknowledged the lawyer Jacobis's statement, indicating that Xie Baofei could no longer be classified as a natural human being, but rather as a new kind of human being.

Therefore, Tian Yanbao can be temporarily exonerated until a law applicable to the new humans is enacted.

As for the charges Yakulis brought against him, Xie Kezheng also gave a rebuttal, or rather, a passionate speech.

This speech became the most exciting climax of the entire movie.

"I can imagine that some things have had a great impact on everyone, and many people have been very critical of me."

But I would like to ask everyone not to forget history, not to forget that when Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" was published, it also caused a great uproar.

Perhaps at the time, countless defenders of 'human purity' rose up in protest, cursing Darwin as a descendant of monkeys.

But with the advancement of science, few people are now ashamed to be 'descendants of monkeys'.

However, those moral guardians have clearly not completely disappeared; they have changed their appearance and are still trying to stir up a new wave of noise.

"Perhaps in their understanding, humans have bid farewell to ignorance and established civilization, thus distinguishing themselves from beasts."

But from a physical structure perspective, is there really a clear line drawn between humans and animals?

No! Absolutely not! All living things are of the same origin, sharing a common bloodline.

If that's the case, why is embedding a small amount of foreign genes into the human body considered a heinous crime as long as it benefits human survival?

If this change benefits humanity and helps us defeat the Trisolarans in the future, why can't we adopt it?
We must understand that nature is constantly changing and evolving, and the mutation of species is endless. Must we, as humans, remain stagnant and complacent?

(End of this chapter)