A Girl’s Guide to Taking Over the World
Giveth and Taketh
“Push! Push!”
"It's not coming. Call Dr. Sun."
"Prep for a C-section, and make sure we keep the father out. I don't want more cross-contamination."
A petite nurse with wide brown curls did her best to calm the first-time mother. "Sweetie, everything is fine. With women our size, this is normal, and it's best for you and the baby.”
“But everything’s okay, right? She’s going to be okay?” Mary asked, her slight frame shrouded in hospital bedding. She was anxious but confident that the nurses knew what they were doing.
Sarah, the nurse, did not respond this time. Dr. Sun could be heard speed-walking down the hall, yelling at someone, “I told you this was a bad idea. We can’t keep taking chances like this!” But the instant she rounded the corner to enter the room, she was the epitome of calm and focus.
“Mary, tell me, how are we doing?” She didn’t wait for an answer, gauging everything she needed by reading her patient’s face. “This is going to be no worse than rolling out of bed in the morning. Just relax, and Sarah will have you feeling nice and numb here soon.”
Then to the nurse, “Why did you wait so long?” Again, not waiting for an answer, “Doesn’t matter. She’s prepped? Have we gotten the flavi test back yet?”
Sarah answered, “No, but it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? I mean,” she spoke quietly, “it’s six whole deviations above normal. I’ve never seen anything like it. Have you?”
“We’re going to need to put her under; the shock might be too much, and I don’t want to have to forcibly sedate her if it comes to that.”
“Doctor, she’s... She’ll find out eventually,” but Dr. Sun cut her off.
“Just get Dr. Gabriel in here and make sure she's ready. I’m going to check on that damn flavi.”
The young mother strained to hear and was quickly moving from anxious to concerned. “Nurse, we’re okay, right? My baby is going to be okay, right?”
Sarah spoke in her sweetest drawl, “Ah, honey, you and your baby are going to be more than okay. You're going to be perfect. Now, your only job is to get comfy and try to relax. The doctor is going to put you under for this one; she thinks--”
“Under? Like, put under? Why? I don’t need that. I need to be awake to see my baby, to make sure she’s okay,” Mary pleaded.
“Honey, it's for the best. The doctor knows what she’s doing. It's just going to feel like going to sleep, and when you wake up, your baby will be right here with you, just like magic.” Sarah was somehow keeping it together despite knowing the procedure's expected outcome.
“That’s not what we talked about; that’s not what I want. Where’s Jim? I need to talk to my husband!”
“Sweetie, I’m sorry, but it’s too late. We already put the pento in your IV. You just need to try and take a deep breath. One--”
“Jim! Jim!!! I need to see my husband. Jim!” Mary’s breath was labored, her vision blurring. On an exhale, she managed to whisper, “Evelyn.”
She breathed in, then out heavily, “Call.” In. Then out, “Call her. Call her, Evelyn…”
Flavivirus
Eveyln was born at the front end of the pandemic, before resources were exhausted and governments had given up fighting. By the year 2051 everyone would know that the flavivirus genus includes West Nile, dengue, several tick-borne strains like yellow fever and the Zika virus, and awful diseases causing encephalitis in children. By that time It was common knowledge that the name flavi came from yellow fever because flavus means yellow in Latin.
Starting in the early 2040’s and for nearly a decade young women all over the world were told to avoid becoming pregnant and they tried but it was not enough. Evelyn had been one of the early babies born to a mother infected with the new, unnamed strain of flavivirus while it was still little understood. Her mother had done everything right, avoided sugar, alcohol, crowds, coffee and any unnecessary medication, she even had asked her husband to try and not use the microwave around her just to be safe. But at first the flavivirus seemed to strike indiscriminately.
Like most of these viruses it was transmitted by the bite from an infected arthropod. This version was traced back to a South Asian shipping crew, it had somehow gained the ability to replicate in mammals to continue its life cycle through human to human transfection. An R0, reproduction rate, greater than five and mortality rate of only 5% meant that even though everyone eventually got it only those at risk showed symptoms.
Unlike with healthy adults the results of infection were profound on fetal development and extremely variable case to case. About 10% of babies were born with only minor cognitive side effects. The other 90% suffered severe macrocephaly, having 5 to 10 times mean cranial capacity for their age group. The vast majority of these children were aborted or succumbed soon after being born, not one out of a thousand survived. But Evelyn was different, she lived.
Soon after Eveyln was born it was made illegal to carry a flavi infected child to term, the risks were too great. China was the first to make the call and they were seen as barbaric but within a year the western world followed suit. Making testing and abortion mandatory for those found positive. Of those affected the few children that did make it had next to no quality of life and only a few other than Evelyn made it into their 20’s.
Manifested as a grossly enlarged cranium, macrocephaly is a horrendous disease. Childrens’ heads were so big they were unable to lift or even hold themselves upright for more than a moment. Braces and supports were required for independent living and just leaving bed was an extended ordeal. Cognitively, a small number of children were typical but the majority were severely deficient and many were essentially vegetative. Evelyn was the opposite.
After the outbreak governments went haywire. They enacted, then lifted, then enacted again mass quarantines, travel restrictions and nonsense sterilizations of young women that only worsened the problem by forcing women to hide pregnancies.
Hundreds of island and isolated populations remained virus free for the entirety of the outbreak. For healthy women surrogacy quickly became the highest paid profession. Island nations like New Zealand that were fast to close borders and quarantine the sick avoided the worst of it. At the height of the surrogacy boom in the late 2040’s New Zealand mother’s were being paid over $10 million NZD per embryo inserted, regardless of the outcome. Because of quick action and preparedness the extinction of the human race was never at risk but everything else was.
By law, because Evelyn was born infected, she had not been allowed to leave the hospital for the first year of her life but even after that short time it was clear that she would probably end up being a research asset to the hospital, not a liability. They decided to try and keep her there indefinitely by offering to cover 90% of her medical bills for ten years in exchange for exclusive publishing rights and were surprised when her father agreed to the terms sight unseen. This essentially made Evelyn a ward of the hospital but left all final decisions to her father.
By the time she was one Evelyn was speaking like a two year old in broken but meaningful sentences. Before she could say the word piano she was playing recognizable melodies on her tablet’s keyboard. She learned to read and write by trial and error with a text to speech program long before her father or nurses realized what she was doing. From an early age it was self-evident, Evelyn Price was going to be different.
A New Normal
In the wake of the outbreak nurses became teachers, parents became nurses and there were never enough doctors. Hospitals were mass quarantine facilities where many children spent the entirety of their short lives and the medical industry exploded to account for well over half of global expenditures. All to care for a lost generation that if lucky enough to be born at all would never make it past their first two years.
Precocity
Evelyn read voraciously from the age of three but more than anything her accelerated learning was facilitated by videos and online courses. The virtual classroom infrastructure had been built and staffed for the generation of children who seldom were allowed to leave their homes and Evelyn mastered the automated systems quickly.
Fame
By the time she was four Evelyn was world famous. A home video of her factoring a complex polynomial equation aired on a comedy late show. She was an overnight star.
Fortune
A year later she was streaming online math lessons for highschool credit and supplementing her father’s income with donations from students. Her father, Jim, was as uncomfortable around her as anyone. They had no common ground. At five she started using his first name instead of Dad. What was the point? She had asked when he questioned the change. She loved Jim and her nurse Sarah, but somehow didn’t care about them. It didn’t make sense to care about people, not to Evelyn.
The Smartest Girl in the Room
At six she wrote her first book, an autobiography about the life of a quarantined perma-patient and the lost generation as a whole. Evelyn didn’t need confidence because she did not care what others thought of her. She had a dozen or so instruments and hobbies, mountains of course work to get through and, as she calculated, four to five hours of reading to do per day for the next twelve years to get through the melinia of science and literature that had preceded her.
It was not that Evelyn was smarter than the people around her, it was that she did not even see the world the same way, she saw it better. She saw it the way it really was. Her insights into daily life were astounding and scary to anyone that spoke to her. Piercing observations about the banality of life or an overly personal question about some guarded insecurity, being around Evelyn was uncomfortable to say the least.
The Miseducation of Evelyn Price
“Evelyn, please. I need you to pay attention to this,” the nurse Sarah was saying. As a result of the virus Evelyn’s extremely large head required the support of a metal neck brace, her’s had tons of old shoulder padding that looked uncomfortable but she would always say it was no big deal. For her lessons she was sitting cross legged on the stiff hospital bed in front of her nurse but not paying attention. Evelyn would have been the picture of health and vitality if not for the watermelon sized cranium she had to forever keep precariously balanced on her small frame. For a surface area that increased five times, her scalp produced no more hair follicles, so she appeared to be very thin haired and balding in places. Her features were normal aside from appearing small, bottom heavy and close together in comparison.
It was late afternoon and the nurse was desperate to get home before dark for once. “How do you expect any of these grand schemes of yours to work out if you don’t learn the basics first?” Sarah asked Evelyn.
“Sarah, you know that I did this trig unit last year on my own. It’s wasting everyone’s time to force me to get these quals and also, did I mention it’s cruel and unusual to not give me my birthday off?” Evelyn said.
“Sweety, it was your decision that we have class today. I love you and I’ll see you first thing in the AM, I’m sorry but it’s time I get going. Just think, you’ll be out of here soon and we’ll have you and your Dad over for dinner.” Sarah was as good as an actual mother to Evelyn in many ways but she still had her own family to care for.
“Who’s on nights?” Evelyn already knew but was trying to prolong the goodbye.
“I think it’s Jane, no Megan tonight. I’ll tell her to make sure to clean the bathroom in the morning, I swear this building is starting to rot from the inside out.”
“That’s okay, I don’t mind doing it myself. And you’ll be in tomorrow?”
“That's right, I love you Evie and happy birthday.” Sarah didn’t want to get choked up. She gave her young patient/student a goodnight hug and kiss on the forehead then let the door close on the small private room.
Evelyn, the patient, was born the same night her mother had died, seven years ago in the very same hospital not far from where she was now. She thought about how the flavivirus had kept her and millions of other children similarly confined, how their mothers had contracted it while pregnant by not being careful enough, by not being smart enough.
After a decade of research and trillions in spending the first trial vaccines finally became available and there was no longer any excuse to keep her confined. Evelyn had been outside the hospital but she had never lived outside the hospital. The prospect scared and excited her. She wanted to go home but at the same time, the hospital was her home.
Asking For a Friend
By her eighth birthday she had completed all the course work for a GED but refused to submit the paperwork, on principle, she said but never completely explained what that meant. The same year she enrolled in a state school, majoring in English as the youngest student ever accepted to any university in the US.
Evelyn inhaled information. She plumbed every detail from every interaction or environment. Every slice of existence was investigated, analyzed and stored. Nothing escaped her scrutiny. To know Evelyn was to come face to face with the nihilistic reality of existence itself, a black hole. For most it was an all around awful experience. Evelyn devoured people too, just like her books, lessons and hobbies, she was insatiable.
She cared deeply about medicine, history and music but more than anything, mathematics and economics. She was interested in people too but in the way most of us would be interested in watching a tiger live-fed a goat, disgusted, but unable to look away.
Evelyn never told anyone about what she wanted or what she was doing. As far as Evelyn knew, she was the only one of her kind and she was not happy about it. She had connected online with other flavi children who were cognitively normal or slightly above average but she never found another case of macrocephalic induced hyper-intelligence. The problem, statistically speaking, was that she only had a single “positive” individual to study, herself. Genetically, even with her full genome sequenced, her search algorithm lacked sufficient power to figure out what sequences were essential to Evelyn’s “abilities”, thus she was not able to use the data to find others like herself. Physically, she had found no significant differences within the “control” group of afflicted children and herself. In looking for what exactly it was that made her different from her peers Evelyn had very little to go on.
Cloning was out. Aside from the legality of it she decided right away the risk of long tail consequences was too great. Also, she could already talk to herself, she wanted a friend. With thousands of potential gene targets doing gene knockout or promotion studies in mammals could take even a well funded lab decades to get results. So Evelyn settled on what she thought was a good compromise, to use her own eggs, fertilized by a variety of men and run a simple trial and error, brute force, in-virto fertilization experiment.
But she was eight. She didn’t want to wait another decade to begin, she also wasn't sure she would ever be allowed to have a child herself. People were not having babies in the United States and healthy oversea surrogates were charging in the millions to carry. If Evelyn wanted a child she would have to find another way. Her first experiments were incubating chicken eggs in an artificial placenta. She bought the fretilized eggs online and it was a delicate operation to remove the shell and transfer the embryo to a double layer plastic bag under the sink in her bathroom. It was four months and five malformed aborted chicks later before she had her first success. A chick she coaxed from a single cell to a full term fluffy baby all in her tiny bathroom with just the medical supplies she was able to scavenge from the hospital. She cried when she had to flush it down the toilet, it was that or attempt the delicate operation of removing the vocal cords to keep it quiet. Nevermind that, she was ecstatic about the success.
Evelyn thought she would be able to harvest her own eggs with the surgical tools and supplies she had spent a lifetime hoarding but frozen sample storage would be difficult. Liquid nitrogen was kept in the basement and that was off limits to patients. Harvesting her own eggs was a complicated and painful process she did not want to go through more often than she had to.
After gaining confidence with her in vitro chicken assay she moved on to experimenting with a pet gerbil she was allowed to keep. Ordering gerbil semen and IF materials online was easy but she was alway short on funds for the tools she was unable to find during her late night raids into the rest of the hospital. For the artificial uterus she settled on a dual layer carbon fiber silicon material that could breathe and stretch. She lost a horrendous number of gerbil babies and mothers but as long as the nurses didn’t notice the difference in fur markings as they kept getting replaced the animal worked as a great model organism for her early trials.
Evelyn had her work cut out for her and she had the iron will necessary to get what she wanted. There was one thing she wanted more than anything, it was what she wished for when she blew out the candles on her eighth birthday cake. Evelyn just wanted someone to talk to.
A Woman Like Us
The nurse Sarah was there when Evelyn was born and nearly every day since. She had been the last person to speak with the mother and in that last moment something had been exchanged, a non-verbal agreement between women. Sarah felt no responsibility for what had happened but couldn’t shake the feeling that she needed to be there for Evelyn. From day one, she too felt that somehow Evelyn was going to be special.
Evelyn never cried as a baby. She would make eye contact, look concerned or frightened but never cried. Her father worked two shifts to keep up with the minimum hospital payments. Sarah was just about the closest thing to a parent in Evelyn's life. She became a certified k-12 teacher so Evelyn wouldn't be stuck doing on-line course work. She gave up many of her nights and weekends so that Evelyn wouldn’t be left alone.
Her husband accused her of neglecting her own family when she’d stay overnight. Her own children grew to resent their “step sister” when she was often the reason why they could not take this or that vacation or would be stuck at home with their Dad during the periodically enforced quarantines but Sarah never questioned what she was doing. Sarah believed wholeheartedly that Evelyn needed her more than anyone else, in a way, Sarah had been bewitched. Even as a child Evelyn had that power.
A Red Christmas
About the time Evelyn was getting ready to move in with her father she started to think about her living arrangements and personal wealth for the first time. Jim barely made enough to support himself and the apartment she was expected to be moving into, which was anything but nice. The few thousand dollars she had managed to save from tutoring was her own but nothing close to enough to furnish the home and laboratory she felt she needed.
If Evelyn wanted to be financially independent as soon as possible she realized that linear growth of her capital was not going to be sufficient, she needed the leverage of equity markets. Fortunes of the few are often made off catastrophic losses of the masses, and Evelyn had just the catastrophe in mind. Global financial markets had been teetering on the edge of collapse for nearly ten years. Markets rebounded after the first year of the outbreak but had required constant new money being pumped in. Every citizen’s monthly payment had ballooned to $7,500 a week and all sales and property taxes were indefinitely suspended. The world had turned to socialism in its time of need.
But somehow the dollar held. Oil and gold held steady. Prices had not spiraled with out of control inflation and the stock market still existed. Evelyn saw an opportunity to short, to short everything.
In 2059 the world was on the edge. The US dollar had held sway for over 100 years, the longest of any fiat currency. Despite being inflated thousands of times past its real value, the currency still worked, people still believed. All Evelyn would need to do is inject some doubt into the system, to pop the bubble. First she bought as many short positions as she could in USD by purchasing hard assets as “bets” against the currency.
She started using her math tutor channel to teach about economics, about how government currency is inflated and the decline of its purchasing power. After one month she was contacted by the secret service and asked to desist. So she made a video about it. She made videos about fake money propping up the system, she talked about the banking elite, inflation and how a government for the people needs to be a government BY the people. She was getting big.
She piled every dollar into her short positions, racking up massive negative balances for the first few months but slowly the tide began to turn in her favor. The dollar began to fall. First it looked like asset prices were increasing and everyone cheered the end of the 10 year recession. Markets were going gangbusters, home prices were soaring, every asset class was hitting record highs, Evelyn’s shorts were costing her thousands per day in fees to keep open, but she persisted.
In the popular media she gained notoriety as the child savant turned conspiracy theorist. Online she gained millions of followers who felt the system was rigged and were actively cheering for it to collapse. When the markets did start to fall many blamed her. Saying her hysterics triggered the selloff, Evelyn mantined it was inevitable. For weeks the nine year old Evelyn was the hottest get for every interviewer and she was everywhere. Until the markets truly hit bottom and were forced to disband, she was seen as prophetic, afterwards as a child witch. In the most disgusting display of humanity she was demonized by many then ridiculed and blamed for the crash. Her father tried his best to insulate her from what was going on but she wasn’t just in the eye of a hurricane, she was the storm.
Banks closed, money became whatever had value to the person you happened to be trading with, food was scarce and almost overnight Evelyn was one of the wealthiest people in the country. Days before global financial markets were forced to shut down she was pulling out funds into hard assets as fast as her little hands could enter the trades. December 21, the Friday before Christmas was the last holiday before ultimate failure and perfect timing for Evelyn. The DOW was down 65% for the year. That Friday while most were home with family she bought twenty three properties in California and ten in New York. She bought land, she was collecting companies like a normal nine year old collects charms. She bought the company her father worked for and immediately signed it over to him. By the time she was ready to leave the hospital, she owned it and essentially all the surrounding property. It was a very good Christmas for Evelyn but the markets never did reopen.
Homecoming
“Dad, I’m home.” Evelyn called. “I’m exhausted, did you get dinner by any chance?”
“Sweety, I’m sorry, I’ll order something now, what do you feel like?”
“Doesn’t matter, just not pizza.”
“How was the lab, any progress? I saw you on the news again, it was good though, they were nice, really.”
“Dad, you know I don’t care about that stuff, they are so mean!. I can’t, I just, can’t!”
“It’s ok, sweety. Can we do a, three,” he breathed in deep, “Two.” He breathed out through his mouth, “And one,” pulling the air in through his nose deeply, trying to make eye contact.
“It was fine, thank you for asking,” Evelyn said after the short breathing exercise.
“Did Dr. Albert get the test done you wanted?” Jim asked, trying to stay involved.
“Dad, that was like literally a month ago, I had to let him go anyway.”
“Oh, honey I’m sorry.”
Eveyln was trying to stay positive, “Doesn’t matter, he wasn’t keeping up. I can hire and bring over ten Indian engineers for the price of one Albert.”
“Well, that’s good I guess.”
“We actually did get an implant that lasted over six weeks. I keep thinking we are wasting our time with animal testing, it's like, of course these mutations are not going to be viable in swine, their brains are literally exploding out of their skulls at high pressure within days of cranial formation.” Evelyn didn’t like talking shop with her dad but knew he was trying his best.
“Oh, sweety, you know I, I don’t really know about all that, I’m just happy if things are working out for you.”
“Well they’re not. Norsvin is already $52 billion in the hole in lobbying costs alone and we are no closer to human trials than we were six months ago,” Evelyn complained.
“You knew this would be a process, didn’t you say it could take a lifetime before you saw results, you’ve only been out of the hospital for, what, not much more than a year now. I know you’ll do incredible things but people are scared of change.”
“And sometimes they need to be scared before they can change.” Evelyn offered.
“But…?”
“No but, just thinking.”
“So... Chinese ok?” Jim asked.
“Yeh, make sure it's tofu General Tso please this time,” I’m not eating pork anymore.
“You know, Sweety, it's kinda’ funny you won’t let me eat meat but all day at work you know, well, you know?” Jim loved his daughter but understood very little about her.
“Think of it as a balancing act, Jim, also, that's research, you know we’d do it all computationally if we could. Biology is... Messy.”
Topigs Norsvin
Evelyn acquired dozens of companies on her buying spree but Topigs Norsvin was a jewel in her crown and where she chose to spend most of her time. Her first year out of the hospital she led several research teams aimed at reproducing the mutation that led to her own hyper intelligence. Swine was an obvious choice as a model organism since they reproduce quickly and were already of moderate intelligence.
Simply infecting pregnant sows with the falvivirus was ineffective as it was a human specific virus, so she bred an immunocompromised line and infected those. Few offspring survived but those that did had abnormal cranial phenotypes although all below mean intelligence.
She concluded that genetically she was the same as everyone else and short of purposefully infecting young human mothers with the virus for study she saw no path forward.
When Evelyn was chronologically eleven years old Jim still put her to bed every night but in every way she was the far more mature of the two. More often than not it was Evelyn who was comforting and validating Jim, not the other way around but he did his best.
One night after Evelyn had returned from the lab Jim said, “Your mother would be so proud of you. It’s her birthday today, you know. I, I didn’t know if you knew that,” tears were forming in his eyes.
“Of course I know that, Dad. I also know you don’t like talking about her, it’s okay.”
“She would have given everything to see who you’ve become,” Jim did actually like talking about his late wife.
“She did, I mean, she did give everything.”
“At the end, just before you were born she was so frail. I told her she should have stopped working sooner but also I think she was just giving you everything she could, body and soul.”
“What do you mean, frail? Like, anemia, that’s not uncommon.”
“I remember, all her tests were normal, with the virus everyone was on high alert for any abnormalities the whole way through. Everyone kept telling us you both were healthy but she was clearly losing weight the last few weeks.”
“I’ve been over her charts, there’s nothing about losing weight, her numbers were all within normal range.” Evelyn had scoured all her and her mother’s data long ago.
“Well, not weight, her stomach kept getting bigger but, like she was losing something, her body was, what’s the word when a thing--”
“Atrophy. Her muscles were probably atrophying to accommodate me. She really did give everything.”
“No, honey no. It was not like that, I’m just saying, she loved you so much, the pregnancy wasn’t easy on her but she wanted to give you this, she wanted you so bad.”
“Wait, Dad, that's it! That's why I survived but she didn’t. Fetal doping, increased red blood cells probably! Mom’s body was failing in a way that most probably don’t.” Evelyn thought she was on to something.
“Honey, what are you talking about? If you don’t want to hear about Mom I understand.
“Just like Lance Armstrong! That’s it!” Evelyn lit up.
“How, how do you even know who that is? And what does he have to do with Mom?”
“You see it right? What’s wrong with me, or Mom actually. Her body compensated for what went wrong with me, maybe overcompensated. She’s the anomaly, not me. There was something special about Mom, not me!”
“I’m not sure what you mean but I want you to know that there is nothing your mother wouldn’t have done for you and there was nothing wrong with her.” Jim was trying to calm Evelyn down.
“Dad! It’s why we’ve never gotten past week six! We’ve only tried hormonal and nutrient levels within normal biological ranges, we need to try, 2, 5, hell, 10x levels. How could I have been so dumb!”
Evelyn grabbed for a notebook and started writing furiously. In the first column she made a list of a dozen or so nutrient and hormonal compounds. Then potential treatment group levels in mg or µg of compound per kg of body weight.
Well accustomed to Evelyn’s deep focus Jim knew to leave his daughter alone when she was onto an interesting problem. She worked intently until the doorbell rang and just like any nine year old jumped at the chance to answer it.
“I got it, Dad. Did you already leave a tip?” She opened the door, “Hi, I’m Evelyn, how are you?”
“Uh, good. You. I mean your that. That Evelyn. Wow, It’s like so nice to meet you. I’ve like, watched you forever. You are literally the only reason I passed geometry last semester.”
“Thank you very much. It is always nice to meet a fan. Here is a tip.” Evelyn said.
Evelyn handed the young man two hundred dollar bills.
“You don’t think, maybe I could get like a picture with you could I? I mean, if it's not too much?”
“Due to complications of prenatal flavi my doctors have advised against unnecessary physical contact with strangers.” Evelyn used this excuse often to avoid physical contact.
“Oh, yeh, like of course, I’m sorry, I know that was weird. But thank you, thanks so much.”
“Have a good night.” Evelyn said sutting the door with the bag of chinese food in one hand. She turned to face her father and smiled.
Jim said, “You love that the doctors said excuse don’t you?”
“As long as they don’t know that I am my own doctor there’s no harm done.”
“That’s not really a thing, Sweety.”
“And why can’t I be my own doctor, I don’t see who else would be more qualified.”
“Um, maybe, like an actual doctor?” Jim said this first part slowly, then the last part quickly as he crouched down and jogged up to Evelyn making “claw” hands as he went to grab her around the waist. Evelyn knew what was coming.
She dropped to the floor and started laughing before he even touched her, saying, “No, no Dad, please I’ll do anything.” She burst the second Jim started tickling, first the waist, then feet and thigh. They wrestled and Evelyn laughed until she cried and Jim was out of breath.
“Ok, ok sweety.” Taking a deep breath, “Let’s eat something.” The two already had a fairly set dinner routine, Evelyn would watch two to three nightly news programs at the same time as Jim would try to talk to her about her day. It wasn’t perfect but it seemed to work for them. That night Evelyn left the TV’s off and at the kitchen table they talked about her mother until it was time for bed.
Chairman of the Board
“We’re closing the surrogacy division.” It was the first thing Evelyn said walking into the morning meeting. “Sanjay, dump everything in our planned parenthood portfolio and Marcus, I’m sorry but we will no longer be needing your services or those of the WHO, we are going a different route.”
Ming was her executive assistant and she asked in a concerned tone, “Ms. Price, is, is everything ok? I thought the whole idea was that we were going to--”
To her assistant, “Ming, I like you but you don’t know the first thing about what we are doing.” Then to the 13 around the board room table, “What we are doing is trying to improve the lives of every man woman and child on this planet, and the WAY we are going to do that is by increasing mean IQ. By my estimates for every point the global average IQ increases we see an 8% increase in standard of living, a 5% increase in happiness and a, if I am correct, a 3% increase in lifespan.”
She paused to walk slowly to the back of the room and continued, “War, famine, insecutiry, fear, murder. All manifestations of low intelligence. Society has spent millennia trying to fix the problem by attacking the symptoms. My friends, we are here to hit the problem at the source.”
“I had a breakthrough the other night. Dr. Stauf, Dr. Pauling, tell me what you think. Most children of flavi are malnourished. We took this to be a result of the mother’s weakened immune system. But what if it was a result of the cerebellum trying to pool resources? The zygotic brain is starving its own body and its host, the mother simply can not keep up. So we take the mother out of the equation. We go full in vitro and start maxing out nutrient and hormone levels, to the point of toxicity and we go looking for that sweet spot.”
“Ms. Price, I. It is theoretically possible you know but no one has gotten a few days past insemination of viable growth without implantation. Artificial placenta are decades away from--”
“I’m not talking about artificial implantation Dr. in vivo but keep the organ on life support outside of the body, it's the only way we can have precise control. How long can we keep a heart beating outside the body, days, weeks? We can do the same for a placenta. Marcie, who do we own in the lab grown meat sector?”
Marcie struggled to understand the connection before giving up and tried to answer the question, “Mam, I mean, Dr. Price, we have MeatLab, BeyondMeat and Burgerly, a 15% stake in ChemChina and I believe they have the greatest variety for their niche markets. As far as I know they have bovine, canine, and elephant lines, a few big cats that produce lab grown muscle relatively efficiently. But, but no one has anything outside of muscle and fat tissue, regulation would never allow for--”
“I am not concerned with what we are allowed, Marcie but thank you. Dr. Pauling, get the head of ChemChina on the phone, we need 51% as soon as possible, sell whatever you need to make the numbers work. Let's break for the day, this time tomorrow I want to own CC and Marcie, make sure that heads of our lab meats are all here, at least on conference, see you all then.”
Evelyn walked out of the room without making eye contact or acknowledging anyone's concerns. She had effectively just fired thousands of people. Her assistant Ming stayed behind and as soon as the door shut the board room erupted. She can't do this! It’ll bankrupt us! What is she thinking! Several rounds of, That's it, she's lost it! And lots of, I can’t keep working like this!
Ming tried to calm the crowd, “I’ll get more info, please, everyone, please. I will talk, PLEASE, everyone. Clearly this is a pivot, nobody is losing their jobs.”
“Ming!” The head of water security spoke over the rest. “Ming, ChemChina is at least a $95 billion asset, back of the envelope, she’s asking for $45 to complete a takeover. Even if we could liquidate that fast she won’t make it, she’s talking about bankrupting us all for this…”
“John, Evelyn has, let’s say, significantly more hard assets than she lets on. I promise you, I promise YOU ALL, nothing is closing down. We may need to let go of some of our humanitarian work, Charlie, I’m sorry but I’m sure we’ll find plenty of investors to take you on. John, you are right, it might be tough, maybe water won’t make it, I’m sorry but again, we’ll find you all good homes.”
The room blew up all over again. She can’t! This will ruin us! Someone needs to stop her!
“Ok, how about this, we’ll break and reconvene for an afternoon session when I know more. If you have specific concerns put them in writing and we’ll address them, let's say at three, ok?”
John spoke up again over the rest, “Ming, if you let this go through they’ll be no coming back from it, all the good we’ve done this last year will have been for nothing, she’s throwing it all away, for, for what exactly?”
“John, put it in writing, we’ll talk at three. Now I need to go. Everyone clear? I’ll see you then.”
Ming didn’t wait for an answer, she walked out the door trying to catch up to her boss.
But there was no three o’clock meeting. By noon 11 of the 13 divisions were no longer part of the Price conglomerate. Evelyn did retain John and a few others but they were all reassigned to medical or lab meat research. Evelyn never wanted to build an empire, she wanted to rebuild society itself and she had no attachment to the old one.
Septimus
Keeping human organs on life support proved to be a straightforward proposition and Evelyn with her team had immediate success. Initially organs were purchased abroad and imported before she decided too much time was being wasted in transit and moved the whole organization and her father to rural China where tissue was abundant and regulations non existent. Organ maturation was a slow process and even in the world’s more populous nation there were only a few dozen usable cadavers per day. Progress slowed.
A year had passed since the incident in the boardroom and Evelyn had just turned thirteen, she was getting depressed. Arriving home late from work one night she walked in the door feeling sour, “Jim, this is stupid! It’s not going to work, it was NEVER going to work. How could I be so dumb.”
Jim had a hard time accepting who his daughter was becoming and asked specifically to please be kept out of her business decisions. “Hey honey, welcome home, or should I say, nee how.”
“Good accent, you been practicing with Ms. Chow?”
“Sweety, please, you don’t need to…”
“I’m just saying good job, you don’t need to be so sensitive.”
“Ok, I’m sorry, I. I just am glad your home, you know I don’t like these late nights.”
“Well, it doesn’t even matter anymore, I’m probably giving up anyway. This whole move to Beijing was a waste of time. In vivo has barely outperformed the artificial route, just this week we aborted fifteen hundred due to a miscalculation with the glutathione dilutions. It’s pointless as long as I am working with people on a third grade level.”
“Sweety, you know I don’t like to hear about-- you know I don’t like that.”
“What do you want, Dad? You want me to be alone for the rest of my life?”
“Evie, you.” His brow wrinkled and he felt hurt, “You have me, Evie.”
“That’s not what I mean, I, you know what I mean, I need someone, like me.”
“Are we really that different? You act like your, like your not even human sometimes, like you--”
“You still don’t get it do you? I’m not. I am in no way what you call human, there is no aspect of our lives that overlap. What kind of relationship do you have with that plant over there, or the ducks in the park you like to feed, what do you have in common with them? Now imagine that was all you had. Imagine that your only friend in life was a plant, a rock or some ducks wouldn’t you want more?”
Jim was crying and couldn’t answer, not because of the tears but because he had absolutely nothing to say. They stood in silence, Evelyn let a moment pass before she turned and walked back out the door, her father assumed to get some air and a late dinner. She was thirteen years old chronologically but in every other way she was a full grown adult.
She didn’t go home that night and instead she went back to the lab and spent the next eight hours working out glutathione decay rates, falling asleep at the bench, she never went “home” again. The lab became not just her work but her life. She fired half the management team and slimmed down her companies to just three, Meetly, Topigs and an investment firm she named after herself, Price Incorporated. It worked. Progress accelerated and soon Evelyn’s team had several litters of genetically modified flavi infected massively intelligent pigs. Nine out of ten still “failed to thrive” but the lab now had dozens of pigs “in training” that were at least as intelligent as a normal ten year old child.
Special keyboards were designed for communication, 2x2 meter pads with painted letters that could be stomped on to register a keystroke. Evelyn loved history and used a Roman inspired naming scheme early on. Pirums was a male spotted Yorkshire, he died before reaching 6 months old but was the clearest sign of success to date. They attempted trepanning the skull to release pressure from the increased cranium size but it was not enough. It was clear that a full craniectomy would be required soon after birth, removing the top half of the skull, as early as possible to allow unencumbered growth of the brain. A system of replaceable 3d printed porous “skull caps” were upgraded overtime but required the animals to be reared in semi-sterile environments. Septimus and Octavius were the first to make it to adulthood and they were marvelous creatures by any standard. Septimus was kind, fun and quick with a joke. He mostly understood his place in life, Evelyn had seen fit to hide nothing from her children. She spent as much time with the pigs as she did in the lab and for the most part the keyboard was barely necessary anymore.
“Morning Sep,” Evelyn said, a bright sunny day in April.
“Uhhhhg-Ckkkkg!” Septimus replied.
“What’d you guys get up to last night?”
“HHhhhgggg, Huggg hugg,” Septimus grunted and swung his head in the direction of their art studio at what looked like a pile of freshly painted canvases.
“You know those are selling like hotcakes right, Marcie told me your “Algernon” piece went for over a million at auction last week,” Evelyn was genuinely happy for her friend’s success.
“Hhhhhhck hugggggg. Huuuck.” Evelyn took this to mean something like, Who cares. I just like doing it. But she nodded toward the pigboard, a gesture that meant she wanted him to type out what he ment. Septimus hung his head annoyed and slow walked over to the large electronic mat with the letters long since worn off and stomped out the following:
“Evie, you know I don’t want to be put on display like this. Nobody is going to get what I’m trying to do as long as you're promoting me as “the pig that can paint”. These people are buying a joke, a conversation piece, not a piece of art. I want to create, not be a laughing stock. I want people to take me seriously.”
“Oh, Sep. I. I so, so much know what you mean. I swear to god Sep you are the only friend I have and I know, I know people are awful but this is still a first step. People have no context for, for--”
“Uhhhhg gggggck.” Evelyn nodded to the pigboard and Septimus typed, “For what I am?”
“No, what, WE are. People only know what they know. Our job, your job, is to let them know you, it's the only way they will ever understand.”
Septimus typed, “I don’t want to be stuck in here the rest of my life, Evie. Even if it means a brain infection, I don’t care anymore. I want to see the outside world, I want to meet another pig.”
“You know hundreds of pigs, Sep. And you know you wouldn’t last a week outside, I’m sorry but it is what it is.”
Septimus quickly stomped out, “I don’t care. I don’t care about being part of your experiment anymore. I spoke with Shawn and he told me animal rights in America might consider this whole thing inhumane, did you know that? He said this would never even be allowed in America and that’s why you won’t let us go there for interviews.”
“Sep. You talked to my lawyer, how, when?”
“Gggggghuck?” with a slight lift of the eyes at the end which Evelyn took to mean, “Why not?”
“Because they are my lawyers, Sep and you are--”
“Kkkiigg,” Spetimus’s way of saying pig.
“Because you are, yes, you are not a person, Sep.”
Septimus’s eyes narrowed and his head lowered, “Kaaaiiiiii, Knnnooot, Kiiigg!.”
“Sep? Ok, ok you are not a pig, I’m sorry you know--”
Before Evelyn had time to stand up let alone exit the cage Septimus was charging from just a few meters away. In a second he was on her and in one bite to the back of her leg he took out a grapefruit sized chunk of her calf muscle and tore back. Ligaments left dangling, Evelyn looked and called for help before she passed out from the pain and the sight of her own flesh hanging out the sides of her best friend’s mouth.
She woke up the next day in a hospital bed and made two quick decisions she never regretted, to amputate the leg to minimize the risk of infection spreading and to put down Septimus. The program had been a complete success and there was no excuse to delay human trials any further.
Immaculate Conception
“Dr. Price, would you like to cut the cord?” Dr. Gupta said, handing Evelyn a pair of surgical scissors.
“Thank you, Doctor. Let's do it together. Smile.” Taking Dr. Gupta’s hand in hers then putting both over the pair of scissors she paused and smiled for the flashing cameras as together they cut the Tygon® plastic tubing connecting the first fully lab grown human to its nutrient feed.
“Dr. Price. Dr. Price, how do you feel?” The small surgical room was bursting with a dozen reporters dressed in isolation gowns and other personal protective equipment.
“Dr. Price. What does this say for the future of humanity?”
“Are you concerned for where this could lead?”
The reporters were drowned out by her PR assistant, Marcie. “Everyone, we are taking all questions in writing. This is only a photo opportunity.”
But Evelyn spoke up, “It's ok, Marcie, I don’t mind. Suzan, is that you in the back? I, I feel like we are making progress. We have a long way to go but today marks a new frontier for the human race.”
“Dr. Price. When will we know if the child is… If the child will be allowed out of the hospital?”
“Stan, I thought you left The Globe last year? But, we already know. It is why you are here, the child is perfectly normal.”
“I’m with The Standard now Ma’am. But, it is still infected right? Will it ever have anything like a normal life?”
“Normal! What exactly is that supposed to mean, Stanley? You mean, normal like you? You mean you--”
“Ok! Thank you everyone. We appreciate your time and any questions can be--” Marcie was trying her best.
“Dr. Price, I only mean, will it ever be, unencumbered.”
“Unencumbered!? You mean will she require a brace like mine? Yes, but for that small price will this child be bright, will this child be healthy, will this child make everyone in this room look like a mentally disabled baboon? Yes to all that, Stanley. You should be scared, you should be asking questions because this is the beginning of the end for people like you. You are being replaced.”
“All of you out, NOW!” Marcie started physically forcing reporters out of the cramped operating room. “If I see a single damn word of any of that in print we’ll have the libel suites on your desk by close of business. Not a Goddamn word, you hear me!”
As soon as Marcie had the gaggle shoved out the door Evelyn was looking for sympathy, “Channy, they just don’t understand, they have no idea what we are trying to do here, they are making us out to be some kind of monsters.”
But Dr. Gupta had none, “I don’t know Evelyn. They may have a point. This, this child, what does it prove. How is this not, doing harm?” The newborn was laying still in the neonatal crib inside the double walled artificial womb. Looking down at it Dr. Gupta added, “We better get it into the incubator.
“Damn it, Channy, not you too. A double digital reduction in crime could be expected for every point increase. Boosting IQ in even 5% of the population could triple GDP and life expectancy for that group. If that's not reason enough…”
Dr. Gupta was exhausted, “I know the pitch Evelyn, I helped write it. I’m just saying, listening to your critics isn’t the worst thing. Do you want me to call NICU down to come get it?”
“Don’t be stupid Channy, this was just for the reporters. You think I’d risk contamination? This one wasn't going to make it anyway, malformed spine. And I don’t need this from you right now. I don’t need you, these reporters, my own FATHER! Questioning me, questioning every-little-thing I do. You know what. Get out, Channy. Get out and leave your badge!”
The tiny child squirmed in the fluid-filled sack at the sound of her “mother” yelling and since being disconnected she was quickly running low on oxygen.
“You are sick Evelyn! You are a monster and you will get what you deserve. I regret the fact I ever stepped foot into this evil. People will find out, Evelyn. People will know what you’ve done and when they do, I promise you, there will be no sympathy for--”
“I said out!” Evelyn grabbed a phone off the wall and hit *91, “Lab 318, we have a disturbance. Get Dr. Gupta out of this building now!” She slammed the phone down. She pushed past her colleague and started fast walking down the hall.
Dr. Gupta called after her, “You will rue the day, Miss. Price. The day you decided to play, God.”
Evelyn screamed back in her still a child's voice without turning around, “Doctor! It’s DOCTOR Price!”
Forty Days
Evelyn worked.
Forty Nights
And worked.
374
“Three Seventy Four, are you ready?” Evelyn had outgrown her sentimentality, her children’s legal names were numbered starting the day of the umbilical cord cutting publicity stunt. Although each child had a full time care staff of three or four Evelyn still spent as much time with them as possible. No part of their education was left up to chance or the common core.
Male fetuses were culled at four weeks gestation and stem cells harvested. Genetic abnormalities could be detected almost immediately after insemination so were never implanted and the People’s Republic of China gave Evelyn Price up to eight weeks to file for a “certificate of birth” only after determining if a child would or would not “fail to thrive” post-natal, no one asked ever asked what happened to the rejected ones.
Any child that had made it to their first birthday had been sequenced, scanned and studied precisely from head to toe. Because she had harvested early, Evelyn had nearly half a million frozen eggs and an infinite doner supply of male genetic material. Three Seventy Four was almost four and as sweet as a child could be, she was one of Evelyn’s favorites. From a genetically weak partner she seemed to have more Evelyn in her than the others.
“Are we testing today?” Three Seventy Four asked, her pitch rising dramatically at the end.
“I think we are done with that for now, I want you and your sisters to work on a real problem for me.”
“Oh sure. You know, Mom. I can do it.”
“Where did you hear that word? Let me guess, Three Twenty? Just call me Evelyn, or Evee if you must.” Evelyn was not happy but it was easy to hide the emotion from her daughter.
“No, no. Not Tree Twenty, Tree Twenty is good. Sarah, Mom. Sarah says everyone has a mom and you are our mom. Say it, I know it’s true,” the incredibly adorable little girl said with a persuasive drop of her chin.
Almost letting a feeling slip through, “Sarah. I told her. Uhh. It’s ok, you know what sweety, call me anything you want, ok.” She realigned, she was a good mother, “Today, I need your help. We’ve got a big problem with the number machine upstairs. I need you and your sisters to help,” she gulped, “Help, Mommy find the right tangent to a set of elliptic curves. You remember, drawing the lines on circles we did last week?”
“I know, I know. I can draw the lines. It's just that I might need a little ice cream too…” She looked down, then glanced up to see if the deception was working.
Evelyn was a good mother, saying, “Oh, ice cream might help huh?”
“Yeh, it's healthy food for my brain.”
“Oh really, well then, I can’t say no to that, you want chocolate or vanilla?”
“Chocolate AND vanilla! Together!”
“We’ll see.” Evelyn said, walking away with a proud smile to open the cell doors of her other daughters’ for the day’s experiments.”
In a small lecture hall thirteen young girls aged three to almost five sat with exquisite patience while Evelyn explained the activity. On their tablet screens she would show a curve with a point on it, then four different lines with the angle of their slope varying. The girls were asked to touch the line that corresponded to the 90 degree tangent at the point on the curve.
“Ok, now this one for practice,” Evelyn drew a wide parabola on the front board with the point at the very bottom. “What would this line look like?”
An older girl, Two Zero Three piped up, “That’s too easy Evee, it's just like a balance beam.”
“A balance beam you say? How’s that Two Oh Three?”
“Like. Just balance it on top, also, flip it, like, what’s that, hory-zontil? It’s just like, you know, flat, just nothing.”
“Good Two Oh, good. But, is it ‘flat’, or is it, ‘nothing’?”
“Umm, both.”
“No, Three Too,” said Three Seventy Four, her nickname for Two Zero Three, “It’s not how. How can flat be also nothing? Mom, I mean, Evee. Show us like last week. Show us the sideways.”
“You mean this one?” Evelyn drew a narrow right facing parabola.
“Yeh, Three Too, look. If we do straight down, Mom.” She waited for Evelyn to fill in the correct tangent line. “See, now, it's not moving up OR down. Go that way, go back,” she pointed to the left, then to the right. “We can’t, so that is what nothing is, zero freedom. You see?” She looked concerningly at her older sister, genuinely worried about why she wasn’t getting it.
“You're Stupid!” Two Zero Three screamed. “I hate you and you're not my sister!”
“Three, Three Too, it’s ok. Evie, tell Three Too it’s ok. Ok?” Three Seventy Four was a natural pacemaker as well as leader.
“Ok, let's take a break for today. Three Seventy Four, great job, everyone else, please pay attention to your sister and I’ll see you tomorrow.” The room erupted in crying and screams of, nooo, I don’t want to go back, and, let us stay longer, please.
Evelyn capped her marker and quickly exited the room. Half a dozen care takers from the back of the room flooded in to calm and return the children to their cells. Three Seventy Four was the only one to go quietly. Three Seventy Four was the only one who understood what was really going on.
It’s All Political
“I’m not a god damn kid any more!” Evelyn was shouting at her Dad about nothing in particular. Jim had moved back to the US and kept an apartment in New York where Evelyn was visiting.
“Evie, you know, I have never treated you like a child, like my child maybe, but never a child.”
“Then why won’t you sign? You know the only way I’m getting on the ballot is with your signature. Do you really think I won’t forge it and sue you into oblivion if you try to fight me? You’re doing this because you don’t care about me, you don’t trust me!”
“Do you know how many alerts I got yesterday? Do you know how scared I am EVERY TIME I hear your name on the news. Just last month there were protests again at your New Delhi plant. You know I am worried about your safety and that is it sweetie. I want you to be safe.”
“Power is safety, money is security. I don’t make the rules but you know I have to play this stupid game. If we want Topigs to go public we need congressional approval, they are never going to give it to me. It’s ageism, that’s all it is and it’s not fair!”
“Darling, what if. What if it is for a reason though, like maybe--” Evelyn cut Jim off.
“I knew it! I knew you just don’t want me to have this. That’s it, Dad. I knew this day would come. I just had hoped not so soon. Just so you know, if you even think about contesting this, well, you remember what happened to Dr. Otaki.” Evelyn was now in her dad’s face, talking down while looking up to him like a school yard bully.
“Yes sweety, I’m not going to try and stop you, I just--”
“That’s exactly what you are doing! I can’t take this any more, I can’t talk to you!” Evelyn turned and walked out. She immediately sent her lawyer’s office the signed parent consent required to run for a seat in the State Senate of New York and the completed proposed bill to eliminate the age restriction entirely with instructions to file.
At that moment Evelyn had over 1,200 “children” back home. None were allowed to leave the Democratic Republic of China and after number 789 was born the government decided to stop issuing individual birth certificates and identification. Instead they relied on a database of id numbers, identifying DNA sequences, fingerprints and iris scans that Evelyn maintained herself but was required to share with party officials. The children of Topigs were less than second class citizens, they were second class humans, unaccepted by the government and ridiculed by the world at large. Evelyn did her best to isolate them from the outside but information is leaky and it didn’t take long for the world and the children to learn about each other. China was never happy about the optics.
She was interrupted writing an angry e-mail to the legal team with a message from her head of security, “Ms. Price, they’ve entered the building. There was nothing we could do and they are demanding passcodes for the upstairs lab.”
She thumbed out a frantic reply, “What do they want? Call Chairman Xiang, now!” Still in the hallway outside her father’s apartment she immediately got her Party handler on the phone, “Xifeng, the hell is going on!?!”
“Mam, the bilateral agreement had to be slightly… modified. The Party has faced increased criticism surrounding your work and some mitigation was required.”
“Mitigation! The hell does that mean, Xifeng! You waited till I was out of country and you pull this! I swear to god if you touch my girls! ”
“You will what, Ms. Price? Your little project has attracted quite a lot of attention this last year, not all of it good. If you think you have a better option than working with The Party I suggest you pursue it. Otherwise, I will be here when you are ready to discuss the matter civilly.” The phone went dead and Evelyn went red. “God DAMNIT!” She smashed her phone. Then the door behind her gently bumped her back side and Jim popped his head out.
“Evie, everything ok?”
“Ok, No! No it is not ok. I would have had my girls out of that god forsaken country months ago had you just signed when I asked! Why did I ever listen to you! Xiang might very well be slaughtering my babies right this second! I need to get back.”
She pulled out her sat phone and tapped it, “Sam, you ready? I’ll be up in two. New route, we’re going LGA, LGA to SG, SG to BJS. Got it?” She hung up. “Dad, I’m sorry. I still love you, I need to go.”
“I love you t--” Evelyn let the stairwell door shut on her dad and was taking steps two at a time up to the roof. She was back in Beijing fourteen and a half hours later but it was way, way too late. The labs had already been raided, the girls and anyone in the building taken into custody and all their data copied over to Party servers. Everything and everyone of value in the labs was gone. After clearing up some loose ends, arranging for furniture and art to be shipped to her father’s she left the country and never returned. Evelyn was given no reason to believe she would ever be allowed to see any of her coworkers or subjects again. It was time for another pivot.
Preaching to the Choir
“Madam. President.” The Crowd Roared.
Evelyn stood on stage with her father in front of 10,000 people and every set of human eyes on the planet watching live, feeling as comfortable as if she was sitting at home addressing friends. For her, it felt like things were finally clicking.
She whispered and smiled to Jim, “Dad, wave.” She stepped forward and lifted a microphone out of its stand to address the nation off the cuff. Without taking a breath she began speaking at a pace that was always a little too fast.
Today we observe a celebration of freedom symbolizing a renewal as well as a change.
We hold in our hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, injustice and inequity but also the power to abolish all forms of human life.
At the same time, we dare not forget that we are the heirs of revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike. The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
Whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice for the future which we ask of you. Let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.
She thanked the crowd and stepped back. Not seeming to rush things, she was off stage in under a minute. Election night Evelyn was in bed by 10 pm at her dad’s New York apartment.
Evelyn had been successful in reforming systemic agism in the country, removing all restrictions on anyone based on age over 18. She lost her first race for State Senate based on the technicality of having spent most of the previous year outside the US, but in the year 2060 she ran and won as the first party independent candidate for president, disappointed she was the youngest but not the youngest possible president ever elected.
The job was easy for Evelyn. A daily 6 am intelligence brief scheduled for an hour but often went on for two to three. An early lunch, meetings, events and other executive duties before retiring by 6 pm. Her campaign promises to reform the military and eliminate all foreign bases were fulfilled the first year by renaming them consulates and putting a civilian liaison in charge. Precedent had given her the right to continue running her private companies and funding her own personal interest projects with government money.
The Price administration was quick to fund an anti-flavi initiative that distributed $billions to basic research involving transmission, incubation and alternative cures. DARPA knew that in many ways the virus was also a perfect bioweapon. As always, Evelyn was secretive and kept the government as compartmentalized as possible. After a year most organizations no longer had any direct line of communication to their predecessors or compatriots, all information flowed through the White House. The people loved her. The White House staff praised her and the world watched in suspense and horror as this young woman laid out a plan for how she would do for America what she had done for herself, amass untold power and wealth.
The NIH headquarters in Bethesda was Evelyn’s home away from home where she coordinated the flavi initiative. She kept the funding process as convoluted as possible, where one project would often be funded by multiple agencies. Efforts were wastefully duplicated across teams and similar programs were run in parallel in different locations. Everyone involved had a lot of questions but no one was able to piece together what Evelyn had been doing until years later. What she was doing was running a Skunk Works.
The nth Wave
Evelyn had long since stopped acknowledging birthdays but nonetheless, today was her’s. Reflecting, she had suffered so much failure in her short life. She had failed to bridge the special divide, her pigs never could have survived the real world let alone contributed. Her beautiful children failed to integrate and even if they had, they never would have been accepted. Evelyn decided that the world needed a clean slate and this was going to be her one shot. Amazingly she already had the perfect delivery system, the virus, she just needed to alter the payload. Genetically there were several issues such as bypassing the current vaccine. It would be easy but could take less than a year for a new one to be developed.
One night working with her “Basement Team” as she called them Evelyn was trying to provide some encouragement. “Yes we are safe now but we know this thing can mutate rapidly. If we don’t know how it might evolve, how can we be prepared?”
“It’s irresponsible, even under BSL-4 there is always a chance of escape and the modifications you are talking about would take a century in the wild. I stand firm, there is no way the WHO will be a part of this work. I can’t, it’s just--”
Evelyn had heard all she needed, “Thank you, Dr. Phillips. I hear what you are saying and you are right, I am operating with an overabundance of caution. We appreciate your work and of course you will be eligible for your six month severance as long as, well you know. Please see yourself out.”
That is not what Dr. Phillips had meant, “Dr. I, I mean, Madame President, that, that is not what I meant. Only that I don’t think--”
“Severance is at our discretion, remember. In fact, your freedom is at my discretion. How’s three months sound instead?” Evelyn was having none of this.
Flustered, the researcher had never. “Dr. Price, I.”
“One month? Or is it Leavenworth you're after?” Evelyn was done but had learned to not overreact.
The young man didn’t say a word but gave her a look of pure scorn and disgust. He held out at arm's length his tablet computer, purposefully dropped it at Evelyn’s feet and walked out.
“I want to see three variants, increased virulency, the integrated mutagen and fix the god damn glutathione promoter, why is this so hard!” Evelyn stormed out followed by three secret service men.
Evelyn got what she wanted. A virus that would mutate randomly and rapidly, an unprecedented R naught of 22.7 and the perfect balance of hormonal promoters. The development team was disbanded and animal trials started in earnest. Mouse, canine and simian trails were all successful, despite the fact that only Evenly knew what “success” meant. As far as everyone involved believed they were testing newly discovered viral strains that had mutated in the wild. The few that knew the true origins were either paid off or disposed of.
One day about half way through her first term Evelyn was taking a meeting, “Mam, it’s worse, much worse than we thought. This new line we just got in seems absolutely unstoppable. To be honest, we have no idea where these mutated versions are coming from, it's evolving much faster than, well, than it should.”
“General, what if it gets out? How long before 100% infection?” Evelyn loved asking questions that she already knew the answer to in her morning brief.
“A year, maybe two.”
Evelyn accidently let a quick smile flash knowing he was grossly overestimating. “Oh, that fast, how could you have let this happen? I thought we had it under control!”
“Mam, this is unprecedented. I mean, biologically, this should not be happening. Our West Coast office thinks they found a bio-marker, something that seems to tag it as coming out of our own labs. It makes no sense though.”
“Oh, really. From us? That is extremely disturbing. Let’s keep testing, have you found out about the prisoner situation yet? What if we just use the death row inmates? What we really need is data on the under 20’s though. We can mix in the juveniles with the adult population right? I mean, if we have to?”
“Mam, from what we’ve seen, that would be certain death, maybe in as little as two weeks. We are seeing a massive swelling of brain tissue and without some intervention there is a zero survival rate. No one makes it more than a month before the bleeding starts. What’s the point of further testing, we already know what this thing can do.”
“Are you listening! What about the goddamn kids, General! That is what I am asking about. I want to see this in the juvie population. Ok! Can you do this general or is it time to promote General Williams, you know he’s eager for your job.”
“Mam, you are talking about purposefully infecting children with a deadly virus, this is not something the US Army can be a part of--”
“Master at arms. Arrest this man. Dereliction! Get him the hell out of here.” Two young men in uniform grabbed the Four Star General, one by each arm.
“They hell are you doing, Evelyn! You can’t! You can’t. Get the hell off of me!” The General was making a scene. Evelyn leaned over to the man in a suit next to her. “Sedate him.” In a fluid motion the suited man unsheathed a syringe and jabbed it in the General’s neck just before he slumped, fell to the ground and was dragged out of the room.
General Williams was ecstatic to get the call about his immediate promotion and had learned enough about the Price administration to not ask any questions. He carried out the tests as asked and the results were just as his predecessor had predicted. Evelyn was making progress.
Tradition
As much as she would have liked to, Evelyn knew in the long run she would not be able to go it alone. Releasing a virus that struck indiscriminately would wipe out a majority of the population within a few years, she needed precision. By using a testosterone driven set of gene promoters only males would be affected by infection. Females would be dormant carriers of a virus that meant certain death to any man that came into contact with her. Every generation thinks it's the first to invent genocide.
In her third year she didn’t even bother to campaign. Knowing what was coming there was little chance the country would vote out the incumbent in the midst of a pandemic and she had always struggled with the male vote anyway. The Basement Team had gotten used to working alongside the President of the United States. While everyone else was suited in double layer PPE with an independent air supply, President Price chose to work usually with just a single glove on her dominant hand if any protective gear at all. She was fond of saying, “If you don’t make mistakes you don’t need to take precautions”. As she herself was immune the only risk was accidental release or infection of her co-workers, neither of which bothered her.
She planned to make the announcement during a political debate for maximum effect. During her opponent's time she arranged to have an aide dressed in a black suit and white shirt approach her on stage and whisper something. She then said, “Excuse me. Senator, excuse me, I am sorry.”
The moderator spoke up, “Madame President, please wait for your time.” But Evelyn did not:
I am sorry. I have just been informed that the United States of America is in immediate danger. My aid has told me that a much more virulent form of the dread Flavivirus, which we have been recently monitoring, has now been detected in several major metropolitan areas including New York, San Francisco and earlier today right here in Chicago.
Unfortunately we have known that this was always a possibility and have contingency plans in place that, as of now, are in effect. I am declaring a state of national emergency in all fifty states. The lockdown protocols that we are all too familiar with will be reimplemented.
My fellow Americans, we WILL get through this. We will continue to prosper and we will--
“You KNEW about this!” her challenger roared. “You knew the American people were in danger and you did nothing till this very instant! What kind of a president puts her own people in harms way to further a political career, what kind of--”
“Ken, we don’t need this kind partisanship right now. I am sorry, the moderation team, Mr. Quinn, Vice President Elliott and I need to get back to work. I need to get back to my job of doing my best to protect the American people. Mr. Quinn thank you again and we will reschedule as soon as we know more. Please, everyone, we are going to disassemble immediately but calmly. Back rows! Back rows first, wait for the row behind you to be empty before moving towards the exit. Thank you and goodnight.”
Chaos erupted. Ten percent of people started running toward the exits, pushing anything or anyone over that stood in their way. Another ten percent were doing the same thing but in the opposite direction, running toward the stage to try and get further comment on the situation. A good eighty percent of people tend to act rationally and they did their best to do as they were asked and stayed put. After a moment, rather than get trampled, they started to push back against the small number of instigators.
“Don’t touch me! Six feet. Six feet goddamnit!” The eighty percent of “good” people were having their personal space invaded and it only took a split second for them to realize the pandemic was back, their lives were in danger and for the “good” people to turn bad.
Evelyn was secreted out the back and was in the Presidential limo momentarily with several aids. “Madame President, we’re getting reports that the crowd is out of control. It sounds like several of the exits are blocked. We should send a contingency back to try and calm the crowd.”
“And risk our men? Did you not hear what I said up there?” Evelyn wasn’t sure how long it would take before people figured out that she was responsible but wanted to give herself as much time as possible. “If the police can’t handle it, call in the national guard, remember, Shane, it’s a national emergency now.
This did not calm Shane, “Madame, people could die. If we caused this mess we have a responsibility to clean it up. Driver. Driver!” Shane banged the dividing glass and it rolled down. “Driver we need to head back to the--”
“Skip, don’t do a goddamn thing other than keep your foot on the gas.”
“Well, then let me out here, I’ll walk back to the stadium.”
The next thing Evelyn said was under her breath, “It’s already too late.”
“What? Too late for what?
“Tell me, Shane. Had any headaches lately? To be honest I’m surprised you’ve made it this long. Skip, you better keep that glass rolled up for your own good. It must have been a good week or two since you would have caught it.”
“Evelyn. Evelyn, what the hell are you talking about? You didn’t. This. This, was you?
“Do you still want to get out, Shane?
“You monster. You despotic freak!”
“I know what I am Shane but I doubt you could comprehend it. Think of me as a revolutionary but please, not a fascist.”
“There is no word for what you are. You won’t get away with this. You’ll have to kill me here and now if you don’t want this getting out.”
“No, you’ll keep quiet because telling the truth will do more harm than good and you know it. If you thought the panic you saw at the stadium was bad, just wait until they find out their own government developed the thing. Let Skip take you home and relax with Liz and the kids for a few days before heading to the hospital. You might have up to a week if you're lucky.” Evelyn knew from the visible symptoms he wouldn't have much more than 24 hours to live.
“Go to hell you big headed freak.”
“Not another word or you’ll be out right here on the street.” She said calmly then they sat in a deeply disturbing silence the rest of the way back to the hotel.
Shake it Off
Evelyn was re-elected, the Senator had unofficially bowed out saying the President had his “full support and confidence in handling the situation.” For a time it looked to many like a combination of quarantine and segregation might work to save a significant portion of the male population. Yes, the major cities would be lost, procreation would become a game of Russian roulette and the sexes would be forever at odds but it seemed survival would be possible. That was only because no one had expected explicit spreading. It turned out that a certain number of individuals didn’t particularly care if men survived or not and carried on about their normal lives.
It took weeks, not months to hit 1 million cases. By the end of her fifth year as President the world’s male population had been reduced by 75%. Large numbers of men were able to get themselves to the emergency mass-hospice centers set up in every major city and hooked up to morphine drips before succumbing. Just as many died quietly and alone in their homes or spontaneously hemorrhaging walking down the street or driving to work. Stress and high high blood pressure were warning signs of what was termed, Hypertension Induced Terminal Projectile Bleeding. Industrialized countries were well prepared to retool incinerators and furnaces to handle the wetter material but in the third world especially, things were a total mess.
It was easy to equate the massive rise in standard of living for every woman and child on the planet with the hollowing out of society's masculine side, but the truth was just that Evelyn was an excellent economist and knew human psychology. Agriculture, mining and manufacturing was largely automated and wide swaths of industry were repatriated to be brought under direct Federal oversight. Within a year Evelyn controlled it all.
Powerful men running from the virus were their own downfall. To every far corner of the Earth the privileged flocked on private jets and yachts. Hawaii, Greenland, Tasmania, the depths of the Brazilian rainforest, even an Antarctic base was set up. But the virus was persistent, eventually the men would need to interact with the outside world and when they did, the virus was waiting.
The absolute worst cases were those of pregnant mothers of boys for whom a doctor’s visit was not possible. Adult women were essentially unaffected by infection, prenatal girls suffered a milder form of Evelyn’s macrocephaly and were born largely complication free but the fates of boys, like their fathers, ranged from passing quietly to twisting and spinning themselves to death in their mothers’ bellies. Suffocating themselves with the umbilical cord before passing out from losing too much blood or the pain. The experience was horrific for all the wives and mothers, they were the only ones that had to live with it.
Reconstruction
Society restructured and as it did Evelyn had an answer, the right answer, to everything. She surrounded herself with the brightest minds in the world and together they ruled with an iron fist. She chose to retain the title of President despite having become so much more. Within the first year the English language started to shift, him, he, they, them, her and she were all interchangeable and quickly, like other romance languages, sexuality started to be applied to nouns in an ad hoc fashion.
Nordic countries fared the worst. Many in the north depend on low wage earning men for fishing and automation was slow to advance in that industry. Asia did the best, barely skipping a beat and Europe was in between with hiccups here and there but overall everyone was almost instantly better off in the new economy. Without war and manufacturing to keep them busy, men it turned out, were surprisingly disposable.
There were small revolts or uprisings here and there but Evelyn always responded brilliantly by simply giving them what they wanted. Autonomy, freedom from taxation, greater integration or more social programs, it didn’t matter. The big lie of capitalism had been that only a small percentage of a population actually needs to be working to sustain the whole. Evelyn found that fully 75% of the world could essentially do nothing but consume and as long as supply chains were intact it didn’t much matter how local communities governed themselves. It was a liberal autocracy coordinated in the Oval Office.
The Great War
Thousands of macro-babies were born after the outbreak but artificial insemination was slow to pick up, no one wanted a macro-baby. Six years into her administration Evelyn Price had everything she wanted. Literally the world at her feet, but still felt she had no one to talk to. During a meeting with her socioeconomic team she asked out of the blue, “How many macros do we have again? I mean global, right now?”
“Mam, we have been asked not to use that term. But, we, we “have”, the numbers are around, for the last year out of nearly 1 million flavi-complicated births 750 were to term and 680 plus have made it past the critical first three months. At least 10% succumb to macroencepitic related SIDS but we’ve been seeing that number drop steadily and improved braces and beddings have been developed.”
“If only we had had this kind of dedication twenty years ago, how many more of us would have survived?”
“The technology has made a difference, but with all do respect mam, your’s was a significantly different case from what we are seeing today. Today’s virus seems to have mutated into a much milder form, Mam, this is not uncommon with diseases like this, and while we do see some improved cognitive abilities fully 50% perform no better than average despite the greatly increased cranial capacity.”
“I know the virus a hell of a lot better than you do, Doctor. You know I’ve always had an issue with using that title for anyone in the soft sciences. You stick to the demographics and leave the science to the real doctors.”
“Of course, Mam.”
“Group 16a, how are they doing? I always liked that one. Damn, what was her name, Katie, Krisitn, something?”
“Kristin Olivia Garnes, she’s almost two.”
“She’s talking right? Of course she is. Can we arrange a visit?”
“Mam, another? With the same family? Opically, what are we trying to say here? That you are supporting the victims? If so, why not spread the visits out a little? We have thousands in the hospital that could really use our attention.”
“I said I want to see Kristin god damnit! What is with you people? Masie! Get in here. Schedule a visit to the Millers in Spokane. I wanna do this tomorrow, ok? Tell them it's a photo op but I want at least an hour with the little girl, no cameras.”
“Yes Mam, of course,” Masie didn’t ask any questions.
“And who do we have in sector 31f? Wasn’t there one in the top five there too? I’d like to spend some time with her when we have an opening.”
“Mam. Just out of curiosity, why are we so interested in these high performers? Surly resources would be better spent on the less fortunate. I can understand the need for the scholarship program for a few of the gifted but it's taking a full 35% of the falvi research budget and 15% of social services for our gifted-macros programs.”
“Because, Katie, they are our future. Someone in that 1% will be running things after I’m gone and I don’t want her growing up in some slum in Mumbai.”
“Mam, Mumbai was shuttered six months ago--”
“I know Mumbai was evacuated you dolt! We are concentrating resources because that is how progress is made. Read your goddamn Bible, Katie, M25:29, To he who has an abundance more will be given, from he who has nothing, everything will be taken. This is how we win.”
“Win? Win what, Mam?”
“The war, Katie. We have been fighting a war against nature itself from the day woman used her first tool. Nature is the enemy and always has been. It turned us against ourselves by inventing the sexes. It pitted species against species for its own amusement. The natural world is nothing but a thief, stealing our livelihoods and God given dignity. We win by fighting back with the only weapon we have, the only gift God ever gave us, free will and the intelligence to use it.
Tree Heaven
Evelyn had rewarded her former assistant, Ming, with a State Department cabinet position and she was now earning her keep with it being her job to brief the President with some significant new intelligence. Evelyn's girls, the first round of subjects that had been confiscated and she assumed destroyed by the CPP were still alive. They were being released to foster homes after having been raised in Party run orphanages for the last ten years. It was the first that Evelyn was hearing the news and she was about to shoot the messenger.
Ming begged for her literal life, “Mam, I am sorry but this wasn’t even on our radar. At least no one in the State Department was looking for dozens of young western girls in the Chinese orphanage system, how were we to know?”
“When they said the girls had been removed, I just assumed... This contingency should always have been on the map.” Evelyn said distraught then instantly switched to enraged, “I want them extracted. NOW! And it’s not dozens, it's seven hundred and twelve assuming the best. I don’t care how we do it!”
Ming was desperately trying to bring the President back down to Earth. “Mam, that’s what, like, 3, 5 jumbo jets. How are we going to get 5 flights in and out of Beijing unnoticed let alone disappear nearly a thousand foreign nationals? It's not feasible unilaterally. It might take time but we must make arrangements for adoptions while we work the optics out with Beijing. A week, two tops. Please, let’s not rush this one.”
“If my girls are out there I want them back now. I should have done anything and everything I could have to get them out of there and bring them home years ago and that's just what we are going to do now. Beijing can’t touch us right now. CIA will have at least four jets available, we have two carriers in South China, you're telling me they can’t make room for a few hundred girls? Hell, buy every airline ticket, reroute the western seaboard. Ming, I really can’t be doing your job for you still.”
“Is not the transport, Mam. It's the potential resistance from the Party.” Ming begged for reason.
“Leave politics to me and the Veep. I still have a few contacts. You worry about logistics.”
“Mam, I should warn you, it may be just a few girls, Xifen let us know they are happy to send remains for inspection.”
“Happy!? Happy to send! Tell Xifen he can go to hell. Actually, don’t tell them a damn thing, the Party can hear about it with the rest of the world. Marcie! Someone! I want to be on the tarmac when the first plane touches down, no excuses!”
Evelyn was mad but less than 24 hours later there she was, at Andrews Air Force Base watching the first two 747s coming in for a landing. It was a dark and cold fall night in DC, wind whipping down the tarmac with small sharp rain drops stinging. Her daughter, Three Seventy Four was the first one seen getting off the plane after the crew prepared the deboarding steps. She was a charming young woman of twelve and except for a head that was about three quarters the size of Evelyn’s and every bit as grotesque and unnatural.
The two eyed each other knowingly, Three Seventy Four from the top of boarding steps at the plan’s threshold. Three Seventy Four waited at the top of the steps, listening to the engine noise.
Evelyn started walking quickly toward the steps but Three Seventy Four did not start her descent, so Eveylyn stopped at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for permission to board. She decided to produce a single tear in her right eye, to let Three Seventy Four know she was sincere, it was not fake, she was just choosing to allow this particular emotion through in this way. Eveyln had long had full control over most of her bodily functions after studying buddhism and yoga for a few weeks as a child. She often practiced by controlling her heart beat and had wondered if one might be able to stop it entirely just by thought alone and more than once in her early practice she had gotten closer than she cared to remember.
She called out over the wind and rain, “Three Seventy Four, is that you!?” She smiled as big as she could, waved, made it look like she was choking back tears. “THREE. THREE, I know that you and all I can say is I am SORRY. To you and your sisters, I am sorry. I never undertook anything without the best intention of helping, helping you, helping the…”
Three Seventy Four had said something but Evelyn couldn’t hear of the sound of the rain and her own Casablanca monologue. “WHAT? What did you say, Three?”
“I said you're a monster, Evelyn Goddamn Price!” She stepped aside and practically threw the single hard shell roller bag luggage she had behind her down the stairs. Evelyn had a good 3 seconds to move out of the way but still barely missed being knocked over by the flying suitcase. Her security who had been hanging back now rushed up and within seconds had rused the stairs and grabbed Three Seventy Four by the arms to help escort her down to the President. She wasn’t fighting but she wasn’t going to comply either.
Evelyn said to everyone, “Come on, let's get inside and talk. Be gentle, Three Seventy Four, can these ladies please let you go?”
“They BETTER let me go, I’m still a CPP citizen and they told me you can’t do anything to me, I can leave anytime I want!” Three Seventy Four was furious.
“Ok, ok, she is right ladies, please let her go she’s done nothing wrong.”
But Three Seventy Four was ready to say what she had been waiting a lifetime to say, “I spent FIVE YEARS trying to get in touch with you! I wrote hundreds of emails, I even stalked your assistant, Ming Da or whatever online to figure out where she got coffee just to get a message to you, but now, ALL OF A SUDDEN, I drop MY WHOLE LIFE and you drag me to the White House! What! Why? What do you want with us, you absolute psychopath!?!” Three Seventy Four was heated. She was breathing heavily but not speaking, Evelyn was giving her time and space, she was LISTENING to what her daughter had to say.
After being sure Three Seventy Four was done Evelyn said, “Three, may I call you that?” then waited for the almost imperceptible head nod, “Three, I just yesterday learned of your existence. This I promise you, the SECOND I was told that you exist I had people…”
“TOLD THAT I EXIST? TOLD? Like you had forgotten? No, you knew you were just busy, being president, running your thousand or whatever companies. YOU LEFT. We have dealt with the fall out of your choices, NOT you. Don’t EVER tell me you didn’t know I existed, you ARE a monster, Ms. President!”
“I deserve that, I deserve your hatred but just let…” Evelyn has never felt such hostility in her life coming from someone else.
“You get NOTHING, I’m not even going to waste my time. I’ll take whatever handout you have for me, god knows I can use the money but from me, you get nothing, not even my pity. Three Seventy Four stormed off toward the terminal with a security officer in tow.
Several more young girls 7-12 years old were now making their way down the stairs, unaided, some with several bags. Evelyn had to compose herself for the welcoming, why had she not prepared a ceremony, a band or atleast a tent. She had been so focused on getting them here she had neglected their comfort. Of the almost 300 girls coming off the first flight Eveyln knew less than 100. She tried her best to greet them by name where possible and give each girl some attention but she had dropped the ball already. It wasn’t long before a few dozen limousines and Sprinter vans showed up and while they tried not to split the girls up they ended up going to five different hotels across the city depending on availability. But life is a learning experience and her first time extracting dozens of her genetically modified offspring from a hostile foreign power was bound to hit a few snags. The girls were home, safe and next time she would do better.
The Cove
There wouldn’t be a “next time” though. As soon as the CPP heard what President Price had done they arrested the other 500 or subjects. Three Seventy Four and most of the rest of the girls now in America blamed Evelyn. They blamed her for taking them from their old lives and for taking the lives of their left behind sisters. Most of them blamed Evelyn for everything.
There were 241 individuals “rescued” from China, now living under 24 hour surveillance and protection. Evelyn’s first surviving replicates, the oldest girls, were 12 and almost 13, the oldest was named number One Seventy Four and the youngest of the “big girls” was Three Eight Two. There was then a big jump in age, and IQ, between cohorts as Evelyn had optimized her experiments over the years.The smaller girls were between 6 and 9 years old, with names as low as the 880’s. Evelyn was sure experimentation had continued well into the thousands but assumed Beijing must be holding the youngest girls back on purpose. Evelyn numbered her test subjects as follows: Each round of replication of her experiment she started numbering her subjects as 000, then the next group started 100, then 200. For example, no one from the 400’s survived, too much estrogen and then the sucrose used as food had gotten contaminated. The 700’s were a mess too and they were the reason Evelyn and her team “dialed it down” for the 800’s, and it showed in their testing scores.
Because the standard IQ test was not applicable to her Evelyn had devised a new intelligence test meant for the other cranially gifted against herself. She called the score the EQi, the Evelyn Price Quotient of Intelligence, your score, divided by Evelyn’s score multiplied by 100 equals your EQi. Once a year she administered the test to herself and whatever score she got was made the new baseline denominator. Then everyone else’s score was compared to that. She partly used this system to justify her position of power, an open invitation for anyone wanting to challenge her. As far as she knew no one had ever gotten above a 95. The average EQi for the public was generally measured on a scale reduced by 1 order of magnitude, 0-10 instead of 0-100, with an average around 4-5 most people were able to only get 1 or 2 questions correct.
|
Name/Cohort |
Age |
Mean EQi |
|
174 - 382 |
11-12 |
72 |
|
500 - 621 520-550d |
7-9 |
89 |
|
841 - 883 |
5-6 |
83 |
Even though they were split up in a new country and with no resources the girls quickly reconnected and figured out a way to communicate. In a group chat one of them had suggested a name, The Coven, for themselves, which quickly got shortened to, The Cove. The Cove was the 241 genetic replicates of Evelyn Price and nearly every single one of them hated her with every fiber of their being.
In the first weeks the girls were treated with kid gloves and given every comfort available. They were taken on tours of the capital, thrown lavish dinners and cared for in every way imaginable. Evelyn would pop in only occasionally to say hell and test the waters, but the waters were troubled.
But the girls got settled in their new homes and apartments. Evelyn of course knew how they felt, every phone she had given them and hotel room they had been put up in had been bugged. She knew they hated her so she was giving them time and space. And the girls knew that Evelyn knew, so they only said things they wanted her to think that they didn’t want her to know. Despite knowing this Evelyn still felt she could ascertain some useful information from the show they were putting on for her.
The girls took up hobbies and personal educational pursuits, other than trying to mess with their “mother”, some played sports, cliques formed around certain activities like hiking or a book club. Right away Evelyn had everyone who wanted to be enrolled in school, which was only about ½. The others chose a self paced education, partially guided by Evelyn and her aides.
The politics of getting the rest out of China was dragging and so Evelyn poured her efforts and time into the girls who were already there. The country suffered, her relationships suffered, but little by little, taking her time, Evelyn was able to let the girls know that she cared. She was invested and she was there to support them however she could.
Fewer and fewer members of The Cove actively planned for Evelyn’s murder, or even hoped for mild revenge. She had made them comfortable, she had made them, and even if there had been mistakes she was trying to make them right.
374, two 500s, an 8 and a low 6
The girls lived in a purpose built three story education center and dorm just outside of Alrlington Virginia. They had complete freedom and everyone in the facility was directly employed by the President of the United States.
Three Seventy Four (374) was 13 and may have simply benefited from being one of the older girls, or the early one-on-one attention she had received from Evelyn but whatever it was, she was a natural born leader. In times of uncertainty it somehow just made sense to be asking her what was going on. Every girl in The Cove felt she depended on Three Seventy Four and someow shared a special connection with her, even Evely, an honorary member, felt similarly. Evelyn had gone through an early phase of using East Asian male genetics exclusively but starting with the 300’s, settling on a permanently fully synthetic male gamete that was 45% Ashkanazi background, 20% East Asian, which in turn was close to 80% from Hong Kong Han Chinese and the rest a Japanese/Korean mix, 10-15% British/European and 5% of African descent.
Five Twenty Nine (529) was beloved among her peers. Occasionally during testing Evelyn had noticed her waiting to turn in her paper until it looked like at least one other person had finished also, not wanting to show off. She was always helpful, seemingly always in the right place at the right time to lend a hand. An aide noted she had confidence but without obvious ambition.
Five Ninety Seven (597) had everything going for her. She was one of the few omniglots and natural diplomats in the group that already spoke fluent English (and every language). When the 10 or so omniglots got together they played a game where each subsequent word in the sentence had to be in a different language, with no repeating a language in a sentence. She had a good week’s head start on the rest of the girls and used it to make connections with the staff and presidential aides.
Eight Fifty Two (852) could have been the 10,000th reincarnation of the Buddha or the 15th dalai lama, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, 100 years ago they would have called her the second coming of Christ. She had the sweetest singing voice and was kind to a fault. From the day she could put anything in her mouth she was a strict vegan and hearing her speak, slow, clam and deliberate was like listening to the voice of god through the mouth of a cherub. The other girls had taken to going to 852 when they had gotten hurt in one way or another. One had thought she noticed that a scraped knee had healed especially fast after being in contact with her and had mentioned it to the others. Girls who had been otherwise underappreciated were especially drawn to 852 and at times could be seen almost jostling with each other just to be near her during meals.
Six Fifteen (615) was quiet and took in information at a terrifying rate. Early on she requested an aide put an entire online encyclopedia in a single text file she could scroll through. Starting at the top she held her finger on the down arrow and stared at the screen, soaking in the text flying by. For a period of over two months she woke up everyday and began staring, seemingly blankly at the wall of information zooming past her, stopping only a few times a day to eat and take short breaks. While her face remained expressionless inside she weaving an intricate tapestry of information, each thread making connections through a landscape of facts and figures.
Evelyn Price had produced 241 of the most astonishing human beings to have ever walked the planet. Clearly her early work has been correct, directly engineering the embryo and artificial gestation was the ONLY way to get consistent high quality results but she had been forced to waste a decade using the convoluted and messy mosquito delivery vector.
While things were going great with the girls, Evelyn's 8th year in office was not her best. A rival faction put up a contender during the last election cycle and it had ruffled her feathers. She was distracted with the girls, if only the world could know what was coming the voters would have given her a little more leniency she thought.
Connectome
Evelyn and mother nature had both come up against the same problem; people’s heads couldn’t get any bigger without risking the mother at birth or the person simply tipping over, but at the same time the number of connections and desnisty of neurons in the brain was also already maxed out.
Increasing the head size any further, even with the best carbon fiber braces and next-gen exoskelletons was out of the question so Evelyn was left with only one direction, to increase either the number of neurons or their connectivity. It is well understood that an overly connected brain leads to two distinct but mirrored disorders. A hyper-intelligent individual with an overly-connected brain will be a progidious learner early on, but like a lightning storm with a positive feedback loop, regoins can get caught in a reinforcing loop that gets stronger and stronger with each repition. Akin to a virus that takes hold and uses the hosts own cells to replicate, an effective mind virus of the hyper-intelligent can often be related to mathematics, poetry, images or music. Obsessively repeating a phrase, equation or tune until driven mad. Evelyn had lost entire cohorts to such activity, she had even been witness to the transfer of a virus in the form of one girl explaining how the numbering system of the Torroh was a secret code that could be used to understand God’s true intentions. Again, what was happening was local regions became hyper-connected, then a positive feedback loop that continuually reinforceses itself and the self-replicating mind-virus then cuts itself off from the rest of the mind, at which point there is no cure.
But schiopphrenia is just one side of the acursed coin Eveyln was flipping, a hyper-active mind is just as likely to lead to generalized anxiety disorders and pralizing fear. Extream sensitivities to touch, sounds and light were common for her girls. When a person is born they have the most nural connections they will ever have, growing and learning is the process of pruning these connections down and reinforcing the important ones. The overly connected brain fails to prune enough of these conections and results range from mild anxiety to extream autism-like symptoms.
A perfect ballet would be to waltz the fine line between the two but she never quite got there.
In her early days in the lab she was reckless, needing to push the limits and that is how she had ended up with Cohort 5 (C5), the highest scorers but also how she managed to lose the entire previous generation. C5 was a dangerous overexpression of the NR2B gene, known to reduce long range nural connectivity but resulted in hyperconnected circuitry locally, often resulting in ASD-like symptoms. Since the physical size of the cranium had long since been maxed out Eveyln and evolution had both happened upon the only soultion, to increase overall connectivity of the brain.
All of Evelyn’s girls suffered from being on this spectrum, it was inevitable as nature had already miximized intelligence given the wetware and biological constraints so her only options were to go bigger or increase connectioin density. Evelyn had developed her own 0-10 scale that was roughly correlated to the level of between-region nural connectivity. A 0 on her scale was a complete discconetion from reality, a total schizophrenia break. These grils were always the most precocious, early achievers who always looked poised for greatness but soon the mind virus would take hold, like an out of control loop that parts of the mind could not exit out of. Often the first sign would be an obsession with a single problem, algoritm or image which they would draw or repeate over and over agian, each loop reinforcing the virus. For these girls she would attempt to keep them over-stimulated and forced out of their comfort zone to stop them subcomming to any one loop.
On the other end was a 10, these girls were extremely late developers, some not speaking until the age of 4, dozens never became verbal at all. They sought no interactions and rejected an attempt at physical contact. Evelyn had a “low stimulus” wing designed for them early on that was built to give plenty of space to move around and lots of quiet corners for the girls to hide away in. Eveyln had hiried the best professionals on the planet and given her children every advantage she could. By the end of her twenty-seventh year she was confident that she had found a safe middle ground and her girls were being well taken care of and she could re-focus her efforts on the needs of the rest of the world.
At All Costs
This year she passed the first 1 million macro-babies born in the US, she figured 2-3 million/year would be perfect and they were right on track. EQi results were much lower than she would have liked even amongst the gifted macros with a mean around 55-60 while she was seeing high 80’s in her first cohort (C1). She wanted people that would be able to take over for her but with these numbers she wasn’t going to be able to retire anytime soon.
Evelyn was spending more and more time with her 241 children while her other duties suffered. Three Seventy Four was turning 15 this year and Evelyn had been delgating more and more responsibilities to the older girls. While holding no official cabinet posions she leaned on her girls heavily for advice and heading up several of her shadow departments. Her most trusted advisor was Three Seventy Four from whom there was little she kept secret. She felt an inherent connection to her children and trusted them implecity, a place no other human had ever been able to hold in her life. After explaining the situation to the oldest cohort, doing her best to justify her experimention and feeling satisfied they did and would see her side of things she brought not just Three Seventy four but a dozen of the young women on a tour of the underground laboratories.
Evelyn had acres of covert laboratory space under the city of Washington DC and neighborring Arlington, this single facility had become the largest employers of STEM majors in the county. Tens of thousands of individuals worked in secret, research groups were walled off from each other and in most cases unaware that they were just a small part of a much larger organization. Evelyn had organized things in a way that each group, hundreds of them, all reported back directly to her. The gain-of-function lab thought their research was purly hypothetical, the army of entomologists thought they were fighting the spread of the virus, not contributing to it. Engineers in logistics had no idea that the “products” they were transporting were live insects and the city of doctors and nurses caring for her test subjects we told they babies had been brought in from nearby hospitals, not fertilized on site with clonal synthetic DNA. Everyone involved, except Evelyn, was sure they were fighting the good fight against a naturally evolving virus that threatened the world, except for a few early slip up and a single person suspected what was really going on.
But the workload was getting to be too much even for Evelyn and her multitude of AI assistants, she needed to bring in a managerial class she could trust. The pool of canidates was small and her first hire was Three Seventy Four, her favorite daughter and most trusted confidant, she was turning 15 this year and Evelyn thought old enough to start taking on more responsibility.
One day at dinner she broached the subject, “Three, how’s things going, it feels like forever since we talked?”
Three Seventy Four was a genius but still a teenager speaking to her mother, “We talked literally last week and you know exactly where I am, like 24/7 if you actually wanted to talk.”
Evelyn took a deep breath and mentally reset, “Three, I, you know I love you right, as much as I would love my own child and I only want the best for you and your sisters, nothing will ever change that.”
“OK, but I’m still not allowed to call you mom? Not like it matters but you know how much you’ve messed me up and, and, all of us. It's like all you see is yourself and as smart as you think you are you can’t even see how your actions affect others.” Three Seventy Four thought Evelyn had brought her out that night to apoligize and wanted to make it as hard as possible for some reason.
“Three, please. I just wanted us to have some time together, you know your birthday is coming up…” Evelyn got cut off.
“Birthday, what the hell even is that, I didn’t have a BIRTHday, I had a day you cut me out of a plastic bag, maybe call it that.” Evelyn was the closest thing to a mother she had and it showed.
“That’s fair, I deserve that but it doesn’t change the facts, here we are, I love you and, and to be honest, I need you help. Things in R&D have been growing so fast the last couple years, you know we hit a million births this year, plus this most recent mutation and the Chinese are back at it, I want to ask if you’d consider taking a break from teaching and your art, which is important, to help me in the labs, like, a manager if you will.” Evelyn spoek PERFECTLY when she wanted to but found it was important to interject at least a few “likes” and “umms” most of the time to make herself more relatable.
“Manager?” Three Seventy Four sounded almost incredulous. “Umm, thanks but no thanks, Mom, I literally have no reason to do that, just because you think painting is a waste of time doesn’t mean I’m just going to drop everything to help you with your science experiments. I think my time is much better spent with you younger girls, as you say, we have more macros being born everyday and their caretakers need training, who better to do it than someone thats been there themselves, God knows the normies can’t keep up with them.”
Evelyn wasn’t going to take no for an answer but still needed to tread gently and let Three Seventy Four feel like it was her decision as much as possible, “First, they have your protocols to fall back on and we have unlimited resources pouring into the program. Second, even if it doesn’t seem like it, this, in R&D, is where we need you the most. I can’t explain everything right off the bat but I promise, once you see, once you understand the scale of what I’m asking for you will understand why it has to be you, it has has to be now.”
Three Seventy Four didn’t believe a word of it, “You don’t trust me to make my own decisions, thats what this is about. You have ALWAYS thought you are the smartest one but guess what, that might have been true for YOUR entire life but things are different. Your EQi bullshit is such nonsense, it alwasy has been, just another way to justify you doing what you want while railroading the rest of us. Why did you REALLY want me over tonight, to offer me a JOB, well I have a JOB, Mom. A job, a life and friends, something you’ve never understood, and thats not something I’m just going to walk away from on a whim.
Evelyn saw where this was going and would need to backtrack, fast, “Three, ok, I can accept that and you are right, I don’t know if I’ve ever had a real friend and I can’t say I havn’t been jealous of you and the girls in that regaurd. How about this, an hour a week? Thats all I ask, take one hour once a week, say every Monday from 8 to 9 am to tour and get to know the space, no comitment.”
Three Seventy Four was ready for a fight and was taken aback but her mother’s quick defeat. She had to stop herself from letting the next combative words coming out of her mouth. Instead, she slumped back in her seat, sat and thought a moment before saying, “What do I get for this hour a week of my time?”
Evelyn was ready for this one, “Anything. Anything you want. My cabinet, all my resources will be at your disposal starting day one. Clearances, all the way through Q, literally nothing will be kept from you and your word will carry the same weight as mine. You would effevily be my delaget in form and function.
“Umm, so, you are going to make me, me basically president in your absence, for one hour a week of my time? Three Seventy Four was confused for the first time in a long time.
“Yes. For all intents and purposes you would be assigned the role of Chief Executive Officer Tempore, giving you all the same powers I have. Evelyn said this part clearly and simply, sure to not mince words.
“Why? Why would you and hand over that much power, and it's not like the cabinet, senate or congress would go along with it.”
“Sweetie, I am the Senate. Every single one of those people serve at my pleasure, and if everything goes as planned it will never come up. Now, as to why, I told you, I need you. You and your sisters. I can’t trust the, as you say, the normies, not that they are not good people, they built this county after all, but I need people like you, people like us if things are going to run smoothly and I have already made as much progress as I can on my own. Also, because you are ready, because you deserve it.”
“Wow.” Three Severnty Four was speechless. “Wow. Umm. Wow. Ok, OK. Yeh I guess. I mean what would I have to lose? Sure I’ll do it.”
“Oh great honey, that's wonderful to hear.” Evelyn was genuinely happy. “We can get started literally anytime, we can tour tonight if Ming is available or wait till Monday if you want. You’ll have a lot to see but I’m sure you’ll be able to catch up in no time. It would probably be easiest, I’ll add you to the access list to my personal AI and that has access to everything, that way you can get caught up at your own pace too.
“I guess, but, I mean, what exactly is going to be my job, just like, overseeing gestation, newborns, what?” Three Severnty Four was all of a sudden excited but still confused.
“Well, everything. I’ve been cautious about telling you and the girls everything in the past, I wanted to wait until you were old enough but basically I want you to help me run everything.”
“What do you mean tell us everything? What, that you are actually like an alien like they say online?” Three Sventy Four laughed at her own joke.
As smart as she was Evelyn almost never joked, “Well, your not far off, but you’ll see, like I say, starting now you will have full access and know everything I know. I’ll warn you, there is… a lot. Just take your time, utilize Ming and my assists if you you guys have any questions just give me a call or schedule a meeting, I’ll be here for you anytime.”
Three Seventy Four was actually smiling, “Wow, Mom, ok. I mean, if you really are serious, I kind think your not but, if your serious ok. Now, whats for diner?”
Evelyn was already pushing her chair back from the table when Three Seventy Four was asking this final question, “Actaully sweetheart, I have to get going, but if you want to stay the kitchen if fully open to you. I hate to say but I double booked and need to be back in Bejing in 4 hours, they have an SR-71 already fueled and on the tarmac, I’d ask you to come but there's only two seats, I'm taking the RSO and wouldn’t trust myself to pilot, not yet at least.”
Evelyn could see the excitement and joy drain from Three Seventy Four’s face immediately, like she realized this was all just a trick, “Look, we can talk AS SOON as I get back, 8 hours max ok. Get some sleep and if you want we’ll get started first thing in the morning.”
Evelyn kissed Three Seventy Four on the top of the head, a rare sign of affection and Three Seventy Four gave a slight, almost sarcastic smile. “Ok Mom, if you say so. But I’m in charge, starting like, now, right?”
Evelyn assured her, “Yes Three, I’ve already informed the Chief of Staff of the change, as of two hours ago your official title is Chief Executive Officer Tempore to the President, COTP for short. If you have any hiccups you can reach me on my satellite. You be good and I’ll see you tomorow, ok?”
Quite resolution was replacing disappointment for Three Seventy Four, “Ok, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, good luck in Bejing, by the way, you might aw well tell me know, whats so important that you gotta be there in person.”
“Oh, you know, another uprising, I’ll never understand why they’ve had so much trouble keeping their people in check but I’m going to do a quick speech and hopefully help quite things down. Like I say, eight hours max and I’ll be back. I LOVE you, Three, and thank you. I promise you, you’ll see this is going to be be a good thing, for both of us.”
A tall normal headed woman in a suit came in silently and said, “Mam, the jet needs to leave in the next 5 minutes or will need to be refuled again.”
After one more kiss on Three Seventy Four’s gigantic forehead she said, “Thank you Janet, not need, I’m coming now,” and she was out the door, leaving Three Seventy Four alone, confused and excited about what lay ahead.
Nueva Generacion
The education of Three Seventy Four was anything but smooth. Ming was an excellent host and tour guid but it became quickly obvious that when it came to operations she was clueless. By design there was no organizational hierarchy for Three Seventy Four to refer to and it turned out Evelyn’s personal AI assistant was the best source of informaiton. At best the various groups were a random assortment of researchers, engineers and low level mangaers who were suprisingly unaware of what they were doing and why.
For the first several months Three Seventy Four’s days were filled with meeting after meeting with division heads that went something like the following:
“Madame Pro Tem, thank you for your time this morning, it is my understanding that we are to brief you on what our division has been up to the last few years. This shouldn’t take more than an hour of your time and if you're ready my Deputy Director has prepared a presentation for you.”
After a few dozen of these, Three Seventy Four was tired of hearing basically the same thing again and again and preferred to skip the niceties, “Admiral, while I appreciate the efforts let's make this as informal as possible. I understand your division has been busy shipping live virus to our South American research facility but am unclear on why, what excatly has been the purpose of these bulk shipments?”
“Um, Mam, I, we are not allowed to ship live virus, in fact all of our shipments specifically go through an extensive steriliation and innactivatin treatment beofe leaving the facility.”
With a confused look Three Seventy Four would ask, “And where is that inactivation done, do you verify no live virus is contained before shipping?”
The higher up would reply confidently, “Of course Mam, that is all done next door by VPD, our Viral Production Division, they verify every batch, label it appropriately then return it to us for shipment.”
With more confusion, “And Admiral, what is that verification, I mean, what does a shipment look like when it comes back?”
The higherup, by this time thinking she may have grossly overestimated the intelligence of her new sixteen year old boss, “Well, Mam, specifically, it is a label, a sticker, that we use with variying levels of biohazard from 1-5. At production it is the highest level of BH5 then after UV, heat or chemical inactivation it is a BH3.” The department head would say, now speaking more slowly, often holding up an example as if to a young child or an intelligent dog.”
“Ok, but how do you verify the inactivation step, is there further testing being done before shipment?” Three Seventy Four was quickly learning that departments were often more siloed than necessary and there was little cross talk between divisions.
“Well, Mam, I don’t personally oversee that step, you would have to talk to VPD, I think our contact over there is a commander Qin, or Chin, I’m not sure the spelling.”
“Admerial, QIN, is an abbreviation for a Quantitative Inteligence, its an AI, you are telling me your only contact with VPD is a chatbot?” Now it was Three Seventy Four’s turn to talk down.
“Umm, I, I was unaware of that, I was under the impression that Commander Qin had served in Bogota at ground zero a few years ago and that's why she was heading up VPD, is, is that not the case?”
Three Seventy Four would then realize that the person she was talking to had next to no idea what was going on, politely excuse herself from the meeting and ask for a one page brief of all inputs, outputs and activities of the division. This was her routine for several months before she slowly pieced togeth her own organizational chart and scheduled a meeting with Evelyn to go over what was happening.
Evelyn made time for a one on one with Three Seventy Four one morning in the oval office between photoshoots and she was excited to hear about what progress her daughter had been making.
“So, Three, thank you so much and sorry it's been crazy. I knew letting the CCP maintain any control was gonna come back to bite me and it sure did. So please, tell me, what are you thinking, finding your feet as leader of the free world yet?”
Three Seventy Four was not in a joking mood and had not been since her first day, in the office. “Well, first of all, Ms. President, what in God’s name, what in the hell, WHAT is, THIS? With all due respect, what are you doing, why? Did you think I wasn’t going to figure this out? Did you think I was just going to, like, go along with this? You were just going to wall me off and I’d just go along with this insanity? Mom, you, you do realize you are completely out of your mind right? You do realize that I’m going to go public with this right?” Three Seventy Four pulled out her large format org chart she had been wroking on, a rats nest of arrows, names and acronyms.
“DRL, FFPCO, VPD, LOP… Fake people, fake dpartmens, AIs masquerading as humans? For the life of me I still can’t figure out what the hell you are even up to but no one goes to this much trouble to hide something unless it's worth hiding. I haven’t found a single living breathing person that can actually tell me what is going on and if you don’t tell me right now what they hell this is all about I’m going straight to the media with what I do know.”
Evelyn was ready for this, although she had expected her best and brightest to have gotten further along than she had. “Three. Three, Three. You understand what’s going on don’t you. Please, don’t make me walk you through it all right now.”
Three Seventy Four was getting furious. “Walk me through it then, I have no damn clue what you are talking about! Best case you are out of your mind, worst case you are out of your mind and are the next Hitler. I’ve spoken to at least a hundred department heads and not a single one can tell me what the hell is going on, by all account we have put a majority of this country’s disposable income into manufacturing and releasing an advanced form of the Flavivirus as a justification to push artificial gestation but that makes absolutely no sense. We have been doing everything we can for the better part of a quarter century to fight it. I mean, you, you, me, WE are a result of this horrible virus that has ruined countless lives, destroyed humanity and damn near brought civiliation to the brink.”
Evelyn just started at Three Seventy Four, almost as if trying to convey information via telepathy. She was calm and patient, looking straight through her daughter’s eyes until slowly, little by little the glimmer of recognition came over her. First it was surprise, then anger, then surprise again and confusion and all of a sudden Three Seventy Four was filled with instant rage at the realizaiton that what she had just said was exactly what was going on.
“You, you, what? What did, you do!” She stammered, “What in God’s name did you do Evelyn! You MONSTER! You are SICK! You are a sick, sick monster!” Three Seventy Four was screaming all of a sudden.
“Three, please, try to calm down.” Evelyn tried to hold her gaze but the connection was gone.
“What! Why! What are you thinking! You did this? YOU did THIS!” She said, looking up as if at her own giant head. “You are evil! You are pure evil. For what, you made us like this? YOU made us, like THIS! Why would you do this! You knew what you were doing all along but why?”
Evelyn tried her most consoling tone of voice, “Three, you know why. You are old enough, you remember what it was like. What men are like, what, as you call them, normies are like, if we wanted to progress, if we wanted to…”
“But I didn’t kill anyone, I didn’t play GOD! You are a murderer! Probably the most prolific in all human history, but you're not human are you, you are something else, you wanted to kill off everyone and replace us with something like YOU. You are sick and I would NEVER be a part of it. I’m not like you. I’m not your DAUGHTER, I’m one of your sick science experiments, we all are. And soon the whole world will know what you’ve done. The whole world will know that you killed off a generaiton and tried to replace us with, with whatever the hell I am.”
Evelyn tried to be and was understanding, “Sweetie, I’m not going to try and stop you. If you think that’s the right thing to do you have all the power in the world to do it, I won’t even try to talk you out of it. But please understand, of course I did not create the Flavivirus, yes, we, here in these labs we worked to improve it but I am a product of nature, I was born just like anyone else and I have accepted there never was nor is there now anything wrong with me. The first human was a chance mutation, our mitochondrial Eve, she would have been seen as a giant headed freak just as I was, we are again taking the next step in human evolution, this time just wilth a little extra push to get things moving.”
“You are a freak, you are right and I want nothing to do with you. This time tomorrow the people will be calling for your giant stupid head on a stake. This time tomorrow there'll be revolution in the streates the second the world finds out what you’ve done. Killed off a generation and attempted to replace them with, with freaks like you.”
“Like us sweety, freaks like us,” Evelyn reminded her daughter.
“God I HATE you! I knew it was too good to be true, I KNEW there was a catch the second you invited me to join you here it just took me six months to figure it out. God I am so stupid for trusting you even for a second.” Three Seventy Four was as mad at herself as she was at her mother.
“Like I said, you need to do what you need to do and believe it or not I’ll support you. If that means turning me over, giving your evidence to the media I won’t fight it, I’d only ask that you sleep on. Give yourself 24 hours to think it through, the ramifications of what you are suggesting and whatever you decide I’ll support it.” Evelyn was not playing mindgames. She knew the day she brought anyone else on board this was a possible outcome and she was ready to face the consequences of her actions.
Three Severty Four was done talking, she had made up her mind, she grabbed the ruffled papers she had come in with, huffed one last time in her mother’s general direction and stormed out of the office, intent on heading straight to media relations to hand over the evidence of the crimes against humanity she had uncovered, damning her mother and perhaps herself to a life in prison or worse, screaming one last time as she slammed the Oval Office door, “I HATE YOU!”
Blow Back
Three Seventy Four didn’t go to the media, she didn’t realease the org chart or tell anyone what she had uncovered, what good would it have done? Instead she quietly resolved to use her new position of power for good and do what she could to disrupt her mother’s plans. She gave it a few days but knew what she had to do and requestd another meeting with Evelyn as soon as she had settled down.
“Three, are we feeling better, do you think we can talk like adults now.” Evelyn’s voice to Three Severnty Four now sounded like it was dripping with condecention but Three Severnty Four bit her tonge.
“Mom, Evelyn, I… Yes, I have thought A LOT about what you’ve done and am not even close to accepting it but the truth is that going public would clearly do more harm than good. I’m not even sure if us macros would be safe in such a case. The outrage would be enough to plunge the world into chaos and if I'm being honest with myself, as much as I hate what you’ve done, as much as I hate you right now, the world is better off, people are better off than they have ever been in human history and I can’t argue with that.”
“Thank you, Three, I can’t tell you how much I appreaciate that.” Evelyn had spent a lifetime being right and so it was easy for her to accept Three Seventy Four’s apology and recognition even though a normal person with one tenth her intelligence might have seen right through the incinsarity.
“If I am going to stay on there are going to be some BIG changes though. I know there is still more you’ve been keeping from me. I know about the Male Gamete Research Division, MGRD, one of the few places I’ve still been unable to access. And I know your AI assistant has only limited access, the one you gave me at least. From here on out, the first inkiing I get is that you are keeping something from me or if ANYTHING happens to me I’ve given all my notes to my sisters and asked them to immediately relse the information to the media. I’ve told everything I know to Two Fiften, Three Eighty One and Five Thirty Nine. They know everything I do but have promised to keep it to themselves unless something happens to me.” Three Seventy Four paused to see her mother’s reaction.
“I wish you wouldn’t have done that, Three, but of course I understand, you need to protect yourself. I would ask, if you trust these girls that we might as well bring them in, it was always my intention that you and your sisters would take over anyway and now is as good a time as any.” Everything was going as Evelyn had planned.
“Ok, so you agree, full access, starting today. And not only acces but command authority, I don’t know what you’ve told your people but they are still treating me like a child and I get the distinct feeling they are not taking my postion seriously. I want to you to make a public statement about me, I don’ care how you do it but without their respect I’m just an annoiyance to these people.” Three Seventy Four was finding her feet and her voice.
“Of course, it will be tricky to justify and there may be some blow back from the cabnit, having you leap frog like this, claims of nepotism but we’ll work it out. Would you consider doing six months in the Bogata office, just for appearances. We could set you up as a doctor, push a “cure” for this next wave through your practice and upon your return welcome you home a hero, a media tour and a round on the talk show circuit would do the trick.”
“Sure, mom, whatever you think but I don’t want to waste any time.”
“Great, it's settled then, after a stint as medial envoy, then we could put you in as Assistant Surgeon General, make everything look official.” Evelyn was genuinely happy with the compromise. “And bring Two Fiften, Five Thirty Nine and anyone else you want along, agin you have full authority moving forward. Just talk with Ming, she’ll sort out the details. And Three, I can’t tell you how happy I am to have you on board, this is all I have ever wanted, having my daughters working alongside me.”
The Discovery
Three Seventy Four’s six months in Bogata turned into a year and it went well. She slowly brought more and more of her sisters on board. First just Five Thirty Nine and Two Fiften but soon flew down the entire 100-300 cohort, followed by a select number of 500’s and 600’s. She built an on boarding process that slowly introduced them to what was really going on behind the scenes that included an extrnsive period of therapy as she knew learning the truth too quickly could be traumatising. Only a few of the girls went off the rails, as she had almost done but in time all were able to be reigned back in and read into the program that Three Seventy Four code named, the Zeus accord. A formal organization heriarchy was formed with Three Seventy Four at the top.
Just as Evelyn has promised, upon her retun the the United States a year later Three Seventy Four was welcomed as a hero under the pretense that she had discovered a cure for the latest wave of Falvivirus. It was now as official as it could be, Three Seventy Four was more than just a figurehead or the mother’s daughter, she was a well known and well regaurded medical professional heading up the largest R&D facilities in the world. Her first goal was to uncover the final secrets her mother had been hiding, mainly the Male Gameter Divison, which for somereason had been specifficaly kept off her radar even though she knew of its existance. Evelyn explained it away as it being a simple produciton facility and not worth Three Seventy Four’s time but the more Evelyn resisted the more Three Seventy Four knew she had to visit the facility and it was the first tour she scheduled upon her return.
“General Three, welcome and thank you so much for coming, we have been looking forward to your arrival. My deputy director has prepared a presentation for you whenever your ready. Can I get anything to eat or drink, anything at all?”
“Thank you Captain Marsha but I’m ok and without being rude I’d like to get right to it if possible. Lets start with the research facility I’ve been dying to learn what you guys have been working on here the last ten years.” Three Seventy Four was polite but not wasting a second on anyones time.
“Yes, of course mam, I was informed that today was going to be just a presentaiton and, well the tour would follow another day, it's just we were not prepared and, bing a BSL-5 we would need a few days for your safety of course.”
Three Seventy Four KNEW something like this might happen and was prepared, “Captain, absolutely not, I am fully capable and ready today, infact, that will be our first stop and you yourself will be escorting me.” Next she addressed the black suited agent standed beside her, “Agent Kristin, if Captain Marsha refuses, arrest her immedatly, in fact, shot her first, then arrest her. We are not wasting another Goddamn second here. Captain, lets go.”
“Yes, Yes Mam, absolutely. I'm sorry, no disrespect intended, it's just I had my orders and..."
"Agent Kristin."
The agent reached for her side arm and at the same time touched her inviable earpiece saying, "Back up, front entrance."
The captain stammered, "Mam, mam please, there is no need for this, I am ready to go, please follow me."
"Good, let's go then," said Three Seventy Four.
The captian led Three Seventy Four and a contengent of agnets into the building, through half a dozen security checkpoints unhindered and down to the basement level facility. Three Seventy Four and her agents were on high alert.
The elevator stopped at a floor labeled B3/BSL-5, as they walked out another bank of what looked like high security elevators stood across from them, "Where do those go?" Three Seventy Four asked.
"Those, Mam? Those go to our most secure facility, again, I was informed that..." But the captain was cut off by the flash of the agent again reaching for her gun without hesitation after Three Seventy Four shot her a glance.
"But of course, if that is where you would like to begin, we, we can, head there first." The Captain said visably distrought.
"Yes, that's where we will begin our little tour, Captain."
The captain said, "I just need to get my associate to help with the access, she can be down in just a minute. She took out her cell phone, dialed a three digit number and said, "Major, we're gonna need you up on B3, like, right now. OK. No, I mean right now please."
Within a minute a bank of elevator doors opened and a uniformed Army Major was stading there looking first angry then confused. "Captain what the hell is going on, this better be important."
The Captain said, "Yes, Major, I'm sorry but we have General Three Seventy Four here and she is requesting to see the..." But she was cut off by Three Seventy Four.
"Agent." And her agent now fully withdrew her firearm and pointed it directly at the Marjor’s chest. "Major, good to meet you, you can call me, Three and we are going to be touring your facility today, I hope that's ok with you.
"Umm," she said, eyes darting back and forth between the Captain, the agent and Three Seventy Four. The Captain noded slightly as if to say, just do what she says.
"Of course, Mam. Please, follow me." And all six, Three Seventy Four, Captain Marsha and three agents boraded the elevator.
As soon as the doors shut a faint animal-like vocaliation in the distance became apparent. At B4 it became louder and by the time the doors opened on B5 it sounded like a combination of a crowded dog shelted and a bar fight. The metal on metal banging was defening, screams of pain and psycosis were agonizing, grunts and soft thuds, sounds like Three Seventy Four had never hearded before were foreign but inatly terrifing, like some part of her knew she was in danger and it took every ounce of her resolve to step off the elevator. One of the agents was visably shaken and muttered something to Agent Marsha about staying behind so they left her on the elevator and the 5 moved forward.
Three Seventy Four had to almost yell just to be heard over the roar, "What the hell is this! Animal research! Is this a testing facitly, what in God's name are you doing here Captain?"
"Yes, Mam, in a sense I guess you could say. This facitly is under direct supervision of the President, I assure you nothing goes on here without your mother's approval."
"Jesus Christ! What are you doing, Chimps? Its sounds, it sounds almost, human!" Three Seventy Four was confused and worried.
The Major said, "Lets, let's just move forward ok. Please, no matter what, keep your hands to yourself and stay in the MIDDLE of the ailes, DO NOT get close to the cages, the subjects WILL reach out and try to grab you. Please suit up, we have constant issues with feces being thrown and even though we maintain strickt sertility it is still, unsettleing, to be hit with excrament when it happens."
"Good lord, what are you testing, I've never heard anything like this before!" Three Seventy Four assumed she was in a primate testing lab but was unsure.
The Major said again, "Mam, let's just get you suited up and you can see for yourself, it would be easier than trying to explain."
So the five of them put on their oversized white biohazard suits and moved through another two security gates before opening the door to what looked like a maximm security prison ward.
For a second the sounds died down before a low, queit and almost rythmic hooting started, the Major explained, "They do that when they think it's feeding time, despite being mostly seperated we've been amazed at how many rituals and beliefes they have formed, some of them even have something like a ruadmentary language they've developed to communicate."
"That's amazing, so it is primate research, this must be where Evelyn was developing and testing the updated vectors." Three Seventy Four thought she was understanding.
"Something like that, Mam, come on let's keep moving."
In the first bank of doors Three Seventy Four was egar now to see one of the animal test subjects, were they giant headed chimps? Super inteligent macaques? But nothing could have prepared her for the truth.
A heavy steel door with a small rectangular opening at waist level was the first they came to. She reached to unlatch it but the Major stopped her, "Mam, just, stand back and open from the side, like this." She unlatched the feeding slot and immedatly when she did a projectle of feces came flying trhough the opening, splattering on the opposite wall. "Just give them a second here."
Three Seventy Four cauutionly approached the viewing window, bent over and peered inside.
In a 5x5 meter bare concret room was a man, or a half man half beast, some kind of genetic mutant on all fours. It looked like the men Three Seventy Four remembered seeing in her childhood, or the images and videos she had studied but hunched over, somehow, not human at all but at the same time more human than she herslef. She almost fell back in terror and shock.
"What! What the hell is that? Is that, is that a, a man?" Three Seventy Four literally had no idea what kind of anumal she was looking at.
The Major replied, "Yes, Mam, these are men, this wing we use for harvesting genetic material. I assure you, although the accomidations appear bare bones it is what's best for them. They have everything they need and in genral are well cared for for the duration of their usefulness."
"What, why?" Was all that Three Seventy Four could muster to say.
"Like I say, Mam, we need a resource for genetic diversty, next door is a little more, well lets just say we started here for a reason. These our out most well cared for specimens as we want them in peak physical condition." The Major was trying to sound reasonable.
"Jesus Christ! I mean, Jesus. Take me next door." Three Seventy Four needed to see everything.
The Major tried to stop her, "Mam, I would suggest that..."
"Take me next door, Major, NOW."
"Yes, Mam." Next door was even more horrendous. Here there were 3-10 individuals per 5x5 cell. Many were missing limbs, all were covered in blood and sores. She saw at least a few dead bodies and blood smeared around the mouths of all of them. It was by far and away the most disgusting and despicable scene Three Seventy Four could have imagined but again, all she could muster to say was, "But, Why?"
"Mam, it is just their nature. We don't understand it but put more than 2 together for any amount of time and eventually, well you see what happens. We try our best to medicate or restrain but they need to move around and, like I say, it's just their nature to be like this. It is... unfortunante."
"Why not serperate them? Why not at the very least give them individual cells?" Three Seventy Four asked.
The Major said, "Mam, we need so many for the sake of diversity and are simply always limited by space. I know, it's not ideal but it is what it is. Again, we do our best to keep the subjects comfortable and safe but there's just nothing we can do except sperate them and we just dont have the resources to do that."
"How many?" Three Seventy Four asked directly.
"Well, it's hard to give exact numbers but..." The Major didn't want to say.
"HOW MANY!" Three Seventy four demanded.
"Again, for the purpose of maintaining sufficient genetic diversity at any one time, we may be housing, well, around 50 to 60,000 individuals in this facility."
"Holy hell! My God, no wonder she didn't want me to see this. My God!"
Keep it Secret
Three Seventy Four knew that she wasn’t going to be able to let Evelyn know what she had found out, she would need to go out of her way to make sure that the President thought she was as on board as ever if she wanted to keep her job. She set a meeting a few days later just to have a chance to reassure her mother that nothing had changed even if word did get back to her about the unauthorized tour.
Evelyn welcomed her daughter, “Three, I’m so happy you’re having a chance to expand your influence. I really think the various departments are going to benefit from your perspective and insight. Can I ask, have you been finding anything of particular interest recently? I’ve been getting some great feedback from our leads.”
Evelyn knew that Three Seventy Four’s tell for when she was about to tell a lie was she would take an imperceptibly small breath to relax herself and she did so now before saying, “Everything is going great, I honestly have been blown away at how much you and your team accomplished in just a few years. I do have a couple minor issues about resource allocation, if you don’t mind I’ll jump right into it.”
Evelyn was eager to hear, “Please, Three, speak freely, what are you thinking?” Evelyn was expecting some amount of push back and was pleasantly surprised to hear constructive criticism instead.”
“Well, for some of our research divisions, of course I fully understand the need for, direct evaluations, I mean, obviously we can’t advocate for untested treatments to be released on the public but just two small points: One, couldn’t animal testing be sufficient for several of our early assays, I mean, some of our human trials do seem to be a bit, immature, especially when mortality rates are 50% and above. Second, facilities for said human subjects are a little tight, yes, what I’m proposing would mean keeping a smaller number of subject, but I find that by reducing the population just by 10% we can actually increase living space by 25% due to reduced resources needed as well…”
Evelyn couldn't help herself from jumping in, “Three, honey, that is so sweet of you and I love that caring for others is your first order of business.” After just a moment of hesitation, which was Evelyn’s tell, she said, “Yes, that's a wonderful idea and if you say it will help progress lets do it. Now I do hate to think about a mass population like that, it will be gruesome but if its what you think…”
Three Seventy Four was dumb struck by what Evelyn just said, “Gruesome! What are you talking about? I’m simply saying that we don’t need so many human subject what are you talking about?” Three Seventy Four said with as much venom in her voice as she could muster.
Evelyn replied, also sweetly, as if speaking to a young child, “Well, if we are going to reduce the population Honey, where do you suppose we reduce them to?”
“Release them! Obviously you let them go! We have the vaccine, there’s absolutely no reason to keep them locked up for no reason at this point!” Three Seventy Four was indigent.
“Three, those men are fully institutionalized, they couldn’t survive in the outside world, and think, even if they could would you want them out walking around, it would be, safe.” Evelyn was right about that.
“Well I don’t know, an island, what about like a sanctuary, just a place for them to just live, for…” Evelyn cut her off.
“For what purpose, Three? For how long? They don’t know what’s going on, they can’t even speak, they would rip each other apart if given half the chance.”
Three Seventy Four said, “I know.” At first defiant, as if she was about to tell her mother about how she had seen first hand what the men in captivity we capable of, but then she remembered her position and became resigned to her mother’s power when she said again, “I know. I know, you’re right. I saw them and you're right, they are murderous animals at this point, probably rehabilitation would be hopeless.”
Evelyn was terrible at consoling people but she tried, “Three I see your concern for the subject, of course I was exactly the same when I was younger,” Evelyn was not the same at all, “If anything I cared too much and because of it missed out on countless opportunities. I know it doesn't help but you need to think of every step forward as a sacrifice. We all have to sacrifice for progress.”
Three Seventy Four took a shallow breath that told Evelyn she was about to lie, “Of course, we are going to break some eggs along the way but, I just need to be able to live with what you, what we are doing here and I believe that human life is precious, even males.”
Evelyn thought she was home free, “Three, you are so right and honestly, have you here right now, hearing your feedback is exactly what I needed, this is exactly the kind of thing I wanted to bring you on for. I have a blind spot for a lot of the caring stuff, if you know what I mean.”
“Yeh, I know, Mom.” Three Seventy Four was 99% certain her mother was psychopathic.
“Well, good, so its settled, 10% reduction, expand living and rec areas where possible, you have total freedom if you think you can help!” Evelyn was genuinely happy that she thought she was past on of the biggest speed bumps of her plan. “As always, just tell me what your guys need and Ming can handle finances. I gotta run for another meet and greet but let's catch up in a month. I love you, Three, and we’ll talk soon!” Evelyn talked until she was out the door, not letting Three Seventy Four even say goodbye except under her breath after the door to the President’s office had already behind her.
Keep it Safe
For the better part of a year Three Seventy Four did what she could to clean up the facilities she now headed. Everything from public hospitals and clinics to the secret underground testing bunkers of her mother, she did everything she could to find people in need and supply them with what they needed. Three Seventy Four was regularly in the news and was becoming loved far and wide for her humanitarian work. In interviews she was always respectful of her mother but also spoke clearly and distinctly about the need to pick up the lower classes and bring the same high level of health care the elites like her enjoyed to everyone.
Her popularity increased to the point that Evelyn for the first time started to see Three Seventy Four as a potential rival. She started asking her to spend more time “on the ground” where she was “needed” with less time in the media. This small jealousy was the beginning of the end for Evelyn.
Three Seventy Four did indeed start spending more time, “on the ground” and at times even acted as an on-call physician for whatever hospital she happened to be running or inspecting at the time. Public facilities did improve and standardize over time and Three Seventy Four brought a human touch back to a public health institution that had been run as an ad hoc, just scraping by, organization for a generation.
She also cleaned up the departments doing human testing and brought them back under the umbrella of FDA regulation. Evenly would under the radar fight many of the changes but as long as Three Seventy Four was diligent in making sure her changes were implemented she never heard a peep from Evenly about anything she did.
Part of her work was starting a rehabilitation center for the no longer used male subjects. Her hope being that soon she would be able to go public with the program and release the men back into society on a limited basis. She had one star pupil who she swore was able to speak in broken english the first day she met him. Evelyn swore all subjects with artificially gestated but this one was easily old enough that he could have been born naturally, 20, 25 years old at least, Q10562.
Q10562’s eyes were dark brown and although all subjects regularly had all their body hair removed chemically, Q10562 always seemed a little shaggy. He was bigger than average but not the biggest, smarter than the average but the smartest she had seen. He seemed to always be struggling with a hard problem stuck in his head but not about to name it. The first time Three Seventy Four and Q10562 met he peed out the small door opening when they opened it for feeding time, it was his was of showing excitement. Three Seventy Four was disgusted of course and was about to hit her emergency alert button to call the guards but caught a glimpse of Q10562’s eyes through the eye level pane of bullet proof glass, he was smiling. He was saying hello.
The next day Three Seventy Four told the orderly that was would deliver Q10562’s food that morning. When she did, before opening the food slot she looked in to see Q10562 sitting in the corner, seemingly thinking. She knocked to get his attention and said slowly, “Food. Food, NO PEE PEE. OK, FOOD. NO PEE PEE.” And before he had a chance to get up she quickly opened the slot, practically threw the food tray in, scattering the food all over the floor and closed the slot, she said, “Good, NO PEE PEE. GOOD.” Utterly content with herself and their first lesson she walked away. She did the same at dinner, feeding him an hour later than usual so he wouldn’t be able to prepare his urinary assault.
The next day, it was the same. At breakfast she approached the window, said loudly, “NO PEE PEE,” and began to open the food slot, but like a bat out of hell, as if he’d been waiting around all night for this opportunity, Q10562 jumped up and with a HUGE smile on his face ran to the slot and almost immediately began urinated out into the hallway, the stream missing Three Seventy Four’s shoes by mear inches. Genuinely surprised and not at all intending to do any harm, she slammed the door slot shut right on the private parts of Q10562 and he screamed like she had never heard before. He pulled back, ran into the corner and cowered, not knowing what he had done wrong to deserve such punishment. Like a scared and hurt dog he shivered and whimpered in the corner for an hour before Three Seventy Four was able to get the me team in to tranquilize him and treat his injury properly. Three Seventy Four felt horrible and she waited three days to try again.
This time when Q10562 saw Three Seventy Four at his window he darted for the far corner of the small cell and protectively covered his private parts. At first as it sounded like he was just grunting in fear but after a second Three Seventy Four was sure she could here something distinct. Over and over again he seemed to be saying something.
“Naaaa TEEEE TEEEE” “NAAAAAHHHH. TEEE TEEEE”
“No, Pee pee! Yes, Yes that's it, No pee pee, yes, you are talking!” Three Seventy Four was excited, but as soon as Q10562 heard the phrase, “No pee pee” again he further withdrew and even let out a scream, and again repeated, “Naaahh tee teeee!”
“Good.” Three Seventy Four said to herself. She opened the slot but Q10562 would not leave his corner. She tried to set the tray down on the inside of the cell but it spilled. “No matter” she thought, she was happy to be making progress.
The next few weeks Three Seventy Four continued with Q10562 until one day they had something almost like a routine. She would approach with the food, say, “Food. No pee pee.” Then open the door slot, Q10562 would approach, take the tray, say, “Fudd Nahh tee tee”, then Three Seventy Four would gently close the door.
One morning Q10562 was curled up in a corner and seemingly refused to come get his food. When presented with their daily greeting all he would do is grunt and turn further away. Three Seventy Four got on her intercom, “Med, can I get someone down in bank Q? Five Six Two isn’t eating, two orderleys should be enough.”
The dispatcher responded, “Yes Mam, we do wish you were not down there alone at all. We’ve got an issue on L block so it's gonna be 20 minutes at best, just hang tight please and we’ll get someone to ya.” Word was spreading in the lab about how much time Three Seventy Four was spending with the subjects and her little issues were becoming less of a priority of the staff.
“Damn it,” Three Seventy Four said to herself. She called again, he was breathing, just, he looked in pain. With one hand she grabbed her emergency call button and the other she slowly opened the locking arm of the heavy steel door. She was going to open it just enough to set the tray down and get out but as soon as she was in Q10562 gave a heavy cough into his blanket that drew her attention and sympathy. “Ohh, Q, whats wrong with you.” She asked as she bent over, hand out reached, thinking she would touch his back she stepped into the cell and closer to Q10562.
On her second step, when she was a foot or two away in one split second Q10562 expertly threw off his blanket, spun around and all in one beautifully orchestrated movement started urinating mid air precisely landing a small number of drops on the leg and shoe of Three Seventy Four and immediately stopping the stream not getting any anywhere else. He completed his 360 spin by landing on one foot and going into a crouch from where he looked Three Seventy Four straight in the eye with the biggest, proudest smile a boy could have, as if to say, “See, pee pee! Got ya!”
Three Seventy Four was disgusted, sick, but also amused and flattered. But she said, “Gross! A, NO Pee Pee! How many times do I have to tell you. Gross!”
Q10562 stayed in his crouched position, smile fading from his face, as Three Seventy Four quickly left the room and closed the door, going to look for the nearest sink and roll of paper towels. The next day Q10562 was waiting attentively at the door, making sure that Three Seventy Four was able to see he wasn’t hiding anything. For weeks everything went smoothly and Q10562 continued to make small progress. After a month he understood the words, pee, no, back, sit, stay, come here and eat. His speech was intelligible only to Three Seventy Four but he seemed to understand words had meaning and that he would be able to use them.
One week he tried asking for, “More Food.” Which was huge for Three Seventy Four to witness one making a request. She had been keeping a notebook and this was one of her first extended entries. She had other candidates too. H31492, a few in A block but Q10562 was her favorite and seemed the most promising. One day she gave him a mirror but he cut himself trying to fight the reflection. She tried giving him a pet, a cat, a dog, even trying a small fish tank but he just couldn't seem to understand that an animal would not be food. In fact, he seemed to insist on using the same word, “Fuud” to describe his actual food and any pet or animal Three Seventy Four would try for him.
Progress accelerated once she brought in a child psychologist to help. One on one lessons grew to group sessions and eventually she set up what could have been called a school where 20-30 males were attending at a time. Incidents were common but with orderlies and sedatives on hand things rarely became violent.
Qdam
Three Seventy Four had to rescue Q10562 more than once. The standard response for violent behavior was electroshock and pepper spray but for some reason Q10562 was exempt from the worst punishments. Castration was the final “treatment” for unruly males but even though Q10562 got in more than his fair share of fights, especially when Three Seventy Four seemed to be around, he was never even threatened with it.
Three Seventy Four took on teaching a few classes herself. Within a year Q10562 was talking like a young boy full of questions. He was most interested in learning about the virus and where it came from. Even though, for all intents and purposes, he was cognitively a 4-5 year old boy he seemed to understand his situation without trouble. From what Three Seventy Four and the psychologists told him Q10562 gathered that Evelyn Price was in charge and was the person that made him, naturally, he wanted to meet her.
Q10562 wasn’t the best student, he wasn’t even a good student but he was the most curious. His favorite words were, why and how and he would like to anyone in his broken English as long as they would allow. After one year of lessons he knew enough to be able to tell Three Seventy Four that he loved her but he hadn’t learned enough to understand the feelings he had when she said she liked him too but didn’t love him and never could. After that Q10562 got the shock treatment for dismembering a classmate for no apparent reason, Three Seventy Four wasn’t mad but she was disappointed, she thought she had made more progress than that and it was clear that she was still a long way from reintroduction.
Three Seventy Four had become comfortable with facility protocol and she would sometimes take shackled individuals back to their cells herself. One night walking Q10562 back she asked him a question, “Q if you ever get out of here, what do you think you would want to do?”
Q10562 thought for a second, “I want to see the ocean. The water, that like boats float on. I want to see the ocean. I would SWIM in the ocean.”
“Q, that's lovely. I hope I get to show you the ocean one day,” Three Seventy Four was sincere.
“Three, you can show my the Ocean one day. Today. You say, Evelyn Price, is in charge but no, Three, YOU are in charge, you said so.” The logic of Q10562 was sound but he knew nothing of the real world and just because Three Seventy Four could do whatever she wanted she couldn't get away with anything she wanted.
“It’s not like that Q, I still have to do what she says, I mean, as long as shes alive she’s the boss.”
Q10562 said, “You are boss Three, you even say, I see TV say it too. Three, you. You are be… Be-u-tiful, Three. Beautiful and boss. It is why I love”
“Oh Q, I am literally the only female you have even seen, one day you’ll see…” Three Seventy Four trailed off as she undid the handcuffs of Q10562.
Q10562 slowly stood straight, straighter than Three Seventy Four had seen him before, he said, “I know what a kiss is. I learned it.” And without a second of hesitation, as if simply informing her that knowing of its existence was enough of a reason, Q10562 leaned in to put his lips on the proportionally tiny lips of Three Seventy Four. He not only had to lean down but also pivot under her enormous forehead, but nonetheless he was able to make contact and hold them there for almost a full second before Three Seventy Four pushed him pack. “Q, NO! BAD, BAD!” She yelled and slammed the steel door shut on her prisoner. “Good night Q, but Bad, BAD, Q.”
Three Seventy Four went to be that night excited about the progress she was making, excited about Q10562. Q10562 was so happy he peed on himself to fall asleep and dreamed of murdering Evelyn Price, whoever she was.
Three Seventy Four started spending more time teaching, more time in Q block and more time with Q10562 in particular. After first she was carful to keep any encounters off camera but one day a CCTV captured the two of them holding hands has she led him back to his cell one night. A few days later Three Seventy Four was questioned about it if was wise for her to be spending some time one-on-one with with just one subject. Q10562 was asking more and more about meeting Evelyn. Saying if she created him then she would surly want to meet him, Three Seventy Four tried to tell him she wasn’t like that but he kept insisting.
Evelyn wanted her daughters to take over for her one day but for the most part, like Three Seventy Four, they were busy taking on little pet projects and very little progress was being made in their respective departments.
Three Seventy Four felt like she was being pressured on all sides, from her own staff, the president and the patients themselves who she felt the greatest responsibility. At the end of her fourth year in office she was feeling drained and like she was making few if any positive changes, something had to give.
Qdam
Three Seventy Four called Evelyn one evening and jumped right in, “Mom, hi. I want you to come down to the facility, I think this is the year we should finally go public and I want to get your final approval.”
Evelyn said into the phone, “Hi Three, so good to hear from you. A tour, sure I think thats a great idea. You know I’m sunk this month, but early spring I’m sure…”
Three Seventy Four interrupted, “Actually, Mom we’d like to have you here for a ribbon cutting next week, Tuesday. Sorry to just dump this on you but believe it or not, we’re ready. Short story we’re gonna push is basically that, yes we do have males but they were not testing subject but simply quarantined. We already have the story to major outlets, saying that we knew these patients could never be released due to infection but now with the vaccine it's safe. With the last two years of education they essentially all believe the same, that they were taken in as young infected and abandoned babies. Believe me, once you see it, we’ve got the whole thing wrapped up with a bow and ready to go…”
Evelyn was shaking, “You, You WHAT now Sweetie?” Evelyn put her hand over the phone but could be hear screaming something at a piolet about turing around. “Honey, what? We talked about one day, maybe going public, what is this rush all of a sudden?”
Three Seventy Four was calm and confident, “No rush mom, its just that we’re ready, the, the boys as I call them, are ready. I told you two years ago, there’s no reason to keep them locked up anymore.”
“Three, Three, listen to me. I’ll be there in, in,” there was more screaming in the background about timing and authorized airports, “Two hours, ok, I’ll be there in two hours for your, this tour. Ok, can you meet me there in two hours, Sweetie?” Evelyn said in the least sweet voice possible.
“Um, two hours, I mean I’m home for the night but guess I can run back in if you want but let's just do it tomorrow morning.” Three Seventy Four had said something wrong.
“Three, it's not that late, I can meet you there at 18:30 ok, I think it best we talk in person. Ok, love, gotta run and see you then.”
At 18:00 that evening a black limousine showed up at Three Seventy Four’s apartment. She had been planning on driving herself but figured this meant her mom was serious.
Right at 18:30 a car pulled up in front of research facility and Evelyn got out. The two giant headed women tried for an awkward hug, awkward both because of their giant heads but also because Three Seventy Four was certain hr mother was a psychopath hell bent on world domination which made all of their interactions slightly odd.
Seconds after the greeting first a few police cars started pulling in behind the President but then a SWAT vehicle and shortly followed by a dozen private security cars, then helicopter could me hearded getting closer and closer.
Three was confused and annoyed, “Mom, what the hell is this? You bring the army to a lab meetings?”
Evelyn tried to brush it off, “Oh you know, Secret Service is so carful these days, they’ll send the infialtry for any public appearance these days.”
“Public, its literally you and me at this time of night,” she was confused.
“But, the nature of the facility, from what I understand necessitates a higher default security level, that all Sweetie, just protocol.” Then Evelyn yelled back over the sound of the incoming aircraft. “Ok Captain, marshall your ladies out here, I’ll be on comms just wait for me.”
“Mom, this is, crazy and totally unnecessady. I’ve been here over two years without a single incident, what are you doing?” Three Seventy Four genuinely didn’t get it.
“Three, its just protocol, for the president to enter any max security facitlyi this is just the standard precaution. Its no big deal, I wanted to get here ASAP and hear what you wanted to tell me. Lets get inside and we can talk.” Evelyn led her daughter inside followed by a small contingent of soldiers.
“Mom, this is really insanse. Like I told you, we are ready here. Over 90% of our subjects we believe are fully ready of re-integrations, progress has been a lot faster than we would have expected.”
Evelyn spoke to her daughter in the most understand voice she could muster, “Three, you guys have been doing AMAZING work here. Honestly, I also thought it would take, 5, 10 times longer to get to where you are not, getting ready to re-relase men into society, and thats, thats great! I just think that maybe, before we take any HUGE steps we should get a few more experts in the program. Socially, how will things work after such a re-integration for example.” Eveylyn has a sort of desperation in her voice.
Evelyn was leading the two of them slowly as she talked away from the entrance and to the elevators, the second Three Seventy Four picked up on her mother’s suttle intentions alarm bells went off and she looked around. She looked up and on the top atrium windows she heard foot steps scurry across the roof. Evelyn saw the glint of recognition and redoubled her efforts to distract her, “Come on Three, if we’re going to have this big ribbon cutting I want to see what you youve been up to. Show me some of these men you say are ready for the real world!”
Three Seventy Four was eager to impress Evelyn and introduce she to Q10562. “Well, there is one student I do want to you meet. If nothing else will convince you that these men don’t deserve to be locked up he will. I promise, you’ll see, Evelyn, the progress he has made in just two years, I mean at this point I honestly believe that men could be brought to the same, or almost the same cognitive level as some of our older citizens.” They walked towards the elevators and Three Seventy Four was getting excited to show off her work. You know, some of us think that within a few generations even, with proper oversight of course men might even be able to again contribute to the reproductive cycle, you know like naturally, like old’n days…” Three Seventy Four got cut off.
Evelyn shouted, “Stop, JUST STOP, Three. Please. Lets get downstairs, I mean, you are getting ahead of yourself…” Evelyn’s outburtst scared herself and she quickly tried to back away from it. “I’m sorry, its just. I think you are getting a little ahead of yourself. Why don’t you introduce me to this subject you are so egar to show off and then we can keep talking.”
They rode the elevators down and walked to Q block without much more to say. Three Seventy Four was still excited but more reserved now. Finally she said, “Here we are, now if you want to see him in action I suggest we take him down to the gymnasium, don’t worry, he’ll be wearing a collar and I have the remote right here. A touch of the button of if I just say the word, “H-e-l-p” he is instantly incapacitated.”
“But still, Three, I can see him just as good from this side of the door.”
“Mom, I’m here to convince you that men can be released and treated just like anyone else, if you can’t trust one how will you ever trust all of them?” Three Seventy Four had a good point and Evelyn had seen the shock collars in action before and trusted them.
Three Seventy Four knocked on the door of Q10562, “Q, you wanna do some exercise for us?”
Q10562’s reply sounded also like the voice of Jim, or any other full grown man Evelyn remembered from her childhood he said, “Hi Three. I missed you. Is Evelyn Price with you?”
It was odd that he knew but Three Seventy Four only confirmed, “Yeh Q, I brought my mom to meet you. We are talking about how soon we can get you and your friends out of her.
He said only, “That’s nice. That would be nice.”
Evelyn said, glazing at Three Seventy Four first, “So, Q, is it? Q Three tells me you have something to show us in the gym, is that right?” Almost as if she was talking to a seven to ten year old boy.
“Yes, thats ok. And I have so many questions. Like why. Three can’t tell me why you make us, just that you did. And if you make us, why keep us here?”
“Oh, Q, Three didn’t explain this to you? It was a horrible disease, a virus…”
“I know virus, I know because Three tells us about the virus. But we know its gone, but we still here.”
Evelyn was a little nervous, “Well yes, Q, thats why we are trying to get you out, thats what this is all about, getting you our of this place and starting a new life on the outside.”
Three Seventy Four started to open the door. Evelyn took a step back. Slowly Q10562 stepped out of his cell until he stood facing Evelyn but head and shoulders above her. “We go gym,” was all he said and started walking down the hall in front of them, not even looking back to see if they were following.
In the gym Three Seventy Four directed Q10562 to do some moves that she thought were particularly impressive. A handstand, something she would never even able to attempt. And then a simple forward role at the end of which Q10562 did any overly elaborate finish followed but a backwards roll and similar flourish. After a few jumps on the trampoline he was winded and made his way back to the mother/daughter. “What you think, pretty great right? Three says I would be the greatest gymnast in the world if I was able to compete. Three says everyone is old or has a big head, but not me. Im young and have a normal head so I can do…” Evelyn cut him off and spoke over him.
“Your head isn’t normal, its just, smaller, you have a small head, ok.” She wondered who even would have given him the idea of a normal sized head?
Q10562 replied, “Ok, I have a small head, but it makes it so I can do all kinds of stuff Three says she can’t because her head to too big…”
Again Evelyn snapped, “Her head is NOT too big, it's totally fine and normal fine. OK, got it, we all have very normal heads, bigger or smaller.”
Q10562 didn’t want to be rude, “Yes, yes Evelyn, I am sorry.”
Three Seventy Four agreed, “Sorry mom, I’m not sure what I might have told him, you know he’s just learning so much, he probably got it from watching old videos and stuff.
Q10562 tried to back her up, “Yes, yes Evelyn, it was just stupid movies I watch, not real, not real life, of course, I know that.”
Evelyn put her head in her hands, exasperated. “Uhhh, Three, you, you JUST don’t get it do you?” I really, REALLY thought you were smart enough and now, after all this, everything I’ve don’t you basically fall for the oldest trick in the book and there was nothing I could do to save you.”
Three should she was still made about the “big head” comment. “But mom, he didn’t mean it, hes just learning and didn’t mean to be rude”
Evelyn said, “Its not that, Sweetie. It just, you don’t get it, you didn’t see what the world was like with me, you don’t understand how much better off we are now. I was naive, I was stupid. I did my best, I want you to know Three, I really did try but it just wasn’t enough.
“Mom, what are you talking about. I mean if you don’t think we’re ready to go public yet, I mean I guess we could put it off for a few week, maybe even this time next year would be ok…”
Q10562 didn’t understand much but her could tell that Three seventy Four was arguing for his freedom and one more year meant one more year in his cell. He didn’t like the idea of that.
Evelyn was between annoyed and exasperated, “Three, how can I say this. You don’t understand, I thought you would but you don’t. We tired that, we tried the world with men and it was a terrible place. Do you understand how common murder was when I was a kid, we couldn’t even walk around after dark out of hear of being assaulted, it that really a world you would want to go back to?”
“I don’t know, Mom, all I know that at least that was the real world, not your fever dream of trying to fill the world with clones of yourself. Honestly I don’t care what its like, anything at this point would be better than living in your fake utopia where the only freedom anyone has is to do exactly what you tell them to do.”
Evelyn was at the end of her rope, “You wish you were my clone! My God, Three, I can’t believe you, at your age, I thought you would have grown up by now but I guess that was too much to ask. Look at me, there isn’t going to be any release or repopulation. We aren't going to go backwards, we are making progress and you want to throw us 100 years back into the past? Its not going to happen Three. I thought you would have figured this out by now but you’ve spent the last two years doing nothing, wasting time making sure out test subjects were comfortable when you could have been making real progress.
Q10562 tried to speak, “No talk to Three like that.”
Evelyn snapped back, “Shut up you. Like I would like orders from a man, an ANIMAL. Three, get that disgusting thing back in his cage and if your smart your be out of the building by the time my helo takes off.
Q10562 spoke again, “No talk to THREE!”
Evelyn spat, “I’ll talk to my daughter however I want, Three get him out of here and get on home for the night, you’ll have to find a new pet project in the morning.” She spoke into her wrist, “Sasha, set to pull it in 15. Make sure it doesn’t blow until staff are out but make sure no one without a badge leaves the building.”
Three Seventy Four screamed, “Mom? Evelyn what they hell are you doing? You can’t!”
Over the radio they heard, “Yes Mam, locked and loaded, please confirm 15 minutes.”
Q10562 again repeated his demand and took a large step towards Evelyn, she again shouted over him, “Three, hit him. Hit the button.” But Three Seventy Four just watch Q10562 take another step towads her mother and raise his two big hands over his head.
The radio said again “Mam we’re ready, just need confirmation. Mam?”
Evelyn shouted at Three Seventy Four, “Hit the button, Three, SHOCK HIM!”
But Three Seventy Four just watch. Q10562 clasped his hands into a rock and from high up above his head he brang his fists down as hard as he could straight on the top of Evelyn Prices giant head. His fists collapsed into the skull, slowed only by the build of of brain matter, blood and pieces of shatered cranium. It was a mess.
Three Seventy Four of sickened and frozen but the radio brought them back to reality.
“Mam, are we a go? Please confirm?” Three Seventy Four scambled for the device and said into it. This is Surgeon General, Three Seventy Four, I am here with the president and there is to be no strike, repeat, NO STRIKE. Call off all units.” She dropped the mic and looked up into the big brown eyes of Q10562, he looked down at her and smiled, her mother’s blood and brains still dripping off his fists.
A New Normal
Three Seventy Four thought fast and hit a big red fire alarm button on the side wall. Dozens of steel doors swung open, Three Seventy Four looked at Q10562 and asked in fear, “You can you protect me, right?”
Q10562 said calmly, “I protect Three, no pee pee,” and smiled big.
Several of the men were cautious, first only peeking out of their cells then slowly stepping out. One or two bolted for the opening, one ran out so fast he smashed into the opposite wall, cracking his head and falling instantly unconscious. It took a minute for one to approach Three Seventy Four on all fours and Q10562 to, without hesitation, use his new fist smash move on the man’s skull, felling him not far from his room’s opening.
“Good, Q. But, be careful. Now let's get out of here.” On their way to the elevators they saw a few men congregating around the body of Evelyn. Three Seventy Four gripped her emergency call button, pressed and held, “Hello, come in, come it. We need help on Q block. Somehow the cells all opened, the President needs help, repeat the president needs immediate help.”
“Yes Mam, we just heard the alarms, what the hells going on down there? It says "fire on Q.”
“I don’t know what happened, everyone is loose, they just all started coming, get us out of here, it's chaos!” Three Seventy Four yelled into the microphone.
“Yes Mam, 15 seconds out. Red Team there in, five, four, three..”
The elevator doors opened and security guards streamed out. Three Seventy Four called to them, “HERE! Over there! The President needs help, she's down!”
One guard ran up to Q10562 with a baton raised but Three Seventy Four stood between them, “No, this one had nothing to do with it, he's with me. Just get the president out of here!”
“My God! WHAT! What the hell happened here!.” A guard was screaming.
“Three Seventy Four yelled back, “We were taking a tour and the doors must have malfunctioned, they all just opened at once when we were trying to put Q10562 back. “Just get The President out of here, NOW!”
“Mam, the, The President is dead. AGENTS, get these animals caged, Natasha, find the locking mechanism and on my signal, pull it.” Then talking to Three Seventy Four again, “Mam, what… You’re gonna need to tell me what happened here.”
Three Seventy Four snapped, “I told you! They got out. Now, I assume there's a helo on the roof. You’re gonna take me and Q out of here and back to the White House.”
The agent was trying to be logical, “Mam, we’re fully loaded, surely you have a driver…” but she was cut off.
“Then you and your women stay behind, I don’t care. For now, I’m raking officer, get us home.”
Three Seventy Four and Q10562 were led up the back stairwell and to the roof. A blackhawk helicopter flew just the two of them back to the White House where Three Seventy Four immediately arranged a public address to the nation which she gave herself.
“My fellow citizens, you know me as the Surgeon General, our country's top physician, and as such tonight I come to you with some extremely disturbing news. The President of the United States, Evelyn Price has been in a terrible accident and tonight succumbed to her life threatening injuries after being attacked by a group of political prisoners being held against their will just outside of Washington DC. Unbeknownst to much of the world, myself included, the former president had maintained a secret research facility where she was conducting human trials on both female and male patients. Yes, I said male individuals were being held captive and being used for viral testing and development. The secret facility held no less than 20,000 male individuals, b the largest single contingent of the male gender in the world.”
“I know you all would be anxious to see and hear from one of these individuals and so I have brought one to speak with us today, his name is Q10562. Q, would you mind saying a few words and maybe answer a couple questions from the press?”
Q10562 said, “Q can.”
A hand shot up from the audience, an older normal headed journalist, “Mr. Mr. Q, is it? Where have they been keeping you? Who released you? What happened to the President? What have…”
Three Seventy Four spoke over the questioner, “Please one at a time, this is Q’s first time, in public,” then she visually checked in with Q10562 to make sure he was ok to answer.
Q10562 answered, “Q… I do not know many things. I know only the things Three tells me but I trust Three. I love Three…”
Three Seventy Four gave Q10562 a small hit with the side of her hand before he continued.
“I know that men were made, we were made by Evelyn Price, we were made and put in jail, jail is a place you can not leave. I told Evelyn no, no pee pee, I told her…”
Three Seventy Four cut him off again, “Q, is, a special individual, he has been nonverbal for most of his life and is still just learning to speak. What he is trying to say is that these men, these boys were born into captivity and never allowed to leave. He knows very little about the outside world but is kind, gentle and wants to learn more.
Another hand shot up and a young woman started speaking, “You say 20,000 men? That’s… Where will they go? Our cities, our people, are not ready for anything of the sort. Surly you are not going to let 20,000 men just lose in our streets, that would be madness.”
Three Seventy Four got stern, “After a short period of rehabilitation 3-6 months, it is out plan to release all subjects with an assigned social manager to help with integration. But your concerns are valid and I immediately started putting together a team to handle a smooth transition.
The from the other side of the room, “What about contamination, is the vaccine even effective with the male body, how do we know its not too soon?”
Three Seventy Four was composed, “The sad truth, Miss, is that our currency vaccine was actually developed using these captive men as test subjects and said vaccine has been under development much longer than the public has, until now, been allowed to know. Since the first outbreak in the 2040’s we have had an effective vaccine that for myriad reasons was largely kept secret from the public. As Surgeon General I take full responsibility for this oversight and I as we speak there is a congressional commission being formed to look into the ongoing situation.
Then back to the first woman, “Are you saying we’ve had the vaccine all along? Why would it have taken so long to release and what does this all have to do with the man you have standing in front of us here?”
Three Seventy Four had done the hard part and was done answering questions, “Eveyone, thank you, thank you for coming tonight on short notice. Ther will be a million questions, I have a million questions but for now, Q and I need to get some rest, my deputy will be available for the next 24 hours and my office will be responding to all written requests for further information. Thank you, thank you for your time and God bless this United States of America.
***
Over the next few months the men were integrated slowly back into society. All 20,000 were hounded by admirers and could hardly leave the house without being approached and fawned over. Many women wanted nothing more than to touch a man, or the older women would ask for a wistful hug, often saying how much it reminded them of their husband, father or son. Younger women were simply enthralled, sometimes simply following one around aimlessly or tried to start awkward conversations. The men, for their part, were happy. Most found their places in the world as recipients of endless affection and praise for accomplishing even the most menial of tasks. There was backlash from society about “babying” the new men but they were insulated from the worst of it and carried on in their lives as if they were God’s gift to women.
Q10562 had fallen in love with Three Seventy Four and the two had their first child just 1 year later, one of the first new generations of naturally born babies. It was a girl and her head was just a hair larger than Q10562’s but still had to be born via c-section.
The youngest normal headed women in the 2080’s were in their late 30’s and a few met and fell in love with men, resulting in a head size between normal and giant. By 2200, the second and third generation born to at least one normal headed parent, head size was regressing to the mean. Five generations in and the descendants of Evelyn were barely distinguishable from the few that never had any giant headed blood. Soon, people were stupid again. They went back to driving cars, having jobs, working and playing games. Not because they needed to but because they said they liked it. People forgot about the health benefits of being vegetarian and religion came back into vogue. Aside from some technological advances the year 2500 was indistinguishable from the year 2020 except for a slightly larger head size and people not being able able to wear any old hats.