In the East Room all was dead seriousness. Even the young children seem to sense the gravity of the occasion and they sat quietly with their parents. The President spoke:
"My fellow Americans, and my fellow men and women of every nation who have joined us tonight: Let me speak to you this evening not so much as the President of the United States, but as the father of a family. Megan and I have for more than thirty years shared the hopes and fears of parents everywhere. Our children began coming before we were ready for them financially and we struggled for some years to assure their future. Our second son Patrick died in infancy. Rory our youngest, who by now may have more name recognition than I, makes light of his disability but Megan and I cannot help but let it worry us. All of you, but especially the parents among you, will know how deeply we feel the anxiety the news I am about to share with you will produce.
"For almost two years our National Institutes of Health, in collaboration with public health agencies all over the world, have been studying what has become known as the genetics crisis, to the exclusion of just about everything else. Late this afternoon Doctor J. William Smith, the Surgeon General of the United States, brought me final confirmation of data they have developed.
"As you probably know, all the ova, or egg cells, that a woman contributes to the conception of a child are produced and stored in her body before she is born. It now appears that the egg cells of nearly every woman and girl in the world born since 2010 have the gene that is producing the anomaly we find so distressing. Moreover, the gene is dominant. This means that a rapidly increasing proportion of children born in the future will have the new trait. By the end of this century the person who walks as we do will be the exception. By the end of the next, the birth of a child with the legs we have considered normal will be an extremely rare event. He or she will in fact be handicapped, because everything will have been adapted to the new trait.
"While we are still seeking to identify with scientific certitude the agent of this genetic mutation, the fact is that it cannot now be reversed. If we were to find the agent tomorrow and remove it from the environment the next day these births would continue. The trait will - not may, not might, but will become the norm. Therefore, as shocking as this news is, we must accept what we cannot change. We must deal with the new realities in a rational and compassionate way. We must prepare a world for future generations whose life will be quite different from what we have accepted for millennia as normal.
"I have asked Rory to help me compose this address to you, and to address you himself this evening. His life has been something of an experience of these new realities. When the doctors told us Rory would be a paraplegic from birth I will confess that his mother and I shared the deepest despair. We could not imagine a good and happy life for him." He looked away from the teleprompter toward his son, in an evident departure from his text. "Now what can I say, except that he makes us so proud ..."
The President choked up and pulled out his handkerchief to wipe the tears from his eyes. Rory guided his father's hand to touch his mother's, stretched across the table toward her husband. The President, regaining his composure almost instantly, simply said, "Rory, you have the floor." Rory's familiar face, featuring huge pale blue eyes set in fair skin and topped by a shock of dark hair, filled half a billion screens as he began, "My fellow Americans..." Suddenly the familiar impish grin broke out as he turned to his father and said, "You were right, Dad. That's a great feeling." Suppressed laughter rippled through the relatives assembled behind him."
"I said no such thing," the President snapped. "Rory, please get on with it."
"Yes, sir. Sorry. I couldn't resist." The remark may indeed have been inappropriate in the utterly serious context of the evening, but the world did exhale and relax. Rory McDonough fixed his open gaze on the unseen billions of people beyond the camera lens and continued.
"When I speak from my own experience I am speaking only for myself. That being said, I will say that having useless legs has never kept me from doing anything I really felt I needed to do. Most of you know, from the movie if nowhere else, that one morning when I was eight years old I left my crutches and braces in my bedroom and never went without my wheelchair again. Many said at the time, and maybe still think today, 'Oh, that poor kid.'
"Let me tell you that it was the most liberating experience of my life. I realized that the only reason I was struggling to walk with crutches was that other people thought I should be walking somehow, so I could be more like them. I was using half my body to haul the other half around, with several pounds of plastic and steel, to minimize their discomfort.
"Once I decided to forget my legs they were no longer a problem to me. If my inability to walk is a problem to other people, that is their problem. I can do everything I feel I need to do. Sometimes I have to do things in a way that might make others feel awkward or embarrassed. That too is their problem. Can I do everything I want to do? Let's be real. Nobody can do everything they might think they want to do. In short, I'm OK. I really am.
"I think everyone must know by now that the day we signed the contract with HBO, Mike decided to quit walking until it we were done with the movie, so he'd know from the inside what my life has been like. Joey soon followed."
YOU ARE READING
IN ONE GENERATION: A Fantasy
Short StoryA third of the way into the twenty-first century an alarming mutation appears in newborns all over the world. This is a story of how the First Family of that time helped the world to deal with the crisis.
