Amygdala Hijack - A Genetic Engineering Sci-Fi Story of Impending Dystopia

EP. 1 - LAST DAYS

"TO MY LOYAL LISTENERS."

Peter's left hand shook on the old sound mixer. He was unaccustomed to this – thinking about what he would say while managing the audio engineering that Molli always handled.

"Molli," he interjected with a moan, finding it hard to grasp he was back on air. "Forgive the sound quality. She's not here, and perhaps not with us at all. I'm having to go it alone on this freezing Cambridge morning in late October 2037. This podcast is live and being stored or played out on a server somewhere, I hope. Storage is a thing for future uses and likely matters no longer to no human; well, possibly alien archivers, assuming they ever get here. To those of you with grid power who still retain an Internet connection, you can guess what I'm about to say – but please stick with me through this last show of our series."

A lamp crashed behind him, and he spun around to be sure nobody was entering his garage studio. He apologized.

"Sorry about that. Shaky ground here with buildings coming down. You understand all too well."

He stopped for a moment, noticing his hand smeared a streak of crimson across the mixer. "Crap, I'm bleeding somewhere, or it's someone else's blood. I can't tell any longer."

Reaching for Molli's beloved red spiral binder, he opened it to her final entry.

"I appreciate those of you who sent in questions and comments from prior calls. Molli wrote them down, and I'll try to get to them if I'm not rudely interrupted."

He turned his leather swivel chair to the side and closed his eyes, then forced himself back to his microphone.

"You have been the greatest to me and to my friends come and gone, like Molli and Ears. Loved that guy. Lost another love yesterday to radicalized mechs, as if there's any other kind. But we who still breathe have lost many."

Tears streamed down his face and plopped onto the desk.

"I'll do the best I can despite a world boiled like a Fenway Frank in utter death and disarray. This is my last podcast and likely one of the last podcasts of humankind. Yesterday, I streamed the other final interviews from our series – Brokers, Hats, and Stoicholic. They're playing on any server I could find that was still working, or they're lost in the ether that was humanity. Either way, it was a great four years before it unraveled, and I'd be nowhere without you. You were my sustenance and kept me going. But I'll make it through. As my grandma used to say: 'Buckle down, face the cold wind, pitch your last pitch and make it a fastball.'"

He clicked on his tablet to run the Uncovering Science Podcast ten-second lead-in jingle.

"That's the last time we'll be forced to suffer that stupid guitar riff Molli liked. Her old boyfriend made it, the idiot. Well, at least he's likely gone, too. You don't hit a woman, ever, but then, I suppose all the idiots are dead or soon will be."

The jingle stopped, and there was a moment of silence.

"I'll start from the top, as I used to do, as if nothing is different. So here we go."

Grabbing his sweat-stained Red Sox cap, Peter placed it brim-backward on his balding head, then took a deep breath.

"Hello fans of all things science and tech. This is the Uncovering Science Podcast with your host Peter Scott, and today we will discuss the end of the world and how we got here."

He emitted an accidental laugh that emerged from somewhere below his diaphragm.

"What was that old song from the late 1990s? Something about this being the end of the world as we know it? I can't recall. Please bear with me. I need to take a swig."