Emeros X

Day 3.2

Richard’s face was blanched. Erin could feel her tongue getting dry. She swallowed, hard.

“Richard, they don’t make placebos. Why would they?”

“In this case, you were a test subject. My dad must’ve tampered with what pills you were supposed to get somehow.”

“Why?”

“He didn’t want me with someone, like you,” Richard looked down, as if he was at fault. He opened his center console, finding a folded up article and flattening it out in between them. He pointed to the title:

            FINANCIAL CLASS: NEW VARIABLE IN LOVE

“It means that people are meant to be with others in the same class as them. The wealthy marry the wealthy just as much as the poor marry the poor.”

“That doesn’t make sense. We all take the same test.”

“Well, the analysis doesn’t exactly work the same if you were to cheat on the test.”

Richard began to explain what he had done the day of the test. Instead of answering the questions about himself, he answered how he wanted himself to answer. He said he remembered sitting in the room and looking around, especially at the other wealthy kids in the room. If someone was to simply look in the room, there’s no way to tell who was wealthier if they solely looked at the students’ appearances. Except Richard could tell; he could tell in a second. The wealthier were genetically modified. All of them were a certain kind of build, neither tall nor short, never wiry or obese. Most had perfectly straight hair, like silk, with only the children of the eccentric well-to-do families having curly hair, and just barely. They all had bright blue or green eyes, the kind old love poems devoted lines to.

 Richard hated this. He hated every single one of the girls that all looked exactly the same, bright eyes, perfectly white teeth to match a perfectly straight smile, all paired with the same body. He hated the boys more. In the locker room with their backs facing the wall, you couldn’t tell one guy from the next unless you knew what his hair looked like. Even then, you could be wrong. Richard hated that he was one of them, that he looked exactly like the rest of the people in the room.

“Wait, you’re genetically modified?”

“It was originally intended to combat diseases, but when the wealthy found out it could alter appearances, appearances they didn’t like in themselves, well, they jumped at the chance to have attractive children.”

“But if they’ve been doing this since before your parents were born, wouldn’t you have already been born looking like that?”

“No. Genes take generations to do that. The wealthy are always looking to spend money. What’s a few extra thousand going to do? Especially when it guarantees the type of child they want.”

Erin was stuck. She hadn’t noticed that the wealthy kids always looked similar. Then again, she was hardly ever in the same classes as them. They were all in accelerated learning classes, classes that were different from simple advanced classes. The teachers were always older and from what Erin heard, all of them had special degrees.