One Hundred

Chapter Two

The separation of the New City from the Old World was not an amicable event. When I was very little, three years old perhaps, we were living on the brink of a war. I have very few memories of that time, of course. I have pieced things together from my mother’s journal, which I found hidden upstairs in our attic, stuffed inside one of her long winter boots. My mother is dead now, as is my father. I keep the diary a secret because speaking of the war is forbidden. To speak of times past is forbidden; we are only allowed to speak of the present and the future.  

 16.01.2—1

I don’t know why I’m writing this down. Is it for myself? Posterity? All I can say is that I have a strange sense of dread and I’m not usually the superstitious type. Writing anything down will endanger whoever finds this, but I am worried that the truth will never get out. Terrible things are happening and I fear for the future.

My name is Michelle K. and I am a biogeneticist. I was awarded a scholarship to work for Dr Xian in the Stellar Institute two years ago. Ju Xian is the most talented and powerful genetics researcher of our time. I would be working with his team to manipulate the genetic code of embryos to ‘enhance’ for various traits. Techniques were quite established when I started working at his lab. There were ten key traits that we were to be looking at: intelligence, hearing, sight, immunity, height, muscle bulk, hair colour, eye colour, metabolism and skin colour. Initial tests on embryos had begun eight years prior.

Our first successfully ten-trait manipulated embryo was implanted into a surrogate very soon after I arrived. This child was a Caucasian male, who was designed to have intelligence in the top centile, due to enhanced and accelerated neuronal development. He would have perfect facial symmetry, height six foot two and grade 3 muscle bulk. The surrogate was a healthy eighteen-year old woman. The genetic material came from two healthy donors.

 Subject 1.0 or, baby Bob as we liked to call him was delivered by caesarean section nine months later. Despite the genetic enhancement, the usual gestational period was still required. At birth, the child looked very much like a normal baby boy but he did have accelerated milestones. Almost immediately after deliver, he was able to fix on distant objects, smile and babble.

 Thus far, Dr Xian’s experiment had been successful. The lab staff breathed a collective sigh of relief. Two months later, the unthinkable happened. Baby Bob died due to brain haemorrhage . An autopsy was performed and the cause of death was a massive bleed in the brain due to accelerated blood vessel development. The blood vessels had essentially grown too quickly compared to the rest of his brain.

 I thought that the embryo experimentation would be shut down after this, but Dr Xian told us that we had unrestricted funding from the armed forces and the genetic enhancement experiments were to continue.  

A further two subjects were born and bled into their brain, this time one month after birth. Again, we were told to continue on as if nothing had happened. Me and probably a quarter of the researchers no longer agree with the direction in which the experiments are going. The biggest problem at the moment is how on earth do I leave?

According to the map in the journal, the Old World and the New City were then simply east and west of a land called NeaArchea. Soon, the East and West did separate and acquired different leaders. President Browne governed the progressive East whereas the in the more conservative West leadership was given to Carson, who was in fact, the opposition leader. Debate raged. President Carson, advised that we had made the ‘morally, ethically and spiritually correct decision by not subjecting ourselves and our children to the human rights violations of eugenetics.’ Meanwhile, President Browne had a vision to ‘genetically enhance each individual, animal and plant for the future glory of mankind’. At the time that the press heard of the death of baby Bob, six thousand surrogate mothers had volunteered with violent enthusiasm to give birth to the next generation of ten trait enhanced children.

The Old World leaders declared that the New City was playing God; that their genetic experiments would lead to the demise of civilisation. The New City retorted that the Old World was obstructive; that the demise of civilisation would result from rejecting scientific progress. The next news clipping showed that on a brisk November morning, that year, President Carson died. He was travelling together with ten of his cabinet members to visit President Browne for negotiations, when his sky commuter crashed into a tree, killing all ten inside. He was immediately replaced by his brother, the Vice President. The following day, the Old World discovered that it had been sold in its entirety to the New City for the alleged debts that the deceased President had incurred. The citizens of the Old World are still paying off those alleged debts to this very day.