One night he doesn’t come home. I watch the news on the projector. There was an anti-splicing protest in Shenzhen that afternoon, and fourteen protesters were arrested by the Chinese police. The protesters are being held overnight for questioning.
I go to the wardrobe and take out all of Gen’s belongings: clothes, shoes, palm-computer, earpieces. I put everything into a suitcase and leave it in the hallway outside the apartment.
When I get home from work the next day, the suitcase is gone. In its place is a red cap, propped against the door. Gen doesn’t return. I put the cap in the bin.
2126 AD
My failure is plastered across the newsblogs for all to see.
HORIZON GROUP BLUNDER: THREE YEAR OLDS FAIL IQ TEST
Private research giant Horizon Group’s genetic modifications at the East Hong Kong Children’s Center have backfired in an embarrassing turn of events. The three-year-old children with Horizon’s upgrade have tested nearly 4 IQ points lower than comparable cohorts. The modification was designed to increase children’s intelligence, but appears to have had the opposite effect. This news has shocked the Hong Kong community and the Chinese government.
“This grave mistake will jeopardize the comfortable advantage that Horizon Group has held in winning government contracts over the past decade,” says scientific adviser Professor Xi.
My name is not mentioned in the article, but it’s enough to make me burn with humiliation. I can’t read on. I dig my palms into my eyes, hard enough that white flashes of light sear my vision. Shame crackles on my skin. How could this have happened? We’d spent a year reviewing the literature, a year running computer simulations, and another year testing the modification in simians. It was supposed to be another triumph for Horizon Group.
One of my research assistants has already scrutinized the study and sent us a deflated video message. The results of the intelligence test are unequivocal. On average, the three year olds with the modification introduced by Horizon Group tested 3.7 points lower than children at the Northern and Western Centers, and 3.4 points lower than children in previous cohorts. Our only hope is that they might make up the lost points later in childhood. It’s a thin hope.
The receptionist is doing her coffee rounds. She pauses over me. “Lian? What will you have today?”
I pull my face out of my hands. “It’s the same fucking order every day, Ming.”
A colleague at the desk next to me glances across, her lips pressed tightly together. I say nothing. Is there anyone here who isn’t incompetent? Ming stands still for a moment, eyes shining with hurt, and then moves on. When she delivers my coffee ten minutes later, she plonks it down hard enough that foam scatters all over my desk.
I open the folders that contain our simulations and play them, one by one. I scan the permutations and combinations until my eyes are dry. I compare the code to the prototype derived from the research literature. I examine the stitch-points where the spliced codons are brought together.
I’m not sure what I’m looking for. It seems impossible that we could’ve made a mistake. Each of the doctorate students checked the sequence a hundred times. The outcome has to be an anomaly: a completely unpredictable culmination of multiple interactions. A stroke of fucking bad luck.
As I load another simulation, the computer freezes. A fragmented tangle of code spasms on my projector. I can’t believe it. I’m working at Horizon Group with the latest model CPUs and displays. We’re not supposed to have glitches. Blinding heat floods my body, and I’m transformed into a being of light and color, without sound, without thought.
A moment later, I return to my senses. My hands are sore, and my colleagues are staring at me. I glance down. The computer keyboard is broken: the middle split by a crack, and several buttons artfully sprinkled around it. I flex and curl my fingers, unsure if they belong to me.
A chime sounds in my earpiece, followed by a gentle, automated voice. Lian, please attend Project Director Song’s office.
The wary eyes of three dozen scientists follow me as I walk toward the Director’s office. Their fear and pity sicken me. No one says a thing.
Director Song tells me to take the rest of the day off.
My cheeks burn. Leaving work early is a sign of weakness. “I’m not sick, Director,” I say. “And I hope I can prove to you that I’m not incompetent.”
“No one here considers you incompetent, Lian. We all know you’re one of our most dedicated researchers. But you’ve worked hard enough today. There will be more work in the next few days, as we come under increased scrutiny. Rest and prepare yourself.”
“I don’t need to rest.”
“Lian. You bit off poor Ming’s head, and you smashed a computer. Right now, the office is terrified of you. You are not a charged battery. You’re like a six or seven percent—and that’s being generous. Take the afternoon off. Here.” The Director swipes at an icon, and a brief melody sounds in my earpiece. “I’ve given you two vouchers for a nice meal in Tsim Sha Tsui. Take someone out for dinner. Eat, drink. Relax.”
“Director, I’d much rather—”
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” says my boss, and turns away to answer a call on her earpiece. I’m dismissed.
In the end, I eat alone. The vouchers are for a lavish restaurant on the eighth floor of Millennium Tower. The diners are a mix of local businessmen and white tourists. I’m seated at a cloth-draped table, on a plush chair, in front of a floor-to-ceiling window that overlooks Victoria Harbour. Late afternoon sunlight coats the water with sparkling diamonds. Cargo ships move ponderously through the dock, bleating in low tunes.
I order a banquet for myself and my imaginary date. Savory snake soup, roast goose with crispy skin, lobster noodles swimming in sauce, chewy phoenix talons, and delicate dumplings bursting with oily soup. Suddenly, I am ravenous. I can’t remember the last time I ate such flavorsome food. The indulgence feels seductive, hedonistic, primal. I imagine how I must look to the other diners: a lone Chinese woman, tearing meat off the bone with her hands, crunching tendons between her teeth, slavering and licking her fingers, spilling sauce down the front of her satin shirt.
After lunch, I walk the old streets behind the glamorous new buildings. Here, the sidewalks carry cracks from a century ago, and loose garbage blusters in forgotten alleys. I have a vague memory of walking here as a child with my classmates, parading in two neat lines, shepherded by schoolteachers. I remember eating fresh egg tarts with Jingfei and Chao and Gen—the bliss of that first bite into the sweet, gooey pastry; the warmth of the last swallow sitting in our bellies for the rest of the day.
A handful of people walk past me hastily, in the opposite direction. Two women pause. “Don’t go that way,” they say. “There’s a protest in the square.”
“OK,” I say, and keep walking.
In less than a minute I’m at the square. A crowd of thirty or so people with thin red armbands are marching around, waving homemade signs. REPRODUCTION IS OUR RIGHT. FREEDOM FROM SPLICING. REAL BABIES NOT JIGSAW BABIES. HORIZON GROUP VOLIATES OUR CHILDREN.
They’re protesting tailored reproduction. I feel a rush of embarrassment for them. What a hotchpotch of characters: young and old, in scruffy clothing. One of their signs has a spelling mistake. Some of them have brought children, who scamper around with little signs. I suspect these are natural-born children, and I observe them with fascination. They each orbit their own adult. The parent-child bond is surprisingly easy to pick out.
It won’t be long before the police arrive. Most of the time, the police let protesters go about their business as long as they’re peaceful.
The protesters light a fire in a metal trash can. One of the leaders, a man in a checkered shirt, tears up articles and newspapers and feeds the fire with scraps of paper. He yells out broad sentiments that make little sense to me. I suspect he is destroying printed copies of scientific studies. I almost laugh aloud at the irony of trying to destroy something intellectual, electronic, and abstract, wit
h a physical act.
A group of young men and women, university students by their demeanor, enter the square. One of them must have made a remark to the protesters, because suddenly the two groups are facing each other. Fists tighten and lips curl. The man in the checkered shirt pushes one of the young men in the chest. There is a scuffle.
“Hey!” I shout, walking over. “Break that up or I’ll call the police!”
The man in the checkered shirt rounds upon me. “Back off, mutated bitch.”
“How dare you speak to a lady like that!” says a young man.
Checkered-shirt peers at the pin on my collar and spits at my feet. “She’s one of them mad scientists fucking up the next generation. She gets no respect from me.”
“Don’t think she cares about the respect of mongrels,” sneers the young man.
A young woman casts her eye over the scrappy mob of protesters. “Disgusting. Bringing natural-born babies into the world. I hope we breed you out in twenty years.”
Another protester, a man with a bulbous nose, lunges at her with fists outstretched. His face is a contorted, ugly mask of fury. A friend pulls the young woman out of harm’s way just in time. Two more friends leap at the bulbous-nosed man. Screams erupt. The two groups have melded into one. I spin around, disorientated. Where did all these people come from? There must be a hundred people in the square!
Someone barrels into me, knocking the air from my lungs. I’m on the ground, knees scraping the concrete. Winded, I drag myself to my feet and search for a way out. I’m surrounded by crying children and wrestling adults.
“Don’t let them get away!” A young man in a university sweater points across the square. “That one tried to punch Yu An.”
“Police will get ’em.”
“Don’t see police here, do you? Come on!”
I’m caught up in the chase. The protesters scatter, but we pursue a handful of them into the darkening streets. I’m running elbow to elbow with the young people, like a pack of wolves, cold wind in our faces. We’re on the heels of three of them, but they split up. We corner one in a blind alley.
It’s the man who lunged at the young woman. He looks to be in his forties, with a leathered complexion. He wears a woolen beanie and a T-shirt that’s too long for his stocky frame. I marvel at his nose, which is swollen with tumorous growths. It’s large enough to be two noses. No spliced child would have such a defect. A wave of repulsion sweeps over me.
“What’s this?” he sneers. “A citizen’s arrest?”
“Prison’s too good for you,” hisses a young man next to me. “You’re a natural-born, no doubt, judging by that beautiful face.”
The man sticks his chin out. “Proud to be. What’s it to you?”
“Scum,” the young man snarls. “No wonder you’re violent and crude.”
“You animals should be exiled,” another says. “You want to drag China back into the dark days.”
He shrugs, but his eyes are wary. “We just want to be free to have our own families.”
“You really want to pass your genes on to a poor child?” someone snaps, and I realize it is me.
Beneath that ridiculous woolen beanie, his expression remains lofty. “Better mine than yours.”
A woman slaps him across the cheek. He stumbles back against the wall, more out of surprise than pain. Before he can react, someone else kicks him in the gut. He drops to his knees. The beanie falls off, revealing a patchy head of hair that reminds me of the simians in our laboratory. Suddenly, he seems such a pathetic and useless creature. A glitch in the course of humanity.
White heat floods my body, the color of euphoria or rage.
I stumble backward. Around me, the youths are shouting, but I can’t make sense of what they’re saying. My hands sting and throb. The smells of tinny blood and sour urine fill my throat, and I retch.
The man is crumpled on the ground. A patch of urine stains the front of his trousers. Bloods pours from a gash on his brow and from his slack mouth. I can’t remember if he was missing teeth before. I notice, with an eerie clarity, that his shoes have fallen off and his socks do not match. One is navy and one is black.
“Get out of here!” someone shouts, and my legs obey. I flee through the narrow streets, terrified to look back. My face feels frozen, like the painted wooden masks used in opera shows. I find a subway entrance and stumble down into its tunnels. Everyone is staring at me. They must know what sort of person I am, and what I’ve done, and what I’ve become.
On the train home, all I can see are the man’s mismatched socks, poking out from his trouser legs. Navy and black, alike but not identical. I cover my face and begin to cry—harsh, hard sobs that shake me to the core.
* * *
It’s funny how things from your childhood look older and smaller when you come back to visit.
The East Hong Kong Children’s Center has always been a vast, impenetrable presence in my mind. But now, the square building peppered with hundreds of square windows seems forlorn rather than forbidding. The walls are weather-stained. The once-red sign cresting the tower is bleached to a salmon pink. As I step through the revolving doors, my shoes trace a threadbare trail in the rug.
The foyer hasn’t been updated since its inception. On the walls hang photographs of Hong Kong’s cityscape in 1920, 1980, 2010, 2065. The lemony smell of air freshener wafts to my nose, and the scent makes my heart ache. Is this stagnant, faceless place really where I came from? I imagine myself, framed and hung on the wall: Hong Kong, 2089.
The receptionist seems kind. I give her my name, and the reason for my visit, and she flicks a moving map onto my palm-computer.
“Follow the yellow line,” she says.
I walk down gray corridors that are both strange and familiar. Unease fills my bones, a quiet itch on the skin of my soul. The place feels haunted. The childhood spirits of myself, Gen, Jingfei, Chao, Suyin, still dwell here. I try to remind myself that I don’t believe in ghosts.
Children’s chatter reaches my ears. As I turn the corner, I see a class of seven or eight year olds in a courtyard garden, studying plants through their augmented reality glasses. Four schoolteachers guard them like lampposts. I watch them for a while, wondering about their genetic heritage, wondering if anyone has told them that, in a few years, they will be taken into nurses’ offices and doctors’ surgeries for unspoken procedures. The children clump into groups, heads together, chatting eagerly, then break apart and scamper around, only to reform in new clusters. They look happy.
I take an elevator to the third floor and walk across to the staff wing. The yellow line leads me to an empty cafeteria. The noise of clanging pots echoes from the kitchen, where the chefs must be preparing lunch. I pick a path between the scattered tables and chairs and reach the glass doors on the far side of the cafeteria.
The doors open onto a neatly tended garden balcony. Sunshine presses vibrant warmth to my face. Between potted hibiscus and flowing moneywort, a woman in a brown silk dress sits with her back to me, gazing out over the sprawling, steaming city. Her gray hair trails in a braid down her back.
As I approach, I see that the woman is carrying a baby in her arms. She sways, ever so slightly, and hums under her breath. The tune freezes me in my tracks. I stand still, absorbing the low, soft notes. The melody wraps me in a bubble of safety. Suddenly, everything falls into place. The bright sun, drawing life into my skin, drawing color forth from the pink hibiscus. The clanking city, shrinking into smallness beneath me. My birth mother, within arm’s reach, aged and beautiful.
I must have made a noise, because Deepa turns around. Her face has grown thinner in the last twenty years; her body has grown softer and plumper. The baby is a tiny thing, swaddled in cloth and nestled firmly in her arms. On her left wrist is the jade bracelet that I chose in a perfunctory manner from a vendor twenty years ago.
“Lian,” she says at once, her face full of astonishment.
She never expected to see me again. She didn�
��t believe that I would come to visit her. None of the others returned to the Center. For the first time, I glimpse the sort of grief a mother feels when a child abandons her. The sadness is a punch to the gut.
I kneel at her feet. Deepa watches me, a question in her eyes, saying nothing. I remember my coldness and condescension at seventeen, and I’m ashamed.
I want to confess my sins, but I don’t think she would look at me with love if she knew the person I am now. I wonder if she once held me as tenderly as she is holding the infant in her arms. Then, I realize that she must have. Quiet tears trek down my cheeks, and a strange peace spreads within me.
With trembling fingers, I touch the bracelet on her wrist and grasp her arthritic hand. Her fingers curl gently around mine. Her knuckles are swollen and stiff. I press my forehead to the back of her hand.
“I’m sorry,” I say, unable to meet her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
I wonder if I should explain what I’m apologizing for, but I can’t put it into words. It doesn’t seem to matter, anyway. Deepa rests her gnarled hand on my brow, smoothing away my sins.
* * *
The taxi car is stuck in traffic.
I don’t mind. I lean back against the leather seat and gaze out of the window. Glassy skyscrapers climb into the clouds. Animated billboards proclaim the wonders of a new skin revitalization cream, and the ecstasies of the latest virtual reality game, and the necessity of purchasing authentic sapphire jewelry for your loved ones. Pedestrians weave through the traffic, glued to their eyepieces and earpieces, guided by their internal autopilot. Hong Kong has a mad, busy beauty to it.
The dashboard chimes. “Apologies for the delay, Lian. Would you like me to search for an alternative route?”
“No, it’s fine.”
“Staying on course,” says the car. “Would you like to listen to music or a webcast to pass the time?”
Grace Chan Page 4