The Darwin Variant

by Kenneth Johnson

  I fell squarely in the keep-your-head-down, nose-to-the-grindstone category, as did many middle-class, middle-of-the-road people like myself. I was pleased with the new attention that my plant was receiving and the modest financial bonus I’d been given. My chewed thumbnail was actually healing up.

  When Rupert Green arrived in my office with his two assistants on the day of his tour, he found a lightly toasted poppy seed bagel with cream cheese awaiting him. My research had determined his favorite. He was pleased. Of course, I had a small selection of other bagels for his attendants.

  I had been showing Mr. Green the new construction designed to increase the plant’s output. As we came out from one of the concrete buildings and through a stand of stainless steel pipes, I saw ahead of us two women who had arrived to join the expedition. They were conversing outside one of the noisy heat converter units: three stories of pipes, junctions, and filters. Like ourselves, they were wearing yellow hard hats, which clashed considerably with their clothing. Dr. Lauren Fletcher was typically elegant in a tailored navy blue suit. I didn’t know the other woman who was middle-aged, Hispanic, and wore a dress Simone would’ve liked with a tiny print of pink roses. She stood solidly with a thoroughly professional air, chatting confidently with Dr. Fletcher.

  One odd thing that surprised me was how Mr. Green’s corporate leadership persona instantly melted away as soon as we caught sight of them. He became subservient, meek, toward Dr. Fletcher. As though he were considerably inferior.

  Mr. Green smiled, even bowed slightly, as we approached them. He said to me, “Nobel laureate Dr. Fletcher you know, of course, as does the world.” I greeted her. “And this is Shelly Navarro, a brilliant biochemist that we’ve been lucky enough to lure away from her sterling work with the school district. She’s going to oversee production here at Everett.”

  I’d heard through the grapevine that I might be getting some sort of new supervisor, which was worrisome. I’d quietly enjoyed my position at the top of the Everett organizational chart since our president had just resigned over some hush-hush conflict with the BioTeck board. I’d been hoping to be promoted to his job. Nonetheless I greeted her cordially, “Ms. Navarro.”

  I was rewarded by a warm handshake and smile. “Oh, Shelly, please.” But her intonation expressed that I should always remember she was Ms. Navarro.

  Shelly Navarro. . .

  When Clarence Frederick turned his attention back to Lauren, he missed my careful assessment of him. I’d never had much patience for men or interest in personal involvements, but many intriguing new ideas and horizons were opening up to me since I’d eaten the strawberries and achieved some corporate power.

  Getting involved with the Friends, which led to this prestigious Everett job and the stock options that accompanied it, had also provided a welcome uptick on my financial future.

  VIA BioTeck Industries SEES [Secure Encrypted Email Server]

  From: Clarence Frederick [Sr. VP Everett Biochemical Div]

  To: Rupert Green [Exec Sec, BA Board], Shelly Navarro [Sr. Everett Prod Mgr]

  Date: 02/27/21 09:27PM

  Subject: Current Profit Analysis, AIDS Vaccine

  Dear Mr. Green and Ms. Navarro,

  Again, let me say what a pleasure it was to escort the two of you around Everett last week. Per your request, please see the attached 7-page PDF detailing the most recent P&L status on the HIV/AIDS vaccine. As you will see from the thorough analytical review that I’ve conducted, the net profit income is nothing short of staggering. The worldwide demand for the vaccine is so overwhelming that—even at the extremely reduced price we decided upon—our profit margin vs R & D costs is an astounding 1,747 percent.

  That of course does not include the enormous international public relations value, which has skyrocketed the market value of Everett’s and BioTeck Industries’ stock through the roof. I’m hoping that our stockholders—particularly the principals, including Dr. Fletcher, Mr. Mitchell, Rev. Brown, and of course yourselves—are pleased.

  Personally, I am extraordinarily gratified to have been helpful in this venture, and I assure you that all of us here at Everett will continue to serve BioTeck Industries and our Friends in every way beneficial to our cause.

  Respectfully,

  Clarence Frederick

  SVP Everett Biochemical

  A BioTeck Industries Company

  Courtesy FBI, Clarence Frederick

  Dr. R.W. Hutcherson. . .

  Dominance in sexuality increasingly became a key issue in our personal lives. Some of us A’s sought equally dominant mates because of their matching intelligence and common drives. But that also meant that sex between us could take on an aggressive, competitive nature, even pushing pleasure to the very brink of ecstatic pain. Lauren and I ultimately became that kind of pairing, though our relationship took several months to fully mount up.

  Lauren later told me how she’d been attracted right off by my “smarts and Montana cowboy looks.” Well shucks, thank you kindly, ma’am. She admitted how she’d carefully set out to gain my allegiance by moving in measured increments. I’d seen plenty of wolves do that out on the plains. She also knew Susan and I’d had a thing. And that I looked like a shitkicker all right, but I was nobody’s fool. She never said it, but I was pretty sure she thought since I’d gotten the gift, my mental chops were right up there, close to rivaling her own.

  I felt her vibe from that first night I got dosed, but for quite a spell I held out hopes that Susan would reconsider, come back onto the reservation, take the virus herself, and join me among the Friends. But as weeks went by without Susan returning, my focus slowly shifted. I was plenty aware that the world had changed and so had I. For the far better.

  I had diminishing patience with folks who weren’t A’s. I felt evermore entitled to what Reverend Brown kept repeating was our destiny because of our natural superiority. It was seductive, made a guy pretty heady to know how smart and savvy he was, how he could think circles around most everyone he came across—even a lot of the other A’s. Some of ’em were übermoral or religious types who let that inbred superstitious dogma hold ’em back from being all they could’ve been. But I was wise enough to know there’d always be a bell curve, a spectrum of personalities and of natural drives even among the Friends. All the Friends were leaders, yes; all relatively equal, more or less; but a lucky few of us knew that we were definitely on the more side.

  Lauren and Mitchell wisely drew me into their highest inner circle, invited my ideas, and received ’em with the gratitude and respect they sure as hell deserved. That’s what led to me going a giant step past Lauren’s work on the HIV cure and figuring how to make the sucker work.

  Okay, so Lauren and me: I’d never been into older women, and she had a good dozen years on me, but I was increasingly flattered by this good-looking, brilliant woman who was also at the top of the power structure. When she carefully orchestrated the timing one night and invited my intimate favors, I readily capitulated.

  I was pleased to discover that underneath those stylish duds was a silky, very well-cared-for body. And we were good together. That first time was like a couple of hot kids really getting it on in a barn loft. After that we got into some extremely sophisticated activities. We worked our way slowly and delectably through the entire Kama Sutra. Our sexuality sometimes reminded me of my Montana rodeo days, only this time I was often the bull being ridden.

  I realized, like so many others who got the gift, that it wasn’t just my brainpower that had ramped way up; my sexual appetite and prowess had been increased exponentially by it also. Even the enjoyment and intensity of Lauren wasn’t enough. I frequently sought and relished the pleasure of other women, being careful to keep such hookups from Lauren’s attention. I was fairly certain that Lauren was also enjoying intimacy with Bradford Mitchell.

  After that annoying Nobel ceremony, Mitchell had flown back to the States, leaving Lauren and me to handle the glad-handing afterward. I played my part, but was
plenty ticked off by how she’d sucked up all the accolades for the HIV/AIDS cure. She nurtured the idea it had mostly been her doing and barely mentioned how I was the one who’d made the critical breakthrough. Would’ve been nice if she’d given me more credit, but totally in character that she hadn’t.

  When we got back to her suite overlooking the night-lights of Stockholm harbor, she was charged up more than I’d ever seen her and came on strong. She was unquenchable, and we had us one intense night even as my anger kept percolating higher and higher. Our back and forth encounter heated up volcanically to where she actually sank her teeth into my arm so deep that she drew blood. I slapped her. But she slugged me right back with her fist so damn hard I saw stars. We grabbed each other’s shoulders and dug our fingers in deep and painfully, holding ourselves at arm’s length with teeth bared, breathing hard and furious, neither giving an inch, fiery eyes glaring.

  Ah, the private lives of our master race.

  Security-Cam Video, Private Residential; Case 71743-AB; Date: 03/01/21 Time: 20:37:32

  Address: 69 Granville Dr., Atlanta, GA 30318

  Loc: Brown Estate Master Bedroom

  Cams # 13, 14, 15

  Transcript by: ATL PD-#65420

  Visual Desc: Low light. Cam 13 shows wide view of master bedroom with Victorian furnishings, framed wall mirrors, small lights on night tables beside king-size four-poster bed. Cams 14, 15 show closer views of bed. On the bed on her back is young Asian American girl (name withheld; see case file), age 14 years, 7 months. A very thin sheet covers her but she is apparently nude beneath. One end of a silk scarf tied to her right wrist, the other end tied loosely to top right bedpost. She appears groggy. Drugs later found on premises: flunitrazepam (Rohypnol), also called roofies; gamma hydroxybutyric acid (GHB), also called liquid ecstasy; and ketamine, also called Special K. Collectively: Date rape drugs. Large nude male enters in silhouette from bathroom to right of bed. He moves into closer range of Cam 14. — Positive ID: Reverend Dr. Abraham Brown.

  Courtesy ATL PD, FBI

  Katie McLane. . .

  Eric, Susan, and her growing group of scientists and sympathizers had all been wonderful to me. I loved ’em for treating me like family, but it didn’t make up for the loss of my own. Or my best friend, Darren. A few times when I was feeling super homesick, I snuck out of Eric’s at night and rode his bike through back streets over to the neighborhood where my dad lived with his girlfriend, Tina. I just sat in the tree-shadowed park across the street and looked at their house. Twice I saw him come home and get out of his car. I wanted so bad to go talk to him. I missed the dad he’d been, the dad I used to walk with, holding hands, my stable father who provided the solidity that my frazzled mother never could muster. But because he was infected with the virus now, I knew I couldn’t. My eyes got all blurry as he went into the house. Sometimes I heard him shout at Tina, mad about something.

  The final time I went was a whole lot scarier.

  When I got to the park, I could see him inside through their bedroom window, yelling angrily at Tina. He grabbed at her. She shoved him hard and ran out of sight. Then through the living room window, I saw where he caught up to her really furiously. He ripped her shirt, and when she struggled, he slapped her hard. But Tina came right back at him with a brutal heel-palm to his nose that knocked him backward over a chair as she screamed at him, “What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand?!”

  He was dazed and trying to stand up, but she picked up a wine bottle, smashed it against the side of his head. He went down harder as she grabbed her coat and came blowing out the front door and down to her little Chevy Volt parked in front.

  That’s when I noticed another car farther up the street, behind Tina’s back, start to roll forward. It was weird that the car’s headlights were off. I watched it bear down the windy street and realized it was heading right toward Tina, who was standing beside her car, struggling with her keys.

  I shouted, “Tina! Look out! Look out!”

  She spun around, saw the danger at the last second, and dived onto the back of her Volt as the speeding car sideswiped the Chevy and sped away.

  Tina slid off the back of her damaged car, very shaken, but looked over at me as I said, “Are you okay?”

  With my brown pixie hair she didn’t recognize me at first. “. . . Katie?”

  I motioned her to be quiet, and she hurried over to the shadowy park, whispering, “Oh, honey. I’ve been so worried about you. Are you okay? What’re you doing here?”

  I glanced at the house to be sure my dad wasn’t watching. “I just come to look sometimes.”

  She gave me a long hug. “Oh sweetheart, I’m so sorry about . . . everything.” I knew she wasn’t just talking about Dad being one of them, but also about him being with her. “Please tell me you’re not living on the street. Do you need anything? Some money or—”

  I told her I was all right, but not to tell my dad she’d seen me. She said she wouldn’t be living there or even talking to him anymore. But something else was bothering me. “Tina . . . it all happened so fast that I can’t be sure, but I thought that the driver of that car might have been—”

  “Your mother.” She nodded regretfully. “She tried something like this once before.”

  “Oh my God . . .”

  “Yeah. It’s awful. All of it. I don’t know what the rest of us are gonna do.”

  “I’m with some really good people who’re trying to figure it out.”

  She had fished out a card with her cell number on it. “Well, tell ’em to call me if I can help. And you for sure. Please. Twenty-four/seven.” I nodded thanks and pulled my coat around me as she said, “Can I take you someplace, honey?”

  “No, I’m good. But please be careful, Tina.”

  “You, too. And Katie”—she paused, pressed my hand—“. . . thanks.”

  Our gazes held for a moment, then I headed quickly away across the dark park.

  19

  ADVANCEMENTS

  Dr. Susan Perry. . .

  From the beginning the Friends had been very shrewd. By early March the streets of Atlanta and other Georgia cities hadn’t really seemed to change that much. Daffodils bloomed and people went about their daily lives more or less as usual. Like Reverend Brown had counseled, there had been no apparent usurpation of power, no startling Kristallnacht like Germany in 1938. The state government was simply “more unified” than ever in its history. They eased a lot of workplace regulations, so much that industries and manufacturing thrived, new operations came into Georgia. Yes, fewer regulations resulted in several disastrous incidents where tainted food made lots of people dangerously ill. Yes, fewer safety inspections led to workplace fires leaving many badly burned victims, or on-the-job accidents where others were permanently injured or even killed. But such incidents seemed to be dwindling in number—or at least reports of them were. Local news outlets became far more focused on bringing us cheerful, lightweight stories, and the really excellent news about how Georgia was quickly outpacing California and becoming the place to be as far as businesses were concerned.

  My friend Nate and other journalists complained we were all facing death by a thousand tweets. It had become the go-to way of getting out anyone’s message—whether true or false—with almost no pushback by more knowledgeable sources. Honest truth telling had been undercut by constant barrages of retweets from lawmakers, police, and other authorities. There was such a tsunami of social media blather, untrue “facts,” and outright gaslighting that most of the unsuspecting public was completely confused about whom to trust and what exactly to believe. Antigovernment or antipolice messages got quickly scrubbed. Nate said a lie could fly around the whole state—or even the world—before the truth even got its shoes tied.

  That was particularly true because some of the higher-ups in usually reliable media sources had secretly been corrupted by the CAV-B virus themselves. The most important dedicated reporters who did hold out and fought back got nasty threats.
Many had been forced to leave their jobs, even go underground for their and their families’ safety. Nate shared many articles and blogs with us that he and other journalists had put out on clandestine sites in an effort to counteract the generalized whitewashing of truth. But the Friends kept a weather eye out for all such “rogue” voices and often managed to crush them as soon as they were discovered. Worst of all, a few determined investigative reporters like Nate had “accidents.” One died from a mysterious toxic substance.

  But like the state’s promo said: “The grass is greener in Georgia!” I knew that in parts of the state where comet fragments had fallen, the grass was literally greener. But most importantly there were jobs. That’s what people cared about most. There were many new job opportunities and retraining programs for people who had been left behind the technological curve.

  Many of the jobs were sparked by amazing inventions. Beyond the HIV/AIDS cure, Georgians had suddenly parented and patented startling innovations: Murray Grenwald’s new hydrogen battery was more reliable than lithium-ion and cheaper; the Perini Compound—a Teflon-type substance—reduced friction to near the vanishing point, allowing the creation of ultra-efficient machinery like frictionless bearings. And those fostered the creation of lightweight turbines, which were set to revolutionize aircraft engines. There were even prototypes of automotive vehicles equipped with Perini turbines to let them go airborne. The Georgia State Patrol had begun equipping special squad cars with the turbines. They were called ARPCs, airborne recon patrol craft. The media also enthusiastically covered a new type of weaponry developed from Jefferson Boswell’s startling invention of the JB Capacitor. Trade named El-Stat, it discharged a burst of electrostatic energy the size of a pea that could shock and disable a person. Handheld El-Stats were coming into police use. Larger versions capable of firing golf ball–sized charges that could disable a vehicle were being mounted on some of the GSP’s Perini patrol cars.

  And in an ever-so-friendly manner, the ranks of law enforcement personnel continued expanding. At first, most people didn’t even realize that there were a lot more police around, and if they did, they’d say: “It’s a good thing. Look how much calmer the streets are now. If only they’d been here before.” Well, now they were. And playing rougher. All across the state.