by Pam Uphoff
At home, the TV was on, some girly show his sisters loved. "I'm home." They ignored him. Old enough to catch the flack about the unacceptable older brother, too young to really think it through. Desperate to separate themselves from him, to be accepted by their peers as normal.
I understand wanting to be normal.
He tossed his backpack into his room, and raided the fridge for food. Peanut butter and jelly, glass of milk. Everything else was fresh veggies and tofu. And Mom had complained about having to buy him cow’s milk. She wouldn't even buy the new vat grown meat. Maybe he ought to forget the car and just use his money to buy himself real food. Maybe if it snowed more, he'd earn enough money shoveling walks around the neighborhood to do both. He whipped through his homework and then pulled out his last library book.
Have to go to the library again tomorrow. Maybe Mom will drop me off when she takes the girls to ballet.
He managed to lose himself in a space opera until his door crashed open.
"There you are!" Sibyl Dunmeyer was dressed for success in a red suit. Tense and obviously unhappy.
He sat up straighter and closed the book. What's wrong this time? "Hi Mom. How was work, today?"
"Great until someone told me the news." She hunched her shoulders.
"What news?" His stomach flopped over.
"The vote. The Congress got the genetic engineering bill out of committee and voted on it today."
Chris sagged back in disbelief. "They didn't pass it!"
"Of course they did. And the Senate will pass it as well. No one wants to be on the record as supporting . . . dangerous . . . people." She blinked suddenly. A tear broke loose and tracked down her cheek.
Crying? Mother crying? It must be anger, or shame. "So they're actually going to exile us?" Then he swallowed, tried to think. He felt like he was floating on a cloud of denial.
Or realization.
"I mean, me."
Then he scrambled to soften the offence. "I mean, anyone with engineering. Good thing I'm plenty old to be on my own. I'll be seventeen, maybe eighteen, before anything actually happens."
Mom shook her head, helpless, not denying. "I can't live in a howling wilderness. And what would your father do? He's a stock broker. And the girls?"
"Brook and Pet would hate roughing it. I, on the other hand, will enjoy every minute of it." Chris fought down his gorge, fought back tears.
"We'll help you, help get you . . . things. Supplies." She wiped an angry hand across her cheek, smearing makeup. "You'll be fine." She clutched the door. "We do love you . . ."
"It's just that you custom ordered your perfect baby boy. And then they changed the definition of perfect." Chris looked beyond her, and spotted his father. "I know you can't take the girls there, frontiers are no place for little girls."
His dad's hand tightened on Mom's shoulder. "They say they'll be opening gates once a month. So after the first month, send us a list of things you need. We'll bring it to you, have a family vacation for a month. It's not like we'll never see you again."
Chris nodded, unable to force more reassurances from his mouth.
"I picked up dinner, let’s go eat." Dad led Mom away.
Chris closed his door quietly. And concentrated on not getting sick. Tears didn't count, when there was no one to see. After a few minutes he forced himself to wipe his face and go sit with his family. He didn't have much of an appetite.
It snowed overnight, two inches of wet slush, that threatened to freeze as temperatures kept dropping. He grabbed his shovel and headed out in the pre-dawn to clear the driveways of the three clients who left early, then the rest of the driveways, then he started on the sidewalks that ordinarily he'd have left for after school. Mr. Fergusson sent him away, Mrs. Burns fussed and paid him early, as if she thought the government would whisk him away tomorrow. None of his other regular clients came out, so he worked in peace, ignored the school bus as it passed. It wasn't as if his grades mattered any more.
At home, alone, he started researching the parallel worlds. They were all Earth, of course, with some slight difference in their natural history that had split them off into a present that was just across a dimensional fold. Trans World Travel the company called itself these days. They'd previously been NewGenes, the company that had made so many genetic discoveries, years ago, before genetic engineering was made illegal. Same managers, same Board of Directors. Same stockholders, mostly some Chinese family.
Now they get to screw me all over again.
The scenes they showed of Gaia, the first colony, were pretty. Scenic. Quaint little villages with small garden patches, the observatory up on a mountain. A few big swaths of grain fields to provide the bulk for the reformulators. They had automated kitchens in the communal cafeterias in each village.
They were colonizing the worlds where humans had never evolved, but that had split away recently enough that the animals were roughly recognizable. No dinosaurs.
Chris sighed. It looked really boring, and he'd bet there was going to be someone in charge of all the children. His only hope was to delay going until he was eighteen. Several private colony companies has lists of what they recommended their members bring with them. Chris blanched at the hugely expensive items. I am so screwed, the parents won't buy me an RV. Maybe a jeep. Chris contemplated what he'd heard from his parents, about their current financial situation. The wonderful old boat they'd sold before moving across the country had never been replaced. Maybe a motorcycle. Off road variety.
The phone interrupted further studies. The Vice Principal for Junior Boys informed him he'd better be sick, else he would be truant. The man managed to get a tint of sympathy into his voice, but was unmoved by Chris's claim of immunity from school attendance requirements, as a non-human. "Get here for fourth period."
Chris wolfed down lunch—more peanut butter and jelly—and started walking.
He was greeted by the school football star. "Hey, Dunmeyer, haven't they thrown you off the planet yet?"
Chris managed a smile. "Eat your heart out. No more school, all the land I want. Fishing, hunting. No parents. Major score."
Hector actually looked taken aback. "You parents aren't going?"
"Course not. Geeze, the little sisters are all natural. They wouldn't fit in at all." Chris walked past the jerk and kept going.
The looks he got from people after that changed. A bit. Some sympathy, some envy, some pity. But mostly just the usual unthinking prejudice and bullying.
A week later, the Senate passed the bill without changes.
The President signed it. And made a big to-do of it; he spoke about keeping the human race safe, about sensible limits on science. Chis listened in disbelief. No apology to the kids he was kicking off the planet, no remorse for families torn apart.
Two weeks later, the letter came. Apparently the government knew where all the genetically engineered people were. It sounded like a lawsuit. Or perhaps an arrest warrant. "Subject is reported to have been engineered to contain Happy Kids, Inc. genetic suites BTSS and F23." His Dad filled it out, admitted that his "minor partial child" would be unaccompanied. That the child was not a member of a commercial colony group.
It only took the government four months to organize the exile.
Apparently they wanted it done and over with well before the elections. Some people tried to run, some people tried to hide their kids. The government gathered them all up, mostly with a fair amount of "stuff" for colonizing a raw frontier. Chris's parents' had spent some serious money outfitting him, but stopped short of buying him a vehicle. Which rather limited the amount of stuff he could take.
The federal agents were anonymous behind mirrored sunglasses. They slung his two big plastic trunks into the back of the SUV without looking in them and gestured him in. Good. He'd been afraid they'd confiscate his arsenal. He'd hugged his Mom (stoic) and sisters (crying), shaken his father's (trembling) hand already. He picked up his backpack, filled with the government recommended travel
ing kit, and got in the back seat. He didn't look back. A pane of something clear, and probably bullet proof, separated him from the front seat. He eyed the doors. No handles on the inside. I'm just a kid. How dangerous do they think we are?
They drove off without talking, took the interstate, but exited on the other side of town. They wound around to a huge house in an obviously rich neighborhood.
"Wait right here, kid." As if he had a choice. But at least one of the agents had finally spoken to him.
Chris nodded, silenced and intimidated, even though he tried hard to channel a heroic character from one of his favorite books. He couldn't see any people at the house. Well, a curtain twitched a bit. The agents returned, toting more plastic trunks. A second trip. Two kids being exiled? Then the screaming and crying started. Two little kids. One broke away and ran for the house. The agent scooped him, no, her, up and carried her at arms length to avoid the flailing and kicking. The second kid tried a sit down strike, and was scooped up, as well. She didn't scream, just pushed, leaned as far away from the agent as she could. They were shoved in the back and the door hastily shut. The tantrum continued, unabated even when she rolled off the seat and onto the floor. The feds jumped in the front and the car pulled away.
Chris blinked at the girls' hair. "Wow. Blue. How old are you two? You're kind of small to be tossed out of the nest." He had to raise his voice over the temper tantrum. He met the scowling gaze of the other girl. "My parents sent me away too, but at least I'm big enough to manage on my own."
Scowl.
The temper tantrum thrower took another deep breath but just blew it out with a catch of a sob at the end. "Mommy doesn't love us any more. Steven said we were just stupid pets and they ought to just put us down like unwanted puppies."
"Steven's our step-father. " Scowler added. "Not our real one. We don't have a real one. Mommy just wanted cute little babies with peacock hair. That was before she met Steven. Now she doesn't want us anymore. They want a real baby."
Chris eyed their hair. Yeah, when a light hit, it was iridescent and almost purple.
"And Steven said we shouldn't be allowed to go to school. Which is stupid because we can already read." Temper Tantrum climbed up onto the seat between her sister and Chris. Scrunched up against her sister, who was pressed against the door.
"Yeah, everyone calls us morons, but we're actually smarter than most of them. I'm Chris Dunmeyer. What are your names?"
"I'm Sky and she's Sea." Tantrum thrower matched her sister's scowl. "Way. That's Mom's old last name. Steven doesn't want us to use his name. We're five."
"We're twins. We were made this way on purpose." Sea's scowl wobbled toward truculent.
"I'm sixteen. Almost seventeen. I think my parents would have come, if I'd been their only kid. But I've got two little sisters, and they're just normal kids. Mom and Dad . . . stayed to raise them." He had to look away.
Tantrum, Sky rather, reached over and patted his arm. The silent sympathy had him blinking back tears himself.
The agents got back on the interstate and sped up, heading to the far left lane. Apparently three was their quota of kids.
Chris looked out at the dimming light of evening and wondered how far they'd be going. A warm weight leaned up against him. The two girls were both asleep. He remembered when his sisters were young enough to just crash like that. And refused to cry. He diverted himself by looking at the agents. "Are you taking us all the way to Wisconsin?"
The driver took off his sunglasses, and met his eyes in the mirror. "No, we're meeting a bus in Springfield. They've got all the kids from Boston already aboard. I heard the bus is fixed up for you kids to live in, and it's supposed to have a whole bunch of cutting edge tech, an auto-kitchen and a mini fabricator."
Chris bit his lip. "That's good. I guess we'll need that, until we get gardens going and so forth. Hunting and fishing."
"Some of the adults will have hunting rifles and so forth." The other agent chimed in.
Chris nodded. "I have my fishing gear." And two rifles, two shotguns, and lots of ammo, but I'm not going to bring that to your attention. "We'll be fine. Although I think they ought to have let the little kids stay until they were a bit older." Chris sat back and stared at the dark landscape and the bright lights of the other traffic.
In Springfield, they waited for half an hour at a rest stop before the bus from Boston arrived. Chris helped with the trunks while a woman led the cranky twins away. The trunks were all shoved into the luggage hold of a very odd looking bus. It was a cylinder, give or take the wheels and the rather minimal ground clearance between them.
"Shaped so it will fit through the gate." The agent stuck out his hand. "Good luck, kid."
"Thanks." He shook hands, and then climbed into the bus. Inside there were nice big seats, a single row down each side.
His assigned seat was up front, behind the driver. The driver looked at him over his glasses. "You must be Chris."
"Yes, sir." I don't have to be polite, any more.
"There's only five of you with driver's licenses. Watch what I do, you'll be taking over soon enough." The driver turned away, pulled a lever and the door sighed closed.
Chris gulped. Drive this huge thing? "You're not going through the gate?"
"Hell, no. You kids are on your own."
No nanny. No teachers. No foster parents. "Holy Toledo."
The girl in the front seat on the other side nodded. "They're just throwing us through the gate, they figure we've got enough stuff to make a go of it. I'm Milly. Amelia Prentice." She looked older, like a senior, or maybe even a college student. She must be seventeen, else she wouldn't be on the bus. Thick wavy brown hair, bright blue eyes in a tanned face. She waved at the three girls in the seats behind them; they all eyed him with disfavor. "Lillian Marshall, Ariel Wyss, Jamie Uchida. The five of us are theoretically in charge of the bus and the kids. Were those little kids your sisters?"
"Nope, never met them before." They were all pretty, like the popular girls that never wanted to have anything to do with him. Actually, the fat ugly girls hadn't either. Oh, well.
Lillian snorted. Bright green eyes, red hair. Her slightly tan skin was about as pale as the genetically engineered came, some combination of Political Correctness and the suntan craze of twenty years ago. Both extreme whiteness and extreme blackness had been left out of the genetic engineers' palate of skin colors. "We hoped Chris was short for Christine, and we females could run things sensibly. I suppose you think boys should be in charge?"
Only when the girls have stupid attitudes like yours. "Nope. I'm going to go off and live in the wild. You four can be as in charge as the rest of the kids let you be."
A giggle from further back. "Yeah! We are not swapping our parents for perpetual babysitters."
Jamie leaned out and glared. "Shut up Mallory. We're just worried about the little kids. You can get into all the trouble you want."
A bunch of them looked as old or older than he was. "Only five of us have driver's licenses?"
Mallory scowled. She was tiny and blonde, with no figure to speak of. Female gymnast type, made to order. "My parents didn't trust their little monster with a big dangerous car. There was a kid that was in a wreck, killed two other people . . . it sort of poisoned the whole state about us driving. They didn't take the older monsters' licenses away, but us young ones? Forget it."
"Well, if we do very much driving, over there, you'll all get to learn." Milly turned her attention back to the front as the driver put the bus in gear and pulled out.
In the empty stretches between towns, the driver pulled over and let them all take turns behind the wheel. They didn't get much turning practice, but they got a feel for the weight and responsiveness of the bus, as they sped up, slowed down, and changed lanes. Huge powerful engine, massive weight. Chris loved it. It felt so powerful. But not nimble.
They picked up a few more kids in Albany. Roslyn and Lance could drive, the rest were younger, or hadn't learne
d.
By the time they got to the Trans World Travel headquarters, they were all relaxed and comfortable with the handling. They slept on the bus, lined up with a wild miscellany of vehicles. Just ahead of them, a mooing mass of cows was crammed into a trailer made of steel bars, two horses stood stolidly in a separate section at the front. The man driving it cursed not being able to drive through immediately and fetched water and hay for the animals. The bus driver and the woman who'd been minding the little kids wouldn't let the kids out either.
Not that they needed out. They had two bathrooms, a fab machine and a kitchen in the back of the bus. The seats reclined till they were nearly flat, and swiveled to face either window or the seat across the aisle. Facing the aisle, the trays could be pushed up and shoved a bit to the side, so they all met in the middle. Chris temporarily swapped seats with Jamie so the four girls could play card games. Chris walked back and checked on Sea and Sky. They perked up to see an almost familiar face, and showed him the kitchen. It was pretty easy to learn the controls, and he produced cookies to share around with the other kids.
Lillian snorted as he distributed them. "Did you notice they're not programmed for alcohol? They gave us a 'child safe' kitchen! They're still controlling us."
"Never fear, someone is sure to start a still." Chris grinned. "I read how it worked once, I'll give it a try if we develop a desperate need to get drunk and rowdy."
There were four boys under ten, five boys and four girls between ten and fifteen, the other twenty-seven of them were older than that. Chris wondered if the older bias reflected the growing unpopularity of genetic engineering. Or the younger the kids, the more likely the parents emigrated too. Or both.
Mid-morning the government people walked the line, got everyone woken up and their vehicles started up. The driver and the nanny got off.