Athena's Choice

by Adam Boostrom

  The only problem with my plan was that I forgot about original sin. In all my eagerness to tell people what they really wanted, I never stopped to consider that when I looked inside people’s true hearts for the first time, and saw their honest desires laid bare, that what I found staring back at me might be horrifying. A terrible question quickly emerged: how could I tell people what they really wanted, if what they really wanted was catastrophic to the fabric of society?

  My mistake stemmed from my being too caught up in the finery of the present. It's so easy for us humans, living in our stylish cities, wearing our posh clothes, to forget where we came from -- to forget that life on this planet did not start with our arrival on it. We, the living, are the current baton holders in an evolutionary race that began eons ago when the earth was new, and will continue for millennia after we are gone. What do we want? What will we always want? Whatever our most successful ancestors wanted, of course. Whichever past desires proved to be the most evolutionarily successful are the ones which will be found in the subsequent generations. That is mankind's true legacy. Evolution is humanity's real original sin.

  Perhaps, reader, you think I'm being overly dramatic. You think mankind is not so irrevocably flawed in his desires. You think of evolution only as progress. See for yourself, then, the hidden truths that my research on happiness has uncovered with regard to gender, desire, and human nature:

  Whether consciously aware of it or not, my research has discovered that just under 70% of all living men, and over 85% of adolescent men, would derive a sincere and lasting-enjoyment from sexually-assaulting one or more of their colleagues. Given the opportunity, and an absence of personal consequences, the vast majority of men would relish the chance for guiltless rape. For many, perhaps as much as 20% of men, it is only a fear of societal retribution that restrains them. In women, the number to share this desire is less than 2%.

  In 66% of males, my research has shown the genuine happiness boost which would result if subjects were allowed to murder, in cold blood, without fear of incarceration or reprisal, at least one person in their lives. In women, the number is less than 7%.

  Over 45% of men would derive more pure enjoyment from physically harming an outsider — brutally beating him by hand — than from helping that same outsider to escape such a beating. For these men, to put it bluntly, violence feels good. In women, the number to share this enjoyment is less than 1%.

  Just under 23% of males receive immense bursts of happiness from acquiring a thing — be it a belonging, a woman, or a title. At the same time, these men receive virtually no joy from that thing once acquired. They are driven to take pleasure in accumulation, but never in appreciation. Their greed is insatiable. Less than 3% of women exhibit this trait.

  Worst of all, my research has shown that just over 6% of all living men have such an overwhelming need to see themselves as a ‘hero fighting for a just and righteous cause,’ that they are literally happier to die a martyr’s death — in an act of violent self-sacrifice — than to live a long, full life. Their bodies yearn so much for ‘personal glory’ that they are eager to give up everything, even life itself, to pursue it. For these men, the need to feel part of a ‘noble cause’ is so great, in fact, that when no real threat exists for them, their brains will invent one — literally making enemies out of thin air — just to satisfy their need.

  Please, reader, stop for a moment to consider that last point. Millions of men alive right now, whether they are aware of it or not, would actually be happier to march off to certain death, chasing fame and glory, than to live for decades in quiet, well-cared-for obscurity. This should sound insane to everyone. And yet, why? Western civilization has long celebrated this particular self-destructive trait. The legendary warrior, Achilles, is even now famous and revered, three thousand years after his death, because he made a similar choice of glory over life. Every modern terrorist, suicide-bomber, and mass-shooter envisions for himself this same everlasting fame — in his own perverted way — as he commits his act of heinous barbarity. Our modern lives are beset by constant suffering not because we have failed as a society, not because our young men are being ‘radicalized by extreme forces,’ — and not because our culture is ingrained with ‘toxic masculinity’ — but rather, because, for some small percentage of men, violence in the pursuit of fame is the only true pleasure their bodies will ever know. No amount of career-training, nor psychological-development, nor creature-comforts brought on by technological-abundance will ever change this fact.

  Only 1 out of every 50 million women share this ‘glory-seeking’ trait to the same extreme.

  Reader, I could go on, but hopefully you begin to understand the problem. When I first began profiling people, I wanted nothing more than to share the gift of self-awareness with everyone. But how can I risk telling a small percentage of men — millions of them — that there is nothing they will enjoy more than leaving their wives, traveling to a far-off land, killing all the male inhabitants found there, and taking all the abandoned females for themselves? How can I tell many of the other men who would be happier to remain behind, and to stay married, that only by robbing from society, and piling up more money than they could ever spend in ten lifetimes, will they find even the slightest measure of satisfaction? To normalize these repressed desires would be to unleash hell on earth.

  The trouble, though, lies not with human nature. The trouble stems only from masculine nature. Men, not women, are the ones responsible for the vast majority of violent and destructive acts. This is because the two genders derive enjoyment from different things, due to the fact that for hundreds of thousands of years, they have been playing different evolutionary games, with dissimilar evolutionary objectives.

  For men, the highest levels of evolutionary success have been accomplished through sheer extremes: hoard the most possessions, achieve the most fame, be as selfish as possible, and as violent as necessary. Over and over again, throughout history, when a man has been able to truly distinguish himself relative to his male peers, it has meant that he would impregnate dozens of women and father hundreds of children. This pattern of behavior, in turn, has caused his violent, glory-seeking, risk-everything-for-one-chance-to-stand-out desires to be deeply-seeded into the following generations. Genghis Khan is a direct ancestor to over one million people on earth.

  In contrast, women have been simultaneously playing a different evolutionary game with different evolutionary victory conditions. Because they cannot inseminate dozens of men, or mother hundreds of children, because pregnancy is debilitating and requires help, because it takes a village to raise a child, women have been selected over time for different desires, strengths, and dominant behaviors. Because they have needed to employ empathy, teamwork, and compassion in order to succeed genetically — and to care for their initially helpless offspring — they have evolved to take huge amounts of joy from acts of sympathy and collaboration. The cruel realities of child-bearing and rearing have imbued the majority of women alive today with an overwhelming desire to nurture and to unify. These traits are the gifts from our mothers. And they truly are the greater strength.

  At this point, reader, I would like you to look around the room in which you find yourself. Try to find something in that room, just one thing, that you could make on your own from scratch. I’m confident that your search will be unproductive. We live in an amazing era of civilization. We are surrounded by products of incredible sophistication and mind-boggling complexity. Yet none of these achievements would ever have been possible had we humans not been driven, as we are, to take pleasure from working together.

  As far as species go, homo sapiens are not the strongest, nor the fastest, nor the bravest. By ourselves, we are not even particularly clever. The only superpower we do possess — the reason that we have come to find ourselves in complete dominion over every other species on the planet — is our unprecedented and feminine tendency to enjoy wide-spread collaboration. Tiny contributions from everyone, added to
gether over the centuries, have created mountains of human possibility.

  Make no mistake. It was not aggressive male ambition that powered mankind's ascent. It was our feminine desire to widely-unify toward a common goal. Humanity’s talent for collaboration is, quite simply, the most powerful force on earth.

  Because of the lessons from my youth, I know that theologians still insist that mankind is born with sin because Adam ate an apple in the garden of Eden. Those clergymen are right but for the wrong reasons. Mankind is flawed but not because of a divine plan gone wrong. Rather, original sin exists because of a want for any plan at all. Perhaps, with an intelligent genomic-creator, we could have avoided the damaging, short-sighted consequences of the mindless prisoner’s dilemma that is the game of evolution. Perhaps if men had not been so consistently rewarded for enjoying greedy, vicious, and psychopathic acts, we could all have been born into a world without sin. Perhaps, if we act now, we still can.

  Technological advancements have made it possible for us to re-engineer ourselves with more noble desires in our hearts. The only reason we have not eliminated poverty, hunger, and much of human suffering is simply because the majority of people in power do not want to solve these problems — for they derive no joy in helping others. I propose we change this. I propose we excise the vicious, masculine desires that have plagued mankind since its inception. I propose we use our gene-editing technology to march into a new world without war, without terrorism, without hunger, and without greed. Let us refuse to yield to the blind cruelness of natural selection. Let us overcome our original sin and work together to make the world a better place, for the benefit of all womankind.

  June 12, 2099

  45

  As Athena slowly recovered from her fit of coughing, Nomi spelled out the document's terrifying implications.

  “This whole time, everyone’s had it wrong. The fever wasn’t some biological weapon gone astray. It didn’t accidentally become airborne and infect the whole planet. It was Antares. She made it deliberately to do exactly what it did. She killed them all on purpose. Every last man on earth. Some women, too. Anyone who possessed even the tiniest shred of her demonized traits. She killed them all.”

  While the girls measured the weight of their discovery, a small metallic disc, no bigger than a frisbee, stealthily hovered down to the subterranean level of Norlin library.

  Athena remained frozen in place.

  “We have to tell people about this,” urged Nomi. “We have to warn Public Safety. If Grace killed Captain Bell to protect her secret, then she won’t stop there.” Nomi tugged on Athena’s shoulder, trying to get her to budge, but Athena wouldn't move.

  “How could she have done it…?” asked Athena, still mortified. “How could she have murdered all those people?”

  The small metallic disc navigated down between toppled stacks of bookshelves until it had a clear, unobstructed line of sight. From across the room, it fired a laser blast into Nomi’s stomach, burning a hole in the thick lead of her radiation suit — but not injuring her further.

  “Run!” yelled Nomi.

  Immediately, Athena came to. Together, the two girls dove in the direction of a toppled pile of shelving and books, ducking for cover. Sweat poured down their faces and into their eyes.

  “How many of them did you see?” asked Nomi.

  “Just one, I think,” replied Athena. “Are you ok?”

  “I’m good.” Nomi grazed her fingers against the hole created in her protective radiation gear. “Turns out these dumb suits are good for something after all.”

  Wildly, Athena clicked into the air. “I can’t get through to call for help!” she exclaimed. “That thing's blocking me.”

  Nomi attempted a pair of air-clicks as well, but afterward only shook her head.

  Somewhere off in the corner of the basement came the slow, steady sound of water dripping. In the air hung a burning smell: the vaporized remains of the lead in Nomi’s suit.

  Athena peered out from behind the large pile of books. The drone continued its slow, silent approach, methodically closing in for the kill, leaving no chance for escape.

  “Can you get a good look at it?” asked Nomi. “What’s the model?”

  Athena stuck out her head for a fraction of a second, just long enough for her display to capture the drone’s idiosyncratic features.

  “It’s a…” she waited for her display’s memory to make the identification. “It’s a Laur 3. Super light-weight, weakest point is the battery-pack on top.”

  A sweat-induced fog formed on the inside of the two girl’s visors.

  The drone came closer.

  “On the bright side,” noted Nomi from their hiding place, “if this thing had caught us above ground, it would have flanked us and we’d be dead already.” Her head quickly turned in every direction, scanning her surroundings for anything that could be used as a weapon. “So at least there’s that.”

  Athena felt her tongue go dry.

  The drone came closer.

  “That stairway we came down,” asked Nomi, “is that the only way out of here?”

  “As far as I know,” replied Athena. “But it’s too far, we’ll never make it.”

  Nomi bit her lip. “Listen to me, A.”

  Athena gave no response.

  “Listen to me! If there’s only one of them, we have a chance. I can distract it, draw its fire. While it’s locked in on me, you jump out from the side and disable it with this, ok?” Nomi picked up a shard of rusted metal and handed it to Athena. “It’s our only chance.”

  “Are you crazy!?” whispered Athena. “That thing will shoot you in half.” She poked her finger through the hole in Nomi’s suit.

  “C’mon,” eased Nomi with confidence. She lifted two thick volumes from off of the pile of books. “I’m just going to throw things at it and duck. I’ll be fine.”

  Still squatting, Athena turned urgently in every direction of the dark basement, examining dusty shelf after dusty shelf. Desperately, she searched for any other option to present itself, but none did.

  “Alright, fine, fine,” she said. “Just let it get a little bit nearer.”

  The drone came closer.

  Athena’s heart beat so loudly, she thought it might pulse right out of her chest. Beside her, Nomi climbed into a crouched position and gritted her teeth.

  The drone came even closer, barely two meters away.

  “Alright, it’s now or never,” said Nomi. “Are you ready? On three……”

  “One…..”

  Athena moved to the edge of the pile and prepared to pounce.

  “Two…..”

  Nomi bounced slightly in place as her fingers clenched a book in each hand.

  “Three!”

  Before she had even finished saying three, Nomi had jumped to her feet and begun pelting the drone with books.

  Athena ran around the edge of the pile, screaming as she charged.

  The Laur 3 held its position and fired two laser blasts before Athena could reach it. When she did, she grabbed it with one hand and used the metal shard to spike through its battery pack, easily smashing its lightweight frame. It shattered into pieces and fell harmlessly onto the ground.

  An enormous sigh of relief escaped from Athena’s mouth, followed by a tiny laugh, before she turned to see the impact of its two fired shots.

  Behind the pile of books, Nomi stood unmoved. She had a confused look on her face and a gaping hole in her chest.

  “Nomes!” Athena rushed to Nomi’s side, catching her just before she fell to the ground.

  “See,” gasped Nomi, choking on blood. “I told you I loved you.”

  Athena rocked her friend gently into her lap. She spoke to her softly between sobs. “I'm going to call for help,” she cried, “and we’re going to fix you. Ok? Don’t leave me. We’re going to fix you.”

  Nomi’s face appeared calm, resigned to her fate. Her breaths quickly became short and shallow. “Ow,” she gasped, “godd
amn, this hurts.” She coughed with great difficulty. A tremendous amount of red blood gushed from the enormous hole just above her heart. “Do you know,” she murmured with what little strength she had left, “what my favorite memory is?”

  “Stop,” said Athena, fighting through her tears. “Don’t talk like that.”

  “It’s this one.” Nomi swiped twice with her finger and flicked a recording onto Athena’s display. Blood continued to rush out of her body. Her eyes struggled to remain open, as they took in their final glimpse of the world. She died in Athena’s arms.

  For several minutes, Athena cradled Nomi’s still-pulsing body, trying to hug the wound closed. “No, no,” she softly repeated again and again. “No, no, no.”

  Oblivious with grief, Athena failed to notice the second drone that hovered down to the basement of Norlin library. She was still holding Nomi's lifeless body when the second drone fired a long-needled tranquilizer dart directly through her radiation suit and into the back of her neck.

  As Athena slumped over, unconscious, a steady clacking of boots echoed within the library’s ruined walls.

  Nomi James’ Memory File Recorded August 13th, 2086

  FADE IN:

  EXT. ELEMENTARY SCHOOL - DAYTIME

  In the parking lot of JANE ADAMS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, a group of young girls arrive for morning drop-off in a u-shaped, school parking lot.

  ZOOM IN ON:

  EXT. A SINGLE CITY-CAR

  A young girl, the tiny NOMI JAMES, sports a school uniform and a Rainbow Ruby backpack almost as big as she is. She disembarks from a stopped car. Her mother, the concerned and dutiful NOREEN JAMES, calls out to her from inside the car.

  NOREEN

  Are you sure you have everything, honey?

  NOMI

  Yesssssss, mooooooom!

  NOREEN

  Ok. Then, I’ll be right here waiting for you when school ends.

  NOMI

  I know, mom.

  Nomi joins a flow of other young girls, almost all of whom are bigger than she is. She enters into the building, turns left, and walks down a hallway until she reaches —