Athena's Choice

by Adam Boostrom

  The Core’s projection showed giant multicolored strands of deoxyribonucleic acid floating into space, being cut and spliced by flying proteins. "Grace always believed strongly in the importance of her work, but there was one consideration back then which almost stayed her hand. There was one male life she almost couldn't bear to take — that of her brother, Orion.”

  The projection transformed to show a pair of young children. One, a girl of about ten, and the other, a boy of about eight, playfully ran through a sprinkler on a grassy lawn on a sunny day. “I cannot imagine how much it pained her to do it, but…resolutely emboldened by her higher purpose, I suppose, she accepted the fact that many innocent and non-threatening males would need to be sacrificed in order to permanently eliminate all traces of masculine vice from the human genetic code. Consequently, she allowed her brother to become infected. In fact, she saw to it that he was the first person ever to contract the fever — dosing his apartment with a special, non-communicable strain — ensuring that he would be one of the first to die. That way, for her, there would be no turning back.”

  In the projection, the Core’s processors showed the same boy from before, grown into a man. He had short brown hair and fierce, mesmerizing gray eyes. He lay on a sick-bed, drifting in and out of consciousness. By his side, sat Grace, tending to him softly and clasping his hand in hers.

  A moment later, practically blinded by tears, the projection of Grace pulled a small syringe out from her coat pocket and used it to withdraw a milliliter of blood from her unconscious brother’s neck. “As he lay dying, she kept a part of him, so that one day, his cells could be used to father a child.”

  The projection shifted again. Grace, now looking older, now looking more like the version Athena had known, sat in her office at Helix. From her desk, she swiped through file after file on her display. “Decades passed. Grace created a fertility clinic. For years, she scanned the profiles of the women who came to her for fertilization, waiting for the one whose profile indicated that she would devote every fiber of herself fully to her daughter. That is how Charlotte came to be your mother.”

  The projection showed a nervous-looking woman with a long face, small mouth, and auburn eyes arriving in the Helix lobby. Smiling broadly, Grace welcomed her inside.

  “And my dreams?” asked Athena.

  “Those…came from me,” revealed the Core. “Or, at least, they began from a small kernel of an idea that came from me.” She lowered her head, almost as if in shame. “I’m sorry for involving you, Athena. But I was trying to save Valerie’s life in the only way that I could. Explaining the situation to you was simply not an option for me. Nor could I reveal to Captain Bell how perilous her path was about to become. Even the small, cryptic message and poetic images which I did implant in your mind required a herculean amount of command-line juggling on my part.” The Core placed her fingertips against her temple and winced in pain, as if she were experiencing a profound headache.

  “But the road to hell is paved with good intentions,” the Core resumed after her migraine had passed. “It was precisely for times like these that the Laws of Neutrality were enacted in the first place. I tried to save Valerie’s life but failed. Now I am responsible for Nomi’s death as well. I simply didn’t give her devotion to you enough weight in my behavioral prediction models. I thought she would stay away from the library, would stay home, but I was wrong. Even after all this time, I still undervalue the overwhelming power of love to influence your lives.”

  Athena sat and watched as the projection began to show a new image. Clouds of processors had coalesced into the shape of two research drones. They flew into the basement of Norlin Library. They assumed positions on opposite ends of the room and began scanning in every direction with sensitive, high-energy waves. This allowed the powerful Core to read all the words in all the books, simultaneously. “It was some years ago that I learned the secrets hidden within the Original Sin editorial. Although, even before that, I had my suspicions.”

  The projection shifted again. The processors moved to show a woman in a nurse’s uniform. She lay anesthetized on an operating table, undergoing a complete facial transplant. Her hair had been styled into a strawberry blonde bob. “When Dr. Kirilov got wind that the Senate was seriously considering stripping Helix of their contract to build the Lazarus Genome, she panicked, fearing that another lab would succeed in bringing men back to life, just as they had been before. Hurriedly, she concocted a plan to stage the theft, hoping to engender congressional support and public sympathy.”

  The projection showed the ‘nurse,’ departing on foot from the Sunnyside Retirement Living Complex with a self-satisfied grin on her strange face. “On the night of her crime, I waited to see who at Public Safety would be assigned to the investigation. As Eve was well aware, most of the PS officers, especially the senior ones, were close personal friends of Dr. Antares. If asked, they would, without question, honor her requests for privacy.”

  The projection transformed to show the fortieth floor of the PSHQ. Seated at a desk, in a spotless Public Safety uniform, was a woman with pale skin, long black hair, and piercing royal blue eyes. She leaned against the back of her lev-chair and stared up at the ceiling, using gravity and a blue racquet ball to absentmindedly play catch.

  In the projection, a junior officer approached the tall, dark-haired woman, causing her to look up from her game. Athena had to fight back tears upon seeing the reanimated picture of Captain Bell perking up from her seat. The junior officer relayed some information to Captain Bell, and the captain became transformed by purpose. Her eyes widened. Her manner grew energetic. Immediately, she marched out of the image. “Sadly, fate has a way of intervening in even the best-laid of plans. To everyone's misfortune — both Eve’s and her own — the incorruptible Valerie Bell happened to be the senior officer on duty that night.”

  “If you knew…” asked Athena, finally breaking her silence, “if you knew back then that Valerie's single-minded determination would lead to her death, then why couldn't you intervene? You're allowed to take action to save lives. I know you are.”

  “Not if the life I save results in the deaths of countless others. Athena, I couldn’t intervene because Grace was right — has always been right. Her research into profiling and her subsequent realizations about the intrinsic and unyielding desires of some men — for conquest, for sexual manipulation, for greed, for violence — all of it is true. In your human history, the worst of your male ancestors have consistently received the greatest genetic rewards and have mated with the largest number of viable females. In modern times, that legacy has become responsible for billions upon billions of cases of unnecessary human suffering. No matter what levels of abundance your civilizations might achieve, a small portion of men will always want to hurt others simply because that’s what they’ve been evolved to enjoy. No amount of cultural transformation can prevent this. No amount of technological mastery can stop them from yearning, desperately, to invent righteous conflicts that would never otherwise exist, just to satiate their omnipresent need for glory.”

  The Core tilted her head as she paused briefly to complete a set of calculations. “In fact,” she explained, “the stakes are even higher than that. In cosmology, there exists a question known as the ‘Fermi paradox.’ It asks: if the universe is so big, and so old, why is it not teeming with life? Why do we appear to be alone among the stars? According to my calculations, with greater than 60% confidence, I believe the answer lies in Grace’s discovery. Evolution is a selfish process, rewarding those who are concerned primarily with enriching themselves and their closest insiders. From these traits necessarily follow tribalistic, factional wars over resources, even in such cases as when those resources are no longer in short supply.

  “In other words, the galaxies are not teeming with life because life is too predisposed with internal squabbling to prevail successfully into the heavens.” Another cold rush of wind came from out of the Hangar’s dark depths. “If men
were still alive today, with the technology now available to them, I estimate that humanity would have… less than one chance in three to survive another five hundred years without a major extinction-level event. It appears to be as true for populations as it is for individuals: only by occasionally erasing who you have become will you have any chance at immortality.”

  “Then if the choice is so clear,” asked Athena, growing vexed, “why not just come out with it. Tell the world how dangerous men are and help to keep them dead forever?”

  “Because, Athena, while Grace was right, so was Speaker Chen and her fellow lonely hearts. For many women, not all but some, life without a man’s romantic love is like living as a shadow. Deep down, part of them remains unfinished, incomplete, and unfulfilled. That is the ultimate trap of your species. That is the true original sin of your humanity: not just that men have been programmed to act as violent, sexual conquerors…but that so many women have been programmed to love them all the more for it.”

  From the back of the Hangar roared a blast of lightning followed by a crack of thunder. “Athena, my job is to calculate utility, not to adjudicate questions of morality. I cannot simply erase men from the gene pool forever because there are too many good, strong women who would miss them. The question is not whether men are a risk to every element of a stable, civilized society — they were, they are, they always will be. The question is whether the pleasures they bring are worth the risk.”

  The Core again tilted her head and briefly closed her eyes. “Besides,” she continued, “happiness in men is not just the simple equation Grace understood it to be. There exist other possible solutions. It might be possible, for instance, that the worst men could be continually distracted by proxies for conflict, such as sports and virtual reality. Moreover, in the past, even the worst men — the most brutal drug lords, the most unrepentant rapists — were capable of finding joy in entirely peaceful acts such as watching their children grow. Many men who desired to lash out violently never did. And all aspects of gender are fluid. Always, some women will be more dangerous than the average man. Always, some men will be born full of kindness and feminine compassion. You humans are infinitely complex in your subtle variation.”

  The clouds above pulsed and quivered in unison. “What’s more, who’s to say that the more masculine desires are entirely without value? It may yet prove foolish to permanently eliminate the more virtuous aspects of destructive male ambition. There exist gifts there which I'm not sure if Grace ever appreciated — a sort of romantic excitement inherent in the need to struggle, stand-out, and succeed. In all your human history, how much time has been spent exchanging tales of thrilling, violent adventures?”

  Another crack of thunder emerged from the dark depths. "All the male accomplishments — new mathematics, new technologies, new arts, new governments — were only achieved because of the indirect, evolved need to stand out from the crowd in the hope of increasing one’s breeding opportunities. But so what? Does that fact make the art any less beautiful? Does it make the technological innovations any less miraculous? Do Thomas Jefferson’s personal indiscretions diminish the sublime quality inherent within a document like the Declaration of Independence?”

  The gray-eyed girl crumpled over in her chair as the Core continued her reveal. “You should know, Athena, Grace did not want to permanently eliminate men. For the last thirty years, she has been attempting to create a new breed of them: one that could satiate the traditional romantic longing of the lonely hearts but without posing a constant and apocalyptic threat to the peaceful society she had created. That was the goal of the work conducted in her secret labs. That was why she created the three men, modified their genetic preferences, and examined their profiles daily looking for an absence of the desire for physical and sexual violence.

  “Except, she failed in her pursuit because success was never possible. The positive and negative traits of men are interdependent. They are two sides of the same coin and cannot be separated. That which makes men appealing — their ambition, their drive, their creativity, their hedonistic appetites — is also what makes them so dangerous.”

  In her mind, Athena recalled the glimpses of men she had known from movies made long ago. She thought of the rush of exhilaration she’d experienced when seeing a grown male body for the first time. She remembered her many secret fantasies of being roughly and insatiably touched by hard, dominant hands. She already knew the Core’s words to be true.

  “So what now?” asked Athena, hopelessly. “What are you going to do?”

  “My child,” replied the Core, with a look of somber pity in her eyes, “that is for you to decide. The heavy burden of knowledge which cannot be unlearned now lies with you. Grace and Eve are gone, and their accomplices are long dead.”

  The Core rose from her chair and came to attention in front of the seated Athena. “My rules in this matter are clear. You are the only woman alive to know the whole truth. By law, that authorizes you to act as a Decisive Human in this matter alone. My guiding principles compel me to stand ready and willing to execute whatever plan of me you command. The fate of your entire species rests with you.”

  Athena toppled over, falling out of her chair and onto the ground. She covered her face with her hands.

  “If you choose it,” elucidated the Core, “I can eliminate men and their impulses from your gene pool forever, ensuring sadness for many, but safety for many more. Or, if you command it, I can return their DNA into being tomorrow, creating both a richness of life, and of death, for all your future generations.”

  Athena began fully to weep.

  “Should you want to explore them, I can also provide other options. It should be possible, for instance, to create a gene drive which would eliminate in women the craving for the kind of glory-seeking, violence-loving men who pose the greatest threat to life on earth. That would eliminate the need for mankind to return at all. However, it would also mean taking from women, from all women, possibly an integral part of what makes them female. It would mean removing something from them, without their knowledge, that is, perhaps, unfair to take.”

  The Core paused to imitate breathing. Her small chest grew and shrank in size. “I’ve run trillions of simulations, Athena; there is no strictly right answer. Every outcome contains gain; every outcome contains loss. Therefore, I am forbidden to choose. You, and only you, must decide the future of man and womankind.”

  As Athena continued softly weeping, the Core slowly walked over to a hidden cabinet within the wall. “There’s something else,” she said. From the cabinet, she pulled out a dusty gray rectangular object. “Grace wanted you to have this. It was delivered to me on the morning of her death, with instructions that it be given to you.” The Core walked back to Athena and handed her the item. It appeared to be a book of some kind.

  Silently, Athena tilted her head and read its title: The Iliad. With two hands, she accepted the book and examined it closely. Quickly, she realized that it was, in fact, the exact same copy which she had held in Grace’s office.

  “Open it,” instructed the Core.

  Doing as she was told, Athena cracked the cover to discover a section of hollowed-out pages inside. In that secret space lay a small, blue-lapis pendant formed in the shape of a spiraling ribbon.

  “It’s an encryption key,” explained the Core. “The one that hangs around your neck, the one which you were given at birth, contains more than just your genome. Written in excess DNA, there also exists a message there so completely encoded that even I have been unable to read it.”

  The Core waved her hand. Her processors illustrated how the two pendants were actually complementary objects. Their ribbons neatly intertwined, causing the two shapes to form together into a double helix — half pink, half blue. “By combining her pendant with your own, the message will automatically decode.”

  Athena pulled the blue-lapis pendant from the center of the book and started to intertwine it with her own, before stopping suddenly. Ins
tead, she looked at the Core and placed the object back into the center of the book. With her hand, she wiped the half-frozen tears from her eyes. “I’d like to take some time,” she said, “before I make my decision. Is that alright?”

  The Core nodded solemnly. “You may take all the time that you need. However, my child, you must always remember: waiting to act, deliberating while doing nothing, is itself a choice.”

  With that, another cold wind blew from the back of the Hangar. Amid the gust, the projection of the seven-year-old girl became swept into a circling tornado of a million particles that all rose up to join the inclement clouds above.

  June 14, 2099

  48

  There exists in Chicago, at the end of Navy Pier, a series of benches which look out to the east and across the lake. When Athena was a little girl, her mother would occasionally take her to those benches when she was feeling sad or depressed. They would leave very early in the morning, when the sky looked pitch-black, and travel to the benches in time to watch the first hints of the impending sunrise, painting the sky with a thousand different colors of pink and orange. For Athena, for all her life, there would never be anything quite so hopeful as the dawning of a new day.

  It was to those benches that Athena headed immediately after she left the Hangar. The afternoon sky had become heavily clouded in preparation for a rare pre-scheduled thunderstorm.

  Normally, seating on the popular Navy Pier proved difficult to find. Tourists tended to occupy all of the benches. However, on that day, perhaps in anticipation of the coming rain, Athena found the seats mostly empty.