“I don’t mean to be rude,” D_Light interjected, “but why do we need to drink?” D_Light had only spoken to children a few times and was not sure of the best way to converse. Should he change his voice to a higher pitch like he had seen others do? He decided against it, knowing that Love_Monkey was not an ordinary child.
“It will protect you from the cullers,” she answered.
“There are several of them nearby, and they certainly have picked up your scent by now.”
Confused, Lyra asked, “I’m sorry, Love_Monkey, but I don’t understand why drinking something from you will protect me from anything.”
The girl smiled patronizingly but did not miss a beat as she patiently explained. “There are several compounds in the liquid that, when metabolized, will excrete a unique scent from your glands, convincing the culler that you are not food.”
D_Light was no biologist, but he knew that metabolizing liquid took time, so without further delay he snatched the vial from her outstretched hand and took a swig. She looked up at him without expression. Seeing no immediate detrimental effect, the others took their turns.
After everyone drank, the girl continued. “The repellant is fast-acting but will still take up to a minute to take effect, so now I think you should run. My father’s cullers are very good at what they do, so you should run as fast as you possibly can.”
Encouragement was unnecessary, for the team sprinted past the girl and down the path. Stealth was not attempted. They raced as fast as they could, but Lily was far ahead. She bounded forward, her long, lean legs widening the gap between her and the rest of the team. Lily looked behind her, her neck bearing no bulging tendons, her face no grisly smile of exertion. It was as though this remarkable pace was only mildly strenuous for her. Then, suddenly, her eyes locked onto something beyond the team and her jaw dropped.
D_Light checked behind him to discover a terrifying sight. Three of the hunters were gaining on them like an onrushing tsunami. Running on all fours, they sent rocks and plant debris sailing through the air. They were big, shadowy hunks of horrifying nightmare.
Djoser caught sight of them too. “Amanda, save us!” he cried out. At this, his bodyguard, who had been keeping pace with her master, broke off and turned to face the approaching monsters. As she stood waiting, the muscles in her arms tense, she crouched slightly. Her swords, which had been drawn in an instant, shimmered blue and green in the glow of the nearby photoflowers.
D_Light returned his head forward to watch where he was running. No missteps, he thought. Djoser was beside him. His eyes were fixed forward and wide with terror.
Ahead, up the path, Love_Monkey stood waving at them. Impossible! D_Light thought. How did she get ahead of us? As they made their fast approach, it was evident that she was not waving, but beckoning them to come to her. Lily had almost reached the girl and looked poised to follow. D_Light, figuring he had nothing to lose, decided to follow as well. Seeing that she had caught their attention, the girl then turned and began to jog-perhaps even skip-away down a path that snaked into bushy green darkness.
The monsters did not slacken their pace as they charged Amanda. It appeared that they were about to use their momentum to spring onto her, so she prepared to sidestep and slash. She doubted, however, that this move would save her. They outnumbered her three to one, and it was evident that they were fast and powerful-even for products. Still, if they underestimated her she might be able to catch them by surprise and take at least one of them out.
However, when the opportunity came, they did not pounce upon her. Instead, two of the three suddenly broke off, one leaping off to her left and one to her right. The third simply stopped with a suddenness that seemed to defy the physics of motion. She was now in the middle of a triangle. The creatures snarled, but their faces were little more than a blur to Amanda, who swiftly shifted her attention from one to the other. The beasts then darted in and out, just out of reach of her slashing blades. Are they testing me? she wondered. Are they attempting to coax me to lunge at one to give the others an opening? Adopting a defensive posture, Amanda was quite aware of such tactics, and she would not be baited. If one of them moved into range of her blades, they would pay for it; otherwise, she would hold steady. Indeed, she preferred to wait. Every second she delayed the enemy was another second for her master to make his escape.
The beasts sniffed and whined. Perhaps realizing that their opening tactic was unsuccessful, the triangle began to constrict. Amanda knew she needed to dispatch at least one of them in order to have a chance, but if she attacked one, the others would certainly close in. Amanda wanted to think that if her onslaught was swift and effective enough that the others would retreat, but she sensed no fear in these humanoid monsters that danced as though conducting some grisly, alien strip show.
Amanda was about to take her gamble when the back of her leg was sliced open. Instantly, her blade swept back in retaliation, but it cut only air. The thing had withdrawn before her swiftly flowing blood even had time to blotch her skinsuit. Another slash appeared across her stomach as though by some devilish magic. It was deep, and once again the culler had retreated out of reach before she could even the score.
Amanda was on the ground now, but they still did not finish her. She swung her blades about in vain as each of them took turns darting in and out, nicking, slicing, and puncturing. One of her two hearts was pierced and no longer functioned, but the bodyguard fought on, directing her attention to protecting her upper body and head since her legs were now shredded and useless. But then, all at once, the monsters just stopped. They sniffed the air. Their hungry, dark, merciless pupils contracted, and then, standing fully upright and sniffing their surroundings, they simply walked away.
CHAPTER 27
We are not in the business of growing slaves. A product should “enjoy” its purpose. Anything else is unethical and can even be dangerous. There have been many slave revolts in history…not pretty.
Life is motivated by pleasure and pain. You need to design your life to seek out its targeted work at the exclusion of all other activities. For example, if a household servant is required, the servant should be designed with an obsessive-compulsive disorder for cleanliness (see gene template #C139090). Such a servant will vigilantly maintain order in the household without any direction from the owner.
As another example, if a product’s purpose requires painful activities, those pain receptors might be excluded from the product design or a propensity for masochism could be added.
In this process, pleasure and pain are used together to obtain the desired behavior, and most importantly, these stimuli are intrinsic to the being.
— Excerpt from Dr. Monsa’s lecture series, “Best Practices for Genetic Engineers”
Lyra, Djoser, and D_Light had no idea where the strange little girl was taking them, but they did not hesitate to follow. However, nothing could have prepared them for what presented itself on the other side of the hedge-a clearing bordered by high walls of leaves and flowers, in the middle of which sat an elaborate dining set. A long, silver table dominated the space, surrounded by slender, high-backed chairs, between which a banquet was visible. Lily, who had been ahead of the rest, stopped abruptly and stood stone still. Emerging through the hedge as if their lives depended on it, D_Light, Lyra, and Djoser nearly ended up in a heap as they skidded to a stop behind Lily.
“Excellent, I had hoped you would make it in time for supper!” roared a man from the far end of the table-at least D_Light assumed he was a man, for he was so ugly that D_Light’s heart skipped a beat and his left hand, his throwing hand, shot down to where his razor discs were hidden in his skinsuit.
For starters, the man’s face was completely asymmetrical. His left eye was slightly lower than his right, one cheek puffed out as though suffering from an allergic reaction, his nose was crooked, and his left eyebrow was completely gone. And as if the overall structure of the face was not bad enough, his skin was pocked by countless undesirable
features-tiny craters, patches of rubbery flesh, tufts of hair where there should be none, and a feeble beard that, had this man any luck at all, would have concealed some of the aforementioned defects. Instead, the beard only darkened areas of his chin and cheeks, further mottling his face.
The grotesque stranger rose from his seat. “Allow me to introduce myself,” he began. “I am Dr. Monsa, and you are our guests!” He outstretched his arms wide as though offering a generous gift. “Please, find a seat. Take a seat and be comfortable.”
Lily led the team in bravery by shuffling forward a few steps as though testing for quicksand. The others did not move at all, but merely stared in awe. An awkward silence followed. Then, suddenly, the doctor erupted with laughter, the short and sudden bursts of sound making D_Light flinch in surprise. “I am afraid I will need to ask of you the nearly impossible task of forgiving my appearance,” the doctor announced. “In my nearly two hundred years as a wetgineer, I bear the scars of many of my creations.” Dr. Monsa bowed sincerely and gestured again for the party to be seated.
Djoser looked back over his shoulder and, through his panting, managed to utter a sound as though trying to speak. Dr. Monsa quickly interrupted him. “Oh, yes, you are absolutely safe now. Like me and the rest of my family, you all now smell absolutely dreadful to my cullers. Please, attempt to relax.”
“One of us was left behind,” Lily announced.
“I see,” replied the doctor, who then looked over at a lanky-limbed, long-haired monkey that stood upright nearby on the table. Dr. Monsa nodded thoughtfully. “Oh, yes, your guardian is alive, but I’m afraid she is a bit worse for wear.” He frowned and added, “She will not be joining us for dinner.”
The doctor’s eyes were distant as he spoke. D_Light took this to mean the doctor had been accessing his familiar. Was the monkey his familiar? D_Light wondered to himself. It was a sin to manufacture a familiar with human-like characteristics such as hands, and possessing such a familiar was a transgression. A familiar with human-like physiology could be used as an extension of the master’s own body, which would likely lead to sloth.
The doctor returned from his vacant-eyed trance, at which point he roved over to Lily. “Lily, is it? Please, it would be an honor if you would sit right here at my side.” The doctor slid a chair out with a flourish that reminded D_Light of something from old movie feeds he used to watch in nursery.
Lily curtsied stiffly as though reciting a long since forgotten ballet move, and took her seat, at which point the doctor swiftly moved behind her and scooted the chair in behind her. Without looking away from the top of Lily’s head, which he stood over, Dr. Monsa made a vague motion to the rest of the party to sit. D_Light, Lyra, and Djoser found seats near each other, creating a defensive line. The three of them rotated their attention between each other, the plates and utensils in front of them, and their host.
Love_Monkey silently moved a chair to the other side of Lily, sat down, and smiled sheepishly as she gazed up at her. Lily smiled back at the girl, remarking to herself how volatile human children were. Back at the groksta, only an hour or two ago, the child had been furious, but her eyes now glistened with adoration.
Lyra felt completely disoriented. With her familiar gone, she felt as though a part of her mind was missing, the part that knew things. She had the unbearable urge to ask questions so she could fully establish her bearings. “Grandfather, about those creatures, the cullers, as you call them, are they-” Her sentence cut off as she nearly jumped from her chair. Six little girls, identical in all ways to Love_Monkey, entered the clearing. All wore the same clothing, differing only in the color of the bow fastened in their long, golden hair.
“They’re cloned!” Lyra gasped. “Grandfather, you cloned your children?”
“Please, just call me doctor,” the man insisted. “And no, cloning human beings is a sin. These are in the likeness of my children and I refer to them as my daughters, but their code is under the legal limit to be considered human; therefore, they are products. Products that I cloned.”
“You have children products? Why? No one creates products in the likeness of children.”
Djoser pinched Lyra under the table. Why is she interrogating him? Doesn’t she know who he is? he wondered.
The doctor curled his bulbous and crooked lips into what Djoser hoped was a smile. “Yes, Lyra. Although technically not a sin, creating immature products is not considered a best practice in my line of work.”
The doctor took a long gulp of his beverage before continuing. “As to your question of why, it is because I could not dream up a better assistant. My bio-daughter, Samantha, was both a joy to work with and an effective wetgineer. She fell victim to the TerriLove virus before she gained immortality and hence was not qualified for resurrection.”
Lily’s forehead wrinkled with concern, and she leaned over to pat the doctor on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” she offered. “It must have been tragic to lose a daughter so young.”
The doctor redirected his gaze at Lily, and his grimace widened. “Oh, she was seventy-three years old when she passed. Granted, she was young, but on the bright side, she survived longer than most in my laboratories in the early days. As for these girls,” the doctor said, nodding to the identical children at the table, “these lambs, which is what I call all of my family, I put a clamp on their physiological development at age eleven-you know, before puberty and all that nonsense.” The doctor winked at Lily.
“In addition to their physiology clamp, I also disrupted certain aspects of their overall nervous system development-enough to, in layman’s terms, keep them young at heart as the decades slide by. In this way, I spared my lambs the tragedy of adulthood. Even as their intellectual powers increase through experience, they do not become jaded and unimaginative like the rest of us. As you can imagine, they are exceptional scientists.”
“Daddy, you know we hate it when you talk about us as though we’re not here,” one of the clones complained.
Dr. Monsa ignored her as he took a sip from his nectar ale mug and said, “You see, it was at age eleven that Samantha, my bio-daughter, was at the height of her curiosity, of her unbridled wonder and passion for all that was alive. Unlike any other bio-child I had, she would sit and watch all manner of organisms for hours on end. It did not matter what it was, either. It could be an amoeba through the micro, a beetle scuttling over the ground, the veins of a leaf, the dance of molecules of mitochondria. She would unselfconsciously ponder the reproductive cycle of any creature she found.” The doctor stared off vacantly as though the end of the table was the ocean horizon. “When my little girl was that age, my head was deep into my machines. I wanted to mimic life with software, with zeros and ones. All those years ago, she was the one who first taught me the value of life, that there is no substitute, that life itself is the ultimate technology.”
Dr. Monsa smiled over at the clones now seated in a line spanning one entire side of the table. “These remind me of her,” he said while smiling and nodding. “They remind me of the beauty of nature and her never-ending capacity for wondrous creation.”
The doctor took a long pause. “And this,” he said as he gestured to his ravaged face, “reminds me that new creation is often fueled by destruction. Viruses, bacteria, as well as much larger organisms, don’t always turn out as planned. Worse yet, depending on who’s funding the project, they turn out exactly as planned. When only maimed, I called myself lucky. When not so lucky, I died. I dare say I have been resurrected more times than I care to count.”
“Five times, Daddy,” one daughter offered. “As an immortal, Daddy has the option for resurrection, that is, if resurrection is possible under the circumstances.”
The doctor flipped his hand in the air as though performing a magic trick. “The body is easy enough to mend and bring back to life; it is the mind that is irreplaceable-at least currently. Fortunately for me, my brain tissue has never been damaged beyond repair.”
“I hope
I don’t offend you, but I must ask, why don’t you replace your-”
“My face?” The doctor interrupted Lily’s question with a chuckle. “Because it is a hassle, for one thing. Swapping a body is not routine, even for immortals. It is a major ordeal, and there can be complications. Also, and I hope you do not think me petty for saying this, I must admit that I enjoy seeing people’s expressions when they behold me for the first time. For example, I don’t leave my garden often anymore, but when I do, say on business, even other immortals are intimidated. I think it gives me an edge in that I leave a lasting impression. I don’t need the world to enjoy looking at me. I have the love of my lambs, and that is all I require.”
The doctor suddenly threw up his hands and groaned. “And speaking of my lambs! Let me apologize once again for your harrowing welcome. One of my girls, Love_Monkey, whom you already met, messaged ahead that you would be coming. I sent another of my lambs to guide you in safely, but she evidently got distracted. What was it this time?”
Curious_Scourge, the clone D_Light supposed was the one who had given the team the repellant earlier, bent her head slightly. “It was the Gibbon flies-they had transitioned,” she muttered under her breath.
“So typical, Curious!” BoBo, who sat at the far end of the table wearing a purple bow, shook her head disapprovingly.
Dr. Monsa pointed his finger at BoBo. “Don’t chide your sister. I think it’s safe to say you could have done the same thing.”
“No, Daddy, no! Where did the ‘Curious’ come from in ‘Curious_Scourge’?” BoBo raised an eyebrow at the doctor and then back at her sister.
The doctor nearly choked on his mouthful of syrup. “Oh, spare me! Just the other day I sent you to milk the mellowcows, and where did you end up? Three hours watching an Equus caballus #7541 give birth while the rest of us sat and drank water for lunch!”
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