by Harry Marku
toward the door. As he passed by Robb's and Ryan's vantage they saw his eyes through his shield.
They were wide with panic.
Kick Start
“How many...?“ Ryan phrased the words with difficulty.
“How many what?” Robb said with a level voice.
“How many... archetypes... are there?”
“Archetypes...” Robb pondered. “That's clever. A much better moniker than deviants or mutations, I suppose.” He leaned back on his chair and chuckled softly.
“I don't find this funny,” Ryan spat.
“You should reconsider your sense of humor,” Robb retorted with an advisory tone, frustrating Ryan.
“I don't think so,” Ryan replied with more calmness than he felt. Besides his frustration at Robb's cavalier replies, he felt a growing unease: Since their night at the compound, Robb sounded more and more like a lunatic, and less like a trusted colleague. From the corners of his eyes Ryan sought the café exits.
“At least eight,” Robb answered.
“Eight?” Ryan's throat constricted. For an instant he couldn't breathe.
“Eight,” Robb reiterated. “By morphology, they're all significantly smaller, of course, but there are herbivores, cold-bloods, hibernators, nocturnals, subterranean dwellers, arborealists, water-dwellers....”
“Don't some of these types already exist by choice?” Ryan cut him off.
“Yes, but not as morphological specialists.”
“What?”
“They're bodies have changed.”
“Yes, I get that.”
“Maybe it's been in the making for some time.”
“I don't follow you, Robb.”
“Form follows function. An individual's needs expressed in lineage traits. Lamarck, you may recall.”
“No,” Ryan disagreed.
“You're missing the point.”
“What point? My company's technology has...”
“... begun the process of ending human competition.”
“It's corrupted the human genome, Robb. Don't make light of it. Don't deny it!”
“I'm denying nothing,” Robb argued, “No, I think its quite the opposite.”
Ryan scoffed.
“It's hastened the natural process.” Then Robb murmured an odd rhetoric, “Hell, that's an accusation that I can't even be sure of. Perhaps your technology is the process.
“What?”
“The commencement of our evolutionary development.”
“How can you say that, Robb? CI is technology!”
Robb ignored him. “What did Jankowiak call this venture?”
“The Methuselah Project.” Ryan was bitter.
“Yes. Doesn't that mean something to you?”
“Are you telling me these creatures—”
“They're human, Ryan,” Robb interrupted.
“—these h-h-hu...mans...” Ryan could hardly phrase the word, “are long-lived?”
“No.”
“Then it's not what Jankowiak set out to find.”
“Of course it is.”
“What do you mean?” Ryan exhaled violently, venting his exasperation.
“It's a broader interpretation, an intellectual license of the term, I suppose.” Robb meandered. “I'm sure Jankowiak only considered the individual when he conceived of the Methuselah game.”
“Don't waffle, Robb. Please”—
Robb squared his eyes at Ryan. “This is a species expression, Ryan. So far, Smith and the others are not falling prey to degenerative diseases. No heart disease, no carcinoma and, most importantly, they have an enhanced immunological response against viruses.”
“Viruses?”
“Yes, the scientists first documented this behavior against the 'flu and cold strains. Now its clear, it extends to many viruses, maybe even AIDs or Ebola. Right now Dr. Smith doesn't know the full extent. But what he does know is clear and I agree with him.” Robb stared at the ceiling for a moment and then lowered his eyes to Ryan's. They were fiercely intense. “This is a significant evolutionary armament against threats that all humans have battled for millions of years.”
“But they don't live longer.” Ryan focused on his personal failure.
“No, in fact they appear to age more quickly. As they should.”
“Huh? How does this make sense?”
“Viruses constantly mutate. Consider beyond the immediate hype of an SARS or H1N1 or AIDs virus. Every season a dominant 'flu emerges—and it's only one of many mutations. With transcontinental traffic the lucky variant migrates and quickly infects the globe. Millions get sick. A small percentage die. The virus thrives, waxes and wanes. In the process it is exposed to adaptive influences and it evolves again. It's a successful strategy. Until now.”
Robb smiled triumphantly. “These archetypes are radically different, Ryan. Their immunity against viruses ensures their survival with respect to ours—at a reduced tax on the environment.”
“I-I-I...” Ryan stuttered. “I can't accept that.”
“Then you're in denial.”
“I deny that I'm to blame.”
“To blame?” Robb was incredulous. “You're to thank!”
Ryan stared as if Robb were mad. “You're crazy,” he said softly.
“Am I?” Robb laughed. He did sound crazy. “We're primates, Ryan. A shared ancestry with the other Great Apes yet ours has uniquely taken over the globe. How can that be? The three other species co-exist on the same continent, sometimes in the same locales, without undue conflict. What makes us so different?”
Ryan shook his head, more puzzled by Robb posing the question than the obvious answer.
“Because chimps, orangutans and gorillas inhabit unique ecological niches,” Robb answered.
Ryan's eyes narrowed further.
“They no longer compete,” Robb spelled it out.
“I thought competition was our lifeblood,” Ryan argued.
“Competition for consumption long ago replaced competition for survival,” Robb replied.
“That's just semantics,” Ryan said with belligerence.
“Nothing is limitless, Ryan. We live longer and there are more of us. Though we've neutralized old enemies with vaccinations, herbicides and insecticides—even pharmaceuticals—as fast as we conquer another threat appears.”
Ryan nodded.
“Human populations exploded because of technology,” Robb continued, “but only after we learned to manipulate the natural world to do what we wanted. The deserts blossomed with water from hundreds of miles away. Hybridized seeds enhanced food production by fifty-fold. We scorned pestilence with genetic modifications. We inevitably waxed in numbers and in cockiness. And then, when that wasn't enough and the land no longer met our needs, we harvested the seas—with ruthless efficiency. We own the entire globe... But there's been collateral damage, Ryan. We've lynched a plethora of indigenous species to their extinction.”
Ryan winced. It wasn't that Robb's indictment was scathing, it was worse; Robb sounded like an alarmist.
“It can't go on forever, Ryan. Whether we know it or not, we've backed ourselves into a tight corner. Our resources are on the decline. Biodiversity is crashing. We've made the Earth small: She is our Floriana.”
“We'll innovate,” Ryan postured halfheartedly.
“What if we don't? What if we can't?” Robb argued. “What's left to exploit? I don't mean the inevitable conflict we'll have over water, land and food. No, my concern is fundamental: Past extinctions tell us that there is a terrible price to pay. Nature does not favor uniformity.”
“Uniformity?” Ryan was confused. Robb had waxed academic again.
“Too much of any one thing,” Robb re-stated but when he saw that Ryan didn't get it he expounded again. “The Mayans and the Incas grew in numbers, homogenized their ecosystems and consumed their resources. They became vulnerable to natural disasters and their cultures were extinguished.”
“They didn't have modern tech...” Ryan began but Ro
bb cut him off.
“They had the best technology of their day, Ryan, just like we do. In that regard, nothing's changed. Technology can only thwart the inevitable.”
“Why? We're far more advanced...”
“Ha!” Robb retorted, “just a point in time.”
“What's so different this time?” Ryan did not spare his condescension.
“Wet have the capacity for self-annihilation.”
“So shouldn't that slate us for destruction?” Ryan spat with thick sarcasm. Robb's argument was flawed.
“I don't see how you could think that,” Robb mused. He seemed to be genuinely confused by Ryan's question. “What an odd thing to say!”
“Hardly,” Ryan pressed. “Flaws in one's character determine one's fate. Maybe we should throw in the towel now.”
“That's ludicrous, Ryan.”
“Is it? Now you're arguing against yourself, Robb. What about the Incas and the Mayans?”
“Don't misunderstand me, Ryan.”
“Misunderstand what? That you're talking in circles?”
“Circles? Hardly!” Robb refused to be backed into a corner. “The loss of a single culture didn't pose the greater threat—because each was an isolated failure—no, the impact from loss of diversity is considerably greater. It's global, Ryan.”
“Then why not wipe the slate clean?”
“Never!” Robb snapped—Ryan furrowed his brow to frame a retort but before he could speak Robb continued—“Why would Nature abandon her pinnacle expression? She's too invested.”
“Invested?”
“Invested,” Robb reiterated. “Her crowning achievement reigns supreme. Now it's time to remold and disperse.”
“It's just not what I expected.” Ryan lamented.
“It never is, Ryan.”
Aftermath
“Will you ever tell him, Robb?” Natalia asked. She held open up a current events magazine, the feature article, “Collective Arrogance,” dedicated to the