IGMS Issue 48

by IGMS

  This brief conversation took place when the children were both four. Sunk and Audny had decided against preschool because the Cal and March were already reading at a third grade level -- or higher. The activities at the preschools they visited were obviously far beneath their children's level. Now their debate was about home schooling versus tutors, because there was no school prepared to deal with March and Cal.

  One reason was their astonishing ability to hear even the faintest conversations and distinguish the words from background noise. Audny and Sunk had been alone in the kitchen, with Cal playing outside and March in her bedroom. But the moment Audny said, "We're wonderful parents," they could hear March's door open and the clattering footsteps as she ran to the kitchen, flung open the door, and loudly asked, "Do you know what I think?"

  "We will when you tell us," said Audny, a little annoyed at yet another reminder that there was no privacy in this house.

  "It's just a conversational opening, my love," said Sunk. "What do you think, March?"

  "I think you are wonderful parents. Cal and I both think so. We're learning all the most important things about being human from you, and you really ought to have children of your own very, very soon."

  Neither Audny nor Sunk had the faintest idea how to answer. They had decided not to tell the children they were not genetically related to their parents because that would raise all sorts of impossible questions. Yet it seemed that somehow they knew.

  "We have children of our own," said Audny. "You and Cal." She patted her abdomen. "I carried you in here."

  At this point Cal wandered in from outside and began to noodle on the electronic piano, picking out tunes that implied an understanding of complicated harmonic relationships. But Sunk was sure Cal was listening. In fact, he wondered if Cal had somehow known that March was going to bring up this topic and he wanted to listen. It seemed likely that they had discussed it beforehand.

  "Don't lie to us," said March. Us. So she had noticed Cal come in and considered him to be part of her side of the conversation. "We know what we are."

  Audny stiffened. "And what is that?" she asked.

  "Thanks for not pretending that we're normal, Mom. We know we're not. We know about the alien spaceship and the human genome etched inside. We know that we're the result of a reconstruction of that genome which you got implanted in you so you could give birth to us."

  Sunk and Audny could only look at each other, then at March. "It's interesting to hear you speak in a voice we've never heard before," said Sunk.

  "We both speak the same language as you and Mother," March said to him.

  "English isn't our native language," said Audny.

  "It's the only language you speak to each other," said March. "And you speak it very precisely, like the scientists you are. With an elevated vocabulary. Did you think we wouldn't learn to talk that way?"

  "We knew you would eventually," said Sunk.

  "We're trying to pass for normal," said March. "But when you decided against sending us to kindergarten we knew that we had failed."

  "Until this conversation," said Audny, "you hadn't failed quite so spectacularly."

  "Because it wasn't necessary to talk at this level until now," said March. "Cal and I discussed this and even though we've been given strict ..."

  When her voice trailed off, Sunk looked quickly at Cal. Had he given her some signal? No ... his eyes were on his own fingers on the keyboard. Only now he was using various fingers from both hands to improvise music much more complicated than he had ever played before.

  "What is it you've been strictly instructed not to say?" asked Audny.

  "And by whom?" murmured Sunk, knowing they could hear his almost subvocal question.

  "We're not the first children to be born from this genome," said March. "The earliest ones are several years older than we are, and you know what that means."

  Sunk wanted to ask how they could possibly know any of this, but Audny held up her hand to stop him. "I wish we did know what it means," said Audny, "but we don't, because we don't know anybody else who's raising children like you. So the only things we know about your development, we've learned from watching you."

  "We do everything earlier than human kids," said March.

  Sunk hated hearing her speak of other kids as human, as if she did not regard herself as one of them.

  March seemed to sense something -- his breathing? A slight stiffening of his posture? -- and said, "I meant regular human kids."

  "Puberty," said Cal clearly from the other room. "Get to the point, Marchioness." It was the name he used when he wanted to goad her or tease her.

  Sunk sighed. "Please don't tell me that you're --"

  "We're not even five years old yet," said March impatiently. "But some of them are ten and eleven now, and their bodies are maturing. Have matured, reproductively speaking."

  Reproductively speaking. Sunk and Audny hadn't thought they would have to do any "reproductive speaking" for at least a few more years. Now it was plain they were already behind the curve.

  "And what does that have to do with us having children that are genetically related to us?" asked Audny. Oh, yes. Audny had a way of staying on point.

  "While you still can," said March.

  "If you still can," said Cal. His playing was uninterrupted.

  "What are you talking about?" asked Sunk.

  "Some of the other children have been tested," said March. "Their reproductive cells do not replicate the genome from the alien craft."

  Again Sunk wanted to demand how they could possibly know this.

  "The two of you chose not to look for other parents doing what you're doing," said March. "That was wise -- none of the other regular human parents know about you, either. But many of them know about each other. They know that one of the families -- if we can call them that -- took one look at the genes their experimental children carried in their ova and spermatozoa and killed them."

  Sunk couldn't restrain a gasp. Audny burst into tears, though she quickly stopped herself.

  "Killed them," murmured Sunk. "Why?"

  "We aren't the new species," said March. "Our children will be."

  "So what?" asked Sunk. "Any parents who did what we did understood the risk."

  "From what we were able to get before they were killed," said March, "their reproductive genes would have produced ... creatures with about ten percent non-human genes."

  Sunk knew that this was approximately the percentage of genetic difference between humans and cats.

  "It could have been worse," said Audny, and then she gave a laugh that was almost indistinguishable from a sob.

  "Percentages don't matter," said Sunk. "What matters is where the new genetic information is. What it codes for."

  "'New' is the key word," said March. "Because all of the genome we have is still there, nothing left out. The ten percent new material isn't even attached to any of the normal twenty-three pairs. There are six new chromosome pairs, much shorter than any of the human genes except the Y, but they combine to be the equivalent of an additional ten percent."

  "That's very odd," said Audny.

  "More than odd," said Sunk. "Where did they come from?"

  "Our genes know how to make those six new pairs," said March, "but they don't do it in any of our cells except the spermatozoa and ova. Nobody thought to look at our gametes until the Oldest were caught --"

  "The Oldest?" asked Audny. "The earliest-born ..."

  "Of our kind," said March.

  "Nobody looked at their gametes until they were caught mating," said Sunk. Audry started to protest, but Sunk shook his head. "Whom could they mate with, except each other? The only other members of their species were all twins, genetically. There can't be an incest taboo for them in this first generation."

  Audny turned again to March. "Perhaps it's time for you to tell us ..." Then she hesitated.

  Sunk finished the question: "How you know these things."

  "Well,"
said March, stealing a glance at Cal. "The parents who know each other communicate in secret encrypted sites on the internet."

  "Which you've found and decrypted," said Sunk. "How did you know where to look? You're very smart, but you're only four years old and we never see you messing with the computers."

  "Just tell them," said Cal. "They'll figure it out eventually."

  "We've figured it out already," said Audny. "You have ways of communicating with the other children that don't depend on technology." Sunk thought it was generous of her to include him among those who had "figured it out already." It hadn't crossed his mind that they had any sort of mental communication, until now.

  "We always have," said March. "But we still developed language because the human genome makes us hungry for language. And what we pass to and from each other -- it isn't language. It's more like raw memory. But not completely raw. We select it and send it, just to one or two at a time."

  "So you got this directly from the two children who were ..." Sunk could not say "killed."

  "No," said March. "We got it from two other children. But they got it from the Oldest before they died, and they passed it on to us raw. We think it's complete, but we can't tell about that. We're still outsiders so they might not trust us with everything."

  "We know they don't," said Cal. And now he walked away from the keyboard and came into the kitchen. He didn't join directly in the conversation. He opened the fridge and poured himself some tangerine juice. "Because they never told us anything that would explain why the Oldest were killed."

  "We have some ideas, though," said March. "Based on some of the other things we've seen, and based on what we've learned about genes from our reading."

  "We think," said Cal, sipping from his glass, "that the additional genes don't affect the physical or mental structure of the next generation. They aren't part of the human genome. They're something else."

  "What?" asked Sunk.

  "We can't possibly know," said March, glaring at Cal.

  "March doesn't like speculating," said Cal, "but I think it's our job as humans to try to anticipate every possibility."

  "And a lot of impossibilities, too," said March.

  "We don't know if the Oldest actually conceived a child. We don't know if those other genes actually got combined. But I think they did."

  "Based on no evidence," said March.

  "She's the skeptic on this one," said Cal. "There's no scientific method without doubt, isn't that right, Dad?"

  "Hypothesis and doubt go hand in hand," said Sunk. "Without the hypothesis, nothing new, and without the doubt, science gets captured by fads and dogmas."

  "So do you think her doubt should keep me from telling you my guesses?" asked Cal.

  "Do you believe your guesses?" asked Audny.

  "No," said Cal. "But I don't disbelieve them, either. Whatever happened, their own parents killed them. And I mean killed them. Nothing slow, nothing painless, nothing secret. They shot them and they burned them and then they burned down the house around themselves. That doesn't come from mental communication. It comes from police reports."

  "Cal's theory is that whatever those extra genes make," said March, "it doesn't stay confined within the bodies of our children. It gets loose. Like the common cold. Or measles, or chicken pox. And then it does stuff."

  "What stuff?" asked Sunk.

  "Cal's guess," March began.

  "I think," said Cal, "that whatever those genes make, some of it got into the parents, they saw the effects in their own bodies, and they immediately acted to kill their children as the source of the infection, and to kill themselves because they were already infected and would spread it further."

  "Cal thinks the aliens who designed us included a weapon to wipe out regular humans like you. Or to sterilize them. But regular humans still have the will to survive, individually and collectively. And you're our parents. We love you, we want you to survive."

  "The parents of the Oldest were scientists like you," said Cal. "They wouldn't have flown into a rage about the incest or the pregnancy --"

  "If the Oldest got pregnant," said March.

  "And the new organisms --"

  "If any," added March.

  "Couldn't have made them murderously and suicidally insane because an infectious agent like that wouldn't propagate long enough to do anything."

  Part of Sunk was proud of the kids for coming up with all this sophisticated reasoning. Part of him was terrified for exactly the same reason. Mostly, though, he was frightened because what if Cal was right? Sunk looked at Audny, unwilling to speak his thoughts aloud in front of the children, yet unable to be sure what to say without her counsel.

  Maybe she took his glance as confirmation of what she had already decided. Maybe she thought he was leaving it up to her. "We're not going to kill you," said Audny to the children.

  "Thank you, Mother," said March. "What worries us is if, when we get older, maybe something we do might accidentally kill you."

  "I'm glad you think of that as a bad thing," said Sunk.

  Audny gave a tiny laugh. Sunk looked at her again. "Not sure what you meant by that," Sunk said.

  "I meant, 'Ha,'" said Audny.

  "Who knows what we'll think when we reach puberty?" said Cal. "I've read a lot about adolescence and that's a kind of insanity, too. For all we know, the Oldest knew exactly what they were doing, and meant to do it."

  "We're a long way into these speculations now," said Audny.

  "It's not entirely speculation," Sunk reminded Audny. "March and Cal know the Oldest from the inside out."

  "You think they're not telling us everything they know?" asked Audny.

  "Of course they're not," said Sunk. "But what I meant was deeper inside. Genetically speaking, March and Cal are those first two children."

  "Twins are different from each other," said March. "Even identicals. Same genes, but different fingerprints."

  "Different personalities," said Cal. "But the rush of hormones at puberty turns us all into monsters."

  "Let's say you're completely correct," said Audny. "I mean Cal. Your guesses. Suppose that these extra genes code for a disease that attacks traditional humans."

  Traditional. Yes, that was better than "normal," thought Sunk.

  "Maybe the word 'attack' isn't the right one," said Audny. "Maybe it does intrude in the human body the way disease agents do. Like viruses, maybe, plugging themselves into the nucleus of every cell they can break into. But does that mean that the ... aliens mean to destroy us?"

  "Maybe the parents of the Oldest acted too quickly," said Sunk. "Motivated by fear rather than evidence. Maybe they wiped out this 'infection' because of what it might do."

  "There are augmented children like us who aren't living with their parents," said March. "Some are in foster care, some in orphanages, some in non-scientist families who don't know that the children they adopted had the alien genome. Only two sets of twins were broken up, so the rest of them all have a potential mate. It's going to happen. They're going to mate, some of them, anyway, and whatever the parents of the Oldest were so afraid of will get loose."

  "Everybody keeps promising that we won't mate," said Cal, "but vows of chastity aren't famous for being universally kept."

  It was as if both kids were strangers. "You've been hiding from us for years," said Sunk. "Hiding how you really talk, how you really think."

  "It seemed ... prudent," said March. "We saw how you seized on every sign that we were more advanced than other kids our age. We were afraid you'd ... ask too many questions."

  "Oh, we would have," said Sunk. "And you know we'll ask them now."

  "Yes," said March, looking resigned. "But we don't want you to die."

  "And we don't want you to kill us," said Cal.

  "Running away isn't an option," said March. "We may look like six-year-olds instead of almost-five-year-olds, but that's not enough. Nobody's going to let us wander around without stopping us and turning us
over to the police or child services or something."

  "For all we know," said Cal, "the extra genes are like an inoculation against all diseases. It may allow traditional humans to live to be five hundred. Or to think to each other and share memories across vast distances the way we can. It might be a good thing, but it scared the parents of the oldest."

  "You have a plan," said Sunk. "You wouldn't have brought this to us if you didn't have a plan."

  "Well, yes," said March. "It's the same plan that all of us decided on. But we don't know if --"

  "Nobody thinks that any of their parents will go along with it," said Cal. "But I think you might. I think you will."

  "And your plan is for us to have children who are genetically related to us," said Audny.

  "That's part of it," said March.

  "And part of it is quitting your jobs and moving to some really isolated location," said Cal. "A private island would be best. Where we can grow all our own food and generate electricity and everything, without any contact with the outside world."

  "Quarantine," said Audny.

  "Cal and I won't come near each other until we know what happens when other kids mate and aren't murdered and burned," said March. "Right now coming near each other that way seems like the most repulsive idea ever, but, you know, hormones. So all we can promise is that we'll wait."

  "If the extra genes wipe out the human race, or sterilize everybody, or something," said Cal, "you two should already have a couple of traditional human kids."

  "Hopefully a girl and a boy," said March.

  "In case we need to start the human race over," said Audny dryly.

  "Well, yes," said Cal.

  "In case we decide," said March, "that for the sake of traditional humanity, all of us augmented kids need to ... go."

  "We don't think it's right for the aliens to decide to replace Homo sapiens with whatever we are," said Cal.

  "But they didn't," said Sunk.

  "They embedded extra genes in our children's reproductive cells," said Audny.

  "Yes, and those genes will do whatever they do. But the aliens didn't hold a gun to our heads and make us have these babies," said Sunk. "We chose."