by IGMS
"We chose without knowing what we were choosing," said Audny.
"And we knew we didn't know, and still we chose," said Sunk.
"The whole human race didn't choose," said Audny. "Just us."
"Us and all those other parents who had augmented children," said Sunk. "How many?"
"Almost a hundred pairs," said March. "But there might be more who, you know. They're just lurking. Listening but not sending anything."
"It seems to me," said Sunk, "that everybody who could have created examples of the alien genome did it. And they all chose to create both sexes. Am I right?"
"So we chose," said Audny. "But we didn't have any right to choose."
"We're not on trial here," said Sunk. "We created our children in a nontraditional way, but we love them and we're a family. And they're amazing. We chose to find out what would happen. Nobody knows what will happen when they have children. Nobody."
"That's my point," said Audny. "It's human nature. It's built into us. We have to know."
"Curious people have to know," said Sunk. "And people who want children are generally those who have the most children. Yes, it's part of human nature. And maybe the aliens knew that and so they laid a trap. But maybe it isn't a trap. Maybe it's the most wonderful thing that could ever happen. And we passed the first test -- we made these kids -- and now we're facing the second test."
"Do we love them so much that we refuse to kill them?" asked Audny.
"Do we trust the makers of their genome to have a plan that's better than anything we could plan for ourselves," said Sunk. "How many parents through all of history have died for their children, if that's what it took?"
"Not that many," said Audny.
"Enough to show that it's also part of the human character," said Sunk. "Even if all the traditional humans die out -- killed or sterilized or whatever -- if it clears the way for children like these ..." He gestured to include both Cal and March.
"But do we have a right to decide for all the other traditional humans?" asked Audny.
"It's not about having a 'right,'" said Sunk. "It's about having a choice at all. It's about having to choose. Who else can decide? These are our children, not theirs."
"We're not technically yours," said March softly.
"You are our children," said Audny, even more softly. "And having children the regular way won't change that."
And then Sunk began to laugh. The others looked at him as if he were crazy. "I think it's time for Cal and March to tell us whether we passed their little test."
March and Cal looked at each other.
Cal smiled sadly.
March just shook her head. "We're not 'testing' you," she said.
"What would we be testing for?" asked Cal. "To see if you loved us more than the whole human race? Or to see if you would sacrifice your own children in order to save the human race from replacement or transformation?"
"I don't know what the test is for," said Sunk. "If I knew, I could have passed it or failed it on purpose. But it feels like a test. Because everything we know about these hypothetical extra genes, we got from you. From children who aren't even five. Children who look six but --"
"But talk like grad students," said Audny.
"Is that a good thing?" asked Cal.
"Not a test," said March. "Not hypothetical. But now I see why the other kids think that none of their parents will go into quarantine. Because they'll all find a way to talk themselves out of believing their own alien children. We're trying to warn you about the alien invasion, but now you've found a story you can tell yourselves so you don't have to do anything at all. It's just a test. They were just testing us."
"They'll look it up on the internet," said Cal. "They'll find the parents who murdered their twins and burned the house down around themselves."
"That won't prove anything," said March. "There's no evidence that the dead twins were augmented humans. They can just tell themselves that we found the news stories and then made up a test using that as part of our setup."
They were all sitting around the table now. Nobody was looking at anybody else. Cal finished his tangerine juice. And then they sat a while longer.
"In for a penny, in for a pound," said Audny.
"What?" asked Cal.
"In for a dime, in for a dollar," said Sunk. "What your mother is saying is, we've already built our lives entirely around having you and raising you. We were already planning on home schooling you."
"We have a lot of money saved," said Audny, "and selling the house will raise more."
"I don't know if we can buy an island," said Sunk, "but we can live in a fairly isolated place. A completely isolated place."
"With an internet connection so we can follow the news," said Audny.
"We can do it, and so we should do it. See how it plays out," said Sunk.
Both Cal and March were young enough that their emotions were written on their faces. March looked relieved. Cal looked happy. Excited, even. "You'll really do it?"
"If you weren't just testing us," said Sunk. "If this is all true."
"But how can you know if we're telling the truth?" asked March.
"We know, because you said so," said Audny, "and because, if it isn't true, at some point you'll tell us."
"It's not a test," said Cal.
"You can't say that," said Sunk.
"But it isn't a test," said March. "How can you think that we'd --"
"We don't really know you," said Audny. "Not since you started talking like this -- how can we know what to think."
"You're missing my point," said Sunk. "I don't think it's Cal's or March's test. But that doesn't mean it isn't a test. It's their test. The ... people out there. The aliens. The gods. Whatever and whoever they are. They sent us the end of the world in a box. We decided to unwrap it and make these children. Now we're deciding to take precautions so that we can have a chance at allowing traditional and augmented humans to live together in the same world. Another choice, after we have more information. But a choice."
"So Dad," said March. "Our conversation, today. You think the aliens planned this?"
"I think they had to know that if we had enough science and technology to snag that spacecraft, decode its message, and then make these babies, we'd also notice the much-larger genetic change in the next generation. And then we'd decide what to do about it. Maybe the parents of the Oldest passed a test, or maybe they failed it. Or maybe there's no pass, no fail, just a fork in the road. They walked down one path, and we're choosing to wait a while longer before we decide what to do. But it's the choice they set before us when they launched that spacecraft. For all we know they don't care how we decide. Whatever kind of human species emerges from this, it's the one that human beings chose. Freely."
"Chose with insufficient information," said Audny.
"There's always insufficient information," said Sunk. "And yet we choose."
It took two months to wind down their professional responsibilities, to buy a small Costa Rican island, and to arrange for their new compound to be build. There was enough money, and while people thought they were making a weird or terrible choice, to give up their careers and go off and live like hermits, like the Swiss family Robinson, nobody tried to stop them and there was no story about it anywhere on the internet.
No epidemic broke out in the world while they were making their preparations. They lived on the island for five years and nothing happened to demonstrate that any part of March's and Cal's story was true. March told them it was because most of the star-born children were holding off on mating after the loss of the Oldest.
But the waiting ended, and this time there was an actual birth to a brother and sister near Mumbai. The baby died almost at once. But somehow the birth unleashed the plague they had feared. It swept from Mumbai throughout the world, killing about half the people it infected.
The fifty percent death rate was shattering to economies and governments, and the whole world got caught u
p in so much chaos and suffering, violence and loss -- in short, history -- that they couldn't keep track of it all from their island.
But as the dust settled, there was a rising optimism, because the survivors were changed. They didn't get sick anymore. They weren't just immune to that particular plague -- they no longer got sick at all. Not even food poisoning. Not even senile dementia or any of the other uncurable diseases. Perfect health.
"The disease was meant as a gift, then," said Audny.
"Who knows what they meant," said Cal. "Who cares what they meant. We meant to live on this island, and we're alive. You have two natural human children, and they're alive, and you're alive. That's what we meant."
"What do your friends tell you?" asked Sunk. "I mean, your twins. The other augmented ones."
"They aren't speaking to us," said March, "and we aren't speaking to them. They were getting too controlling. They were pressuring us to make a baby and infect you -- even though none of the babies born so far has lived more than a few minutes."
"Some of them even tried to get somebody to force their way onto the island," said Cal. "But it didn't work, because even though they're really smart, they're still young, and most adults are just trying to rebuild their lives."
"Eventually it will work," said March. "Eventually they'll come."
"And when that happens," said Sunk, "either your mother and I will live through it, or not. And the other children."
"You say that as if you don't care how it turns out," said Audny.
"I care," said Sunk. "But I also know that the outcome is beyond our control. What do we gain by delaying? Jump in with both feet and take our chances."
"No," said March. "You might die. The odds are that half of you will die."
"We're going to die eventually," said Sunk. "Whoever lives through the disease will live a long time, though. And if we all live -- and why shouldn't we? -- then we can travel freely. You can live up to your full potential."
"Until we find out," said Cal, "what the next generation of monster children are like."
"Every civilization lasts only until they reach a generation that no longer wants to do whatever it takes to keep the civilization alive," said Audny. "Haven't you read history? I'm not afraid of your children or their children or their children's children's children."
"They'll all choose to do what they choose to do," said Sunk. "As we did. As you did, and as you will in the future."
March leaned against the doorjamb, looking askance at her brother. "If it's all the same to you," she said, "I'm not going to let a committee decide whether I'm going to mate with this buffoon."
"The desire to reproduce will get stronger," said Audny.
"Curiosity, too," added Sunk.
"But perhaps the other children will have a better chance of survival if they're more mature when the disease comes," said Audny. She did not have to say: And perhaps Sunk and I will have a lower chance of survival, being older.
March and Cal watched the growth of Audny's and Sunk's natural children, Nels and Beleza, with fascination. Each of the markers of a normal human childhood was seen with delight. The first grasping of the hands, the first attempts to balance on the feet, pushing up from the floor, rolling over, sitting. March and Cal played with the babies frequently.
Played, but there was also an element of testing. "What do you think?" Audny asked March one day, as she played with Beleza.
"I think that it's a beautiful thing, to watch babies learn to be human."
"Are you playing with Beleza?" asked Audny.
"Am I invisible?" asked March.
"I mean, are you playing or testing?"
"Both at once," said March. "And also helping and teaching her, exercising and strengthening." She let Beleza sink back to a sitting position and let go of the baby's hands. Then she took her mother's left hand and held it in both of hers. "We have the human instinct to play with babies," she said. "Isn't it a good thing that we love infants that have the human genome? Doesn't that bode well for the two species' ability to get along?"
It did, yes, Audny knew. But it did not bode well that March regarded Nels and Beleza as members of another species, instead of a variant of their own.
March got pregnant when Nels was five and Beleza was four. Not sure when in the pregnancy the infection might appear, they all monitored each other's health minutely. In the interest of science, they also kept weekly ultrasound records of the gestating baby and wrote down every observation.
Labor began after only seven months of pregnancy, but the baby, a daughter, was nearly the size of a regular full-term infant. Cal was at March's side, with that highly concentrated, faraway look that by now his parents recognized as the sign that he was in communication with others of his generation.
"Don't puncture the birth caul," said Cal. "That's the mistake the others made, we think."
The warning was necessary, because the baby's entire body was completely enclosed in a tough, thick sac of seemingly impermeable membrane.
"She can't breathe through that," said Audny, unable to keep the anxiety and urgency out of her voice.
"The others couldn't breathe without the sac," said Cal. "If we don't try something different, ours will die, too."
The placenta soon delivered, and on the assumption that its role was finished, Sunk tied it off and cut the umbilical cord. The sac was already hardening as he weighed the baby and then scanned her. "Look at this," he said, showing the scan to the others. "There's a yolk in there, I think."
"This next generation might have a head too large to deliver at full term," said Audny. "A flexible sac that turns into a kind of eggshell allows the baby to be born much younger, with a smaller head, without cutting short the gestation time."
"Especially if air can osmote through the eggshell," said Sunk.
Audny sighed. "But it gives March no baby to hold or bond with."
Cal shook his head. "We've already bonded with her."
Not with language, but mind to mind, Audny and Sunk understood at once.
"She'll tell us when she's ready to come out," said March wearily from the delivery bed. "One way or another."
For three months March and Cal took turns sleeping with the egg nestled close to their bodies. The baby inside wriggled, stretched, kicked -- and the egg had enough resiliency to show some of the movement. Then, at last, the pressure grew too great for the eggshell, and it split where the little girl was pressing hard with her feet.
"She's too big for the shell now," said Cal, as he tore the egg open the rest of the way.
Sunk was relieved when the baby's face emerged from the fluid and she took a great gasping breath and then cried out. This was, at last, the completion of her birth, after ten months of gestation, partly in utero, partly in ovo. She was definitely human in appearance, though she was the size of a largish one-year-old and her head was almost adult-sized.
"I'm here," said the baby. "What's my name?"
March and Cal embraced her and each other, weeping with joy.
"You can help choose your own name, darling," said Audny. And then, only a little sarcastically, "Can she read yet? Because there are plenty of name lists online."
"Darling's a good name," said the baby.
"She can't read," said Cal. "She's not used to seeing yet, and her brain is only registering two dimensions right now. And she's also too young to decide her own name. She may have absorbed speech in the womb, but that doesn't mean she has as much sense as a kitten."
"I'm much smarter than a kitten," said the baby.
"But you still can't pronounce your Rs properly," said Cal.
"Don't be so critical," said March. "She's very young and doesn't know her own limitations."
"If she has any," said Sunk.
As March and Cal introduced Darling to her body and their house and the island, however, the rest of the family fell ill.
The disease progressed slowly for the first few days, appearing as a cold, with sniffles
and sneezes, then a bit of coughing and a tickle at the back of the throat. But then the little ones became lethargic, sleepy, and complained of headaches, and soon Sunk and Audny felt the same symptoms.
"What a relief that it's not more painful," said Sunk, after he took to his bed.
"There was a great deal of pain on the mainland," said Cal. "Maybe you have a mild case."
Mild or severe, Sunk had no way to judge. He was irresistibly sleepy.
Maybe I'll sleep myself to death, he thought. Then this would be the most merciful of diseases.
But the mercy was not perfect, because there were dreams. Some were a recapitulation of memory -- Sunk's own childhood, moments with his parents, his siblings, his teachers, all remembered more clearly than any dreams Sunk had ever had.
Soon, though, his dreams had people in them that Sunk had never met. And soon he understood that many of those people were the makers of the genome. "No," they told him, "we did not make these new children to replace you, and we did not make them to be more like us. We made them to be exactly like you, only perfect. They are the human race, raised to its full potential."
"Why did you do it?" asked Sunk. "And why did you have to put this disease into the genome?"
In one dream, the alien gave a long explanation in language so technical that Sunk could understand only bits of it, until at last he began to waken and realized that all the words were nonsense. Only a dream, he understood. I'm not really talking to the aliens, and so there will be no answers.
But in another dream, they said, "We did not put in the disease, my love; the disease just happens, the way the common cold happened with the last great leap of your genome. The new species wants, at the deepest genetic level, to wipe out all competition. Like secretions from the roots of a plant, to inhibit the growth of plants from the same species. This is my air, this is my sunlight, this is my soil and my water, you will not steal them from me."
There was no dream in which the aliens answered his first question: Why did you do it? Why did you send this new genome to us, engraved into the skin of a hollow ship?
Finally Sunk awoke fully. Awoke enough to feel the warmth of air through open windows, though there was still shade to keep off the direct light of the sun.