‘I am very pretty,’ said Elisaveta thoughtfully. ‘And also very intelligent. I’m fantastic at maths. And I’m very flexible. I can wrap my legs around the back of my head, no problem.’
‘But it’s all completely random, isn’t it?’ said Digby, who knew something about genetics. ‘The genes in my body that make me me and the ones that make you you will all get mixed up when they are passed on to our child. What if the baby inherits my looks instead of yours? I’m not particularly good-looking. And you’ve got abnormally large feet for such a delicate lady. What? I’m only saying. Don’t you want our child to be perfect?’
Elisaveta thought that as long as the child was happy, she didn’t really mind. But Digby was used to everything in his life being perfect. He summoned the best scientists from across his many companies to a meeting on his private island.
Twelve of them arrived, wearing the white coats of their trade, and blinking in the tropical light and heat. Digby hustled them from the dusty airstrip into an air-conditioned meeting room, where they all sat around a polished mahogany table, gaping as Digby explained what he wanted. He had a PowerPoint presentation and everything.
‘But … but … that’s not possible!’ gasped Dr Jane Johnson, lead geneticist at CloneCoplc and inventor of the popular doughnut-tasting cabbage, flipping through the brochure that Digby had had made for the occasion.
‘Sure it is,’ said Digby calmly. ‘There are genes for everything, aren’t there? Genetics dictate whether eyes are blue or brown, and decide the colour of your hair, or how tall you are, or whether you taste of cabbage or doughnuts, doesn’t it?’
‘Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that,’ muttered Dr Alessandro Munoz, director of science at GoGen and inventor of star-shaped mushrooms. ‘You want your future child to be the most beautiful in the world, the best singer, the most intelligent, the kindest … and you want her to be able to shoot lasers out of her eyes?’
‘Well, I’m not wedded to that last one, although it would be cool,’ said Digby confidently. ‘But, in my experience, anything is possible, given the right incentive. Look, Dr Johnson, Dr Munoz, I’m not asking you to do everything by yourself. Take one element each, work on that, and we will meet here again in a year’s time. You can have whatever you need for your research – I mean anything. And when you succeed – as I know you will – all twelve of you will be rich beyond your wildest dreams.’
The scientists returned to their different laboratories across the world, enthused by their task. Dr Purnima Mistry spent a year isolating the genes which she thought guaranteed that a person would be super athletic. Professor Li Wei and her team were absorbed in discovering the cluster of genes which made a person more likely to have a kind heart. All of the scientists worked hard and all were pleased with their discoveries, and excited to see how they could be used in practice.
But holed up in a university far, far from Digby’s tropical island, in the cold lands of the north, someone was not happy. Professor Morten Larsson was the greatest geneticist in the world. But he was a recluse and had not been seen for many years, which is why Digby King had forgotten he existed.
Although he rarely left his rooms, Professor Larsson heard whisperings about what the twelve scientists were up to and he was furious. Digby had insulted him by not including him among the best scientists in the world. ‘Perfect child, eh?’ he muttered to himself grimly. ‘We’ll just see about that!’
A year to the day after Digby had first outlined his plan, the scientists returned to the tropical island. Digby could hardly contain his excitement, and stood with his arms around Elisaveta, watching through a floor-to-ceiling window. The learned men and women lined up in a sterile laboratory, each ready to make their adjustments to the tiny mass of cells which would grow into Elisaveta and Digby’s perfect child.
‘Through my alteration of this cluster of genes, the child will be beautiful, precisely as you asked for, Mr and Mrs King,’ breathed Dr Johnson, as she stepped away from the shining silver machinery.
Digby beamed.
‘Through the fruits of my work,’ announced Dr Volkov, ‘the child will have the most amazing musical ability ever seen.’
One by one, the scientists proclaimed their achievements.
‘She will have a kind heart!’ said Professor Li Wei.
‘She will be athletic!’ announced Dr Mistry.
‘She will be intelligent,’ said Dr Munoz.
‘She will have a tip-top immune system – no coughs and colds for her!’ stated Professor Idris Kalu.
‘I couldn’t quite manage the lasers,’ admitted Dr Fay Ferrari. ‘But she will have super-duper eyesight.’
‘She will have a silver tongue,’ declared young, red-headed Dr Eric Davies. ‘Er, not literally,’ he added, seeing the dark look Digby shot him through the plate glass. ‘I mean, she will be, like, really persuasive? Like, really good with words, knowing the right thing to say, good at telling stories and all that?’
‘I’m really pleased with this one,’ said the next scientist up, Professor Max Canning. ‘I have found a way to make her smell beautiful at all times. And she can control it, so she can smell of lavender one day and vanilla the next … Awesome, eh?’
Digby hadn’t asked for that particular gift, but he liked his employees to use their initiative, so he waved it through. Besides, it did sound kind of cool to be able to smell like anything you wanted.
‘She will be wise!’ stated the next scientist, Dr Laure Legrand. Digby opened his mouth but Dr Legrand interrupted him. ‘Yes, I know what you’re going to say but it’s different to being intelligent, all right? Intelligence is knowing something – wisdom is knowing what to do about it.’
Digby looked unconvinced.
‘Oh, OK, fine,’ grumbled Dr Legrand. ‘Also, she will be full of joy. A happy type of person.’
‘She will be funny,’ declared the last scientist, Dr Janice Lester. ‘A real hoot. She’ll have everyone in stitches.’
Digby smiled. ‘That’s fantastic!’ he cried. ‘I just can’t wait to meet my beautiful, clever, funny, sweet-smelling daughter!’
Nine months later, Bryony Rosamund King came into the world in the usual way. Elisaveta cradled the bouncing baby in her arms, in the sunny, flower-filled nursery Digby had had built. The twelve scientists, keen to see the results of their labour, oohed and ahhed over the tot.
Most of the gifts were not yet evident, as Bryony was so little, but it had to be said that her face was pleasant to look at, her crying had a very musical lilt to it, and there was a strong smell of bacon wafting from her, mixed with petrol. ‘I don’t think she can control the smell thing yet,’ said Digby. ‘But I’m sure it will be brilliant when she knows what she’s doing.’
Suddenly, a loud noise, like a siren, rang through the room. Bryony started to cry – musically. The screen in the corner, which had been showing calming clouds drifting across a pale blue sky, fizzed with static and was filled with a frowning, skeletal face with cavernous cheekbones and burning eyes set deep in their sockets.
Digby didn’t recognise him but the group of scientists gasped as one: ‘Dr Larsson!’
‘Oh, you recognise me, do you?’ hissed the scientist peevishly. ‘What about you, King? Remember me now, do you? You forgot about me, didn’t you, when you were designing your perfect daughter? I could have done the laser eyes, you know, but you didn’t think to ask me. Did you think I was past it? Well, I’ve still got it, oh yes. Beautiful she may be, and clever and all the rest, but much good it’ll do you. I managed to infiltrate your scientists’ labs. Yes, all of them. I have infected your daughter with a deadly disease. It won’t become apparent until she is sixteen, but after that, she will have only weeks to live. Mwa-ha-ha-ha,’ he added, as it seemed to follow naturally, and disappeared from the screen.
Naturally, pandemonium ensued. The scientists were all talking at once. Elisaveta started to scream. Bryony’s loud cries went up and down the scale of G major, above all the other noise.<
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‘Shut up!’ bellowed Digby. ‘Get my security team in here right now! Trace that TV signal! Find out whether he’s telling the truth, and if he is, find a cure!’
But no one could trace Dr Morten Larsson, not even the succession of brilliant detectives employed by the Kings.
Bryony was taken into hospital to be checked over, but nobody could discover what, if anything, was wrong with her. ‘Her genes are so weird anyway,’ said the doctor. ‘What on earth is this smell thing?’
As Bryony King grew up, she was everything the scientists had promised she would be. She was beautiful, she was kind; she could sing like an angel, do complicated sums and bend her legs behind her head, no problem. Also, she had learned to control the smell thing, and most often was to be found smelling of roses, her signature scent.
She wasn’t perfect. She had a temper and she tended to pick the dry skin off her feet; she was messy; she couldn’t cook; and her father had neglected to mention swimming, which she was rubbish at – she sank like a stone the minute she stepped into the water. But she was an amazing person. Maybe she would have been anyway.
If Digby had asked his daughter, she might have been able to help with the whole ‘dropping dead at sixteen’ fiasco. She was that intelligent. But he didn’t want to frighten her.
And as the years passed, both Elisaveta and Digby wondered whether Dr Larsson had been lying. There was nobody healthier than Bryony on the tropical island where she spent her days, or, in fact, anywhere in the world. But they put a plan in place, just in case.
One day, just after her sixteenth birthday, Bryony was wandering through the beautiful garden surrounding the mansion, in search of the treehouse where she liked to curl up and read the latest scientific journal. A herd of flying cats swooped about her head, mewing gently, and at her feet scuttled the lion-headed ants that were the result of another of her father’s genetic experiments. The jewelled pendant she wore around her neck flashed like a diamond in the bright sunlight. She had her iPad in her hand so she could email the authors of the papers she read with helpful comments about how wrong they were – put in the kindest terms, of course. But before she came to the treehouse, Bryony stumbled upon a building she had never seen before, made of some kind of shiny white material, with no apparent windows or doors.
What could that be? she wondered to herself. It must have been built pretty recently – I’m sure I came past here a few weeks ago and it wasn’t here.
The building hummed softly: evidently it was drawing power from somewhere. Bryony put her hand on the outside wall and drew it back in surprise; the building was very cold. She decided to find her father and ask him, but before she could make a move, her heart gave a funny jump, her pulse sped up and then slowed down, and she toppled over onto the grass.
Immediately, back at the mansion, lights began to flash and a siren began to wail. A team of paramedics sprang into action and were at Bryony’s side in seconds, alerted by the pendant around her neck. Her parents had hidden a microchip in the jewel which transferred a continuous stream of information about Bryony’s heartbeat, breathing and general health to a network of computers around the island and to Digby’s mobile phone.
The paramedics lifted Bryony’s limp body onto a stretcher and rushed her into the white building. They were soon joined by Digby and Elisaveta, who watched in horror as Bryony, looking pale but serene, was lowered into a strange, transparent pod. The sides of the pod drew together with a hum to enclose Bryony within it, and a pattern of frost immediately began to appear on the clear surface.
‘Is she … ?’
‘We got to her in time,’ the medics assured Elisaveta. ‘She isn’t quite dead yet. And now she’s cryogenically frozen, we have time to find out what’s the matter with her and discover a cure. Then we can unfreeze her.’
There were two more pods at the back of the room. Digby looked at Elisaveta. He was no longer the confident, entitled man he had been; he seemed broken, far older than he actually was. Elisaveta too was sad and tired-looking.
‘Shall we?’ he asked his wife, holding out a hand.
She hesitated. Then she replied firmly, ‘Yes.’
The doctor injected Elisaveta and Digby with a substance to send them to sleep. They lay down in the pods and were enclosed.
Just before the cold descended, Digby thought, Am I doing the right thing? Would it be better for me to stay awake, to make sure my team of scientists keep working on a cure, to drive them on? Then he thought, But I don’t know how long the cure will take. I might die, and then Bryony would wake up in the future with nobody she knows. She might be afraid. No, this is the best way: the pods are programmed to defrost us if – when – Bryony is revived.
And then everything went black.
In the outside world, the twelve scientists did keep working on finding a cure for Bryony. But Dr Larsson was very clever, and they just couldn’t work out what he had done. And although Digby had left all of his money to them, so they could keep the freezing unit running and save Bryony, they gradually became interested in other things, and spent less and less time on the cure. There was a war, which took up a lot of time and energy, and the weather went completely crazy, so the world’s scientists had to work together to help with the famine and floods. Eventually, there was nobody left who remembered Bryony, Elisaveta and Digby.
Time passed. An old man and an old woman kept the mysterious building powered, but they had forgotten why – they didn’t even live on the small island. It was a duty that had been passed from generation to generation. Meanwhile the weird plants and animals on the island, left to themselves, took over the place.
But far away, a young student at the University Centre in Svalbard was gazing in amazement at the information scrolling across the holographic screen in front of him. Phil Lorensen was completing his medical studies, but was missing the vital information he needed to write his final essay on genetic modification. After months of fruitless searching on the internet, following whispers about long-forgotten research, he had ended up here, a cunningly concealed website where Dr Morten Larsson had hidden the alterations he had made to Bryony’s genes.
Phil could not believe his eyes. Bryony’s genome (all of her genes put together) was the most amazing he had ever seen. The information it held helped him to complete his studies, and he devised a cure for her illness. But the more he stared at her genome, the more he wanted to meet her. He could feel himself falling in love with her just looking at her genes, but he knew she must have been dead for at least a century. Then he received an email from a Jake Johnson:
Hey, Phil. I read your paper on the mysterious genome. Back in the day, my great-great-grandmother worked on something called Project Princess, and I think I may have some information that could be helpful.
The information was helpful. One week later, Phil was in a boat, powering through azure water towards a small island. Putting his binoculars to his eyes, he gazed at the tangled mass of vines and other strange-looking plants covering the whole place. Unusual sounds drifted to him over the still water; hoots, roars and screeches filled his ears. He nervously checked his equipment for the hundredth time, making sure his precious syringe was there.
Landing the boat and pulling it up the small sandy beach, Phil was immediately attacked from the air by a squadron of flying cats, while lion-headed ants gave mighty roars as they began to nibble his toes. Running up the beach and into the jungle, Phil flailed his hands around his face to ward off the swooping felines, and he crashed through the trees which had taken over the island. But the cats didn’t seem to want to hurt him – instead they seemed to be driving him forward, further inland, until he suddenly stumbled against a strangely humming, creeper-covered building. The cats stopped swooping and started to twine themselves around his ankles.
‘I think I’ve found what I was looking for,’ Phil panted, out of breath from his cat-driven stumble through the jungle. He brushed a particularly bright mass of scarlet flowers aside
and uncovered a digital keypad, just as his informant had said he would. Inputting the passcode he had been given – Bryony’s birthday – he jumped back in amazement as a doorway slid open where no door had appeared to be.
Cautiously, he stepped inside, immediately aware of the coolness of the air compared to the heat outside, as well as the hushed, expectant atmosphere.
A winged cat followed him inside, and immediately jumped up onto one of the three frosted pods that stood in the middle of the room.
‘Is this the one, mutant kitty?’ asked Phil.
The cat mewed.
Phil placed his hand on the pod and it opened, revealing Bryony, looking exactly as she had when she first fell to the ground a mere ten metres away but one hundred years before.
‘I should start the defrosting process, shouldn’t I?’ Phil asked the cat.
He fiddled about with the instrument panel next to the pod and the humming grew louder.
Suddenly, Bryony’s eyelids flickered, but before anything else could happen, Phil quickly stabbed her arm with his hypodermic needle, hoping that his cure would work. It took a while – people don’t wake up from one-hundred-year sleeps straight away, no matter what you’ve heard. Phil sat there next to Bryony’s pod, clutching her hand and occasionally scanning her to check on her progress.
Eventually, she opened her eyes. ‘You stabbed me in the arm!’ she accused Phil.
‘Er, yes. You felt that, did you?’ he asked.
‘Hey, I’m not dead!’ Bryony suddenly realised. ‘I thought it was all over for me when I felt my heart go weird. Did you save me? Who are you anyway? Where am I? And why are you covered in green scales?’
‘We’re one hundred years in the future,’ said Phil nervously, hoping Bryony would be OK with that. ‘Yes, I think I did save you. Er, green scales are very fashionable. Also, it’s protection against the sun. We kind of need that now.’
Bryony sat up. ‘I’m super excited to find out what’s been going on for the last one hundred years,’ she said.
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