Netopia: A Thrilling Dystopian Novel (Science Fiction & Action)

by Y. G. Levimor

  During the beta stage, the company explicitly stated that they ran a risk of unknown mutations and other unexpected developments. But only a few actually heeded the warnings, and most people did not think much about it.

  The creative department came out with manipulative statements promising the target audience: “Intellect and nice legs: be parents to the first health model

  [13] and Nobel laureate”; “Spend a few minutes on your child and watch the next president grow up”; “Plan ahead – and get a head start”; “Plan a social and cooperative child. Plan, because you want him to succeed.”

  Christoph injected forum debates with marketing ploys to promote mostly genius traits, believing most of his golden eggs would come from that particular duck, being in higher demand than athletic ability, beauty, or longevity. Even if users made the final decision, Baby Gaga noted its recommendations.

  As work progressed, Christoph became more and more content with what he saw. He would wake up full of energy and determination. Tiny tending owls in his mouth serviced tooth by tooth in immaculate fashion, and the larger ones applied a crème to his face made from a rare species of avocado laced with gold granules. He never mentioned his age, and always said that mentally he was still seven years old, and intended to stay that way. No one argued about that. At night, before falling asleep, he would lie awake and remember a conversation he had with his father as a boy, after ruining his father's neopet – a first generation lion-cat.

  “You’ll amount to nothing!” Johann shouted.

  “It wasn't on purpose,” Christoph shouted back, still holding the broken neopet.

  “All you can do is destroy!” his father accused. “It's the third thing you broke this week! Now pick up the pieces and throw them away.”

  “I just wanted to see what was inside!” he said in defense. “Bye bye,” he said to the lion-cat parts and put them away.

  Despite the ongoing friction between them, Christoph and his parents were very much alike. Like them, he too worked to improve the world of children. But he took his parents' vision one step forward: improving life itself. The baby business gave Christoph dreams of having a baby of his own, and he would wake up in fright. Caring, raising, educating – it was a nightmare to him. Still, the thought of his life ending with him also caused him panic – it could not end with him. But usually this was as far as his thoughts took him. One day, maybe, he told himself. Years passed, and the only things he raised were his murderous miniature dolphins.

  ***

  Among Baby Gaga's clients were Kay and Donny Steel, a couple rich beyond measure. After many years of barren union, they felt that now, with the progress of technology, it was essential for them to bring a perfect heir into the world. The two quarreled for hours in front of the catalog, and finally ordered a girl. As long as gender balance was maintained, the state allowed couples to choose the sex of their child. But when the balance shifted to one side, parents were notified that sex selection was unavailable.

  Designing the destined child was the stage where most couples arrived at their crisis, and this is where Baby Gaga, known for its friendly user interface, came to the rescue.

  “Donny, I want her to be pretty, like me,” said Kay, who was indeed quite a beautiful woman.

  “Okay, but without your aggressive streak,” Donny poked at her while absorbed in the interface options flickering in his face. “So let’s make sure we leave that part of you out, okay?”

  “Is that so?” Kay protested. “And why should she be passive like you? Where's the upside there? I want her to handle the world outside, I want a little tiger, and better yet if she's a fighter like me.”

  “You want a baby who’ll be you, in short,” he said while she walked over to stand in front of a huge, shaping mirror.

  “What's wrong with that?”

  “Permit me to jog your memory: you were the one who fell in love with me, isn't that right?”

  “Yes, but before you got a grip on who you are, you were all over the place, a waste of a man.”

  “They recommend programming skills.”

  “I don't want an emotionally crippled child. I'll be bored with her if she won't talk fashion with me. I’d actually like her to be talented like Robin Nice, the author,” Kay added enthusiastically.

  “You're right, that's important. A talent for writing.”

  “But look, with all the traits we put in they predict she’ll be depressed and withdrawn, shutting people out. Where did we go wrong?”

  “We should jack her activism up thirty percent; take twenty or so off her composure and maybe that'll fix it. Try again.”

  With a flick of his finger Donny shifted the composure level to the left and humor slightly to the right.

  “Oh, yeah. There we go, they predict she’ll take her failures and make challenges of them. Excellent. Let's see how she feels when she's sixteen and her boyfriend dumps her.”

  “That's it, that's what I'm talking about. She'll take it in stride and handle it with cynicism, it says so here,” Kay said excitedly.

  “We don't want her cynical all the time,” said Donny. “She'll end up being bitter.”

  “We should invest more in mental acuity and motor abilities. Humor isn't all that important for a girl.”

  “I'm glad we can agree on something,” Donny concluded and the two continued adding to the trait basket.

  “Now we'll have a perfect girl,” said Kay, eyes aglitter.

  “Absolutely perfect,” said Donny, proud.

  'Done'. The new baby was in the shopping bag and on her way.

  ***

  From the moment the application launched, its interface was already translated into most languages. Millions of parents selected and assembled their babies with the variety of options on offer. Parents got exactly the baby they ordered, and very beautiful children were born.

  Most shone like stars, before beginning to fall and crash like meteors.

  When the first babies planned on Baby Gaga reached the age of four, the company received disturbing reports about newly discovered genetic problems. The number of babies that showed signs of odd and alarming behavior grew quickly and reached tens of thousands. They all suffered from a syndrome researchers described as an unstable personality that could ‘flip’ in seconds from one extreme to another. These events were uncontrollable, and reported instances only multiplied. The media started calling the babies - now children – ‘Gaga Monsters,’ alluding to the serious mutations in their genes.

  The beautiful Steel baby, for example, started reacting like her mother in real time: a perfect imitation of the mother's personality. She cried when her mother did, and got angry when her mother did. In effect, she had become a human parrot that accurately mimicked the behavior of family members. The child did not get more than an hour of sleep at night, even after turning five, and she was hyperactive. The doctors gave up. Her parents were forced to hire an overnight nanny to stay with her after she was diagnosed with a genetic condition that limited the duration of her sleep to an hour. Her body needed only that one hour, which was nothing more than a nap, and she was never really tired.

  The really hard cases were the multi-mutations. Multiple dynamic personalities – of the mother, the father, and others – were switching in rapid succession, and the kids were imitating behaviors indiscriminately without even knowing they were doing it. One extreme case involved a baby that was made up of twenty distinguished donors, and now, before even turning five, was moving between these twenty personalities at an alarming rate. Another case was a boy with only one personality trait. He couldn't smile, couldn't laugh, just sat there frozen with his arms crossed like a corpse.

  Christoph felt lost under the countless complaints and lawsuits the company was hit with, which included threatening letters, demands to recall the faulty products, and demands for compensation. Claims of parents saying they received the wrong baby were stacking up, and parents arrived at the offices with their wrong children and
threatened to leave them there. There were stories of babies abandoned on street corners everywhere and parents were found and arrested. There were individual claims of every sort: a boy with an athlete's genes who turned out to be lazy. Another girl was supposed to be interested in programming, but only wanted to model and had absolutely no knack for technology.

  “This is a nightmare!” Christoph shouted at Fabian. “How did it happen?”

  “I don't know. We had the best researchers running every scenario,” answered Fabian, who was also alarmed by the mounting number of complaints.

  “We have to take care of this quickly, before it turns into a media circus. They're all waiting to dance on our graves. We can't let that happen.”

  “What are we going to do?” Fabian asked.

  “Give me a minute. I need to think. It's not our fault, it's a bug, although we signed off on it. Our names are embroiled in this catastrophe. It's our responsibility! Now go away, I need to be alone and think.”

  Fabian lingered for a moment before leaving; he wanted to stay and hug Christoph. He didn't want to leave him there agitated, alone.

  ***

  Tens of thousands of frustrated, betrayed, angry and disappointed parents – the Gaga Monsters’ parents – filed a giant class action suit against Baby Gaga, the laboratories, researchers, programmers, investors and the state that sanctioned the disaster and failed to control it.

  The enormous scandal threatened to finish Christoph financially and ruin his reputation. The long legal battle was going to cost him a fortune, but the worst thing he faced was being known as the father of monsters.

  “You know them, Christoph,” said his personal advisor, Cyril Kurkov. “The media’s out for your blood. They won't find a better tragedy - a symbol of success and wealth crashing down. They'll dig up the most outrageous stories.”

  “I know,” Christoph answered. “Miserable parents all over the world are whining: 'Our life is ruined. There's nothing more for us. How will we go on? Instead of the perfect baby, we got a devil.' And the worst is that I'm the devil here now.”

  “You need to soften your image, show more humanity. Get out there, accept legal and public responsibility, show empathy, and share in their distress. You need to play the active role and promise to investigate and get to the truth. Can you do that?”

  “Yes,” he answered grudgingly, and added, “These parents, they didn't want a baby, they wanted an accessory to store in a room at home.”

  “That doesn't matter. Your job now is to see them as the people you care about most, is that clear?”

  “I'll do it,” he promised.

  Christoph knew that no amount of money could offset the attention focused on the mothers, who would wring their tragedy for all it was worth. The compassion and pity they evoked were considerable. No one was going to feel sorry for Christoph Müller, the aloof businessmen, who would be cast as the source of all evil when all he really wanted was to take humanity a step forward and create a better society.

  Public scrutiny only increased, and the attacks against Christoph had his back to the wall. No one remembered that millions of beautiful babies, who were also smart and healthy, were born thanks to the app. Organizations that advocated a ban of genetic manipulation in babies stirred the pot, seeing the affair as a live case study twisted in the process to begin with. Hundreds of thousands all over the world were marching in violent demonstrations against Baby Gaga laboratories, carrying digital signs that alternated condemning messages like ‘Christoph Müller: Shame You were Born," "The Perfucked Toy for the Perfucked Baby," "Bubble Shame," and "Christoph Killer!" Their eyes were livid, and they had nothing to lose. Many showed up with their monsters.

  Christoph decided it was better to be smart than right. Away from the limelight, his representatives were fighting a legal trench war. Their central defense was that the contract clearly disclaimed all responsibility, and stated that mutations were possible. "The company will not be directly liable for human error," it read.

  While this went on, Christoph faced the cameras with tears in his eyes, embracing two Gaga Monsters, and delivered a statement: "I’ve decided that I’ll adopt these ill-fated babies. I’ll do everything in my power to set things right. My heart goes out to all the families."

  The net was instantaneously flooded with the facial expressions of tens of thousands of viewers, recorded and directly fed back into the web, shooting the sentiment meter on Christoph's personal online presence up into the positive range.

  “My company will establish an investigative committee and coordinate a thorough examination into the cause of this failure,” Christoph promised the public. “Our researchers are determined to find the source of the mutations and a solution to the personality abnormalities we’re seeing. The finest minds have come together to deal with this situation, and I am putting forth all my financial resources to make it possible. The state and its regulatory agencies are also looking into these incidents, and they are getting all the assistance they require. These young souls are our primary concern, we’re taking what happened very seriously.”

  More than anything, Christoph was worried the investigation would uncover the secret genetic research he conducted on the embryos. The first thing he did was to delete all the research data stored on his secure private Cloud, and save it in a secret offline location – a violation of information acts that prohibited the storage of data in ways that blocked remote access.

  Christoph ended the broadcast with a shocking announcement that all Baby Gaga activities would be suspended until the committee published the results of its investigation.

  ***

  Christoph despised the People's Council. He was now remembering how, after the Baby Gaga scandal, it passed laws against the design of babies, digital applications included, and prohibited all laboratory activity in the field.

  The author of the legislation was Alexander Cage, a member of the Online People's Council who had fought the application from the start, and with greater passion after things got out of control. Cage hated anyone who thought they had the right to ‘play God’ at the expense of helpless babies, including the parents who were too dumb to read the fine print. He considered them equally responsible for accepting a contract that waived their rights, along with everyone who collaborated with Christoph. He argued that the idea itself was reckless. How could anyone market an application like that without properly looking into its implications? He saw it as negligence of the highest order.

  Since the scandal, the world had reverted to the biblical means of procreation. It was decided that children would be born in the usual manner until the mutations could be better understood and a method of preventing them found. One argument for baby planning was that there will always be production defects; it was a price every industry had to pay. In the end, it made sense that, out of millions of designed babies, a few would have defects.

  The committee found a bug in the recombination process that could not have been foreseen, at the intersection between biology and technology. It was that bug which generated all the mutations, and as bugs are unpredictable by nature, the committee determined that Christoph could not be accountable for deliberate negligence.

  Of course, this was of no comfort to the parents. The media started running stories about parents who murdered their babies after flipping out, unable to cope with their warped personalities any longer.

  During all of this, Christoph had become a saint. He helped, he raised funds, and he championed the weak. It was a masterpiece of irony: of all people, he, who wanted to see these ‘suppressing elements’ eliminated, was now dedicated to their care. He smiled and had his picture taken with disabled children. He even went as far as donating a fortune to rehabilitation centers for the vulnerable children he had secretly hoped to destroy.

  These actions were necessary for clearing his name, but he felt they were also clearing him of any will to get up in the morning. In his dreams, he would gather them all, light a fire
, linger a while to hear their screaming, and leave them burning without batting an eyelid.

  Surprisingly, the Gaga parents wanted Christoph to visit, and he gave them strength and encouragement. They realized he wasn't at fault and were convinced his intentions were pure. When meeting with upset mothers, Christoph had a custom of saying, “I hope I can create a better society.”

  One of the mothers once replied, “I also want to see that day. Our baby was supposed to be the most perfect baby in the world. I still remember how we drove past the sign that read 'The perfect toy needs the perfect baby.' I looked at my partner, and we could both tell that we were ready. We wanted our baby to be the most amazing there is.”

  “Yes, I understand. That's what every parent wants eventually.”

  “No one can understand what it's like to lose a dream,” said the mother, wiping away a tear. “Waking up with a little boy that speaks and answers me like his father… he's just a copy! I'm scared of him. One night I was fighting with his father, and the boy suddenly tells me, 'You know, you gained some weight. I don't even feel like sleeping with you. All I have to do is look at you and I feel like fucking somebody else.'”

  “That's not easy to hear,” said Christoph, feigning shock.

  “Do you understand? He speaks like his father! I almost broke up with the man before, but I stayed and ended up with a baby that talks like him, going on and on all day long. It's like a never ending impersonation.”

  The mother broke into a sob.

  The sight was not something Christoph could easily stomach. He looked around uncomfortably, but eventually had no choice but to touch her and offer his comfort: “I understand, I understand,” he said, but there was only one thing he could understand: people like her had to die… them and the useless babies they give birth to.

  After two years of gruesome philanthropic activity, the People's Jury decided that Christoph and the others involved were to pay the 20,000 families involved in the case 50 million Unis in compensation, and sponsor free toys to all the affected children every year.