BEYOND EXTINCTION

by John Keeble

  "Security worries me," says Kimon, once an Abbotsford trooper and now a genetically-upgraded numan2 leader. "The latest refugees say huge areas are free of rot death. The military will attack us when they can move around the world safely."

  "Time for you to give priority to physical defenses of the village, Kimon?" says Jack.

  Alice enjoys watching Kimon perform in meetings. He is a remarkable success with a faster mind and more confidence than his trooper design. He is stronger, needs less sleep, and has a natural revulsion to eating anything with a face. The new man. And all my design. He's the future.

  Kimon, the meeting's moderator, asks: "Is there any other business? No? Then I close the meeting."

  As the village leaders drift off, Sara, Alice's calm and devoted sister, brings in wooden mugs of tea made from forest fruit and roots. "It's not exactly G&T but it's not bad, is it?" says Jack.

  "Jack, there's something I've been meaning to talk to you about," says Alice.

  "Xam's pregnancy? Max's legal responsibilities? Their determined efforts to repopulate the world with their own efforts?"

  "In a way. But this is more about us. Making us more equal."

  "I thought we were equal. Is there something I can do for you?"

  "There is something I can do for you. You have the DNA structure to be an advanced numan4 like me. Maybe even numan6 eventually. Galen wrote some coding into your DNA as a brain functions inhibitor – he did the same to me without my knowing. I found mine and removed it. I could do the same for you."

  Numan superbrain upgrade, or DNA handcuffs so she can use genetic strings from Max and me for her repopulation dreams?

  "The idea of DNA handcuffs on the numan2s strikes me as being morally questionable, however necessary and beneficial to us," he replies obliquely.

  She shrugs – a human gesture she picked up somewhere – and says: "We have no choice. I want the numan2s here and healthy for our repopulation plans. That has nothing to do with what I am proposing for you. An upgrade would free you, not handcuff you."

  The old problem. I love her. She makes me happy. She is the kindest person I have ever met. But... "I guess we have no choice with the numan2s but I'm happy as I am. Maybe you can upgrade me in a year or two."

  "Jack," she persists, "you know the three of us are linked. You, me and Max were made for each other – literally."

  "I thought it was just written in the stars."

  "It was written by a star. True, Galen is a dark star, but I can bring light and life using what he created. To do that, I must have the physical building blocks in Max, and the species memories coded into your genes. Both sets of DNA coding are locked to prevent anyone stealing them, misusing them, or triggering them accidentally."

  "Sure. I assumed so." I should've realized that. It's basic security. Maybe she's right about helping me think faster: my brain should be able to join the dots a lot faster than this.

  "I'm the key," she adds. "I have a unique gene that can open your DNA lock. You can unlock Max's DNA. All three of us have to be synchronized."

  She never gives up! "Thank you for explaining it. Finally. How does it change anything?"

  "We are joined at the most basic level, Jack. What is good for any of us, is good for all of us."

  "Even if, as a well-meaning scientist, you grind Max up and use his DNA?"

  "Jack!"

  They glare at each other. At one time I trusted her completely.

  *

  Chapter 40

  The crisis, a year in the making, is here. There are now 247 numan2s living in Eden Garden Village. The pmeat supplies have run out. Sanitation is breaking down. The food yield from the forest gets less every week as over-harvesting takes its toll and collectors are forced to walk deeper into the forest.

  "There are just too many people here for us to cope," Alice tells Jack.

  They are camping out with Max and Xam in the drone after giving their house to the latest refugees. The house is crowded with twenty-three numans. Their human animal, brought as food and a sign of wealth, is tethered outside without protection from the storms.

  "We could enlarge the village again but I'm very concerned about producing food," says Jack, looking up from the mediamat where he is working on his book. "It's not just the seasonal dips in what we can harvest in the forest. The drone food processor was never designed for sustained use at this level. When it fails, we will not be able to convert forest nutrition into edible food."

  "Then agree with me!" urges Alice. "We start the repopulation plan! We can halve the village population in 26 days."

  At what price to me and Max? "How do you want to start?"

  "Upgrade the numan2s to survive and procreate naturally. They are the priority. Then I want to re-create insects and animals. I can grow the insects in my lab. They're not a problem. But I don't have the equipment for more complex work."

  "What about humans?"

  "Yes! I need a few female human animals. They would be very useful for growing fetuses."

  "Would you make humans to release into the wild?"

  "Of course. I've been thinking about that. Human excesses doomed the planet and all life on it. I want to write some DNA coding to prevent my new humans doing the same. I think I can write some of Max's brain DNA into the basic weave of humans to make them a little more pleasant."

  Is she serious?

  "I need you to help me," says Alice. "If you accept my DNA upgrade, we can start the full process. Your brain processing speed will more than double and your memory will expand beyond what you can even imagine. We need to upgrade you now."

  The weight of the new world falls on his shoulders again. I'm so tired of arguing about her giving me a DNA upgrade. "I guess it's time," he says reluctantly.

  Alice brightens, enthusiasm on her face. "I've already started adapting numan2 physiology to help them survive with river water and poor food. They will heal more quickly from infections and accidents."

  "You didn't tell me that!"

  "Jack, you and I have been living in the human Garden of Eden. It has been perfect for us. But it's different for the numan2s. They see survival as being trapped here with us controlling them."

  "They don't seem to mind."

  "I've been adapting them so they have a chance to survive in new communities. They no longer eat meat – I think Donald, the new people's human animal, will end up with us. We can keep him as a pet."

  "Max likes him."

  Jack fiddles with the mediamat. His book is on the screen, but his mind is on what Alice has admitted: she has been secretly rebuilding the numan2s.

  "What about Max and his cassette of DNA patterns? What's going to happen to him? Is he going to be hurt?"

  "Of course not," she says. "I can take the DNA from Max and start growing it in Xam. Then I can remove the fetus and use a grow bag made from materials in the drone. At that stage, I can modify the genetic coding in the fetus to produce the animal."

  "Sounds idyllic."

  "Yes, it could be," she continues dreamily. "For re-created animals, I'll need the species memories that only you can provide."

  "Yes, I know," says Jack, his resistance stiffening in a cloud of mistrust.

  *

  Chapter 41

  Jack screws up his eyes, trying to shut out the sun's early afternoon glare as he peers across the Euphrates. Behind him, on the gently rising ground, Eden Garden Village is safe for now from the rising water. In front, the river disappears into the distance across a flooded plain.

  How long before Eden Garden Village is awash? How long before I have to give in and let Alice give me her DNA infusion?

  He sits, thinking, on the log that marks the water level: six months ago, the log was ten feet from the water's edge; now it is less than four.

  For Jack, it is a quiet retreat from the village. Unless Alice finds me. She grows more impatient by the day. At night, she is the Alice of his most sensual dreams.

  "Why do you say than numans
are people and nonnumans are animals?" he had asked her in a hot, sticky night without any storm winds to cool them.

  "Just a way of talking, Jack. It's not important."

  "How a human is described is always important. It lets in domination, cruelty, exploitation. If you define one creature as a person and other creatures as animals, you give license to exploit and kill."

  "Okay, Jack. What do you suggest? Shall we call humans ‘people?'"

  "Yes, perhaps. But not just humans. I think of Max as a nonnuman person. If you are going to create—."

  "We are going to create a new population!"

  "Are we? Or are you creating and I'm just providing chunks of DNA memory codes?"

  "What shall we do? Let the world die? Let Galen create the future?"

  Jack had run his hand over her body, silky slippery with sweat and all the more erotic for it. "If we are going to recreate life, we should do it slowly and make sure we avoid the violence, greed and oppression of the past. Is that possible?"

  "Jack, I'm a scientist not a moral philosopher! Have you any idea how much work it would take? Every physiological element would need to be upgraded. And that's the easy part. I would have to recode the species memories and that was Galen's specialty."

  "Can you do it?"

  "In theory. If I had you upgraded and there to help me. Jack, do you understand what you are asking? Take the human animal as an example: it survived by exploiting, killing and eating other animals. It destroyed itself and the planet by its aggression and greed. Changing that is a big DNA rewrite!"

  "Not all humans were like that. Many fought against that way. There must be good in the existing DNA as well as bad. We can bring it out."

  He had felt her sigh against him. "Is that the price of you willingly helping me, Jack?"

  "We could work together to create a world in balance."

  "And Max becomes a person!"

  "Can you think of any reason why he's not a person equal in his right to a natural share of the planet and the right to live without being dominated, persecuted or exploited? What gives numans the right to use the rest of the world's creatures as if they own them?"

  "If I agree to this, you will take my genetic upgrade and share the work alongside me?"

  "I'm alongside you now," he had said and it had felt like an agreement being struck.

  Now, as he sits by the Euphrates, Jack wants to trust Alice completely. It needs a trust far deeper than marriage, more physically committed than sexual and survival unity. She lied and manipulated so effectively in the past – but, on the other hand, she gave so much to him and Max. Will it be a golden future or genetic imprisonment? How can I know until I have gone beyond the point of no return?

  A memory jumps into his mind and he shudders. It was a conversation about the Galen-rebuild. "I need him," she had said. "He has some of Galen's DNA and memory coding that I can isolate and extract. It will help me design my own numan6, either as a rebuild or as an upgrade for us. I'll keep the Galen rebuild in a cage by my lab – he will be quite content – and pull apart his DNA until I can see how Galen constructed him."

  The worst split between them had come when she allocated Aapeli, the boy she said she loved like a son, to a group of young numan2 women. Eventually, after weeks of argument, Aapeli led his five wives into the wilderness to set up a new community.

  Jack's biggest surprise had been Aleksi, who took the older females. "I need a family, and I can stay here to help Ali," he had said. Alice had designed a "young reproduction" upgrade for Aleksi and the women. Jack has to admit, they seem happy.

  Jack, adrift in his mind on the log, hears footsteps behind him and does not need to turn around to know it is Alice and the dogs.

  She puts her arms around his shoulders and leans over to kiss his face. "Hi, is my Great Writer deep in thought?"

  "Just contemplating our future," he says. "Hey, what's this?" He reaches down to greet Xam and her puppies, getting a tongue bath from Max as soon as he is in range.

  "Proud parents showing off the kids!" she says.

  "A new generation for a new world." He tries to sound ironic but, somehow, it seems a simple truth.

  Alice fishes in her shoulder bag and shows him the DNA infuser. "I need you as a numan4 to help me. I can't do it all alone."

  His stomach lurches. I know she's right. Sooner or later I will have to gamble my life and Max's on her intentions. Why not now?

  *

  Chapter 42

  Jack staggers from their house, unsteady in step and mind. He knows he should stay inside but he cannot remember why. Are the troopers coming? He feels ill, lethargic. Nothing seems to connect.

  He walks past the Galen-rebuild's cage and neither sees the other. Through the village, past the human animal Donald being given his exercise, past numan2 women. Are they Aleksi's wives?

  The mid-morning sun on the Euphrates hurts his eyes as he slumps on his log. What is wrong with me? What has Alice's DNA upgrade done to me?

  Memories whirl and cross-currents of thoughts collide and splinter. His fear of genetic handcuffs, memories of orangutans and elephants as killers closed in. Alice rises like a specter, saying: "Our Max lookalike puppy – I'm using his brain as a biological computer." Jack starts, his body rigid for a second. "No! Leave him alone!" he shouts. She shouts back, "Okay. Okay. I won't touch him!"

  A noise from the village drags him back into the world, real shapes and sounds that drain the waking nightmares. He turns and almost topples from the log. "Alice," he calls as he sees her with their tribe of dogs padding towards the food-gathering larders deep in the forest.

  She changes course and strides up to him. "I'm going to look for something different for us to eat tonight," she says while the dogs mob Jack. How can she be here? She's working somewhere else.

  Jack reaches out for Max, Xam and each of the puppies. He pulls the Max lookalike close. He's all right. She didn't upgrade him into a computer.

  He tells Alice: "I'm ill."

  "That's normal after the upgrade I gave you. Don't worry about it."

  Unless I'm locked in your genetic handcuffs.

  The sparkle of the water captures him and he cannot summon the willpower to fight it. When I was a child—. His train of thought fails. His eyes are drawing him into a million watery stars shimmering with possibilities and dangers he does not understand. What is happening?

  For a moment, he thinks he is having another extinction attack but this is different. I let her give me the upgrade and it's killing me.

  He slips clumsily off the log, landing softly and awkwardly on grass and silt soaked by the night's storms. One of the puppies, the one that looks like Max, runs round from behind the log and Jack instinctively scoops him up to protect him. The puppy's name is very important but he cannot remember it, or work out why the puppy is here alone. They should have taken him with them.

  Jack's fingers can feel the puppy's heart pounding and his legs struggling. I'm squeezing him too tightly!

  His mind is failing, drowning. A wisp of a haze thickens into a mist, a fog, and finally an impenetrable blanket of moisture and grief. This is it: I'm dying. The light of consciousness is sucked into a well of pain and anguish.

  Jackjack is walking among the creatures of the world, dead creatures in a dead world, shades and shapes out of their environments, whales and squirrels, eagles and moles, ants and panthers. The landscape is bare of trees, its rivers black with the effluence of mining, its polluted air thick enough to chew. And the blood-red sun, scorching.

  "Perfect, isn't it?"

  Jackjack jerks to the sound of a voice, a voice he knows and fears.

  "Galen! What are you doing here?"

  "I'm not Galen, Jack. Galen is hiding away with the military. He is busy wrecking the new world for his own glory."

  "Who are you? Do I know you?"

  "Oh, we've never met. I was once Jabir, a World Council member incarcerated and animalized for trying to stop the destruction o
f the human animal species and the genocide of numan2s. Your woman, Balen, knows me well."

  Jackjack remembers now. How can I remember what I've never known? "You look and sound just like Galen," he says.

  "That's because I'm Galen-rebuild5. Professor Galen and your woman stripped my mind and my body one gene at a time until I was reduced to rootstock. They rebuilt me as an experiment, but it failed."

  Around them, the dead are watching, moving closer. It's an illusion. They can't get closer. But every illusion contains its own truth; I can see the suffering, the violence of human and numan exploitation.

  "Galen and Balen decided that I was not suitable for further experiments and…" Jabir breaks off, his head shaking in a denial that Jack was beginning to remember. "They said I was an animal and would feel little pain, not like the pain a person would feel, when they put me down numanely."

  "What did they do?"

  "They strapped me onto the dissection machine… I knew what was happening, I felt the touch of the blade before it drew the first blood. Believe me, there is nothing numane about being a helpless creature used by vivisectors."

  "I'm sorry. I didn't know Balen then. She came to me as Alice."

  "She was as much a creature of her culture as I was an animal on the dissection table."

  "I can't forgive her, but she's my life. I want her and Max just like we were in Abbotsford. She wants to kill Max and use him for her experiments."

  "No, I don't think she wants to kill Max. I think she's changed."

  Jackjack sweeps his eyes around, among the millions of animals crowding close, an indictment of innumanity and inhumanity, waste, greed and lust for blood and power. Bears with vile bile tubes in their bodies, a whale mortally wounded by a FedJap explosive harpoon, foxes ripped to pieces in a hunt, a shot lion, a chainsawed rhino, a porpoise trapped in a fishing net, humans and numans mutilated, starved, blistered by the poisons of the Earth's exploitation.