Variations on Humanity

by Paul Eslinger

  An hour later, Ceres was much smaller in the evening sky. Rhona and Keene had spent the hour in casual conversation with town residents. They circled back to where Nanda was talking with Janet, Charles and a number of others. Rhona’s breath fogged in the cool air when she spoke. “We’re going to head back now.”

  “We’ll be right with you,” Nanda replied. She, Adara, Damaris and Geena were the only Abantu attending the impromptu party. Geena was married to Wade Winterfield, who now operated Jetmore Food Center. Geena took Wade’s small human daughter, Sheryl, born in a previous marriage, to visit the store every day. Wade and Sheryl were in the crowd tonight.

  Rhona squeezed Keene’s hand when they reached the parking lot. “The discussions went well after Keith and Cecelia left. However, I need to talk to Laura when we get back.”

  “Why?”

  “Her reliance on just-in-time information needs to change.”

  Chapter 2 – Coming Changes

  Rhona didn’t see Laura in the cafeteria or other common areas of the underground facility, so she headed for the Intelligence Center. The center was bigger than a college basketball court but only fifteen feet in height. Images, charts, graphs and icons packed with information covered the walls, room dividers and hung in the air in open spaces. Many of the displays were holographic in nature. Once you stepped away from the door, you couldn’t move without walking between or through displays.

  Half a dozen individuals moved about in the room, communing with the AI powering the displays. Rhona spotted Laura’s dark brown hair and moved in her direction. The Abantu was five feet ten inches in height, filled her clothes in all of the appropriate places, and her very good-looking face looked like a woman still in her late teens.

  The genetically modified Abantu could easily pass as a human, and she had done so for over 200 years. The only defining feature of her alien heritage was her eyes.

  Even the most intense physical scrutiny would miss one significant item. Laura had been born five years before Jesus of Nazareth, and she could expect to live another ten millennia. Part of her longevity came from medical science a million years more advanced than human levels and part of it was genetic in origin.

  Laura beckoned welcome and spoke when Rhona came close. “I was just about to call you.”

  “Oh? What about?”

  “Helen Pratt just came out of her coma.”

  “That’s good news.”

  Helen and Glenn Pratt had run a small grocery store before building Jetmore Food Center and running it another sixteen years. Machinations by Anthony Harper would have resulted in the mortgage company refusing to refinance the balloon payment although they had made all of the payments and they only had five years to go on the loan. Laura had purchased the business in a cash sale and Glenn had paid off the mortgage company. A car wreck on the way back from picking up mortgage closure paperwork in Wichita had killed Glenn and landed Helen in the hospital in Dodge City with serious head injuries.

  “It is,” Laura agreed. “We’ve been monitoring her progress.”

  The Abantu AI, nicknamed Dulcis, could remotely tap any human electronic system, even if they are encrypted with the strongest algorithms. Rhona had seen the medical reports on Helen. “We expected her to come out of the coma.”

  “There are a couple things I didn’t tell you.”

  “Really?” Rhona bristled as she continued. “I actually wanted to talk to you about that.”

  Laura grimaced and looked at the floor before continuing. “I think I understand your frustration. However, Helen is one of the good people. Glenn died at the accident scene and Helen’s initial prognosis was bad. Damaris visited her every day and injected her with some of our medicine when the nurse left the room.”

  “Ah.” Rhona thought back over the last week. The workload had been intense and she hadn’t noticed when Damaris left and returned.

  “Damaris also left an electronic bug, as you would say, in her room. We just learned someone intentionally ran Helen and Glenn off of the road.”

  “Have we started investigating?”

  “Not yet,” Laura said. “We’ll tackle that tomorrow. Sam and Trixie can work on it. Sam is good at that kind of search.”

  “I agree,” Rhona replied. Sam Mahoney and Keene had worked as contractors for an Air Force intelligence organization for several years. They had identified several Abantu while working on other tasks. Just three weeks previously they had begun working for the Abantu intelligence organization run by Laura after their Air Force client fired them.

  Laura gestured around the room. “We’re done here for the evening, but there is one other thing. A couple of weeks ago I mentioned the idea of starting a medical subsidiary.”

  “I remember,” Rhona said when Laura paused. “It seems more like a year ago.”

  “I want some ideas about how I should set it up.”

  “Doesn’t Dulcis have a recommendation?” Rhona asked.

  “Of course, she does. I want a recommendation from a human perspective.”

  Rhona looked around the room. Several of the others were heading out the door, but she might need to work a while longer. “You say we’re done for tonight. When do you need the recommendation?”

  “Something off the cuff by tomorrow would be nice. Anything serious can take a while.”

  “Is there a deadline?”

  “Not really.” Laura’s face displayed a slight hint of embarrassment. “I’m meeting with Brian Rodabaugh tomorrow on other legal issues. I thought I would bring up the concept.”

  Rhona noticed the emotion but didn’t comment on it. Unexpectedly for someone working in a contentious profession, the lawyer’s personality rated 9.997 on the Karthi Index.

  The multifaceted index developed by the Abantu measured pleasantness, reliability, fairness, anger control, and intelligence to a lesser extent. The scores ranged from 1 to 10 and people with index scores over about 8.5 were both pleasant and largely compatible with the Abantu mind-set. Only one in 430,000 people ranked higher than Brian.

  The scope of the new assignment was vague, so Rhona decided to probe a little. “The American medical system has an extremely complex set of rules and laws.”

  Laura’s eyebrows bunched together. “I know. A few of the rules make sense and the rest of them were put in place by blithering idiots trying to set up a zero-risk environment.”

  “You like a low-risk environment.”

  “Yes, but…”

  “But what?” Rhona prompted.

  “Intelligent collaboration can reduce risks much better than legislation and picky rules.”

  Rhona chuckled. “You need to talk to your senator.”

  “He’s a thorn in my side.”

  “I won’t ask you his Karthi Index score.” Rhona shook her head. Her mind seemed to work smoother every day and her recall of facts was better than ever before in her life. “Never mind, Keene already said it was 1.74.”

  Laura clenched her fists. “He’s only interested in gathering personal power.”

  “Welcome to Earth,” Rhona commented with a wry smile. “Anyway, does David Coffey have a high score?”

  “He’s high enough it’s a good thing he’s already married. His wife also has a high score.”

  Rhona smiled and asked, “Are you going to offer free DNA treatments to Brian Rodabaugh?”

  The dark rim of Laura’s eyes flashed blue-white and then slowly faded back to black. Her noncommittal voice didn’t match her obvious emotional state. “We will need a good lawyer for quite some time.”

  “You’ve been here some time already,” Rhona said. “Are you thinking a few hundred years, or more?”

  Laura shrugged but didn’t disagree.

  Satisfied she had read the previous hint of embarrassment correctly, Rhona returned to her previous question. “David is
the local health inspector. Maybe he will have good ideas about how to set up a medical subsidiary.”

  Laura made a vague gesture. “Go ahead and talk to him.”

  “How much can I tell him?”

  “We have advanced medicine for treating diseases and initial treatments and dietary supplements that can extend human lifetimes by a factor of four or five, with people healthy until the end of life.”

  “Thanks.” Rhona turned away and reached for her cell phone and then she turned back as the implications of Laura’s statement started to emerge. “Medicine is a huge industry in this country. It would shrivel and die if everyone were healthy. The economic implications are staggering.”

  “Consider that fact in your proposal,” Laura responded.

  Rhona raised her phone again. The deadline of one day for initial feedback compressed her timeline for a discussion with David.

  “Hello?” David’s voice sounded cheerful when he answered the call.

  “This is Rhona.”

  “Hi, Rhona. Do you have a new phone? My caller ID isn’t working.”

  Rhona chuckled. “Laura gave me a new phone–one of theirs–a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Oh, that explains the difference.”

  “Do you have time for a little chat tonight about medical things? I have some ideas I want to bounce off of you.”

  “I’m home. Do you want to come over here? Renee and I are just sitting down to eat.”

  Rhona thought quickly. “I can come over. How about in an hour? Keene will probably come with me.”

  “Sounds great,” David responded. “By the way, did you watch the news tonight?”

  “Not after viewing Ceres.”

  “Senator Harper is marshaling support against the president’s proposal to declare Hodgeman County an Abantu embassy. He says the president doesn’t have the authority to give away private land or state-owned land in Kansas.”

  “Did he say anything else?” Rhona asked.

  “He’s a good speaker and he said a lot, but none of the rest was very logical. Effective in stirring up public opposition, but not logical.”

  Rhona looked around when she and Keene arrived at David’s small house an hour later. It was in good shape, had recently been painted, and the bushes in the yard were neatly trimmed. She reached for the doorbell. “I haven’t been here before,” she told Keene.

  “Me either.”

  The door swung open and Renee stood there with a welcoming smile. “Come on in. David is in the living room.”

  “Hello,” Rhona said.

  “Thank you,” Keene added as he followed Rhona into the house and along the short hall.

  David stood and hit the power button on the large wall-mounted TV when they entered the room. “Come in and take a seat.”

  The room wasn’t huge, but it was big enough that two reclining armchairs and a new-looking couch didn’t crowd the space. Rhona sat on the couch and Keene sat beside her. She said, “Thanks for taking the time to talk to us.”

  “Sure.” David slid into one of the armchairs after Renee sat in the other one. “What’s on your mind?”

  Rhona chuckled. “I’ll cut to the punch line and then we’ll fill in the details. Laura wants to set up a company to manufacture medicine and dietary supplements and sell them across the world. We’re interested in any thoughts you have.”

  “Hmm.” David leaned back in his chair and rubbed his chin. “That wouldn’t be any problem, provided…”

  “Provided what?” Renee asked.

  “Everything they make is already approved by the FDA,” Keene interjected.

  David nodded. “Right. But, in general, you only need FDA approval for sales in the American market. A number of other countries have their own approval process. Several don’t have any regulatory bodies at all.” He looked at Rhona and raised one eyebrow. “Well?”

  “No one else makes the products we’re thinking about.”

  “Clinical trials can take years.” David hitched forward in his chair. “However, Laura and the others have a lot of years, don’t they?”

  A sinking feeling gathered in the pit of Rhona’s stomach. The average Abantu lifetime was over ten millennia and humans were truly ephemerals. “Yes, but the humans who could benefit from the new products do not have a lot of years.”

  Renee looked back and forth between the two visitors. “How do you know the new products will work for humans? We now know Laura and the others are not human.”

  “What did the gossip circuit say about them treating me?” Keene asked.

  “We…” David paused. “I’ll say it straight out. We heard you were close to death and you were completely healed three weeks later.”

  “I was in terrible shape,” Keene agreed. “You’ve never inspected their infirmary, have you?”

  David shook his head. “No. Officially, their infirmary doesn’t even exist.”

  “It exists and their treatments worked,” Rhona said.

  Renee’s blue eyes widened slightly. “We didn’t see you for several days a couple of weeks ago. Andrea says you were injured.”

  “She holds the world record for sniffing out secrets.” Rhona tapped her fingers on her left side. “I took a 9 mm slug about here. I had two broken ribs, a perforated colon, a damaged kidney and spinal nerve damage. I was up and around four days later. The scars from the slug and corrective surgeries are almost gone.”

  “Amazing. Can they do that for anyone who is injured?”

  “Our techniques are positively Neanderthal compared to theirs. Some of their techniques can be implemented in other places.” Rhona glanced at David. “Would you like to visit their infirmary?”

  His eyes widened. “Of course. But…”

  Rhona barked a short laugh. “You don’t have to try to shut down an undocumented facility you don’t know exists. Visiting there would expose it.”

  He grimaced. “You’re essentially correct.”

  “Let me put it another way. Their medicines can cure every known human disease, including all forms of cancer.”

  Renee’s face went white. She jumped to her feet and her voice climbed in pitch. “Why didn’t they bring this up before? My mother died of cancer when I was fourteen. Laura knew her.”

  “It wasn’t in their rules of engagement,” Rhona replied. “I can understand that a little from personal experience. There are plenty of people out there willing to shoot any alien, or anyone associated with an alien.”

  “Oh.” Renee sat down, hugging her arms together over her chest.

  Rhona turned her attention back to David. “They also make very effective dietary supplements. People who take a series of twelve weekly shots, eat daily dietary supplements, and use their medicine when necessary will live longer and healthier lives.”

  “How much longer?” Renee asked when David didn’t respond.

  “Nanda says a person can live a healthy life for about 300 to 350 years. The end will come in just a few years when the dietary supplements lose their effectiveness.”

  David stood and paced back and forth across the living room, pulling on his chin. Finally, he whirled and looked straight at Rhona. Deep furrows appeared on his forehead as his eyebrows drew together. “If what you say about being shot is true, then maybe the other nonsense you’re spouting is true.” He took a deep breath. “I knew Renee’s mother very well. Why are you telling us this?” he demanded.

  Rhona held up her hand with two fingers extended and chose her words carefully. “Two reasons. First, we invite the two of you to take the supplements. Every human living in Laura’s facility is already taking advantage of their medical skills. Second, we’re interested in any thought you have on setting up the manufacturing and distribution approach.”

  “Uh, I don’t know…”

  “Of course, you do.” R
enee interrupted as she sprang out of her chair and put her hand on David’s arm. She turned and looked at Rhona with a worried look etched on her face. “We’ll participate and help out. We’ll have to be careful so people don’t swarm the entire county or kill each other to be first in line to get treatments. I still don’t know why we didn’t get swarmed after the president made his speech earlier in the week.”

  Chapter 3 – Infirmary Visit

  The next morning, Rhona and Keene joined Laura and several others at a table in the cafeteria. The automated equipment in the underground facility prepared the excellent food and did the cleanup, except for bussing the dishes. It even did that on the rare occasions someone left without putting the dirty dishes away.

  Laura pushed her empty dishes back slightly from the edge of the table and sipped her coffee. She looked at Rhona. “Did you think about the medical topics?”

  “I did.” Rhona took a deep breath and then held it when Laura raised her hand.

  “What’s the elevator speech version?” Laura asked.

  Rhona glanced at Keene and the other people sitting around the table, including her parents, before returning her gaze to Laura. “Produce all of the medicine here in Jetmore. Set up a network of distribution centers all around the world. Start delivery after you have enough inventory to treat everyone over age ten on the planet. Production must match the consumption rate.”

  “Is that all?” Laura looked contemplative.

  Rhona chuckled. “The strategy is simple. Implementing a good distribution system may be a bear.”

  “That’s a little larger scale than I was thinking.”

  Keene leaned forward. “It’s necessary. Humans are a cantankerous species and many of them will chase longevity with lethal force if they feel they don’t have access.”

  Charles and Judith had been listening quietly, but Charles now directed his words at Laura. “Do you have the assets to set up that much production?”