What will life be like five hundred years from now. A snapshot from the cradle. |
This is a piece of a song, popular in the late sixties In the year twenty five twenty five If man is still alive If woman can survive They may fly COPING WITH LIFE IN 2525 ZhaKeen Marie looked at the corner of her screen and sighed. This had taken longer then she had allowed herself. Being in the World Health Care Program had it's challenges when working for a client in Egypt. He had a artificial heart replacement operation three months ago and ZhaKeen Marie was finalizing the last billing. ZhaKeen was thinking next year would be so much easier with World Currency. Taking the doctors billing from Region One in Egypt, the on line adviser from Region Three in Brazil, along with the rest of the heart team that had been flown in from Region six, and then figuring out the currency values of three months ago, had taken it's toll on time. She knew once she got into her car she could relax. All she had to do was hit the travel plan for home and the vehicle's computer would take her home to her apartment where her companion was waiting for her. Turning thirty last month and feeling her age she remembered the Genetic Validation she had to go through when she turned twenty five. Allergy tests, genetic defect tests, mental stability tests, I.Q. tests, as well as physical profiling till finally she got her reproductive validation grading. Since then she had contributed eggs for ladies that weren't as fortunate as her. She herself had a surrogate mother with no knowledge of who her biological parents were. She hated going through the super ovulation process and cramps, but knew it was the best thing for future generations. Around the year 2020 their had been a Social and Ethical Revolution with the thinking that every form of social interaction was all right as long as nobody was hurt by it. That started the Polygamous marriages in large homes where there could be five to twenty people married to each other. This was the life style that became the norm because of the economic advantages of being able to raise children with every adult contributing to the marriage. By the end of the twenty-first century the Torah, the Koran, and the Bible had all been changed to fit Society. Another century later a forth religion was developed by foreword thinking theologians. They put all the religions together into a book and called the manuscript 'The Way'. About a hundred years ago the World Government adapted it as the world religion and strongly suggested everyone co-hear to the directives set forth in 'The Way". The different nations had been constantly at war with each other until the common people decided they needed a world government. One of the first things the World Government decided was the Human Race had to catch up to modern technology. Instead of spending resources on weaponry, the World Government invested in a Genetic Resource and Practice Management Program. One of the programs World Government had acted upon, once it was firmly in control, was to adhere to a Non Racial Discrimination Program. The Geneticists were asked to recommend a Best Universal Blend, and they did. They recommended 25 percent Germanic, 20 percent Semitic, 20 percent Asian, 20 percent Indian, 10 percent American Native, and 5 percent Black African. Since then the worlds population had slowly been blended, to become universally a light brown in color. She had always been taught as a young girl that it was an honor to contribute anyway you can to the human society, but this last time she had put a request in for herself. Even picking out the donor, the other half of the embryos that she had produced. He had been so considerate and handsome that she had even taken her companion in to have him changed from the replica of the teen heart throb that she had liked, to the man she now admired. It was too bad that in today's world, three fourths of the men had no interest in ladies, but liked companions that were shaped like other men. She couldn't wait to get home to her At Home Incubation Unit and check on her girl. Only three months more and she would be ready for her first breath of air. ZhaKeen Marie tried not to think of the other embryos that had been taken for other homes. It started out with eleven zygotes from the flush. Six had been frozen for future use. Five zygotes had been developed into embryos. Three embryos had been placed into other homes. She would get to keep one female embryo and her donor had spoken for the male embryo. She had no rights to any of the children that she had helped to create except for her baby. It bothered her sometimes to always do and go along with the program for the betterment of humanity. As a child in History Class, she had read where in 2130 a whole region of people had said they would construct their own set of values and government. The International Government Of Ethics sent the Robotic Peace Keepers in, and they PACIFIED. Supported with the Doctors Guild For Betterment Of Humanity, they turned Man, Woman, and Child sterile through out the whole region. This was something to be grasped and pondered, considering that there was only six regions in the whole World! Don't mess with the laws of the WORLD was the message, LOUD and CLEAR! Four hundred years ago an informational satellite, called Exploration II, had bean sent out of our solar system to explore other galaxias. It had found a solar system and planet similar to ours. Since it was a hundred light years away and would take two hundred and fifty years to reach it, a plan had bean formed on how to colonize it. Three years she ago had bean called in to listen to what the plan was and how she could help. They were outfitting a space ship with a robot, plant seeds and food. Their was to be a baby incubator with different size compartments to support different sized mammals. On board would be five hundred zygotes. Only a few humans would be incubated twenty years before touchdown on the new planet, with the rest of the embryos being developed after they landed. The geneticists had selected a man that was considered the strongest man in the world, called Trumane Lu-baltchure. Between the donor and the recipient they would freeze two flushes of zygotes to join the rest of the zygotes being sent into outer space. You simply DID what was expected! - ---------------------------------------------- Trumane was MAD! As long as he could remember he had bean mad and agitated. He sometimes thought it must be a hormone imbalance. That had to be why he was always uptight and strong. Stronger then anyone in the World that went along with the program. Not only did he have strength but he also had a quick mind and chiseled features that everyone considered good looks. Most woman considered him a mans man that other men fell short of in comparison. The geneticist had mandated that the twelve wives that he had could not use him for procreation of their children because his wives did not pass the genetic standards. They had used his essence for a couple of zygote flushes on a couple of vary docile woman and that was all till three years ago, when the geneticists came to him with this plan of putting humans into a new solar system. They had picked out an intelligent, self confident and independent woman, that, blended with him would create self sufficient leaders in a new world. They said it was a long shot and it might be a crazy idea! Only he didn't think it was crazy. He just wish he could have went. What an adventure that would have bean! Leave this crummy world with all it's rules and restrictions, knocking down anything that got in your way. Do what you need to do, with the FREEDOM to do it! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I was called Megual Adamson when I was born. Adamson for the woman that incubated me. Megual because I came out of the incubator a dark chocolate brown. My flush number was 25,07,14,219,711M. 25 for the year in the century of which I was born. I was the seventh born of fourteen embryos, therefor 07,14. The number of flushes having been performed since the year 2055 had been 219,711 and I was a male. My thirteen siblings had all been born within a three month period and we shared sibling reunions. My first reunion was when I was twelve, and I think that was when I became interested in genetic mapping. One girl that was a sibling of mine was tall and skinny with blue eyes and blond hair. All the other siblings were somewhere in between her coloring and mine. Since I was good in science I studied genealogy. By the time I completed my Masters I was thirty two, with my thesis being in chromosomes and the effects of combative chromosomes. From there I went into species blending. It had been done in the past with the results being a lot of sterile females. One example is the Mule of the early Nineteenth Century. It was a cross used for farming. A donkey crossed with a draft horse made a superior beast of burden. The problem was overcoming crossbred sterility so the offspring could reproduce. When I broke the code, I was acclaimed a Genius of our time. I discovered sterility was a condition in pregnancy that was brought on by the body attempting to abort the unusual set of genetics the embryo represented. A little higher body temperature along with a higher acidic level and the fetus became sterile or aborted. If the embryo stayed fertile, the second generation would not have a sterile problem. When the World Government Representatives met to formulate a comprehensive plan to populate a new planet, I gave a presentation, giving them an outline of a plan for putting more species into fewer embryos. This would shorten the population time once the new planet was reached and the amount of incubators needed. The World Government agreed with the concept and I was hired to spearhead the project. I planed to have only warm blooded embryos of animals shipped to the planet. Snakes, alligator, birds, and insects would not be part of this new world. Dust mites, weeds, viruses, and micro bacteria would not be included unless needed for the mammals. I worked my tail off making sure the space ship was big enough and the time it took to get there was pinpointed down to the minutes. We have spent time in outer space and we knew weightlessness took calcium from bones and by ten years in space the brain had changed so much that gaining gravity to fast could be detrimental to one's life. We had no choice on what we could do so the spaceship had to be an Incubation Laboratory with a robot activated on touchdown to start the process of incubating humans. During this time I also had clearance to the computer data base on all the archives over the past hundred years tracking genetic selection. I was shocked to discover that twenty percent of the population on earth had the Genetic Selection Committee genes in them. That's when I decided that my genes were going on that space ship. I knew everything was done systematic in the laboratories so I would have to be very careful. In the animal compound they were having trouble collecting semen from the Mountain Gorilla so I offered to assist them toward a favorable outcome. One morning I surprised everyone by announcing that I had accomplished the impossible. After everyone had left for the day, while the gorilla was still partly sedated, I had electrically pulsated him until he ejaculated and I collected him. Of course this was all rubbish and I had switched the frozen vials and put my genes in place of Trumane's. Guess what and where Trumane's genes were going to be doing. That's right! The spider monkey! Nobody checked the DNA on any of the vials because it had already been done. The DNA of the Gorilla had been processed by me by collecting skin tissue from him. Pick your sons Pick your daughters too From the bottom of a long glass tube Chapter 2 |