Perhaps there’s a genetic basis for bigotry, one that’s hidden within the chemical bonds of our DNA, and thus camouflaged to escape the astounding wizardry of the genetic engineers. They can modify everything else. So why can’t they correct such a fundamental flaw in their so-called perfect world?
My mind weighed this insight, this transient fragment of pseudo-lucidity, as I slowly emerged from a fitful sleep. Throwing off the thin bed sheet, I wearily sat up and looked around. My eyes came to rest on the framed portrait of Becka on the nightstand. She’d been twelve when the photo was taken, standing beside a rough stone wall in a blue dress, her auburn hair falling to her shoulders. Becka’s expression in the photo was enigmatic, suggesting perhaps a puzzled innocence. It was an angelic face, a genetically-engineered face, and behind it hummed a genetically-engineered mind. It was hard to believe that I, with my short, dumpy body and a face that looked like an old catcher’s mitt, could havefathered such an incredibly beautiful daughter, even with help of the genetic engineers. But I had, and I was proud of her. Unfortunately, for the others like me, the world’s non-genetically modified majority, Becka’s perfect face represented something altogether different. Hers was the image of a new master race.
Of course, Becka wasn’t a little girl anymore. She was a grown woman, married, with a promising career and a life that I could barely comprehend. She and Ryan were even planning to have a baby. She had her own life to live. I understood that. Yet it still hurt that I hadn’t actually seen her in nearly five years, not since Maggie’s death, and I missed her. Although we’d spoken by phone occasionally, our conversations had always been rushed and awkward, exchanges that only underscored the fact that the distance between us was more than just geographic.
Yet now, finally, Becka was coming to Oak River. Her message had been cryptic, just the announcement that she would be arriving soon and was coming alone. She hadn’t explained why, and my subsequent calls to her had gone unanswered.
***
Later that morning, stepping out of my apartment, I saw Mrs. Wallingham sweeping the hallway.
“Mornin’ Albee,” she said. “How’re things today?”
I nodded a greeting. “Fine Rosie. Going to get some coffee at the Grill. Be back in a little while.”
“You need a hat, Albee. Don’t forget your hat! You’ll get sunburned without a hat.”
“I think I’ll be all right, Rosie. I’ll try and stay out of the sun.” With that, I started down the three flights of stairs.
There are no longer any oaks in Oak River. In fact, there aren’t many trees left at all. As for the river, well, it dried up long ago and is now just a repository for municipal garbage. The ‘City’ of Oak River was located in a dry, featureless, wasteland, and consisted largely of drab, sterile tenements and dilapidated warehouses. It is one of hundreds of reservations set aside for nongens. Ghettos, really, they’re repositories for the unwanted detritus of a society undergoing a dramatic metamorphosis.
I crossed the street to the Acorn Grill, which stood at the corner in a narrow and largely vacant office building. The Grill contained a single row of booths and a lunch counter with a half-dozen swivel-top stools. I eased onto my favorite stool. Resting my elbows on the counter, I contemplated the eggs sizzling on the grill. The only other patron was an old woman in a threadbare coat, half dozing in one of the booths.
The owner, Harv, looked out from the kitchen, saw me, and waved.
“I’ll be right out, Albee,” he called.
A moment later he pushed through the swinging door, wiping his hands on the front of his stained white apron.
“What can I get you, Albee?” he asked.
“Just a cup of coffee today, Harv, and maybe some toast.”
“Coming right up,” Harv said, as he went over to an antiquated coffee machine and poured some dark brew into a large ceramic cup. He passed it to me, just as two slices of toast popped up in a nearby metal toaster.
“Those for me?” I asked.
“Nope,” Harv replied, as he liberally buttered the toast and set the two pieces on a plate. He then lifted the fried eggs from the grill with a large-bladed spatula and set them next to the toast. Plate in hand, he walked over to the old woman.
“Here you go, Mary.”
The woman stirred, saw the plate of food, and looked up at Harv. “Thank you,” she said. “You’re keeping track of this, Harv, aren’t you? I’ll repay you as soon as I get some work.”
“I know you will,” he replied. Returning behind the counter, Harv put two fresh slices of bread into the toaster.
“These ones are for you, Albee,” he said with a grin. Then he began scouring the grill.
I watched Mary as she ate her eggs. “So, Harv,” I whispered, “you’re giving out free meals now?”
“Not for old farts like you, Albee, just for people who deserve it.” Pointing the spatula at the woman, he said, “You know, Mary used to be a math professor at a small college in the east. When the genens decided it was no longer necessary to teach calculus to nongens, they cut the school’s academic funding and turned it into a glorified vocational school. As an added bonus, they sacked Mary and sent her here with a pittance for a pension. It wasn’t fair.”
“You’re never gonna get rewarded for your good deeds, Harv. Not in this life.”
“And probably not in the next,” Harv added. “I’m sure, by the time I reach those Pearly Gates, the genens will have raised the standards for entry. I’ll just have to be kind to people like Mary for my own satisfaction, and because it’s the right thing to do. But don’t worry, Albee. When you start to dodder, I’ll squeeze out enough humanity to give you a few free meals as well.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “Always the bleeding heart, Harv.”
Harv just grunted.
“Do you have today’s paper?” I asked.
Harv retrieved the newspaper from behind the counter and handed it to me. “Looks like they passed that new sterilization law,” he said.
I looked at the headline: President Norris Signs Genetic Standards Law.
Harv muttered, “I guess the genens are getting tired of having us around, polluting the gene pool and all. I hear they’re giving bonuses to nongens willing to get themselves fixed. Maybe you and I should volunteer, Albee. After all, it’s not as if we’ve got great prospects. And sooner or later, they’re gonna make sterilization mandatory anyway, so we might as well get something out of it while we can.”
“You can, if you want, Harv,” I said. “I’m not dead yet. Miracles do happen.”
“Not around here they don’t,” Harv scoffed.
My two slices of toast popped up, and Harv passed them to me.
As I ate, I read the lead story on the new Genetic Standards Law. Of course, every member of Congress, the judicial system, and all of the senior members of the Administration were genens. At one time, having super-intelligent politicians had seemed like a great idea. However, it hadn’t worked out very well for us nongens. I saw the sterilization law as just one more step in the steady, ongoing march of social Darwinism. Granted, population growth rates clearly had to fall, given the strain on the planet’s resources and the horrendous impacts of climate change. Of course, Genens ruled that the reductions had to come from the nongen population. Otherwise, they argued, how would the world escape the genetic morass that had plagued mankind throughout history? Nongens, of course, questioned this line of argument. Not that it mattered.
I skimmed through the rest of the paper. There was an update on the recentbombing of a genen maternity clinic, which had killed six hospital workers and 640 genen fetuses in various stages of in-vitro gestation. Security experts had attributed the crime to a nongen terrorist group. Other than that, there wasn’t much news to speak of, so I folded the paper and set it down on the counter. “What do you think about that clinic bombing?” I asked Harv.
He sighed. “I wish they hadn’t done it. It just increases genen paranoia, and feeds the stereotype that we lesser mortalsare genetically predisposed to violence. Even worse, it gives the authorities yet another excuse to tighten their grip on us nongens. Isn’t it enough that we’re walled off in this God-forsaken excuse for a retirement community?”
Harv turned towards me, waving the wet cloth he had been using to clean the counter. “But frankly, deep down, I sympathize with the radicals. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t condone violence, but Christ, the genens control the government, the corporations, and the media. They’ve taken or automated all the decent jobs. They can go anywhere they want and do whatever they want, while we need a permit to take a piss. I mean, they’re arrogant, condescending, racist bastards.” Harv turned his attention back to wiping the counter.
I sighed. “I know what you mean, Harv. You and I, we’re relics of the past, Neanderthals in a Cro-Magnon world.”
“Very funny,” Harv said bitterly. “At least, when you and I were young, we had a place in society. We belonged. But when I see the young people around here, fifteen or twenty years old, I wonder how the hell they can go on. It must be crushing to have your whole life ahead of you, yet know that no matter what you do, no matter how hard you study or work or slave, you’ll never rise above dog shit in this society.”
Harv returned to cleaning the counter with vigorous angry strokes. As I watched him, I wondered what Harv would think, if he knew that I actually had a genen daughter.
When I finished my coffee and toast, I put a few bills on the counter and said, “Well, thanks Harv. I’d better get going. I’ll stop by later this afternoon. If business is slow, maybe we can play a few games of chess.”
Harv waved casually in my direction and said, “Let’s do that, Albee. I’ll spring for coffee while we play.”
***
I walked out into the warm morning air. It was only April, but the temperature was already well over ninety degrees. Since I was in no great hurry to run my errands, I wandered over to the local park. It was, in reality, little more than a dusty field. There, I sat down on a run-down cement bench, across from an asphalt basketball court. The only remaining pole was bent, giving the backboard and hoop an awkward and uneven tilt. Nevertheless, two teenagers were shooting baskets, and doing reasonably well, having clearly mastered the hoop’s odd angles and rebounds. The other playground equipment was unused. Given the hefty tax placed on nongen children, one rarely saw youngsters in Oak River anymore, so the equipment had largely fallen into disrepair.
While I sat on the bench, staring at the swing set, I reflected yet again on Becka… and on Maggie. The world had changed profoundly during my sixty-two years. Advances in genetic engineering had given mankind the power to vastly increase human intelligence, eliminate genetic diseases, and reset the body’s parameters to avoid common maladies. Human bodies could now be carefully sculpted and facial features perfected. They claimed that the resulting designer babies were the next step in human evolution, the salvation of humanity in an increasingly complex and uncontrollable world. Yet, to the bulk of the nongen population, it didn’t feel that way. Rather, it felt like an alien race had taken over the planet.
The high cost of genetic engineering had enabled the rich to parlay their wealth into formidable genetic advantages for their offspring, advantages that solidified, and in their minds even justified, their privileged social status. Over the years, however, as the genen population had gone from wealthy minority to powerful authority, the situation for nongens had grown steadily worse. Now it was rare for nongens to have genen children. This was partly because of the strict regulations in effect, but mostly due to the huge medical costs involved. Thirty years earlier, it had been different.
Although we were both nongens, Maggie and I had wanted a genen child. We could see the way the wind was blowing, even then. At the time, I’d been managing a hardware store, part of a chain that spanned the West Coast. However, I knew that it was only a matter of time before I’d be replaced by a genen, or by some automated system designed by a genen. And then what? At least, we thought, if our child were genen, she’d be able to survive in this world, and perhaps even support us in our old age.
It took us nearly three years to save up enough for a down payment for the natal procedure, and another six to pay off the loans. Of course, we could only afford one genen child. We contracted for a girl. Maggie named her Becka.
Sitting on that bench, I thought about the experience those many years ago. It had started with a visit to the Emgen Maternity Clinic.
***
We went to Emgen on a rainy Monday morning. There a technician extracted DNA from a few drops of our blood, and with that sample, the clinic assessed our genetic strengths and weaknesses and recommended modifications. Maggie and I received a report detailing the combinations possible with our genes, and an explanation of how our raw DNA could be enhanced. It included a hundred profiles generated from the parameters set by our DNA, each with a slightly different mix of characteristics. For each profile, there were pictures of what our daughter would look like at the ages of 10, 20, 40 and 60. Seated together on our small living room sofa, hand in hand, Maggie and I stared at the images for a long time. Then we chose Profile 89 for our daughter. That would be Becka. The face that looked back at us, aged 20, was beautiful–perfect in every way.
The first few years with Becka were wonderful. She was our miraculous angel, and we were her entire world. We did all the things that parents do to encourage a precocious child. We talked with her, sung to her, and read to her every night. However, by the age of three Becka was reading to us. She did so tentatively at first, but progressed quickly, with an ease and confidence that was mesmerizing. She was soon reading to herself and no longer needed our help. We read too slowly. Still, she remained our little angel and we continued to be the center of her world.
Sometimes I would catch Becka looking at me with an expression of bewilderment, often after she’d posed a question for which I didn’t have an answer. There came a point, as Becka grew older, where I couldn’t even understand some of the questions, much less formulate credible answers. And I was relatively smart for a nongen, a college grad with a degree in English literature, no less. During the screening program, I’d scored 115 on the Huxley-Gentex IQ scale. Maggie had scored 125. But how can you compete with a child that tips the IQ scale at 248, a child who could do differential calculus and advanced computer programming at the age of nine?
I’ve always wondered whether things might have been different, easier anyway, if we’d kept Becka with us longer. However, we never could have given her the intellectual support needed to take full advantage of her genetic prowess. So, all too soon, Becka started school and began interacting with other children–genen children. There, she also met genen adults for the first time, and gradually began to realize just how imperfect her own parents were. Eventually, she stopped even asking us questions, probably to save us the embarrassment of having to admit that we didn’t know the answers. She saved her questions for school.
Over the years, raising Becka became more difficult for us. Maggie and I had received counseling on the problems faced by nongen parents in raising genen children, so this wasn’t wholly unexpected. After all, when a child is so much smarter, why should the opinions of her flawed parents matter? When Maggie and I tried to argue with Becka, we lost–abysmally. She was too quick with the retort and too savage in debate, and she could effortlessly muster devastatingly logical challenges to any argument we had the temerity to put forth. After one fruitless encounter, at age 10, Becka had pointed out, in an angry petulant voice, that her own IQ was greater than our two IQs combined. So why did she have to listen to us? Then she’d stormed into her room, slamming the door behind her. Later that evening, she’d come back out, apologized and hugged us both. Yet, it was hard to forget that what she’d said had been perfectly true.
Of course, it wasn’t the school’s fault. The teachers never intentionally tried to instill parental disdain into our daughter. The school’s crime was that it existed. It presented an example of how things should have been. The teachers, all genens, were the parents that Becka should have had. Those she did have, Maggie and I, were an embarrassment to a girl trying to navigate her way through adolescence. As a result, Becka rarely brought her friends home. She went to their houses, instead. Their parents were all genens.
At sixteen, Becka left to attend a university on the other side of the country, one highly recommended by her genen school counselors. Although devastated, Maggie and I tried hard not to show it. I, of course, still had the hardware store to run, but Maggie had no such outlet, and she suffered grievously in her empty nest.
Two years later, Maggie suffered a stroke. At dinner one evening, she began to feel nauseous. I raced with her to the hospital, but we were still in the waiting room when she had a second, massive and fatal stroke. The doctors told me that nothing could have been done to save her. Perhaps that had been true. It was a nongen hospital, after all, and a nongen disease. Genens simply didn’t get strokes.
Becka came home for Maggie’s funeral, of course, but only stayed for a few days. Just before she left, she told me, somewhat sheepishly, that she had a serious boyfriend. His name was Ryan. When I asked her why he hadn’t come to the funeral, Becka had flushed and muttered something about exams.
Six months later, I moved into a small apartment. I phoned Becka to ask whether she wanted any of her old belongings as keepsakes. I even suggested that she visit and bring Ryan, so that I could meet him. After a moment of hesitation, Becka claimed that she was too busy with her studies to visit just then, and insisted that she didn’t really need any of her old things anyway. I had the feeling that something was wrong, but didn’t press her. In any case, I still kept a few items in case she changed her mind someday–photographs, scrapbooks, her old teddy bear, and such. After that, although we talked on the phone from time to time, Becka never visited, so she never saw the mementos that I’d so carefully hoarded.
When she finished her undergraduate degree, Becka went on to graduate school in biochemistry. She mentioned Ryan occasionally in their talks. Apparently, he had become an assistant professor of philosophy at the university. It was a discipline that, quite frankly, I had always found abstruse, and I suspected that Ryan and his genen colleagues had raised it to a completely new and rarefied level of obfuscation.
Then, one day, out of the blue, Becka told me that she and Ryan had gotten married. Surprised and disappointed, I expressed my dismay at not having been invited to the wedding. Becka apologized, claiming that it had been a small affair, hastily arranged. Angry, as well as hurt, and told her that I wanted to see her and would fly back east to visit them. It was then that Becka reluctantly told me of her husband’s disdain for nongens. He was even an active member of the Genen Power Movement, one of the driving forces promoting nongen segregation. It all became clear to me then. Ryan’s anti-nongen attitude had been the reason for Becka’s sporadic contact with me over the years.
Not long after that, I received a memo from Corporate Management informing me that I was being replaced as manager of the hardware store. The memo thanked me for my thirty-seven years of dedicated service. However, they said, new blood was needed. They offered to let me continue at the store, but under the authority of a twenty-four-year-old genen. I quit instead. Six months later, I was evicted from my apartment and sent to Oak River as an ‘unemployable’.
***
I had been so absorbed in my recollections that I hadn’t even noticed the basketball players leave. The park was deserted. I could feel the sun’s rays frying my bare scalp and regretted not having taken Rosie’s advice about wearing a hat. By the time I finished my errands and returned to the Acorn, I had a nice sunburn and a bit of a headache. Harv gave me some aspirin and sent me home. It was mid-afternoon when I reached my apartment building.
As I approached the landing at the top of the stairs, I saw her.
Becka smiled. “Hello, Dad.”
I rushed to her and gave her a big hug. When we separated, I saw tears in her dark green eyes.
“What’s wrong, honey?” I asked.
Becka’s lower lip quivered with emotion.
“Ryan left me.”
“Left you? But why?”
Becka tried to pull herself together, rubbing a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand.
“Apparently, I’m genetically defective.”
I looked at her incredulously, then with alarm.
“Oh, it’s nothing serious,” she said quickly. “It seems I have a rare mutation that affects the genetic coding for a protein that’s critical for stimulating egg production in the ovaries. It’s a mutation that causes infertility.”
I understood the gist of this, although my knowledge of biology had long since atrophied. I was about to say something, when Becka continued.
“The doctor said it was easily correctable, but Ryan was very upset when he heard about it. We were supposed to see the doctor last week to discuss cloning my DNA. They were going to repair the sequence and insert the new DNA into a host egg to use in the fertilization process. It’s not a difficult procedure and would have completely solved the problem. However, Ryan didn’t show up for the appointment. When I called him later that day, he told me he was filing for a divorce. When I asked him why, he had the gall to say that I was genetically flawed.” Becka’s voice was now trembling with anger and frustration.
“I asked him how he could possibly say that, especially since the problem could be rectified. Do you know what he said? He said that if I had one defect, I probably had others. Then he blamed it on my having had nongen parents, rather than genen parents like he did. I was devastated and so angry.”
“Yes, I can understand why,” I said. “But Becka, no one’s perfect, not even genens. You can’t let what he said get to you.”
“Well it does–a lot. And it hurts, even when I remind myself that I have a 15 point IQ advantage over that arrogant SOB.”
“And it’s not as if he can produce his own eggs,” I added.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Becka sniffled. A hint of a smile formed as she brushed away a few more tears. “He’s no better in that department than I am.”
There was a long pause. Then Becka leaned into me and I put my arms around her. “Dad, I knew you’d understand. I’ve had a lot of time to think these past few days. Most of all, I was thinking about you and Mom, and about what a bitch I’d been … ever since I was a child. I was so full of myself and so caught up in my god-awful intellectual superiority that I let my shit-heel of a husband come between us. When I saw how much it hurt when he rejected me, I realized how much I must have hurt you and mom over the years.”
“We understood, Becka, your mother, especially. We were always proud of you.”
“Yes, well I’ve had it with the genen world. Dad, would you mind if I stayed with you for a while? I’ll only stay as long as you’ll have me.”
I was stunned. I tried to speak, but had trouble forming the words. Finally, I stammered, “Becka, this isn’t really a nice place. It’s in the middle of nowhere. It’s awfully hot most of the year, and dusty, and the food’s not great, and there’s not much in the way of intellectual stimulation, at least not at your level. For someone like you, it would get boring very fast. My apartment doesn’t even have air conditioning and….” The reasons why she shouldn’t move to Oak River flooded my brain, but I hesitated to go on. More than anything, I wanted her to stay.
“Dad, I’ve always known that Oak River wasn’t the slacker’s paradise that Ryan and his friends made it out to be. But you don’t have to worry about me. I’ll find something to do to occupy myself. For the time being, I just want to get as far away from those people as possible.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Thank you.”
I could sense the relief, the happiness, in Becka’s voice.
We continued to talk while I made dinner. I even dug out her old stuffed bear and was glad to see her eyes mist up at seeing it. Later, after Becka had gone to bed, I stretched out on the sofa. In the morning, after breakfast, we’d buy a bed for the spare room. It was then that I remembered Harv. I’d have to tell him my secret–that I had a genen daughter, and that she was going to be living with me and eating at the Acorn Grill, and that Harv would just have to mind his language around her and temper his anti-genen rhetoric.
Then, as I drifted off to sleep, I recalled the fragmentary insight that had heralded the break of day. At the time, it had seemed so profound. Now, I saw it for the sophistry it was; no more insightful than any other such twilight discoveries. The genens’ bigotry wasn’t in their genes. It was learned, molded into young minds from birth, even into brilliant, genetically engineered minds.
Hopefully, I thought, some future generation would shed that genen arrogance and perhaps even come to sympathize with their imperfect forebears. Unfortunately, by the time they reach that milestone in human evolution, I’ll probably be long gone.
The End