© Evan Woods 2024
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My name no longer carries the weight it once did so is not cited here, although my files are of course titled. I have been promised that the following few paragraphs will be joining the compilations of my essays and research held in the Humanity Library deep beneath the Moon’s surface.
Throughout my life I scoffed at people in general but in spite of my disdain and derision I became first a doctor of medicine then, proving my worth to the wealthy and stupid, moved into genetic research in order to push the boundaries of my experiments. I spent the funds lavished on me in not quite the way my patrons intended, but still producing results for the fools. The cause of life was always more interesting than the wastrels that lived it. These days the Next revere me as the father of their world and I want for nothing, every aspect of my life cared for and provided for by the Next, as it is for the remaining two billion hominids living out our comfortably controlled lives in this united, utopian world.
However, original-species humans are no longer being born. We have become an evolutionary cul-de-sac, being replaced by the Next and their superior progeny. My physical death has been scheduled and it is now only minutes away. After 175 years I have no more to do in this corporeal realm and have been urged by the Next to make the leap into cyberspace, joining the millions of other worthy souls in the digital afterlife, which, if I may boast the claim, is of my own indirect making due to the intelligence, science and engineering capabilites of my creations. Some of the remaining hominids choose not to upload at death, preferring the old-fashioned finality. For the rest of us the Next make that judgement which is as it should be. The upload of my mind to the system-wide neural net repository will be made within my last second, so that once my consciousness has been severed from my body there will be no break in my flow of being. However, apparently a vastly different existence in a virtual universe awaits me, one which I have been excited to look forward to ever since my Next told me they’d developed a method of transition.
I was 45 years old when, through my research, I effectively changed the world forever by playing God – and succeeding. 130 years have passed since that day. I recall…
The Beginning
…I have never liked children, always thinking they could be made better from conception onwards however dull their parentage. In due course I became an experimental scientist with a desire to push the boundaries of in-vitro enhancements on cells from the womb. My initial genetic experiments, hidden from the authorities, proved successful in animals. Moving on to human trials I carefully selected a group of thirteen freshly pregnant women, volunteers of course, vetted for – and mercilessly using – their overwhelming desire for ‘better’ children. They had full knowledge of my intentions and were highly unlikely to talk out of turn for fear of losing their unborns to the knives of those who fear eugenics. I applied my expertise to their fetal cells then reintroduced the altered genetic material into the mothers’ wombs.
The pregnancies passed the months strangely peacefully as if each foetus was patiently awaiting their terms; I noted that when one moved inside the womb the rest of the mothers reported the same movement at almost the same time. A strange development, based perhaps on the fact of all thirteen original feotus’ from the same batch being rewombed within hours of each other perhaps? Tangential to my intent but very curious.
Each baby was to be birthed in thirteen different hospitals and clinics to minimise any official prying. The babies were born within hours of each other! It was obvious right from the moment they opened their eyes that they were not merely different – each parent reported a sense of awareness emanating from the newborns.
They evolved into ideal children, perfectly behaved. I garnered reports indicating that although they had never met, they slept at the same time, played at the same time, murmured to themselves as if conversing. By their fourth year they had developed amazingly, playing and laughing as small children do but, it seemed, with considered and thoughtful purpose. Their parents loved them and the children apparently loved their parents. However, in my capacity as scientist, observer and ‘uncle’, my impression was more that the children were reserved, seeing their ‘parents’ as guardians, a respected necessity, although with some kind of love. In their attitude towards myself they appeared to sense that I was some part of what they were, that I was a part of their lives, caring and somehow responsible beyond what they saw as their parent’s typically human parental failings.
For the day that encompassed the children’s fourth birthdays I set up a party in a meeting hall local to my workspace where they met for the first time. Of course the parents knew of each other through me over the years but this was the first time the children were all in the same place at the same time.
Unfortunately a colleague who disliked me for his suspicions about my ‘unnatural tinkering’, as he put it, believing it to be an open house creche I suppose, drifted in with his own brat-on-a-lead.
He came straight to the point when he saw me. “What the fuck are you up to here?”
Personality clash; he and I have never seen eye to eye and barely tolerated each other’s presence even if passing on different sides of the street. “Well if it isn’t one of the many people I wish would get stuck in a sewer and drown. I organised this private gathering, what’s that got to do with you?”
“You’re hosting a party for parents and their children? Why, you hate children, you’re a miserable old git.”
I am utterly unaffected by name-calling and slurs however, at base something drew me, a query which I felt superior, or perhaps stupid, enough to answer. “All right then. I sent invitations to parents of children of above average intelligence to meet and discuss their potential.” I lied. “Each one of these children is smart, really smart. Their IQ’s are already far up the scale and increasing rapidly every month yet they are only four years old.”
The children, who’d been chatting and laughing with each other, fell silent. They were looking from me to the other fellow as we spoke, following our exchange and suddenly I could feel their attention in the air like a cloud, a palpable hallucinogenic black heaviness.
I admit to wanting to put one over on enemy mine. With inspiration and a massive amount of faith in what I knew, even with incomplete evidence, what I’d helped to create four years and nine months ago, I gestured to the children with a confidence I’d never felt before and said “tell this fool who you are.”
The response was remarkable. The children lined up and twelve pairs of eyes focused on the little girl in the middle of the line, Jenny. She walked forward a couple of steps, awkward as children often are when trying to be formal, stared at my non-friend and made a proclamation just as the other twelve children aimed their communal gaze, a gaze that loomed with their incredible vitality and power, at that man. In her little girl voice Jenny said “We are what comes next.”
The parents looked confused and a little scared. I on the other hand, was ecstatic and could not have hoped for better! Although never having met before, the children seemed to have complete awareness of each other, what they were capable of and had, without a word, somehow connected with each other and as one mind elected Jenny to speak for them in a manner far beyond their years.
I got carried away in the moment. Turning to the man I told him: “A new beginning. In a few decades each of these children will occupy positions of influence and power. A new age has begun and it’s right in front of you!” Perhaps I was a little wild eyed – and most certainly triumphant.
“You’re fucking mental!” Was his considered reply as he was towed out the door by his own brat-on-a-lead who, hiding behind his father’s legs, was displaying every sign of being terrified under the other children’s powerful attention. My impression was that ‘my’ children could look after themselves. The thought ran through my mind that the idiot child’s idiot father could report me to the Medical Council but I never saw or heard from him again. Presumably that family moved away or something else happened. The need to find out seemed closed off to me.
As if they sensed their futures the thirteen children gathered around me, smiling. As I mentioned at the beginning I have never liked children but somehow I felt kindred with this group of tots, even wanted. They were practically a single entity that I could care for and guide into the coming years – maybe I wasn’t far wrong in my outburst. A New Way perhaps?
From then on their parents were nothing more than feeding stations, otherwise irrelevant in the lives of my creations… my artificial intelligences.
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Evan Woods 