Chapters Eight and Nine

When I explained my research project, Doctor Hahona jumped at the chance to give me the benefit of his expertise.  He immediately suggested I meet him at the Ectogenesis Lab–sometimes known as the Gen-Lab–a complex that included the DNA bank, Replication Lab, Gestation Chamber, and a computerized control room.  His no-time-like the present eagerness caught me by surprise, but I quickly agreed and hustled down to Deck Four.

“You look tired,” he said in greeting, his brow furrowed in concern.  “You’re not getting enough rest.”

“Guilty as charged,” I admitted with a self-deprecating smile, hoping it masked the sudden blip on my threat-assessment radar.  “You know how I am when I get caught up in my research.  I’ll try to get more sleep.”

He nodded paternally.  “See that you do.  Now let’s scrub up.”

Scrubbing up was a new experience; I had no idea the process was so complicated, let alone so long and drawn-out.  Hahona had to remind me twice to keep my hands up so the germicidal beam would run from my fingertips to my elbows throughout the procedure.  Medi-tech Asiya Nasir helped me into a surgical gown, booties, gloves, cap, and mask.  Hahona gave me a final once-over, then led me into the Gestation Chamber or Womb Room–the spacious, immaculate, brightly lit chamber where the next generation was grown.  Thirty four-foot-high, stainless-steel cylinders lined the curved bulkhead.  Half the cylinders were stationary, half rotated slowly.

“Our goal is continuity,” Hahona began.  “In order to avoid any break in life continuance, we initiate embryonic differentiation on day one of the relevant citizen’s one-hundred-twentieth year.”  This was the consolation offered by the Quingenti:  As your current lifespan dwindled to its last days, you knew your next lifespan was brewing in the Gen-Lab.  “As soon as the fetus is mature,” the doc continued, “the former lifespan transitions out.”

Transitions out was Quingenti-speak for voluntarily ending one lifespan in order to start the next.  The big day was usually ushered in with an all-night continuance celebration, a regular “out with the old, in with the new” blowout.  The party ended with a nightcap in the medical section, a lethal little chaser that stopped the body’s biological processes without the slightest twinge of discomfort.  That moment marked the official kickoff for the new span.

The doctor led me to one of the stationary devices, gave the cylinder a fond pat, and popped the top.  “Each of these bioreactors is designed to contain a single uterus, or womb.”

I peered into the empty cylinder.  “What are the wombs made of?”

“Genetically neutral artificial tissue.  It serves as a scaffolding—a lattice, if you will—to channel the growth of the placenta, which is engineered using a minute culture constituted from a target-Alpha Universal Replication Cell.  Five weeks into the process, an umbilical cord, or funiculus umbilicalis, develops from remnants of the yolk sac and allantois, forming a connection between the embryo and the placenta.  The cord supplies oxygen- and nutrient-rich blood fabricated from the subject’s own stem cells.  Within the placenta, the fetus is cushioned by scientifically formulated amniotic fluid—a mixture consisting largely of water and varying amounts of proteins, carbohydrates, lipids and phospholipids, urea, and electrolytes.  Under these conditions, the fetus forms and grows naturally.”

“What’s this green tubing?” I asked, gingerly running a latex-gloved finger down a line running between the bulkhead and the cylinder cap.

“That delivers the blood to the placenta.  The red tubing carries deoxygenated, nutrient-depleted blood away to be re-enriched.”

My eyes strayed to one of the rotating cylinders.  Somebody’s clone was growing in there.  Somebody I knew.  It gave me goose-bumps.

Hahona reclaimed my attention by waving toward the dimly lit room beyond a glass partition.  Five medical technicians, their faces eerily illuminated by immense holographic screens, rapidly called up or entered data, examined three-dimensional images of helices and half-formed fetuses, and conferred quietly.  “The entire gestational process—including periodic assessments and/or adjustments to ensure precise, sequenced gene activation—is computer controlled and monitored.  My obstetrical duties are limited to surgically removing the viable infant from the fetoplacental sheath.”

As birth announcements went, I thought that one lacked something, but I smiled and nodded.  “Ah.”

“Would you like to see one?”

“See one what?” I asked cautiously.  If he meant would I like to see one surgery, the answer was not on your life.

“An infant.  Would you like to see one?”

I was immediately intrigued.  Most of us never saw a baby, because we weren’t allowed on Deck Three–environmental stimuli were tightly controlled and closely monitored there–which was the only place babies were found on board.  Nobody had them the old-fashioned way.  The Janus had just so much living space, after all.  Given those limitations, population control was a must—every Colonist received a subdermal contraceptive implant with the onset of puberty.  “Can I?”

“I don’t see why not,” he replied.  “Your research would hardly be complete without it.  Asiya, would you be so kind?”

The Medi-tech nodded and glided out of the chamber, returning a minute later cradling a cooing baby wrapped in a pink blanket.

I leaned in for a closer look.  “Are they … uh … I mean, are we all that small?”

“Size varies, but not widely.  She’s within the normal range for her age and sex,” Hahona assured me.  “Would you like to hold her?”

Envisioning a disastrous fumble, I hastily tucked my hands behind my back and retreated a step.  “No, thanks.”  I paused.  “Who is she?”

He smiled paternally.  “This is Vella Desislava.”

“The Council member?”  I shook my head, realizing I would never be able to look at the statuesque brunette again without flashing back to the baby wetly gumming her fist.

Hahona touched a gloved finger to Vella’s cheek.  “Tomorrow or the next day, we’ll place little Vella with her assigned gynedroid nurturer on Deck Three.”

I nodded.  Younglings shared their nurturers’ quarters until they were ready to train professionally, usually at age sixteen.  Every once in a while, you would see a wide-eyed gaggle of soon-to-be trainees edging tentatively down the corridors on carefully chaperoned outings designed to familiarize them with the rest of the ship.

Hahona nodded to the tech.  “Thank you, Asiya.”  She rightly took that as her signal to depart.

“Tell me about the nurturers,” I said.  “I know they play a crucial role in infant development, but I’m not entirely clear on the details.”

The doctor’s expression brightened.  “Oh, the gynedroids are quite remarkable!  Each nurturer is fluent in every conceivable nuance of Alpha transmission for two or more Colonists.”  Bubbling over with enthusiasm, he went on to explain in detail the exceedingly advanced technology involved, including:  simulated skin embedded with thousands of sensors and temperature controls, all of which translated into a completely natural texture and tactile responsiveness; an artificial consciousness capable of producing all the right emotions at all the right times; and programming specifically designed to help their charges find themselves.

I listened intently, oohing and ahhing and nodding in all the right places.  Inside I wondered which was worse—the fact that a program designed with my own immortality in mind was making me really uncomfortable … or the fact that I could now mentally undress the only mother figure I had ever known right down to a state-of-the-art collection of chips, circuits, and nanosensors.

But mother figure or no, the cold, hard truth was Maya was a robotic mechanism designed to constantly, consistently bring out the Alpha in me.  She was a technological marvel—a fount of nonstop psycho-suggestion programmed to augment and reinforce every implanted memory and channel my behavior, up to and including facial expressions and idiosyncrasies of speech.  As Hahona so conscientiously informed me, even the soothing lullabies she had dialed up at bedtime were loaded with data packaged for my particular baby brain, molding my deep subconscious while I slept.

As I struggled to hold my brightly-interested, suitably-impressed researcher smile, I silently reminded myself none of this was news.  The Colonial agenda had never been hidden, and at some point in what the experts called my Early Childhood Phase I had figured out that, technically speaking, Maya wasn’t human.  But the specifics had remained mercifully vague and never seemed all that important.

Until now.  Those specifics seemed very important now.  By the time I finally left the Gen-Lab, the rosy glow of childhood memories was fading fast.

Ω

Chapter Nine

Publius Ammon was positively thrilled to get my call.  There was nothing he would enjoy more, he gushed, than answering any questions I might have about the Early Childhood Education program.  When would I like to come?  Now?  Excellent!

When I arrived at his quarters and placed my thumb on the scanner to alert Publius to the fact that I had arrived, he opened almost immediately.  He was decked out in a broad smile and the same gray jumpsuit he had worn the last time I saw him.  “Come in and welcome!” he beamed, gesturing me inside.  “I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear about your continued interest in our program!  You look a little peaked, but I understand completely.”

“You do?”

“Of course!  You obviously can’t tear yourself away from your research!  Didn’t I tell you you’d want to delve deeper?   Right this way,” he continued, leading me through the salon.  His quarters had everything he felt the MoE office lacked:  plush carpeting, wood paneling, even a marble fireplace merrily aglow with holographic flames.  The furniture was straight out of the nineteenth century:  George III Giltwood sofa and chairs upholstered in wine-colored fabric, gracefully carved Hepplewhite mahogany side table, mahogany breakfront bookcase.  We wound up in his study, where the bulkheads were a checkerboard of impressive diplomas and awards.  I took the walnut wing armchair on the visitor’s side of the burled walnut desk, while Publius settled into a surprisingly contemporary high-backed leather chair on the other side.  He didn’t waste any more time on pleasantries but launched right into his favorite subject.

“I believe you’ll find our curriculum both comprehensive and exciting,” he said, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands across his middle.  “We are, after all, charged with nothing less than articulating and prosecuting the complex educational intervention referenced in the Prime Tenet.”  He paused, gazing at me in bright-eyed expectation.

“I see,” was the best I could come up with.

He nodded in approval.  “I thought you might.  Ours is the noble task of assisting each Colonist in his or her quest to achieve the goal of personal consciousness preservation, known in the field as PCP.  Of course, we also provide education in the more conventional sense, preschool through post-graduate.”  He stopped again, the same well-what-do-you-have-to-say-about-that? expression on his face.

“Of course.”

Smiling at me like I was teacher’s pet, he held up an index finger.  “But we must never forget our primary objective is the development of each individual in such a way that he or she will be able to function seamlessly throughout his or her successive spans without diminution of, alteration in, or damage to his or her personal consciousness.”  Wondering if he had memorized that phrase verbatim, I nodded.

“Now that you understand our mission and vision,” he continued, warming to his subject, “let’s move on to an overview of the program for younglings aged eighteen months to twelve years.  Of course, this will be just that—merely an overview.  I can provide you with much more detailed information in Appendices B-1 through B-103 of the Educational Code.”

“All right.”  I quickly pegged Amon as a lecturer at heart; he was obviously in his element.  It was kind of sad, when I stopped to think about it—a born lecturer like him stuck in a dead-end bureaucracy with no one to lecture.  Resisting the temptation to take the mental detour that thought offered, I forced my attention back to my host.

“The gynedroid nurturers’ programming comes fully online during the elementary or early-childhood years,” he was saying.  “Why then?  You may well ask.  The short answer is, studies have shown that younglings between the ages of three and twelve are disproportionately receptive to guidance, naturally curious, and eager to learn.  Furthermore, children are especially ready to accept as true information passed on by a trusted, beloved Guardian.  As far as impressionable young minds are concerned, these individuals are well nigh infallible.  The ‘parental’ judgment, consistently and unanimously reinforced by the culture at large, gradually becomes the child’s own deeply-held belief.  Well,” he concluded with a smile, spreading his hands palm up, “you see how it all fits together.”

“Yes.”  I forced myself to return his smile.  I could indeed see how it all fit together.  I could see all too clearly.  But while I had no problem with the concept of informed, responsible adult guidance, psychologically dissecting and manipulating kids too young to defend themselves was another kettle of fish.  Maybe it wasn’t as cold and calculating as it sounded?  Education should be intentional, I reminded myself, taking another stab at objectivity.  (I had promised myself I would reserve judgment until after I had talked to all three experts–probably still chasing that saving grace that would make life copacetic again.)

Publius leaned forward and laid his hands on the desk’s black leather blotter, fingers laced.  “During this phase behavioral channeling also comes into play.  Alpha-appropriate behavior is rewarded by the nurturer and other significant adult figures, while non-compatible manifestations trigger an immediate, albeit brief, disconnect—” he unlaced his fingers and brought his fists together, pulling them apart to demonstrate “—a powerful, pointed non-response as the nurturer transmits the data to our behavior-monitoring system.  This, in turn, triggers a remedial session with a trained psychiatrist or psychologist.”  He smiled benignly.  “Studies have shown the combination of positive and negative reinforcement plus psychological adjustment to be extremely effective.”

And lasting, I added silently.  “What about the sleep teaching?”

“Oh, REM-cycle instruction continues, reinforced during waking hours by the incorporation of corresponding educational materials.  Highly stylized audio disks, for example, featuring ‘adventures of the Prime.’  Songs and lightly dramatized videos.”  He paused, beaming.  “We’re really quite proud of these materials.  They’re cleverly designed and colorfully packaged to ensure enthusiastic consumption.  Research indicates the child’s willing participation facilitates and expedites the formative process.”

“I’m sure it does,” I murmured, carefully concealing a mild wave of revulsion.  The videos, songs, and games I remembered so well suddenly seemed tainted and faintly sinister.

“Formal classes begin at age four.  Naturally, the Academy offers each student a curriculum tailored to foster the apposite interests, abilities, and expertise.  And so, bit by bit,” he concluded with jolly, job-well-done satisfaction, raising one hand and pinching a gap between his soft, pink thumb and forefinger, “the genetically encoded personality is coaxed into full expression.”

As he went on to describe secondary education, I couldn’t take my eyes off his face.  Like Hahona, this man was utterly convinced he was doing all the right things for all the right reasons.  His serene smile reminded me vaguely of the Cheshire Cat in that ancient Lewis Carroll story—I could well imagine that smile suspended above the desk chair long after his corpulent frame faded from sight.

I managed to smile back at him, ask intelligent questions, shake his hand when all was said and done, and thank him for his time.  Yes, I would be sure to contact him, if I had any questions or wanted to see the appendices to the Code, I said in parting.  Then, stoop-shouldered and tired to the bone, I slowly made my way back to my own quarters, feeling more disaffected than ever.  Things weren’t exactly going according to plan.

Ω

Kathy DiSanto, 2009, all rights reserved