Chapter Two: CHAINges
Posted on | Sunday, November 7, 2010 | No Comments
There was precious little that L.B.Z.J. Hawkings cared for in the world other that the death of the superhuman the media had dubbed The Son. While the rest of the world glorified and adored the man whose otherworldly abilities allowed him to accomplish things that others would deem as acts of God, for L.B.Z.J. Hawkings, the Son was the black stain of taint that would eventually bring about the destruction of mankind and everything that man had accomplished. And this opinion, as far as L.B.Z.J. Hawkings was concerned, was not just an opinion. For him, it was a fact. One that L.B.Z.J. Hawkings was born into and was raised to remember. One that L.B.Z.J. Hawkings dedicated his life to stopping.
When he was born, L.B.Z.J. Hawkings had a different name.
It was summer of 2062 when a young couple realized their son was already anxious to be born. Mother felt the water break seconds after she had uttered the words, “He is coming” and father called for help on his biomolecular phone. The message requesting for medical assistance was quickly transposed into a series of biological codes that was then released through the PheromoNet that surrounded the space station. Knowing that a medical team was sure to receive the biological telegram, the father held mother close and tried to help her calm down.
“Mankind has been giving birth to children for centuries. Stay calm. Focus on your breathing. The medical team should arrive any second.”
“But our child,” mother grunted between gasps for air, “What will happen to our child?”
“What happens to every child,” father replied ruefully, “He will be born, tagged, then examined. If found suitable, he will then be assigned a family in the station that requires one of his genetic build.”
“Our child!”
“We have no choice,” he continued, “Ever since mankind had to abandon our dying planet to the hungers of that… that thing… we have done what was necessary to survive. We were lucky enough to have reached a space-faring level of biotechnology before it happened. Imagine if we were still stuck using rocket fuel and accident-prone shuttles?
“Biotechnology has allowed us to create spacecraft that also fulfill our needs as living organisms. The ships transform our carbon dioxide to breathable oxygen. Our waste feeds the ship, which in turn allow it to bear fruit and grain. Symbiotech has become the very core of how we have survived our leaving the Earth. But that same symbiotic relationship requires from us a greater responsibility of ensuring no part of the ship is tapped of its resources too quickly.”
“Hence the Assignments,” mother wept as she said the word. This was to be her third child that she would lose. The two others were somewhere else in the massive vessel, older now, and trained with skills they were genetically tagged to be predisposed towards. Like tiny cells whose specialized duties helped keep the living organism healthy. When she was young, mother admired the science and symmetry of it all. How everyone born knew they were meant for something. How everyone played a role they were suited to do. Now, all she could think about were the children she gave birth to but never raised. The children she had never seen again.
“A name,” she turned to father and grabbed his hands tight to keep him from pulling away, “We have to at least give him a n-“ Her words were cut short as a bout of pain forced her to scream. The child that was to be known eventually in the past as L.B.Z.J. Hawkings was adamant about wanting to be born. She grit her teeth and mentally called out to her unborn son. Not yet. Not yet my son. Please give me time.
He listened.
Or at least he seemed to as the pain faded away.
“We need to name him,” mother told father. Father hesitated. To name the child was not illegal. While the system permitted such fraternizations, it was generally accepted by all that not knowing who your children were allowed them to grow into their roles without fear of failing to meet performance standards parents typically set upon their children. It allowed them to embrace their roles in the craft with less romanticized distractions of doing something other than what one was genetically prepped towards doing. A child whose genetics suggested a mastery of visual-spatial intelligence would be assigned to a family composed of designers and architects. His presence among those matching his disposition was intended to encourage his proficiency and shorten his learning curve.
But naming him did raise the possibility of being able to identify one’s own child in the future. Father was not sure if that was a wise thing to do.
“We need to,” mother begged one last time. She pulled father closer. “For me. For him.”
He closed his eyes. He knew he should say no. But he felt in his heart she was right.
*
Seven years later, Malcom P10 stood at the foot of the twin caskets that contained the bodies of his mother and father. Both had died when a bioelectric malfunction caused the air conditioning and coolant systems of their science facility to shut down. No malice was discovered during the investigation on what lead to the fatal accident. All the young man could do was accept the fact that his parents had become new additions to the statistical data of how many deaths had occurred on the vessel that year. Their deaths were to be logged in an operations report, then archived in the central database for easy retrieval if anyone ever deemed it was worth looking into once again.
Malcom P10 knew that even in death, his parents were never going to be free of the vessel that killed them. Since no one seemed to have any motive to have them murdered, it was very quickly concluded that their deaths were the result of a major bioelectrical failure that the vessel itself had suffered from. It was like an ant happened to step upon the water bubble that was about to burst: it was not an act of murder or cruelty; it was merely the inevitability of cause and effect. It could have happened to any of the other people in other science facilities. It could have happened at any other day or time. But just as upon birth, a child is tagged and reallocated as per where it would be most needed, upon death a body is then delivered into a gathering tube, pumped with the proper nutrient and mineral baths, before being allowed to organically disassemble to key protein and chemical components that are collected and redistributed through-out the vessel. There were no exceptions to this recycling method.
No exceptions at all.
The years that followed simply manifested themselves as even more reasons for Malcom P10 to hate how life ran in the vessel. Sports were reduced to repetitive ranges of motion, in order to reduce the time wasted whenever someone wanted to leave the chamber. Entertainment as well began to transform from explosions of creative excess into barely funny repeated anecdotes broadcast into the media streams. Everything was formulaic. Everything was routine. For the biotechnological vessel, that meant efficiency: The cost for every resource was equal to if not cheaper than the expense for each one. For Malcom P10, it simply meant everything was predictably boredom-inducing.
It would not be until a few more years before Malcom P10 would find the hidden archive of data called MYN-12122010-S0N, find a way to decrypt the data file, and learn of the existence of one single entity whose actions changed the world he never knew into the horrific banality it had become so familiarly sick of.
*
Malcom P10 was a researcher. Like his parents, he was assigned to the science facilities of the vessel. Tasked to handle all research and data analysis tasks when required, Malcom P10 was given full access to all data he deemed necessary to fulfill his duties as part of the vessel. The act of naming him allowed his parents to assign him to duties that were closer to where they worked. With their son growing up with them, Malcom P10 was able to learn the rudimentary skills required to fulfill his duties as one of the members of the Symbiotech vessel GATES. The Earth was in trouble. Its many nations, once defined by political and man-made physical boundaries, were now smoldering ruins. Ashes and smoke had replaced the countless billboards and posters that used to populate the walls with color and smiling faces. Survivors of the decade long struggle to free the planet from the grip of a single superhuman madman lead to the downfall of the distinction of first world countries and the eradication of all forms of formal economy. Many believed the luckier ones were the cowards who had left the planet in the biotechnological vessels that were tasked to search for an alternative home to live in. Few realized the bravery necessary to leave the people you loved for a mission that may have been doomed to fail from the very beginning.
But Malcom P10’s skills and proficiencies lay in a different field. Had his parents allowed him to be Assigned as normal procedures required, they would have discovered that his assessment would have rated him a Class Nine Engineer. And a Astrophysicist. And a Quantum theorist. His incredible intellect allowed him to process massive amounts of information so easily that mastering a new field of science only took him a few years to accomplish. It did not take long for Malcom P10 to consider the possibility of finding a way to save the lives of his parents.
And not much longer to formulate a means to do so.
He realized the best way to stop it lay in his very genes.
*
Genetics is a funny thing. Like miniscule packages of electronic data, every strand and segment of the human DNA contains instructions that are used in the development and function of a human being. Like a set of genetic blueprints, deoxyribonucleic acid store information on everything that will be necessary for the growth and development of a person; from the construction of all the necessary components in creating protein cells and RNA molecules to the very processes necessary in regulating the said flow of information. It was the perfect storage device for data that was meant to be activated at a precise time.
Like a self-booting automated extracting folder of data, with the right protein markers and genetic keys, Malcom realized he had only needed to send back the correct information down his own DNA like a message transmitted through time. Given the right nudge, he theorized it was possible to send the data packet down backwards to an earlier inheritor of genetic memory and have it activate and develop and grow the child into the same version of himself, but born in an earlier period of space and time.
All that was needed was to encode it accurately and test it for himself.
On himself.
This massive undocumented scientific theory was soon to be proven to be not just possible but the beginning of massive changes to the world as we knew it. And no one would ever know.
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chapter two
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