Human genetic engineering started in the United States. This was a surprise at the time to those who speculate on such things. The expectation was that China would fire the first shot. China, a newly minted superpower, had both the means and a seemingly unhindered view on ethically problematic issues. Nevertheless, many historians believe that the catalyst for America’s plunge into “accelerated human evolution” was in response to Asia’s economic rise to power. The West did not want to give up their hegemony. As the American middle and upper classes’ grip over exclusive and high-paying employment continued to erode in the global economy, so did their qualms about tampering with nature. Parents had always wanted to give their children an edge, but then on the competitive international stage, “want” became “need.”
But let’s not be too harsh on these U.S. parents and their suppliers. Pandora’s box was destined to open eventually, and when it did, it did not even take a generation before nearly everyone in the world was saving their dollars, their yen, or their euros to level the playing field for their own child.
Improving the long-term health and attractiveness of their children was easy enough, but the real demand was for boosting intelligence. Historically, parents had always secretly hoped for a “gifted” child, and now this gift could be purchased.
Thanks to such market forces, it was only a few generations before much of the world was genetically homogenized. Now was the opportune time for a virus to strike. When the TerriLove virus exploited a weakness in our shared proteomic signature (one related to the nervous system, incidentally), it raged with abandon. We were like identical shafts of wheat, standing straight and immobile, awaiting the scythe.
Is it any wonder the OverSoul banned engineering on humans? Only through the seemingly random drunken walk of sexual reproduction do we gain the diversity needed to meet an unpredictable future.
I will find you. It is impossible to hide from me. You think you are clever, but your vanity is your undoing, Ascara the witch cooed as D_Light sank below the frothing waves.
It was then that D_Light woke, not because of the nightmare, but from the numbingly recognizable voice of his familiar. Master, your quest log has been updated.
Another nightmare? How is that possible? Smorgeous, analyze the dream…somehow. What’s that about my vanity?
Master, you have not experienced a dream state in the 23.4 minutes you have been asleep.
Not that again! What the hell is going on?
Master, you have another quest. You have made it clear that the MetaGame is your highest priority.
D_Light groaned. His head swimming, he cursed at his computer. He was sticky. He remembered where he was-remembered the lake-and wondered if he should go take another swim to wash off. Without waiting for permission, Smorgeous saturated his master’s optical senses with the quest log.
Quest: Seek out Dr. Monsa, great-grandfather of the House of Monsa. Dr. Monsa is the head patriarch of the House of Monsa. The House of Monsa is located at the following coordinates…
That is nearby, only thirteen kilometers from here, Lyra’s thought broke in. D_Light did not realize that Smorgeous had joined him into a blink with the nobles. Now the three of them were sharing thoughts as they reviewed the quest. It was more than a little disconcerting when his familiar shared his mind without explicit permission. Now he had to be careful to shield his thoughts in case something embarrassing cropped up in his head.
Finally, we get a softball, Djoser said. Go find a local immortal. What then? Say hello?
The doctor is by all accounts an elusive and unpredictable man, Lyra replied. Might not be so straightforward.
D_Light opened his eyes. Lyra stood over him, arching her back in a grandiose, catlike stretch. She spoke out loud, groggily and to no one in particular. “Let’s move out. We can work out the details on the way.”
After creeping out from behind the boathouse and through a yard overlooked by the large bay windows of an old-fashioned brick and mortar dwelling, they found their way onto one of the public trails. They walked quickly, trying to make good time. As they travelled they discussed how best to tackle the quest. According to what they could gather from the Cloud, the doctor would be very difficult to contact by remote means.
“Dr. Monsa is all about the biogames,” Djoser said. “He’s not going to talk to anyone that isn’t either a crack-shot wetgineer or otherwise on his short list.”
Lyra asked, “We will need to visit him in person then?”
Djoser nodded. “Yes, for outsiders like us, that would probably be the only shot at meeting him.” He frowned. “I blinked my mother about it. She won’t even try to arrange a meeting.”
“Same here,” Lyra said. “I tried to pull a few strings, call in a few favors, but nada.” Grinning, she added, “I think everyone who’s in the know is afraid of this guy. Afraid to piss him off or something.”
“No doubt,” D_Light joined in. “He’s holed up in his main house, the one not far from here. And by holed up I mean he’s in deep, in a part of the house called the inner sanctum.” He chuckled. “Sounds a little intimidating, eh? That’s where he does his research. Apparently, it’s some sort of Darwinian freak show in there and only the truly determined would want to enter-enter the sanctum.” D_Light did a mock shiver to feign fear.
“Well, I’m determined,” said Djoser with confidence.
“Have you seen the action on this MetaGame lately? A whole lot of people want to get a piece. The point spread is looking good, and the sweet pot is up to thirty large.” Djoser patted Amanda on her rump to add emphasis.
Thirty large! D_Light thought. The term “large” was not a denomination of one thousand as it was in the old days; it now meant million. If they won, even his tenth share of the pot would be worth more than what he’d made off fragging Fael. My Soul, this could be my week!
“Hey, by the way, when I contacted my people, I didn’t have to explain our fugitive situation to anyone,” Lyra said. “It looks like none of us is in the public demon database.”
“Yeah, but did you check your own private status?” D_Light asked.
Lyra replied, “That’s just it. I come up as a ‘suspected demon.’”
“At least you’re only suspected,” D_Light muttered.
“Curious though, don’t you think?” Lyra asked. “If the DA really wanted to catch us, why wouldn’t they make our status public?”
“I’d hate to think they were not chasing us,” Djoser grumbled. “That would mean I took a swim in that slime lake for no reason.” He gave Lily a hard look meant to be teasing, but she seemed to misunderstand it, at which point he patted her on the shoulder. Lily merely arched her eyebrows at him.
“Well, I for one have never been hunted by the Divine Authority before, so I’m not exactly sure what to expect,” Lyra said. “I say we proceed as though we are on the hot list. Better safe than stunned and reformatted.”
Night had fallen by the time the team neared House Monsa. Presently, they were crossing an immense suspension bridge, the railings and lines of which were overgrown by light-emitting vines that merged into a shimmering glow, a glow that stretched out over the kilometers of bridge ahead and behind.
Lily had hustled several bicycles from players using her paper hard currency bills, which were still wet and crumpled from the lake. Now all had bicycles, except for the bodyguards, who had to share one. With excellent balance, Amanda sat on the handlebars. Brian didn’t appear to mind the view.
The only automated transportation on the road was the commercial bots, heavily laden with goods. The team had entertained the idea of trying to hitch a ride on one of these, but the AI-controlled vehicles could not be bribed and moved too fast to hop on the way a drifter might catch a boxcar. Other House Monsa commuters either strolled on the pedestrian lane of the bridge, lost in their own virtual worlds, or hissed rapidly by overhead in liftcars. Renting a liftcar was out, so the team did a great deal of furious pedaling and eventually approached House Monsa, which loomed ahead like a mountain at the terminus of the great suspension bridge.
Using the enhanced vision of the familiars, which rode in saddlebags on the bikes, the party members could see the great house as though it were daytime. It was unlike anything any of them had ever seen. They stopped and silently regarded the sight before them.
The house itself was constructed of an unusual variety of dro-vine that was unfamiliar to the curious onlookers. Unlike the soft, green, spongy dro-vine of the spanker ghetto, this species was colored silver and its exoskeleton was hard with sharp edges. The splendid quality of this dro-vine, coupled with an inordinate number of sparkling windows, made the castle’s sheer, jagged walls resemble an inverted cluster of icicles that jutted from the lake into a high-altitude display of splendor, the turrets and towers being the icicle tips. However, unlike the austere and barren ice found in high mountaintops, these soaring spires were sprinkled along the ridges with rich greens, luminous blues, blood reds, and every other color imaginable. The effect was as though a god, quite haphazardly, had thrown confetti across this mysterious structure. This confetti, however, actually represented private and public gardens, some of which clung precariously to their perches, hundreds of meters, if not a thousand, into the air. The garden lights were the product of a billion photo-emitting flowers.
Besides the photoflower gardens, there were lights lower down on the lake, artificial ones, used by the house marina to guide boats in and out. The marina was situated inside a sea wall where a few thousand boats were lashed to a network of dimly lit floating docks. Large commercial barges, lit with their own reds and greens, floated by soundlessly.
D_Light realized this was likely a romantic setting. Remembering the events of a few hours before, he smiled at Amanda, who rode arm’s length from him. “Hi there,” he said.
The ever-vigilant bodyguard detected his gesture, but she rested her eyes on him only momentarily and then moved them away without acknowledgment. He might as well have been one of the bridge railing posts.
That must be insects, Lily said in D_Light’s mind. Because they were sharing Smorgeous’s visual at the moment, Lily was able to blink D_Light without permission. It wasn’t polite to blink without first sending a request; nevertheless, D_Light let it go.
To show what she was talking about, she pinged on the vid feed a subtle, smoky mist that collected here and there about the spires.
Smorgeous magnified the view. Not insects, D_Light declared. Those are bats! Big ones!
D_Light had never seen so many creatures being used to fuel a single dro-vine structure. He supposed it made sense. The living structure was incredibly thick and therefore did not have adequate surface area to survive on hyper-photosynthesis alone. The bats were needed to ferry nectar from the nectar trees of the mainland to the island, the distance being too great to use insects for the task. Indeed, larger animals were required, ones that could efficiently make the crossing. These bats fit the bill, being genetically engineered animals. By imprinting them with the location of their roosts throughout the dro-vine castle, they tirelessly gathered their payloads and brought them back home. There they dispensed the nectar into receptacles that fed straight into the building’s circulatory system. The bats took for themselves only enough of the energy and nutrient-optimized nectar to continue their work and, when energy reserves were sufficient, reproduce.
Lily went on. They are so breathtakingly busy! Collecting, collecting, depositing, depositing…
And to think that many of them are probably asleep! You see, for harvesters, when it’s time for a nap, half their brain shuts down while the other half controls flight. Some migratory birds have done this for millions of years. We have since borrowed that nifty innovation.
Fascinating, Lily replied. When asked, Smorgeous did not detect any sarcasm pattern in her thought signature.
D_Light relaxed and allowed himself a moment to take in the silver and black cloud of harvesters rapidly swirling around, in, and out of the glowing icy crags. My Soul, what is this place I’m going to? he thought.
Just look at it, Lily. This…this ecosystem is an example of God’s work. Efficient, elegant, beautiful.
God’s work? I thought this was all designed by people?
The OverSoul is in everything.
It’s beautiful; however, those bats just seem lost to me, lost in their single-mindedness. A little sad, I think, Lily said.
We are all just thralls of biochemistry, D_Light replied. Besides, it would be wasteful to make them any other way. Have you heard the old saying “The world is a jawbreaker”?
No, she answered.
There was a time, a time before the OverSoul, when the world was like a jawbreaker, a hard, round candy, that we sucked and gnawed on over the centuries, slowly consuming it. We didn’t do this because we were evil, we were just animals doing what animals do-eating.
What a silly saying. So are you-I mean, we-no longer animals?
Of course we are! However, we now have a shepherd.
Perfect! So we’re not even handsome animals? We’re the livestock, chewing our cud and grinding our lives away?
Yeah, I suppose. Just like that, only less nihilistic.
Too late, I think I’m going to drive my bike off the bridge, just like a big dumb cow, Lily said with a laugh. So on the bright side, the world’s no longer a jawbreaker?
No, it’s this. In a grand gesture, D_Light had Smorgeous pan out for the optimum view of the House of Monsa. He then turned to look over at Lily to see her reaction. He was startled to find her gazing right back at him. She was obviously not watching Smorgeous’s feed.
“Umm,” D_Light said out loud as he stumbled over his words. “Your, your veil is off.” D_Light’s front tire wobbled, and he struggled for a moment to keep from colliding with the railing.
“When you plugged me into your cat’s eyes, I saw myself as another person. It was…unsettling. I’d rather keep track of who’s who,” Lily said.
He could see the silhouette of her exquisite face in the glow of the marina. Fine for now. No one’s around. Put it up again before we arrive, he said through the blink.
She nodded as she returned facing forward. He glanced back over his shoulder at the seemingly endless bridge behind. From time to time, he continued to look back while he pedaled as though making sure the shadowy bridge was still there…and to keep an eye out for rogue bot trucks.
Meanwhile, Lyra and Djoser were just ahead, riding side by side. The two nobles chatted aloud. “I’ve arranged to meet a friend of mine,” Lyra mentioned. “She’s not of very high rank, but she is a mother of this house and has promised to get us in. Actually, Djoser, you know her. Sweet_Ting?”
“Sweet_Ting?” Djoser shrugged. “Uhhh! I’d look her up, but-”
“No! Don’t even consider pinging the Cloud. We don’t know how we might get traced. Only peer-to-peer blinks,” Lyra warned. “Look, you met Sweet_Ting when I did, at that mixer last year, remember?”
“Hmmm, drawing a blank here.”
“For Soul’s sake, Djoser, you perved the woman!”
There was a pause. “Oh, right! That skinny, bug-eyed girl!” he exclaimed. “Hmmm, she wasn’t the brightest, was she?” Djoser chuckled.
“That didn’t stop you from going in on an intimacy permit with her,” Lyra jibbed.
“Actually, that bitch made me pay for the whole thing. Said it would ‘soooo be worth it.’” Djoser turned his head and spat over the side of the bridge rail, down into the blackness below.
“Maybe not so stupid after all,” Lyra said, “although seducing you is about as difficult as pedaling this bike.” She then looked back over at D_Light. “Not that I would know from firsthand experience,” she added with a wink.
Lyra leaned back on her seat. “Aside from convincing you to foot the bill for an IP, I believe your estimation of her intellect is correct. She can’t even get a breeding permit. She told me she was turned down just last week.”
“Ouch,” Djoser said. “But she’s a mother of an important house.”
“True, but she was born with her title. Apparently, the DNA fairy chose to withhold the brains. I guess even parentage like hers is no guarantee,” Lyra replied.
Djoser let out a low whistle. “Her parents must be peeved. Imagine spending the points for a breeding permit and then having a dud like that? I bet her parents wished they could have engineered her like in the old days. Makes you wonder why the OverSoul changed the rules.”
“ Everyone knows why the rules were changed. Even Sweet_Ting knows that,” Lyra spat.
Djoser looked back at Lyra. “I know, but if I ever decide to have one, I’d like to make sure. I mean, I want to get some kind of return on my investment!”
Lyra switched to a blink, effectively shutting D_Light out of the conversation. Genetically engineering humans is a deadly sin, she said with emphasis. Would you want to risk being demonized? You need to have your familiar erase your archive of this conversation.
We’re demons now and it’s not so bad, Djoser responded.
Suspected demons, Lyra corrected. She looked over toward D_Light. Only Dee and the new girl are demons. Besides, our sins were necessary to win the MetaGame and will be purged upon completion.
Lyra’s thought pattern was a little ragged, and Djoser thought it sounded like she was trying to convince herself. He would have preferred more resolution in her tone. After all, he was taking a big gamble with this whole game. He had half a mind to turn D_Light and Lily in to the Divine Authority and be done with it. He did not want to lose the MetaGame, but he did not want to get on the wrong side of the OverSoul either. The last thing he was curious about was what, exactly, “demon atonement” entailed.
“Anyway,” Lyra continued out loud, “even D_Light didn’t commit a deadly sin.” She looked pointedly at Djoser. “You watch it or I’ll turn you in for heresy. Erase your archive or not, I’ve got mine and D_Light has his.”
“Oh, I’d prefer you left me out of it,” D_Light said flatly.
“Look, thinking outside the box is divine. I’m not serious. It’s not a sin to think about sin, right?” Djoser’s voice was pitched an octave or two higher than usual.
“Well, at any rate,” Djoser continued in a tone that seemed to suggest that the conversation may as well end, “lucky for you and me that we both have good parentage and the brain genetics came through.”
Lyra was quiet for a moment and then said in an offhanded tone, “By the way, if Sweet_Ting brings it up, you know, about the breeding permit? Be sure to console her properly.”
Djoser rolled his eyes.
The stairway leading up to the main entrance of House Monsa was long, and it towered over them. Snaking down the staircase was a line of tightly packed people waiting to get into the lounge, the house groksta. Some were there simply to enjoy the groksta, while others hoped to find a way into the house itself and perhaps-if they possessed the right traits-even apply for family membership.
Following closely behind Lyra, the party ignored the line and withstood the weight of many hateful glares as they ascended to two enormous doors that stood wide open. Half a dozen armed guards flanked the doors, and while a few of them nodded to people as they passed through, most of the square-jawed men just stood stoically.
Lyra walked straight up to the first guard and said, “We are here to see-” Her sentence was cut off by a screech from just inside the immense doors. A slender pandectic woman with a beautiful face but distinctively bulging eyes rushed out and embraced Lyra, nearly sending them both backward down the vast stairway below.
The woman’s assault was so fierce that D_Light half expected an edgy Amanda to sink a blade into the stranger’s side. Amanda, however, did not react at all except to watch the newcomer carefully. Products like Amanda were designed to read body language very well, much better than most humans, which was no small feat given that human evolution had dedicated a great deal of effort to learning how to perceive subtle signs from one another.
“Lyra, it’s you!” Sweet_Ting exclaimed as she carefully parted Lyra’s nanofiber veil. “At last you visit me!” Sweet_Ting let the veil fall back into place to hold Lyra by the sides of her head as though gazing into a crystal ball. Lyra smiled and looked like she was about to say something when the whirlwind of a woman let her head go and moved to Djoser. She parted his veil. “Djoser!” she squealed and kissed him squarely on the lips before he could even speak. “Oh, what a perfectly stupid top hat! My, it’s a dream to see you again.”
The greeting confused D_Light. In his experience, nobles of different houses exchanged formal greetings when they met. For example, when a noblewoman like Sweet_Ting greeted another noblewoman, they would each bow and say something ingratiating like, “The face of a princess, only younger!” A noblewoman’s greeting to a guest nobleman might sound something like, “I avert my eyes, for your virility makes me blush.” This process tended to take some time since it was expected that each party would try to one-up the other’s compliment, resulting in a tedious arms race of flattery.
Sweet_Ting, in contrast, made immediate physical contact and was saying things that were not scripted. It amused D_Light to watch Lyra and Djoser squirm under the ambiguity of such a reception. He also found himself taking an instant liking to the woman, unsure if it was due to her unexpectedly casual nature or her remarkable ability to make her uptight friends uncomfortable. Whatever the case, he appreciated the brevity with which Sweet_Ting immediately beckoned them to follow her into the lounge. The gesture was made specifically to Lyra and Djoser, but the others were apparently welcome also.
Just inside the doors was a small secondary line. Smorgeous strode ahead to have a better look.
Master, it’s a blood scanner, Smorgeous said as he beamed the visual back. Under the watchful eyes of a guard, visitors were taking their turn placing their palm down on a small, veiny, gelatinous slab.
Mother, they are going to take a blood sample! We will be exposed!
Relax, D. None of us are in the public demon database, and there are no flags on any of us, remember? Lyra was using her soothing tone.
And the guest list is supposed to be discreet. House Monsa won’t send it to the Authority without a special request. There’s no reason for the DA to suspect us to be here…and don’t look so frightened! That actually might raise suspicion, Djoser said. Further up in line, he was peering back at D_Light with his monocle.
Anyway, House Monsa requires blood of all visitors. Just a chance we have to take, Lyra said.