Chapter – 24
Technology will save us.
It was a brave slogan, one that became the foundation of an entire culture. Jenna heard it wherever she went, every day, unceasing and unyielding. Technology cleaned her air, purified her water, kept her warm, and grew her food. She was raised with it, developing a calm acceptance that this was the way of the world. She never understood the value of diversity, the need for a forest or soil. The Earth and its people had been running one grand experiment, with technology and human labour gradually replacing nature. This experiment had finally been proven a failure.
Earth was dying.
The only redemption of technology was its use in escaping the now collapsing planet. It was an escape, for better or for worse, Jenna had been chosen to attend. Billions were being left behind, but Jenna was considered too young and important to the future colonies on Mars.
This was a fact that, with much moral difficulty, Jenna had accepted. Many nights she had been plagued by insomnia, and often spells of tears or grief. Every night there was a dream. A month ago, it was of those being left behind, suffocating as oxygen quality plummeted. A week ago, it was the chaos brought about by mass hunger. A day ago, it was of many millions of people, their skin a blistering red from only a few minutes of sun exposure. And only a few hours ago, she dreamt of the old growth tree, which had given her the pearls now resting in her pocket.
Today, there were more tears. Her work took priority however, for it had to be complete in a week’s time, the time of the great evacuation. She gave the computers instructions, then moved away as they performed their tasks. Almost casually, the computer stripped apart DNA, toying with its structure oh so gently, then reconnecting it in a new order. Once it was done, the image of a young boy appeared on the screen. He was handsome, fit, free of genetic disorders or weakness. He had the benefit of genes from world renowned athletes, scientists, artists, and many others, all added to the original structure he inherited from his parents. The characteristics of his parents were of course the starting blocks, but Jenna was paid to make this boy exactly like she had a thousand others.
Perfect.
It wasn’t just her ability as a genetic engineer that made her so vital to society. They weren’t taking Jenna to safety because she could give children naturally large lungs and hearts, quick wits or keen senses. Jenna was needed because she could create children at all.
Medicine allowed infertile parents to reproduce, and so their children had the same disability, needing the same treatment. Poisons in the food, the water, the air, long since made natural reproduction impossible. Any children that did come from a mother’s womb were girls 95 per cent of the time, ratios that couldn’t be maintained. So there were people like Jenna, the life givers to most people on Earth. Time and time again, she took the seeds from prospective parents, took away the mutations, cleaned away the imperfections, added whatever the parents wished, and grew the future of humanity. Every child was born as pure as possible, but would lose their own fertility before puberty.
Perhaps things would be different on Mars. The Martians had no such problems that Jenna was aware of. The young man’s face on the screen was smiling, showing off his flawlessly straight teeth. He would never develop wisdom teeth, something his parents had requested. Many children were given priority over others because their parents were escaping Earth as well. Nigel, the name for this future child, would not be born here. He would spend his first days as an immigrant to a foreign planet.
New tears welled in Jenna’s eyes, but she held back the sobs. Her vocation came with a great deal of emotional baggage, and in retrospect, Jenna wouldn’t have thought herself suited to handle it. She was the one giving birth to the world’s children, using her machines and training.
There was an unexpected side effect to her work. With each passing child, as she watched and nurtured every one as it grew and developed, as she gently lifted each of them from their artificial wombs, crying as they took their first breaths of air, she found herself growing attached to them. She developed a motherly bond. As the years passed, she started to see them as her own children. She kept these feelings to herself, but they existed. She'd never had the chance to grow a child of her own, and that left a hole in her heart. To think of these babies as her own helped. Lately, however, the thoughts had been anything but helpful.
If these were her children, then she was leaving most of them behind, to die with a dying world.
Now the crying took hold. She buried her face in her hands, the face of Nigel still smiling on the screen. If she was honest with herself, then the prospect of growing a child of her own was a bittersweet prospect. With all she had created, their authenticity had faded. She was terrified of having one of her own, because she worried how she would treat it.
Half way between child and project.
Jenna knew every last name that her children inherited. She had a good memory for that kind of thing. It was on the screen in front of her.
Nigel Goodman.
The faces often stayed with her as well. It happened often, that she could see the children years after their birth. They were never exactly as the computer predicted, but always close enough for Jenna to recognize them.
Many times, it was their faces in her horrific dreams.
Still she wept as another painful thought came to mind. There were more children who deserved her tears, the ones that would never see life. There were the children only as complete as Nigel, children still in the form of unprocessed DNA deemed sacrificial in light of the evacuation. These were the children with parents unable to pay for the best genetic traits, the ones considered too ‘unprocessed.' Once the planetary evacuation was decided upon, the choosing of priority births was harsh. Jenna understood why. It was all explained to her in detail. These decisions weren’t made easily, but the choice itself was necessary. There was no lack of compassion in the people leading the world. Still, Jenna couldn’t escape the faces of those who would never grow up. Their storage devices were set aside.
Jenna was responsible for informing the parents of these unborn children. The meetings were heartbreaking. It was all the more painful because Jenna couldn’t comfort them. She had to remain professional. Not only that, but the parents she was speaking to were being left behind.
One meeting with a middle aged couple haunted her still. There had been angrier, sadder, calmer and more indifferent couples. This one, however, was the most tragic. Jenna had seen fit to visit the couple at home. They sat on a small couch, Jenna across from them, holding each other’s hand patiently as Jenna explained. Once she was done, there was a long silence, the couple absorbing the words. There were the occasional tears, and they even thanked Jenna for having come in person. Then the woman spoke.
“I guess it’s for the best…for us and Kenny.”
Kenny was the child Jenna would no longer create for them.
“For the best?” Jenna had asked. The man spoke next.
“We’ve been talking about stopping the birth, before Kenny was…started.”
“What kind of parents would we be," the woman continued, "if we brought a child into a world like this?” She had smiled then, her face glistening with tears.
Jenna didn't know what to say. To her recollection, she didn't say anything for the rest of her visit. She didn't think the emotion of that meeting would ever leave her. It became clear to her that most of her children would have been better off unborn. Jenna thought she was doing important work, the work of giving life. She had never considered the quality of that life. And so the imperfect children had been stored away, in a part of her lab being left behind.
The computer made a sharp beeping noise, and Jenna stood up. She detached a storage device, now carrying the complete building blocks of Nigel Goodman, a man sure to be one of the first Terrans born on Martian soil. It was overwhelming to think that an entire life could be stored in so small a device. Now, it seemed inconceivable how f
ortunate this one device was over hundreds of others. She could only hope that Nigel cherished every moment of his life when it was given to him.
__________
Others came to the lab, groups of strong men, packing and removing equipment. They were being directed by Jenna’s manager, a shorter, overweight man. According to him, there would still be more to remove tomorrow. Most of the equipment was too expensive to be left behind. Many unborn children still needed to be packaged for the journey. It was going to be a busy week. The manager wasn’t without a sense of compassion, however. He saw something was wrong, and told Jenna to go home early. Jenna accepted the offer to be polite, but she knew going home wouldn't help. Instead, she decided to take a walk. It wasn’t recommended that people do this, but she felt her lungs could survive one night of air pollution. The mask she wore offered enough protection from smog.
There were only the tall streets held up by skyscrapers for her to explore. Public transit was everywhere in the city, but not where she was now. The precious silence was soothing to her. This street was also protected from the blaring lights that were all too common on the lower levels.
She didn’t know these streets, which is exactly the atmosphere she wanted. She wanted to be as lost as she felt.
Jenna didn't understand economics. She didn't follow the politics or even pay attention to the global environmental issues. How did this concern her? She did her work, and she did it well, assuming there were other people in other positions doing their jobs well. Times had gotten worse, even as far back as Jenna could remember. She remembered when people could no longer walk in sunlight with exposed skin. She was there, four years ago when all water had to be filtered, boiled, chlorinated and zapped by UV rays by law before anyone could drink it. There were more and more problems coming to light, but every time they did, some new job sector opened up to deal with it, and life went on.
Jenna felt the entire world slowly closing in on her, with entire industries maintaining this bubble of a city, protecting the city dwellers from the harsh environment beyond. People were working day in and day out, just to keep everyone at the city's core alive. And to think, some people actually lived outside of the city, in the desert. They survived the extreme heat with specialized clothing, building settlements out of old sun domes built for rural communities a few decades ago. That's all Jenna knew.
She found herself becoming angry. It wasn't fair that the planet was dying. What had she done? In what way had the leaders of the world allowed for this calamity? Maybe the end of Earth was set in motion a very long time ago, by older leaders who didn't have the interests of the future at heart. This wasn't fair.
A powerful shiver ran through her body at the thought, and she stopped walking abruptly. She wasn't certain how, but the pearls had in some way captured her attention that moment. Looking at her pocket, she remembered the dream in which she'd found them. She remembered the fallen tree, and the sting of guilt for having been responsible. A dark shadow seemed to come over her thoughts, and she dropped to her knees. Harsh thoughts towards the government left her mind, and there was only guilt. She knew full well who was to blame, even if she didn't fully understand why.
For a good long time, she stayed there, replaying the dream over and over in her mind. The supernatural appearance of the pearls somehow didn’t bother her. She knew, beyond doubt, that she'd run her hand along the side of that tree, and had found the pearls at its roots. But what did it matter? In a dying world, when being asked to leave hundreds of one’s children behind, Jenna couldn’t worry about the supernatural. Why the pearls had come to her bothered Jenna more than how.
Looking up, she saw still more of the massive city, with its levels and lights. On the roofs of many structures she could see the carbon scrubbers, the only things stopping cascading CO2 levels. They were meant to replace real trees. As it would turn out, they were a weak substitute.
Far in the distance was a black metal tower stretching into the sky, and continuing on into orbit. It was the space elevator. In a week’s time, it would take her and her equipment to the ships heading for Mars. It was her escape from the world she felt responsible for destroying. It was an escape from her dying children…
She found her way home after an hour of loneliness. Her apartment was very high, one of the more expensive homes in the city. It was at the city’s centre, safe from the desert surrounding it, the dust storms and violence of desperate rioters. She had always been able to ignore the stories of such riots and attempted invasions. They were often half hearted and small, blamed on the anarchists and uneducated desert people. Recently, the riots had gotten larger, and more frightening. From what the news told her, there were lawyers rioting alongside desert dwellers, scientists arm in arm with idealists.
Jenna had to pack once she got home. With all her negative thoughts recently, this simple task became difficult. Usually she would let the news play while doing such a dull chore, but today she couldn’t take it. Today, and perhaps until she left, she would ignore the news networks diligently. Every headline felt like an accusation, every story a finger in her direction. So she packed in silence, the noise proof walls and the closed windows allowing for her universe to be confined in a place free of horrors.
As if to punish herself, she didn't pack many of her favourite items, things she initially intended to take with her. She left all of her more flattering clothes, ignored her entertainment devices, and abandoned her paintings, except for a sentimental few.
Soon she forced herself into bed, knowing another long day was in front of her.