Best Of You
by Raymond Vogel
As far as we can tell, this is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 Raymond Vogel
All rights reserved.
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
I wrote Best of You sometime after another pass through my YA science fiction novel, Matter of Resistance (released Aug, 2013). I wanted to provide a contrast to my brilliant hero in Matter of Resistance through a brilliant societal deviant. I also wanted to set the time period closer to contemporary and to have the character drive the action much more than a broader political environment.
Most importantly, though, I wanted to spend time writing in first person. For me, first person is like being inside the action. It lets me move with the characters, see what they see, feel what they feel. It opens up so many fun possibilities. I started out reading to escape, but I think writing takes me even further.
Hope you enjoy!
- Raymond Vogel
“Dr. Brooks, are you okay?”
Just like a technician. Worried more about a splash of blood than the fog his optic nerve should be warning him about. If he knew what I knew, he’d see the blood as I do. As another dab of paint. A tiny stroke of brilliance wiped onto a corner of stretched canvas, impossible to understand by any but the artist himself.
“I’m fine.”
He catches himself on the metal table and slides forward, all the while looking for something to grab onto. I take a careful step backward and watch as a rack of test tubes collides against the ceramic floor tiles. Glass and acetic acid spray my lab sneakers. It mixes with the blood pooled between tiles, causing it to sizzle.
Then, finally, he slides backward off the table and flops to the floor beside his boss. I review the response patterns in my mind as I turn. I take two staggering steps and swing my arm into a Bunsen burner, which falls over onto a loose pile of papers. They ignite. I take four backward, uneasy steps until I reach the wall. The scrambling fingerprints of a juvenile in flight against the closed metal door will complete the scene for the detectives. Then, I’m in the hallway.
I don’t have much time. The heat will trigger the emergency systems in thirty seconds, maybe less. And the robbery of the Wells Fargo across the street should already be underway. Assuming they took the bait. It’s not essential that regular police arrive on the scene first, but it will help.
I duck into the stairwell and head toward the roof. I’m greeted at the top of the first flight by flashing red lights and an ear-splitting alarm that tell me the fire has done its work. In moments, the stairs will be full of hospital first responders. Volunteers guaranteed to cover my tracks with a stampede of misplaced concern. I take the last flight two stairs at a time and slip out into crisp night air. As an added precaution, I wipe my prints off the handle before closing the access door behind me.
I take a moment to remove my lab coat and stuff it in the backpack that had been hidden below it. I move to the edge of the building and make the short drop down to the covering of the crosswalk. I steady myself and walk with measured paces to where it connects with the parking garage. The sounds of the fire and bank alarms join together in my own personal symphony, my marching song.
The garage is nearly full, but I’m invisible now anyway. Other children are the only ones that ever notice eleven-year-olds, especially ones with backpacks. I move past row after row of car-filled parking spaces. Hydrogen-powered leisure machines demeaned into back-and-forth transports for hospital employees. It would be less expensive to rent a luxury subway car every day of the week.
I reach the bottom floor and hop the rail onto the sidewalk. Without so much as a backward glance, I stroll in the opposite direction of the still-blaring sirens.
What no one will realize is that this was the beginning. Of everything. The chaotic, messy birth of a solution to all of mankind’s self-generated problems. When I finally tell this story, it will be to a grateful crowd. One that already understands the destiny I have in mind for them because they will be living it.
Three cop cars pass me in succession. The young officer riding passenger in the third car tosses a full coffee cup from the window. It splashes on the sidewalk before me, and he gives me an angry look for noticing. I feel a pang of sympathy for him. He’s responding to natural human instincts that he’s got no control over. I pick up his cup and carry it as far as the next trash can I come to. He’s being dragged into a wild goose chase and deserves the small kindness.
Two subway stops and another short walk take me back to my hotel. I log into my screen to answer four separate messages from my worried parents. I haven’t responded during night hours for more than a month, but they still try. I will need their attention soon, but there’s just no reason to answer at night.
It’s still hard to fathom how they don’t understand what I am yet. They listen to me talk, and they try to read my public papers. Yet, they persist in believing I’m a helpless child, wandering the streets of St. Louis lost, hungry, and alone. It’s like they made their decision, the decision that created me, based only on the ads. They just heard “The Best of You!” and must have fallen to pieces figuring out how to get it. They’re always so determined to have the newest tech.
I take a long shower to wash away the lack of sleep. There can’t be anything strange about my appearance today.
Had they even asked a single intelligent question about the process?
Well, I have. I’ve pieced it together from scratch a hundred different ways and come to the same conclusion every time. It made sense in a way – to scan a thousand embryos for the right sequences and then, choose the one with the best attributes. But they hadn’t accounted for the duality of human nature. There was never a human created without the secret desire for greatness, and in great humans that desire can be an all-consuming force.
I feel the drive every day to control others, to eliminate competition, to make my mark on the world. I am unsympathetic, cold and calculating, as distant from human emotions as a line of code. What if there were hundreds like me, or thousands? The inescapable result would be war. A global war that would take the world back to prehistoric times. To allow that war would be to undermine the very core of my being. Humanity needed to be preserved, to be ushered forward to the next phase in its history.
Dressed in my miniature suit and tie, I perform a final diagnostic on the disruption software. I verify the timer on my screen’s transmission system. Last, I check that my room has been left as expected, only taking with me the single backup of clothing in my newly equipped backpack. Ready to go.
The cab driver is as condescendingly friendly as he can manage, ushering me in with comforting phrases and pats on the back. I suspect he’s planning to take me on an indirect route to squeeze a few extra credits out of me. Instead, he takes me directly to the conference hall, and I include in my payment a ten percent tip for his honesty. No need for being stingy with a bank account I’ll never access again.
I haven’t seen the outside of this building before, but the architecture isn’t surprising. Glass-paneled walls with tall columns, double doors evenly spaced along the exterior of the main presentation room. Lots of white and grey and empty space between. The exterior windows are alight with ads.
As soon as I enter the crowd of biotechnical and generic engineers, I am immediately promoted to rock star status. They may not know me by face, but they know the kid in the suit is Dr. Charles Brooks. I’m the one they’ve traveled so many miles to shake hands with, the one they paused their research projects just to hear sp
eak. They gather around me like flies, buzzing toward me nervously then zipping back to friends and colleagues to replay the experience for them in smug confidence.
“Dr. Brooks,” one man says, his accent thick with guttural Russian undertones, “a great pleasure to meet you. I am very honored.”
He only wants me to bow my head respectfully toward him, and I oblige. The Russian buzzes away.
“Would you imprint my copy of The Transformational Dichotomy of Genomes?” a woman asks. She speaks in the crisp American English of a local St. Louis newscaster. Though she is a lovely woman, her perfume would have smelled better in a smaller dosage. It partially blinds me as I imprint her reader with my thumb.
That was a mistake. Now, the crowd is lined up, readers at the ready for imprinting. The work they all want me to sign is my doctoral