Chapter 15:
Thomas, fortunately, was right, which was delightful given that he was feeling slightly stressed about everything already. Were the room, in fact, bizarre, he probably would've snapped. It was instead surprisingly ordinary, and looked rather like the typical hotel room of the twenty-first century. The only things that were missing were windows and a television set. This was disappointing as Thomas had hoped to catch a glimpse of the outside world before they got a formal tour. Things were apparently designed to prevent the three from finding out anything too early that may shock them, which was, Thomas reasoned, a very good thing. He was at least familiar with the lab, and now would have time to get familiar with their new companions before they set out to see the world.
Thomas put his bags onto the large, king sized bed and walked into the bathroom. Again, very ordinary, aside from the fact that the shower and tub seemed to be comically large. Thomas mused that it was spacious enough to fit two or three people comfortably. He wondered why this was, but then made the connection back to Darin who would probably find it normally sized. Was this built to accommodate him? Or worse yet, was everyone in the future bigger than the people of the twenty-first century?
"No... no, that wouldn't make sense..." Thomas said aloud to himself. He put the thought of it out of his mind and went to pick out the clothes that he would wear that day. After a nice, long shower, he got dressed and walked back to the bedroom. He looked at the clock and found that he still had fifteen minutes to kill before he had to meet them back in the lab. It was then that he noticed a large manila colored envelope and a piece of paper on the nightstand next to his bed.
"Oh?" he said aloud as he walked over to see what it was. The paper looked to be a small note, folded over one time. The envelope was plain looking and simply said "Thomas" on the outside in cursive handwriting. He picked up the note and a key fell out as it unfolded. The key to his condo! Could the condo really still be there? He bent over and picked up the key and quickly read the note. Written on the paper was this:
"Thomas,
Sorry, but they knocked down the building where your condo was in 2053 to make room for a new skyscraper. Here's your key, in case you want it for sentimental reasons.
Karen,
Lab Employee"
"Oh well..." Thomas said to himself, feeling the false hope fading away. "I should have expected that would happen. He looked at the key, wondering if there was any reason to keep it. He couldn't find one, so tried to find a reason to throw it out. After not finding one of those either, he just stuck it in his pocket and decided to deal with it later.
Thomas now turned his attention to the other, larger envelope on the nightstand. He squeezed the metal tongs together and broke the seal of the envelope, opening it slowly and methodically. Inside there was a single piece of paper. Thomas pulled it out and looked at it. It was a letter, signed by Frank, and Flo:
Dear Thomas,
How exciting and yet sobering it must be for you! You have taken the first, huge leap on your journey in search of sanity, peace, and enlightenment. And you’ve made it safe and sound! On the other hand, you have no idea what awaits you on the outside. In all honesty, neither do we. The possibilities are endless! But there is one thing that we are sure of: no matter what awaits you, if you all stick together, you will be able to overcome any obstacles or challenges along the way.
Flo and I haven’t much more time left in our lives, but we’ve already trained our successors. The new head of the lab will be lovely young woman named Karen Pallows. We began working with her shortly after you were frozen, and have the utmost confidence in her. We’re sure she will care for things diligently and train successors to ensure everything will go smoothly when you are revived.
Speaking of the two individuals who will be there to serve as your aides when you’re awakened, I urge you to trust them implicitly. I’m sure what you will see and experience may be difficult to understand, but rest assured that the aides, whoever they may be, were hand selected to guide you through this new world. Regardless of what happens, your well being will be one of their top concerns.
On a more personal note, Thomas, even though we didn’t get to spend a lot of time getting to know you, it’s obvious to us that you are a very caring, considerate person. Please, maintain those qualities. In all likelihood it will be very useful to providing stability and balance to the group. Finally, I ask that you please care for Vera. I don’t know if it will happen immediately, but I’m sure at some point my passing will sink in. Please be there for her when and if she needs it.
We wish you all the best,
Frank Thompson
Flo Wright
November 16, 2012
Thomas sat and reflected momentarily. It hadn’t even occurred to him till then that Frank, Flo, and Ervin were gone. The letter was a nice touch. Thomas reread it again and then slipped it and the note from Karen back into the envelope and into a drawer in the nightstand. He wondered idly for a moment how Vera and Doug were doing. Surely they had received a letter as well, and theirs was likely longer given the long-standing relationship…
Thomas sat and finally let his mind wander away from the thought of the letters. He looked around at the room, still amazed that it was this simple. He was honestly expecting more from the living quarters of the future. He mused about a special he had seen on TV showcasing all the gadgets that companies were coming up with now. The "smart kitchen" had been especially amusing, featuring a whole slew of Internet enabled appliances. The toaster would retrieve local forecasts and burn an image on the toast of a cloud, the sun, a snowflake, or whatever the case may be depending on the weather for that day. The refrigerator was connected to the Internet as well and would email you reminders when you needed to buy new milk or to remind you, once again, that the leftover Chinese food rotting in the back should probably be disposed of soon. There was even an electronic cookbook that was connected to a database of recipes on the Internet, a virtually limitless collection of culinary information at your fingertips.
It was, of course, all completely ridiculous and unnecessary. However, Thomas had truly believed that eventually all houses would be completely interconnected with "smart" appliances and other gadgets that kept everything running smoothly. His train of thought arrived back to reality. Here he was, two-hundred years after the invention of the Internet enabled weather forecasting toaster, and his room had only a bed, dresser, two nightstands, some lights, and a bathroom. Not even a TV! It was all rather disappointing. He glanced at the clock. Ten more minutes till they needed to meet up. Thomas decided to just go ahead and make his way down early. He walked out into the hallway, shut the door, and saw Vera coming out as well.
"Hey, perfect timing!" he shouted as he speed walked to catch up with her. "How's your room?"
"Oh, the room is fine, just fine…" Vera said, clearly distracted. Thomas wondered if she had found the letter, but felt uncomfortable asking about it, so left the matter alone. She breathed deeply, gathering her thoughts. "There was nothing special about the room, really, except for the awesome shower."
"Yeah, I thought that was nice too," Thomas said. "So, how are you feeling about all this?"
"I'm OK now. I was really freaking out at first, especially after seeing that robot… But the shower helped me to unwind. Once I get to know these two a little better, I think I'll be fine and ready to see what the future has to offer." They rounded the corner and went down the stairs to the foyer.
"I'm pretty much in the same boat," Thomas said. "I was trying to figure out what to make of these two. I mean, it's weird, you know? The girl has such a..." Thomas looked behind them and down to the foyer to make sure their new companions weren't around. "She has such a weird fashion sense. Though I'm betting that's normal or something now. And the guy looks like he should be off playing some sort of professional sport, not working here in a lab. But I guess we'll find out more later..."
"Uh huh," Vera muttered, her mind els
ewhere. They entered the foyer and turned down the stairs that led to the basement. Doug, was already there, sitting cross-legged on the floor. He raised his head and looked up to see them coming.
"Hey, feeling better?" he asked Vera. Vera and Thomas joined him on the floor, creating a small circle, and Vera repeated the same spiel that she told Thomas.
"Oh definitely," Doug said, "that Lyla seems pretty normal aside from her hair, but that Darin guy is huge! I hope that's not normal or anything..." Doug paused momentarily, his ego somewhat worried about this point. "But the technology is going to be so cool!" he exclaimed, quickly leaving his ego behind and getting back to his nerdy roots. "That HELPR robot thing was extremely impressive, and I can't wait to see what else is out there. I was a bit disappointed that it's basically just a toy rather than a self-aware robot, but hey, you have to start with something, and did you see the thing? It was floating for crying out loud!"
They continued talking about this for quite some time, guessing about what else they may encounter. Soon, however, Darin and Lyla came back down the stairs, Toby following shortly after. They joined them on the floor, changing the small circle to a nice oval.
"So...what do you want to know about us?" Darin kicked off the conversation. The three looked at each other, unsure which of them should be the one to say it. Thomas finally decided to get it over with.
"Yeah, well, I guess the thing I want to ask is..." Thomas didn't know how to word it tactfully, so decided to be blunt instead. "Well, thing is, you're big, so I'm wondering if, for some crazy reason, everyone in the future is big too or something." Darin gaped, turned to look towards Lyla, who shrugged, then turned back to them.
"Umm, well, no, not everyone in the future is big or anything..." He paused, seeming to search his knowledge of the past to try to see what they could possibly mean. "You didn't have football in 2008?"
"What? Of course we did!" Thomas said, failing to see how this connected to the question.
"Oh, well then, I'm a football player--or at least I was, so that's why."
"But that doesn't explain it. Most football players aren't as tall or even as strong as you. Or at least they weren't in our time." Darin seemed puzzled by this, and Lyla was clearly thinking deeply about it as well. Suddenly she made the connection.
"OH! I know Darin! They didn't have the lottery or the regulations on players back then!" Lyla turned to Thomas. "See, now they pick all professional football players before they're born, using a lottery system. Then the lottery winners are genetically altered so that they can reach a certain standard before they can join the WFA."
"Wait, WFA?" Thomas asked.
"World Football Association," Darin said.
"Hold on," Doug said, "you're telling me that they pick people to join football teams before they're born and then genetically alter them to make them better players?"
"Yeah. Why?" Darin said, obviously seeing nothing unusual about it.
"You don't see the problem here? Don't you get it? Doing this completely destroys the concept of natural talent. If you purposely alter people to make them better, then there is no hope for people who actually work hard and develop talent in a sport. It's just not fair or right!"
"Now hold on a second here," Darin said, getting flustered. "It's not just football, every sport does it now!"
"So what?!" Doug shouted. "That still doesn't make it right!"
"OK, chill!" Lyla yelled authoritatively. "Darin, we clearly don't know much about how things were in their time. Let's just try and figure out why we're failing to communicate." Darin and Doug seemed to accept this, sat back, and relaxed. "Doug, athletes in your time weren't genetically altered?"
"No, no one was genetically altered!" Doug said, clearly still feeling strongly about the matter. Lyla seemed surprised by this. "They didn't even have the technology to do such a thing. I mean yeah, we were decoding the human genome, but they hadn't figured it all out yet and they certainly didn't have the ability to change someone's genes before they were born."
"Really?" Lyla asked, mouth agape. "People were allowed to just have kids of their own free will?"
"What do you mean?" Vera piped up. "How could that be controlled? It's nature, it could happen any time, planned or not."
"Maybe it could in your time," Lyla said, "but it doesn't work that way. You have to apply and be approved by the government before you can have a kid. There's a form you fill out and you have to prove that you would be able to adequately care for the child. If there is any history of you not taking proper care of your kids, you can't have any more. Didn't they have anything like that in your time?"
"There was child protective services and all that, but you can't stop people from having kids!" Vera said, still unsure how there could be any confusion about this matter.
"Oh, they didn't fix people back then?" Lyla asked, understanding finally what the communication failure might be.
"WHAT?" Vera, Thomas, and Doug shouted in unison.
"FIX people?" Vera's mind swam. "The government FIXES people like animals? What is the government thinking? What are the citizens thinking? How can they accept something like that?"
"Well it's not that big of a deal!" Lyla laughed at what she perceived as a serious overreaction. "Everyone is fixed so there are no accidental or unwanted pregnancies! If a couple wants to have a kid then they just have to fill out the proper forms. After they're approved, they can go to the nearest genetic clinic and design their child."
"Design?" Vera asked, still not getting it. Doug groaned, understanding it all too well.
"Holy cow..." he muttered. "I don't believe it."
"Yeah," Lyla said happily, "the couple gets the approval and goes down to the genetic clinic and a sample of their DNA is taken. Then they choose the gender of the child and a computer generated projection of what the adult would look like is shown. The couple can then have the computer remix the DNA until they get a result they are happy with. Next, the resultant child's DNA is scanned for any known genetic diseases, and those are eliminated. Finally, they are given a set number of 'points' that they can use to make changes about the child's appearance, or give the child a predisposition to having a talent in a certain area, or make them more intelligent. You name it and you can more than likely do it. Most parents, though, tend to just stick with cosmetic changes. Each change costs a certain number of points, though, so the parents can't design their child to be extreme in every way, as their number of points is limited."
"And that's where the lottery comes into play," Darin said, picking up the torch. "Once the application is accepted, the granted permit is good for a period of one year. The parents can then submit their name to one of the lotteries and hope that they get picked. Once a year, the lotteries take place. There are all kinds of lotteries, and not just for sports. The fashion industry, actors and actresses, groups of scientists, even some forms of intense manual labor have special lotteries that give the parents extra points to use to help them design their child to meet the minimum requirements for that field. If they win that lottery, of course, that means they’re committing their child to that career path, so some people won’t do it because of the fact that it doesn’t let their child decide. But most people will at least enter, even though chances of winning are slim."
"So your parents actually won for you to be a football player?" Doug asked.
"Yeah, so they took the extra points they got and used it to make me taller, give a boost to my metabolism, and make it easier for me to gain and keep muscle." Darin replied, matter-of-fact, as if it was the most normal thing in the world--which, of course, it was.
"So you played professional football and then stopped?" Doug asked, wondering why he only "used to play football", since he still appeared very young and couldn’t imagine him being retired already.
"Actually… I never played professional football…" Darin replied.
"Huh?" Doug was very confused now. "I thought you said you would’ve been committed to that
career path since your parents won? How did you get out of it?"
"I didn’t get out of it, I never got into it." Darin looked resentful. "I trained and played all through high school and college. But during my last year of college, the commissioner of football announced that the minimum requirements for the league would be changing, and so I no longer met those requirements."
"They didn’t have a grandfather clause that would let you get in anyhow?" Thomas asked.
"Nope, and there were only two people other than me who were affected, so we weren't permitted to appeal. My parents made a few mistakes when designing me. See, the WFA gives a list of minimum and recommended requirements for future players, so my parents made me taller than the bare minimum requirement--which was, at that time, 6'8"--but only by a little bit. I’m 6'10", and the new minimum height for the game is seven feet. Most parents who were designing their kids to play football stuck them between seven to seven and a half feet, so the large majority of the prospective players were fine. My parents, on the other hand, decided to make me just above the minimum and use the remaining points to make me more intelligent and do some other tweaks they thought were important. I’m not particularly angry about it or anything, it was just slightly disappointing. But anyhow, suddenly I didn’t have a career, so I ended up finishing school and getting a job here."
"Wow..." Doug was simply amazed by it all. "Why would they even make a minimum height requirement anyhow? Football doesn’t need that."
"Well, as with any sport, the most extreme players always get the most attention. With basketball, for example, the media and fans would always buzz about the new center and how tall he was, and ratings would go up along with ticket sales. With football it’s usually about the biggest player, or the guy with the most stamina. Having height is beneficial for stride and makes it easier to take someone down since you’d have more weight on your side."
"Being very tall has never been healthy. The people who were very tall in our time usually had limb and joint problems or worse," Doug said. "How can this be helpful? I mean if football has seven foot tall players, basketball must be ridiculous!"
"Not really, no," Darin said. "This is different, because it’s all healthy growth resulting from genetics. Back then the height may have been from pituitary disorders or other similar problems and wasn’t what the person’s body was made to do. With this all being established right in the person’s DNA, the body grows and accommodates the size properly. And yeah, basketball can get ridiculous, most players are far beyond seven feet, centers usually are around nine now. They had to raise the hoop so that it’s at twelve feet now instead of ten. Sports have always been about extremes: players, injuries, the game in itself, it’s all extreme. Chances are, it’s likely to continue that way. That’s the reason, though, that a lot of things are made bigger now, to accommodate more of the extremes that are becoming more commonly seen, though certainly not normal for the large majority of the population."
Doug just gaped, wanted greatly to rant about how wrong it all was, but decided to just leave it alone. Vera didn’t really care about the ethical dilemmas of altering athletes or movie stars, she still couldn’t believe that the government actually "fixed" human beings to prevent them from having kids of their own free will. This was one area she felt no one, especially the government, should be permitted to meddle with. Thomas still just wanted to know more.
"I can see why this would be useful, especially in preventing genetic diseases. But doesn’t this system just discourage people from having kids by making it harder for them to do it when they want to?" Thomas asked.
"No, quite the opposite, it’s just like the traditional, financial lottery. Everyone wants to have as many kids as possible now in the hopes that one of their kids will be picked for one of the lotteries they choose to enter." Lyla said.
"Oh no… how many people are there living on Earth now?" Vera asked, afraid of the answer.
"Well we just broke twenty billion recently," Lyla said, smiling as if it was something to be proud of.
"That’s horrible!" Vera yelped. "I can’t even begin to imagine what the environment out there is like now with that many humans polluting and destroying the Earth."
"Hey, chill!" Lyla snapped back, getting fed up with these three already. "I remember how much of an issue that was in your time period from history class, but just relax, we took care of it."
"How can you just ‘take care of it’?" Vera objected.
"Let’s just relax and not worry about the environment right now." Darin suggested. "You wanted to get to know us better, so that’s what we need to do. You’ll learn and understand more about the outside world later. So, you know my story now, mostly anyhow. The only other useful information is that I’m single." He winked at Vera. Vera was floored.
"I’m sorry," she snapped back, "I don’t date genetically modified men I’ve just met." Darin turned bright red, but controlled himself. Vera turned to Lyla. "So, what’s with the hair?" Thomas and Doug were fascinated by this side of Vera that they had never seen before. Thomas decided that he liked it.
"I was tired of being blonde so I altered my hair color to pink. I thought it would be fun and different." Lyla stroked her hair as she said this, showing it off.
"So how old are you now, then?" Vera inquired. "What’s your story?"
"I’m thirty-three, grew up and went to school here in the city with plans to be a teacher... A history teacher, actually, but I got out of that pretty quickly after I realized it just wasn’t for me. I couldn’t handle the kids…"
"I’m sorry," Vera said, acting much more like her normal self, "I can understand that though, the kids from our time were pretty rough, and they must be worse now. At least you were able to get a job here though. Plus, it's good for us to have someone with a strong background in history to tell us what's happened in the last two-hundred years."
"Yeah… this has been an interesting job, that’s for sure, but pretty boring until the last month while we made sure everything was prepared for you three to be revived. Of course, now that you have been revived, it’s been especially fascinating…" She stared coolly at Vera, still feeling a bit of anger. "But, we’re going to have to work together at least, so let’s just try to get along. It’ll be tough because we obviously have such differences in our beliefs and what’s normal to us, but I think we’ll be OK." She smiled. "Let’s say we order pizza and just have a casual chat, huh?" They all agreed and were soon enjoying a pie, just as good after two-hundred years.