The room had gone very still. A couple of people shifted slightly in their chairs and one or two cleared their throats. It was strange the unnecessary habits they had continued to adopt, Hagen thought vaguely. He glanced over at Cally and Ethan, who were playing with some wooden figures they had had made for him. He went on:
"I’m aware that this project is throwing up complex ethical issues that the Committee will want to review, and I don’t expect to achieve a quick answer. You’ll want time to consider all the resource issues required to sustain this development in the long term. However, I urge you to consider at the very least how we can fulfil our responsibilities without contravening the moral codes by which our society is guided. Now, if you’d like to turn to the briefing paper, I’ll take you through some of the practical benefits that we believe Ethan and his kind can bring to us."
There was a shuffling of papers.
"OK, first point: cognitive development. Cally, the picture cards, please."
The demonstration went well and they explained, convincingly Hagen thought, the reasons for their having integrated Ethan into their family unit. Without the social stimuli and bonds they could provide, Ethan would never have been able to begin the process of successfully developing into a socialised human being. In illustration of this point, Ethan performed well, following the cues they provided him; the promise of synthetic ice-cream afterwards was having the desired result. The only minor hiccup came when they tried to take his rabbit away from him to get him to concentrate on one of the manual dexterity tests.
"No, that’s mine!" he said, pouting at Cally.
She wagged a finger at him. "Don’t speak to me like that, young man," she said.
"You’d almost think he was one of our own kids, would you?" whispered a Committee member to his neighbor.
"That’s a dangerous thought," came the reply. "But I know what you mean."
By the end of the session, the Committee seemed pretty much convinced that Hagen Associates had given them a satisfactory glimpse of the future. Cally scooped Ethan up in her arms.
"Say goodbye," she whispered and kissed him on the nose.
"Bye!" he chirped and waved a small hand at the gathering as she carried him from the room.
More than one person around the table gave an indulgent smile.
"I’d sure like to have a couple of those little fellas round my place," one man said after they had gone. "They’d make light work of the gardening."
"Cuter than the auto-mower, too," said his neighbor and they all laughed.
"Well," said Cuthbert, beaming at Hagen and Cally. "Thank you for your time. I think you can take that as a mandate to make some more."
* * * * *
A couple of evenings later, Hagen and Cally sat on the viewing terrace at the top of the New York Pinnacle, now officially the highest building in the world. The business of impressing the Ethics Committee and attending meetings with their sponsors was over, and they were taking a little time off to enjoy their trip to the city. They had left Ethan in the care of their project assistant.
"I think we can safely say this trip has been a success," said Hagen.
"I guess so," said Cally with a wistful smile.
"What’s wrong?" he asked.
She had seemed a little down ever since they got back to the hotel earlier.
"Oh, nothing really," she said leaning on the parapet and gazing over towards the shining ribbon that was the Hudson River. "I guess I just never expected this moment to come round yet. The time since we started the project has gone by so quickly, even by our standards."
"But we knew it would," he said quietly.
"It doesn’t make it any easier though, does it?" she said, turning to him. "I can’t cry, but if I could…"
He put his arms around her and pulled her close. "It wouldn’t do any good. Objectively speaking-"
She broke away from him impatiently. "That just it! Objectively speaking, Ethan’s the goods that form the basis for our business contracts, but why I can’t I see him like that? Tell me."
Hagen shook his head. He had no answer for her.
"Damn these emotions," she said angrily. "Sometimes I think our ancestors must have been idiots to want to keep them."
"There were good reasons for that, you know," he reminded her.
"I know, but that doesn’t make it any easier living with them, does it?" she said vehemently. "If I thought we could carry on functioning as higher life forms with the same cognitive and social abilities, I’d be the first to volunteer to have all feeling stripped out of me."
"You don’t mean that," he said. "You know as well as I do that right from the beginning they established the need for a human brain pattern if we were to have a long-term chance of survival. And we have been successful. I mean, look at all this." He gestured expansively at the city that sprawled below them in the purple-gray dusk. "Everything we’ve achieved since we came into our inheritance. Besides, the complexity of our emotions makes us what we are. They distinguish us from all the other life forms on this planet."
She shrugged uneasily. "Even so, I can’t bear the thought of saying goodbye to him tomorrow, Dick. Leaving him behind. Is that so wrong? I’m not just a scientist, I’m a person."
"You are indeed and I love you," he said quietly, taking her in his arms again.
This time she leaned her forehead against his shoulder. "The kids are going to miss him, you know." She paused. "How will he manage without us?"
"He’ll be fine," said Hagen with a confidence that he didn’t really feel. "We’ve taught him as much as we can and we’ve given him a great start, but we’re geneticists. It’s time to let the other experts have their turn, like we said we would. We’re lucky we’ve been able to get hold of the best in their field. Emily Watkins is an outstanding clinical psychologist – I’ve read some of her papers – and she’s been keen to get involved with this at the outset. Anyway, love, it’s time to hand him over before- before we get too attached."
How could we not grow attached?" she asked bitterly.
"It was always a risk," he said. "But we have to be objective. It’s because we made him in our image, didn’t we?"
"I think you’ll find that we were made in his," she said after a pause.
Hagen made no answer and they stood there for a long time, gazing out into the twilight.
* * * * *
Journal entry: April 3 2718
It’s great to be back home, but it’s been a difficult day for all of us. The kids are finding it harder to adjust to life without Ethan than we had anticipated. The apartment seems so empty somehow.
Professor Watkins and her team have assured us that he’ll be in good hands and we’ve all agreed that this is for the best. Ethan can continue to grow and thrive in a stable environment, while we concentrate on refining the embryo selection technology that will allow the project to move on to the next stage.
I’m afraid we’ve been neglecting the kids a little recently. We’ve been so taken up with developing the new company, HumanTec. With the right backing, and the continued support of the Ethics Committee, this venture could be huge.
The Government Labor Board has given us a list of twenty key occupations where there’s an acute shortage of workers. We’ll work with them to identify the main traits needed in workers in those occupations. We’re not quite at the stage where we can filter the embryos selectively on the basis of aptitude for particular areas of work, but we can at least identify those which are likely to have the required physical characteristics. It amuses me a little to say it, but this is not an exact science yet; indeed, it may never be such a thing. We’re dealing with humans, after all.
Even if we don’t get the preliminary selection right at the embryonic stage, I’m confident that the right training and rehabilitation programmes will provide the necessary corrective action to make our subjects suitable for some k
ind of productive role. If we’ve managed to create life, we should be careful not to waste it.
We’re also talking to the press, through the Ethics Committee of course, since media speculation about the long-term consequences of our work is rife. I’m sick of hearing scare stories about "the end of civilization" and "back to the Stone Age". It’s pathetic really. They’re probably spread by the same journalists who whip up hysteria about drones’ rights.
I wonder sometimes what Ethan will end up working as. A driver maybe? Or a garbage processor? Who knows? He’s a bright boy, maybe too bright. Our tests so far have indicated that he isn’t likely to have any difficulty performing manual tasks, but I fear that his mental capabilities may not be sufficiently stretched. Perhaps we should consider ways of limiting the IQ levels of future specimens in order to avoid the possibility of their becoming destabilised by this mental inertia? When things have settled down again, I’ll discuss it with Cally.
When the plague killed off the last humans five hundred years ago, it all seemed so simple. There were enough of our forebears around – the synthetics - to pick up the pieces and carry on pretty much where the humans had left off. They were modelled on the human physique, had been programmed with the same basic bio-rhythms and had the full range of human emotions. Humans seemed to feel more comfortable being around the synthetics if they looked and acted the same as them. Lucky for us.
It was easy for them to just step into the shoes – in some cases, quite literally – of the masters who had vacated their world. I find it curious sometimes that in all the developments since then, as the synthetics made more life forms like themselves and became people, they didn’t work harder at abandoning some of the quirks that humans gave us. Perhaps they were scared of what might happen. Truth is, we’re as bound up in our emotions as the humans ever were, even if we live longer and function more reliably.
The trouble is there are so many occupations now that people feel are below their capabilities. We want to act like humans but we also want to be better than them. So, suddenly manual labour is seen as something beneath us. Even the drones are getting choosy about the work they take up. But without someone to do all those dirty yet necessary jobs, our economy can’t function properly and we can’t remain a world player as a country. That’s where we came in with the HumanTec project and Ethan was the start of it all.
I still feel like a hypocrite. After lecturing Cally about maintaining our scientific objectivity, I find that I miss him far more than I ever thought I would.
* * * * *
It was the summer of 2740 when Hagen began to feel the first real pangs of uneasiness about the project. Up to that point, it had been considered by most people as a success, despite the comments from doom mongers, who predicted dire results from meddling with nature in this way. Following the successful rearing and mobilisation of their first batch of humans, who still held a novelty value at that stage, HumanTec had moved into production on a larger scale. To date, there were some ten thousand units either in work or in training across the Americas and Eurasia. So far, Australia hadn’t taken up any of these workers, but there were rumours that they were working on their own version, a smaller, more compliant unit that would function well in the deep mining operations they were undertaking in the Outback.
Cuthbert called by the lab unexpectedly one evening. Cally was in the middle of running tests on some drugs that she was developing to strengthen the humans’ resistance to some flu-type virus that had sprung up in the Eastern colonies recently. Cuthbert looked at the results with polite interest, then gestured to Hagen that he would like a word in private.
"Step into my office," said Hagen and closed the door after them.
He was aware that Cally was watching them curiously through the glass. Cuthbert sat down, looking slightly pensive for a moment.
"So, how have you both been, Dick?" he asked and fiddled with the glass paperweight on the desk in front of him.
"Fine," said Hagen.
"And the kids?"
"OK."
"That’s good." He paused, as though unsure what to say next.
"This isn’t really a social call, is it?" said Hagen,
"Well, no," said Cuthbert, looking relieved that he didn’t have to pretend any more. "Look, there’s been a real backlash lately about the human labor issue. You know how it is. First of all people get excited because it means they have an excuse not to do the menial jobs and it makes life easier. Then they start complaining that there’s no work left; the humans are creating unemployment. I’m beginning to wonder if we did the right thing supporting your project."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," said Hagen. "But it’s a bit late to worry about that now, isn’t it?"
"Well…" Cuthbert shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "I’ve had one or two conversations with people in the President’s office who are beginning to talk about euthanasia. They’re worried it might be a re-election issue. You know, putting them to sleep before they can live long enough to be a burden on society. It’s only a concept," he added hastily, seeing the expression on Hagen’s face.
"We spent years in development before we managed to create Ethan and the others, and now you’re talking about putting them down." Hagen shook his head angrily. "I can’t believe you’d seriously consider that."
"I wouldn’t, but others might. My tenure on the Ethics Committee is coming to an end and word has it that my likely successor won’t look so kindly on humans." Cuthbert held up his hand in a placatory gesture. "Couldn’t you just start by limiting the numbers you turn out and see how it goes?"
"We could, but the Australians are well ahead with their developments now. If we scaled down production, they’d soon spot a gap in the market."
Cuthbert nodded. "Fair point. I guess if we’re going to have humans doing our dirty work, they might as well be American humans."
Hagen grinned in spite of himself. "That’s a bit parochial, isn’t it? What happened to the ‘greater good’?"
Cuthbert looked a little embarrassed. "Just trying to be practical. Carry on producing the humans in the lab, by all means, but maybe take a look at limiting their abilities to reproduce themselves by natural methods." A faint expression of distaste crossed his face. "That way, we can keep a check on their numbers without resorting to more, ah, draconian methods.
"There’s also the food issue. We’ve had to set aside land in the Mid West to grow crops to feed them, which means not using it to grow bio-fuels. Some people are finding that hard to stomach. No pun intended."
Hagen shrugged. "What do you want me to do? I told the Committee thirty years ago that it needed to think about all the resource issues."
Cuthbert frowned. "Well, let’s just say it’s only now that some of this is hitting home. People are asking what good humans ever did the planet, you know."
"They created us."
Cuthbert gave him a wry glance. "Oh, people are good at forgetting little things like that. But since they went away, look at what we’ve done. Clean air, minimum pollution, effective population control." Cuthbert glanced at his watch. "Sorry, I’ve got to go. Got a meeting in Lisbon in the morning. Look, I’ll have some of our PR people look at this again. See if they can put a more positive spin on things. ‘The value of human assets’, ‘the jobs no-one else wants’. That kind of thing."
"OK. Great," said Hagen without much enthusiasm.
They shook hands and Hagen showed him out. At the door, Cuthbert stopped and looked at him.
"In the meantime, just bear in mind what I said about a backlash," he said, deeply serious. I’d hate to see you get caught up in any negative publicity. You being the founding father, and all."
* * * * *
Journal entry: 15 June 2759
There are rumours of another reshuffle on the Ethics Committee and a change of their moral standpoint. It seems as though our principles are becom
ing as mutable as those that human society used to adopt. There’s also unrest on the board of HumanTec; some of the shareholders are getting nervous about the issue of ‘human rights’. Since that campaign started up a couple of years ago, some of the politicians have started jumping on the bandwagon and saying that we should be treating the humans as full members of society. It’s a contentious idea and I’m not fully convinced it would work. It’s one thing allowing the human colonies to live in semi-independence up in the north, but quite another to consider giving them the same rights and privileges that we enjoy. I can’t imagine that it could ever be more than a fantasy.
HumanTec has had demonstrators outside the gates twice in the last six months, though. The issue isn’t going to go away.
On a more personal note, I had some bad news today: Ethan has died. Professor Wilkins called me personally to let me know. He was killed in a mining accident out in the mid Atlantic Free Zone. He was getting close to the end of his expected working life, she said, which should be some comfort to us. At least the time and effort we spent on developing him wasn’t wasted. Easy for her to say. Cally went off on her own for a while after I told her the news. Neither of us really wanted to talk about it.
I’ve often wondered about Ethan and his brief life. Even though it’s about forty years since we last saw him, we’ve continued to receive reports of his progress on through childhood and puberty and into early adulthood, when he was sent to work in the oilfields. By then, there were so many others like him, male and female, to claim our attention. Yet I never forgot him and the brief time he spent with us. He was special. He was the first.
Despite my attempts to be objective, I wonder if he ever thought of us. If he did, were they good memories? I hope so.
About the Author
A. F. McKeating is from Cumbria, England originally. She has had a varied career, from museum assistant to civil servant. She has had pieces of fiction published in various places, such as the Ranfurly Review, Friction magazine and on Everydayfiction.com. She enjoys reading as much as writing and believes there's always time for a good story.