Evolution's End

by Steven Spellman

  After her second meal arrived, he left enough money for the two meals and rose to leave. Denna held the styrofoam carry out tray in her hand as she stood to embrace him. He slipped a few dollars into her pocket. On his way to the door she reached into her pocket to see what he had given her. She looked at the few dollars as if they were gold nuggets. “Thank you.” She said quietly, barely loud enough for him to hear from the door.

  “It’s all I had on me …” he said and walked out of the door quickly. He didn’t know what else to say and he thought that if he tried to think of something he might say the wrong thing. If he were wrong about Denna’s financial situation, what he’d done could very well have been extremely offensive. As he walked to his building though he knew that it would be more terrible if he weren’t wrong. Inside his building he had to wait through heightened security measures to get to his classroom. There were armed guards patrolling the tunnel and posted at the vault door that led into the underground building. One of them patted Marcus down briefly and peeked into his briefcase before waving him through. “What’s all this?” Marcus asked as he took his briefcase back and waited for someone to open the thick vault door. “Are we expecting another attack?”

  “More threats have been made.” It was the only information the guard offered and as soon as the vault door opened he gestured for Marcus to move through it quickly. He seemed impatient to search the next professor or student that might be coming down the tunnel. When Marcus entered his auditorium his students were just beginning to file in. They all seemed as confused as he was with the newly posted armed guards, especially since the student body probably received a much more thorough search than the faculty. During his midmorning break Marcus went to pay Professor Edelstein a visit. He found the professor harassing one of his students in his office. Marcus had no idea what the student had done. He only knew that when the teenage girl left the professor’s office she was in tears. In his old building Marcus had seen the same scene countless times before. Professor Edelstein was relentlessly demanding of those he deigned to share his knowledge with and in all the years Marcus had known him he had never witnessed a student leave his office happier than when they had come. The best a kid could hope for was to break even in Professor Edelstein’s book—It was virtually impossible to impress the man.

  Marcus smiled at the young woman as she passed him by, sobbing like a small child, but she only brushed past with her hands cradling her face and galloped down the hallway. He turned and knocked on the professor’s door. “Come in!” Professor Edelstein shouted from behind his closed door. When Marcus entered his office Professor Edelstein stood to his feet and shook his hand vigorously. “Great to see you, Professor.” Professor Edelstein said. He gestured for Marcus to take a seat.

  “Same here.” Marcus answered “I came to see if you knew what was going on with this new security detail.”

  “The armed guards, you mean?”

  Marcus nodded his head.

  “I requested them.”

  “Are we expecting another attack?” Marcus suddenly felt as if a Freedom Movement extremist might be on their way to the facility with some kind of bomb loaded backpack at that very moment.

  Professor Edelstein seemed to share his angst. The professor glanced towards his office door. No one was there but he stood and slowly and deliberately locked it anyway. He sat back down. “I found a bookbag in the tunnel yesterday.”

  “A bookbag?”

  “It was filled with some kind of pungent white powder.” Marcus looked aghast, as Professor Edelstein continued, “They’re testing it in the chemistry lab right now. I thought that it might be a prank …” Marcus knew that that had been wishful thinking. None of the students would’ve played a prank like that, not after everything that had happened. “But more than likely it was some kind of poison or explosive … especially since the words Freedom Movement were scrawled on the back of the bag.” So, the Freedom Movement had already found a way to infiltrate the tunnels leading to the underground facility? How long before they had operatives behind the vault door where they could kill more innocent men, women, and children? It was the question that burned inside Marcus’ mind. He was not interested in witnessing more destruction and mutilated bodies.

  “So I requested an armed detail from here on out and I plan to fast track the work that we’re doing here. We can’t let these people stop us.”

  “What do you mean, fast track?” Marcus asked cautiously. Professors routinely worked from sunup to sundown to teach their classes and then conduct their experiments and research, the student body was usually buried deep beneath mountains of detailed assignments and study material, and there were rotating crews pulling twelve hour shifts working rover recovery and producing Titedelstein ore. Marcus had no idea what more could possibly be done to speed progress along any faster. One thing was for sure, Professor Edelstein was obviously more concerned with the work than the people who performed it. If Marcus had had any doubts about that, the professor’s answer would’ve quelled it.

  “We’re calling for more surgical volunteers.”

  Marcus’ eyes bulged. There had never been an open call for surgical volunteers. There had never needed to be. Most of the people in Science City felt as Denna did about the permanent merger of man and machine that the people in the Willoughby Building were trying to achieve, but not everyone. Volunteering for these new and sometimes terrifying Titedelstein surgical procedures meant entrance into the campuses, and that meant that there had always been a lengthy backlist of willing participants. If Professor Edelstein were issuing an open call for volunteers that could only mean that he intended to ramp up the number of human experiments quite a bit. The problem was there weren’t enough trained professionals in the campuses for that many surgical procedures. Certainly, Professor Edelstein didn’t intend to use his students for the procedures. They were just kids. They weren’t ready for complicated amputation and prosthetic attachment procedures on real patients and not just the test dummies they sometimes worked with. It seemed appalling but it was the only thing that Marcus could think that Professor Edelstein might have in mind.

  He prayed that he was wrong, not only for the students’ sake but also for the countless patients that they would butcher if they were tossed into a bloody operating theatre alone before they were ready. Marcus took a deep breath. “How?” he asked, loathing the answer before it came. “How are we going to perform more surgical procedures? We don’t have that many doctors.” Marcus looked into the professor’s eyes, “Jim, you don’t intend to use …?” he couldn’t finish the sentence.

  Professor Edelstein finished it for him, “My students?” Professor Edelstein raised an eyebrow. “Your students?” Marcus raised both eyebrows. “Is that completely out of the question?”

  Marcus was just about to answer that yes, it was completely out of the question, but Professor Edelstein continued, “Listen Marcus, you know what the good people of Science City don’t know, that our drinkable water supply is dwindling. Unless the rovers find some subglacial lake that isn’t contaminated with radiation and then find some way to bring that water back to Science City our water supply will be totally depleted in a few years. The temperature is continuing to rise every year and it’s never going to stop. The air is becoming unbreathable. We’ve implanted more artificial lungs this year than ever before. Time is not on our side, Marcus. We can’t afford to do things the same way anymore.”

  Marcus huffed. “So, to save the world we must torture the population?

  “Torture?” Professor Edelstein seemed genuinely astounded.

  “That’s what it will be if you let these students perform complicated amputations. Most of these kids aren’t ready to administer anesthesia yet and you’re suggesting that they …”

  “I’m not suggesting anything, Marcus.” Professor Edelstein said as he raised a hand for silence like he was talking to a wayward student. “I knew that you would voice the loudest concern over fast tracking
the students through their studies and although I don’t necessarily agree with you, I can see your point. I’m not using the students.” Professor Edelstein let that hang in the air as if it should quell all of Marcus’ angst. It didn’t. Marcus breathed easier but it was obvious that Professor Edelstein did have something in mind and it was probably something that Marcus wouldn’t like either.

  “Then, how?” Marcus asked, steadying himself for another blow.

  Professor Edelstein sat a little straighter in his chair. “The Auto Surgeon Program.”

  Marcus’ mouth hung open. “The Auto Surgeon Program!”

  “It’s not the students.” The professor answered with a hint of a smile playing at a corner of his mouth.

  Marcus had no answer to that. It wasn’t the students but it didn’t seem much better. The Auto Surgeon Program had been the brainchild of Professor Edelstein. It had begun with surgeons performing surgeries not with scalpel and retractors, but seated comfortably in front of a large monitor and a control panel with at least one joystick mechanism. The control panel operated robotic arms that themselves operated on the patient as the surgeon dictated. As the program progressed, surgeons were soon able to operate on patients via the robotic Auto Surgeon from miles away. As long as a connection could be made between the control panel and the robotic arms, any surgery was possible from anywhere. Years passed and the program took a turn that earned it more than a few detractors. The system became so proficient that soon the robotic arms were more precise than the human hand could ever be. It wasn’t long after that that someone decided that perhaps a well programmed Auto Surgeon system could perform surgery without human input, with a greater success rate.

  That person was Professor Edelstein. He had been pushing for full robotic surgery since his system showed that it was possible. The problem was that no one wanted to be operated on by a machine with no human to keep it on track, and no professionally trained human wanted to relinquish his job to a machine. It would’ve made Professor Edelstein’s name famous but it would’ve also put a lot of high ranking people out of work. The professor had never been able to get enough people to sign off on the idea. Things had obviously changed now and as Marcus considered it he thought he could see what must’ve happened.

  After the explosion, the destruction of the old building, the brutal death toll,

  Professor Edelstein had used the chaos and the mounting fear to convince the campuses’ counsel that if they didn’t take drastic measures now there would be no opportunity for drastic measures later, only drastic consequences. No doubt the professor had used lengthy scholarly rhetoric to convince the people that mattered that it was his way or the wrong way and obviously the people that mattered had believed him. Marcus collapsed back in his seat, dumbfounded. He felt like a man who had looked up to see an eighteen-wheeler barreling down upon him with no time to react. Wherever this thing was going it was too late to stop it now. He didn’t like the idea of robots operating on human beings, inside human beings, with no human being to supervise it. It seemed like a situation like that could get very ugly very quickly.

  Then a thought crossed Marcus’ mind and without warning, he chuckled. It was a dry chuckle that built quickly into side splitting laughter. Professor Edelstein’s eyebrows creased but he didn’t interrupt. He didn’t say anything, only looked on intently until Marcus calmed down. Then he asked, “What’s so funny?” not as if he were offended but as if he were only searching for a piece of information.

  “Nothing, really.” Marcus answered as he wiped his eyes.

  “Nothing?” Professor Edelstein countered. “It didn’t sound like ‘nothing’. I deduce that you don’t agree that it’s time to deploy my Auto Surgeon Program?”

  “For once, you have deduced wrong.” Marcus said “I was laughing because I think you may be right. I never thought I’d hear these words out of my own mouth, Edelstein” the professor wrinkled his nose; he preferred to be addressed by his professional title “but I think it’s time to deploy your Auto Surgeon Program.”

  Professor Edelstein leaned back, laced his fingers together and smiled. “It’s amazingly gratifying to hear that from you, professor. If I may ask, what won you over?”

  “Desperation.” A simple answer, that, but there was more. “I won’t lie to you and tell you that I look forward to seeing robots operating on humans unaided because I don’t, but I just realized something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We agree that Titedelstein robotic bodies are mankind’s best hope of survival …”

  “We do.”

  “If we hope to trade this human flesh for robotic bodies then I guess it’s not really a stretch for robot bodies to operate on human flesh.”

  Professor Edelstein unlaced his bony fingers and stood smoothly to his feet. “You’ve always been able to recognize sound logic.” The professor said as he walked around his table. “That’s why we make such wonderful colleagues.”

  Marcus stood to his feet as well and Professor Edelstein put an arm around his shoulder—Professor Edelstein never put an arm around anyone’s shoulder; a firm handshake was usually the closest contact that anyone could expect from him—and walked him to the door. “There is something else I wanted to discuss with you as well, not as a colleague but as a friend.” That was another unusual thing. Marcus had never once heard Professor Edelstein refer to anyone as ‘friend’. It was just not a word an esteemed professor like himself used. Marcus listened carefully, as the professor walked him out of the door and down the hall. “Denna Morgan.” Professor Edelstein cut right to the chase.

  Marcus glanced up into his face, “Yes. What about her?”

  “I don’t know how to say this …”

  “By just saying it.” Marcus answered, impatient to know what was happening right now. “You’ve never been one to mince words.”

  Professor Edelstein looked gratified at that. “You’re right, professor … she’s using you.”

  Whatever Marcus had expected it had not been that. “What … where do you … what?” He stammered.

  “I don’t know her very well but I knew her husband and he was one of the most efficient rover recovery crew members that I’ve ever seen. I petitioned for her to remain in the worker barracks”—this was apparently what the professor thought of any place where a menial laborer might live—"for as long as possible out of respect for her husband’s contribution but you know how hard living space is to come by in the campuses, Marcus …” Professor Edelstein leaned forward to gaze into Marcus’ face. It was clear that he expected Marcus to pick up on what he was implying. Unfortunately, it wasn’t crystal clear to Marcus what the professor was implying. Professor Edelstein stopped and forced Marcus to stop too in the middle of the hallway, just as a student sauntered passed. He waited until the student passed by and turned a far corner before he continued, “She’s using you in hopes that she can find somewhere to stay so she doesn’t have to leave the campuses. That was probably why she married her husband in the first place.”

  The two professors walked on silently. After a few steps, Marcus shrugged Professor Edelstein’s arm off his shoulder. He hadn’t intended to but he was glad he did. Suddenly, for a fiery moment, he didn’t want the professor touching or talking to him. He didn’t want to be in the same hallway or in the same building with the professor. It was the image of Denna that popped into his mind. She was beautiful, she was kind, she was intelligent, she was resourceful. She made him feel alive whenever she was around. But now Professor Edelstein proposed to add a couple other descriptions to what she was, like liar and manipulator. It felt to Marcus as if he had watched Professor Edelstein slap his mother. He struggled to calm himself but every time Denna’s vibrant face popped in his head and then the fact that the professor claimed that she was a fraud, interested only in self-preservation, it was like he was watching his mother get slapped over and over again.

  “I need to get to my class, Edelstein.” He said without looking t
he professor in the face and walked quickly down the hall. Professor Edelstein only looked on after him with a deep frown that creased the bottoms of his deflated cheeks. Meanwhile, Marcus struggled not to sprint away. He needed to put as much space as possible between himself and Professor Edelstein before he said or did something he would regret. But as he climbed the ladder up to the level where his classroom was, what rankled him more than anything was there was a part of him—a small part, but a part—that knew that the professor was right.

  CHAPTER 10

  The operating theatre was huge. It was nearly as large as an auditorium and certainly more brightly lit. Small recessed lightbulbs dotted the ceiling everywhere, each inside its own special reflector. These were special state of the art lights. Their primary purpose was not to light the huge room but to sterilize it. The visible light was just a bonus but a harsh one; it was impossible to gaze up directly into one of the bulbs for any length of time without its special light searing your irises into blindness. Any human that entered the massive theatre was required to wear special googles to avoid permanent eye damage. Marcus snatched up one of the pairs of googles just before he entered. Professor Edelstein was already inside with his own pair of googles. Two of his assistances were there as well. The three of them looked so strange together in their oversized protective eyewear, like a trio of bug people inspecting something that they might like to drag back to their burrows. But there weren’t any insects in the room, just fifty patients that were being operated on by large robotic arms that rose from the underside of each of the patient’s beds and operating tables like strange metal octopus’ tentacles.