Incarnate- Essence

by Thomas Harper

  “I want to make reincarnation available to the world,” I said, wincing as I awaited their response.

  “You mean…your reincarnation?” Masaru asked, turning his head to look at me.

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “That I don’t know yet,” I said, “but we know Benecorp is working on it.”

  “You want to wait for Benecorp to figure it out and then, what, steal it from them?” Masaru asked.

  “Or we could steal what they have already and figure the rest out ourselves,” I said.

  Akira glanced at the rearview mirror to see me. While Masaru showed skepticism, and even a hint of horror in his eyes, Akira’s were full of interest.

  “Use the work Benecorp has killed and tortured untold hundreds, maybe thousands of people to get?” Masaru asked, “they even cut your head open and gave you this split-brain thing.”

  “I know,” I sighed, “and it’s…horrifying. But it’s already been done. And maybe we can finish what they started without torturing anyone.”

  “They’re the biggest multinational conglomerate in the world,” Masaru said, “with every resource at their disposal. How will a handful of desperate people like us figure it out first?”

  “It doesn’t have to be just us,” I said, “this forty-eights thing has become a sort of movement. One with great interest from-”

  “From transgenic people,” Masaru nodded, “people who tend to be good at molecular biology and gene manipulation.”

  “Exactly,” I said, “we can crowdsource the problem. Biohackers and DIY scientists all over the world could work on it. And once it’s figured out, we make it available to everyone. To the world. As immortals, they’ll all have a vested interest in making the future better. Being randomly reborn anywhere in the world creates a sort of Rawlsian veil that will make people-”

  “Eshe,” Masaru said.

  “You don’t agree?”

  “Do you believe that will actually happen?” Masaru asked, “that it’ll make people more forward thinking? Make them treat each other better?”

  “Why wouldn’t-”

  “Or do you just want to do this because you feel alone?”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but no words came out.

  He knows, Evita said with not a small amount of relish in her voice.

  “Besides,” Masaru said, “when has ‘improving’ on nature ever worked out for humanity?”

  “How about your extra chromosomes?” Akira asked, sounding defensive, “and all of those enhancements?”

  “That’s not improving our nature,” Masaru said, “that’s balancing our nature against the very imbalances we’ve created for ourselves. Pollution and the ability for some people to constantly track everyone else. Those are what we get when we keep viewing nature as this purely materialistic object we can ‘improve’ on.”

  “Then so are my brain implants,” Akira snapped, “that’s how I balance our little operation against the cartels and the CSA and Benecorp and all those people.”

  “I wasn’t even talking about…” he sighed, going quiet.

  Awkward silence filled the truck for several minutes. I glanced at Yukiko, who was no longer playing with the doll, having sensed the tension. She looked back to me with a pained expression as if trying to ask ‘why is everyone mad at each other?’

  Perhaps Masaru hit on something real, Evita said, almost taunting, maybe you really are just doing this so you don’t have to be alone anymore.

  Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the truck drove itself into a long driveway, stopping just in front of a closed garage door. The house stood two stories tall, stretching for two hundred feet in the middle of a ten-acre lot just outside Cortez.

  Thirteen of the twenty-nine children rescued from the trafficker’s house had been released from the hospital. With no institution to take them, Doctor Taylor’s daughter reluctantly volunteered to house them on her sizable property.

  Akira, Masaru and I got out of the truck and walked toward the front door. I couldn’t stop watching Masaru. I didn’t know if it was his stubborn skepticism of my plan or his intuition about…

  …about your true motives, Evita said.

  I bit my lip, trying to push the thought out of my head.

  Masaru moved slowly up the driveway, entire body swaying back and forth. He had a severe limp with the bone healed lopsided, leaning on a cane as he moved. Yukiko walked in a waddling gait between her parents, looking up at the large, yet simple house with an astonishment reserved for children.

  Akira’s gaze stayed down, expression dour. After wiping the computer, she had retired to the basement for several hours. I could only imagine she was beating herself up for causing the breach. She accused herself of being sloppy, and it was clear that her emotional troubles were distracting her. But pointing it out would only make things worse.

  Masaru started up the concrete stairs, holding onto Akira and me for support. Whatever venom had been in his interrogation of my plan dissipated, a warm smile spreading over his lips as he nodded to us in appreciation.

  “One step at a time,” Akira allowed a weak smile once Masaru had gotten to the top.

  “Yuki,” Masaru said, “you’re doing better than daddy.”

  The toddler smiled up at him as she climbed up each step with hands and feet. I looked to Akira, who gave me a determined look and a nod. She kept her eyes on me for a moment. I furrowed my brow. She mouthed the words I like your plan. I nodded back.

  After getting to the top, before we even knocked, the front door opened.

  “Doña Akira. Don Masaru,” the young girl said, her pronunciations of their names done in Spanish.

  “Hello,” I said to her, flashing a big smile.

  She smiled sheepishly at me before turning around and leading us down the hall. The house was quite large, but not overly decorative. The foyer had a plain looking stairway leading up and a hallway going past a dining room back into a living room. Plenty of space for a large family, but thirteen kids would be a bit much. Not to mention another sixteen still in the hospital that might need a place to stay.

  When the three of us got back to the living room, we found it was crammed with kids eating sandwiches and cookies and playing with toys. The girl that had led us in sat on the couch next to three other girls. Liana, Doctor Taylor, and her daughter and son-in-law were all there. All of them were smiling with the kids gabbing all around them, but the expression looked forced on Taylor’s son-in-law.

  These kids are looking a lot healthier after just a few weeks.

  “Glad you could drop by,” Doctor Taylor said, approaching us as we stood in the doorway, taking the scene in.

  “They staying out of trouble?” I asked.

  “For the most part,” she said, “lot of ‘em are scared of grownups.” She paused a moment before continuing. “Those four on the couch,” she signaled to the young girls, subtle smiles on their faces as they watched the other kids play, “the girl who greeted you. She’s eighteen. Two the others’re seventeen, and the fourth is sixteen.”

  “Christ,” Masaru said in almost a whisper, “they look like they’re eight.”

  Taylor shook her head, “few’a the others got the same treatment. They’re still young enough it’s hard to tell.”

  “Is it reversible?” I asked.

  “Maybe hormone therapy,” Taylor shrugged, “it’ll artificially put ‘em through puberty. But the epiphyseal plates’re fused on their bones. They’ll be that small for the resta their life.”

  “It might be possible to gene dope them so they go through puberty on their own,” Akira said.

  Taylor shrugged, “they’re old enough what what they wanna do. For now, I think we’re more concerned with psychological issues that’ll pop up. Four oldest ones been sex workers since at least the age they look. That’s when they woulda been given the treatment.”

  Doctor Taylor’s daughter and son-in-law walked over to us, holding
out their hands to shake. Doctor Taylor introduced Akira and Masaru to them and they introduced themselves as Deidre and John Waters.

  I don’t know if I should be insulted that I wasn’t introduced or not. I just look like another kid to them.

  Deidre looked very similar to her mother, her small frame and mousy face projecting a physical frailty that was offset by a look of confidence that gave her a larger presence. John was almost the opposite, being tall with a large frame yet having a look that lacked confidence.

  “Seems like a handful,” Masaru said, looking over their shoulder at the kids as Yukiko waddled into the room to join them.

  “We’re already working on hiring a staff to assist us,” Deidre said, “we’ve had lots of donations coming in. For now, Liana’s been more than willing to help out.”

  The woman who had been a slave at the house, now also much healthier, looked up at hearing her name as she gathered the children’s dirty plates. Her face was much fuller now, her cheeks large and round as she smiled, revealing crooked teeth. She had cut her dark hair short.

  “She’s about the only one that the children don’t seem nervous around,” John said shrugging, “some of them don’t seem to want anything to do with me.”

  Doctor Taylor smiled, “they’ll come around.”

  “Do you plan on keeping them all here?” I asked.

  Deidre gave me a strange look, but said, “as long as they need to be here. But we’re hopin’ other people will adopt ‘em.”

  I looked into the room again. The little girl – who was actually eighteen – was helping fix a toy for one of the other children. I walked past Doctor Taylor into the large living room, looking around at the kids, remembering how bad of shape they had been in when we rescued them over a month ago. Now they were running about, rambunctious and well-fed, yet an air of caution always present in their gaze. I couldn’t help but smile thinking about them actually being able to live a better life.

  Yet it also made me think about the refugees that we had left behind in the Congo when Sachi had found me. We had left them military supplies, but I could only imagine that it wouldn’t be enough if Benecorp or someone else wanted to go back in there. Sachi had put Eddie in charge of training them, but since his death, I hadn’t heard much about what was going on over there.

  When I reached the other side of the room, I looked back to Akira as she spoke with Doctor Taylor’s family. This was her humanitarian side of the mission. Saving the kids was supposed to raise morale. And yet she didn’t look very happy. The specter of despair she had felt in the refugee camp still hovered over her. And it was only exacerbated by the breach.

  She knows its all just marketing, Evita said. Nothing like a before picture of a battered, miserable child and then an after picture of a clean, smiling child to get people on your side.

  “It’s not as cynical as that…” I muttered.

  “Who do you talk to?” the girl who had met us at the door asked in Spanish.

  I looked to her and flashed a smile, saying in Spanish, “just talking to myself.”

  “I’ve done that, too,” she said, returning the smile.

  “What’s your name? I asked.

  “Regina.”

  “Hello Regina. I’m Eshe. You must have gotten very lonely for you to be talking to yourself.”

  Her smile faded, “I did. But you all saved me. Saved us. I wish I could do more to thank you for that.”

  “Well for now, you can keep helping out with the other kids,” I said, nodding toward them, “there’s going to be even more coming in soon.”

  “I’m trying,” she said, the smile returning, “but some of them are bigger than me.”

  “Is that something you wish you could fix?”

  “Maybe,” she said, looking to the floor, “I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.”

  She’s eighteen and has probably never made a decision for herself in her entire life.

  “Well, you’re free now,” I said.

  “Free to do what?”

  “Whatever you want,” I said, “to decide what to do in the future.”

  She shook her head slowly, eyes closed. “I don’t know what there is to do. I tried going for a walk a few days ago and…I was too scared to go more than a little way down the street by myself.”

  “It’ll keep getting easier,” I said, “You just have to try going one step further every day.”

  Her small child’s eyes looked into mine, “I haven’t gone outside by myself in so long.” She paused, looking nervously around and then said, “I…I wanted Glen with me.”

  “Who is Glen?”

  She looked down to her feet, “the man who last owned me.”

  “You wanted him back?”

  She looked up again, frightened. “No. No…never. But he wasn’t always bad. And sometimes he would take me for walks outside and pretend like he was my papi. He would buy me things. But…”

  “But he wasn’t your father.”

  “No,” Regina shook her head, “he wouldn’t let me go to school. I wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone. I had no friends. I…I taught myself to read while I was locked in the basement. And when he came home, he…he…”

  I gently put a hand on Regina’s shoulder, but she jumped back at this, panic in her eyes. I held my hands up, shaking my head. The panic fled from Regina’s face, replaced with sorrow.

  “I’m sorry…” she said.

  “No, I’m sorry,” I said, “We don’t have to talk about this.”

  “I do need to talk about it,” the little girl said, “I want to talk about it. It’s…not something that should just disappear. But I can’t do it by myself.”

  “You can always ask any of us if you need help,” I said.

  She looked back up at me, “I want to help you. I don’t want anyone else to have to go through what I did.”

  I nodded, “I understand that. And there are definitely things you can do to help.”

  “Like what?” she asked, her childlike face looking up at me, hopeful.

  “You can be a symbol for everyone else,” I said, “you can make sure that not one person goes to bed at night without having to think about what’s really going on in the world. You can expose humanities true nature to them and make them want to change it.”

  She hesitated for some time, thinking about what I’d said. Her young features were juxtaposed with the trepidation of someone old enough to understand the ramifications of what helping in this way would mean. After a time, her furrowed brows rose, petite jaw clenching with determination.

  “I’ll do it,” she said, “If it will help you stop this from happening, I’ll do it.”

  Chapter 12

  Demand for chromosome treatment increased gradually in the Liberation of Colorado. Salia spread the word through her transgenic-subculture channels. Aveena showed up once a week to retrieve packages of the treatment we produced. Though slow moving, it became practically an assembly line. Akira wrote a protocol for making it and everyone took shifts working in the lab. The process, with people working around the clock, took about eight days for a single batch if nothing went wrong. Our typical yield was enough for a full eighteen courses for two people.

  The newest version had a gene for a light activated DNase enzyme. The enzyme was secreted by cells in the renal pelvis of the kidneys and in the colon. After waste is excreted, light activates the enzyme, which activates more of the enzyme in a cascade effect, and then breaks down any DNA that came out with the waste. That way, people with the treatment couldn’t be tracked by their excretions. It also came with genes that caused a slow but constant shift over time in a person’s fingerprints, handprints, and irises as the cells grew and divided so that surveillance couldn’t track people by these markers long-term.

  Not long after distribution was underway, stories popped up online of people being arrested carrying vials of the product across CSA and PRA borders. The two governments wanted to crack down on it as fast as possibl
e, using their media mouthpieces to pound the association of the chromosome treatment with the dangerous forty-eights terrorist group into the minds of their viewers.

  But nothing stopped it from spreading, even if it was slow. Demand was high, and Salia was ecstatic with the amount of money she was raking in off of the treatment.

  Well-wishers in the LoC began making pilgrimages to Deidre and John’s house to see the liberated children and give them gifts. It was almost the middle of March before twenty-eight of them were living in the house, the remaining child still in rough condition in the hospital due to complications from Shift withdrawal.

  While Laura took night shifts in the lab, she had little interest in how things worked. She just followed the protocol. However, I made sure to take greater interest in learning lab techniques and theory. Especially with Akira helping me figure out how my reincarnation works. The added bonus was that Akira almost approached something comparable to happiness explaining how things worked.

  “Why go through all this process?” I asked, looking at the diagram Akira had sketched on a piece of scrap paper while showing me how CRISPR/Cas9 works, “why not just make the whole chromosome with that oligonucleotide synthesis method?”

  Akira sat on the stool next to me, both of us by the small, clutterd lab bench. The hair re-growing on her head was still short, but now able to hide the black lines of the transdermal implants snaking across her scalp. She had the same loose-fitting sweatpants and oversized t-shirt on that she had been wearing the past few days. The image of myself as Marcy Riviera when I fist met Akira came to mind.

  “We can make practically infinite this way,” Akira said, with an expression not quite a smile, yet also not the unending scowl she had adopted since Mexico. “From our glycerol stocks,” she signaled to the minus eighty Celsius coolers. “The blank chromosome backbone, with just the repeating PAM sites and homologous recombination sequences, is replicated as a plasmid. In principle, trillions of it from a single cell. Do the same thing with the inserts. Cut with CRISPR and insert with homologous recombination. Transfect onto our synthetic cells. Let them grow. Break them open. Purify the chromosome. Bind it to our CRISPR construct and there we go. Treatment is ready to go.”