The White Death

by Rafferty, Daniel

  “Cecil,” said Freda with a smile. He was her favorite on the Council.

  “Freda.” His tone lacked his usual happiness and gusto. “We need to meet at once.”

  “Perhaps after the Council session tonight?” she offered. “Time can be made available before transporting back to Earth. Grace can give us a room.”

  “No, Freda. Now,” replied Cecil, glancing around his office, looking nervous.

  “Where?” she asked, her curiosity building.

  “I’ll come to you.”

  Freda frowned. She knew Cecil would only come to Earth if he were to tell her something classified. He feared being overheard, accidentally or on purpose.

  “Okay. I know a quiet place. I’m sending you coordinates,” said Freda, nodding to Christopher, who began tapping buttons on his computer tablet.

  After hanging up, Freda put on a matching purple coat and gloves, deciding against a hat to shield her perfectly kept curly white hair. Such things were irrelevant to her, but after nearly 150 years on Earth, she had learned to blend in.

  “Ready?”

  Christopher nodded. She put her arm out, and he placed his hand on it. Her magnificent brooch, attached to her coat, began to glisten. She touched it, and they vanished in a flash of white light. Destination: London.

  “Brrrr, it’s cold,” complained Christopher a moment later, rubbing his hands in a futile attempt to get some heat into them. His lightly trimmed gray beard did little to shield him from the snowstorm London was enduring. “Must get Peter to design me a heated coat.”

  Freda laughed, imagining Doctor Roberts’s face if Christopher did ask for such an invention. They had appeared without notice down a small side alley to one of its bustling streets. They headed on down the alley, passing the occasional homeless person and stray dog, both of which seemed all too common for the British capital at the moment.

  “Remember when you first saw snow?” said Christopher.

  “And I thought we were under attack,” she said, laughing. Her own home world was much hotter and more exotic than Earth. Snow was something she had only heard about, and she found it to be a hindrance. She worried about Christopher. A fall at his age could be deadly.

  A small coffee shop called Maggy’s was a welcome sight for the pair, and Christopher couldn’t wait to get into the warmth.

  “Freda, darling,” said Bernadette, hugging the small woman. Bernadette—or Bernie, as she was better known—was in her seventies now. Her children had been urging her to retire for a while now, but she insisted she wanted to work till the end. Maggy’s was too important to her and others to hand over the reins. Bernie had known Freda since she was a little girl, when Bernie’s mother ran the shop. While she knew Freda was not of this world, she never asked any questions.

  “Bernadette, lovely to see you,” said Freda, placing a tender hand on the doting coffee shop owner. “Just the usual, please.”

  “Coming right up,” she replied. Giving Christopher a hug, she quickly set off to whip up some lattes.

  “It amazes me how this exact booth is free every time we come here,” said Christopher. He dusted some snowflakes from his shoulders.

  “We need to have some luck on our side,” said Freda.

  A flash of light caught Bernie’s eye. She opened the stock room door to find Cecil standing there. She didn’t know who he was, but with Freda and Christopher here, she knew the procedure.

  “Over towards the corner, darling. Freda has just arrived. Fabulous coffee is on the way.”

  “Thank you,” he replied cautiously.

  “Relax,” said Freda, projecting her voice. In her whole time here, Cecil had only visited Earth once before. He considered the inhabitants the most “unique” of the up-and-coming civilizations. Freda always argued it contributed to their charm and longevity. She smiled at him as he approached the small booth and sat down facing her and Christopher.

  “Interesting place,” said Cecil, the strong coffee smell catching attention. He couldn’t help but think how quickly humans aged. Christopher, whom he met around forty years ago, was almost unrecognizable now.

  “I find it charming,” replied Freda, taking her gloves off. Cecil himself had aged, and his modern purple tunic only emphasized his increasingly lined face.

  “Indeed,” he said, trying to get comfortable.

  “Here we go, ladies and gents. Three hot caramel lattes. Extra caramel for you, Freda,” interrupted Bernie in her usual bubbly manner. She was careful to place a nice red napkin under each latte and a warm plate in the middle, holding some double chocolate muffins with oozing warm caramel in the center. “Enjoy now.”

  “Thank you, Bernie,” said Freda graciously as the plump older woman scuffled off to serve a gentleman covered in snow, who had just arrived.

  “Cecil, what’s going on? Your call sounded urgent.” Freda stirred her latte with a long, thin spoon, mixing it all around until it was totally blended. She broke off a piece of the warm, sticky muffin.

  “Freda,” he began quietly, leaning forward across the table. His eyes darted around the quaint café, nervous. “We have a situation developing. The Council is planning to intervene on Earth.”

  “What?” She set the remainder of her muffin down on a crumpled napkin, pushing the latte aside. Christopher did the same, their interest in the fantastic food vanishing.

  “You heard me,” he replied. “Do you recall this report?” He pushed an A4-sized pad across the table.

  “This was years ago,” said Freda, shocked.

  “1982, I believe,” added Christopher. He would never forget that report.

  Freda glared at the document title. “Indeed it was, Christopher,” she agreed.

  “The report was concerned with the health of the human gene pool. It was becoming overridden with mutations. Human society, pollution, genetic experimentation, and obesity were all taking an unrelenting toll on the health of the species.”

  “I remember the report.” Freda skimmed through it, refreshing her advanced mind with its more intricate details. “I told the Council it was premature and that the species needed time, up to a thousand years, before we might have to intervene. I know the situation has deteriorated significantly since then, but a planet-wide intervention will only exacerbate the problem.”

  “Loretta believes action needs to be taken, before … well, quite frankly, before humans become extinct.”

  Freda knew the others on the Council considered Cecil weak, too interested in philosophical points of view. They, on the other hand, were interested in cold, hard facts.

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” said Freda. She considered Loretta a bully, and this only proved her point as far as she was concerned.

  “The Human Paradox,” said Cecil.

  “Is that really relevant to this discussion?” warned Freda. She would not be debating that here, on Earth, of all places. “Now, what interventions are they proposing?” She pushed the report back to him.

  He let out a concerned grunt, before swearing her to secrecy. Freda knew he wanted to believe he was being coerced into telling her. It was his nature.

  “As you know, work began on investigating the human gene pool and DNA structure around 140 years ago.”

  “That’s right, I approved it,” said Freda.

  “The project concluded that the human gene pool is in such disrepair that humanity may soon begin devolving—or worse, face genetic extinction.”

  “Genetic extinction?” asked Christopher, underlining the phrase for importance.

  “Unable to procreate,” said Freda.

  Cecil agreed. “We predict that infertility will continue to increase, and in seventy-five years, complete infertility of the human race will occur. That leads to extinction.”

  “Is our gene pool
that bad?” Christopher asked. “I wish science was my forte.”

  “If we don’t act now, being unable to procreate may be a very real possibility in the next fifty years,” replied Cecil. He looked at Freda, who returned the stare. She knew he told the truth. This had been a long time coming, but she desperately wanted humans to solve their own problems. This new president was her greatest—and maybe last—hope.

  “I may support a limited intervention,” she finally said.

  “Freda, their gene pool is overloaded with mutations, and with the process of natural selection now irrelevant, the problem is critical. Wide-ranging action is needed. Ten thousand years ago, you couldn’t hunt if you had poor vision. But now, genetically speaking, the human species really is ill. Humans are actually the most medicated species we have ever recorded.”

  “Medication is rising every year,” agreed Freda. “Humans seem more interested in managing the side effects of illness than getting to the root cause.”

  “We always take the easy route,” said Christopher.

  “Christopher, I’m not condemning your social institutions. I’m just saying from a human biological point of view, survival of the fittest has definitely stopped. There are some convincing arguments that it is in reverse.”

  “Nevertheless,” began Freda, “humans need time to sort these problems out themselves.”

  “I understand why you’re saying that, but we have no way of knowing whether humanity will follow the same route your own people did, Freda.”

  She could feel Christopher looking at her, curious at the comment. Her own species had found themselves laden with a gene pool that resembled a cesspit. It took them nearly two thousand years and much social hardship to change.

  “Coming through what my species did brought us together as a whole,” said Freda. “It solidified us, and we did it ourselves. Humans will not react kindly to an outside alien force intervening with their children.”

  Cecil took another deep breath, before offering more of the story. “After the 1982 report, the Council was concerned for the future health of the species. So funding was authorized for an ongoing project. The aim of the project was to cure the genetic defects in the human gene pool, with Loretta bringing in some of the best Bernay scientists in the genetic field. A laboratory was needed on Earth for optimal efficiency.”

  “That is against the law,” snapped Freda. “Section twenty-one, paragraph five states no facility shall ever be constructed on the territory of a civilization under the guardianship of the Council.”

  “Except in the most exceptional circumstances,” said Cecil. “Freda, you know the Council always creates clauses like that in every contract.”

  “And I should have been informed!” she said.

  “Technically, we didn’t have to inform you.”

  “How convenient,” she replied. “I really do hate that woman.”

  “That’s quite personal,” said Cecil. “I’m surprised at you.”

  “She hates me!” said Freda. “Loretta would have me gone from my post tomorrow if she could.” She shook her head. “Just continue.”

  “Work began slowly and carefully, with the Bernay scientists starting off with small genetic problems. Their first was human vision. They located the genetic defects that caused blindness and gradual vision loss. The results were astounding. Within six months, they had corrected all visual defects and brought in a set of humans for correction testing.”

  “You brought in humans for genetic testing?” said Freda, furious. “If the Supreme Court heard about this, they would have Loretta’s head.”

  “Freda, their memories were wiped. This only began five years ago. It took the Council nearly half a century to understand the human gene pool. In the beginning, only 700 people were brought in and cured. I believe the human media referred to their sudden cure as ‘miracles.’”

  “Impressive or not, it was still wrong to do.”

  Cecil would not be baited into an argument, which Freda would most certainly win. “Everything was going brilliantly until they finished current and future genetic mutation predictions last year. After some estimates, they found it would take over three millennium and a vast increase in staff to fix the problem.”

  “The Council would never agree to such a long, costly operation,” said Freda, ignoring his final point. He was saying nothing new there.

  “No, they wouldn’t. It was deemed inefficient. Therefore, work began on producing a single solution to the entire problem. The result was a ‘gene re-sequencer virus,’ which they are calling the Eugenics Virus. A human test subject was acquired. This female had a litany of illnesses, including mental retardation, muscular dystrophy, limited vision, underactive thyroid, high blood pressure … the list was extensive. They administered the virus, and within three days, every genetic error had been removed. Don’t ask me to explain how the virus works, but it has a library of human genetic errors, and when it finds one, it rectifies it. The test subject began to show signs of recovery almost immediately. It was spectacular.”

  “I’m not going to deny that it is impressive, but this kind of direct biological interference in a sentient species really does have moral quandaries.”

  “Which is why I’m on your side and why I’m sitting here, on Earth, telling you all this,” said Cecil.

  “So they plan to go ahead with this then?” She was already formulating her complaint to the Supreme Court to get the action stopped.

  Cecil hesitated, then said, “Work had already begun on an airborne delivery system, before … well, before the incident occurred.”

  “See what I mean? What happened?” asked Freda, knowing this was where the conversation would quickly go downhill. Cecil clicked his fingers, and everyone in the café stopped still, as if frozen in time. Coffee Bernie was pouring into a cup was suspended mid-stream.

  “This,” he said. Cecil removed a small white ball from his coat pocket, and it hovered in the air between the three of them. A Council memory chip, used for archiving data. Freda and Christopher watched the memory chip open up, projecting a 3D video report as Cecil talked them through it. “The Eugenics Virus was slightly modified for widespread airborne delivery. There were complications when it was tested in a sealed chamber with human test batches. Usually 100 at a time. This was the result.”

  The video transitioned from genetic coding and diagrams to a middle-aged human female, confined to a chair, sobbing and speaking incoherently. To Freda, it didn’t sound like talking at all, instead more animalistic—like a wounded animal whose very being had been ripped apart. She foamed at the mouth and spat out blood, and dark black rims had appeared around her eyes.

  “What the Bernay scientists didn’t realize was that the human gene pool contained many positive genetic mutations that their virus also removed. Many parts of their genetic structure are interlinked. Removing defective genes made the beneficial and essential ones defunct. Not only that—the human body was adversely affected by the airborne version of the virus, causing debilitating mental disability along with a host of physical problems.”

  He continued, “There were theories about the human immune system and how it saw the resequencer as an attack on the body. It was sent into hyper-drive, and the battling between the resequencer and the immune system destroyed the blood-brain barrier. Once that happened, mental decline was swift and dangerous as the battle moved into that key area.”

  “Which could account for the erratic tendencies,” said Freda. “What happened to them?”

  “Each one-hundred batch were exterminated. Only six humans that were part of the airborne delivery trials remain. The Bernay want to study them, to see what went wrong. But this incident has pushed Loretta and others to believe a more direct intervention is necessary to save the species.”

  “What exactly?”

 
“I don’t know.”

  “Cecil!”

  “Freda, I honestly don’t. Loretta has been in conference all day with the Supreme Court and the four home worlds. As head of the Council, it is her right. She also has the ammunition. The annual reports from the other five civilizations have already been submitted and reviewed. They’ve confirmed humanity, while being the oldest of the six, is the least advanced technologically, socially, physically, and genetically.”

  “Will I have your support at the Council meeting tonight?” she asked, doubtful.

  “Well … you see, it’s difficult…”

  “Cecil, stop talking in circles. You are either against it or for it,” she snapped.

  Freda was about to launch into a tirade against her longtime friend, before a beeping noise distracted them all. Cecil took a small device from his tunic.

  “The Council meeting has been moved forward. We must go.” He may have been one of the four Council members, but he was not irreplaceable.

  “Christopher, I’ll pick you up in two hours. Try and enjoy London,” instructed Freda. She envied him now but was eager to commence with the battle ahead. She would not let the Bernay dictate the future of a race.

  “We need to go,” said Cecil quickly. The café returned to normal, unfrozen from time.

  “You won’t be executed for being five minutes late.”

  Cecil shot her a disapproving glare, which she rolled her eyes at. She asked Bernie if they could step into the kitchen. Bernie knew not to ask why and instead happily obliged. Moments later they were gone, appearing in a nicely decorated corridor above Earth in the Council ship Experian. With six planets to monitor, the Experian was constructed and crewed by members from each of the four elder civilizations. It was small and sleek, efficient and fast. The Experian traveled continually between the six planets in an endless cycle.