by Purple Hazel
And Rudo, by way of comparison? She unfortunately was eliminated within the first day of testing and whisked away to a factory in town where she worked on an evening cleaning crew. This was the first span of time lasting more than a few days that she’d been separated from her sister, and when the finalists were eventually moved to a hotel in downtown London where they could live like rich kids—room service, comfortable beds, clean towels, clean bathrooms, delicious food—Shamiso seemed gradually transformed. It was quite easy to see in her demeanor. She became more outgoing, more expressive, and far more confident with each passing day.
Observed by the staffers, Shamiso became a quite different person when Rudo wasn’t around. They felt they should verify this, so during testing they went back and consulted the section supervisor again, learning even more about their bright new prospect. It seemed—at least according to the tough old gal running the place—that Rudo was to Shamiso much like kryptonite was to Superman…or the way tequila was to a naïve college freshman. One might say. Rudo was the loud, boisterous, outgoing type—the evil twin. In her absence, Shamiso became more of the kind, reserved, introspective type…the educated, informed, mature type. They speculated she’d be the kind of girl who would blossom and flourish in an environment such as a space exploration ship hurtling through the galaxy toward Kapteyn B. They surmised she would grow into an adult during the mission, playing a vital role in its ultimate success.
However, everyone knew what this would mean. The two would have to be separated. Shamiso was clearly the one they wanted. And yet, how could they do this? It almost immediately perplexed the young staffers and brought up an even deeper moral issue that none of them had considered or for that matter had openly discussed among themselves up to that point. Even if they could heartlessly pull apart these identical twins who’d spent nine plus years together—practically every waking moment of their lives—then just what in God’s name would happen to Rudo Kachote? What would become of her now that her twin might be leaving her?
Of course, they never objected to this moral quandary back in Darmstadt when they were in the presence of their superiors. Oh no, they didn’t dare complain! This job—this internship, for all intents and purposes—was a great opportunity, a segue perhaps into a lifelong career with the GU Space Programme, from which they could support themselves comfortably and eventually retire with full benefits and health coverage. Two weeks’ paid vacation were offered every twelve months. Most definitely, they all wanted something like that, especially given the likelihood that Space Programme would be expanding for decades and soon become the catalyst for the Alliance’s next economic boom. Therefore, they had to ask themselves, why rock the boat?
But thinking about it had to bother them…this idea of separating identical twins and abandoning their Earth-bound sibling to a life of hard knocks and brutal reality. But for the other girl it would open up a life of adventure and wonderment; exploring the known galaxy would be her future. That said, Space Programme—Günther’s father in particular—had already addressed this issue long before when setting out the prime directives for their mission.
First off, the Earth twin could never find out what had happened to their identical sibling. That was of the utmost importance. Once successfully separated and a plausible story had been concocted, only then could the space twin be told of their fate. Those were the rules. After that, the two could no longer see each other, not for many years, at least until the ship finally returned to Earth, however long that took.
The second issue of course was what to do about all the people who knew about the experiment and had participated in identifying the correct prospects among the sets of twins. What about the staff and administration at the orphanages and work houses? What about all those people left at these places who might later tell the Earth twin of their sibling’s true destination? The answer to this was easy: they were simply to be bought off and effectively silenced. Incented and yet also clearly warned to keep it a closely held secret all the rest of their days.
The orphanages and work houses, for instance, would get a very large government endowment in the form of a deposit made into their bank account that would be just about equal to their average operating budget over the past five years. Also, any staff participating in aiding Space Programme staffers would receive a bonus, perhaps a pay raise, and in each case a government accommodation of a sort that most everyone really craved: Each section supervisor, administrator, or field overseer assisting in the process would get—after signing a confidentiality agreement that was literally filled with strict warnings against breaking their silence—a guarantee of full government retirement benefits starting at age fifty-five.
Now that was something practically no one could resist. Indeed, virtually all of them leapt at the chance to essentially check their morals at the door and sign on to help in any way they could. In ten or fifteen years, depending on their age currently, to be able to simply walk away from those stinky dormitory halls and bratty kids? Ah yes. That was practically irresistible, even if it was blatantly unethical. After all, separating identical twins from each other can have far-reaching, perhaps even devastating effects on each sibling’s individual development. No one needed an advance degree from college to know that.
Monozygotic twins are formed in the fetus from a single egg or zygote which splits and forms two embryos. Twins, whether monozygotic or dizygotic, occur on average thirty-three out of a thousand live births. But identical twins are the rarest—and most often female—because male embryos are more susceptible to die in utero. Monozygotic twins have different fingerprints, and though genetically very similar, they are not the same. Not exactly.
This becomes even more prevalent over time because there will also be epigenetic modification caused by environmental influences throughout twins’ lives. This term basically means activity of particular genes. Genes can be switched on, switched off, or left dormant in any individual. Same thing with twins. Rudo Kachote was different than her sister Shamiso due to not only the environment they had to survive in, but also the way she chose to react to it. Shamiso, by way of comparison, had her twin Rudo to pummel or put the boot to any girl or boy on the street daring to bother them. Shamiso, being her identical twin, was easily mistaken for her tough duplicate, thus Shamiso was free to more fully develop other parts of her intelligence. That’s how each twin had affected the others’ development while growing up.
Now the only remaining question was how would Rudo develop into adulthood without her beautiful sister to look out for and protect? What would this do to her personality? How would this affect her own IQ development...and her future? What might she become someday without Shamiso constantly tagging along, always by her side, balancing her emotionally and giving her responsibility for another human being besides herself?
Unfortunately, it would seem these things were no one’s affair but Rudo’s, at least according to programme directives. The staffers were directed to inform her that her sister was, “going away to live with another family for a while.” She was told they’d eventually be reunited, and that was all they were allowed to tell her.
It broke—literally shattered—the hearts of staffers to have to lie like that to an innocent little girl. There was no way to rationalize it. No way to live with what they’d done. This was not a matter of international security for the future of mankind after all. It was just a silly scientific experiment conducted by sober, intelligent, otherwise moral men and women back in Darmstadt who felt this somehow needed to be done. Thus, poor Rudo was going to be on her own, and when the two parted, it was a very teary, heart-wrenching scene to be sure.
For Rudo, this was the last of her family, driving away in a solar transport lorry one drizzly London afternoon. Shamiso was told that she was being moved to a program for smarter kids who showed an aptitude for applied sciences. Eventually, she would be told the truth, once a date for launch was set and she was united with the other space twins they selected
.
Amazingly enough, Shamiso said nothing in response to their barefaced lie. She only stared out the back window of the van with her hand up against the rain-streaked glass. Meanwhile, Rudo stood on that lonely wet sidewalk until the vehicle had completely disappeared down the street.
“Thank God we only have to do this two more times,” muttered one of the staffers. A few others heard the young woman and sighed or nodded in silence. Devastated by the experience, none of them spoke about it again for the rest of the trip to Heathrow Airport…
* * * *
Next, the young staffers travelled all the way down to south Texas, near a city called Katy, which was just west of the original site of metropolitan Houston. Here they investigated a very strange set of circumstances indeed.
* * * *
Back at the Research and Technology Centre in Noordwijk a month earlier: They came across a pair of twin boys which had shown up on government records eight years prior. Live Birth Certificates indicated they were ten years old, in perfect health, and up to that point in time no physical maladies or defects had been identified. They seemed healthy, vibrant and strong enough to endure the strain of a deep space mission. Strong, athletic boys—both of them. And what a gross understatement that was.
When referring to Práxedis and Oswaldo Guerrero, their little league coach called them the Ranger Battalion. Their coach was the first to greet them at Houston Hobby Air Terminal and the one driving them out to Katy. The man was also more than happy to tell the team of young scientists about the two prospects they’d travelled across the Atlantic to meet.
Any team they had ever played on not only won, they won big. Championship after championship. They were “almost freaks of nature,” he was so bold to say, and identical from head to toe. Practically interchangeable. “Could hardly tell ’em apart since the day they arrived,” he claimed. Práx. Any sport, any position, any team the Guerrero twins played for, they quite literally dominated the field “from whistle to whistle.” During the long drive through the south Texas countryside, he detailed for everything he thought the Space Programme interns needed to know—like he was some high school football coach hosting a group of college recruiters.
“Práxedis can throw, Oswaldo can catch damn near anything,” he said. “Oswaldo can kick, Práxedis can elude tacklers,” he added. “Práxedis can outmaneuver defenders on the soccer pitch while ’ole Ozzie, see...he can pretty much outrun anyone—except Práxedis, of course—in a sprint. And what’s more he’s got the endurance of a God-dang marathon runner.”
In the traditional American sport of baseball, they were also fantastic players as well as devastating hitters. Práxedis could pitch blazing fastballs. Oswaldo was a phenomenon in the field, chasing down fly balls and heaving the ball from the warning track all the way to home plate—on a single bounce—whenever base runners attempted to tag up and steal home plate on a sacrifice fly. On top of that...he could do this at only ten years of age!
“Of course, that’s on a little league ball field,” added the coach, “but hey, let me tell ya’, I ain’t seen nobody do that before I met these kids, that’s for sure.” He could kick, too, added the fellow, and in European style soccer Oswaldo was a fearless goalie. But when it came to Megaball—which had evolved from a combination of the very violent and injury-prone American sport of football, with the more endurance-oriented sport of English rugby, was where both boys really stood out. Práxedis and Oswaldo were already “up-and-comers,” playing on the twelve-year old team which was the maximum age limit for this particular orphanage. And on the Katy Boys Farm, located just outside the little Texas farming community of 250,000, both kids were being groomed to become stars in the sport someday.
Rotella Coronado ran the place, which had been serving the community for over forty years. It functioned as a cotton farm during the week, but over the years it had garnered a reputation as a weekend boot camp for future high school athletes.
How in the world did a place like this exist? Those young staffers from Europe could only wonder. Only in Texas, perhaps. But what had happened with Katy Boys Farm was simple really.
Coronado Plantation typically had several hundred city kids—male only—sent there each year for hours of strenuous labor in the hot Texas sun. A rudimentary education was provided until boys turned thirteen, when they were tested for mental aptitude and released into society as employable workers.
However, while at the plantation, they had plenty of free time on weekends with nothing else to do but play sports. It was quite easy to try out and test various athletic-looking boys to see if they had any dexterity for sports, and then starting in the 2070’s, several former Megaball players who’d retired from the professional league came to work there as supervisors and youth counselors.
And that was basically how the Guerrero’s were discovered. They’d been there since they were toddlers; and now they had both turned into strapping ten-year-olds who towered over most kids their age.
The staffers from Space Programme knew they’d have a tough time deciding between them, but the solution once again was to try and test them on applied sciences. Really the only way to differentiate them, so to speak. Physical fitness was obviously NOT going to be a differential.
“Oh, there’s no question about it,” quipped the loquacious coach, “they’re tough little bastards, let me tell ya’.”
Between the two, it was almost a dead heat during that long week of testing. Once again the GU staffers showed up with their Peedees and packed a large gymnasium with school desks to test ALL the kids between the ages of nine and eleven. But once again this was merely a ruse to see how the two boys fared in such an environment. Could they concentrate? In a massive room packed with several hundred boys around their own age? In that stifling south Texas heat with air conditioning units pumping full blast just to keep the temperature and humidity bearable? It was an ordeal, even for the staffers stuck with proctoring the exam.
Yet Práxedis and Oswaldo hammered through the first day with flying colors until the room’s population of sweaty, mostly annoyed nine, ten, and eleven-year-old boys had dwindled to less than fifty. After that, the remainder were taken away from the Katy Boy’s Farm for another week to undergo further testing. To be sure the Guerreros’ coach, Dustin “Dusty” Kinefick, was only vaguely polite about the interruption to their...studies...as he referred to them missing all those practices, but there was no use in arguing the point.
“Y’all thinkin’ these boys ’r what? Good at math ’n shit? Scientists someday, maybe?” The staffers chose not to belabor the topic with him, just let the facility administrator Rotella Coronado pull him aside and have a little chat with him. She had no problem setting him straight, of course. She knew just what was at stake. After that, Dusty Kinefick was completely on board with it.
The staffers, it turned out, had promised Mrs. Coronado a rather generous endowment toward the improvement of her sports facilities, paving the way for her plantation out west of New Houston to be transformed into a real sports academy. She and her beefy youth counselors could then train hundreds of Guerrero Brothers with materials and equipment like that of a major suburban youth sports program. And what a fortune they might make if one of their charges made it on to the professional leagues some day! They’d need an agent eventually, wouldn’t they? How could Coach Dusty argue with something like that?
In the end, it was the young but not-so-little Oswaldo who “made the cut”. He and five other boys finished the entire program on their Peedees and demonstrated a deep understanding for scientific concepts despite the very basic education taught to them on the Katy Boys Farm.
Práxedis, to his credit, got pretty far into the testing as well, no question about it. But when the exam got into more complicated natural sciences and physics-related problem solving, he simply couldn’t handle it. His brother, Oswaldo, advanced into the final day of testing, but poor Práxedis was eliminated. It was the first time in his young life he coul
d ever recall being bested by his twin brother at anything, and it was obviously very distressing to him.
Once again, the staffers had the twin they wanted and had to separate one from the other in such a way that no one suspected anything or asked too many questions. That’s why they wisely delegated the unenviable task to Coach Dusty himself, charging him with explaining to Práxedis that his twin brother Oswaldo—or Ozzie as he liked to be called—would be moving on to another boy’s camp and “maybe someday soon you two’ll get to play each other! Who knows!”
It was a good lie, if there was such a thing, the young staffers had to admit. They couldn’t have thought up anything better, that was for sure. Therefore, when the two boys parted, out front of the downtown hotel where the finalists were staying, he bravely bid a temporary farewell to his brother.
“See you on the field then, pussy,” said Práxedis with a macho grin. Oswaldo chuckled and playfully punched his twin brother in the chest. Práxedis rough-housed with him a bit, then pushed him away as Oswaldo turned to load up onto the van heading out to Houston Hobby Air Terminal. He then waved goodbye as the shiny vehicle, covered in solar chips and glistening off the afternoon sunlight, rolled away with a whining, whirring sound. His brother waved back to him through the rear window.
“Yeah bro’, I’ll see you on the field someday,” he mumbled to himself. He couldn’t possibly have known just how long it would be before that big day would come to pass.
Chapter 8
Katerfrüstück
After that, the staffers travelled all the way to Canada, and went to visit a place originally suggested by Kelvin himself—upon B.J.’s urgings naturally. The St. John’s Training School for Boys—once called the Kennedy Detention Centre, just northwest of Toronto, up in Uxbridge—was where they were headed. The alteration in climate from the heat of south Texas to the cool autumn afternoons of southeastern Canada was certainly quite a welcome change.
