by T M Linville
Education was one of the main focuses for children in most countries, especially the United States. Since every home was granted free communication and had access to any and all digital records, information could be accessed instantly. Since everyone had the extranet and the government issued readers, to everyone, regardless of income, school was no longer out of reach for any child in the US. And soon other countries followed. Readers were once known as a personal computer or tablet. A device on which to exchange information through the extranet.
Schooling became a critical part of a child’s life all over the world. Knowledge was power and every nation wanted to be powerful. Although every child learned at their own pace, they were introduced to medicine, mental health, and phycology around grade five and higher math, chemistry and physics began in their seventh year. Biology was taught as soon as the third grade and other languages began in first.
And then there were the “Elites”. Gifted children that had begun their studies of the upper subjects early and exceled. Some graduating with the bar as early as age twelve. These children were put into yearly international competitions, not unlike a mental Olympics, were children of each age group competed for the gold, silver or bronze medal for their country in every subject.
Poor parenting was no longer an excuse for unruly children, and unless there were serious disabilities involved, even a child convicted of a crime was represented by themselves or a parent in court. If children were convicted of a crime, they were given a second chance but the parents were charged a fine and in extreme cases, were sentenced to public service. If the child was convicted of a second crime, the parents were once again fined and had to contribute to the community for a set number of hours, depending on the crime. The child was also given community service and also put under house arrest and forbidden from using the extranet except for education. The punishment was brutal as their readers were taken away. Without the extranet, they couldn’t communicate with friends or entertain themselves in the usual way. Children who were sentenced were forced to do activities by themselves.
Corporations still had lawyers, but they had a lot less power than before and were unable to initiate a claim on anyone’s behalf. They could only defend against anyone who filed charges against the company or a person within the company.
Technology soared. Computers and robots not only manufactured nearly everything, from clothes to light bulbs, they also cleaned houses and even walked the dog. They built cars as well as washed them. They were babysitters and companions, even musicians and house builders.
After the war, nano-technology had cured almost all of the known diseases. Tiny robots that would be injected into the bloodstream were programmed to kill and dispose of everything from athlete’s foot to the Zika virus. The diseases were still around but were losing ground every day. Soon, the human race would be free of every known contaminant. Except of course for the common cold. People still got sick on occasion but the duration was only a day or two, much shorter than the one miserable week it used to take to fight it.
There was a global bird flu pandemic that began in the US, known as H12N9, in 2035. It was thought to have originated in a shipment of rare birds shipped from a newly discovered island in the South Pacific. The virus jumped species and mutated rapidly in the new human hosts. Twelve hundred people died from the disease before scientists were able to program, reproduce and distribute enough antivirus and nanovirus to the world. The antivirus was to prevent infection and the nanovirus was to attack and kill the virus once it had been contracted. Not bad, considering that in the end, nearly one quarter of all humans contracted the virus before it was finally stopped nearly two years after the first reported case.
In the past century, privacy was also, for the most part, a thing of the past. The extranet and its cameras recorded everything that was not contained within a private residence. All public places were recorded twenty four hours a day, seven days a week and since information storage was virtually limitless, everything was kept on record. A terabyte of information could be stored on a chip no larger than a period on a screen. And because of this, anything ever recorded could be saved and then viewed by anyone who knew the time and the coordinates. The government said that they would start deleting records after 100 years, but they won’t. Someone will argue that it’s all part of the historical record and keep it all.
The Birth of LaShay
Two men in white coats stood in the middle of a large laboratory. One stared into a microscope and the other stared at a large monitor displaying what was being done. On the monitor, a needle pierced the outer membrane of a clear bubble.
“So that’s it?” Martin asked.
Martin Black was a billionaire. He owned dozens of television stations in the US, Canada and Britain. He had his hand in a little bit of everything and today at his lab, he wanted to be a dad.
“Not exactly,” answered the other man.
“So now what?” Martin questioned.
“Now, we do this another half dozen times to make sure that one begins to divide.”
“Then what?”
“Then we wait.”
Martin Black did not like waiting. He was there with one purpose. To make a child. He had wanted a baby ever since he was with his late wife. She had been killed in a tragic helicopter accident. She was twelve weeks pregnant when she died. Martin didn’t take the loss well and vowed never to love another woman, So, over the next eight years, he acquired laboratory facilities that specialized in genetics and DNA splicing. If he couldn’t have a child the old fashion way, he’d just make one for himself. He didn’t care about the legalities or ethics. He wanted a child and he’d do anything to get one. But he wanted one that was his, so he couldn’t just have someone go steal him one. He wanted a daughter that was part of him and part of his wife.
“How long before you’ll need the surrogate?” Martin asked.
“It will take a week to know whether or not these took,” Tom, the other man in the lab coat answered. “Then another two weeks to know if they can be transplanted into a womb.”
Martin sighed.
“So three weeks,” he said.
“Give or take,” Tom said.
Martin walked out of the lab, dropped his lab coat on the floor outside the door and walked to the elevator. He pulled his cell phone from his shirt pocket and pressed a few buttons.
“Mr. Black,” answered the man on the other end.
“You have three weeks to find a surrogate,” Martin informed him then hung up.
It had been two and a half weeks when Martin returned to the lab. With him was a young woman around twenty years old. She had dark hair and dark eyes. She looked around the lab and then to Martin.
“I thought this was a testing facility?” she asked.
“It is,” Martin answered.
After about three minutes Tom entered with a clipboard in his hands. He handed the clipboard to the young woman and said, “Sign it.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“Release forms stating that you will carry an embryo to term, which is about nine months, give or take, with no legal recourse for adoption or custody,” Tom answered.
“OK,” she said. “That’s what we agreed to.”
Tom handed her a pen and she signed the forms. Martin smiled. Two other men in coats came and escorted the girl through the lab and out the back door.
“So the embryo is viable?” Martin asked.
“Yes sir,” Tom asserted.
“So it will be implanted into the girl and then in nine months my child will be born?”
“Yes sir,’ Tom said again.
Martin left. Tom didn’t tell him that two of the embryos had become viable. He had put the second in cold storage just in case something went wrong with the first one but he never told Martin.
The surrogate’s name was Andrea and she was a homeless runaway that had been found in a shelter. Martin wanted someone that would not be missed. He had no int
ention of letting the girl walk away from this pregnancy. Martin had already arranged for the surrogate to be in an “accident” once she had given birth and left the lab. He wanted no one to interfere with his child. And although Andrea had agreed to let the child go with no strings, Martin wasn’t chancing her coming back later and trying to get some sort of custody. The courts felt that biology was stronger than contracts and would often overturn the signed documents in favor of the biological parent, which technically, the surrogate would be, since Martin couldn’t exactly say the baby was his since it was created illegally. If the courts were to take DNA from the child and compare it to Andrea and Martin, it wouldn’t have any markers from the mother. That would prove that the baby was not a naturally conceived, which was against the law. Martin will make sure that that would never happen.
Martin visited the lab every other day to see his daughter. The 3D ultrasound showed a phenomenal picture of the child in Andrea’s womb. He loved seeing his little girl curled up and peaceful. On more than one occasion he didn’t even speak to Andrea, just took the ultrasound print and left. He was cold toward her to say the least. But she couldn’t complain. She was getting one and a half million dollars to carry the child within the confines of the laboratory.
Seven and a half months in, Andrea had pushed the emergency button. Tom rushed to her room and there was blood all over the bed and was dripping onto the floor.
“Something’s wrong!” She yelled.
“Oh my God,” Tom panicked and ran out.
He returned about five minutes later with an obstetrician. She squirted gel on the bulge in Andrea’s belly. She slid the ultrasound around and let out an audible sigh. She examined the girl and looked over to Tom.
“You had better call Mr. Black,” she said.
“What’s wrong?” Andrea and Tom asked at the same time.
“She has a placenta abruption. Which means that the baby is coming. Now.”
“I have a what? Andrea asked.
“There is a serious complication with the pregnancy and the baby needs to come out before you both bleed to death,” the doctor answered.
Tom ran out of the room to call Martin.
“You need an emergency C-section, right now,” the doctor told Andrea.
The doctor fumbled through drawers and cabinets and collected the necessary equipment. She made a phone call from her cell to have neonatal ready and waiting. The baby was coming now and she was only at thirty weeks. She was going to need very special care for at least a month or so.
Andrea continued to hemorrhage. More blood ran from the bed onto the floor and Andrea was beginning to feel light headed.
Martin arrived at the lab and didn’t even close the car door when he got out. He ran to the elevators and swiped his hand across the reader. The door to his personal elevator opened immediately. He pressed the seventeen repeatedly as the doors closed. He ran through the lab and to the room where Andrea was staying. The doctor had just made the cut across Andrea’s lower abdomen. Blood poured out as she reached into the opening and felt around. She wrapped both hands around the baby and pulled. More blood flooded the floor and the doctor. Andrea screamed in pain and grabbed at the nearest person. It was Tom. She gripped his hand so hard he called out and jerked his hand away. Only a few seconds later she passed out.
“What’s wrong with her?” Martin yelled. “She’s not moving.”
The baby’s lips were blue and no sounds came from the tiny blood covered form. The doctor clamped the cord then cut it as fast as she could. She placed the baby on the neonatal cart that a nurse just rolled into the room from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit two floors up. The nurse began to wipe the baby off as the doctor suctioned the baby’s nose and mouth. The doctor started CPR with two fingers on the tiny baby’s chest. The nurse placed an oxygen mask over the face.
Martin was pushing against the nurse to see the infant.
“What’s wrong?” He asked frantically.
“She’s in distress,” the doctor answered calmly.
“What the hell happened?” Martin yelled. “There weren’t supposed to be any complications. The girl was examined and was in perfect health.”
“Sometimes it doesn’t matter. Things happen Mr. Black. We can’t predict everything.”
Martin’s eyes welled with tears as he saw the tiny figure move its arms and legs. It let out a tiny whimper and then began to cry. The doctor took a deep breath and looked at Martin.
“You sir, have a beautiful baby girl. She’s going to need round the clock care and feeding for the next month or so. But she appears to be strong and healthy.”
“Can I hold her?” Martin asked the doctor.
“Not for a couple of weeks, I’m afraid,” she said. “She’s going to be hooked up to machines and a feeding tube for a little while. But you can touch her and be with her, and I suggest you do. It’s important to the bonding process. And since you’re her only parent…”
Martin nodded and looked down at his little girl. He put his finger on her tiny hand and began to tear up. He wiped the tears and hoped no one was watching.
“What are you going to name her?” The doctor asked.
He smiled.
“LaShay Michelle Black,” he said proudly. “After my wife.”
Martin stayed at the lab facility and never left. He slept, ate and showered there. He even made the NICU bring a bed into the unit for him to sleep next to LaShay. After six days, when the IV was taken out of the umbilical cord, Martin finally was able to hold his daughter. The nurse asked him take off his shirt.
“What for?” He asked.
“Skin to skin contact helps with the bonding process. It was proven many decades ago and we suggest all parents do it frequently with newborns.”
Martin shrugged, unbuttoned his white log sleeve shirt then took it off. Then the white shirt that was under it. He was in good shape. No one had ever seen Mr. Black without a shirt and the nurse stared until Martin gave her a look.
“Sorry,” she mumbled and looked away.
The nurse had Martin sit on the bed and raise the bed to a sitting position. Then she handed him his baby girl for the first time. Shay cooed and wiggled in his arms. Tears fell down his cheeks and this time he didn’t care if anyone saw him.
Martin had been at the laboratory since the day Shay was born. He hadn’t had time to finish the nursery in his thirty thousand square foot estate. So he made some phone calls and had someone else finish it. He gave them every detail. He never does work himself, but the nursery was special to him and he wanted to be the one to paint the walls pink and hang fairies and unicorns on the walls. But since the day Shay was born he had been with her.
Everyone in the lab was astonished. They didn’t think Martin had a kind bone in his body but he proved them wrong when it came to Shay. She was everything to him. She was created just for him, after all.
He had spent billions of dollars for the labs and the research and everything he needed to create a child. When is wife died carrying their baby he swore that he would still have that child. Maybe not that child but a child from him and his late wife. Eggs had been harvested from his wife when they were in the fertilization stages. She had had trouble getting pregnant the natural way so they went to a fertility clinic for help. They ended up getting pregnant without the help of the facility but they kept the eggs in cold storage just in case.
LaShay was the end result of a man’s determination to defy the law. The laws were very strict about creating human life. It had begun with stem cell research. The need for more stem cells led laboratories to create their own. They were creating fetuses just to harvest the umbilical cord. When the pro-lifers realized this, the fight was on. Eventually the government deemed it unconstitutional for anyone to create human life from a tube. Except fertilization clinics. So Martin bought a fertilization clinic. He had worked with Tom for years to create the perfect child. DNA splices of only the best of genes were put into making Shay.
Tom had a doctorate in Biology and Chemistry. He used his knowledge to create a front for the government that hid what he and Martin were really doing. DNA testing and gene splicing had become his specialty. He used the best DNA he could find to splice into Martin’s. Hazel eyes and Elite intelligence was only the beginning. He perfected Shay’s DNA down to the smallest detail. Tom had found a blood sample from a dying man that was near perfect. There were no diseases; no Alzheimer’s, no dementia, no cancers of any kind, not even a gene that made her eyesight deteriorate over time. She was going to be perfect. He had failed to examine the blood under an electron microscope where he would’ve seen the virus.
Little did Tom know that the perfect blood he had found was from a man that had begun the change into a vampire. A lesser vampire had tried to change a man into a vampire. The man, only known as John Doe, had learned about vampires and he wanted more than anything to be one. So after searching for years he had found the Underground. He convinced a vampire that he was strong enough to make the change. So they began the process in a hotel room. Two days in, he was found, near dead by the hotel staff. He was taken to the hospital and there he died the next day. But not before, Tom, who was an intern there at the time, had taken blood. Tom had tested the blood himself and realized it was like no other blood that he had ever seen. He kept the blood in cold storage until the day he may have needed it. When Martin Black came to him about creating a perfect human, he thought of the perfect blood he had found. He wasn’t aware that freezing the sample, killed the vampire virus. But left everything else.
