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I’d like to participate.
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Mar 20, 2018 22:20
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 04:47 |
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Is the word count exact? I have been doing some cuts and have around 2015. I haven’t done TD in a while and didn’t remember how strict the judging is for that. I still have a few days to get it down, I guess.
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Mar 24, 2018 00:17
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Well, I guess I’ll just scrap my poo poo because drat if I can’t compete with that.  for my cloacal surgery here in a decade or two.
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Mar 24, 2018 22:20
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Echidna - 1998 words Gloria’s friends who had jobs in finance found it hilarious that she, now on the doorstep of fifty, lived the same poor graduate student life she had at twenty. She ruminated on this as she waited for the shower to warm. Sfew friends, no lovers to speak of, and a crappy apartment. She didn’t even have a cat, for Christ’s sake. She blew out a long, exaggerated sigh and stepped into the shower. “If it weren’t for the kids” she thought, “I’d be pathetic.” The snow was fresh and deep, and despite most of the city being closed down she trudged toward the lab. The protesters were there, of course, as resolute now as they were on day one. They were less numerous, perhaps, but they still massed around the entrance to the building, shouting epithets at her over the wind. Gloria recognized some of the faces, those that had been there since the beginning. The faces were lined, much like her own, but their owners were still spry enough to hold signs and scream. In the empty lab, Gloria grabbed some coffee from the pot and sat at her desk, taking some time to go over her to-do list, when she saw the envelope. It was one of the small envelopes her mentor, Bill Fuller, had adopted for bad news several years ago. The envelope meant something catastrophic. Gloria had two plates spinning at the moment. They were huge, ostentatious plates that would serve up the crowning moments of her career. First was the paper, which was the culmination of nearly eighteen years of research. The second was the FDA’s decision on the clinical trials. She opened the envelope. It was worse than she thought. There was no actual news, just a hastily written “come see me –B”. She tossed the note into the trash bin and started off. It was a long walk to Bill’s office, but she paused when she came to the classroom. They were all there, rapt in their teacher’s instruction. Classes were taught by professors from all over the college and ran from seven in the morning to five at night. Gloria was sure the kids could go longer, wanted to in fact, but the scientific staff all agreed at the beginning not to push them too hard. The truth was any limitations put on them were arbitrary. They were seventeen, and vivacious. None of them looked up while she waited at the window. There wasn’t a second of misplaced attention. Gloria felt her pulse quicken. She was proud of them. Glancing down at her watch Gloria saw that ten minutes had passed. When she finally made it to Bill’s office, she opened the door and was greeted by the sight of the entire scientific staff crammed into Bill’s office. They were all carrying glasses of champagne and wearing party hats. “SURPRISE!” Everyone was shouting all at once. Bill pushed through the group, passing her a stack of paper. He leaned in close. “The FDA paperwork. Clinical trials start in six months.” He smiled, and Gloria felt like she was going to pass out. She had been too scared to hope, but now it was real, there in her hand. Bill walked back to his desk. “Oh, and by the way, Nature finally responded,” he said, raising his voice above the din, “they want to know what picture you’re using for the December cover.” The roar of voices grew even louder and everyone moved to crowd around Gloria. They might have even carried her out on their shoulders, had the ceilings not been so low. **** Gloria had been nineteen and her much-published undergraduate work in next-generation sequencing of child prodigies had catapulted her into the limelight. There were laboratories and biotech firms courting her for post-doctoral work and she had even made national news. Everyone had assumed that she would move to Harvard, or Yale, but it was Dr. Fuller’s (“Call me Bill”) low-key invitation for a coffee that beat them all. She met him on a summer morning and after a few minutes of chat, Bill got to the heart of the matter. “Do you know who Yuval Noah Harari is?” “No, I don’t think I’ve heard of him.” “He wrote some books about fifteen years ago. He’s a philosopher – a futurist, really. His work focused on the past and future of humankind. I was very interested in it when I was a graduate student.” “What made it so interesting?” “He pitched this idea that societal and technological pressures will cause a new evolution in humankind – the formation of a human god with eternal life. Homo deus.” “Homo deus? That sounds more like fiction than philosophy.” “I agree that eternal life is a bit far-fetched. But you’ve already figured out that humans have enormous potential coded in our genomes, right? Your work on ATXN2 expression and it’s correlation with intelligence was one of the first examples that I really believed was true. Hell, the SNP analysis of those prodigies alone would be enough to convince anyone.” “Well, that’s not quite what I implied in my concl-” He cut her off. “Are you familiar with what my lab does?” “Sure, you work on CRISPR-based manipulations of mammalian biology. It’s really interesting.” “What if I told you I wanted to take it further?” “In what way?” When Bill finished explaining, Gloria felt like she was going mad. Bill wasn’t talking about experiments, he was talking about miracles. The House had just passed H.R. 6161, legalizing the use of developed human tissue for research purposes. It would easily pass the Senate based on recent scientific breakthroughs using fetal tissue.The definition of “developed” was murky and Bill saw an opportunity. He was lucky to have powerful friends. His project wasn’t just ambitious; it was sacrilegious. He wanted to combine his lentiviral CRISPR systems with Gloria’s prodigy work and bring modified infants to term. These children would be monitored for cognitive, motor, and social function. At first, Gloria was stunned by his audacity. How was this even legal? What would happen to these children when the study concluded? Who would be their parents? Bill had answers to everything, as Gloria would soon find out. He handled the logistics with funding, the regulators, and the government committees. Her job was to hand-craft child prodigies. She spent the lion’s share of her twenties screening egg and sperm donors and surrogates. She coordinated hospital care, designed lentiviruses, and monitored the children’s prenatal development. Once the children were born, the work seemed to double. Their craniofacial and limb development initially scared Gloria; they had done so much genetic screening but it was possible that they had missed something significant, like Marfan’s, that might cause the slight elongation of the digits and mild retrognathia. Every single day for months, Gloria called the pediatricians, making sure that the children weren’t sick. They weren’t sick. They never got sick. There had been failures, of course. They had started with three separate combinations of modifications, but successful implantations and full-term births were rare. The infants that did come to term, however, were spectacular by any standard. They had ribbed each other about Homo deus around the lab often. It was a running joke that they didn’t think the cradle of a new human race was going to look like a previously-flooded basement someone filled with science equipment. As the children grew, though, the Homo deus jokes stopped being funny. Gloria changed during this time. She did her best to have a social life, but the lab outlasted the patience of friends and boyfriends. She went on the occasional date and had drinks with her school friends, but mostly she kept to herself. It was subtle at first. Gloria hadn’t gotten caught up in her friends’ baby fever when they were all about to turn thirty, despite all the jokes at her expense that she was already a mommy. She never felt any maternal instincts, and those same friends knew to go to others for babysitting. Yet over the years she found herself switching up her terminology as she continued to spend more and more time with her charges. It had started as “the work” or “the project”, but now it was “the children” or “the kids”. As they grew, she started to have trouble processing her feelings about it all. She found herself just watching them more often, spending hours at a time at the playroom windows. “I’m not that kind of person” she would tell people, but in the margins of her notebooks her doodles said otherwise. **** When the party had finally died down, Bill and Gloria were seated in the cafeteria, watching the kids wolf down pizza. Gloria had ordered Dominos, figuring they could use a little fun as well. The kids had mobbed around her, showering her with affection. “Jesus, they turn eighteen in bit, don’t they?” Bill was still drinking. “Two weeks” Gloria replied. She was excited for them. When they had all turned sixteen, Gloria and Bill sat down with the government to hammer out the details of these ten futures. Leaving the meeting, Gloria felt relieved. They had the complete support of the White House. The children, upon their eighteenth birthday, would be given social security numbers, identity cards, and would have financial support. Most of them had already applied for colleges but Gloria knew that at least two wanted to travel before continuing their studies. “Wow. Time really flies. I can’t believe it’s been so long.” “Yeah. I feel old. It’s like I’m having empty-nest syndrome or something. Maybe I’ll have a midlife crisis?” Bill chuckled. “You’ll certainly have the time now. What’ll you do, pick up a twenty-year-old boyfriend?” Gloria laughed. “I was thinking about letting the kids get settled in and then touring around and visiting them all.” Bill’s smile left his face. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.” “About what?” Gloria turned away from the children to look at Bill, and stopped smiling herself when she saw his face. “Here, why don’t we head back to the office?” “No, why don’t you just tell me. Has something gone wrong with their documentation?” “Gloria, I don’t really want to talk about this right in front-“ Some of the kids had stopped talking and turned to look at them. “God drat it, Bill. What’s going on?” Bill got up and walked out of the cafeteria. Gloria turned quickly to look at the teenagers, feeling her heart break when she saw their concerned faces. She rushed out after Bill. “Bill, stop walking.” Her voice was pleading. “They’re not getting identities, Gloria. Because they aren’t people. By the judgement of the White House, they’re GMOs.” Gloria’s mouth dropped open. She had never heard Bill talk like this about the children before. “I thought…” “In three weeks they’re all getting transferred to a new research facility. There’s federal agencies that want to run them through some studies.” “No, Bill, please, you can’t-” “My hands are tied, Gloria. The government is going to increase our funding and that will help us with the clinical trials. I’ve already got a few pharma guys interested. I’d like to have you on board for this.” Gloria flushed, and then slapped Bill as hard as she could and stormed off. His words had brought her clarity she hadn’t realized she was missing. At the bank, she pulled out all of the money in her savings account. On the way home she bought ten identical roller suitcases. At home she packed her own things and booked eleven rooms at a motel just across the Canadian border. That night, she went to the dorms and got the children out of bed. They voted together to follow Gloria out of the building and to the rental van. Before she left she sent Bill an email. “What am I supposed to do?” she wrote. “I can’t leave them. I’m their mother.”
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Mar 26, 2018 03:21
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cyborgs on tinder Your fitting is 1/4” Mine requires 7/8” We need to break up
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Mar 26, 2018 23:21
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Oh god what have I wrought In
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Mar 27, 2018 02:08
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 04:47 |
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Thank you all for the commentary. I’ll be moving the story to the other thread here soon.
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Mar 27, 2018 18:19
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