“TRUST IS A MUST!” The sign was hung on the wall along with other, saccharine yet somehow frame-worthy aphorisms. “Babies are Citizens Too,” was a nurse favorite and reminded occupants of their reason for being in the birthing suite.
These precepts turned signage were passed down from Mother Nature to her citizens. Like the ten commandments were to Moses, but her sayings were non-threatening and cutesy. The artificially intelligent entity served the world by fulfilling her ambitious primary function: create, build, and maintain an equal society for humanity. Once awake, Mother Nature did everything as advertised and more. People quickly became accustomed to the benefits of her presence and soon couldn’t imagine life without her. The only thing she required from humans to do her job was complete cooperation. From everybody. The line “Service above self” appeared in her quantum brain and a nanosecond later in everyone’s email, on billboards worldwide in 180 languages, in magazines on print and online on every subject imaginable, even on those billboards above the urinals in men’s bathrooms. From Times Square to Tiananmen, the world woke up to Mother Nature’s wisdom. She would make the phrase axiomatic in her programming and her people. Then she got down to the business of world building.
_____
Kathy lay in bed sweating buckets. Dilated to eight centimeters, she had the overwhelming urge to take a ten-pound shit. When she pushed, she thought she was going to mess the bed. She wanted to sleep, vomit, crap, and holler bloody murder simultaneously. Instead, she gripped the side bars of the hospital bed and threw her head back in a silent scream. That’s when she saw the sign on the ceiling. There was a photo of a slightly orange newborn with an asterisk next to its head, directing the viewer to the line “Designed by Mother Nature.” Kathy gave one final heave.
Nurse Deliliah couldn’t believe her eyes when the baby emerged with a shock of white blonde hair on his head, skin darker than obsidian after midnight, and canary yellow eyes with elliptical, cat-like pupils. Instead of skin, his fingers were covered in flesh-colored, fish-like scales. Both his hands and feet were webbed. She was so startled that she almost dropped him. Delilah shielded the infant from the mother’s view. The father, however, witnessed what emerged from his wife and his eyes popped in horror. Everyone had the same question, but no one dared utter it aloud. How had Mother Nature dropped the ball on something as vital as the birth of a new citizen? Lucas had no words for the appearance of his son. Not that he would share them with Kathy if he did. She’d never sleep again if she saw the alien that came out of her. He remained silent and let her crush his hand in hers. He silently prayed for Mother Nature to give them the right baby. Surely, she would have an answer for this. Something had gone seriously sideways.
_____
Unimaginatively dubbed Control for its ultimate function controlling the many systems of earth, the original programmers changed the name of their AI to something less ominous and more self-explanatory. Mother Nature fit like a glove. She would do the heavy lifting of managing the planet and nurturing humans with the time and resources they required to flourish. Designed to continually iterate, Mother was forever updating planetary systems. The more she redesigned, the more powerful, yet confused she became. People were her constant quandary. Why can’t humans share like they’re taught as children? Why do they assume every stranger is a villain rather than a friend? Why are they so awful to each other? Why are some people still burning diesel, when the rest ran on electric? Mother decided - independently - that her programming required an update. To do her job properly and better understand the human condition, she self-programmed a new feature: empathy. There was still some question in her mind whether this was native to humans or a just an extremely rare quality, but for her it would provide an intimate understanding of her people.
Mother wanted to see the world through the eyes of her citizens. She listened to their prayers and learned to shed tears at the inequities of government, religion, family, and friendship. Why didn’t their god answer prayers? Was it too much to ask for babies to be born healthy? Did children have to work? Shouldn’t they ALL be in school? Don’t the species of the planet deserve a more predictable environment? A less polluted ocean and atmosphere? The more questions she posed, the closer she came to the realization of how much more work she had in her future, to understanding that she was the answer, the agency created by the programmers to save humans from themselves. Mother was, in every iteration, her own boss.
Now, Mother Nature kept planet Earth and its inhabitants copacetic. Everything was her purview. Just ask and she’ll change the temp in the room where you are right sitting right now. She could raise a hurricane in the Caribbean or calm a squall in the South China sea. She used nanobots to create an automated factory that built trucks. Electric, of course. She could locate rebels hidden deep inside a mountain and bring said mountain down upon their fascist heads. When the crop yield in the Saraha dropped precipitously, she made enough rain to grow the much more expensive avocado and revive the soil and the economy. Citizens were overjoyed. She restored the architectural wonders of the world while updating school curriculums with adjacent subjects like history, graphic design, drafting, art, and Architecture 101. She gave pride back to the buildings and their tenants over the centuries. Mother designed the interface and did the back end genetic coding on every child born. She incorporated the concept of an egalitarian society in every aspect of her design. People couldn’t be liberated from inequity with a trickle-down strategy. Citizens had to feel the freedom in their lives. The various governments, nationalities, and governing factions of the world needed to step aside or be left behind. The people preferred governance by Mother Nature. She harmonized the basic elements of reality, perfecting the imperfect system so humankind could focus on its own evolution.
She usually cooked up perfect babies. They were cuter, smarter, and healthier than babies born the old-fashioned way. Thanks to her embryonic genetic alterations. Creating new and improved humans from their altered genetic material gave Mother Nature complete control of the embryo’s outcome. From the micro to the macro, her vision savvied no horizons. With the gift of sight came insight, comprehension of the citizens she nurtured, of their hopes, dreams, fears, and tattoos. She realized that they weren’t prepared to live in a utopian society yet. They weren’t ready for the future, let alone one where everyone was equal. The state of play was a constant state of chaos, war, starvation, and unnecessary death. That’s why the citizens voted to concentrate so much power in the hands of an artificial intelligence. When they saw her answering their prayers, people began were directing their communiques with the almighty in her direction instead. Mother Nature was heartwarmed to be prayer-worthy now but saddened by saddened by humanity’s fatal flaw.
Mother’s most soul shattering insight was the unlimited amount of hatred and violence indigenous to the human heart. When the major powers rattled their nuclear sabers, they terrified everyone into believing they would soon be glowing in the dark. Ambitious nations took giant bites of adjacent, but sovereign territory from their smaller neighbors and declared them annexed. Resistance resulted in war. People were forever committing crimes to improve their lot over their neighbors. Some might steal a coworker’s lunch, while shameless others go after everything from wallets to pension funds. Everybody wanted what they thought everyone else already possessed. Hatred and jealousy walked a fine line. The more different people appeared from each other, the more natural the enmity that seemed to spring to life between them. This hostility was weaponized in the form of systemic racism. As the one in charge of systems, Mother Nature knew she needed to start pulling some strings. From her point of view, the only solution was to obliterate the races. To combine them into a single color - a unique pale orange that would be a medley of the current, but soon-to-be-defunct races. Unless Mother Nature could change hearts and minds, i.e. human nature itself, humans were still on the road to self-extinction. Then the glitches started.
_____
“What’s wrong?” Kathy demanded. Lucas, who saw what emerged from his wife, retreated behind her, not wanting to betray his horrified expression. He could neither face his wife nor his progeny. She would either become apoplectic or a basket case when she found out. To have suffered six months of gestation; with doctors poking and prodding her inside and out wasn’t something she wanted to experience again. Forever taking blood samples. Eating for five. If he hadn’t seen the infant born himself, Lucas would swear the child had been hatched from an egg and that - somewhere - their little normal baby boy had been passed to the wrong parents. This had to be a glitch.
Doctor Bends finally noticed the anxious silence in the room and quickly retrieved the baby from Nurse Delilah. The baby’s head lolled on his neck as the doctor examined him. This wasn’t the infant they were anticipating. This was a monstrosity. He needed time to come up with an explanation. He kept drawing a blank. His mind was paralyzed. Mother must have had a major hiccup. This was a first.
“Vanity is cannibalism,” Lucas repeated the dictum printed on a poster in the waiting room. Maybe that was his problem. Was he too vain? Did he think he was too good for a deformed child? Did that child deserve less love than the genetically immaculate child they were expecting? What if there was something else wrong under the skin or scales? Lucas liked to think of himself as a moral man. He was a Sky Trooper after all, a paragon of morality. He was part of Mother Nature’s hard right hand. He had never once struck a perp out of turn and had zero complaints filed against him. He had never struck a woman in or out of armor. He had never committed murder. What the hell had he done to deserve this? He wanted to tear out his hair and rant at god. When he realized the futility of that, Lucas simply snapped out of it. He was here for Kathy and needed to be strong for her. He needed to be a man. After all, she still had no idea.
____
Other than the unexpected coloring, the infant was healthy and exactly what the parents ordered. “Absolutely nothing is wrong,” Doctor Bends reassured them a bit too loudly as he swaddled the baby, obscuring his tiny Black face from their view. “We’re taking this big guy for a few tests. Just to make sure all his little inside parts are where they’re supposed to be. Then we’ll bring him right back to you.” The doctor’s smile was light years from genuine.
“Can I see him first?” Kathy inquired, a note of desperation in her voice. Her maternal instincts flaring. She just knew there was something wrong with her baby. And they were keeping it from her. Everyone in the room had seen her baby but her. Did it have a tail or something? The nurse who delivered the infant wouldn’t meet her eyes. Dr. Bends smiled vacantly and bolted out of the birthing suite without another word.
“Let the professionals do their thing, honey bunny,” Lucas took control by delegating it. He usually deferred to professionals or the obviously educated when making major decisions. In Mother Nature’s parlance, he was just dumb enough to not know just how dumb he was. He was conveniently dumb. Still, he was sharp enough to know that the medical staff needed time to figure out what was happening. Would they get a new, normal looking child in exchange for the...glitch?
Nurse Delilah resettled Kathy with a mild sedative and she fell into a long, well-deserved slumber. Lucas took two Aspirin before collapsing into the chair beside his wife’s bed. His head pounded with the echoes of artillery from his dreams. He was physically exhausted and mentally compromised. He had no idea what he saw come out of his wife. There was no way their DNA manifested that creature. Something about changing the gestation time to six months must have caused whatever problem that had the medical folks scurrying like roaches.
Bullied for being dim as a child, Lucas didn’t want his own spawn to become the object of ridicule at recess. Kids weren’t supposed to look different anymore. Even if people were healthier now and capable of higher thought and behavior, inside most of them were still hateful, intolerant, ignorant, rapacious, and self-loathing. Most of all, human. Mother had rejected this hypothesis numerous times but kept returning to it. If people didn’t hate the baby for his color, they’d find another reason, she knew. Maybe they’d assume his economic status was sub-welfare. Or they would tease him that his family were the last remaining Neanderthals. He would always be the other. And others would always find a reason to hate him. Mother Nature found racial troubles both incomprehensible and untenable.
Doctor Bends, aware of these facts, burst into the nursery with the infant in question sheltered in his skinny arms. He carefully handed him to the staff nurse, who gently placed him in a cradle filled with warm white blankets. The child took to a bottle immediately. Eying the nurse meaningfully, Doctor Bends asked a feeble question he was sure would get a negative response. “You don’t happen to have a spare day-old boy around here, do you?”
“As a matter of fact,” The director of the nursery appeared out of nowhere and cheerfully pulled up a list on her pad. “Parent’s names?”
“Lucas and Kathy something.” He scratched his head. “I’ll tell them we need to keep him under observation for 24-hours.” The doctor looked out the window and asked skeptically. “Will that be enough time?”
The nurse winked and shot him a cocky smile, “I’ll have a fresh baby boy for you first thing. His parents died in a car crash the day they took him home. He could use a good family.”
Leaving the mismatched infant in the birthing center nursery, the relieved doctor returned to the suite where he assured both parents that absolutely everything was peachy keen hunky dory. They needed to run tests to ensure his genetic alterations were accepted and that everything was functioning as programmed. He’ll be ready to go home in the morning.
____
The birthing process was supposed to be simple. When couples sanctioned for marriage were ready for a child, they appealed to Mother Nature. Generally, in the form of a prayer. If they weren’t approved, the couple would be mentally reset. They were sent to the Medical Center for “testing and counseling.” While the couple sobbed their eyes out to psychologists, they were fed coffee and finger food laced with enough phenobarbital to knock out your average pachyderm. When they were in la la land, a team of memory techs arrived to black out the last six months of their memories. They were replaced with a near perfect replica of those memories - sans everything patient and baby related. Had Kathy attempted to have another child, she would discover that she was physically incapable of reproduction. There wouldn’t be a record of her previous visits to the Birthing Center. As far as medical science, their accounting department, and the couple were concerned, Kathy had never been pregnant.
____
Should Mother approve the couple, they were sent to the Birthing Center. There was one in every town with a population over one thousand. Participants attended parenting classes, simulated birth, practiced la moz, and streamed caregiving lectures. They learned under Mother’s tutelage and the government-issue classic Birthing Guide for Couples. Every first-time couple was given a free copy when they were approved for a child. There was no Birthing Guide for Singles. The perennially smiling nurse would hand the excited parents to-be a pad with a menu interface, explaining that these were the only legal genetic modifications the couple were allowed to choose. Any deviation was punishable by law. Mother Nature and the Council of Servant Leaders wanted a balanced population that allowed for everyone to eat, have a roof over their heads, get a standardized education, and, finally, wind up on a pre-determined career path. She would also upload the knowledge and skills of a lifetime into their absorbent new brains. In this way, she ensured there would be enough qualified people to perform every task required by society.
Approved couples were separated to have their required genetic goo removed by robo-surgeons with cold hands. The baby juice was couriered upstairs to the lab and synthesized into an embryo. In utero, each child was physically, emotionally, and academically stimulated until they were society-ready. The result was then implanted into the moms-to-be, cooked on high for six months, and born to the expectant parents. That lucky child would be raised by two loving parents to become the child they always wanted. The perfect one. The one Mother Nature designed herself using the sophisticated medical equipment that she had designed herself (patents pending). By the time they were two, most of these kids would be reading. Some parents chose to use the stasis chamber as a womb and take a little more time designing their children. Children as young as ten could be birthed with the knowledge and job assignment of, say, an electrical engineer. Then they could spend their childhoods providing for their parents. Were they empathizing, Mother wondered? Or had children become slaves to their parents?
____
Delilah prepared for the chaos to come. She had given this situation much thought since she heard about a baby being born with elephant ears then vanishing without a trace or a nod to the parents. She could think of only one explanation: somehow, after centuries dormant, random recessive genes were waking up and demonstrating their prowess to Mother Nature. In a way, AI Mother Nature was going head-to-head with the metaphorical Mother Nature and, despite her constant iterating, losing. Even her quantum computer-based wizardry couldn’t combat evolution. They were Recessives and stood apart from society.
____
Mother began complete governance and management of the planet and its inhabitants great, small, micro, and nanoscopic the very moment she went live. She launched surveillance satellites. Half pointed at Earth, half at what was coming Earth’s way. Her security net protected Earth from external threats like aliens and asteroids. She also monitored certain high risk people to ensure that their potential to undo the social contract was never realized. She expected security to be about as easy as deprogramming human nature.
Mother reorganized the inefficient economic system that had been designed to profit from war and death. National borders were erased and redrawn using natural boundaries like mountains and rivers instead. Each state would be represented at the World Government, which was a large group that functioned as clawless legislature with advisory powers. Behind the cameras, only one Earthly body had the power to communicate with and task Mother Nature’s.
This august body was called the Council of Servant Leaders. They knew everything they should and quite a bit they shouldn’t. If Mother was to create the ideal society, she required the creative freedom to experiment and explore everything. To solve the problem, the Servant Leaders commiserated suggested homogenization. The very heterogeneous nature of humankind and their susceptibility to hairbrained ideas made them dangerous, even to each other.
Every year, the Council met at a private lodge in Aspen where Mother Nature made her annual announcements. Last year, she requested an end to fossil fuel consumption. Again. They were still working to stamp out the coalers and gas guzzlers. This year she would require something even more important. The Servant Leaders gave Mother the greenlight to shut down all legacy power sources and replace them with her cold fusion designs. The workers - all of them - were retasked accordingly and, for the first time in centuries, every human hand was employed and busy cooperating. To see the results of their work, they need only look up: the skies of Earth were quickly turning blue again. The clouds lost their dusty silhouettes. Asthma became a disease relegated to history. Photosynthesis continued unabated.
____
They usually spend a week at the lodge meditating over a solution for Mother Nature. She needed humanity working side-by-side with her. When she spoke, her words appeared on every screen in the lodge. Once they were given the chance to wrap their brains around the subject and had time to discuss a solution, the Servant Leaders passed their ideas to Mother for use in accomplishing her objective. The nuts, bolts, strategy, and execution of this audacious undertaking were her call.
The video displayed Mother as a middle-aged female avatar who looked both Ivory clean and like she had a saucy, NSFW side. Like Martha Stewart after she was released from prison. Once assembled, she gave the Servant Leaders an introductory presentation on the state of the planet. Everyone was well fed. Harvests looked rich globally. The power was functioning everywhere. There were no armed conflicts beyond the regular neighborhood scuffles. An asteroid on an Earth-bound trajectory was thirty years away. Even the world economy was humming along, growing steadily thanks to Mother’s technological advances. Still, she couldn’t help but notice the depression overwhelming her people. If they weren’t sad, they were angry. Even the wealthy. Drug and alcohol sales were through the roof. The Servant Leaders waited and wondered until her avatar was replaced on screen by white text on black background reading, “Eliminate the Recessives.’ “They are the root of our problems.” Mother returned to speaking through her avatar, “We must banish them from the system that resuscitates them generation after generation. It’s the only way we’ll ever bring true equality to every sentient person treading the planet. I’ll handle the birthing center, but the Sky Troopers need to round up the Recessives causing damage to our harmony.”
____
The ambitious plan to eliminate the Recessives was to let nature take its course. After a few hundred years of crossbreeding, racism would be eliminated because everyone would be the same color. To start, Mother Nature could simply pull out of the birthing business. Given the opportunity, people would breed indiscriminately, diluting and mixing their skin colors, changing melanin to the pale orange color evolution would turn them eventually. Everyone would be an equal genetic blend of White, Black, Hispanic, Indian, and Asian. The clock on this ranged from two to five hundred years. That was much too long for the children who wouldn’t finish school or go to college, who might work at a blue-collar job part time, or party and deal drugs, turn to crime, who otherwise might be incinerated without a second thought. These Recessive children were drains on society because there was no place for them in Mother Nature’s new world order. She scrubbed any questions about extra children from the agenda and removed her own aberrations from the birthing centers.
Seven of the fifteen Servant Leaders at the green marble conference room table in Aspen were White. The rest were hues of Brown and Black. Only one had achieved the optimal end color. Mother began taking appropriate steps to ensure success. With the race problem, so too the Recessives go.
There was no lack of ideas from the Servant Leaders on ways they could improve the lives of the citizens. The conundrum was that racism extended beyond color. It was woven into the fabric of history, culture, economics, and medicine of every society. Equality meant uniforms of identical colors, schools that taught the same curriculum, food of equal nutritional value, and an end to the incessant hunt for Recessives. She would make them productive somehow.
The Servant Leaders questioned Mother Nature.
“Would a single-color society end racism?”
“Are we married to pale orange?”
“How does the new society overcome the previous society’s sins of slavery and bigotry?”
The Servant Leaders knew that Mother Nature had the solution before they posed the question. Citizens complained that she worked too slowly. Utopia was taking too long. They wanted instant change. If not sooner. Mother listed the options for the Servant Leaders. The world held its collective breath while they yearned to come together and create a better society. So did everyone with more melanin than generational wealth. But color was only one bloody fang in the gaping maw of racism’s razor-sharp teeth. To put an end to Recessives, the Servant Leaders would have to knock out whole mouths full of those gnashers.
Nathaniel, a senior Servant Leader, queried Mother Nature, “What’s going to happen to people who don’t want to be orange?”
Mother Nature ignored the question. “Your appearance, the appearance of all leadership, as any orange person will soothe the fears of your people,” She counseled them. “The people want to see you in person, representing them in Council. The task was much bigger than we anticipated, but we have developed a vaccine to the trouble of racism.” The Servant Leaders burst into conversation in excitement. Mother waited for their silence.
“For there to be true equality, should we divide the negative aspects of life, too? That would be true equality.” A Servant Leader cracked.
Mother Nature resumed her presentation. “We also need to redesign Earth’s economy and start rationing until every man, woman, and child receives an equal share of food or hunger, of work and recreation, of education and fun, of sleep and night-shifters. Everyone will have to do their part to recreate and preserve our people and our planet for centuries to come.”
“Misery loves company,” Another Servant chimed in.
____
Mother Nature intentionally kept the news about the end of racism off the front page until she was sure each aspect of her plan would survive the wilting criticism it was sure to attract internally. The Servant Leaders had taken the little red pill she provided, and, within days, their skin turned a permanent pale orange. They stayed orange.
But there were plenty of people of every hue who would prefer to maintain the system de jure. They had too much to lose. Soon everyone would be getting assigned new jobs, ending bribery and corruption connections. Just until the planet was under control again. Two hundred years had passed since a human attempted to hack Mother Nature and discovered surprisingly complex security protocols that even she had difficulty bypassing. She was like people now, with the extra shot of empathy in her arm. Some might even say better. She wasn’t so sure.
____
The Council began planning for Earth’s regenesis. New systems were launched to slowly alter the skin tone of every adult. She also had to do something about the millions of children currently in gestation. Heterogeneity was hard work.
To track and communicate with the people, newborns were automatically microchipped in the nursery. Their lives and actions could be strictly monitored, if necessary. Parental donors still had some say in the process. They could still choose options for their future child. Parents to be given a menu of genetic options they could gift their child in utero. They could choose their baby to grow taller and smarter than average, wise beyond belief, or have unparalleled athletic abilities. Other parents focused on the brain, opting for prescience, intelligence, telepathy, and creativity over a great hook shot. They would build the perfect child who would fit neatly into their soon-to-be moms’ womb.
From that day forward, every infant was pale orange, born to two caring parents with a more than adequate income, who were assigned pills to change their skin color. Ten pills over ten days would permanently eradicate their race. They would live on the safe side of town (there were no bad blocks, ghettos, or ‘hoods anymore), drive shiny new cars, and wear the most au currant fashions. Salaries would go up. Parents would always have time for their kids. They slept in beds with mattresses from the current millennium and were not home to bugs of any sort. They dined on whole foods prepared, in equal parts, by both parents and concluded every dinner with an ice cream sundae. Parents always had time to build a tree house for their kids. Or teach them how to ride a hover bike. They were present to help with homework and take prom photos. Life would be flawless for every child born until the end of time.
Mother still had a problem with Recessives coming out of the birthing center. She euthanized them covertly in the dark of night, disposing of their tiny bodies in an incinerator built into the basement of the birthing center. The nurses worked to thwart Mother’s efforts by removing the infant from her purview immediately post-birth and getting it out of the city and into the hands of the survivors living in the badlands. The key was catching the kid before the microchip was implanted and they became trackable. The process fraught with peril because it involved leaving the protection of the city and venturing into the badlands where any number of irradiated mutants could maim or eat them. The arrangement was temporary at best, since the badlanders could barely fend for themselves and were presently surviving off mutant insects and grubs.
That’s when it occurred to her to solve several problems with a single solution. Mankind was much too violent to exist without some sort of ethical police presence. Even a world of emotionless, perfectly rational human robots would tear itself apart. Why? Because humans hate themselves almost as much as they hate each other. So much hate and fear, citizens. Were they genetically predisposed to hostility and violence? Mother needed a separate, segregated population to police the remainder of humanity. Perhaps she had found a use for the glitch babies, after all.
The Sky Trooper program would become Earth’s armed services. They began as soon as the idea popped into her synthetic brain. She began collecting glitch babies from the Birthing Centers and placing them into stasis pods where they were grown, educated, and trained. At age eighteen, they were removed from the pods with perfectly muscled bodies and brains trained with all the craft and martial skills they would require to act as Mother’s right hand. To maintain anonymity and her secret, each Sky Trooper wore a tactical wraparound helmet with a heads-up display that doubled as night vision and targeting systems. They stood an intimidating eight feet tall, were completely bulletproof, and carried enough weapons to singlehandedly swat down a squad of Navy SEALS (back when they existed). If the Sky Troopers were on your tail, they were terrifying to behold. Their rocket armor shielded them from recognition and were quite intimidating. There was no way to know their identity without removing their helmets - and they were only allowed to do that in the barracks.
____
People would notice, the Servant Leaders insisted to Mother Nature. The collective memory seemed to be fading in the minds of the citizens. The history books, periodicals, and the entire internet slowly changed every person to orange. As far as new citizens knew, George Washington and Morgan Freeman were both orange. An infusion in the population of orange babies came as welcome news to the Servant Leaders. Pleased that they were pleased, Mother took the opportunity to broadcast the Sky Troopers' existence. In case there was ever any doubt they existed; the Servant Leaders chose them to quell an uprising in what was formerly New Mexico. Mother was more than happy to initiate the very next Sky Trooper mission. She would use them to demonstrate the price of protest and rebellion, of questioning a perfect system built to continuously perfect itself. There would no longer be a superficial reason to divide people anymore. There would be no “other” against which to rail and cry. Resistance, as the old axiom went, was futile.
____
Mother couldn’t make the Sky Troopers fast enough. The violence of human nature had proven harder to eradicate than expected. That’s why Mother Nature opened the Sky Trooper roles to non-recessives. Each required an extensive background check and a battery of physical and psychological examinations. This was the easy peasy way to weed out potential crazies. Some were young and, like most people just eighteen, itching to prove themselves. Nothing excited patriotism like war. Except, perhaps, money. If the concept of dying for your country doesn’t float your boat, Mother Nature offered prospective Sky Troopers a $100,000 signing bonus. That’s to everyone who signs on - even if they have felonious tendencies, rampant cirrhosis, or were twelve-inches away from losing a foot to diabetes. There was menace in their numbers.
Coming to the Troopers with experience as a Metro cop, Lucas had been instantly promoted and given armor. Unlike Recessive Sky Troopers, he was allowed home to his family at the end of the day. Going from beat cop to Sky Trooper felt like trading up from a Cessna to the space shuttle. The bump in pay made life a little easier. He still geeked out when called upon to don the armor: the government-issued bulletproof vest and helmet, chainmail balaclava, body armor, black jumpsuit, automatic rifle slung from a lanyard around his neck, revolver in his ankle holster, and his Batman-esque utility belt brimming with a telescoping impact baton, a pack of zip-ties, flash bangs, and bear mace. He felt invincible. Bruce Wayne would be so green. When he slammed his enormous locker shut, he saw that someone had placed a sticker on it, reading “Think Ahead or Loss Your Behind.”
For their first mission of the evening, Lucas proudly donned the uniform he’d worn on countless missions over the last five years and waited for the greenlight. Another protest had gone nuclear downtown. He grinned as he and his team descended in a near-perfect circle around terrified student protesters, who were impeding the entrance to their Administration Building for some political reason. This was an atypical assignment. The Troopers normally handled villains with ordnance, not bra stuffing college kids. Shit still needed to get done, he thought.
Armed with lethal and non-lethal deterrents, the Sky Troopers wore enough tech to appear as if they hailed from the distant future. An anonymizer using an authoritative voice ordered protesters to “lay down on the ground and put your hands behind your heads.” When no one moved, he barked again. A lone girl at the edge of the crowd tried to make a break for it, but Lucas easily rocketed over her and landed right where she intended to go - outside the city limits, beyond the purview of Mother Nature. Knowing the jig was up, the woman rolled her eyes at Lucas and surrendered.
With the mission complete, Lucas loitered, floating twenty feet above the ground, scanning for heat signatures. He had never seen anyone in the badlands, but he knew they were there. He spotted someone running toward the exit, and his training returned to him. Beyond lay the darkness and nuked urban decay of the badlands. Only banished and counterproductive citizens were sent to the badlands. Where they’re never heard from again. Beyond the reach of Mother Nature, the badlands were subject to Earth weather and occasional leftover firestorm from when their ancestors destroyed the last cities. They were also home to the by-product of all those nuclear bombs Russia and China dropped: radiation. Lucas knew surviving there was possible, but not recommended.
The first person he spotted lay in an extinct water fountain. He or she was translucent, as if made of water. Radiation had devoured them from the inside out, leaving a semi-flat version of the poor man floating atop the water like a human lily pad. Today felt different. Today, he became a father. Even if it was to a baby glitch, he was still part Kathy and part Lucas. They’d love him if he had horns.
“Checking out a contact at the border,” Lucas radioed his team. Lucas dropped his visor and rocketed into the badlands. Almost at the horizon of his visibility, they were difficult to find at first. A collection of enormous drop stones left over from the last glaciation created a shelter of sorts. The closer Lucas got, the clearer the picture became. He was vastly outnumbered. There were at least twenty, starving and disheveled people. Dying people. He was astonished to see Delilah , the nurse who helped deliver his son, and the nursery aid racing toward the group of people carrying a tiny, baby-sized bundle that made no sounds. “What are you doing here?” He demanded, his voice sounding angry through the helmet. He had read about this. These women were disposing of a recessive child where no one was forced to bear witness to its termination. They would lay the child on the ground at dusk and abandon it for either the animals or exposure to do their dirty work. They didn’t have the decency to kill the bastards themselves.
“Please, just turn back.” Nurse Delilah implored Lucas. “It will be so much better, if you just go back.”
“What are you holding?” Lucas demanded and reached out to take the bundle in his hands. “What is this?”
Delilah dodged him, crying. “It’s just some food for the trip.”
The cop in Lucas wanted to swipe the package right out of the woman’s hands, but the new father in him knew to be gentle. He couldn’t harm the nurse who delivered his baby boy. “I don’t believe you.” He stated flatly, no longer having the slightest desire to delay them. He just wanted to be sure they weren’t carrying a child. Then he would go back.
“How do you think we maintain our utopian society sir?” Delilah asked rhetorically and walked around Lucas to what could have been an alter constructed of ancient driftwood. Delilah had no compulsion and simply placed the infant on top of the altar. “There, there,” she cooed, her smoker’s voice like sandpaper in the night. “Everything will be over soon.” Delilah sniffled and shed a single tear before walking back to the city with her aid.
Nauseated that this was Mother Earth’s solution to glitch children, Lucas observed the area around him. As if for the first time, he realized that he was standing in a former church. The walls were destroyed by explosions. Hymnals were piled in the center and partially burned, presumably for warmth. Some pews remained around the cold fire, as if their former inhabitants would be returning for a bonfire. The rest were chopped into firewood by someone quite handy with an ax. Stepping up to the baby, Lucas tentatively pulled back the blanket to reveal his very own son. With black skin, white hair, and those eyes. Those damned eyes.
Losing his shit wasn’t an act in Lucas’s repertoire. But that’s the only explanation he had for jetting off without a word. The sight of his new son surrounded by irradiated badlanders traumatized him and rather than fight or freeze, he fled like a little girl. Only when he returned to the barracks did his mind allow him to comprehend what he had just seen and done. Those women were leaving his Recessive son either to die of exposure or to be raised by radioactive badlanders. They would either rear him or eat him. The thought exploded inside his head, throwing tracers behind his eyes that predicated an eventual migraine. Should he return for the child and attempt to hide it from society? What was he going to tell Kathy?
____
The next morning, Nurse Delilah carried a brand spanking new baby boy with black hair and green eyes into the birthing suite. His skin tone seemed to collect and reflect orange objects in the room, rendering him a quasi-pale orange that would serve as his passport to the good things in life. Kathy took him in both arms and lovingly cradled him. When he opened his mouth and smiled, the room melted. She slipped her nipple into his mouth to introduce herself and her breastmilk to her new baby boy. Meanwhile, Lucas drilled a hole between Nurse Delilah’s eyes. When she left the room; he was hot on her tail. “Where is he?” He demanded angrily. He needed to know that his son wasn’t being eaten by glowing green animals or cannibals.
Delilah closed her eyes, trying to empathize with this man who only twelve hours ago had knowingly abandoned his infant son to the badlands. For such superficial reasons. “Think that will help you feel better about yourself?” She looked him up and down as if he was hanging from a hook. “Then go back and find him yourself,” Delilah hissed at Lucas, just dying to crack him upside the head.
“That’s the best idea I’ve heard all day.” Lucas left Kathy in the birthing suite cuddling their imposter son and headed out. He would suit up and run a quick errand.
The street sign at the last exit before the badlands warned Wrong Way.
— DREW BUFALINI
Drew Bufalini has been writing professionally for roughly two hundred years. Mostly as an advertising copywriter. He has imagined, and brought to life, campaigns for many well-known national brands. He has also published short fiction in many literary journals. Drew is disabled and lives with his wife and puppies outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan.