The World Of Ideal Humans

Chapter Two: A Political Dilemma

The importance of politics has skyrocketed since 2039. The U.S. president had instated a new law, which requires that every time a woman is pregnant, her child has to go through CRISPR. There are several requirements for someone's child to be able to live without harm. They need to be modified to be intelligent, kind, objectively attractive, immune to all or most diseases, and other small requirements. One of the most important requirements was a small implant to be inserted into a newborn baby's brain. It is controlled by the government and has received incredible backlash. Fortunately, it is not able to control or track the specific thoughts of a person, but it can be used as a process of identification. Because of these new requirements, any child born before this law is exempt from genetic modification and will receive no consequences. However, they are still required to get the implant. Many people find this disturbing, and others find it as a new sense of hope for the human race. Personally, I think it is the cruelest thing the government could do to their people. This new law has been spread around the world, with more and more countries starting to instate it. My mom thinks the same way that I do, and we both agree that this new law is cruel and unnecessary. My dad disagrees. He agrees with this law and will stand by it until the day he dies. Every day, he asks my mom to have another child because I'm not "pure enough". Both my mom and my dad have received the implant as a requirement for their work, but I have not. Therefore, I am illegal and if I'm caught, my parents receive punishment and I have to be euthanized if I don't receive the implant within a week. For some reason, my dad sees me as a lost cause and will not allow me to get the implant. I find this extremely hypocritical of him, but I don't question it out of fear of being beaten or yelled at. My dad has gone through post-birth genetic enhancement or PBGE. It is not required as of now, but he is trying to force my mom into doing it as well as him. He works for CRI, which is a fitting name if I've ever seen one. The acronym stands for CRISPR Research Incorporated, which has been working on developing new enhancements for genetic modification. He has been featured in various magazines and news articles as the first person to ever go through PBGE, which he created. I am rarely allowed out of the house, so walking down this street was freeing for me. As the road came to a stop, I decided to turn around and head back. I started to walk home as a strange figure started to approach me from the side. I tried to ignore it, thinking it was just a person out and about, and kept on walking. I noticed the person starting to follow me, so I turned around quickly and stopped them in their tracks. "Who are you?" I asked. "My name is..." they suddenly stopped in the middle of their sentence and snapped to look right beside me. I whipped my head around, expecting to see a person or creature beside me, but didn't. I was confused, but when I turned around, the person I was just talking to had vanished. I started to sprint home and shut the door behind me. My parents both worked long hours, so I had time during the day to wander around the area and try not to be seen by anyone. I scurried up to my room and sat down at my desk, trying to make sense of what had happened just minutes ago. I eventually pushed it to the back of my mind and started on my schoolwork. I had always been confused about why my parents gave me schoolwork to do, as I only lived at home. I grasped concepts easily and took little time to master them. Whenever I finished an assignment, I would take an IQ test to make sure it was above the average of 180. I took it and realized that it had gone up by 5 points to reach a total of 244. Unfortunately, I had not even gotten close to the world record, which had changed from 228 by Marilyn Vos Savant to 301, accomplished by Rice Belinsky in 2037. This new requirement was for students in high school and college. If a person's IQ was under 180 after their first, second, third, or fourth year of high school, they would be executed to make way for a smarter generation. In college, it was different, with a person's IQ having to be over 190 to get in and stay above that in order to graduate. Luckily, my IQ had stayed above 200 since I was 11, making me one of the smartest in my state each year since then. Of course, I had to keep this information private. After I completed the test, I turned on my computer and started to play my favorite game, called Border Control. It is what it sounds like, anyone that plays is a border control officer and they have to complete tasks and puzzles to complete each level. They get harder in chronological order, with level 1 being the easiest and going up to level 120. I am currently on level 97, which I just started. I suddenly hear my dad come into the house. I know it's my dad because he always slams the door and runs upstairs to make sure I'm still in my room. He always comes home incredibly angry and paranoid for no reason. "NORO ARE YOU HOME?" he screams. "Yes dad I'm up in my room playing a game." Before he gets the chance to ask I reply to my own comment with "I also finished my work and measured my IQ; it went up by 5 points." He didn't seem impressed, even though it was higher than most people in the state for my age. He still finds something to yell about, however, but I just tune it out. He finally finished his lecture and went to his room to take his daily nap. This gave me time to try and look for the person I saw just a couple of hours earlier. I sprang out of my window at full speed and rolled onto the ground to break my fall. I quickly got up and started jogging quietly to avoid my dad's keen ear. Once I was on the same street I was walking on earlier, I began running at full speed to the place where I saw the person. The street we lived on was almost completely desolate. Only a few other houses were occupied in the neighborhood, so seeing a person out of their house is a rarity at best. I decided to scan the area before knocking on anyone's door. The farther I walked, the more uncomfortable and paranoid I felt; as if someone was watching me in the distance. After I had continued walking on this same road for what seemed like 30 minutes, I came across something I had never seen before. We had lived on this exact street for all of my life, and even before then as well. However, I had never seen this in my entire life. I looked up in amazement, trying to make sense of it. "I must be hallucinating," I said to myself. Right in front of my eyes, there was the biggest tree I had ever seen. The only other tree I had seen in person was when I was 7, so I don't remember it much. The sight of a tree in this climate and even on this earth was a rare sight. My neighborhood was one of the less polluted areas, at least compared to the rest of the state. Since seeing a tree was incredibly rare, I was even more shocked when I realized it had bright green leaves. They swayed in the wind, so colorful and full of hope. I looked down, and even the grass around the tree was almost a glowing green. I couldn't believe my eyes. As I looked up at the tree in all of its glory, I thought of all the times when the world was at peace. All of the times when I used to play in the grass, enjoying life to its fullest. But now, all I could see through the branches was sorrow, uncertainty, doubt, and worst of all; misery. The sky reflected what I felt inside. The tree reflected my past self. As I looked up at the gloomy, cloudy, dark sky, I noticed it starting to get darker and darker by the second. I decided to use my last hour or so to sit down and collect grass and leaves. "Maybe I could grow a sapling," I thought. Once I realized what I had thought, I knew this wasn't possible. While I was collecting leaves and patches of grass to take home, I felt something over my shoulder. I slowly turned around, as if I was in a movie scene. It was the person I had seen hours ago. "Who are you?" I asked again, but this time not expecting an answer. "My name is Bastian," he replied. We conversed for a while, walking closer and closer toward my house. Bastian was turning 16 in a day, and he was homeless of his own accord. It was getting miserably cold and dreary outside, so I invited him to stay at my house. I knew full well that he would have to hide because my parents would be furious if they knew I had even talked to someone without their permission. I snuck back inside my room from the same window I had left out of. I helped him climb inside, hoping that my dad was still asleep. I checked my computer, and to my surprise, I had only been out of the house for 10 minutes. "How is this possible?" I muttered. I decided that the time was a good thing since it was only 6:25. My mom got home at exactly 7:45, so I had just over an hour to find him a place to hide, get a pillow and blanket, food, water, and get back to my room. Our house wasn't the grandest, but we did have a small attic that he could fit in. I told him to stay in there and try to make as little noise as possible until I got back. I went downstairs, where I filled up a water bottle and made him a peanut butter and banana sandwich. I knew it wasn't much, but he seemed thankful when I brought it up to him. I went back downstairs to get one of my old blankets and pillows and went upstairs. We had an inflatable mattress in our attic, which took around 5 seconds to inflate. I helped him make the bed and set up a sort of table for him to eat off of. I gave him a lamp that I hadn't used for a while. The special part about this lamp was that it was connected to another lamp I had in my bedroom. I told him that whenever he tapped the lamp twice in any area, mine would flash and I knew to go upstairs and see what he needed. At this point, I had forgotten about the samples I took and anxiously searched for them in my pockets, fearing that I had lost them. I finally found them, and when I did, I made sure to prep them for clear epoxy to make sure I could have one shred of hope for this world whilst it collapsed. I was exhausted at this point, and I heard a gentle close of a door, which I knew was my mom coming home from work. I quickly headed out of my room to greet her. Afterward, I continued solidifying the leaves and grass in the epoxy. It was getting late, so I decided to go to bed and not waste time on dinner. I let the epoxy sit in my room so it would harden and be good to go in the morning. I got changed into my pajamas and climbed into bed. I shut my eyes, slowly drifting into sleep. Then I heard a loud bang.