Robin Cook - Abduction

“Of course,” Arak said. “That’s why we are here, so you can see for yourselves.”

Slowly the group walked down an aisle several hundred yards long with lines of spheres on either side. Suzanne was fascinated and appalled at the same time. Each sphere contained a floating embryo of varying size and age. Plastered to the base of each sphere was an amorphous, dark purple placenta.

“This is all so artificial,” Suzanne said.

“Indeed,” Arak said.

“Is all reproduction in Interterra done by ectogenesis?” Suzanne asked.

“Absolutely,” Arak said. “Something as important as reproduction we’re not about to leave to chance.”

Suzanne stopped and looked in at an embryo no more than six inches in length. She shook her head. Its tiny arms and legs were moving as if swimming.

“Does the process trouble you?” Arak asked.

Suzanne nodded. “It’s mechanizing a process I think that’s best left to nature.”

“Nature is uncaring,” Arak said. “We can do so much better, and we care.”

Suzanne shrugged. She wasn’t about to get into an argument. She started walking again.

“These are like the spheres you guys were in,” Perry said to Richard and Michael.

“No shit!” Richard said.

“Please!” Suzanne barked irritably at Richard. “I’m getting tired of the language you fellows seem compelled to use.”

“Sorry to offend your majesty,” Richard shot back.

“These containers are similar but not the same,” Arak said quickly. The last thing he wanted was any kind of an altercation in the spawning center.

Suzanne stopped abruptly and peered into one of the spheres. She was aghast at what she saw. Inside was a child who looked at least two years old. “Why is this child still in the sphere?” she questioned.

“It’s perfectly normal,” Arak assured her.

“Normal?” Suzanne questioned. “At what age are they…” she struggled for the right word, “decanted?”

“We still say born,” Arak said. “Or, as a more technical term, we say emerge.”

“Whatever,” Suzanne said. Seeing the child imprisoned in the fluid-filled sphere made her shiver with nausea. It seemed so cold, calculating, and cruel. “At what age are the children freed?”

“Preferably not until four,” Arak said. “We wait until the brain is mature enough to receive the mindprint. We also don’t want the brain cluttered with unorganized natural input any more than necessary.”

Suzanne exchanged a look with Perry.

“Come!” Sufa called out. She beckoned them over. “There’s an emergence imminent. I’ve tried to delay it as much as possible; you’ll have to hurry.” Sufa turned and darted back in the direction she’d come.

Arak urged the group to follow with the intent of passing quickly through a room he called the imprinting room in order to get to the emergence room beyond. But Suzanne faltered on the imprinting room threshold taken aback by the spectacle.

The room was a quarter the size of the gestation room. Instead of sealed spheres with embryos the space was filled with transparent tanks containing angelic-looking four-year-olds. Each child was suspended in fluid but in a fixed position. Umbilical cords and placentas were still present despite the children’s relatively advanced ages.

“I’m not sure I want to see this,” Suzanne said as Arak gently prodded her.

The others silently gathered around the first tank with mouths agape. The child’s head was immobilized as if prepared for stereo tactic brain surgery. His eyes were held open with lid retractors, and the eyes themselves were fixated with limbal sutures. From a gunlike apparatus, beams of light were directed through the side of the transparent tank and into each of the child’s pupils. The beams flickered with a rapid, alternating frequency.

“What’s happening here?” Perry asked. It looked like torture.

“It’s perfectly safe and painless,” Arak said. He joined the group and motioned for Suzanne to do likewise.

“The kid looks like he’s being shot with an arcade gun,” Michael said.

“From your violent culture I can understand why that would be your assumption,” Arak said. “But it couldn’t be further from the truth. To extend the previous analogy about downloading that I used at the death center, this child is merely receiving the download of a mindprint from an individual whose essence had been stored in Central Information. What you are seeing here is the recall procedure.”

Suzanne advanced slowly with a hand over her mouth. She felt like a child at a scary movie: afraid to watch but unable to take her eyes away. Gazing at the immobilized toddler she shuddered. For her, the image was the embodiment of biotechnology gone amuck.

“As you saw at the death center,” Arak continued, “it only takes seconds to extract the mindprint. But implanting it is another matter. We have to rely on a primitive technique using low-energy laser since no one has ever come up with a better access route than the retina. Of course, the retinal route makes sense since the retina is embryonically an out-pocketing of the brain. The process works, but it’s not fast. In fact, it can take up to thirty days.”

“Jeez!” Richard commented. “The poor kid has to be strung up like that for a month?”

“Believe me, there is no suffering involved,” Arak said.

“What about the child’s own essence?” Suzanne asked.

“We’re giving him his essence as we speak,” Arak said, “along with an extraordinary fund of knowledge and experience.” He smiled proudly.

Suzanne nodded, but not in agreement. She saw the process as pure exploitation. For her it was a kind of parasitism, attaching an old soul to an innocent newborn. The mindprint was abducting the infant’s body.

“Arak! Hurry!” Sufa called insistently from a doorway at the opposite end of the room. “You’re missing the event!”

“Come on!” Arak urged to the group. “This is important for you to see. It’s the finished product.”

Suzanne was happy to break off from the disquieting image of the fixated child. She hurried after Arak, purposefully avoiding looking into any of the other tanks. Donald, Richard, and Michael lingered, mesmerized by the sight. Michael lifted his finger and reached out with the intention of interrupting the laser beam. Donald batted his hand away.

“Don’t screw around, sailor!” Donald growled.

“Yeah,” Richard said, “the kid might miss his piano lessons.” He laughed.

“This is freakin’ weird,” Michael said. He walked around the tank to see if he could see into the barrel of the laser gun.

“Well, look on the bright side,” Richard said. “It’s a lot easier than going to school. If it doesn’t hurt nothing, like Arak says, I would have gone for it. Hell, I hated school.”

Donald looked at Richard scornfully. “As if I couldn’t have guessed.”

“Come on!” Arak called back to the three men from the distant doorway. “You need to see this.”

The three men hurried after their hosts. In the next room they found Arak, Sufa, Suzanne, and Perry standing around a satin-upholstered area at the base of a stainless steel slide. The slide came out of the wall; its upper end was closed off by double swinging doors. Sitting in the center of the cushioned depression was a darling four-year-old girl already dressed in the typical Interterran manner. It was apparent she’d recently arrived by sliding down the slide. A number of worker clones were in attendance.

“Welcome, gentlemen,” Arak said to Donald and the divers. He pointed to the little girl. “Meet Barlot.”

“Hey, sugarplum,” Richard said in squeaky, babylike voice. He reached out to pinch the girl’s cheek.