Marilyn Peake - The Other

There was aerial footage of people in a place called New Orleans, Louisiana stranded on rooftops spelling out messages asking for help. Their homes were surrounded by floodwaters as high as second floors and attics. It was haunting.

The tune-out device had been invented to lower the intense empathy that came with our mutated genes. I’d wished we could turn them back on. They never eradicated decent amounts of empathy. They just lowered it to a comfortable level when dealing with extremely painful situations others were in. Too much empathy often rendered it impossible for us to help in situations where action was needed. We became paralyzed.

The film showed a wide variety of weather-related tragedies that occurred in the Near Apocalypse. Fires and droughts in food-producing parts of the world led to mass migrations of people desperate for enough food and water to survive. Countries began enacting laws to keep foreigners out. People died by the thousands. Scenes showing people starving to death—their faces gaunt, their eyes and stomachs bulging, bones clearly outlined where they would normally be covered by layers of fat and skin—were especially hard to watch.

The most painful part of the film showed emaciated infants dying in their mother’s arms—veins protruding beneath the skin of their skulls, ribs pressing against taut flesh, arms and legs as thin as sticks, eyes bulging with a look of horror at the only reality those infants had ever known. This part affected me so deeply that I experienced terrible nightmares after going to sleep that night. I woke up covered in sweat and screaming. In my dream, I’d traveled back in time to a village where there were hundreds of infants in this condition. Their mothers had begged me to give them food and formula for their babies. I refused to do it. I told them rather haughtily that I could not violate the Law of Noninterference. I treated them as though they were immoral for asking me to do that. When they continued to beg, I turned down my empathy, swallowed AgStim and murdered their children. I woke up gasping for air.

The instructional film showed mothers and children crossing miles of desert—on foot, riding even on the roofs of trains or in the trunks of cars—and families risking dangerous boat rides across miles of ocean to bring their families to places where they could thrive. They were repeatedly turned away for not being legal citizens of the places they were trying to enter.

A Mexican boy and his mother, exhausted and dirty after walking miles of desert in extreme heat to reach the United States, were shot by a guard on the U.S. side of the border before they even crossed it. Their bodies were left to bake and rot in the blistering sun. Bobcats and wolves and coyotes found them and fed on their flesh. For the non-human animals, it was a feast, a celebration. It was the natural law of survival of the fittest.

I pondered laws. People back then had tribal laws designed to protect their own kind. We have the Law of Noninterference. We aren’t allowed to kill people from a different time period, but we can certainly watch them die and do nothing to help. We’re expected to do that. What if the Law is wrong? What if the universe is a test? What if we’re supposed to right the wrongs of the past in order to fix the universe and pass the ultimate test? If this is true, our generation will fail, as all the generations before us have failed.

Twice, I had watched my father die. I had been there when I knew he was about to be poisoned. I had done nothing to help. What if that was my own personal test—not only from the TTA, but also from the universe? What if the universe’s test was more important?

Dr. Molyneux turned off the video downloads. Our contact lenses went back to normal. She said, “That was tough to watch, I know. It was important, however. It’s a history lesson to prepare you for your first two missions. It showed you a few events from the first Near Apocalypse caused by the human race. As those situations accelerated and got much worse, scientists worked on a variety of ways for the human race to adapt and survive. A few settlements were established on Mars, but they didn’t succeed. Everyone perished due to accidents in the inhospitable environment and countries lost their motivation to fund additional settlements. We’re the result of another experiment: major changes made to the human genome, so that we create some of our own food through photosynthesis. A major side effect of the photosynthesis: our skin color changed from shades of tan to shades of green. But it solved the food shortage problem. People used to eat three huge meals a day plus snacks. They had sandwiches that were 1,000 calories each, even drinks with that many calories. Can you imagine?”

No, I could not. I felt queasy just thinking about it.

Dr. Molyneux continued, “We’re now facing the second Near Apocalypse caused by man. You know what the world is like outside of elite enclaves like this one. People are once again starving. We’ve had a huge population explosion generation after generation. And we’re encountering a serious issue that the scientists of what is now known as the Green Genome Project did not foresee. Having plant genes spliced into human genes has over time bred too much passivity into us. Drugs like AgStim were supposed to be the answer, but they’re not a long-term solution. They cause mental illness and cancer. These drugs have led to extreme aggression and homicides. And they’re addictive—not immediately, but definitely after continued use. So, you are all going back to different points in time before the Green Genome Project occurred to collect blood and tissue samples. These will be used to splice modified genes for human aggression back into our gene pool. If the human race is going to survive, this needs to be done.”

She gave us time to absorb that information.

Then she said, “Your first mission is to go back to the moment when mothers gave birth to the first babies with successfully modified genes, the first babies with photosynthetic capabilities. That was not handled well. Because human beings back then had persecuted others with skin colors a different shade of tan than their own, scientists feared that babies with green skin would be killed. There were tribes in East Africa that had reacted horribly to people born without pigment. Here, let me show you what they looked like.”

The image of a young boy with skin as white as snow and blue eyes and another image of a woman with pure white skin and red eyes flashed before our eyes.

Dr. Molyneux said, “People in certain East African countries believed that albinos like this carried special powers. They believed that albinos were ghosts or demons, and that using their body parts in potions would bring great luck. People hunted the albinos and hacked off parts of their bodies—arms, tongues, genitals, any kind of part—to make their potions. There was good reason to hide the first generation of green-skinned photosynthetic babies away in a secret location. The mothers were all told that their babies had been born dead. It was believed to be the best way to protect the generation designed to save the human race. Maybe it was. But scientists failed to set up adequate mothering conditions for these babies. Many had impaired cognitive development and emotional problems, which became apparent in childhood and plagued them throughout their lives. You’ll all see this firsthand on your initial mission, so that you can advise on the babies born from our new gene-splicing experiment. Babies won’t be taken away from their mothers, but there may be other important things to look out for. Your second mission will be to go to different locations and time periods to gather blood and tissue samples for gene-splicing. You’ll need to do this in ways that are humane. Further instruction will follow on this. For now, I’m going to notify each of you as to where you’ll be going for your second mission. Take a picture of the time and place when it appears on your lenses. Your assignment for tonight is to research that time-place location. You’ll receive more precise information on your exact destination in the next few days.”