Richard Powers - Generosity

The audience goes wild. Stone sees the future. The race is going to go down. But it will go down laughing. Oona blushes like only the Irish can. Along with 140 million other people, Stone wants to protect this woman from her own heart.

“So, yeah. I’m dating this guy, and I’m wondering if you can tell me whether he’s really as cheerful, way deep down, as he seems to be right now?”

Kurton’s smile isn’t afraid to hint. Someday we’ll all know more about one another than anyone knows about herself.

Oona passes the mic. One of the few men in the audience asks if constant happiness might actually be risky. The audience applauds. The radio psychologist nods and says that people who rate themselves as a ten are less productive than those who call themselves an eight. Kurton asks, “Is that such a bad thing?” The monitors murmur HMM just before the audience does.

A pretty, terrified brunette not much older than Thassa asks how soon science will be able to turn sad genes into happy ones. Kurton grins and says he’s never been very good at predicting the speed of science.

Then a slim, tall, poised woman nearing forty stands and addresses Kurton. “My husband and I are trying to have a child through in vitro fertilization.” The audience falls quiet. “Genetic counselors say we can determine which of the fertilized embryos might have incurable monogenetic diseases. Can we now also tell which ones have the best chance of being happy?”

Oona’s arms are all over the place. “Oh my God! Can you do that?”

It’s not clear whether she means technically or legally. Kurton demurs, apologizing. And the audience murmurs something the monitors don’t prompt.

A creature grips Stone’s arm. He turns to Candace. Her face blanches. Her life’s work is slipping away from her in an arms race of bliss. “They’re buying it,” she whispers. The wisdom of crowds has turned on her. All Stone can do is reach across his chest and touch one limp hand to her right shoulder. She grabs it in both of hers.

“Okay. Hold on!” Oona the sane and suspicious, Oona the levelheaded avenging angel of common sense crosses her hands in a T. And Yes , my two throwback characters hope: she’ll stop the madness now. The most influential woman in the world will buy humanity another twenty years of grace before the species splits into Ordinary and Enhanced. “So what’s the catch? I mean: screening embryos? How much is something like that going to cost?”

An Ah! escapes the audience, then ripples through millions of people in seven time zones, at the speed of broadcast.

“Good question,” Kurton says, rubbing his head. “My company is thinking hard about exactly that question.”

“What do you think?” Oona asks, peering out into the black abyss of dollying machines. Stone thinks she’s putting the matter up for public auction. But she narrows her gaze to the slender forty-year-old on the verge of in vitro. “How much would you pay to pick your child’s profile?”

“I don’t know,” the woman says. “Parents already pay hundreds of thousands to give their children advantages.”

Everyone talks at once. Oona takes forty seconds to reestablish order. She’s dazed, like she doesn’t believe any of this, and then like she does, like we’ve just set out from this world toward something glorious and paradisiacal. At last she falls back into her Everywoman look, still crash-tested but conditioned by a lifetime of biannual breakthroughs to believe that every story will still happen, in time. Through the corner of a mouth that can no longer tell which way to twist, she says, “You heard it here first, friends. The question is whether you’re ready for it! Are we closing in at last on the thing we’ve been looking for from the beginning? More, after this.”

During the commercial break, a start-up down in New Mexico publishes an association study on predisposition to insomnia. An Illinois university lab secures more funding to study the suicide risks of three leading antidepressants. And a Bay Area biotech company prepares to announce a genetic test that will tell anyone their odds of developing bipolar disorder. “We’re not claiming this is our ticket to Stockholm,” the CEO tells his board. “We do, however, believe it offers people more value than any other diagnostic now on the market.”

While the cameras rest, Oona lets her guests debate, just to keep everyone happily on edge. Candace leans over to Stone in the dark. Her warm breath swirls in his ear. “Can we move to another planet?” He wants to tell her yes, anywhere. But multibillion-dollar deep-space probes have already laid claim to all the best reachable ones.

The audience starts to cheer before Stone realizes the real show has returned. “Welcome back,” Oona says, perched on the arm of the emerald sofa. “Today we’re all about the secret of happiness! And right now, I want you to meet a remarkable young woman you may have heard about. Until now, she’s been known only by her pseudonym, Jen. She’s the woman who our guest, Dr. Thomas Kurton, after a four-year study, says may just possess one of the best genetic signatures for personal well-being. How does it feel to be born with what the rest of us can only dream about? Let’s find out. Friends, please welcome the woman with all the right happiness genes, Miss Thassadit Amzwar.”

Thassa stumbles from the wings, squinting in the klieg lights’ blaze. A gasp comes from the house: she’s foreign . She’s wearing a pair of tight green straight-leg jeans and a puffy white Berber blouse embroidered with rainbow around the collar and wrists. She has on every piece of good-luck silver Russell has ever seen her wear. Those onstage clap along with the audience. Thassa sits on the sofa, leaning forward, legs together, peering out into the blackness. She spots her friends and waves. When the clapping quiets, she says, “Why are you all cheering? I haven’t said anything yet!”

Stone presses his eyes and Candace starts to cry. Everyone around them breaks out in a new, delighted ovation.

Nine minutes of television-a broadcast eternity. Watching the scene unfold over the shoulder of her own show’s cameraman, Tonia Schiff couldn’t help feeling, I’ve seen this film before . She could have written the spectacle’s script herself. Thassadit Amzwar came out onstage to a rock anthem, as if some trained seal of elation. The ingenue sat down, surrounded by her examiners, before an audience cranked up on a network high, teetering between the two primal feeding frenzies of hope and doubt. And as in every version of this movie that Schiff had ever seen, some well-meaning but helpless figure lurked on the boundaries of the audience, filled with shameful complicity. At least she was off camera this time.

The Algerian woman sat in the eye of the churning show, far away in an impenetrable place, pulling an imaginary shawl over her shoulders. Schiff marveled at the self-possession, freakish for a woman of any age, let alone twenty-three. In another era, Thassadit Amzwar might have been celebrated as a mystic. The famous host dangled questions in front of her like twine before a cat.

O: Would you call yourself one of the happiest people ever born?

TA: Of course not! Why would I call myself that?

O: You know what I’m asking.

TA: I feel very well. Very happy to be alive.

O: And you feel like that all the time?