Johnson R/evolution

A Mosaic Novel (Book One)
1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-1-61842-518-8
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 125 Seiten

People are starving. Biogenetic adaptations are prevalent amongst the privileged-and the poor are being ground to a sharp and dangerous point. This is the near-future US where in the struggle for survival citizens are pushed to the breaking point as relationships start to fracture along the lines of class and race. These are stories of the leaders and the followers, the victims, heroes, and the everyday people caught in history's wake, chief among them Dr. Ezekiel Carter, a genius in his field who decides to offer genetic reparations to those being left behind. In this world, what will become of the people at the fringes and more than that of humanity itself?

Autoren/Hrsg.

Johnson, Tenea D.

Leseproben

Orientation

“Welcome to Phylogenetics 101. I see we have some new faces on campus today,” Professor Szlasa, a graying wisp of a man in beige slacks and a matching button-down, stood in front of the class, leaning against his desk. He'd scrawled his name on the blackboard behind him and from where Ezekiel sat, it looked almost too perfect. Professor Felix Szlasa floated just to the left of the desk, like a huge name tag. When Szlasa mentioned ‘new faces’ he glanced over at Ezekiel and nodded slightly.

Fifteen-year-old Ezekiel shifted in his seat, hoping no one else had noticed. Bad enough that he felt like he stuck out; worse still, to be acknowledged for it. Ezekiel looked over at the Asian girl in the blue spring dress just in front of him. They were both noticeably younger than their classmates. She hadn’t been at the morning’s special orientation meeting with Ezekiel, but he felt sure Szlasa must mean her as well. Her gaze moved slyly around the room, taking it all in, and Ezekiel thought she too had moved a bit in her seat when the professor mentioned new faces. Ezekiel couldn’t help but notice that amongst the students filling the lines of seating they were the only two brown faces.

The girl looked his age or even a bit younger, probably not even old enough to drive – if her family had that kind of money; The exorbitant licensing fees kept Ezekiel from taking the test. He couldn’t really tell if she was wealthy by looking at her. All the most obvious cues were absent. Since he had arrived earlier in the week he'd noticed that in this town, the well-off usually had adaptations. He'd seen built-in drives, umbi ports, preternaturally handsome babies, and the occasional bold Adapts of the very wealthy: impossible heights and proportion, cranial boosters and things he didn't yet know the name for. Back at home in Erlanger, he could identify wealthy people by their cars, their clothes or frequent trips to the well-stocked grocery blocks hidden behind guard towers. Here things were utterly different. If Ezekiel had been a geeky outsider at home; here he felt he would find new levels of isolation.

He looked around. At least half the kids in the room had small ports at their wrists. If the girl had adaptations they weren’t obvious, which could mean she didn’t come from wealth or that they’d gone the genetic route prenatally, meaning her family had a quite a bit of money – or even that their religion precluded any tech in the flesh. He rested his gaze on her, trying to decide which it might be.

She had thick, dark hair that fell just past her ears, but he saw no ports there. Perhaps hidden by the black-framed glasses? The girl drummed her fingers once on her desk – shiny, manicured fingernails that contrasted with her light brown complexion. As Ezekiel considered her, she glanced back his way and caught him looking. He quickly shifted his attention back to the lecture.

“This semester we’ll touch on many topics, as tends to happen when discussing the history of creation.” Here the professor waited for a polite chuckle from the students. “In terms of evolution, one would think it's best to start at the beginning,” Another pause. Ezekiel looked down at his handheld on the desk, checking the time.

“In our study, we’ll be doing something slightly different than you may be used to. We'll not focus on evolution as a conscious force with agency, seemingly making decisions. This particular approach, though common and exceedingly convenient, is ultimately quite unscientific as there is an inherent personification of nature at the least and a reliance on shadowy notions of God perhaps at most.” Ezekiel heard noises of disapproval from the back of the room. The professor took no notice.

“Instead,” he continued, “we'll look at it as a process that is natural.” He scooted back so that he was sitting on the desk and slowly swept his gaze across the room.

“This means it is both predictable and unpredictable and above all else, a means of survival. Life in all its forms is all about and perhaps essentially is survival.” Professor Szlasa gave another meaningful look; this would be a long class indeed Ezekiel thought.

The professor stood up and walked to the blackboard behind him.

“So we begin with the definition of evolution.” He wrote in the same nearly illegible scrawl just below his name: The means to promote the probability of survival. He turned back to face them.

“Evolution can be prompted by many things.” He held up his pointer finger. “One: it can be the result of steady differences and improvements from one organism generation to the next as necessary in a changing environment. This kind of evolution is dependent on the life span of generations as well as the rate of change in the environment which defines the necessary rate of adaptation. In this way, evolution shows us that organisms often have to get through their challenges, not over them. But there are exceptions to this rule. There are jumps.” The second finger came up.

“Two: Evolution is also prompted by unique cataclysmic events. So while sometimes these changes are prompted by forces eons in the making, at others the catalyst is as sudden and unexpected as a stray comet. Often it happens in jumps and starts, and from different places.”

A hand shot up in front of Ezekiel. Professor Szlasa ignored it.

“It's only with the luxury of hindsight and proper method that we can look back and call it evolution, say that it’s a discernible narrative, recognize it as a road that even now we are walking. Just a few decades ago, most people would have said human evolution was at a kind of standstill. Now this is largely a matter of our own inadequate perspective, but there are varying schools of thought. One says that Humanity has mastered nature. Even the ravages of global warming have been contained to unfortunate locales where technology has not yet made nature obsolete as a formidable foe – with the exception of a few megastorms and the like.”

The hand slowly went down, followed by an audible sigh.

“These jumps in evolution and the transitional lineages that accompanied them are only evident to us in the fossil record. That’s the only way we know it happened. But now with the advent of genetic adaptations, evolution is happening beyond nature’s dictates, making this the most exciting time in history for phylogenetics. Professor Szlasa smiled. “One wonders what fossils will we leave behind.”

An alarm blared. Or rather a vibration and simultaneous cacophony of noise filled the room. Ezekiel had never heard or felt anything like it. He jerked his head up to look at the plastic horn speakers in the corner of the lecture hall. But those sirens were silent.

The vibration shot across his desk. It buzzed. The alarm, he recognized as he looked down at the handheld, was not one uniform sound, but many, an explosion of noise. It was his handheld and everyone else’s going off at the same moment. He tried to turn his handheld off. The screen reacted to his touch, but the noise continued. He looked around and saw that it was the same for everyone in the room. Students began to stand up from their seats. Some eyed their handhelds suspiciously.

The girl caught his eye. She was removing the battery from her phone as she looked at the exit in the back of the room. The professor spoke up, above the din.

“Let me just check with the administration for a bulletin,” Professor Szlasa yelled over the din.

Suddenly the noise stopped. There was a second of silence and the handhelds all went off again, this time louder. When Ezekiel looked down at his screen he saw a clock counting down: 5:00, 4:59, 4:58.

“What the fuck?” he heard disbelievingly from the woman next to him. From the other exclamations and murmurs in the room, it seemed that everyone’s handheld was ticking down. The data port kids held their ears; they squeezed their eyes shut. After a few seconds Ezekiel realized that the clock must be counting down in their heads.

The speakers in the corner of the room crackled to life.

“All students, administrators, faculty, and staff – in a calm and orderly fashion – please report to Dunley Square.”

The students began to collect their things and make their way to the exit. Ezekiel stood and grabbed his bag. With her pack already slung across her shoulder, the girl moved past him and toward the back door; through the small, oblong window in it, Ezekiel could see the hallway was empty and all was still. He could hear the voices of students in the other classrooms and their chairs scraping the floor. In his own class, the first person to reach the exit, a lanky boy with brown hair, twisted the handle and pulled so hard that his fist flew back and he hit himself in the gut. Cursing, he tried it again. But the door didn’t budge. He looked back at them all with wide eyes and tried it once more. The door’s airtight seal didn’t break. The next girl in line tried, and the next. The door stayed closed.

Ezekiel tried to dial out on his handheld. No signal. The clock was at 3:58.

“It’s the Knights,” someone said in a tight voice high as a whisper.

“Or the Handouts,” another voice countered.

Had the reparations factions escalated so quickly? Ezekiel wondered. The Knights’ tactics were usually more along...