Reconception: The Fall (2 page)

After the initial celebrations were over and people
had settled down to underground living, a spirit of discontent
settled down with them. Guilt stalked even the most arrogant and
self-important chairmen and politicians. They had destroyed a
world. And even if they could not blame themselves personally, they
could no longer deny their parts in that destruction. They had
survived, yes, but at what cost?

With guilt, came remorse and the decision to do
something to repair the damage.

For years, heady dreams of restoring the earth to
her former glory were all that sustained them. There was no movie
or computer simulation that could take the place of basking in the
sun, no virtual reality to equal a starry night by the sea. Their
claustrophobia spurred them on.

Evie and Garret returned often to that spot on the
hillside. They never stayed Outside too long, but they managed to
explore the area thoroughly. They took secret soil and water
samples to study in the laboratory. They lay in the grass and
contemplated the stars at night. They delighted in the spring,
summer and fall. Winter, mild though it was, surprised and
intimidated them. The first time they made love, it was under the
sun.

They knew Outside was not safe. They took four times
the regular dose of their vitamins and massive doses of vitamin C,
knowing this would help protect them from carcinogens and
ultraviolet rays pouring through the inadequate ozone layer. They
reinvented sunscreens and sunglasses and covered themselves
carefully before leaving the shelter of the habitat.

They studied tenaciously, ceaselessly. They studied
every science and became expert in all of it: New Scientists. By
the time they reached their twenties, they were given their own
laboratory and free rein to pursue their interests.

They designed microbes
that would eat particular hydrocarbons and excrete ozone into the
upper atmosphere where it was needed. If they could rebuild the
ozone layer, plant life would begin to prosper once more, and that
would mean more oxygen and less CO
₂
.

They worked on the design
of a plant, which would feed on heavy metals that had been
deposited at the bottoms of rivers and lakes. Using the most modern
genetic techniques, they engineered a plant that could survive and
even thrive despite excessive UVB radiation, turning
CO
₂
into
O
₂
more rapidly than any
other plant.

It took a year, but it was terribly important. They
named it Spring, and took loving care of it and its descendants,
even planting it Outside and sowing its seeds on the wind. But they
knew the task was monumental, and that even though thousands of
experts were working on it, it would take such a very long time to
make a difference.

Within the confines of their laboratory, they
designed a miniature ecosystem that had some similarities to earth.
But they realized it was simplistic and lacked the variety of
genotypes that made up earth’s myriad life forms, or at least the
ones remaining. One fifth of all species of plant and animal life
had vanished utterly from the world by the year 2000, and almost
half were gone by 2030, when, in preparation for their retirement
to the underground, scientists had hastily collected genetic
material from all over the world.

Most life forms that had become extinct had
disappeared from the rainforests. So little study had been done
before these fragile ecosystems had been so ruthlessly ripped apart
that Evie and Garret couldn’t even guess what part these missing
links had played in the system. There was no way to know, and the
tragedy was that without the variety, it was possible that the
system couldn’t work.

The natural cleansing, recycling and balancing
mechanisms of the biosphere might not operate in their absence,
just as the processes of a human body, lacking a single enzyme,
could be hopelessly disrupted. Evie and Garret might personally be
able to genetically engineer a plant a year, but estimates were
that earth had supported over 4,000,000 species of plant and
animal, most of which, by 2120 were dead, dying or mutated.

One night as they sat in the lab, Garret threw his
pad across the room in despair, “It can’t be done this way!” he
shouted, “Even with the capacity of the human brain to make
trillions of connections, there just isn’t enough. It’s like trying
to hold the ocean in a wineglass. We’d have to link twenty brains
together to even begin to make a dent in the knowledge we need to
do this job.”

Evie looked up from her microscope and studied him as
his words penetrated. “Garret, that’s a good idea.”

“What, linking twenty brains together?”

“Yes.”

“Evelyn,” he said in exasperation, crossing the room
to pick up his pad. “That would be as big a job as trying to
untangle the connections of this ecosystem.”

“Maybe. But what if we just linked two brains
together?”

Garrett stood there watching her. Her hair glowed in
the light like a sheet of pale gold. “Hon, I hate to break this to
you, but we don’t have the slightest idea how to do that
either.”

“So? We’re not getting anywhere
like this,” Evie said. “At the rate we’re going, we’ll be able to
venture outside on a permanent basis in about 10,000 years, always
assuming Mother Earth
wants
to give humankind another chance.”

“Maybe we should be working on
changing animals—you know, adapt them to taking in
CO
₂
instead
of oxygen,” Garrett said, sitting down at the desk across from her
station.

“No less complicated than trying to fix the earth or
networking brains,” Evie said, slipping the slide out of the
microscope and then bending forward to release the tension that
always built up in her back when she was concentrating. “You're
right though,” she added as she stood up. “We need to take another
tack. We can’t do this microbe by microbe. We need a more holistic
way of defining the system we’re trying to create and ....”

Garrett threw a paper clip at the wastebasket and
stood up, too edgy to sit. “We’ve already got models like that,” he
argued.

“Yes, but they’re too simplistic.”

“But that’s exactly what I’m saying. We haven’t the
knowledge, skill, or a computer large enough or intelligent enough
to do it. It’s too complex.”

“So what do we do?” she said, looking directly at
him.

She’s done it again,
he thought.
Picked up my
thought and carried it forward
. “We change
direction,” he said, smiling. “So. Where exactly do you envision us
heading?”

Evie laughed. “Same place we’ve always been going:
into the unknown.”

“I think we need to work on a smaller scale,” he
insisted.

“You mean larger, don’t you?”

“No, I mean smaller than the whole world.”

Evie grinned, “And I mean bigger than a
microbe.”

“Well, I’m glad we’re in agreement,” Garrett said,
laughing. “How about a plant?”

“How about an animal?”

“How about a human?”

There was a short silence as the
implications of this ran through their minds. Evie broke it with a
sudden deluge of ideas. “It should be a plant that can survive
surface conditions. It should consume CO
₂
at a rapid rate and excrete large quantities of oxygen. It
should not need too much water ....” She stopped to
think.

“It should provide nourishment,” Garret stated.

“For whom?”

“Some people think there are still people and animals
living up there.”

“Do you?” Evie asked.

“We’ve been up there.”

Thoughtfully, she chewed the tip of her nail and
looked at Garret. “That’s true. Some people may have been tough
enough to survive, just like the plant life we’ve seen.”

“And insect life and microbial and fungal life ...
..”

“I think you’re right; it
should
provide
nourishment. But do we design it to feed microbes and insects,
which we know exist, or mammals, which we suspect may be
alive?”

Garret thought for a moment. “Look, up to this very
minute, we, and everyone else, have been working on restoring the
earth, making it habitable for us to live on again. What we’re
talking about now is not reclaiming it but improving it for those
who are already living there, for those who’ve already proved their
ability to survive.

We’re assuming that it may be centuries before it
will be possible for people like us to survive on the surface, if
ever, but that indigenous species can be assisted. What I’m saying
is let’s support whatever life there is now. It’s not possible to
recreate what was.”

“Or maybe we should go a step further ....” Evie
mused.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure yet; let me think about it. Let’s do
something else,” she said suggestively, stepping forward into his
arms. Garret breathed her in and pulled her closer, and they
stopped working.

CHAPTER 2

East USA Habitat: 2128

John Morgan was not a New Scientist. He was
hereditary Chairman of the Board of several major oil companies,
pharmaceutical companies and food conglomerates that no longer
existed. He was a 45-year-old man of distinction, impeccably
groomed and dressed, carefully tanned and manicured. Every
Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday morning, he played tennis, and every
Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday morning, he played squash. He took
all his vitamins and adhered to a scientifically designed diet that
guaranteed him a long and productive life. Fine restaurants and
rich foods were a thing of the past anyway.

In East USA, the underground city where Morgan had
been born just nine years before Garret and Evie, 5000 people made
their residence. Children were few, and the saying was, "One good
apple is worth the whole rotten barrel." Energy and space were
limited; therefore, once the original children had grown up, no
more could be born. Only when someone died was birth permitted.
Morgan had been one of these babies: a treasure, carefully reared,
educated, and spoiled.

His father, who died before Morgan was allowed to be
conceived, had been a scientist of modest reputation before the
Fall, but he had also been the only son of an industrial giant,
which connection was stellar enough to earn him a place in the
underground city. By some genetic miscalculation, it was not just
his father's scientific capability that came out of the sperm bank,
but his great great grandfather's ruthless drive for power as
well.

Morgan had been bred to be an intelligence of the
first order, and he was. He was also a megalomaniac—a man whose
feelings of guilt (carefully instilled in him by his teachers) were
inversely related to his acquisition of power: the more power he
attained, the less guilt he felt.

His mother, Anna Claxton, had never been fooled. She
saw if no one else did, the monumental effort it took for Morgan to
control himself when he didn't get his way. She admired what she
saw as strength of character, not realizing that it was merely
Morgan's understanding of his present weakness, not any innate
concern for the rights of others keeping him in check.

Evie and Garret gave Morgan as wide a berth as
possible, and had done so since they were four and he was twelve.
During a game of hide and seek initiated by Morgan, they discovered
just how ruthless he could be.

“Come on, Morgan,” Evie had teased,
holding her long blond braids out from her head. “Play with us!”
Garret and Evie had been released from school and were on their way
back to their living quarters when they spotted Morgan hanging out
in the 1
^st
Quad, doing homework. There were few children in the habitat,
and Morgan was considered a contemporary despite the eight years
difference in age. “Let’s play a game!”

Morgan weighed his homework against playing with the
little kids. Neither was of much interest. The math was easy, and
he was bored. The kids…well, they might offer some diversion. “Like
what? Tag? You know I’m too fast for you,” he said.

“I know!” Garret said, “Let’s play hide and seek.
You hide, and me and Evie will find you.”

Morgan thought about it briefly and shook his head.
Hiding in a closet somewhere from a couple little kids didn’t sound
like fun. “Nah. You go hide. I’ll find you.”

When he did find them, instead of letting them know
it, he locked the door of the storage space he found them in and
went back to the quad to finish his homework. Six hours later,
after he’d had dinner and was getting ready for bed, he thought of
the consequences he might have to suffer, and decided he’d better
release them. Garret leaped at him when he opened the door,
punching him with his little four-year-old fists. Morgan held him
off until he settled down, his dark wrath incongruous on his baby
face. “Come on, you guys,” Morgan said. “Wasn’t that fun?” Evie’s
tears and Garret’s anger just made him laugh. In fact, it was the
best time he’d had all week.

When Evie began to blossom in adolescence, Morgan
was irresistibly drawn to her, as were most of the men in East USA.
But he was twenty-two to her fourteen, and his wife, twenty-five
year old Elissa, was a bore. Evie was a challenge that sharpened
his wits and tore at his ego. His attempts to seduce her met with
consoling smiles, and sometimes gales of laughter. “John!” she’d
say, “I’m only fourteen!” or “Stop it, John. You’re married!” But
Morgan could see that fourteen was ripe, and his marriage, arranged
from birth, meant nothing to him.