“This is not the most interesting part,” Arak said. “But we might as well start at the beginning. These tanks hold our ovarian and testicular tissue cultures. Eggs and sperms are randomly selected and their chromosomes are scanned for molecular imperfections and then microsomally shuffled. The re-formed germ cells are then checked before allowing them to fertilize. If anyone would care to take a peek, there’s a view port available.” Arak pointed toward a binocular eyepiece along the assembly line apparatus.
Suzanne was the only one who took him up on the offer. She bent over and peered within. Inside a tiny chamber below the microscope objective she could see an oocyte being penetrated by an active sperm. The process happened rapidly. A moment later the zygote was gone, and two new gametes were injected into the chamber.
“Anybody else?” Arak asked after Suzanne straightened up.
No one moved.
“Okay,” Arak said. “Let’s move along to the gestation room and a more interesting phase.” He led the way down the length of the gamete room to a room the size of several football fields placed end to end. Within the room were numerous rows of shelves supporting countless numbers of clear spheres. Between the rows walked hundreds of worker clones checking each sphere in turn.
“My word!” Suzanne murmured as it dawned on her what she was seeing.
“The replicating zygotes coming from the fertilization process are checked again for chromosomal molecular abnormalities,” Arak explained. “Once they are determined to be free of any imperfection whatsoever, and they have reached the requisite number of cells, they are implanted into a sphere and allowed to develop.”
“Can we walk along the spheres?” Suzanne asked.
“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.
“Please,” Barlot said as she ducked Richard’s hand. “It’s better not to touch me for fifteen or twenty minutes since I’ve just come out of the dryer. The nerves in my integument need a chance to adapt to the gaseous environment.”
Richard recoiled.
“These three men are also newly arrived earth surface visitors,” Arak said as he gestured toward Donald, Richard, and Michael.
“My word,” Barlot said. “Isn’t this an occasion! Five surface visitors at the same time. I’m happy to be so honored on my emergence day.”
“We were just welcoming Barlot back to the physical world,” Arak explained.
Barlot nodded. “And it’s wonderful to be back.” She examined her tiny hands, turning them over and then stretching them out. She then glanced at her legs and her feet. She wiggled her toes. “Looks like a good body,” she added. “At least so far.” She giggled.
“I think it looks like a superb body,” Sufa said. “And such beautiful blue eyes. Did you have blue eyes last body?”
“No, but I did the body before that,” Barlot said. “I like variation. Sometimes I allow the eye color to be selected randomly.”
“How do you feel?” Suzanne asked. She knew it was a stupid question, but under the circumstances she couldn’t think of anything else to ask. She was distracted by the marked contrast between the puerile voice and the adult syntax.
“Mainly, I’m hungry,” Barlot said. “And impatient. I’m looking forward to getting home.”
“How long have you been in storage?” Perry asked. “If that’s the right word.”
“We call it being in memory,” Barlot said. “And I’m assuming it was about six years. That was the advertised waiting time when I was extracted. But to me, it seems like it was overnight. When we’re in memory our essences are not programmed to record time.”
“Do your eyes hurt?” Suzanne asked.
“Not in the slightest,” Barlot said. “I suppose you’re referring to the flamelike scleral hemorrhages I undoubtedly have.”
“I am,” Suzanne admitted. The whites of both Barlot’s eyes were fire engine red.
“That’s from the limbal fixation sutures,” Barlot said. “They were probably just removed.”
“Do you remember being in the fish tank?” Michael asked.
Barlot laughed. “I’ve never heard the implant tank referred to as a fish tank. But to answer your question, no! My first conscious memory in this body, and in all previous bodies for that matter, was waking up on the conveyer belt in the dryer.”
“Is the experience of extraction, memory, and recall at all stressful?” Suzanne asked.
Barlot thought for a moment before responding. “No,” she said finally. “The only stressful part is that now I have to wait until puberty to have any real fun.” She laughed, as did Arak, Sufa, Richard, and Michael.
“This is our home,” Sufa said from a hovering air taxi as the exit door materialized. She pointed to a structure similar to the cottages at the visitors’ palace minus the large lawns. It was clustered Levittown-style with hundreds of others just like it. “Arak and I thought it would be instructive for you to experience how we live and perhaps have a bite to eat. Are you all too tired or would you like to come inside for a visit?”
“I could eat,” Richard said eagerly.
“I would love to see your home,” Suzanne said. “It’s very hospitable of you.”
“I’m honored,” Perry said.
Donald merely nodded.
“I’m starved,” Michael said.
“Then it’s decided,” Sufa said. She and Arak climbed from the hovercraft and motioned for the others to follow.
Similar to the quarters at the visitors’ center, the interior was uniformly white—white marble with white fabric and lots of mirrors. Also the main room opened to the outdoors with a pool extending from the inside to the outside. The place was sparsely furnished. Several large holographic displays like those the group had seen in the decon quarters were the only decoration.
“Please come in,” Sufa said.
The group filed in, taking in the surroundings.
“It looks like my apartment in Ocean Beach,” Michael said.
“Get outta here!” Richard scoffed while he playfully cuffed him on the top of his head.
“Are all Interterran homes open to the exterior?” Perry questioned.
“Indeed,” Arak said. “As ironic as it may seem we who dwell inside the earth prefer to be outdoors.”
“Makes it kind of hard to lock up,” Richard said.
“Nothing is locked in Interterra,” Sufa said.
“Nobody steals anything?” Michael questioned.
Both Arak and Sufa giggled. They then self-consciously excused themselves.
“We don’t mean to laugh,” Arak said. “But you people are so entertaining. We can never anticipate what you are going to say. It’s very endearing.”
“I suppose it’s our charming primitiveness,” Donald said.
“Exactly,” Arak agreed.
“There’s no thievery in Interterra,” Sufa said. “There is no need because there is plenty for everyone. Besides, no one owns anything. Private ownership disappeared early in our history. We Interterrans merely use what we need.”
The group sat down. Sufa called for worker clones, who appeared instantly. Along with them came one of the pets the secondary humans had seen from the air taxis. Up close it was even more bizarre looking, with its curious mixture of dog, cat, and monkey traits. The animal loped into the room and made a beeline for the visitors.
“Sark!” Arak bellowed. “Behave!”
The animal obediently stopped in its tracks and, using catlike eyes, it regarded the secondary humans with great curiosity. When it stood up on its hind feet, which were monkeylike with five distinct toes, it was about three feet tall. Its doglike nose twitched as it sniffed.
“This is one weird-looking animal,” Richard said.
“It’s a homid,” Sufa said. “A particularly fine homid, actually. Isn’t he adorable?”
“Get over here, Sark!” Arak cried. “I don’t want you bothering our guests.”
Sark immediately darted behind Arak and, standing on its hind legs, began scratching Arak’s head.
“Good boy,” Arak said contentedly.
“Food for the guests,” Sufa commanded the worker clones, who quickly disappeared.
“Sark looks like a bunch of animals rolled into one,” Michael said.
“That’s one way to put it,” Arak said. “Sark is a chimera develo
ped eons ago and cloned ever since. He’s a remarkable pet. Would anyone care to see one of his best tricks?”
“Sure,” Richard said. To him the animal looked like a biology experiment that went haywire.
“Me, too,” Michael echoed.
Arak stood and motioned for Sark to head outside. As he followed the animal he asked Richard and Michael to join him out in the yard. The divers dutifully got up and trooped into the garden, where they found Arak busily searching for something in the depths of a fern thicket.
“Okay, here’s one,” Arak said. He straightened up, clutching a short, rubberized stick in his hand. He stepped out onto the grass. “Now you men are not going to believe this. It’s very entertaining.”
“Try us!” Richard said dubiously.
Arak bent down and extended the stick to Sark. Sark took the stick with great excitement, chattering like a monkey. Then after a windup he threw the stick to the far corner of the yard.
Arak watched the piece of wood until it came to a complete halt. Then he turned back to the divers. “Quite a throw, wouldn’t you say?”
“Not bad,” Michael agreed. “At least for a homid.”
The corners of Richard’s mouth curled into a wry smile.
“Wait until you see the rest,” Arak said. “Just a second.” Arak ran out to where the stick had fallen, picked it up, and carried it back. He then returned it to Sark. The animal wound up and threw the stick back to approximately the same spot. Dutifully Arak trotted out and retrieved it for the second time. When he returned he was slightly out of breath. “Can you believe it?” he asked. “This cute little devil will keep this up all day. As long as I get the stick, he’ll throw it.”
The two divers looked at each other. Michael rolled his eyes while Richard swallowed a laugh.
“The food is here!” Sufa called from inside.
Arak extended the stick toward Richard. “Would you like to give it a try?”
“I think I’ll pass,” Richard said. “Besides, I’m starved.”
“Then let’s eat,” Arak said agreeably. He tossed the stick back into the fern thicket and headed back inside. Sark followed.