Your One & Only(63)
The book set forth tables and charts that displayed the death toll. A million here, a billion there. It included lists of hospitals shut down, government budgets for medicine running empty, names of city parks appropriated for cemeteries. Some human interest stories were recounted amid the numbers, lending a living reality to the awful census of doom. By the time twenty years or so had passed, there were just pockets of humans left in remote Pacific islands and out-of-the-way highland regions of Central America.
The scientists had three decades to build a new world, one that wouldn’t die out the way their own had. In thirty years, they themselves would be dead, and only their legacy would live on.
The narrative of the Slow Plague came to an end, and the remainder of the book contained a series of words in lists followed by seemingly endless numbers. At first it looked like gibberish to Althea, but then she realized that she didn’t recognize the words because they were actually names of people according to the human custom in which everyone had a distinct name rather than the designation and number of a particular Gen model. The humans always had more than one name, and sometimes three or even four. There were thousands of names in the book, running down to the final page.
She closed the volume and sat back. Something niggled at the back of her mind. She felt there was something familiar about the list.
She picked up the second, unmarked book, and was surprised to find close lines of handwriting covering each page. The first page read: The Journal of Althea Lane, 2068. Althea had never heard of any journals or diaries from the Original Nine. If they existed, surely they’d have been on display in a special place, maybe in Remembrance Hall. If the date was right, the book was old, but it hadn’t disintegrated with age. That meant it must have been in the climate-controlled environment of the Tunnels at some point, and Inga-296 had taken it. Althea turned the pages to read.
FROM THE JOURNAL OF ALTHEA LANE
Costa Rica
2068–2107
(Excerpts)
February 3, 2068
When Hassan and I were flown to San Francisco from Burlington for interviews, the executives at Global Health Initiative showed us the model of the community they were building. The cluster of labs with state-of-the-art technology, vast storage caverns, dining halls, warehouses, residences. They said much of it hadn’t been built yet, and that was only five months ago. Now that we’ve arrived in Costa Rica, I see a whole community risen up as if out of thin air. I walk through this town they’ve built, and if it weren’t for the humidity of Central America, not to mention the toucans and howling monkeys, I’d think we were still in Vermont.
I’m beginning to understand the wealth and resources devoted to this Project—I find myself capitalizing the word, because that’s how it sounds when Una Vispa says it. It really is her vision. When she first offered the positions to me and Hassan, I was a bit starstruck, to be honest. Not just the head of Global Health, but the woman who actually conceived of and formed the most important international organization devoted to securing funds for medical research—research that will benefit the whole world. And she was sitting in our living room, drinking that cheap tea Hassan buys!
We’d already been through the countless exams, including blood tests and genetic history. Dr. Vispa wouldn’t say exactly what all that was for, but she did volunteer she was collecting the best scientists in the world, the most brilliant, and also those with healthy, strong constitutions and well-documented family histories. I guess to make sure we wouldn’t need any extensive medical care while living in such a remote region. We’ve also been selected for our youth. We’ve all earned doctorates, and none of us is over thirty, meaning we’ll be able to oversee the Project for years to come. She gathered agronomists, cytologists, epidemiologists, geneticists, physicists. The goal of the Project, she said, was to research the spread of the autoimmune disorders we’ve been seeing in so many children, though I’m not clear what my role as an evolutionary biologist might be. Dr. Vispa assures me I’m important to the team, however.
She really is a visionary. She looks exactly like she did in that documentary Hassan and I just watched, the one where she bought all this land in Costa Rica and then used her wealth and influence to have it declared a semi-independent province, free from the taxes and regulations of either Costa Rica or the United States. She’s so elegant, with her flowing white hair, startlingly blue eyes, and perfectly tailored (and extraordinarily expensive) pantsuit. Even drinking out of Hassan’s ridiculous BE POSITIVE LIKE A PROTON! mug, she managed to look regal and charismatic.
She explained to us that the financing from the World Commonwealth is far greater even than that provided for the Greenland plantations, the Sahara canals, even the new NASA missions. She took such barefaced pleasure in her project that it was impossible not to be delighted too. But then she turned solemn, saying it was worth every penny, that she’d even devoted a huge portion of her own wealth, because after all, it certainly would be the “last significant investment made in our epoch of humanity.” I’m not sure what she meant, but it certainly sent a chill down my spine!
It’s rather wonderful, I think, though Hassan is concerned. He says all the protocols and political machinations that made this happen are unlike anything he’s ever seen, and he thinks Dr. Vispa and the executives at Global Health know something we don’t. He’s a worrier. In any case, a full community of scientists, engineers, technicians, support staff, and construction workers has sprung up seemingly overnight, and I’m still amazed we’ve been selected for this project. “This is our destiny!” I said to Hassan. “It’s what we were born to do, I can feel it!” He laughed and kissed me, even though I know he thought I was being hopelessly dramatic.