What's up 64D?

Here's something I wrote a few days ago.

It led to an interesting discussion and I'd thought I'd post it here as well to get more opinions and thoughts.

"Welcome to the Human Factory where we make perfect our practice!"

A heavyset man dressed in a cream colored suit greeted the small gaggle of students debarking from the bus.

"I'm Alexander Martin, CEO of The Human Factory. Come along and I'll give you the tour."

He led them down a slick marble floor and up to a glass door.

This is our birthing room or what we like to call the 4F room, where we make sure all embryos are pure and clean.

"Sir, what do you mean by pure and clean?" a boy asked, waving his hand in the air.

"Well Timmy, with our patented technology, we can check ahead if any embryos are carrying any genetic defects or if they will be prone to diseases.

This way, parents never have to worry about their child having any problems."

Susie raised her hand. "I have asthma, does this mean my parents would've gotten rid of me?"

The CEO laughed. "No sweetheart; you would still be here, just a different version of you, a version without asthma. That's a very good thing!"

Susie frowned, "But if I didn't have asthma, wouldn't I be a different kind of Susie?"

"Yeah," David added. "Susie wouldn't be much fun if we couldn't tease her about her inhaler and pretend she was Darth Vader!"

Pausing only momentarily to glare at David, Susie continued. "I can't really go outside and play because of my asthma, so I stay inside and do a lot of reading instead.

If I didn't have asthma, isn't it true that I might be outside a lot more and that I wouldn't learn as much as I do now from reading?"

"The world would be a better place" The CEO thought but instead he smiled uncomfortably and chose as an alternative,

"Well asthma is not really what I was talking about anyway. I was really referring to birth defects and such."

"My older brother has Down Syndrome but he's one of the sweetest people in the whole universe." Mary-Ellen declared. "And he's real good at drawing too, I wouldn't want to get rid of him for anything!"

"For the love of-" the CEO started angrily. "This isn't about getting rid of anybody - it's about preventing these things from happening in the future.

There won't be any older brothers or - or any you's " - here he gestured, slightly rudely towards Susie - "to know about and wonder what they would be like because they won't exists anymore! It's not a destructive thing it's just like a cure, only we're preventing something instead of fixing it."

Several more hands went up but the CEO wasn't having any of it.

"Let's move along to our next section. Now, this is the crowning jewel of The Human Factory, a room we like to call the Perfectatorium.

Here, we've tested combination upon combination of different genes as we strive to make the perfect human."

"Imagine sight so sharp, you won't be caught off guard by the fine print ever again" he joked, his spirits obviously feeling lifted again.

"Superior speed, smooth, clear skin, breathtaking beauty, unparalleled intelligence, electrifingly sharp senses, …" the CEO's excited fervor died down instantly as Susie raised her hand again.

"I suppose you have another question?" he grumbled disdainfully, trying and failing to keep the testiness out of his voice.

"Don't some of these perfections conflict? I mean, is it possible to make someone both really fast and a really high jumper at the same time? Don't they require different leg structures?"

"I-I'm sure, I mean I KNOW that our engineers have it under control." the CEO smiled through clenched teeth.

"Sir," Another student, David raised his hand.

"You mentioned breathtaking beauty but don't people have different ideas of perfect beauty? My friend John thinks Lizzie is really pretty but I sure couldn't disagree more"

While the CEO internally seethed with apoplectic rage at these inquisitive children, Lizzie blushed, looking pleased and angry at the same time.

Buying a few moments to think on the pretense of stopping Lizzie from hitting David as her anger beat pleasure, the CEO started talking, another false smile plastered on his face.

"An excellent question," he falsely smiled, though his tone clearly implied that he thought otherwise. "Beauty, when you think about it, is really nothing more than another mathematical forumla, which our scientist and mathematicians have quantified, derived and perfected."

"What's Lizzie then, a zero?" David cracked.

This time Lizzie DID hit him and the CEO took full advantage of the ensuing scuffle to usher the kids into a different room.

His relief was short lived however; before he could explain the new room, Susie thrust her hand in the air, determined not to have her questions ignored this time around.

"Sir, I still had a question about the Perfectatorium. If everyone is perfect, wouldn't everyone be exactly the same and if everyone were the same, wouldn't it be true that no one was faster or stronger anymore?"

"No!" the CEO snapped vehemently and his brain sighed wearily, forced to forge ahead and scrape together a reason to backup his claim as to why she was wrong.

"You see little girl," he stalled ever so slowly, "The reason why you are wrong, is because you aren't really looking at the whole picture. If two spaceships can both move faster than the speed of light, aren't they both still fast?"

"Nothing moves faster than the speed of light", Susie corrected automatically and with the man bristling she continued, "You mean that perfection is relative?"

"Relative!" the man seized on the word with some relief. "Yes, exactly, I see my example helped you to understand."

"But…" Susie said, frowning with confusion "If perfection is relative, why are you trying to make perfect people?"

"I don't expect you to understand, you are only a silly little girl" he hissed savagely under his breath.

The science teacher, who had been watching her students grill the CEO with great personal enjoyment chose this moment to step forward.

"I'll thank you not to have the audacity to assume the level of intelligence and comprehensibility of my students especially someone such as… well never mind." she trailed off the implications of an insult hanging heavily in the air.

Glaring, the man cleared his throat. "What I meant to say was that we do not focus solely on making perfect people.

If you'll all come to this very next room in fact…"

"Now as you all know," he continued, the students grudgingly following him through the next door. "Jobs such as construction, digging, manual labor basically, can be harmful and even fatally dangerous.

That's why we've created specialized humans! Taking the risk, so you don't have to!"

"Why are they all black?" Danny asked bluntly.

"Oh. Oh! No, no, no, no!" the CEO stammered smoothly, a skill obtained from constant practice . "I know what you're thinking son but absolutely not. We here at The Human Factor pride ourselves in our diversity!"

"There's nothing very diverse about the people down there," Mary-Ellen said quietly.

"No, no, no," The CEO repeated assuring, rather attempting to assure them hurriedly. "Really, some of my dearest and closest friends-"

"Shut up," Danny said angrily. "Who are you to tell these people they have to do manual labor jobs, that's slavery!"

"It is not!" The CEO said just as angrily. "If YOU had shut up and bothered to let me finish explaining, I would've told you that these people have been genetically engineered to want to work.

They have no intelligence, no creativity or free will, they were not taken against their will and they are not treated with cruelty."

"It's wrong!" Lizzie snapped, stamping her foot.

"How can it be wrong if they have no emotions or feelings no tolerance for pain?" the CEO snapped back.

The students fell momentarily silent and triumphantly the CEO swept off to a different room, the class storming behind.

"This… is what we call the Miracle room." the CEO said with a dramatic sweeping gesture.

Despite being upset and angry, the kids could not help but be awed.

Millions, billions it seemed of sparkling crystal spheres filling the room from floor to ceiling and they wouldn't have been surprised if it was called the miracle room simply due to the fact that somehow the stacks did not fall over and send small glass shards shooting all over the place.

"Here we can cure cancers, here, we can give the beauty of a summer day to the blind, here, we can give the well worn forest trail to the paralyzed!" the CEO stated grandly, relishing in the vision his own voiced invoked so was therefore quite annoyed when he opened his eyes and saw Susie whispering to the other students.

"Sir?" Timmy asked curiously. "How did you obtain so many of these?"

"Well, we harvest some of them from the rejects of 4F-" the CEO stopped, regretting the words as soon as they left his mouth and sure enough…

"I knew it you horrid monster!" Lizzie yelled. "Your killing innocent babies!"

"Don't you start, that's a bunch of your moral crap!" the CEO snapped.

"You could a good dose of morals, you stupid jerk!" Lizzie snapped back angrily.

"I will not stand here and be called names!"

The CEO rounded furiously upon the science teacher, who through applaudable effort, fought down the smile threatening to take over her face and said, "Lizzie, you shouldn't use emotions in a debate, scientific or otherwise."

"This is not a debate!" the CEO spat, so angry he failed to realize the science teacher hadn't actually told Lizzie not to call him names. "This is a tour of a wonderful, majestic, breathtaking factory and you kids fail to realize, fail to appreciate the cutting edge science, the raw power, the good of everything that is done here! This tour is over!"

"Why don't you use a different technique than one that destroys human embryos!" Susie asked as the CEO lead them back to their bus.

"It cost too much" The CEO snarled. "This is a business you little brat and profits don't know anything about morals and ethics."

"How come you can't have hot super models doing construction work instead?" Danny asked suddenly.

"That's a stupid idea, other people especially women might find it - " The CEO froze and cursed under his breath.

"Degrading!" Danny yelled gleefully, his point well made.

"Wrong!" Timmy added.

"Incredibly Hot?" David joked, and Lizzie hit him again.

One more stairway, two more doors and I am rid of this miserable kids forever. The CEO though aggressively. In his mind, he called the kids several cuss words and felt better.

This feeling didn't last long.

"I've been thinking…" David started and Lizzie looked at him warily.

"Earlier you said those people who you created to do manual labor and dangerous jobs didn't have any free will, and feelings or emotions or sense of pain. Well sir, I was wondering how can you be sure that they don't, what if you're wrong? And even if they don't isn't it still wrong for us to treat them that way?"

The CEO stared at him stonily and Lizzie hit David.

"Hey!" he said angrily. "I thought I said something good for once."

"Sorry," she apologized. "Force of habit, you know?"

Completely ignoring the question, the CEO wheeled about and stormed back towards the doors of the human factory.

Talking angrily amongst themselves, the children filed on to the bus, all pulling out laptops.

"Hey!" The bus driver said, polishing off the last of the bucket of wings he had been eating. "You know the rules, no playing games on the bus' internet connection!"

"No need to worry about that." the science teacher smiled, pointing to the monitoring screen.

Every laptop had some kind of blog or email open, all containing the words The Human Factory.

"So you kids must have really enjoyed the tour!" the bus driver chuckled, setting the bus in gear. "That clone of mine, I'll tell you, he's something amazing."

TwistyWristy