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1987 The Orange-Eyed Children in Sublevel A
Everyone knew that more went on at Genomex than the research tastefully photographed for the company’s glossy annual report. Everyone knew that Genomex had sections devoted to government-sponsored black projects, operating much like Kelly Johnson’s Skunk Works at Lockheed.
Like most people, I assumed the Genomex black projects involved plants and domestic animals. I even socialized with one of the prime researchers and still didn’t know any better about what was really going on.
Black projects are necessary. I have no ethical qualms about funding such operations with well-hidden dollars, not when they yield technology like the SR-71 and F117-A. However, those projects had honorable motivations driving them.
I should have quit the day I first saw the orange-eyed children, quit the same way my predecessor did five months into the job.
With my promotion came an upgraded keycard that opened 73 % of Genomex’s doors instead of my former access to 38%. I could not have imagined the things I found behind those doors, not in my darkest nightmares: children who could walk through walls; children who could make themselves invisible; children who knew what I was thinking, and children clambering to the top of bookshelves, peering down like cats, flashing temporarily orange eyes at me.
They were ordinary enough looking human children, but they were different, and they knew it.
I went directly to Adam’s office, expecting an explanation I could stomach. Adam was a geneticist, Dr Paul Breedlove’s protégé, and a frequent visitor to my home. He didn’t have any other friends I knew about, since all he seemed to do was work and spend Saturday evenings with Jackie and me.
“Adam, I’ve seen the children in Sublevel A. What is going on down there?” We’d known each other since I’d started with the company, so I felt free to be blunt with him.
“Well, as I’ve told you, Genomex and allied clinics of the Breedlove Foundation specialize in dealing with difficult conceptions…we repair genetic flaws that ordinarily would result in spontaneous abortions, and once those repairs are completed, we return the embryos to complete gestation. We’ve enjoyed a remarkable success rate of live, healthy births.”
Adam smiled throughout, pleased with himself, pleased with his work.
“But Adam, there was something odd about all of the children I saw. Some of them seemed human but more than human, especially the ones with the orange eyes, climbing like cats in trees.”
“The ones you saw represent exceptional cases, cases where the repair went subtly wrong and the result was…unexpected.” He still smiled.
“But so many of them, and to have the expressed anomalies crop up in similar patterns! Do we have some kind of rehabilitation program to fix these unfortunate children?”
“They’re here because they live here. Their parents either couldn’t cope with their behavior or conduct, or they found them so unpresentable they signed custody over to Genomex.”
I could not decide if Adam was smiling because he was a deluded true believer or if he had grossly underestimated my intellect and character. Perhaps all three factors were operating.
“They are human children, Adam! They are not criminals. What is Genomex doing keeping them down there in Sublevel A, away from society, out of sight of the sun?”
I knew the answer as soon as I asked the question. We’re hiding our mistakes.
“Mason, that sounds harsh.”
“They’re people, like you and me. What’s to become of them when they’re adults?”
“Breedlove in fact created the first mutants nearly twenty years ago. There are older individuals in Sublevels B and C.
“What really goes on at this place?”
“Genetic research to cure –permanently, by effecting changes in the base-pair coding-- hideous genetic diseases.”
“And what else, Adam?”
“That’s it, Mason. I’m proud of the work I do here, and proud of all the lives I’ve saved.”
“Are you very sure of that? Shortly after Jackie conceived Grey, we received a letter from Genomex inviting us to free genetic screening. The timing was extraordinary. Only her doctor, her family, and you knew about the pregnancy.”
“Oh, I added your names to a mailing list but surely you don’t see anything sinister in that?”
He was still smiling. I didn’t know what to think.
My gut instinct was that Adam, along with a number of other Genomex researchers and managers, was lying to me about the nature and scope of the company. If ever the time to leave Genomex this was now that time. Leave before Grey started school. Leave before the public discovered the unholy secrets behind the walls and down a few levels in the ground, and association with Genomex became career-killing resume poison.
I resolved to tell Jackie that evening that I wanted to leave Genomex. I couldn’t tell her why, because of secrecy agreements I had signed upon employment. I’d just have to be emphatic.
After lunch, Breedlove summoned me to his office. I had not sinned. I have always been almost annoyingly reliable and dependable, so I wasn’t worried. But the timing was obvious: the meeting had everything to do with my morning chat with Adam.
“Mr Eckhart, it came to my attention that your compensation was not appropriately increased when your recent promotion went into effect.”
In fact, my pay had increased. What was he talking about?
“I’ve personally seen to it that your pay will not only be increased to proper levels, as indicated on that piece of paper,” he said, pausing to lean across his desk and hand me a slip of paper indicating an astonishing monthly salary, “but we’ll also write a check to make that increase retroactive through last month.”
Paul Breedlove smiled at me. Breedlove and Adam must take smiling lessons from the same con artist. Neither is particularly convincing.
“Well, thank you, Dr Breedlove. This is unexpected.” I wasn’t expecting a bribe, which is exactly what this was.
I never had a chance to discuss leaving Genomex with Jackie. Before I reached the door, Jackie was outside, happily telling me her pregnancy was not only confirmed, but that she was carrying twins.
I knew I would never come close to matching the pay level Breedlove was bribing me with, not at my age and experience level. So, I mentally put off leaving Genomex a few years, to 1992-1994.
That Saturday, Adam came by for dinner, played with Grey, and congratulated us on the coming twins.
We sat down to a casual dinner. Even as Jackie prattled on to Adam about how we were now going to have to find a bigger house, I remained distracted and haunted by the children with the orange eyes down in the pits of Genomex, wondering if I wasn’t making a mistake in judgment that would haunt me even more. Jackie passed around the grilled burgers.
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