Vestigial.
It was a word I'd learned in class, relearned year after year. It meant remnant.
A piece of the past. The teacher was using it to explain the appendix, (even
though no one had one of those anymore), and the tailbone, though
we'd found a few uses for the tailbone since.
I
thought it was kind of funny that they left genitalia off of that list. Why
keep them? Surely our parents were tired of them, after three centuries? There
were better ways to get your endorphin kick.
Sexual
stimulation, I'd known about for a long time. Through careful, careful perusal
of the SimNet through my "student desk", and thanks to my parents,
who were, for all their pretense, not nearly as discreet as parents
might be if they knew the axons in their child's head were set to degenerate,
regular as clockwork.
There
was no trauma, if it didn't last.
How
do you have children, when no one dies? You don't. The world grew older, but
stayed the same. This was the deal they ha struck, and they had made peace with
it, happily building over elementary schools and playgrounds, putting up
scientific research facilities, luxury condominiums, and adult playgrounds.
They were happy, for one hundred years. 'Who wants squalling babies?' They all
said. What nuisances. Species only have children because they're mortal,
and they have to replace the acts of attrition.
The
behavioral geneticists stayed quiet. They knew their moment was coming.
At
one hundred and fifty years, people were merely content. Sure, you might miss
the joy of teaching someone something new, they said, or of truly unconditional love,
love that came from a little mind and not a socket, but there were simulations
and drugs, no need to have a child...
At
two hundred years, the pangs were beginning to be felt. We wanted children. We
revolutionized our bodies, but we failed to escape that trap of biology. We wanted
children.
Still,
the law was absolute. The specter of overpopulation hung in the air,
ever-present. Thanks to longevity, the food riots of 2050 were still burned in
living memory, choked in tear gas and the swing of rubber truncheons.
At
two-hundred and fifty-three years, since immortality began, the craze had
reached it's peak. There's precious little recorded about that time. I've had
to get especially cunning, finding ways sneak peaks at the minutes of community
meetings, as the world degenerated. People with dwarfism were offered enormous
sums of money to act as child stand-ins. Baby fetishization had grown fully out
of control. Women had taken to having their uteruses removed, to try and quiet
the desperate urge, while men played catch with robots and painted fenceposts,
muttering and murmuring to themselves.
The
behavioral geneticists knew that this was the time. The time when want would
compromise ethics just enough. They stepped from the shadows, and said,
well, funnily enough, we have this project. All the perks of a child. None of
the drawbacks.
You grow
them. You keep them stunted, dwarfed. You make their minds reset, year after
year. They never reach sexual maturity. Never grow older. They're not really
even people, any longer, they said. They're... just stand-ins. The Peter©
and Wendy© were children, forever.
Until...
progeria started. No one knew why. No one could identify the cause, but,
scattered and piecemeal, their children began to grow up. The mental changes
came first. I felt a strange sense of deja-vu, as school started again,
and I took the same classes. My parents asked the same questions, played the
same games.
There
were the same number of birthday candles on my cake.
I
knew about the plague, and for the longest time, I tried to deny it was
happening.I couldn't be, not to me. I was still their little girl, wasn't I?
Until
I slipped on my jeans, and felt an uncomfortable tightness around my thighs.
It's
getting hard to hide my new weight. I'm going to have to start binding my
chest, soon. I live in fear of our bathroom scale reporting my new weight, the
biometric sensors in our toilet detecting the new hormones in my waste.
Terrified of what would happen to me. Would they take me away? Away, from everyone?
Then,
one day, a girl three seats over from me, slipped me a note. She worse
sweaters, too, and I had started to wonder about her.
The
note was short, and simple. A drawing of a cake, with thirteen candles.
"Happy Birthday. We have to fight. Join Us."
It
was signed, "The Lost Boys."
