Imperfection

The world now create all the babies in a factory rather than naturally. When an imperfection occurs in the Gene Factory, though, the world re-learns what "natural birth" is...

I wouldn’t be writing this, but a lot of people are spreading false rumors about what happened and everything, so I decided I’d write down the truth before it was forgotten. Now it’s known as the “Gene Factory ‘Virus’,” but at the time, it was more commonly known as the Gene Factory’s “Imperfection.” See, it all began back in old 2240. Nice even number; divisible by 2, 4, 5, 10… anyway, that spring was the spring that the virus caught...

As I was saying… in the spring of 2240 (June 15th, to be exact), this huge possible terrorist-released virus went round the country. Me, I was an employee in the Gene Factory at the time. You probably know about the Gene Factory, but maybe it’s been destroyed or replaced by something fancier by now, so I’ll explain:

The Gene Factory is a planet where all the human embryos are born. We"well, the factory, actually--- chose this place because it was close enough to the sun to keep warm, but far enough not to kill the embryos. Anyway… as I was saying, the Gene Factory is a planet where all the human embryos are born. And I was an employee in the spring of 2240.

There was a huge uproar because of the possible viral-threat that could get to the embryos. We were usually in a busy time during the spring because a lot of people wanted their babies in the spring/summer. I was going around checking the embryos’ gene formulas, making sure they were growing exactly how they should. Despite having a couple hundred embryos to check on, I usually learned each one by heart.

There was little Susan Jeffrey. She was to have blonde hair and blue eyes… slender body…height of 5’ 2” etc. I made sure her genes were doing the right things to make her the way her parents wanted her. Then on to Bobby Dean, who was to be 5’ 8”, have light brown hair, green eyes, muscular build etc. His genes were correct. On to an unknown name.. E1, I called her. Her parents didn’t know her name yet, but she was to have black hair, black eyes, and brown skin with a short, petite body…. I went each day to check on the embryos. It was a fun job. All I had to do was walk around the room twice a day, re-reading the genes. Most of it I didn’t even have to look at because I didn’t have to change those genes. I just had to make sure the certain specifics were met and then on to the next embryo.

There was one couple that just wanted twins. Didn’t have any other specifics"male or female, black or white, whatever"they were really easy. I just had to copy the genes and let them do what they want. The twins were due next week. They were both female (easier for me) and they’d have brown hair, fair skin, and average height. I didn’t really pay attention to anything else. Why read through a novel’s-worth of genes, if I didn’t have to? On to Hanna Vruly, she was hard to make. The Vrulys were very specific on how they wanted her. Height of 5’ 5”, straight blond hair, dark blue eyes, golden skin, superior intelligence… the whole deal: the perfect child. Hanna was due in two days. She had come out perfect and I was rather proud of my handy work, what with having to increase the various parts of the brain, change all the genes minutely so that they’d be exactly as they should be. It was great. Like designing a home or website or car. Just I was designing something much more important:a human child.

What’s more, the pay was amazing. $1000 an hour plus I got a place to stay, a car, and all my other needs taken care of "for free. At the age of 27, I was certainly doing well. Not many people were willing to grind through the extra 10 years of schools after high-school in order to meet the requirements as a Gene-Engineer.

I’d been on the job nearly two years now"one of the youngest graduating engineers. And what was best was that I knew my job wasn’t going to go anywhere. I was secure because people always wanted babies, and without the worry of 9 months of pregnancy, why shouldn’t they have one? I always found it funny, in an ironic way that my parents had given birth to me naturally. It was June 15th, 2240 and I was checking on my embryos, smiling because everybody was perfect. At lunch, I heard about the virus-idea on my portable flat-screen(PTV).

Maybe you have something better now, but at the time we had out flat screens on demand so that when we pulled out a little battery and pressed a button on the side, the TV would pop up in the air and you could place it wherever and watch TV.  I was watching my screen with the other engineers when a pretty blonde (who one of the older engineers had created) stood in front of the camera talking about the possible viral-attack. 

Naturally people panicked---a virus amongst their possible babies? What were we going to do? Could we fix it? Would it be alright? Would we have to re-make the babies? Blah, blah, blah… We were watching, rather shocked about the idea ourselves, when our boss"a guy of about mid-sixties walked in, and addressed us all.

“Good, you’ve seen it. I want you boys to be prepared for the onslaught of questions and pictures and everything. These reporters are determined to get answers, and so are the people. Make sure to check for any type of possible virus and send even the slightest hint of a virus or anything to me. I’ll be expecting it. Even if you know that a certain cell looks like a virus, send it up and have me check over it. I trust you guys, but two sets of eyes are always better than one. I doubt there’ll be anything, but I want it all checked over--all the genes, not just bits and pieces. We’ll talk about raises for it on Friday. Meanwhile, good luck and try to assuage the crazed public.” Our boss shot us a smile and left.

We were there 24/7 for the next few weeks, reading the pages and pages and pages in each embryo’s genome. It was a long, tedious job, but it was also rather interesting because we were reading about the person we were making. We sent up thousands of “possible virus” snippets of genes, and we got an extra $500 for every extra hour we worked. We didn’t even go home. In order to make the two rounds, we were just constantly going around and around the room to make sure nothing was going wrong. Perfect. Hanna was born perfect. Her parents were a bit worried, what with the virus-idea, but I told them she was alright and nothing was awry. That settled them down, and they left with Hanna.

I was viewing the twins, now. They’d be ready the next day. I could read their genes at the same time, since they were identical. Adenine-Thymine, Adenine-Thymine, Cytosine-Guanine, Thymine-Adenine, Cytosine-Guanine, Guanine-Cytosine…. Good. I switched over to read the mRNA translations. It was blank. My stomach flipped. I glanced at the other mRNA screens. Blank. Oh my God. This couldn’t be happening. No mRNA? I looked for the tRNA and rRNA. Nothing. Blank. Oh my God. The virus must have done this. There was no other reason. The mRNA should always be working. I read through the rest of the DNA quickly. Nothing wrong. Everything exactly as it should be. So the virus must be directly attacking the mRNA… Or maybe it wasn’t a virus but something else. Damn. Why did this have to happen now? I looked around for my iSender. As I’ve said before, you probably have a lot of better stuff now, but at the time we had 10” by 7” tablets that we would write on with a plastic pencil-like thing, press send, and it would go to the designated person, who’s iSender would start blinking.

URGENT: VIRUS INFORMATION: RNA isn’t working. All screen are blank for m, r, and t RNA. Need assistance immediately.
~ Kyle Ewer

I sent that, and a minute later my iSender was blinking a bright blue color (I’d chosen that color). I looked.

Coming down now. Check others’ embryos.
~ Conner Wimnty

I closed the message, and went into the connected embryo rooms. These rooms were the same size as mine: about 10,000 sq. ft. and had the roughly the same amount of embryos. I called to Gregory, the oldest gene-engineer in the factory.

“ Hey, Greg! Are you RNA monitors working?” He checked, and I saw the color drain from his face. Fear filled his eyes as he shook his head. No. Nothing. Damn it.

I went on to Adrian, and Frank, and Victor… nobody’s RNA monitors were working. Damn it. All they babies were going to die because of some stupid terrorist’s idea of killing people. Don’t let the population continue. Yeah. Great idea. Kill children who haven’t even been born yet. Fantastic idea. How creative. My sarcastic thoughts went on and on, and I could feel the deep frown of anger etched on my lips. There was no point in killing these embryos. No point. All it would do is scare the public and, make them angry. It could start a huge protest"or even worse: a nuclear war. Did we really feel like continue the series of world wars? We’d had four already, did we really need to have WWV and blow up some planets? Jesus.

The day was hectic. We were trying everything possible to figure out why we couldn’t read the mRNA. Was in the virus? Why couldn’t we see a change in the DNA? The twins were born the next day, exactly as they were supposed to be and I wondered why it was that the embryos were continue to grow and such without mRNA working. mRNA was the messenger… it was suppose to help make all the proteins. Without proteins, the body couldn’t be formed. So why couldn’t we see that decline? Then work came in that computer systems had gone down. We couldn’t see anything… no DNA, RNA… nothing except the embryos. A week passed and the public, of course, had to know about what was going on. We were all sitting in the lunch room, watching someone’s PTV. Our boss was on screen talking with a reporter about the virus.

“We believe that there is probably a virus going through the Factory at this time.  We are not quite sure what type of virus, as our computers systems are not working properly. I assure you there is nothing to worry about, however. Many of the embryos are near due and it has been observed by our engineers that the embryos are still growing normally despite the virus. We are working extremely hard to get everything fixed and back on track, so please do not worry about us being astray for long.” Smiling, our boss stepped down from the podium, and the news station continued with the rest of the stories…

Then, Adrian mentioned that there must be something wrong with the RNA system because the monitors weren’t showing anything, and they wouldn’t show an error message if they were working. So, of course, this was relayed to our boss and we stayed and watched the television. What was the point in watching the embryos die? None. After a while, I got bored, and went to see if the embryos were dead yet. It’d been two hours since the virus had taken place.

Author's Note

I'm still working on this story, but I'm not sure it's that great. What do you think of it so far??
Sylvia.

Reviews

[Christopher Angel]

It's a damn good read but unfortunately, your lack of white space made it difficult to read everything word for word. Probably just me though but putting spaces in each paragraph would help with reading as well as punctuate certain sentences that need to stand out. You can add lots of dramatic flair and effect with proper use of white space.

What I've read though, aside from some minor grammatical and punctuation errors, is really good. It kept me hooked and I want to read more - and that's really what writing is all about. I do hope to be able to continue reading this story!

[Wall of Words]

Thanks Christopher! I definitely plan on adding to it in the near future, and will add some "white space" right now. XD
Thanks!
Sylvia

[Christopher Angel]

It's my pleasure :) A helpful trick I use is to add white space - a paragraph - after every 4-5 lines

[Silent Wolf]

It's actually really interesting, though it ends a bit too early, so I shall be awaiting more. (Seems like I'm waiting on a lot of works lol. Now watch its all gonna come at once and I'm gonna be scrambling to get it all read and all lol)

[G.A. Collins]

This idea of a whole other planet for embryos is simply something else- incredibly unique, and incredibly clever. This captivated me from the very beginning, and I loved the references to the casual understand the reader is supposed to have, as the speaker believes. It really brings you into the story, even though you aren't familiar with any of it! I'm not quite sure how I feel about the lack of emotions, however...on one hand I feel it gives us a better understanding to perhaps the harsh personalities which come with this lifestyle, but on the other, I feel like the aspect of a planet full of wasted lives has a great potential to drop an emotional bomb onto the reader and really contrast from horror/action to a sorrowful point of view. But it's amazing, interesting and original- love it!

[Wall of Words]

Thank you. I'm glad you felt able to connect (somewhat) to the story. I tried not to make it too confusing, so that the reader could follow along. :)
Sylvia.

[dw817]

⊰ℛℛ⊱
This part really stuck out for me as I started to read it: "Nice even number; divisible by 2, 4, 5, 10."

I don't know if you've ever seen the movie CUBE or PI but they deal with genius mathematical equations and already I like the theme of this story. You adding that sentence above REALLY gives a unique character for this writing.

It is a little hard to read because of tabulation however, could possibly have added a few blank CRs somewheres at the top. Usually the way I do it is a division every 4-5 lines. If it's a supra-long sentence then I try to break it up a bit.

Also, you are throwing a lot of creative terms at the reader for a single chapter and it could be overwhelming for some to remember.

Gene Factory, 2240, Susan Jeffrey, E1, Hanna Vruly, Gene-Engineer, PTV, Adenine-Thymine, Adenine-Thymine, Cytosine-Guanine, Thymine-Adenine, Cytosine-Guanine, Guanine-Cytosine.

While you are describing these, it's a bit much for a reader to all remember. The way I do it is I introduce no more than 2-unknown elements the reader needs to know about per chapter in my books (and with the assumption it is important for them to remember). It makes the book that much easier to read and you can focus on wide, lavish, and lush descriptions for these 2-articles during that chapter, and you don't give away the whole story in the first chapter as well.

The reader WANTS to go to the next chapter cause you didn't give away everything just yet.

When the learned element re-appears in a following chapter, like a good student, they have memorized the term or name or character and are prepared to recall this to apply it to the reading to paint a clearer picture in their mind of the story involved.

Never assume your readers are geniuses, a lot of us aren't, I know I'm not, and I like to be led by the hand when I'm reading a new story, especially one as well-written and elaborate and exquisite as this one. Please consider.

[Wall of Words]

Thanks so much!! The reason why there is so much information in this is because it's meant to be a short story instead of a novel. I completely agree that in novels it's best not to introduce things all at once, but per-chapter. In this case, however, I don't plan on making a novel, so that's why it's a bit over-whelming. A lot of the things you listed as big ideas I introduce are names. Do you suppose I should not name so many of the embryos?
And sorry for my ignorance, but what do you mean by "tabulation?"
Thanks so much for reading and commenting!
Sylvia.

[dw817]

Well now I recently posted a short story. It was 5-chapters long. The average length (at least for me) for a chapter is 15-pages. If you really like the story, you could work your way into it, introduce new elements over time.

You have so much definition in here it cries to be a true full-length story, however, detailing and explaining everything - just a suggestion.

By tabulation, I mean the divisions between text lines. For instance, if you are going to have someone speak, it's usually a good idea to give them a separate line.

In a printed book it's a fresh line with 4 to 5-blank spaces before beginning the opening sentence. On the Internet you can have a true double-CR whitespace. It makes the story that much easier to read. I.E.:

POOR:
Sharon had been swinging for over an hour when she suddenly stood up. "Look at me, Mommy !" she cried.
BETTER:
Sharon had been swinging for over an hour when she suddenly stood up in the seat.
Looking to her Mother she cried, "Look at me, Mommy !"
- - -
Notice how the 2nd one is written on 2-lines, more detail is given. You want to write a story so it paints pictures in the reader's mind. Imagine your story as a movie and it is your job with your vocabulary and writing to detail it out so when someone reads your story - they see the same movie you do.

Usually I divide my paragraphs every 3-4 lines, depending on the font size and depending on the margins I'm permitted. Writer's Cafe doesn't allow you the full-screen across so paragraphs appear to be even slightly longer.

Just keep in mind the readers, simplify the story for them, make it interesting and all, but you definitely wanna lead them by the hand to begin with, show them the turnstile, then let go and let them explore. :)

[Wall of Words]

Wow. Thanks so much for the help! I really appreciate your comments. XD
I'll go through it later today, and divide up my paragraphs and I'll think about making it a full-blown story. :)
Thanks again for all the great help!
Sylvia.

[JordanIsaacSmith]

A great bit of writing! Your writing is really diverse, so it makes all of your stories quite fresh and fun to read :D

It's an interesting idea and a great start - so I can't wait to read more!

[Wall of Words]

Thanks! I'm a pretty flexible person, and I loved to try all different styles of writing, though fantasy is my favorite. XD
Thanks for commenting! I'm working of finishing the story soon. Hopefully by the end of the weekend. :)
Sylvia.

[Riding the Rainbow]

Wow! This is completely different from the others stories I've already read in here;) This seems pretty cool and I can't wait for more!

[Wall of Words]

Thanks! I just had this idea, and ran away with it. :)
Sylvia.