The Freezer (Genesis Endeavor Book 1) (8 page)

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Teague looked at his notepad to find where he left off. “Without
getting into too much detail about the war, society had degraded to what you
might think of as the Dark Ages. There was no ruling government, and people had
about run out of reasons to fight. To make this worse, the population of the
world was probably less than ten million.” He paused to watch the reaction on
Jack’s face.

“Oh, my Christ in heaven.” Jack whispered to himself. The
thought was sobering. He tried to imagine a world where billions of people had
died fighting for who knows what. “How could so many people have been killed? There
were what, four billion people before the war?”

“Closer to eight billion. At first you could number the dead
in millions, but when the bombs dropped, the gloves were off. Biological
warfare was the weapon of choice after the nukes, and in the process, entire
continents were nearly wiped out. To this day there are entire cities filled
with dust and bones lying where they dropped as invisible plagues swept
through, killing nearly everyone in their path. Some of these plagues killed
instantly, and some left people dying a horrible agonizing death, but they all
accomplished the same thing in the end.” Teague fell silent for a full minute,
and Jack took the opportunity to say a silent prayer. He knew it would take a
long time for him to really appreciate that nearly the whole world was dead. Right
now, he could only do what he could to understand his own situation.

Teague finally broke the silence by clearing his throat. “When
things settled out, there were many small communities, but nothing much larger
than a few hundred people, only a few that numbered in the thousands. Most of
the world was a wasteland filled with radiation or worse, completely
uninhabitable by anything living. There was little food, few animals had
survived the devastation, and those that did were usually tainted in some form,
either radiation or biologically. People lived by scavenging what they could,
but it was not easy. Although there was little reason to fight, it was truly a
matter of only the strong surviving. If you were stronger than the next man,
you could take what he had for yourself. The communities had rules, but it
really came down to using everything you had to survive.

“Then something changed. About the year 2100, give or take
thirty years, a new type of community appeared. They called themselves ‘Enclaves
of Science’ or EoS for short, and they were all led by groups of scientists and
engineers. Nobody was really sure how these groups were related, or where all
the scientists came from. Some people theorized that they were a network of
people who had survived by living underground in old military bunkers for a few
generations, and once they determined that the fighting was over, the educated descendants
emerged to try to recreate civilization.

“The fact was, they had some real talent in their numbers,
and they had some real technology. It did not take long for their communities
to grow. After all, if you had been living day by day, foraging for food and
safe water, freezing in the wintertime, and fighting off people that would just
as soon take everything you have and leave your body to rot as to help you, and
someone said ‘come live with us, we have fresh water and electricity to heat
our homes’, you would probably drop what you were doing and go have a look for
yourself. All you had to do to live with these people was follow the rules, and
rule number one was: everyone contributes. If you couldn’t or wouldn’t
contribute, they showed you the door, and if you didn’t accept that, they
killed you and hung your body at the gates of their cities to remind everyone
that their rules had consequences.

“It might sound harsh but given the conditions people had
survived, it was like a paradise, and the EoS flourished. Soon they were
powerful cities, and they sent out expeditionary groups to search out old
technologies that had been thought lost in the war. Within a handful of years
they had ascended to the level of technology that existed before the war, and
soon after, they far exceeded it.”

Jack was captivated with the history. He had questions, but
he didn’t want to interrupt the doc to ask. Teague continued on. “In the cities,
they had running water, electricity, and all the amenities of a modern
civilization. Crime was almost non-existent, as punishment for committing a
crime was either death or banishment. Banishment was the worse of the two. Inside
the cities it was safe, and populations grew to tens of thousands. There were
about a dozen cities in total, and each one shared their technology with the
others, trading it as if it were currency. It was a completely open society,
where wealth and status was measured by your contribution to the collective
population.

“However, as with anything on this world, life in the EoS
was far from perfect. First off, there was no moral guidance. The entire
population had come from poverty so overwhelming that human life itself had no
value beyond a person’s ability to contribute. When life is not sacred, you
have no moral ground to stand on. There were laws, like don’t murder, don’t
steal, et cetera, but those were not in place because it was wrong to do so,
they were in place because murdering your neighbor takes away his contribution
to society and stealing creates tension and lowers productivity.”

“What about religion? Surely there were religious folks who
believed in an afterlife and the consequences of living an amoral life.”

Teague was quick to answer, as if he had spent a lot of time
considering this very point. “Have you read the Holy Bible Jack?”

“More or less, I was in a Catholic orphanage for part of my
life.”

“Are you familiar with Revelations?”

“The Apocalypse, yes…” Jack was seeing where this was
headed.

“Anyone who survived the devastation and still believed in
God pretty much believed that they were the ones left behind, unworthy of
heaven, destined to live a life of Hell on earth. Few people were inclined to
pass that on to their children. Why teach a child about Heaven when you know
they can never reach it? In their minds, God had abandoned humanity. So they
abandoned God.”

Jack shivered. His faith was never strong, and his taste of
religion in the orphanage kept him from spending too much time even thinking
about religion or God. But despite his weak faith, he couldn’t imagine a world
where nobody believed in a higher power.

Teague let that sink in for a moment before continuing then
said, “With this lack of a moral base, science had no restraint. Technology
grew at a rate that was almost uncontrollable. When computer processing was
elevated beyond that of the human brain, things really heated up.”

Jack interrupted again, “Computer? The last computer I saw
was the size of a room but it could do math faster than any person I knew. What
made these new machines so special?” When Jack was first in the army, a ‘computer’
was a man or woman who was really good at doing math, and he or she sat around
all day computing things. Soon after the war, electronic computers came into
existence and the last couple years had seen huge advances in that field. “I
mean, I don’t know much about computers, but if it can multiply two numbers
faster than me, isn’t it already smarter than me?”

Teague tried to explain. “A lot of people confused the
ability to crunch numbers with intelligence, but the fact is, a biological
brain is an incredibly powerful processor. Are you familiar with math Jack?”

Jack nodded. “I know a little bit, enough to do a little
engineering on a job site.”

“So you know what pi is? For finding the circumference of a
circle?” Jack nodded again. “Well, pi is an infinitely long constant, and a
human can spend weeks crunching numbers to get to a hundred decimal places,
where a computer can figure pi to a million decimal places in a very short
amount of time. On the other hand, a human brain can
discover
pi in the
first place and then apply it to other mathematical equations to learn even
more. A computer just couldn’t do that. By 2012 that computer you saw that took
up a whole room could be put on a piece of silicon the size of a tip of a
needle. The first IBM computers had transistors that numbered in the thousands;
by 2012 they were making processors that had billions of transistors, but they
were still just glorified calculators, and a simple rat’s brain could out think
a computer. The scientists in the EoS studied biological brains and used that
knowledge to create computers that could think like humans, and soon they could
learn like humans. It paved the way for some incredible discoveries.”

The subject went way over Jack’s head, so he took the doc’s word
for it. “So when did they figure out how to clone a person?” Jack was
interested in the history, but he really wanted to get back to the point: How
did he get here.

“I’m getting there Jack, just have a little patience.” Teague
said it with a smile, and Jack nodded, knowing that if he jumped ahead there
would only be more questions. Better to answer those questions now.

“Well, now they had computers that could think and learn
faster than the smartest scientists, and hence the development of technology was
accelerated a great deal. The biggest boundaries in science at the beginning of
the twenty first century were breached and it seemed like there was no end to
how advanced things could get. Medical science in particular leapt forward to
imaginary heights. Cancer was cured. Disease all but eliminated, limbs and
organs could be recreated with mechanical devices that were far better than
what God himself had created. They did hit a limit however. They could keep a
person alive by keeping his organs working, but they couldn’t stop the aging
process, nor could they reverse it. Eventually the brain would age to a point
where it no longer functioned, and you can’t replace the brain with a machine. And
of course, they couldn’t create life in the first place.

“They figured that if they were ever going to discover a way
to do these things, that cloning was the technology that will lead to it. So
they started playing with cloning again. The first approach was to see if they
could make a perfect copy of someone, memories and all. They found the same
thing that scientists from before the war found. You can make a perfect twin
easily enough, but it’s the environment that makes a person what he is, not
biology. Since you cannot recreate the experiences of a person, you cannot
recreate that person.

“So they turned their attention to the other organs they
could not replace by mechanical means, such as ovaries. No mechanical device
can create eggs, it requires a biological device. They took the research they
had done on aging, and while that research never lead to the discovery of
reversing age, it did lead to the discovery of accelerating age. With the
ability to accelerate age they could clone a person, grow them to puberty in a
matter of weeks, and then harvest the parts they wanted, and discard the body.”

“Oh my GOD! That’s disgusting!” Just hearing something like
that made Jack sick. To create a human being just to harvest the parts! “How
could anyone do that and live with themselves? It’s unthinkable!”

Teague grimly nodded in agreement. “I agree with you, but
you have to understand, these people did not have the same moral ideas that you
and I have. They were raised in an environment where the value of human life
was measured by its contribution to society.” He stopped pacing, went to a
cabinet, took out a cup, and filled it from a pitcher he got from the
refrigerator. “Would you like some water?” Jack nodded and he poured a second
cup. Putting the two cups on the table, he sat down and took a sip. “In the
EoS, a ten year old child would not hesitate to put a gun to his father’s head
and pull the trigger if the man could no longer work. These were a people
raised in an environment completely alien to the world you grew up in, Jack. It
wasn’t that people were cruel to each other, they were just raised to believe
that contribution is sacred, not life.” He took another sip to let this sink
in.

“But wouldn’t a child have love for a parent? That alone
should prevent someone from killing a loved one.”

“That is a good point, and you are correct. Even a lack of
religious morals doesn’t prevent people from caring about one another. But it
is that caring that leads to the willingness to sever a connection even as deep
as the one between a father and his child. You see, this is a culture built on contribution.
A child is taught from the beginning that life is only as valuable as the
contribution it can provide. A man might be able to work hard enough to provide
for himself and his family, and a ten year old child might be able to work hard
enough to contribute his own share. But that ten year old could not provide for
himself and his father, let alone the rest of the family. Perhaps though, a ten
year old could provide for his siblings, and they still had potential to
contribute and provide for themselves, where the father who was unable to
contribute was simply dead weight at this point. What use is love if it doesn’t
lead to sacrifice for those you love? A loving father would not only insist
that his child do what is best for the family, but teach him from a young age
that it is the right choice. Hence it was practically an honor to end the life
of a crippled or elderly parent.”

This was so foreign to Jack that he wasn’t sure he would
ever understand it. So he just nodded and said, “So there was no religion or
morality to prevent someone from suggesting that it was bad to grow a human
being solely to kill it and harvest the parts, because it served the highest
purpose they believed in: contribution to society.”

“More or less, Jack. You are very quick to understand.” Jack
again simply nodded. “But there was more to it than just what they could get
out of the harvesting.