Prototype

“I should have worn a wire,” Samantha kept telling herself while she was in the vehicle Granat sent to bring her to the NexGen location she wasn’t allowed to know.

The car slowed to a stop. Granat met her at the car door. Thunder was rumbling in the north; a storm was quickly approaching.

Granat used a card reader to gain access to the warehouse building. Samantha followed him inside after feeling the first couple of raindrops touching her skin. Inside the warehouse was much more advanced than anything she imagined or even read of in a sci-fi book. All of the security was administered by computers, carefully monitored by four robots. From the thermostat to all the experiment subjects, everything was carefully monitored twenty-four/seven. Samantha wondered what they would have to be doing for this kind of security, and where they would go to acquire such a security system.

“What is this place?” she asked.

Granat answered, “My best secured laboratory. I have been testing many different pathogens throughout my career, so I incorporated the security systems for safety purposes.”

“What are you doing here?”

Granat led her back to a series of elevators which required the use of a retinal scanner for activation. The elevator hummed as it descended from the first floor, down past two laboratories, two rooms with environments that could be changed based on the computer program, a greenhouse floor, and finally a floor where research subjects were housed.

They both stepped off of the elevator and paced down the steel flooring toward a small room off to the left.

“You’ll be amazed,” Granat said with an overconfident smile.

He opened the door and Samantha gazed in at a nursery for an older toddler. In the middle of the brightly colored carpet sat a small child quietly reading a book.

“Her name is Reggie,” Granat said with another smile.

“This is..?” Samantha asked in near-terror, looking on at the little person seated on the floor.

“I have successfully delivered a baby from an artificial womb,” Granat admitted proudly. “I’m sorry my experiment caused you such pain, but you should share in such a grand accomplishment.”

Samantha didn’t respond, instead she walked over to the carpeting and sat near the child. The child looked up at her and smiled and returned to reading without speaking. Now Samantha noticed a completed Rubik’s cube next to the child.

“Will you tell me your name?” Samantha asked, holding back her tears to the best of her ability.

“Reggie,” the little girl responded. She couldn’t have been older than three – in fact Samantha knew for a fact she would have turned three this past summer.

“Do you know who I am?” Samantha asked. She was scared of what she would be told, but she still needed to hear an answer – any answer.

“No,” Reggie responded before returning to her book. She stopped reading and looked again at Samantha’s face, and gazed into her eyes, “But I can see the pain you’re suffering. You’ve suffered a lot over the recent years…”

Samantha teared up and stood up and away from the child she carried for such a short time.

“She is a major breakthrough,” Granat explained, unaware of the surge of emotions Samantha was feeling. “She is the first of her kind; a prototype of what science and biotechnology can create and cultivate.”

“What are you going to do with her?” Samantha asked, doing her best to control her emotions.

“Her work is just beginning, she’s part of a much bigger process,” Granat admitted. “She is the future.”

Samantha resisted the urge to lunge at him and rip every hair out of his head, or do something worse. She didn’t really expect him to say that she could take her child home, or else he would have just talked with her about this experiment instead of stealing her child.

Samantha needed to know, “Why did you take her from me?”

“Your genetic profile is unlike any I’ve ever seen before,” Granat admitted. “You were born without an appendix… and no tonsils. Were you aware of that?”

“Just a genetic anomaly,” Samantha said.

“An important one,” Granat added. “Your growth did not include their development, and yet you remained a normal human being. Your existence is a new stage in human evolution. Wouldn’t you want to know what you could do with that change?”

“That’s what this is about? She’s a new stage in human evolution, and you want to manipulate that. Don’t you?”

“Sort of,” Granat said. “The technology that brought her into this world can be marketed to help women all over the world. Families who can’t have children will finally be able to have their babies without a surrogate or an adoption. How many scams have there been like that?”

“That explains artificial gestation, but what about her life from here on out? Why is she in this place instead of at home with me?” Samantha asked him. Her self control for not striking him was growing thinner. She looked at her child she didn’t know at all again and her anger rose higher and hotter.

“That part of my research is my personal project; I’m not ready to discuss it yet,” Granat told her and showed her out of the door. He instructed Reggie that the book she was reading was to be memorized by the end of the day and then he exited, leaving the child alone.

“Why are you sharing this with me?” Samantha asked.

“I need you on my team,” Granat admitted. “You’re a brilliant researcher, and your participation will accelerate my results.”

“You’re offering me a job?” she asked in disbelief.

“You would be much more appreciated in this part of the work then where you used to work. The work is classified, and you’ll be expected to keep it that way.”

“Can I spend time with her?” Samantha asked, looking through the glass at the little girl.

“It’s a possibility,” Granat considered after a moment of silence. He could see the tears running down her cheeks from her reflection in the glass. “Eventually we could consider it, but for now, her part in the project is strictly my responsibility.”

“Will you allow me to think it over?” Samantha asked. She wiped the tears off of her face and stared him in the eyes. “I just need until tomorrow.”

“Very well,” Granat said. “I’ll call you tomorrow at four in the afternoon; you have until then to make your decision.”

“One more question,” Samantha asked before leaving, “Why did you wait to offer me this job and not be up front about this from the very beginning? Why force me to resign, and do this to my life?”

“You weren’t ready then,” Granat said simply. “But I believe you are now.”