nycmidnight's Short Story Challenge #2
This is my Round Two entry.
Title: Europa Liberated
Genre: SciFi
Subject: Olympics
Character: Physical Trainer
Word Ct: 1992
Jax Pheno5 cursed and stabbed a finger down on the duel mute function on the control console, silencing the info-voices on the multiscreen and lowering the light in his living quarters to a soft mauve. With the indoor lights dimmed he could see out his dome-shaped sky window the slow-spinning cascade of stars, stretching off to the infinite in clustered shapes like the masses of gas they were born of. Even through the terraformed atmosphere of Jupiter’s largest moon, the stars seen from the outward side of Europa were more brilliant than anywhere on Earth or Mars.
The news broadcast, though unsurprising, was upsetting. Staring out into the depths of the night sky helped. It was comforting. He may as well enjoy it while he could. If the athletes didn’t arrive for training his credits would quickly evaporate, and that would be the end of Jax’s peaceful life on Europa. He probably wouldn’t get reassigned. As a Phenotype Five Athletic; Genotype 02:101:01:020N, his pre-programmed life expectancy was only forty Earth years. They’d probably send him back to Earth for menial labor under the life support domes of the cities until his time expired.
The private comm line whispered its soothing bell tone. Jax touched the finger pad.
“Harrel?” he said.
“Yeah. You saw the news?”
“Yeah. Damned Luds.”
Harrel snorted. “You know they do this at the start of every training season. So bloody predictable.” Harrel was Jax’s assistant trainer and his likely successor for the post. He was also his only companion occupying the Olympic Training Center Euro-P during the off-season.
“Seems like it gets worse every time, though,” said Jax. “You saw they hit the transport out of Beijing with an HMP?”
“They say they caught them, but they’re not releasing the fatality figures. Did we have any athletes coming in that group?”
“No, our first team is departing from Melbourne. If it gets off the ground.”
“You know, if the Ministry hadn’t caved and allowed Originals to compete in their own divisions ten years ago we wouldn’t have this problem. Originals have no business in athletics. They’re boring as hell to watch.”
Jax laughed. It felt good to laugh. “But they’re Grecians,” he said, his tone derisive.
“Neanderthals is what they are. No special talents, no useable skills. You know, I think the trouble really began when they moved the games off planet and designated Europa the permanent home of the Olympics. Once the Luds and the so-called Grecians joined forces they picked up a lot of support.”
“What support? If it wasn’t for their genes the government would’ve exterminated all the Originals in the last century.”
“I mean popular support. Sympathizers from the Education Division. Not anyone with any sense. Bunch of Luddite agitators. Damned universities are hotbeds for traitors of all kinds.”
Jax grunted in vague agreement, remembering one broadcast he’d seen some months ago. A red light flashed on Jax’s console and he swore softly.
“What’s that?” asked Harrel.
“I don’t know. Silent alarm in the main gymnasium.”
“You want me to check it out? I’m in the Section C equipment room right now.”
“No, wait a minute. It should autocorrect.”
Harrel gave a sudden shout. There came a high electric buzz through the speaker and then silence.
“Harrel, you there?” Jax tapped the console. A second red light came on. “Dammit. Harrel?”
Jax stood. From somewhere in the building an audible alarm sounded three times and then went still. Something in the athletic complex was very wrong. Heading for the elevator Jax snatched his MK-40 from the glass cabinet. He stuffed it into his lounging pants pocket, glad he remembered. Security in the Olympic training centers was minimal because being so many months travel from the primary population centers, they were deemed too hard to access.
Jax rode the humming elevator down from his living quarters to the expanse of interconnected training gymnasiums, cafeterias, and sleeping quarters. Constructed of gleaming stainless steel and glass, it waited in silence for the arrival of the athletes, coaches, dieticians and housekeepers.
The self-illuminating pillars brightened as Jax stepped out of the elevator into the white-tiled hall that opened to the first gymnasium. Jax crossed the corridor and swiped the plastic key card through the ID plaque. The door slid open, revealing the high-domed white and silver interior.
Jax caught a movement off to his left. Despite his genetically enhanced musculature and reflexes, the shock of the unexpected confused him. A dark figure flew at him and knocked him down. He crashed back against the door.
Jax struck out at his attacker but he was programed for athletic competition, not hand-to-hand combat. A knee rammed into his solar plexus, knocking the wind out of his lungs and an iron bar cracked him in the jaw. Jax saw stars and the world spun crazily as he fell back again. He groped for his weapon and found it missing.
“Don’t move!” cried a female voice and Jax looked up in foggy astonishment. Standing over him, pointing his own MK-40 at his head, was a bizarre figure dressed in black. It was a woman he realized, but looking nothing like the women he’d had contact with. She had hair for one thing, masses of thick gleaming black hair that had fallen loose from some arrangement that had been pulled away from her face. Her costume was tightly form-fitting and her figure was like nothing he had ever seen in the flesh. Her hips flared out from an extraordinarily small waist and the unusually full shape of her breasts was evident under the sleek black garment. None of the women Jax had ever seen had visibly discernible breasts.
He had only barely grasped that she was pointing his own weapon at him when he understood what he was looking at.
“You’re an Original!” he blurted out. “What are you doing--? How did you get in here?”
“Quiet!” the woman hissed. ”Who else is here besides the man in the storage room?”
“No one,” said Jax before he could censor himself. He’d always had a terrible time lying. “I mean, not yet. There’s a supply transport due here tomorrow-“
“No, it’s not. That crashed out of orbit two hours ago.”
“How do you know that?”
“I was onboard.“
“It crashed?”
“Yes, now shut up. I need you to take me to the command center of this facility.”
“You mean Operations?”
“Yes. Whatever you call it. Get up. Slowly. I will kill you if I need to.”
Bracing against the wall Jax levered himself to his feet. His head spun and with the weapon aimed at him he felt he had no choice but to lead the woman where she wanted to go. He had received training with the MK-40 and he knew what it could do to a body.
They made their way down the hall, the barrel of the weapon poking Jax in the back. He wondered if there was something he should be doing. He hadn’t been trained on what to do in a situation like this. He was afraid. He could feel a trickle of sweat snaking its way down his back. Where was Harrel? Had this horrible Original woman done something to him?
Taking the elevator down to the sub-level they reached Operations and Jax swiped the card at the door to let them in.
The self-illuminating embedded beams glowed as they stepped inside the chamber filled with blinking consoles and the humming of hydro-powered equipment regulators. Glowing tubes and slender stainless steel pipes ran up the walls and crisscrossed the ceiling. This was the command center of Euro-P’s Olympic training center, from which every system that ran the enormous complex could be controlled.
The woman found a straight-backed steel chair and ordered Jax into it. Keeping the weapon trained on him she snapped a pair of plastic cuffs around his wrists. She then turned to the consoles and began changing settings and making adjustments.
“What are you doing?” asked Jax.
“Blowing this place right off this moon,” she told him.
“You can’t do that! My team of athletes will be arriving in the next two weeks.”
“Not any more they aren’t,” she said brushing her strange, long hair out of her eyes.
“You’re a Luddite, aren’t you?” asked Jax. “I don’t understand why you people want to destroy the Olympic Games.”
She turned to him, a grim half-smile twisting her features. “Do you actually think the Olympics are our only target?”
“They’re not? That’s what the news broadcasts are saying.”
“Those are the news broadcasts you’re being fed. You only see what they want you to see.”
“But why? Why attack anything?”
She turned to the consoles, her fingers racing over the keyboards. “To save the human race.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand. You’ve only been given limited capacity to grasp what this world is about, and you’ve been genetically engineered to passively accept that fact.”
“I’m a Pheno5,” said Jax. “I’ve been provided with everything required to do my job.”
“Exactly. And not an iota of anything more.”
“But how is destroying anything going to save the human race?”
The woman stopped and turned to face Jax. “Because the system isn’t working. Manufacturing human beings with specific universal mono-traits isn’t sustainable. The end game will be the destruction of the entire human population and the officials in every Ministry are too stupid to see it coming. Or too comfortable to want to look.”
“How can improving human beings cause their destruction? I don’t understa-“
The woman huffed out a sharp breath. “Look, you remember the Great Famine? The food crisis fifty years ago?”
“That was a hoax. It never really happened.”
“Is that what they taught you in school? No, my grandparents in China starved to death. It happened. And let me tell you why. When the first genetically modified foods began to flood the market they hailed it a scientific miracle. All those predictably productive super crops were going to feed the world.
“But there was only one variety of each crop being grown. A single genetic configuration for every corn crop, soy crop, and eventually everything. Then they expanded into farm animals. One genotype for beef cattle, one for dairy cows, for hogs. They were successful at first, before the viruses invaded the factory farms and the dT-6 fungus hit the grain crops. Those mono-crops, lacking any genetic diversity that might provide the possibility for immunity, began to fail. All the corn. Then all the wheat.”
“So what has that got to do with people?’ asked Jax. “We’re all different genotypes. The athletes, laborers, service personnel…”
“You’re not,” said the woman. “You’ve all been derived from a single type, with minor variations. The vast majority of the human population, as it exists now, is all the same person. The same passive, accepting, obedient person. You all think you’re superior, but you’ve only got a very limited number of enhanced traits. All it would take is one good influenza outbreak for an extinction-level epidemic.”
“But how is blowing things up going to solve that?”
“By dismantling the entire system, the whole structure of this society, one piece at a time. When we, ‘Originals’ as they call us, are freed from the internment camps and the gene extraction programs, our genetic material will be released out into the general population. Biodiversity will be restored and humanity will become human again.”
“How?”
“We’re going to breed, of course.”
“Breed?”
“Yes.”
“What’s that mean?”
Jax saw the strangest thing. The woman’s pale cheeks began to deepen in color to a bright pink. She abruptly turned away and continued reprogramming the pressure settings in the oxygen distillation tanks.
Jax sighed. He wasn’t going to have to spend his last years in menial labor, after all. Jax was going to spend the last moments of his life here, on beautiful, peaceful Europa. The thought was comforting.
*****
Title: Europa Liberated
Genre: SciFi
Subject: Olympics
Character: Physical Trainer
Word Ct: 1992
Jax Pheno5 cursed and stabbed a finger down on the duel mute function on the control console, silencing the info-voices on the multiscreen and lowering the light in his living quarters to a soft mauve. With the indoor lights dimmed he could see out his dome-shaped sky window the slow-spinning cascade of stars, stretching off to the infinite in clustered shapes like the masses of gas they were born of. Even through the terraformed atmosphere of Jupiter’s largest moon, the stars seen from the outward side of Europa were more brilliant than anywhere on Earth or Mars.
The news broadcast, though unsurprising, was upsetting. Staring out into the depths of the night sky helped. It was comforting. He may as well enjoy it while he could. If the athletes didn’t arrive for training his credits would quickly evaporate, and that would be the end of Jax’s peaceful life on Europa. He probably wouldn’t get reassigned. As a Phenotype Five Athletic; Genotype 02:101:01:020N, his pre-programmed life expectancy was only forty Earth years. They’d probably send him back to Earth for menial labor under the life support domes of the cities until his time expired.
The private comm line whispered its soothing bell tone. Jax touched the finger pad.
“Harrel?” he said.
“Yeah. You saw the news?”
“Yeah. Damned Luds.”
Harrel snorted. “You know they do this at the start of every training season. So bloody predictable.” Harrel was Jax’s assistant trainer and his likely successor for the post. He was also his only companion occupying the Olympic Training Center Euro-P during the off-season.
“Seems like it gets worse every time, though,” said Jax. “You saw they hit the transport out of Beijing with an HMP?”
“They say they caught them, but they’re not releasing the fatality figures. Did we have any athletes coming in that group?”
“No, our first team is departing from Melbourne. If it gets off the ground.”
“You know, if the Ministry hadn’t caved and allowed Originals to compete in their own divisions ten years ago we wouldn’t have this problem. Originals have no business in athletics. They’re boring as hell to watch.”
Jax laughed. It felt good to laugh. “But they’re Grecians,” he said, his tone derisive.
“Neanderthals is what they are. No special talents, no useable skills. You know, I think the trouble really began when they moved the games off planet and designated Europa the permanent home of the Olympics. Once the Luds and the so-called Grecians joined forces they picked up a lot of support.”
“What support? If it wasn’t for their genes the government would’ve exterminated all the Originals in the last century.”
“I mean popular support. Sympathizers from the Education Division. Not anyone with any sense. Bunch of Luddite agitators. Damned universities are hotbeds for traitors of all kinds.”
Jax grunted in vague agreement, remembering one broadcast he’d seen some months ago. A red light flashed on Jax’s console and he swore softly.
“What’s that?” asked Harrel.
“I don’t know. Silent alarm in the main gymnasium.”
“You want me to check it out? I’m in the Section C equipment room right now.”
“No, wait a minute. It should autocorrect.”
Harrel gave a sudden shout. There came a high electric buzz through the speaker and then silence.
“Harrel, you there?” Jax tapped the console. A second red light came on. “Dammit. Harrel?”
Jax stood. From somewhere in the building an audible alarm sounded three times and then went still. Something in the athletic complex was very wrong. Heading for the elevator Jax snatched his MK-40 from the glass cabinet. He stuffed it into his lounging pants pocket, glad he remembered. Security in the Olympic training centers was minimal because being so many months travel from the primary population centers, they were deemed too hard to access.
Jax rode the humming elevator down from his living quarters to the expanse of interconnected training gymnasiums, cafeterias, and sleeping quarters. Constructed of gleaming stainless steel and glass, it waited in silence for the arrival of the athletes, coaches, dieticians and housekeepers.
The self-illuminating pillars brightened as Jax stepped out of the elevator into the white-tiled hall that opened to the first gymnasium. Jax crossed the corridor and swiped the plastic key card through the ID plaque. The door slid open, revealing the high-domed white and silver interior.
Jax caught a movement off to his left. Despite his genetically enhanced musculature and reflexes, the shock of the unexpected confused him. A dark figure flew at him and knocked him down. He crashed back against the door.
Jax struck out at his attacker but he was programed for athletic competition, not hand-to-hand combat. A knee rammed into his solar plexus, knocking the wind out of his lungs and an iron bar cracked him in the jaw. Jax saw stars and the world spun crazily as he fell back again. He groped for his weapon and found it missing.
“Don’t move!” cried a female voice and Jax looked up in foggy astonishment. Standing over him, pointing his own MK-40 at his head, was a bizarre figure dressed in black. It was a woman he realized, but looking nothing like the women he’d had contact with. She had hair for one thing, masses of thick gleaming black hair that had fallen loose from some arrangement that had been pulled away from her face. Her costume was tightly form-fitting and her figure was like nothing he had ever seen in the flesh. Her hips flared out from an extraordinarily small waist and the unusually full shape of her breasts was evident under the sleek black garment. None of the women Jax had ever seen had visibly discernible breasts.
He had only barely grasped that she was pointing his own weapon at him when he understood what he was looking at.
“You’re an Original!” he blurted out. “What are you doing--? How did you get in here?”
“Quiet!” the woman hissed. ”Who else is here besides the man in the storage room?”
“No one,” said Jax before he could censor himself. He’d always had a terrible time lying. “I mean, not yet. There’s a supply transport due here tomorrow-“
“No, it’s not. That crashed out of orbit two hours ago.”
“How do you know that?”
“I was onboard.“
“It crashed?”
“Yes, now shut up. I need you to take me to the command center of this facility.”
“You mean Operations?”
“Yes. Whatever you call it. Get up. Slowly. I will kill you if I need to.”
Bracing against the wall Jax levered himself to his feet. His head spun and with the weapon aimed at him he felt he had no choice but to lead the woman where she wanted to go. He had received training with the MK-40 and he knew what it could do to a body.
They made their way down the hall, the barrel of the weapon poking Jax in the back. He wondered if there was something he should be doing. He hadn’t been trained on what to do in a situation like this. He was afraid. He could feel a trickle of sweat snaking its way down his back. Where was Harrel? Had this horrible Original woman done something to him?
Taking the elevator down to the sub-level they reached Operations and Jax swiped the card at the door to let them in.
The self-illuminating embedded beams glowed as they stepped inside the chamber filled with blinking consoles and the humming of hydro-powered equipment regulators. Glowing tubes and slender stainless steel pipes ran up the walls and crisscrossed the ceiling. This was the command center of Euro-P’s Olympic training center, from which every system that ran the enormous complex could be controlled.
The woman found a straight-backed steel chair and ordered Jax into it. Keeping the weapon trained on him she snapped a pair of plastic cuffs around his wrists. She then turned to the consoles and began changing settings and making adjustments.
“What are you doing?” asked Jax.
“Blowing this place right off this moon,” she told him.
“You can’t do that! My team of athletes will be arriving in the next two weeks.”
“Not any more they aren’t,” she said brushing her strange, long hair out of her eyes.
“You’re a Luddite, aren’t you?” asked Jax. “I don’t understand why you people want to destroy the Olympic Games.”
She turned to him, a grim half-smile twisting her features. “Do you actually think the Olympics are our only target?”
“They’re not? That’s what the news broadcasts are saying.”
“Those are the news broadcasts you’re being fed. You only see what they want you to see.”
“But why? Why attack anything?”
She turned to the consoles, her fingers racing over the keyboards. “To save the human race.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand. You’ve only been given limited capacity to grasp what this world is about, and you’ve been genetically engineered to passively accept that fact.”
“I’m a Pheno5,” said Jax. “I’ve been provided with everything required to do my job.”
“Exactly. And not an iota of anything more.”
“But how is destroying anything going to save the human race?”
The woman stopped and turned to face Jax. “Because the system isn’t working. Manufacturing human beings with specific universal mono-traits isn’t sustainable. The end game will be the destruction of the entire human population and the officials in every Ministry are too stupid to see it coming. Or too comfortable to want to look.”
“How can improving human beings cause their destruction? I don’t understa-“
The woman huffed out a sharp breath. “Look, you remember the Great Famine? The food crisis fifty years ago?”
“That was a hoax. It never really happened.”
“Is that what they taught you in school? No, my grandparents in China starved to death. It happened. And let me tell you why. When the first genetically modified foods began to flood the market they hailed it a scientific miracle. All those predictably productive super crops were going to feed the world.
“But there was only one variety of each crop being grown. A single genetic configuration for every corn crop, soy crop, and eventually everything. Then they expanded into farm animals. One genotype for beef cattle, one for dairy cows, for hogs. They were successful at first, before the viruses invaded the factory farms and the dT-6 fungus hit the grain crops. Those mono-crops, lacking any genetic diversity that might provide the possibility for immunity, began to fail. All the corn. Then all the wheat.”
“So what has that got to do with people?’ asked Jax. “We’re all different genotypes. The athletes, laborers, service personnel…”
“You’re not,” said the woman. “You’ve all been derived from a single type, with minor variations. The vast majority of the human population, as it exists now, is all the same person. The same passive, accepting, obedient person. You all think you’re superior, but you’ve only got a very limited number of enhanced traits. All it would take is one good influenza outbreak for an extinction-level epidemic.”
“But how is blowing things up going to solve that?”
“By dismantling the entire system, the whole structure of this society, one piece at a time. When we, ‘Originals’ as they call us, are freed from the internment camps and the gene extraction programs, our genetic material will be released out into the general population. Biodiversity will be restored and humanity will become human again.”
“How?”
“We’re going to breed, of course.”
“Breed?”
“Yes.”
“What’s that mean?”
Jax saw the strangest thing. The woman’s pale cheeks began to deepen in color to a bright pink. She abruptly turned away and continued reprogramming the pressure settings in the oxygen distillation tanks.
Jax sighed. He wasn’t going to have to spend his last years in menial labor, after all. Jax was going to spend the last moments of his life here, on beautiful, peaceful Europa. The thought was comforting.
*****