Abel Ladd - The Crying Child | Day 20 : 2199 words

It was a few days after their trip to the lawyer office that he started seeing her putting things into boxes and scribbling on the sides. He was playing with his fuzzy bear on the floor in the living room when she walked in talking on her pda and the voice in his head said abruptly, “Change is happening.” He had heard it enough to not be startled by the sudden voice now and took it in stride.
“Thank you Doctor Stetler, you can come by any time, I’m just packing up before the truck gets here,” she said.
“I’ll leave shortly so will be there soon,” the doctor said then the call ended and Esme slid the pda into her pocket.
He grabbed hold of his bear by the leg and swung it around in a circle in front of him then pulled it to his face and bit hard on the side of its head. The fuzziness felt great on his gums and he couldn’t help but suck on the mouthful which had the bear soaked in his saliva. He got off the floor and managed to stand a bit more steady before toddling down the hallway past the now empty rooms to his. He took his bear from his mouth and threw it at his crib which hit the side and plopped on the floor in front of him. He glared down at it, it was supposed to go to bed but didn’t, so he wobbled over to it and again picked it up and heaved it into the air, this time it arched just far enough to hit the inside of the upper bar of the side of the crib and then land on the mattress below. He smiled at his success then heard steps behind him.
“Come on, the doctor will be here soon, let’s get you changed,” she said as she picked him off the floor and set him on the changing table. Her hands swiftly worked to get his diaper changed and soon he was on her hip as they walked back to the kitchen. She set him in his food chair and grabbed a bag of protein dots from the counter and poured a pile onto the tray in front of him.
They tasted good and he shoveled them in his mouth as some bounced off the edge of the tray and hit the floor around his chair. He was down to the last few dots on the tray when the knock on the door sounded and soon a shorter graying haired man was walking into the kitchen.
“It’s been hard but we have managed,” she said as they stopped by his chair.
“”Well I am glad you contacted me, I’ve been rather curious how he has been progressing. And I’m really sorry for what happened to Neal.”
“Thank you doctor. How has doctor Biggs been?”
“He’s well, his grandchildren keep him busy when he’s not at the center. We have a long term project now that is showing some promise, thanks to him,” Grey said as he motioned his way with a nod of his head.
The last dot disappeared into his mouth as he watched them talk, his legs kicking in the air as he gummed the dot until it dissolved and was gone.
“Project?” she asked with raised eyebrows as she motioned to the chairs at the table.
“We’ve been casually calling it sunset for now as a bit of a play on its actual purpose but it’s showing real promise in our experiments so far. The modeling has so far been right.” He said after sitting in one of the chairs.
Esme slid the other chair over close to him the sat down and poured another pile of dots on his tray to which he quickly began to shovel into his mouth with both hands. When she looked back to Grey he continued explaining.
“So, let me back up a bit to his birth. If you remember the tests and samples that we took then, those were basic genetic tests that all children newborns receive.”
“I remember the machine didn’t work is about all, last year is still a lot of blurriness,” she replied with a shake of her head.
“Ahh, yes, sorry. That must have been extremely hard just after giving birth,” he acknowledged.
Her head nodded in agreement but she said nothing to keep him talking.
“So those genetic tests were causing problems with our machine at the time, specifically his test. We were able to put it aside and have been utilizing it to determine what we think is the mechanism for his immunity to the DAWN cocktail. We have been able to develop, in the very early stages though, a compound that is reversing the damage done by DAWN.”
“What damage? I thought it was supposed to be zero risk, that’s what they always said?” her confusion showed clearly on her face.
“Of course they tell the public that. No, DAWN is not zero risk and in fact we are finding a large number of issues that are directly attributable to the unborn child receiving such a large dose. Once the DAWN mandate took place, and we are 3 generations after that, the genome was altered. All living people except for him as far as we know, were mandated an affliction from birth. Congenital indifference to pain at one point in time was a rare mutation in our genes that was then taken advantage of by Division. They first used it to breed better warriors that genetically had a diminished pain response.”
“Why am I not surprised to hear that?” Esme scoffed. “So everyone has CIP but Abel? But isn’t this just the normal now?” she asked.
“It’s the forced normal, it’s not what our genome should be. They found that the CIP made everyone far more complainant in the process which lead to the mandate. His immunity so to speak to DAWN is actually a couple specific mutations to the SCN9A gene that he alone doesn’t have.”
The next fistful of dots smashed into his mouth and he watched a few bounce off onto the floor and roll away.
“In a sense he has a congenital hypersensitivity to pain in relation to the rest of the populace since he feels pain far more than anyone else. Which explains his cries and screams, and also the visceral reaction that everyone has when they hear his cries. We all know in a way that it is missing in us and we all react to the sound a bit differently. You for instance are unique in you’re his mother and largely genetically similar which leads me to a question.”
Esme turned and pulled a bottle from the counter and set it in front of him on his tray and his hands clasped around it but the dots that were still stuck to his hands made the bottle tumble out of his grasp and smash onto the floor below. She picked it up and set it back on the tray for him and quickly flicked the dots off his palms so he could grab the bottle better.
“Do you know much of your lineage? We have been trying to understand how the lack of mutation occurred and have worked through your genetic line as far back as testing records available. It seems this lack of mutation is a mechanism of the protection of the telomeres and has been a part of your genetics for many generations but was not fully expressed until Abel.”
Her look of confusion pulled muscles from parts of her face and contorted her features before she asked, “what are telomeres?”
“Basically they are the protection for your chromosomes that keeps them separate from one another. As we age the telomeres are lost since each time a cell divides a certain number of telomeres are lost from each chromosome. So what appears to be happening is that his telomerase production is so high that he is negating the effects of the cell division on that pathway which has hardened the chromosome to mutations.”
Esme looked over at him and flicked a dot from his forehead as she shook her head in confusion. “Honestly, none of this makes sense to me,” she said with a sly smile.
Grey’s head rocked from side to side then he said hesitantly as he tried to describe the gargantuan amount of knowledge, “think of it as the bumper on a car. It’s there to protect the passengers and the vehicle, like the telomere to the chromosome. The bumper to a car can only be hit so many times before it falls off and the car is then damaged. This is a VERY simplified version of what a telomere does for the chromosome.”
Esme’s head was shaking from side to side as she said, “this is still way over my head. You’re saying he won’t age?”
Grey chuckled as he looked over at him, the bottle hanging from his mouth by the tip of the nipple and he was trying to scrape up the last few dots that he could see on the tray. “No he will age just like everyone else. It’s just those chromosomes, that gene, they are protected from mutation completely.”
“I still am not quite getting what this means, for him.” She said as her eyes went perplexed.
“It means that he is the only true non-engineered human. He is more valuable to the future of the species than most know. That telomere biology he has is unique now, a hundred years ago it wasn’t. That’s what we’re trying to save, we’re trying to bring humanity back to what we were before the blatant human engineering that’s been going on.” Grey’s face was stern as he spoke.
“This is why you told us to keep him safe and out of public?” she asked.
“Exactly, we needed the opportunity to develop the consistent repair of the mutation experimentally and it is showing such good promise in the lab we are ready for the next steps. We’ll be seeing a human revolution in the next few years, a rebirth in a way. The goal is to have the next generation start the transition back to a natural genome.”
The empty bottle fell from his hands and bounced off the edge of the tray of his chair and careened across the floor hitting the chair leg and spinning like a top until it slowed to a stop. He couldn’t look away until it had stopped and when he looked up to Esme his eyes were wide.
She smiled back at him and said, “I hope this move is the right thing to do then, if he is really that important to the world. We’re comfortable here and we know the area. I’m a bit unsure about having to start over in a new place, and one that is not our own since the law firm owns it.”
“Well, you can’t really know until after the fact, you can just do your best to make the best choices you can given the information and instinct you have. Trust yourself to make the right choices and I’m sure you will do what is right for you both.” He pulled out his pda from his shirt pocket and looked at the time then said, “I should get going and let you get back to packing. I ‘m very happy to see how he is doing and I think this could be a good move for you, out of the city might be the best thing.”
“Thank you doctor. This fills in a lot of the blanks and questions that I’ve had since his birth and since Neal died. I still don’t know how I can do this without him here but so far we are making it work. The settlement is going to do the most towards making that easier.”
“I hope it comes soon then,” Grey said as he stood then turned to him and bent over so his face was close and said, ”and you little man, be good to your mother and don’t give her too much trouble. You need to keep yourself safe and don’t go around hurting yourself. We need you around nice and healthy so you can live a good happy life.”
Grey stood up and bowed his head slightly to Esme then deeply to him and after raising it he walked towards the door. Esme stood quickly and followed Grey to show him out. They said goodbye at the door then once she closed the door she walked back over and picked him up from the chair and set him on the floor.
“Well bud, only a little bit more and we’ll be packed up and ready to go to our new home. Stay out things while I get the rest of your room packed,” she said as she walked down the hallway.
His legs wobbled as he toddled to the window and looked out at the city, his dirty hands leaving long streaks down the glass as his last mark in the apartment.