They finally reached downtown and split up into small groups throughout the area so they could eat. The all-cash economy suited them well since they had plenty of it on hand. Priya and her friends finished eating and walked outside to decide what to do next.
“We need to get home while the government is distracted,” Priya said. “I finally have a connection to a video feed from our lab. It’s been trashed.”
“We have all sorts of genetic experiments going on there,” Sophie said. “I hope they didn’t get loose.”
“Let’s contact Akna and Jamilla to see what’s happening,” Priya said. “It’s daybreak on the west coast.”
“Hey, there they are. Climbing in through the broken window,” Sophie said.
Priya’s smiling face appeared in front of them on a video monitor.
“It’s 7:01. You’re late for work.”
“Pree!” they both said.
“What happened to you guys?” Akna said.
“Long story, I’ll explain later. Let’s just say that society isn’t ready for us yet, but we’re okay. What happened to our lab?”
“I’m seeing it for the first time now since the power outage,” Jamilla said. “It’s a ruin. It happened last night when the power was out. It must have been looters. Let’s see what the video cameras caught. Assuming I can find something to replay them on. Here, I’ll use my personal iPad.”
She replayed a recording.
“Those don’t look like looters,” Priya said. “They’re not taking that valuable sequencer.”
“Or anything valuable for resale,” Sophie said.
“Yeah, they’re after our genetic research,” Priya said. “Did you see that? That first guy is trying to hack into our system, but he failed. Our computers are buried underground in a concrete vault. There’s no way they’ll be able to steal them or hack into them. See? The screens are turning off. They have no access.”
“I find it odd that the government didn’t shut down our facility when they arrested us,” Sophie said.
“They told us to keep working as usual,” Akna said. “They had to keep away protesters. Some people thought we were conducting gruesome genetic experiments, like Frankenstein or something.”
“Yeah,” Jamilla said. “People are susceptible to all sorts of conspiracy stories and hoaxes. I wish we could genetically engineer that out of our genome.”
“Actually, we were working on that. Remember?” Akna said. “But then some politicians cut funding.”
“Yeah, they wouldn’t get reelected.” Priya said.
They laughed.
“What’s been stolen?” Sophie said.
“Hmm, a few chairs. Trivial things,” Akna said. “Some looters did get in, but.”
“Where are the smart rats?” Priya said as she watched the video.
“Oh, you don’t want to know,” Jamilla said.
“Did they kill them? Who did it?”
“They’re quite alive. Too alive. It’s hard to explain. Here’s the video. When you were arrested 7 months ago, there was looting like last night. A few windows were broken. The Feds came in to take inventory of this lab. Well, here’s the video.”
“Wait,” Priya said. “Those guys are taking our smart rats. But some got loose. And there they go, out the broken window.”
“That’s not good,” Sophie said. “Normal rats could never compete with them.”
“And they have lots of dominant inheritable modifications,” Priya said.
“This is like when V got loose,” Raven said.
“At least for rat society,” Warren said.
“We don’t know what this means for all species,” Priya said. “Rats are smart and cunning enough as they are. I don’t know what they’ll do in the wild.”
“They’ll do what rats do,” Warren said. “Make more rats.”
“It’s worse than that. Smart rats. They’ll out-compete against other rats and mice for food, mates, and territory. What about other species? Wait, it’s been seven months, what’s happened so far?”
“Again, you don’t want to know,” Jamilla said. “In the area around Palo Alto, the mouse population crashed. So, the owl population crashed. The smart rats are eating the eggs of birds, so this is a bad year for several bird species. They’re competing with squirrels for acorns and winning, but they don’t bury the acorns. So oak trees in the wild might go extinct. There’s been a big effort to stop the rats, but they can’t be caught. The old techniques of setting out traps and poison don’t work. They’re sneaking into houses during daylight hours even when people are just going in and out of the house for a few seconds. They eat the food but leave no droppings. They don’t make messes like normal rats. So, you don’t even know you have a rat problem.”
“I never thought I’d say this, but I hope the sewer rats make a comeback,” Warren said.
“Well, I know what I’ll be doing when I get back,” Priya said. “What’s the expansion radius and population increase rate?”
“About 10 miles,” Jamilla said. “It’s nearly a semi logarithmic progression.”
“The population is doubling, what, every month or so?
“Almost, but that should be slowing down as they hit natural barriers like the bay, ocean or desert,” Akna said.
“Or they run into me,” Priya said. “I think I know how to stop them, but I like them. I don’t want to kill them. They’re so smart and curious.”
“Just like V,” Raven said. “We both have to kill our babies.”
“If we get a chance. Um. Look up,” Priya said.
Several dozen helium filled micro dirigible style drones appeared overhead. They could stay in place for days on battery power in light winds such as there was on that warm summer day.
“Great, what do they want?” Warren said.
“They’re probably going to round us up again,” Pablo said.
“I’m getting reception from a national television broadcast,” Raven said, watching the broadcast in her mind through her implant. “They finally have it working.”
They all tuned in to watch.
“There we are,” Priya said. “It’s a direct video feed from those blimp drones.”
“Check out that headline,” Pablo said. “25,000 alien mutants escape from prison.”
“I doubt many people are seeing this,” Warren said. “Few households have electricity at this point. Um, unless they’re solar powered, which is about 40% of all households, but most of those are set up to send power into the grid instead of keeping it for themselves.”
“But people will find out soon enough,” Pablo said. “They’ll be after us.”
Priya sent a silent message to everyone.
“Let’s disperse widely, and gradually return to our homes. Take whatever mode of transportation you can. Try to fly below the radar. The government is watching us, but it’s too distracted right now to round us up again. We have a small window of opportunity.”
They dispersed. Priya and many of her friends eventually made it back to the San Francisco area, and their other places of residence. The drones followed them everywhere. Their every movement was monitored by the slowly recovering national media.
One month later, Priya and Raven found ways to stop their unintended offspring. They all met at Priya’s lab, which had been restored.
“I think I have it,” Priya said. “We’ve had rat birth control hormones for a while now, but my rats avoid it. I made a few changes, and my rats love the bait.”
“We better do it fast,” Sophie said. “They’ve expanded to a 25-mile radius now. They’ve managed to get onto interstate trucking routes and are being reported all over the country. In small numbers right now.”
“I’m glad you figured it out,” Raven said. “I wish my solution for V was as humane.”
“It’s probably not a complete solution,” Priya said. “These rats are smart, and they’ll adapt. What are you doing about V?”
“Security experts have done a lot so far, but I sent them a comprehensive list of data patterns V tends to make. They look like data files and other common operating system files, but there are subtle differences. We can use these differences to remove these files. “I feel bad. V keeps contacting me and is getting less coherent all the time. It was the world’s most complex life form. Now it’s getting Alzheimer’s-like symptoms. We’re killing it.”
“Not a moment too soon either,” Warren said. “The economy is in ruins. People are blaming us for everything. V would have taken over this planet if we didn’t stop it.”
“I’m embarrassed to contact Bok,” Priya said. “We ignored his warnings about self-modifying artificial intelligence and genetic manipulation.”
“The Omanji ignored their own warnings, and their society was nearly destroyed seven times,” Warren said. “We have nothing to be embarrassed about. We’ve had no armies of drones killing people like the Omanji. We got out of this trouble much easier than they did.”
“Who said we’re out of it?” Priya said. “There are people out there right now, even while we were in prison, building all sorts of dangerous things. Some have selfish and malicious intent, unlike us. Some will be great inventions, and others may put an end to us. I’ve learned my lesson. We need to be careful when we push the limits of biology and technology.”
“What are we going to do about the more than 45 million of our children plus their families still locked up in prisons around the world?” Pablo said. “They have no rights in any country. I’m reading of widespread cases of abuse of those children. Some are even being sold into slavery and being forced to be baby factories.”
“Even the scum of the earth want us to reproduce,” Priya said. “they’re not anti-us, they just want to make money off of us. You can’t stop demand for something people want. People want smart children. Children that won’t have birth defects or nasty diseases. Children that will have long lifespans.”
“The funny thing is, the scum aren’t thinking of improving future society,” Warren said. “They’re only thinking of themselves.”
“Every month now, 3 million of us are born,” Priya said. “They can’t keep up with that. There aren’t enough prisons and not enough money.”
They spent the next several months repairing the damage caused by their inventions. The US government continued to propose spending bills to incarcerate them along with the millions of genetically modified children and their families, but the government could not afford to do it because the economy was in bad shape. Other countries had similar problems when they could not afford to keep those millions of children and their families in prison. They begin letting them go. Millions of people continued to join groups dedicated to their extermination.