Priya browsed the network in her eyepiece.

“It’s only been eight hours, and already a few thousand of us signed up to tutor the few hundred students we enrolled. We’re off to a great start.”

“It’s going to be a lot of work, but it’s more work to calm down frightened angry people,” Sophie said as they walked out the door for their new weekend tutoring classes. They walked by the protesters holding signs.

“Here we go again with the signs,” Priya said. “How about this one, ‘We want students, not mutants,’ nice work.”

“How about this one? ‘The mutants are pollutants.’ At least they rhyme,” Sophie said.

“Yeah, clever,” Priya said.

They walked by the protesters, hoping they would be ignored. Then … splat.

Sophie ducked too late.

“Ugh, what was that?”

“Someone threw a tomato. Ignore it, like civil-rights protesters did in the south in the 1960’s.”

They hurried over to the school room where teachers and students began their tutoring sessions. They ran into the bathroom to clean up before starting their tutoring. They day flew by. They each tutored four students. Soon, the day ended.

“I enjoyed that,” Priya said as they walked out into the late summer evening air.

“Yeah and no incidences happened,” Sophie replied. “We had fun with lots of kids who want to learn. I found it interesting that a lot of them wanted to learn AI. We’ll have to get Raven out here. She’s the AI expert.”

They walked back to their apartment, past a group of Stanford students. The fall semester began for those who turned down the option of attending virtually. Most students understood the value of being physically on the Stanford campus because of the increased opportunities available.

Priya smiled at a group of them and said, “Hi.”

A few said ‘Hi’ back but most stared at her with neutral expressions. Sophie glanced at Priya and thought silently to her.

“Pree, do you think they know who we are, or what we are?”

“I’m not sure. Their reactions were mixed,” Priya thought back as she turned around to see if they were still watching her. The students avoided her gaze. “Yep, they know. They’re smart people.”

“I’m sweating,” Sophie said.

“Me too. We have a lot of work to do,” Priya thought. “Some of them appeared suspicious of us. I haven’t seen that before.”

“Yeah, I noticed that too. There’s something different happening. I’m not sure what.”

They spent the rest of the evening making sure the scheduling system worked smoothly. They spent all of Sunday studying to get a jump on the next semester. Monday was day one.

“The first day went well, don’t you think Pree?” Sophie said.

“Yeah, we’re getting into more advanced topics,” Priya said as they walked down University Avenue. “Hey, this coffee place is new. JavaNation? I’ve never heard of it. Let’s go in.”

“Where are the Baristas?” Sophie said as they poked around.

“The entire thing is automated.” Priya said. “It has a complete menu with all the options. The menu is showing up in my eyepiece right now. Let’s go sit over at this table and order while we sit. What do you want Sophie? My treat.”

“Well, it’s a warm day. I’ll get one of those mocha ice blended frappe drinks, medium, with cashew milk, decaf, sugar-free if no aspartame, with a little chocolate drizzle down the side, no whipped cream. Let’s watch how it handles the order.”

Priya blinked to enter the order into her eyepiece with her voice.

“Me too,” she said. “I made an identical second order. My checking account was debited. Not bad.”

They waited 30 seconds.

“Look, here comes one of those RoeBots with our order,” Priya said. “Excellent.”

“It tastes perfect.” Sophie said. “Who owns this place? I see no employees, the prices are lower, the service is faster, and it tastes better.”

“I’m a part owner.”

They turned around.

“Warren? You own this place?” Priya said.

“Well not exactly, but someone in your apartment building does. I invested some seed money to help get it started. I own 10%.”

“I know who it is,” Sophie said. “It’s Raven, isn’t it?”

“That’s right. She started this place last week.”

“Hi guys,” Raven said. “This is a robotics project run amok. I didn’t want to talk about it until now. I programmed the robots behind the wall to imitate every move a barista makes. They take the order, execute it and hand the order off to the little RoeBot over there. I didn’t make the RoeBot. I programmed it.”

“This is an awesome idea Raven,” Priya said. “It’s better than the dispenser bots we see everywhere. It’s homey. We’ll be coming here all the time, right Sophie?”

“Definitely. It’s the perfect place to hang out. It’s much quieter than the other coffee places, though it’s crowded. Are you going to open in more locations? There are partially automated places, but I can imagine this fully automated, yet old-school concept taking over the world.”

“If this place does well, I’ll open a few more around town thanks to my investor here,” Raven said.

Warren smiled.

“And if this goes well, she’ll definitely expand to other places.”

“I’ll be coming here a lot,” Priya said. “It’s a wonderful place.”

“There’s a problem though,” Raven said. “This morning when I opened up, someone had written ‘MUTANT’ in marker pen on the window over there.”

“You know, I had an idea,” Warren said. “I’m going to get Pablo to work on getting the term ‘mutant’ classified as hate speech.”

“Good,” Priya said. “Right now, we have no protection. Calling us mutants is hate speech. You can tell by the scary looks on the faces of those protesters when they call us that.”

Warren paused for a moment.

“I messaged Pablo and he likes the idea. He said he now has 20 of us who will be lawyers and want to fight for our rights.”

“I’m getting anxious about the imported fringe element out there,” Sophie said.

“I think it’s more than a fringe,” Priya said. “Over half the population of the world either hates us or are afraid of us.”

“I wonder what the real numbers are,” Warren said.

“Many people are threatened by us,” Raven said.

“Yeah, we’ve noticed,” Priya replied. “Even the college students seem threatened or something. They give us strange looks. They aren’t afraid or hateful in the same way as the so-called average person. Stanford accepts only the smartest students and they’re reacting differently than the average person. They’re more curious.”

“Okay, we’ll talk more about this later,” Priya said. “We gotta go back and study.”

As they walked up University Avenue and back to their apartment, they overheard a conversation between two university students and slowed down to listen.

“They think they’re better than us,” the first young woman said.

“Yeah,” the second woman said, “They go to that special school because nobody likes them because they’re arrogant. Those mutants—”

“We’re not arrogant.” Priya said.

The two women turned around.

“Oh, sorry. We didn’t know that—”

“Yeah, you didn’t know the mutants overheard your conversation?” Priya said. “We’ll these two mutants did.”

“Well, you guys are arrogant,” the first one said. “You don’t want to go to Stanford. It’s not good enough. So, then you go to a special accelerated school because nothing human is good enough for you.”

“That’s not true,” Priya said. “When we attended a regular school, we were bullied just like you’re doing to us now. At least at this new school, nobody bullies us.”

The second one said, “See, you say ‘us’ as though you’re in some special club.”

“We’re in a club all right, the club of the abused,” Priya said. “People treat us like we carry some disease. They won’t talk to us, and people protest us.”

She pointed down the street.

“Like right over there. They call us mutants. They write graffiti on our walls, and they think we’re arrogant. They’re wrong. I’m the same person as before the abduction.”

Silence.

“So?” Priya said. “What do you think now?”

“I’m sorry,” the first one said. “I’m Jamilla and this is Akna. I didn’t know about all the problems you’re having. I’m just going by what everyone says.”

More silence.

“It’s okay,” Priya said. “That’s human nature. Well, don’t worry about getting diseases or anything from us. We don’t think we’re better than you. Right Sophie?”

“Yeah, we’re normal girls,” Sophie said. “We have a good memory, that’s all. What are you guys studying at Stanford?”

“We’re studying genetic engineering for our PhD’s,” Akna said.

“We are too,” Sophie said.

“Wait. Are you THE Priya and Sophie?” Jamilla said.

Sophie glanced at Priya and rolled her eyes playfully.

“Why yes, we are,” Sophie said.

“Everyone knows about you guys,” Akna said. “We follow you on Twitter and everywhere else.”

“Wait, I’m confused,” Priya said. “You were following us, and at the same time you thought we were arrogant mutants?”

“Well sure,” Akna said. “We like that you’re into genetics. You know how when you admire a movie star, but you don’t like their politics. You may watch all their movies, but you’d never want to invite them over for dinner.”

“Ah, I see,” Priya said.

Akna shook her head and looked down.

“Yeah, I guess this sounds petty, but that’s human nature I guess.”

“Well, we’re all human,” Priya said. “I’m not perfect either. Okay, we gotta go. Let’s exchange contact information.”

They continued up University Avenue in the direction of their apartment. They crossed the street to avoid the protesters, but they shouted ‘mutants.’ across the street. One threw an apple at them but missed.

“Ugh, they’re nasty,” Sophie said.

“And they’re primitive, and ignorant, and whatever. At least Akna and Jamilla understand now. Two down, 9.5 billion to go.”

They studied late into the evening and went to sleep after midnight.

“You make the best omelets Pree,” Sophie said the next morning.

“Thanks, they’re easy to do with this new graphene pan.”

Sophie nodded her head.

“Oh, today’s September first. This is the day Congress votes on the bill to ban artificial procedures to create babies using modified human DNA.”

She focused into her eyepiece.

“I found the story. 95% of Congress voted for the ban. The Senate is expected pass the ban today. The President will sign the bill into law immediately thereafter.”

“The vote wasn’t close,” Priya said. “I’m not surprised.”

“Me neither,” Sophie said. “Let me ask Pablo how many babies were born with our DNA.”

They heard a knock on the door.

“Hi Pablo, that was too weird, I was just contacting you,” Sophie said.

He smiled.

“It’s like we’re telepathic or something.”

He paused.

“Oh wait.”

He paused again for effect.

“We are.”

“Very funny mister comedian,” Sophie said. “Stick with lawyering. My assistant app is speaking your message to me now. I need to make it realize not to do that when we’re close. I like your voice better. Okay let’s see. About two million ICSI procedures were performed around the world. We’ll find out how many babies are born. With healthy eggs and young moms, a high percentage will result in a live healthy birth. Let’s see, the success rate for women under 35 used to be around 50% and now it’s 75%. For women over 40, the success rate used to be 20% and now it’s 40%. We’ll monitor how these pregnancies go, since our DNA is different. If all goes according to the averages, one million babies will be born with our DNA.”

“I guess we’re a new species,” Priya said. “The Omanji made compatible inheritable changes.”

“We would be mutants,” Sophie said. “At least in the non-derogatory way.”

Priya shook her head.

“Our first right has been taken away from us. I hope that’s the end of it. However, if smart and logical Stanford students are against us, it’s going to be a tough battle.”

“Okay, we gotta get to our classes, let’s go,” Priya said as they walked out the door.

The day passed quickly.

“Can you believe the results of our DNA sequencing Pree?” Sophie said, “The Omanji made over 1,500 significant changes and many other smaller changes.”

“Yeah, and what’s weird is I don’t notice the changes at all. I mean, I can remember things better, but the only evidence of a change I notice is we do well on tests, but I’m the same as before.”

“The teacher didn’t know what effects the changes would bring,” Sophie said. “He only knows that some changes might affect the brain and longevity.”

“I guess we still don’t know much about genetics despite all of the effort and the knowledge gained,” Priya said.

“That’s why we need to get home and study,” Sophie said. “We need to know everything so we can break new ground.”

They focused on their classwork. Five weeks later, they finished their second year of university classes.