Priya and Sophie walked into the lab and watched Jamilla and Akna, who were now interns, testing the rats for signs of aging. Six months earlier, Priya and Sophie discovered the portions of their human DNA modified by the Omanji. They developed rat stem cell lines containing modified DNA and introduced those cells into the rats. They left the small bug in place under the table. It was a way they could promote a non-threatening image. All their employees knew of the bug and acted appropriately.

“How are they coming along?” Priya said.

“Out of 100 rats we treated, about 50 of them are showing significant signs of delayed aging,” Akna said. “It’s still too early to tell, but the results are encouraging.”

“Check out this one,” Akna said. “He’s getting old but he’s acting young, his strength and speed are not declining, and his cells aren’t aging at the rate they should be compared to similarly aged unmodified rats over there in that cage. Have a look at this.”

On the interactive wall behind them, a series of charts showed compelling evidence that the rats were not declining in health and mental ability as they normally would as they grew older.

“They’re holding up well, Priya said. “It’s obvious to me they’re not aging at the rate they should be.”

“Yeah,” Sophie said. “None of them are showing signs of dementia or any other age-related problem.”

“I don’t know how the Omanji figured this out,” Priya said. “They knew what they were doing. I now see how those modifications would work, but I’m not sure how they figured out how an alien species like us would age, and then know what to do to stop it.”

“Have a look at this,” Akna said. “This rat is a master at figuring out this puzzle. After we implanted his modified neural stem cells, some of them are growing a second axon and it’s having an effect.”

“Every day he seems to be getting better,” Sophie said.

“I wish we were making more progress towards curing autism,” Priya said. “Every time I think I’m making progress the problem gets more complicated. There are so many variables that it may be impossible to solve. I can get someone like Raven to help break the code to find patterns. I’m not going to give up. I’ll have to work on other things that are more solvable. Hold on, Amy is trying to contact me.”

Priya blinked into her eyepiece and was connected to Amy.

“Pree, you need to get down here right away. There’s a huge demonstration on the Stanford campus and it’s not in your favor. They’re causing a lot of trouble. Get down here now.”

They disconnected and soon Priya and Sophie were on the scene. Thousands of protesters were marching. They were holding signs demanding the resignation of modified people from several large high technology companies in the area. Priya’s heart sank as she read the signs. The high-tech workers wrote them. These weren’t the same protesters who were afraid of modern technology. She contacted Warren, Raven, and Pablo to get over there as soon as possible.

“I thought things were getting better for us,” Sophie said. “I guess not.”

“They’re angrier than before,” Amy said. “They’ve been getting louder all day long. More people are arriving on the scene every hour. They tell me they resent having modified people get promoted over them and taking the better jobs. Several senators in Washington are supporting this movement. That includes Senator MacArthur.”

“Yeah, I remember him,” Priya said. “I could tell he had it in for us.”

Soon, the others arrived.

“This is looking bad,” Warren said.

“Yeah,” Pablo said. “Our outreach program isn’t working. What should we do?”

“Let’s go back to my office,” Priya said.

As they walked away, several protesters noticed them and begin to follow them. They quickly ran down the street and down a side alley to get away. Eventually they made it back to Priya’s office.

“I feel like this is never going to end,” Priya said. “No matter what we do we’re going to alienate people.”

“Definitely,” Sophie said. “If we hide away, people will think there is some sort of conspiracy happening. If we stay out in the open, we’ll get too much attention and people will become afraid of us taking over the world. If we work in companies, coworkers get resentful. If we start companies, the conspiracy talk gets worse.”

“I’ve been paying a lot of attention to this problem,” Amy said. “People think there’s an uneven playing field. They feel like they don’t have a chance against you guys. It doesn’t matter how much money you make for those companies. They’re worried about their jobs. The weird thing is when I talk to my friends, most of them say they’ll want to have a Mod kid like you guys. Then they realize if they have smart kids, the original human species will eventually go extinct. But they still want the Mod kid.”

“So, in the end, we win,” Priya said. “It’s a voluntary self-extinction. The government won’t like that when they realize it. We better figure out what to do right away. Let’s take a poll among all 25,000 of us to find out what we should do.”

A few hours later the poll was complete. It was decided that in cases where unmodified people felt they couldn’t compete; the mods will quit those jobs. Warren volunteered to finance them until they could start their own companies, or work where they were wanted.

Over the next several months, most of them quit their jobs and started their own companies. Many of them were nonprofit corporations, which allowed them to donate proceeds to worthy causes in the hopes that this would calm fears among the general public. The plan worked well for a while. Then it fell apart.