“Surprise.” Sophie said. “Happy birthday Pree.”

She blew out the candles.

“It’s getting harder to blow these out each year,” Priya said.

“23 is not a lot,” Warren said. “Especially for us.”

“It seems like it’s a lot. I don’t feel 23. I see no-Mod people my age, and what they’re doing. I have no interest whatsoever.”

“Like what?” Sophie said.

“Like going to clubs or parties. Following celebrity gossip. Doing drugs. Dating. Climbing a social ladder. Getting married. Wanting a family. Sometimes I wish I were normal.”

“Occasionally,” Raven said. “There are a few no-Mods like us in those ways, but few people have our interests at our age.”

“We’re getting more out of sync each year with no-Mods our age,” Priya said. “In some ways, we’re still 14 years old. In other ways, it’s like we’re old. We have the resumes of 70-year-olds. I’m starting to feel like I really am part of a new species. Our lifestyle is completely out of sync. There’s no way I’ll ever marry an unmodified guy. I could never work at a normal company. The lack of knowledge many people have about even the most elementary subjects is frustrating to me.”

“Yeah,” Raven said. “People think they know and understand the world and how it works, but when you ask them specific basic questions, they can’t answer them, and only then do they sometimes realize they don’t understand. They think their opinions are grounded in fact, when really, they’re grounded on speculation and ignorance.”

“There’s a lot I don’t understand about the world,” Priya said. “But I’m aware of what I understand and what I don’t. Except the unknown unknowns.”

“Did you hear the news?” Pablo said. “There are now 20 million modified kids in the world. The oldest is now four. I’m getting too many legal requests to handle. Governments are not enforcing the laws because there are too many of us. And we’re an advantage.”

“What legal help do the kids want?” Priya said.

“Their parents want help because they’re being persecuted in their preschools. Their applications are being rejected or if they get into the preschool they’re being ignored or abused. In some countries it’s worse. I’m hearing that in several countries, the modified kids are being rounded up along with their parents and put into camps where they’re not allowed to leave.”

“I read about that last night,” Priya said. “We need to do something about this. It’s getting worse every day.”

“We can’t stop them unless we take physical military action,” Warren said.

“Then so be it,” Priya said. “I’m sick and tired of these ignorant people.”

“But we don’t have an army or anything,” Sophie said.

“There are things we can do short of military action,” Raven said.

“Like what?” Priya said.

“We can disrupt the incarceration process and the operation of the facilities,” Raven said. “We can use our drones and AI framework to mess up anyone who harms these people.”

“Yeah, but that only slows down or delays the process,” Priya said. “How can we stop a foreign government with a full military force that wants to incarcerate or exterminate our people?”

“Maybe we can talk to our government to get help,” Sophie said. “Your mom knows the President, and unfortunately for other reasons, you do too.”

“Yeah right,” Priya said. “The only thing that moves governments to act is physical or economic force.

Wait, that’s it.”

“What’s it?” Sophie said.

“We still have our economic leverage. We used it twice to get us out of incarceration. Maybe we can use it again to get others out.”

 “You’re right,” Warren said. “We can withhold our products and services from the countries that abuse us. That would cost their economies about $50 billion this year, and about $70 billion next year. We get more valuable every year.”

“Let’s put it to a vote between all 25,000 of us on our private network,” Priya said.

The vote was unanimous. At first, the countries ignored their demands. However, once the impact of withholding goods and services was felt in the economies, they released many of their young prisoners and their families. Within a few months, protests spread across the countries until each government decided to incarcerate them once more, regardless of the economic cost. Priya and her friends met to discuss what to do next.

“Well, we tried,” Priya said. “But we’re losing. 14 countries are incarcerating our people. These are little kids and their parents and entire families. We can’t let them do this.”

“I read that 45% of the US population wants to incarcerate us,” Warren said. “That number is rising. This problem keeps coming back.”

“Somebody told me today they want us in prison, and they don’t care if the economy gets hurt,” Raven said. “They think we’re ruining the human species. They think it’s a matter of human survival.”

“You know what happens when an animal is cornered,” Sophie said.

“Yeah,” Priya said. “Humans are dangerous animals. What are we going to do? They’ll come for us. We escaped before, but next time they may never let us go, no matter what we can do to them.”

“We’re in trouble from a legal standpoint,” Pablo said. “They can change the law or even the constitution and we’ll have no legal defense. They’ve been adding clauses to the Human Species Preservation act. They want to make it an amendment to the US Constitution. They can do anything they want to us if they decide we pose an existential threat to the human species. What’s happening in other countries will eventually happen here.”

“We should decide what we’ll do based on contingencies,” Priya said. “One contingency is they incarcerate us and keep us there indefinitely so we can’t reproduce using any method natural or artificial. Another is they kill us and anyone trying to have children of our species. Or they could leave us alone and human nature being what it is, our species will be reproductively preferred and eventually win out. Based on the parental preference to have children like us, in about 80 years, 90% of all births will be of our species. I’m sure the President and Congress know this.

“Speaking of having children of our species, did you hear the president of the Philippines gave birth to a Mod child?” Sophie said.

“Yeah,” Warren said. “Ironic, considering she declared martial law and locked up about a million of us and their human families in prison. What a hypocrite.”

“That’s going to happen here,” Priya said. “We need to plan for the three contingencies. If they try to kill us, we need to physically fight back with every resource we have. I can make biological weapons with a short lifespan. The microbes could affect people for a limited number of hours. I could program them to infect and kill or make sick only specific types of people in specific locations. They could be food-borne or airborne.”

“I could shut down and disable nearly any computer network anywhere,” Raven said. “Even after all these years, there are billions of unprotected or sparsely protected devices.”

“You guys are going to the dark side,” Warren said.

“What do you suggest we do if they try to kill us?” Priya said. “Do we die out and go quietly into the night? If they don’t kill us, do we want to live 300 years with these kinds of constant problems?”

“No, but—”

“There are no buts,” Priya said. “We either defend ourselves or go extinct. We have a right to life just like anyone else.”

“What if they put us in that camp? Keep us alive and comfortable, and that’s it?” Sophie said.

“I don’t know,” Priya said. “It depends on what they do after that. How will they treat us? We should be ready for any contingency anywhere on the planet. We need to work on our survival straight away. I don’t think we have much time. In 15 countries now, one more just started, millions of us and our supporting human families are in detention. It’s happening by the hour.”

“Do you think our human families will support us?” Raven said.

Of course, most of them will,” Priya said. “Parents usually protect their children. We’re their children. Thousands of us are born every day to human parents. Each one of them made a conscious and often illegal decision to have us, knowing what we are. Well, not us modified by the Omanji, but our new species children. Every family benefits by having one of us. Only extreme measures can stop us.”

“Yeah,” Raven said. “But many people want to take extreme measures.”

“That’s why we need to be ready starting at any time,” Priya said. “I’m almost ready now. I can release the programmed microbes at a time and place of my choosing.”

“Isn’t that a weapon of mass destruction?” Warren said.

“No. They’re programmed to make a limited number of people sick for a limited period of time.”

“But you said they could kill people,” Warren said.

“I could program them that way, but I’m not.”

“It’s still a biological weapon,” Warren said. “The World Court decided that years ago. Tests will be able to show that we created those microbes.”

“It’s still less destructive than shooting people with guns or bombing them,” Priya said. “I don’t see how someone can bomb a city or shoot thousands of people and not be considered as evil as someone who uses chemical or biological weapons to kill a lesser number of people or nobody. That attitude excuses people for committing mass murder with conventional weapons. Regardless, this is in self-defense and hopefully it will help to avoid our genocide or slow extinction.”

“I’m watching a Senate subcommittee meeting right now,” Raven said. “They’re trying to monitor our activities. They can’t get much information though. I’ve made sure of that, but they’re making lots of guesses. They’re recommending a change to the Constitution, so we don’t have the rights of regular people. They still have no idea we’re monitoring them.”

“We don’t have much time,” Priya said. “They’re going to come for us again. This time it might be permanent.”

“I can make thousands of small delivery drones for your microbes,” Raven said. “I can program them to deliver a small package to anywhere at any time. I could have them ready in a week.”

“I’m not sure about this,” Sophie said. “I designed some of those microbes. I’d be responsible for those illnesses or even deaths.”

“What else could we do in our own defense?” Priya said. “We can’t watch passively as our species goes extinct. Over our 300-year lifespan too. Yeah, they’re thinking defensively on their side, but I’m not trying to stop humans from reproducing like they’re doing to us.”

“But our existence is driving the extinction of the old species humans,” Warren said.

“Yes,” Priya said. “But we’re not taking action to make them go extinct like they want to do to us. Every time they give birth to one of us, they’re participating in their own voluntary extinction.”

“Voluntary extinction?” Warren said.

“What else would you call it?” Priya said. “They’re giving birth to more of us every day. Those parents want babies like us. Homo sapiens sapiens would be the first species to voluntarily go extinct.”

“Until they change their minds,” Warren said.

“Since when have humans been logically consistent?” Priya said.

“They’re calling us mutants again,” Raven said.

“Who is?” Priya said.

“I’m still listening in on that closed-door congressional meeting. I think momentum is building to have us incarcerated for good. They’re trying to get other countries to do the same.”

“How much time do we have?” Priya said.

“I don’t know,” Raven said. “But I think it’s more like months than years. They want to get all countries to agree to this simultaneously because they know the births of our children will continue otherwise. There are now 21 million of us around the world. Except for us modified by the Omanji, they’re all around four years old or younger.”

“What does the voting look like right now?” Pablo said.

“It’s about 50-50,” Raven said. “In some other countries besides the United States, we’re losing.”

“A simple majority can pass a lot of legislation against us,” Pablo said. “The US Supreme Court would probably rule against us 6 to 3.”

“Legally, what can we do?” Priya said.

“We have a difficult argument to make on our behalf,” Pablo said. “They’re trying to take away our human rights, but we need to argue that we’re humans before we can have human rights. After listening to our last few minutes of conversation, we don’t think we’re human. And they don’t think we are either. What rights do we have?”

“I don’t know,” Priya said.

“They don’t know either,” Pablo said. “Nobody does. It’s up to the Supreme Court to decide. They won’t rule in our favor.”

“I thought we had the law on our side,” Priya said.

“We do, but they’re changing the law and the Supreme Court merely interprets the law.”

“I thought we’re entitled to a jury of our peers,” Sophie said.

“A jury of our human peers,” Pablo said. “Like I said, they don’t think we’re human. We don’t either. If we challenge things all the way to the Supreme Court, the justices will not be peers of your species. We’re a small minority in the general population. All we can hope is our minority rights will be protected.”

“I just got an alert,” Raven said.

“What is it?” Priya said.

“I think V is back,” Raven said.

“How do you know?” Warren said.

“I can’t be sure, but a robot was discovered wandering on a street in Shanghai.”

“So?” Priya said. “There are more robots on the streets now than ever before.”

“Yeah, but this one ran away when people tried to catch it. It’s still on the loose and nobody knows where it came from. Nobody can identify it from any photo of any known robot in production today or in the past.”

“What does it look like?” Priya said.

“It moves and looks a little like V. It’s too much of a coincidence. Some changes have been made. Have a look at this photo. Notice the extra appendage on the side and it moves a lot faster than my version of V.”

“Check this out,” Warren said. “Here’s a story about a strange robot trying to gain access to a robot factory in Bangalore. Why would it be trying to get into the robot factory?”

“Does the story have photos?” Raven said.

“Yes. Have a look at this surveillance video.”

“That one doesn’t look like V at all,” Raven said. “But it’s a fast mover and it behaves like V. I don’t think these two stories are coincidental.”

“Why do you say that?” Sophie said.

“It’s the way they move and the way they avoid people. There’s something familiar about them.”

“Here’s another one,” Warren said. “An unidentified robot was sighted about 3 miles from a Google robot factory in Boston. A Google spokesperson said she could not identify the origin of the robot. The robot got away before anyone could capture it.”

“Who is making these robots?” Pablo said. “It seems like they’re stealing your designs.”

“They resemble V, but more like an evolved version of V with fewer restrictions,” Raven said. “I’m looking for all references to any robot-like object found in the past 24 hours.”

“I thought V was gone for good,” Priya said. “But it went dormant and now it’s back, just like a real virus. I’ve seen this a lot in the lab. They have ability to go into stasis. A chemical trigger brings them back to life.”

“What was the trigger?” Sophie said. “Who or what is manufacturing these robots now?”

“I found 23 instances of unidentified robots sighted in the past 24 hours,” Raven said. “The stories are local. Nobody I’ve seen has drawn any conclusions or correlations yet.”

“What correlations do you see?” Warren said.

“They’re all located in cities that have robot manufacturing facilities. Either this recently started, or they have limited range or both.”

“People are stealing your designs,” Pablo said. “The law is on our side.”

“You’re thinking like a lawyer,” Raven said. “But we need to think like an AI.”

“You’re thinking like someone that’s read too much science fiction,” Pablo said.

“No,” Raven said. “Bok was right. We can’t underestimate V. I just built an agent to put the pieces together. Let’s see what it finds out.”

“What makes you think V is behind this,” Pablo said.

“Because this is happening in so many locations. It’s not like one company is producing these robots.”

“What are the robots doing?” Priya said.

“They don’t seem to be doing much of anything,” Raven said. “They’re exploring. See what it’s doing in this surveillance video? It moves up to objects and touches them. It’s inspecting everything around it. It’s avoiding people whenever possible. My agent has now found 28 of them around the world so far. The only consistent thing I notice is they’re all doing the same thing. Wandering around inspecting things. And avoiding people. They’re mostly out at night, probably because there are fewer people.”

“They seem harmless,” Sophie said. “The hide and only come out at night, kind of like prey animals.”

“Predators come out at night too,” Priya said.