alexpgp | LJ Idol 6.14 - Precognition: Cursed

When I heard that Eve was with child, I was happy, both for her and her husband. When I saw the infant… touched her… I was relieved, not only because mother and daughter were alive and healthy, but because I knew the baby girl would pass The Test.

How did I know? I cannot explain it, but I do not remember a time when I did not know such things.

With the baby in my arms, I left Eve and her husband behind in the reception chapel and passed into the EUGENE analyzer lab. They watched me though the wire-reinforced glass as I placed the baby inside the apparatus, made the necessary adjustments, then went to the control console and initiated the procedure.

As I have since I was 8 years old, I also made an entry in my personal file, which my mother set up for me on the clinic's network to give her boy a place in which to "play computer" while she did paperwork. Now, 17 years later, that file serves a different purpose for me, the clinic's medical computer tech, where one of my principal duties is to operate EUGENE when The Test is performed.

"Baby 091110EVE - PASS," I typed, using the child's hospital number, and exited the file. My entry was saved, encrypted with a legally binding time stamp. In my heart, I wanted to show everyone that I could always tell how The Test would turn out, that I had correctly predicted all of them, including the 42 infants who had been culled over the years. Yes, I'd do that someday, when the time was right.

***
My mother tells me I was bitten by a Thulian whipscorpion when I was two and she and I were visiting my father at his worksite, on a plantation far from the city. The solfugid injected its venom very nearly into my spinal cord, and I spent two months hovering near death at the clinic where my mother worked as the chief doctor, and where she lived while I lay sick. I underwent the standard sessions with the EUGENE ameliorator, to make sure any genetic changes caused by the bite – our Thule has that kind of planetary biology – were properly undone. She has kept me close since then, and sometimes I think I've lived at the clinic all my life.

My mother believed something happened to me during that ordeal because the year following my near-fatal hospitalization, when my sister - who I think of as "Elizabeth" - was born and I was allowed to touch her just moments after delivery, horror crossed my face and I began to cry. Her belief became stronger about six months later, when I had the same reaction after touching another infant that, soon after, also failed The Test and was handed over to the Preservers for culling.

To this day, I cannot name the feeling that sweeps over me when I touch an infant that will not pass The Test, but I have learned to hide my reaction to it, even from my mother, who suspects, but does not know that in this one thing, her son can see the future.

Has my reaction ever been wrong? Well, yes... and no.

My mother's position at the clinic allowed me free run of, in particular, the maternity ward, where my presence was deemed therapeutic for mothers and offspring, and gave me a chance to touch all the infants that were born there. I learned I could somehow tell which babies would be culled by EUGENE, based on my emotional reaction after touching them. Then, when I was 18, a baby named Gary triggered my feeling but passed The Test.

I was happy for the child, but emotionally shaken. It had been the first time in over 300 births that my reaction had failed me. My "failure" shouldn't have affected me, but it did, and I withdrew from the world. A consequence of that withdrawal was losing Eve, a blond, blue-eyed goddess one year my junior, whom I had met at the clinic when she had arrived to do some administrative work for the colony, and with whom I had fallen in love.

Three years later, Gary, then a toddler, collapsed and died while playing tag at a recreation yard. An autopsy was performed, revealing a congenital heart condition. This created an uproar among the Elders, some of whom had already begun to believe The Test was no longer necessary, and now began to argue that the results were unreliable, but the majority prevailed, holding that The Test was an old and venerable tradition that had served the colony well over the generations. My mother was pressured to issue a finding that the heart condition had developed after The Test, triggered by unknown factors of Thulian biology.

But I knew better. Nobody has ever seen the inside of EUGENE, but my education and common sense told me that all hardware eventually wears out, all software eventually produces an error, and EUGENE was one of the systems that dated from the Grounding, many generations ago. As far as I knew, my reactions to babies had always been correct, and EUGENE had made an error with Gary.

***
Like most parents, Eve and her husband remained in the reception chapel during the entire four-hour span of The Test. I tried not to look at them, but I kept noticing them out of the corner of my eye. At the appointed end time, the system's printer whirred and spit out its report. I picked it up, arranged the pages into a neat pile, and my eye caught sight of the result.

My heart stopped.

The baby had failed The Test.

The same report, I knew, had been printed in the office of the Preservers, located only a short distance down the hall. They would be here in minutes to collect the baby. I left the papers on a table, and as calmly as I could, I stepped to the door to the reception chapel and opened it. I was improvising a plan.

I was interrupted when the service door at the back of the lab opened loudly, and two Preservers entered the room with their transport carrier. I was momentarily confused, as I hadn't expected them so soon.

When Eve saw the Preservers, she screamed. I snapped out of my confusion, took two steps to the analyzer, and snatched the infant from inside, wires and all. As the Preservers roared in protest, I grabbed Eve by the hand, dragged her and the baby back through the door to the chapel, and after roughly shoving aside Eve's husband - who had positioned himself to block our way - the three of us ran out of the chapel entrance, though the clinic halls, and into the street.

As Eve and I made our way out of the city, hand in hand through crowds, I kept stealing glances at her, and came to realize I had never really stopped loving her. Somewhat further on, I suddenly felt the the full shock of realization, of what I had just done and what I had done in the past. This was quickly followed by the sting of shame - What have I done? - and I quickly handed the child to Eve and looked away.

When Eve stopped to feed the baby, she told me the infant had a name, Cassandra. I sat close by and all I could feel was the energy between us. "We really have to go now," I said, after a few minutes.

We eventually holed up in an abandoned survival shack in the middle of a plantation after checking it for local wildlife. As the light faded, I came to a decision.

"Do you remember Gary, the little boy who died at the recreation yard," I asked.

"Of course I do, he brought us to the brink of civil war," she said.

I took a breath, then another.

"I knew something was wrong with him," I said, and then explained about my ability, told her about Elizabeth. "But Cassie is fine, Eve," I finished, "I couldn't let them... not her, not you!"

The next morning, before Eve woke, I unwrapped myself from her arms, got dressed, and left a note with food and water. I had to get back to the city. I had to set things right.

The road back and the inquest are still a blur. I was arrested and held, deprived of sleep, and food, and water in which to wash. I was then hauled before a forum of Elders. When I tried to explain about my ability, and EUGENE's failure, and my file - which would prove my claim - I was shouted down. In fact, the whole world was shouting for my head and I felt my cause was lost.

Then Eve parted the crowd and came to stand beside me. She made the Elders listen, and they looked at my file and checked the records and came to a decision. "She's right!" cried an Elder, but I don't remember the rest of the proceedings.

***
I now perform the functions for the colony that EUGENE performed, and have been sentenced to do so up until such time that a baby that passes my "test" manifests a genetic defect or a mutation, or I die. Then EUGENE will be reactivated. I don't care. I have already passed one baby who would have been culled (may it be decades before the child, whose name is Claude, manifests any problems!)

Meanwhile, nights, I pore over ancient files, looking for a way to break EUGENE so that it can never be repaired. I am not far from the answer, and once I find it, and there is no going back for the colony, I will respond to Eve's note, make my escape, and join her to see how she will make the Old Gods bring us back to Eden.

If anyone can do it, she can.

~~Intersection 3~~ Valentine Partnering:
Precognition/The Place That Can Not Be

My topic selection: Precognition

My partner for this round was the ever-cheerful

agirlnamedluna. Her entry is here.

P.S. Conventional wisdom holds that when you assume, you make an "ass" of "u" and "me." As it turns out, the task for this week did not include an intersection, which means my partner and I will advance (or not) solely on our individual and not combined merits. Happily, this would appear to be the entire extent of the damage inflicted by my and

agirlnamedluna's assumption. Our essays are still interwoven, even if our vote tallies are not.