Challenge 00512 - A137: Gengineer of Note
Uplifting, as opposed to Augmenting, is illegal in your universe, right? Presumably for how easily both the process and the products of said process can be abused, along with the sad examples of such.
But I refuse to believe that such a transformative technology with so many pitfalls along the way was developed solely for money. Sure, there had to be at least the potential for profit, otherwise the people capable of doing it would never have had the resources to do so. But there had to be passion, someone or someones doing it because they believed that it was the right thing, that it was a good thing, that they believed in it. Not because it would give them slaves, but because it would give them people.
And then it was abused. Repeatedly. How did they feel about their life’s work, their dream, turning into this? How did they feel, through all the no-doubt-innumerable hearings, the interminable legal proceedings, the castigation?
Were they simply idealistic, to not see the ways their dream could be exploited? Were they themselves, their genius or collective genius exploited by less scrupulous people?
Were they lonely? Were they Nypical, or were they ‘off’? Were they looking, at the most basic level, to “make a friend”? Were they attempting to better understand other people by quantifying what goes into a person, or even in building a person, better themselves?
And how are they seen now, centuries hence? Evil? Greedy? Amoral? – RecklessPrudence
It wasn’t always this way.
It wasn’t a life of solitude with his Cats for company and people like PETA and EVILR[1] constantly at his gates. It wasn’t dodging internet rumours about what he did with his Cats every time he was online.
It wasn’t always feeling sick because of what They were doing with technology.
Once… just once… it had been good.
*
“My name is Anton De'Vrieyez. And this is Jemima.”
“Hello,” said Jemima.
“Oh my god, it talks.”
“That’s ‘she’ talks, please? I’m a girl, not a thing.”
“And -uh- can you show the audience at home that you’re not a puppet or something, Jemima?”
She sighed and stood, turning a graceful pirouette. “I’m really getting tired of showing people how real I am,” she grumbled.
“It’s still your turn,” said Anton. “We agreed to this. You, Julie, Jake and James all decided together that this is how you were going to handle it.”
“There’s four of you?”
“There’s eighty of us,” said Julie. “We’re what you might call the 'display sample’.”
Gasps from the audience. Anton winced. “Jemima, that’s not a good way of putting it.” He sighed. “We all decided together that the J-run should be the prettier cats, and that some would go on the road to show everyone that I’m not doing evil things with you all.”
“I’m sorry, Poppy.”
More gasps.
Anton forced a smile. “All of the Cats call me some variant of 'dad’ or 'pop’. I -uh- did create them. Um. Trying to be a good father to eighty Kittens isn’t that… um… easy…”
“You do okay, Poppy,” Jemima smudged her cheek on his arm as she hugged it. “We all love you.”
“And you made these… sentient cats?”
“Cogniscent cats,” corrected Anton. “I always got on better with cats than I did with people and I looked at our current level of gentech and -uh- realised… I could make a whole population of Cats. Like, give them everything they need to communicate and function on a human level.” A shy smile. “I was so glad when it worked.”
“So… you literally made your friends.”
“If you want to boil it down to that level… yes. I have eight gestational replicators so the Cats come out in batches of eight. After Eve, of course.”
“She’s our Meow-ma,” added Jemima.
“I make sure they’re up to date with their inoculations, of course. Uplifted cats can catch all the human diseases and all of the felid ones, too.”
“So Eve is your girlfriend?”
“What? No! She’s my daughter. Just because she’s the eldest and takes care of some of the Kits with me… It’s complicated, okay? None of the Cats are designed as sexual objects. They’re friends. Companions. Family. I don’t know about you, but I don’t go around screwing my family.”
*
He was the first and last known person who thought about the inalienable rights of Cogniscent life. The right to freedom. The right to an education. The right to shelter. The right to nutrition. The right to reproduce and the right to choose to do so.
All others after him… chose to ignore that. Demanded control. Abused the power over living, thinking beings that were also, legally, property.
Anton and his Cats fled earth and founded the planet Felida. But not before the abusers dragged his good name through the mud.
Only on Felida is he respected as an inventor and a creator. Only on Felida, is all the truth about him told.
When he was dying, the Cats offered to clone him, so that someone like him would always be with them. They had the technology. They could have easily done it without his permission.
“No,” he breathed, extending a gnarled and shaking hand to soothe the asker’s tears and whiskers. “Don’t ever make somebody just so they can be alone.”
If only the other Uplifters had paid him any heed at all.
[1] Egalitarian Vegans Insisting on Life-Rights
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