Last Man Standing

Two men meet in a hillside bar in the near future whilst hiding out from the police. One is a fugitive. One is keeping a secret. Follow this twisting tale through the history of the pair and discovery the interweaving history that connects them in ways neither thought were possible. 

Last Man Standing
By A.M Carver
31^st of December, 2077

The best bars are on the outskirts of Lhasa; at least Harry thought so. He’d never really understood VR bars, whilst the bars in the city centre were either crawling with pre-war moneymen or elitist printer babies. For his fix, Harry took to the hillsides.

Mayke Ame was typical of the district. The unpainted concrete block held a hundred- and fifty-six-years’ worth of dubious deals and questionable clientele. Stepping over the greying mongrel in the doorway, Harry called out to the bartender for the usual. Jiu glanced up briefly from the glow of his head mounted display, nodding as he fished a dusty bottle from the mess behind the bar.  He never said much, but then again he never needed to. The patchwork skin of his body, run through with cables and poorly crafted combat augmentations, usually said enough.

The tumbler had barely met his lips when the mutt in the doorway started to snarl. A figure ducked inside, stumbling up to the bar as he fought to catch his breath. Despite the fashionable twist of his haircut, the man was in a state of shabby disregard; his canary-yellow coat was painted with smudges and burns. Resting a boot on the bar rail, the figure tried on a smile, quickly asking the bartender for a beer between breaths. The room fell quiet as a police drone shot past, its siren howling through the narrow street. With a nod, Jiu popped the lid from a punch-pink bottle, dangling it before the man’s eyes.

“Prices are now doubled. Be civil, or I civilize you.”

The hydraulics in his neck hissed.

“Understanding?”

The man nodded, tapping the back of his hand upon the counter. The register pinged, as Jiu placed the bottle before him. The younger man raised it.

“To your health, péngyǒu.”

Harry couldn’t help but chuckle as Jiu rolled his one surviving eye, plugging an optic extension back into his Netstation.

“Only the brave or the foolish call Jiu their friend.”

The young man glanced over with a grin.

“Then what does that make you?”

“Both.”

The young man laughed, raising his beer.

“Happy New Year, old timer.”

He took a swig as Harry looked him over.

“Happy New Year, xíngshì.”

Beer running down his chin, the outlaw raised a finger.

“Less of a criminal. More of a protestor.” He shrugged. “Same thing to some, I suppose.”

“Depends what you’re protesting. Harry, by the way."

The young man smiled, raising a hand to shake the offered palm.

“Song. Genetic equality.”

“A dangerous practice these days.”

“True, but somebody has to do it. Police Force of four thousand people and not a single Bio passing application? Gotta call discrimination when you see it.”

Harry nodded, glancing out the window.

“You would have thought selecting our own genetics would’ve bred out practices like this. The infinite stubbornness of people never…”

Jiu tapped the counter as both men clocked it; the sirens were returning. Harry slid a chit into Jiu’s waiting hand, motioning for Song to follow him.

“Tab’s good for a few drinks. Care to continue this somewhere less visible?”

Song nodded, swiping his beer from the counter as he tailed Harry through a door, almost invisible amongst the peeling heaps of posters adorned across the back wall. Beyond them was the balcony, a cluster of concrete booths clinging to the side of the bar. Settling on the sun warmed stone, Harry relaxed, studying his new drinking partner with a critical eye.

“Excuse an old man’s curiosity. First generation New Boomer?”

Song let slip a blunted laugh.

“What my life could have been if I could say yes.”

Harry’s eyes widened. He leaned in, his voice lowering to a whisper.

“You’re a Bio?”

The smile on Song’s face was paper thin.

“One hundred percent non-altered human. Womb to table certified.”

Harry shook his head in disbelief.

“Incredible...”

He looked up, catching Song’s raised eyebrow.

“No offence intended. It’s just such a rarity! The post war generation was…”

“Over ninety-nine point nine percent New Eden processed.”

Harry nodded, old eyes studying young.

“Absolutely remarkable. And no sign of deformity! I didn’t think it was possible…”

Song slammed his bottle on the table top, cutting the old man off. Harry looked down, face reddening beneath the wrinkles.

“Again, apologies. I’m clearly not as tactful as I used to be.”

“No need; anyone paying for the round can be as rude as they like.”

He conjured a smile as the old man continued to study him.

“Did your parents not have access to an IUE?”

Slowly peeling the bottle clean, Song gazed across the softly glowing skyline.

“They were offered the chance. They declined.”

“Surely they knew the risks?”

“They knew. Both saw the neonatal units first hand, filled with the broken bodies of war-born children.”

The old man finished his drink quickly. Song was far away now, eyes dancing between the lights of the hillside as Harry pushed the button for another drink.

“I suppose they felt lucky. Nine months later, out I came: a bouncing baby boy. Doctors told them it was a miracle. One even tried to have them charged for negligence, given the impossible odds of me being born alive, yet alone healthy. But there I was.”

Harry barely tasted the bitter whiskey, studying this new found genetic miracle before him.

“Extraordinary.”

Song snorted, a bemused spark in his eyes as he looked the old man over with incredulity.

“Not the word I would have used for it.”

“Oh?”

Nodding, Song drained the last of his beer.

“Rare, certainly. But all the chaos, discrimination and violence aside, it was just like any other childhood.”

He laughed again, that same blunt chuckle of those who swallow their anger. 

“Confusing is probably a more apt description. In a class full of genetic poster children, you can’t help but wonder why you’re the only runt with eczema and a birthmark. The nice kids told me it’s because my parents were recall hicks, idiots dragged back to the homeland before America’s nationality purges. The others just beat the crap out of you.”

The door slid open, as a whirring service drone rattled its way across the balcony. Quickly lifting the drinks from the tray, Harry placed them on the table.

“I’m truly sorry.”

Song shrugged, smiling into his bottle.

“Not your fault. You remember how crazy the world was back then; what does one kid matter your country lacks clean water?”

He took a lengthy swig, drowning the memory.

“Worst part was that it was pre-regulation. Despite the regime’s efforts, sexism was alive and well in the forties, so the first altered generation was almost entirely male here. Combine that with a post-war society and you can see why I learnt to fight young.”

Harry shook his head, picturing the scene.

“It was never meant to be like that.”

“No. But then again, it never is.  Change doesn’t take everyone by the hand. Some of us get dragged, kicking and screaming…”

Harry saw it briefly in his glass, thin ripples thickening as the vibrations took hold. Within seconds the whole building was shaking, the scream of two Breaker Engines deafening both men as they ducked for cover. Mere feet above them, the battered underside of an old troop transport skimmed the rooftops, its black hull adorned with posters and paintjobs. Even as the roar stole his voice, Harry whistled, waving as the old beast played chicken with the whole skyline. Trailing behind, a tatty flag wished all who cared to read it a prosperous new year from the Blue Mountain Triad. Reaching the end of the strip (or perhaps noticing the Police Raptor drones raising from the rooftops), the battered vessel pulled up sharply, arcing out towards orbit. Harry didn’t notice the electric blue flash crossing Song’s right eye as he slowly turned back to the neon spires of Lhasa’s second temple. They sat in silence a while, watching the glow of the breakers fade into the mountain sky. Harry raised a glass.

“All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.”

“You should write that down. Sounds like a history of my ex’s.”

Harry couldn’t help but grin.

“Afraid somebody beat me to it. But forget dead wordsmiths, I could do with a love story.”

The younger man shrugged.

“Hardly love and even less of a story.  As the only non-six foot, genetically perfect boy, I drew attention of the few girls in our institution. Mostly negative of course, but there were a few who were curious. On the subject of dead wordsmiths, how did your Orwell put it? Rebels from the waist down. Never lasted long of course; I was more of a science experiment than a companion.”

He laughed, but it was hollow. The streets began to bustle below them as he tapped his chest, eyes lost in the lights of a billboard advertising this season’s new skin colours.

“Only so many times you can let your heart break though. Eventually, I figured that if society had left me behind, then I had to leave society. The moment I graduated from the academy, I dropped off.”

Harry’s smile was gone, the old man peering over steeped fingers. A hole was gnawing itself through his stomach.

“Toured the dead cities a while. The Beijing crater, the mangroves of New York; a lot of Bios had the same idea. A girl I ran with told me it was our way of mourning the old humanity, our people if you will. I don’t know; I was just running.”

Both men looked out to the city, life packed into each street. Harry shuddered, cold memories creeping up his spine.

“Entire cities, quiet as a shrine. They said you went mad if you listened too long.”

“Yet it feels like sacrilege to speak.”

Harry’s face was pale in the dancing lights of the city. They sat in silence for a time, each picturing a different place with the same look. Song took a swig. 

“Of course, it was always the same when you got back. No matter the trophies or the stories, they still gave you the same look. You might know it, old timer.”

He let slip a grim chuckle, as the old man turned from a dancing sky.

“Dare say I might. Some people, they look at us like they’ve never seen a Bio in their lives…”

“Good chance they haven’t. The war never did stop taking.”

“Reckon you’re not wrong there. My phonebook’s grown thin these days. Who would have thought? Generation that blew up the world: going with a whimper instead of a bang.”

“I can’t imagine.”

“You’re right. You can’t.”

The old man regretted his words the moment he said them.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”

Song raised a hand.

“It’s okay, I get it: Some things are better left to the imagination.’

“They shouldn’t be!”

Harry was dangerously close to leaping from his seat.

“We should talk about it; never stop talking about it. Then we might actually learn something and for once in the whole of human history, we’ll stop repeating the same bloody mistakes in the name of progress!”

The old man was shaking now, whiskey trembling with his hands. The city swelled around them, the laughs and cries of the drunk masses pushing their way towards the centre. He finished his drink as the young man leaned forward.

“And as the rest of the world puts itself back together, we feel ourselves falling apart.”

Harry tensed around his tumbler.

“It’s okay Harry. You have every right to be furious with a world that took everything you knew away in the blink of an eye. But if you carry it with you, all it’s gonna do is weigh you down. Trust me, I know.”

The old man turned to him, doubt written over every line. Song smiled.

“Granted, I lost nothing in the war. I lost everything after instead. Any chance of a normal life was gone the moment the smoke cleared. Maybe it seems better to have never known life before the war, yet at least you have the memory. Us post-war bio’s never even had a frame of reference. No answers to the question. So trust me when I tell you that carrying all that with you will do fuck all but break your back.”

They listened to the city a while, the rising clamour meeting the falling darkness.

“Wise words from a young man.”

Song nodded, picking up his beer.

“A lesson hard learned is never easily forgotten.”

“And which teacher should we thank for it?”

“The wisdom of a Hong Kong paving slab.”

Harry chuckled in the half light.

“Do tell.”

Song drained the last of the bottle, cracking his neck as he did so. 

“Followed that anger a long while. Thought it was all I had, a power bestowed by birth or something. So I did what every human does; took everything I could to make me forget, and did it until it stopped working.”

Song glanced down at the empty bottle, carefully placing it on the far side of the table.

“That changed in sixty-seven. Woke up above a bar in Hong Kong just as the anti-transhumanist riots were breaking out. I’m looking out of the window, watching smoke rise between the looters and the fighters. Next thing I know, I’m amongst them.”

He glanced up at the old man, the lines deepening across his features.

“Not saying I’m proud of it. Not at all. But in that moment of my life, it made perfect sense. If society was going to fuck me over, why shouldn’t I take every opportunity to fuck society right back? I was a force, a wave in a sea of hatred ripping apart everything in its path. Yet the more we destroyed, the angrier I got. It wasn’t enough. Every time we destroyed something, all I could think of was how much they had that I never could. So I kept on breaking and burning, right until they shot a concussion round into the back of my head.”

“Jesus.”

“You said it. Thing that got me though? Right as I’m losing consciousness, falling face first into the crush, the only thing going through my mind was the waste I’d made of myself. No exactly comforting stuff.”

Song hovered his finger above the button, raising an eyebrow at Harry. He nodded, placing his empty tumbler down.

“I was pretty surprised when I woke up. Even more surprised to be in a bed, whilst the most stunning guy I’d ever meet was wrapping my head in bandages. Turns out this family, outside whose block I had been fighting with police and setting fire to cars, had seen through the window when I got taken out. Braved the mob to save my unconscious ass and patch me up inside.”

Song shook his head, still in disbelief over the whole thing.

“Sweetest couple you’ve ever met, only a year or two younger than myself. They were trying to raise enough money to get a child licence, have their first kid and all. We’d pelted their home, set fire to their car and here they were, patching me up like I was a member of the family.”

He smiled, picturing the tiny apartment.

“Ended up staying with them for a couple of days. Soon as I could move, I tried to repay their kindness. It was pretty taboo even then to associate with Bio’s like me, but they didn’t seem to pay much mind. I ate with them every day; even taught them how to cook fish coastal style. Think it was the happiest I’d been in a while.”

The service drone was rattling their way again, spilling precious whiskey.

“The week drew to a close however and I could tell I needed to leave. We still keep in touch though. I sometimes take the Lo-Drone out to Hong Kong harbour, drop by with a fresh catch and a few new stories.”

Song leaned forward, raising a fresh bottle from the tray.

“To the kindness of strangers.”

“Wouldn’t you know it.”

Harry chuckled as they sat back in their chairs, taking in the lights.

“Truly though. I don’t think they realised it, but those two? Changed my life forever.”

The old man raised a cynical eyebrow.

“I know, sentimental garbage and all. That being said, I couldn’t use the anger like I used to though. Every time I wanted to destroy something, I felt ashamed. Took a long while, but I came to the realisation that all this anger just sat inside you, festering. Tainting the good stuff even just by being there.”

He took a long drink from the bottle, eyes following the slow rotation of the street lights, suspended in the darkness.

“It’s a horrible thing to realise; coming to terms with the fact you perpetuate the exact same hate that held you down so long. I saw it clearly then; I’d let the hate define me, mould me into exactly what they wanted to despise. The most powerful resistance I could muster now was to defy that expectation.”

The distant moan of sirens pricked Song’s ears and he fell silent, quietly triangulating. Harry grinned.

“Knew you were a tourist. Don’t worry about it; ambulance from the People’s Hospital.”

He chuckled as Song relaxed.

“They may be perfect people, but this isn’t a perfect world. No amount of genetic advantage is going to stop the occasional fool falling out the window or injecting god knows what.”

Now it was Song’s turn to chuckle, raising his beer.

“Very true. Bless these fools forever. They keep me humble.”

They drank, the sirens fading into the noise of the city below.

“Is that how you got through it then? By becoming a fool?”

“Fool enough to be talking to you, certainly. But the hate? No, that took something very different. It took patience. Still does.”

“Well then, hurry up and tell me.”

They chuckled, Song reclining on the concrete.

“Went back out to the wilderness. Not the ruined habitations of men this time, but real wilderness. This was right around the time the N.U.N were starting the environmental restoration portion of the 30 year plan. I specialised in Nano-tech at the academy and they were hiring everyone they could, so I don’t even think they knew I was a bio until I showed up. Luckily for me, everybody looks the same in a Safety Rig.”

He scrolled up a photo on his wrist mounted unit. Harry looked over the four men in yellow containment suits perched inside an enormous Redwood, the jagged crater blown into the side now overgrown with foliage.

“It was an incredible feat. Same tech that almost wiped us off the face of the planet, bringing whole rainforests back. They shipped a bunch of us out to California, after they’d drained it. Three weeks later, boom, thriving artificial-organic ecosystem growing right before our eyes. Felt god-like what we were doing, even though it paid next to nothing.”

Closing the screen, he looked out over the pulsing streets.

“Spent a long time out in those places, putting it all back together. You can escape almost anything out there, creating life before your fingertips. Left a lot of hate between those trees.”

“Not all of it?”

Song smiled.

“You never lose all of it; we know that well enough. But you lose enough and something else starts growing in its place. By the time the project was completed, I felt ready to take on the hate, because I knew that it didn’t have to define me. So, now that it’s all over, I can calmly sit here and share a drink with the father of the New Eden Project itself.”

The tumbler slipped from the old man’s fingers, bouncing once on the concrete before shattering into a thousand pieces. Song wiped the whiskey from his coat as the shards began to melt.

“No need for dramatics. You’re Harry Sharp, correct?”

The old man didn’t say a word as the melted pieces began to reform into the shape of a glass. 

“I’ll admit, you had me at first. Thought you were just an old world tourist, out here for the lights. But something about your face: too familiar to be a coincidence. Afraid curiosity got the better of me, so I did a scan whilst the junker was overhead. Imagine my surprise when I find out that I’m sitting across from Harry Sharp, designer of the first IUE machine.”

The old man’s knuckles were white as bone.

“That’s all I did Song. I just designed it.”

He nodded, offering his beer to Harry.

“I know. Like I said, I’m not angry with you. Whilst I’m confident a younger me would have thrown you right over the railing, these days I’m just curious. Plus I’d have to cover the tab.”

Harry took the beer in his hands, still trembling.

“Why didn’t you say?”

Song sat back in his chair, shrugging up a smile.

“Wanted to see what kind of person you were. I mean for the longest time I had you in my head as this bogeyman, this mad scientist bastard who decided to ruin my life before I was even born. But you’re not and I’m almost disappointed. You’re human, like the rest of us.”

“Song…”

The young man held up a hand, waving away the words.

“Don’t. I know you English types and trust me, an apology is not what I’m here for.”

Leaning over, he pressed the button for another drink.

“I’ve told you my story. I reckon it’s only fair you tell me yours.”

They sat in silence a long while. The old man was numb, using the beer to pull himself tonsil first back into reality as he shuffled it all in his head.

“Where do I start?”

“The beginning, usually.”

Harry took another deep breath. His mind was reeling with new information and old, memories and revelations circling his brain. He cracked the knuckles of his thumbs, fresh drinks hitting the table as he found the words hiding in his mind.

“September, Twenty-fifteen.”

Song nodded, popping the cap.

“I think my parents truly loved each other. My childhood was pretty ideal, despite the financial constraints. I was a bright kid and both of them were always keen to encourage me, taking me to museums and letting me build stuff in the garage, despite my proclivity for accidents. But love never stops the world from getting in. We didn’t know it then, but my mother’s side of the family had a history of Huntington’s disease. She didn’t know herself until we received the diagnosis.”

His face stiffened, creases deepening where worry had worn into his features. He clocked Song’s look of puzzlement.

“I forget it’s been gone for so long. It was a progressive brain disorder. Essentially deletes the files in your brain one by one, until the system can no longer operate.”

“Jesus...”

“There’s a reason we wiped it out. Started out with the odd funny turn now and then, but she chalked it up to menopause. By the time we realised, we’d missed the opportunity for early preventative steps. All we could do was watch as the woman who raised me fell to ruin, mind gone long before her body was.”

Pinching the bridge of his nose, he paused.

“I never accepted it. Couldn’t, I suppose. Spent months researching everything I could about the disease, genetics and possible cures. Turns out I had a proclivity for the subject, because next thing I know, I’m scoring top marks in biology and chemistry. Applied for medical school the moment I could. I was still following the blind hope that there was some kind of cure, something I could do instead of just sitting there. Because no matter how much you research, or who’s there to support you, nobody can describe what it’s like to watch everything you love about someone disappear whilst they’re sitting in front of you.

He stopped, placing the empty bottle down.

“It was my first week when it happened. I’d been so worried about going away to university. She’d taken a turn for the worse, but my dad was adamant I pursue my dreams. I’d just got back from a welcome week party, one of the first times in a long time I’d gone out and enjoyed myself. Around midnight, I get a call from him, asking if I’d had any contact from mum. She was missing.”

He took a deep breath, hand itching for a pre-war cigarette, tar and all. 

“Blew half my student loan getting a taxi across the country. Dad was in a total state, blaming himself and roaming the streets, searching everywhere for her. We never stopped looking. Soaked through and half starving, but we never stopped. It was two days later the Police recovered her body from the canal.”

The sirens were back, tearing across the skyline as both men pulled their jackets a little closer.

“My Dad couldn’t take it; spent the next three years drinking himself to death. He never touched a drop beforehand. Within three years, he was shrivelled up in a hospital bed, almost as yellow as your jacket. He died, calling her name.”

The colour was gone from Song’s face.

“Harry…”

But the old man raised his hand.

“It’s alright. You wanted to know how one man changes the world? Starts when the world changes him.”

He took a slug of whiskey, shuddering through the burn.

“I did what I had always done; I threw myself into my work. I took the pain and used it to fuel me, pushing me through to the top of my class and then to the top of my field. I was so angry, so obsessed with the idea that some microscopic mistake inside a strand of DNA could cost two fine people their lives.”

He looked to the skyline, as the display ships began to converge on the city centre; midnight was approaching.

“I was headhunted after graduation. After seeing my thesis exploring development of the Cas9-guideRNA system, I was inducted into a government sponsored research team. Our objective was creating a method of altering the DNA, in utero. For five whole years, I barely left the lab. Day and night, we doggedly pursued our goal, conducting trial after trial as we strived to create replicable results. Maybe if I’d stepped outside once in a while, I would have noticed that the world was falling to shit.”

He raised the glass to his lips and thought twice about it.

“Following the dissolution of NATO, we were forcibly relocated to a military compound. I didn’t care. I was so wrapped up in eradicating genetic disease that I became little more than a machine. There was nothing but the objective.”

Giving in, he took a sip.

“The day it all went down, I was woken in the dead of night. Soldiers were carting all of our equipment away in trucks, alongside all essential personnel. I was one of them. We were taken into a bunker complex, where our labs were reconstructed deep underground. It was roughly a week later that we found out what had happened to London.”

Song nodded softly. He’d seen the footage.

“Took civilisation biting the bullet to wake me up. It was dark, Song. Holed up underground with no idea if there was even a world outside anymore. We lost a lot of beautiful minds. I think that if I hadn’t met Lucy, I would have been one of them.”

Song leaned forward.

“Lucy?”

The ghost of a smile pulled at the corners of Harry’s mouth. He placed the tumbler down, fingers playing with the worn gold ring upon his finger.

“Lucy.”

He was quiet for a while.

“After a few months, we’d all gone strange; ghosts wandering around tunnels. Used to run circuits to keep myself ticking. One morning, I’m rounding the corner of the lab block, when a medical cart comes piling out the door. Let me tell you, I didn’t so much go flying as I did face plant directly into a steel sheet.”

Song sucked the air between his teeth. Harry chuckled.

“Damn straight. So here I am, a pale mess flopping about the floor, two front teeth loose and a mouth full of blood. The woman pushing the trolley can’t stop apologising as she’s desperately trying to figure out if I’m FUBAR or not. And looking up, with the strip light behind her head, I could swear she was an angel. Though to be fair, I was heavily concussed.”

Song couldn’t help but grin.

“She came to visit me in the infirmary. Asked me if there was anything she could get me, aside from two new front teeth. From that moment, I knew I was in love.”

Song nodded, his thumb tracing the outline of his wallet as he thought of the photo inside it.

“Best microbiologist and sharpest tongue in the whole facility. This one time, when it was getting really bad, she used the materials in her lab to create a rudimentary still, brewing lab made moonshine for my birthday. I mean it tasted awful, like rinse your mouth out with sand awful, but we were all too happy to care. I loved her. She loved me. Everything else was irrelevant.”

“You guys work on the IUE together?”

“In a lot of ways, yes. The method was essentially perfected in the first year of containment, but our new challenge was creating a machine able to perform it without invasive surgical procedures that could endanger the foetus. Her team helped develop the particle manipulation technology that made it all possible.”

“Hell, you guys. Mother and father of the augmented generation.”

Harry nodded, eyes back on the horizon.

“Valid, but I’m not sure I’d agree. We just made the device. What the N.U.N did with it…”

He paused, mulling it over.

“Part of me wants to take responsibility. We created the IUE. But we never knew how widespread it would become in the aftermath. Honestly, we didn’t even know if there was a humanity left to use it…”

The worry lines deepening, old thoughts circling his skull. Song leaned over, placing a hand on Harry’s knee.

“Don’t think about it just yet. The story must be told.”

Harry nodded, gathering himself.

“We married in secret. The Commander must have known, though as long as we carried out protocol, he had bigger fish to fry. HQ received contact from the N.U.N and calls were coming in from all over the planet; it was time to rebuild. So, three years after the door first sealed, we were granted clearance to begin ground operations. I remember holding her hand through the hazmat suit as they opened the door.”

“Real life Adam and Eve?”

“Adam, Eve, and half the British army. But the world outside was far from Eden.”

He finished the glass quickly, sliding it across the table top.

“London was dead, alongside most major population centres. Anyone left alive after the Nano attacks or biological weapons was either too traumatised or damaged to do more than subsist in the rubble. Disease was rampant. Deformity and mutation widespread. And the smell…”

He shuddered, violently.

“We set up a field hospital in Hatfield for the first few months, trying to treat survivors. It was slow, but we were making progress. All except for the maternity unit. Nothing prepared you for it. Of those who could still get pregnant, each was afflicted. Miscarriages. Stillbirths. Not one healthy baby born in the whole six months. It broke Lucy’s heart.” 

He looked up, shrinking from the memory.

“It was actually Lucy who ventured the idea to utilise the IUE. ‘Field testing’ was how she phrased it. After discussing it with the commander and acquiring a few materials, we had the prototype IUE running in the camp. The brass was worried about its existence being revealed so early after the war, especially after the Rio incident. I was more terrified of seeing it in action. Altering a foetus’ in utero was difficult enough, let alone with the catastrophic damage the war had borne unto the next generation.  But I will never forget holding the first child in my hands. Her mother had come to us after exposure to an unknown chemical. Knowing her child would likely die without help, we locked ourselves into a sixteen-hour combination of surgery and IUE manipulation. Three weeks after that, we’re holding a perfect baby girl. It was the first time in years I had heard a child laugh and I hold no shame in the fact I cried my bloody eyes out.”

Harry smiled, the memory flowing well with the whiskey.

“Of course, we were immediately overwhelmed with requests. A queue thrice round the camp, all wanting IUE. It’s all a bit of a blur from there. After the overwhelming success of the Hatfield infirmary, the N.U.N requisitioned the technology from British high command. Next thing we know, there’s an IUE being shipped to every city in the world.”

“The Envoy?”

Harry nodded.

“Not often you get a personal thank you from the World Security Council. Apparently it was a major factor in re-unification. Of course, there was overwhelming media curiosity as to the story behind it, but I tried to stay away from that; I’m happier being left in peace than thrust into the limelight. Let the N.U.N take the credit for the most part. They were the ones taking it to every shred of civilisation after all; we just put it together.”

Song whistled.

“You are a fantastic reminder to stay humble, Harry.”

“Not as much as Lucy was.”

“You guys kept together?”

“Oh yes. Spent our time travelling the world, researching and perfecting the processes involved. A few years later, we were using it ourselves. She always wanted a daughter. Thanks to the IUE, we had one.”

Harry dug into his jacket pocket, fishing out a dog eared wallet. A picture took up the front pouch.

“Mary H. Sharp, born twenty-forty nine in St. Barbatus Hospital. Gift from above.”

Song studied the picture. A mother and child, wrapped in white hospital sheets. The child was sound asleep, the mother, exhausted.

“She looks just like her mother.”

“No accident. She was always the prettier one of the two of us.”

“You chose to design her?”

“We both did. Felt it was the safest thing to do, given my family’s medical history and our undoubted exposure to post-war fallout.”

Song nodded, handing back the picture as the music swelled in the streets below.

“That why you’re out here? Showing her the world you two made?”

“I’m sure she would have loved to see it, Song.”

They sat in that silence for the longest while, as the wind whipped across the concrete. The darkness of the night sky was cut through with lights, striking and moving as the city seemed to dance beneath them.

“I’m sorry, Harry.”

“Not your fault. Happened a long time ago. You remember the attacks in fifty-nine?”

Song nodded. Harry watched the lights of the city below, bending around his perception.

“We were in Geneva when they detonated the EMP. Things just started falling from the sky, people collapsing in the streets as artificial organs failed; we thought another war was starting from the sheer chaos of it. I held her, Song. Even as the sky was falling, I held her like my life depended on it. It was only when the dust settled that I felt the blood on my fingers. By the time I got her to the hospital…”

He trailed off, once again staring into the neon void.

“She had so many dreams. Used to tell me all the time that she wanted to be just like us, changing the world. First woman to escape the solar system this day, head of the N.U.N the next. She never stopped dreaming. She’s still dreaming, Song. Always will be.”

Song placed a hand on the old man’s shoulder, but he shrugged it off.

“Lucy followed her soon after. Physicians chalked it up to ‘fatigue induced collapse’, but we all knew what it was. You can’t rip that much from someone’s life and expect them to keep breathing. God knows I’ve felt the very same.”

“But you’re still here, Harry. That’s got to mean something.”

“Does it? Here I am Song. Father of the new humanity, though an actual father no longer. I created this technology to change the world for the better. And what have I done? I’ve created a society that subjugates and ignores people like you, Song. I’ve let a world rise that values the aesthetic preference of your parents above human decency. A smarter, faster, more perfect human race that still makes the mistakes of its forefathers.”

Song placed the empty bottle on the table. The sound of people chanting in the street below was becoming hypnotic, organized.

“You can’t bear the burdens of humanity on your shoulders, Harry. It doesn’t matter how advanced we are: human are humans. We’ll fight. We’ll love. Neither is something that can be genetically programmed out of us. It’s a birth right we will carry with us forever. A human condition if there ever was one.”

Both men jumped as an explosion ripped across the sky. Cheers erupted from the ground, as each firework painted the night with flame and colour. Music started up, a thousand voices all aloft in the chilly New Year. They looked out in wonder, the city alive and well beneath them. Song quickly finished his drink.

“You think I did the right thing, Song?”

He kept his eyes on the skyline. Song placed the bottle on the table, quietly taking it in a moment.

“We choose what we create my friend; not what our creations make of us.”

Rolling down the sleeves of his jacket, Song stood. The old man never took his eyes off the mad display of colours before them both. Putting his hand on the old man’s shoulder, Harry accepted it: his story was told.

Stepping back, he looked at Harry one last time. A question rose within him, burning to be asked on the back of his tongue. But as he saw the colours in the old man’s eyes, he thought better of it. Slipping the ultrasound scan his girlfriend had given him back into his pocket, he paused a moment at the door.

“Happy New Year, Harry.”

The old man raised his glass.

“Happy New Year, Song.”