The Different Agenda

By Asi Hart

Jonas thinks he's a pretty ordinary guy.  Sure, he may have destroyed a mall once, using an army of robots, but who hasn't?
Yet, suddenly everybody in the world seems to want to catch him, for reasons unknown to him, and are willing to go to great lengths do do so.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Asi Hart
• Release date: Sep 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215484807

Asi Hart

Asi Hart is the best Sci-Fi author south of the North Pole.

Book preview

1

THE DONNERS SAT QUIETLY in the waiting-room.  Their time was about to be up, as indicated by the wall-mounted counter.  Another couple sat in beside them, they were next in line.  They smiled nervously at each other.

Is this your first time? the Mrs. Donner asked the other couple.

Yes, answered the other woman nervously.

Girl or boy?

We haven't decided yet.

Silence.  They smiled, and waited.

A door opened, and a man and a woman stepped out.  As they walked away, a voice from within the room announced: next.

That's us! Mrs. Donner told the couple still waiting, not expecting a reply.  Mr. and Mrs. Donner walked to the door, and entered the room.

The doctor was formal looking, in his fifties.  He got right to the point before they even sat down: how do you want it done?

The couple were a bit perturbed by his bluntness, and sat down before they answered: want what done?

You are here for a child, aren't you?  You must be aware of what it is that we do here at the clinic?

Oh.  We're new at this.  We don't know how these things go about, explained Mrs. Donner. 

I see.  It is very simple really.  There are three ways to build a child.  All of them require your cells.  Otherwise it won't be your child.  The first way, is to fertilize the egg and place it in the woman.  That is you, he pointed at Mrs. Donner, and her husband smiled awkwardly.  We then let her then take care of the rest naturally.  We'll supply all hormones if necessary.  The second way is to incubate the foetus mechanically.  No trouble for the woman.  You, that is.  We can take care of that here at the institution, for 50.000 SAC's more.  That's most popular with those who can afford it.  The third option is that we just grow the nervous-system; just the brain.  We then graft it to a prefabricated body.  They come out of the vat already in their teens.  That costs you nothing.  The bodies are supplied by the state, and the offspring is guaranteed education by the state, and later work for the state.  That's the most popular option.

The Donners looked nervously at each other.

Do you want to carry the child?  asked Mr. Donner.

I don't know.... If we grow just a nervous system, will the child have any childhood?

What do you mean?  the doctor asked.

Will he play?  Will he laugh?  When will we see him?

The doctor explained: at seventeen, we graft him to his body.  He will sleep until then, learn from our computer, and have an artificial childhood if desired.  There are currently over forty childhoods to choose from.  It is a time-tested method.  No one has ever been worse for it.

The Donners whispered to each other for a while.  The doctor used the time to inspect his nails.

We can't afford to grow our child in a box, whispered Mr. Donner.

He won't have any real childhood if we let the state grow him, whispered Mrs. Donner .  The man squeezed her hand.

Can you do it? he asked her.

I will carry the child myself, announced Mrs. Donner.

Good.  Do you want it taken by C-section?  I strongly recommend it, said the doctor, looking Mrs. Donner down.  Mrs. Donner didn't know what a C-section was, but trusted the doctor.  They were sent to another doctor down the hall who immediately started the procedure. 

Less than an hour later they could leave.  The child would be implanted the next week.  They went to the parking lot, and found their car.  It was an old but reliable Yangtze-Tec sky car, the type that floated on four rotary blades fitted on each corner.  It was not as fast or as quiet as the newer and much more popular Bing-Dao Electro-Magnetic vehicle, but it worked.  It took some time to heat up, but in due time it lifted softly from the ground, and hovered smoothly out into the open air like a magic carpet.  The man put the autopilot on, and set it for the shops.  They were going to celebrate when they came home.

The Donners didn't notice the approaching Bing-Dao hover car.  They did however see the Fakir rotary vehicle that it hit as it came in for landing.  They heard the loud bang of the crash shortly after. 

The Bing-Dao car had been flown way too fast by its renegade driver who'd just stolen it almost an hour earlier.  He had disconnected the automatic safeties in order to enjoy flying it by himself, doing all the fun aerial stunts that the vehicle was capable of.  The police were already after him, but too late.  He hit the Fakir, killing all its occupants, and then most of the wreckage smashed inside the hospital.  The resulting EMP caused the whole city block to black out, and some of the hospital staff suffered total brain meltdown.  Five other hover-cars who relied on electro-magnetic waves fell to earth.  More than thirty people died in that crash.

The hospital's files were a mess.  It took weeks just to extract the files that weren't totally wiped out, and even then, they had to rely on the staff's memory to fill in the holes.  Luckily some of them had had photographic memory installed.  Some of the unborn children had been wiped out.  Fifty jarred brains in various stages of growth got swiped free of memory somehow.  A team got to work on that.

The Donners worried for weeks.  At last they got the message that their child had escaped, and they were to report at the clinic for insertion.

We are sorry for the delay, said the doctor when they returned for the procedure.

We understand.  We saw what happened, said Mr. Donner.

Ah, right.  Do you know what it's going to be? the doctor asked.

Sure, said Mr. Donner.

We ordered a boy, said Mrs. Donner.

Oh.  Right, the doctor looked relieved.

The boy was cut out eight months later.  He looked healthy as anticipated, and his birth went as routinely as could be hoped for.  They named him Jonas, and he grew up like many others who had been carried naturally by their mothers.  They looked and felt no different than those who had been incubated in a box.  The only difference was that those who came from a box had a set of spares available in cold storage in case of accident or illness.

Jonas didn't talk to