Schrodinger’s Children
AN EXCERPT FROM A DYSTOPIAN SHORT THAT FOLLOWS A WOMAN NAMED MING IN THE YEAR 2099. AS A NURSE IN SOUTHERN CHINA, SHE RECOUNTS HER TALES OF ROMANCE, SOCIAL NORMALCY, AND BODILY AUTONOMY IN A WORLD WHERE HUMANS HAVE EVOLVED.
December 2099
You ask me to explain why I am not afraid of the sea. I am asked why I quit my work in that busy hospital, why I fled landlocked Chengdu and found a lopsided hostel at the seaside. It is a lonely place; the tides are wan and low, unperturbed by my presence. The town is blanketed by a cool stillness except the faint pulse of the waves. I am not afraid of the gentle sea, nor what lurks beneath. Rather, the tranquility of the water keeps me alert, undistracted. Like a spider that threads a silver web, if there is a flicker of life inside my belly, I will know. I am minding the end of the 21st century, the one that Georgie predicted.
February 2089
I remember reading the report Georgie wrote ten years ago, in 2089. I was still a nursing student and he was a no-name halfie reporter. That’s about when he changed his name to Georgie. His given name was Zhe Fan. It meant ‘ordinary’: nothing exceptionally bad, nor anything exceptionally good. Then as a college student he changed it to Ji Zhe, which meant ‘journalist’, a gesture of his passion. Then Zhe Ji, for the aesthetics, and then to Georgie.
When The Change began, Georgie was one of the first to speculate about the meaning of the yao, the monster children in China. It was a lengthy segment on the back page of some sensationalist trivia mag, totalling six hundred characters. “The Children of the Future”, it was titled, and in bolded type post underneath: Georgie Chen.
A critic called his article “unscientific”. Georgie declared that The Change was a spark to a flame; a building fire that would thrust humankind forward in the evolutionary game. He claimed that was why it was only happening now—puzzle pieces falling together as if by ordinate design, promising completion on the cusp of a new era. Maybe that part was an exaggeration after all. Next to that column was an unsourced photo of a greyhound with bisected feet, each limb wrought like a carving fork. It couldn’t stand entirely still, on account of its abnormalities, the picture blurred with the wobbling unsteadiness of his stride. The flesh of the forked feet was black and furred, two slabs of rolled dough knitted unevenly together…