Free Neverwylde (The Rim of the World Book 3) by Linda Mooney

gone into the private sector.”
    “Why did your people create these humans?” Kleesod queried.
    “Time to go,” Dox announced unexpectedly. The young man got to his feet, dusted off the seat of his pants, and aimed his portable scanner out across the vast desert. Getting their bearings, he took off at a moderate pace, with the other two tagging along behind him.
    It was sunny, but a cool, steady breeze kept the day from being unbearable. On Earth, the seasonally warm weather would be equivalent to an early spring. Mellori glanced behind him, noting that their footsteps in the dark brown sand were quickly filling in as the wind obliterated their tracks.
    They had been walking for hours. The tallest spire on the temple had disappeared below the horizon long ago. Ahead of them, nothing broke the flat plane for as far as the eye could see. All they had to go by was the jury-rigged tablet Dox used as a navigational aide.
    Mellori continued. “Nearly a couple hundred years ago, our planet was hit with a major pandemic. The Heimer virus. It didn’t so much make us sick or die, but it affected our genetic makeup. To put it bluntly, it wiped out our intelligence. It made us stupid.”
    Kleesod glanced at Dox, then back at Mellori. “Go on.”
    The engineer shrugged. “Our scientists, mathematicians, engineers, all the top-notch brains who’d managed to protect themselves, did all they could to preserve what knowledge we had. They tried to re-teach the population what to do, but none of it stuck. They couldn’t learn. That’s when we realized that, unless something drastic was done, everything about ourselves, our culture, our science and technology, our way of living, would forever change. Even something as simple as knowing how to use a knife to cut our food would be forgotten.”
    “What did you do?”
    “Fortunately, the virus didn’t eradicate everyone’s intelligence. Some of us managed to lock ourselves away in isolated bunkers before we became infected. It was there we discovered by accident that eggs and sperm that had been collected and cryogenically frozen prior to the onset of the virus were untouched. Furthermore, the children created from those eggs were not affected, either. The virus had run its course. That first generation of young adults faced the greatest burden of trying to bring everything back to the way it had been, but they couldn’t do it all by themselves. So they genetically engineered several hundred embryos to become info dumps. To keep the sum knowledge of thousands of years of history, science, math, and language. As the years progressed, these isotope babies became more and more capable.”
    “Are your people still stupid?”
    Mellori smiled. “That was generations ago. All of us who’d been dumbed down are long dead. But their children, and their children’s children, unfortunately those generations remain with very low intelligences. We also discovered that when a test tube baby, one born of frozen egg and sperm, was paired with a naturally born child, their resulting offspring varied. Some were bright; some were not.”
    “What of the children born of Dox’s kind?”
    The engineer let out a loud sigh. “There are very few children born of isotope parents. No one can understand why. They’re not sterile or infertile. But the ones who are born have normal intelligence. They do not have their parents’ vast abilities.”
    “Then you continue to create those of Dox’s kind?”
    “Yes,” Mellori nodded.
    Kleesod took a few longer strides to catch up with the little man. “Dox, why did you choose to go into space?”
    At first, Dox acted as if the Seneecian hadn’t spoken. After nearly a minute of silence, he stopped in his tracks.
    “To meet you.”
    Kleesod blinked in confusion. Mellori could relate.
    “To meet me?”
    Dox bobbed his head once, then took off again.
    When Kleesod shot him another perplexed look, Mellori smiled. “You can try to ask him again, but I doubt