Free The Clean Slate Accord by Sofia Diana Gabel Page B

other way down the hall, toward the lab. When he disappeared through a doorway, Alexa went to her room. With the initiation of the Accord, there was no reason to keep any evidence of Serum D around. Serum D had only been used in the lab during development of the implants and since it wasn’t needed anymore, the danger of keeping it around was too great.
    She opened her bedroom door and let her eyes drift over the room for a moment before stepping inside. In one corner, she had a gilded picture frame outlining an enlarged view of a sequence of Jonas’ DNA, and on the other wall, a complementing photo of her own. It was a balance of perfection.
    Once over the threshold, the door closed automatically and she sat down on her bed. On the table next to her was a stack of pamphlets. She picked one up and skimmed through it, although the words were very familiar as she’d written it herself.
    After receiving your MB-3 Implant, you will be injected with a dose of Serum A twelve hours before the onset of the Accord. By the time of the Serum A injection, the implant will have attached itself to your brain stem. There will be no rejection to the implant, as it will become a living part of your body.
    Serum A will begin to immediately “rewire” your brain’s synaptic responses to Megaburst (MB) activity. Megabursts are defined as the synaptic impulse strength triggered by certain thoughts or activities. For example, 5,000–6,000 MBs are registered during sleep or rest, 7,000–12,000 MBs are within the range for normal waking activity. 13,000–25,000 MBs register during strenuous or sexual activity and 26,000–30,000 MBs result from extreme hostile, violent or hateful thoughts, which are likely to cause the individual to act on those thoughts.
    The Clean Slate Accord will go into effect once the Serum A has regulated MB activity to where MBs over 25,000 will no longer be possible.
    Welcome to New Earth, where one mind, one people becomes a reality!
    Alexa clutched the pamphlet to her heart. She could still remember when worldwide peace was just a dream. Most of her young adult life was spent in the Great World Conflict as a genetic warfare specialist in her home country of the Arctic Principate, starting when she was only sixteen. Mandatory service is what the enlistment letter had said, but rather than placement in the ground laser forces, her IQ landed her a position in the laboratory. How many lives had she changed with her invention of the VRD, Viral Recombinant Defender? Too many to remember.
    It had been so easy to develop the VRD into a perfect weapon. Targeting missiles were loaded with vials of the virus and launched at the enemy’s most populated areas. The missile exploded on impact and the virus was carried up on the ensuing smoke where it drifted into the air. It spread fast, attaching itself to the medulla oblongata of the host. It recombined its own DNA with the host’s and rapidly divided, shedding airborne spores via the host’s respiration. Within a day, the host was transmuted into a mindless shell of its former self and thousands more were infected. Only after seizing control of all the major continents did the Arctic Principate declare victory, and order the dispersal of the antidote to the VRD. While the antidote had been effective in preventing further spread of the virus, it did nothing for the host.
    The memory of the Great World Conflict had haunted her every since. It had given her a craving, an insatiable desire for peace. For twenty years she’d worked to develop the implants, making them as humane as possible. The only unfortunate part was when Jonas found an unavoidable implant failure rate of one in five hundred thousand, when the implant and host were incompatible.
    Tragically, the implants could not be removed surgically. Alexa had learned her lesson from the VRD and developed a more effective antidote to the implants for the testing phase. Serum D