Free Gifted by Peter David Page A

pulled out a small, rectangular object from her bag and held it up.
    Tildie’s eyes widened and she gasped in delight. “A DS?”
    “A DS3,” Kavita corrected her. “For you.”
    Tildie took it and held it almost reverently. “I so wanted one…”
    “I know. It’s already loaded with some games. And it comes with this…” She jacked in a small set of headphones. “So it won’t make noise, you can play it while wearing these. Let’s get you set up.”
    Moments later Tildie was sitting cross-legged on the floor, completely 72 absorbed in a game, headphones nestled comfortably over her ears. Kavita watched her and nodded in satisfaction.
    “Showtime, Doc?” said Feist.
    She could feel the fight-or-flight reflex kicking in, one of the most basic of survival instincts hardwired into the genetic code. She took a deep breath, eased it out to steady her nerves, and then nodded.
    Feist stepped through the curtain and a barrage of flashes went off immediately, as if a miniature lightning storm had erupted in the room. Feist raised his hands and said, “Folks, folks…save it. I’m not the one you’re interested in.
    “The woman you’re about to meet is here to tell you about a discovery that will solve one of the great problems of our current society and, at the same time, improve the quality of life of hundreds of thousands of people. Now, ‘hundreds of thousands’ may not seem like a particularly large number since well over a quarter of a billion live in this country alone. Nevertheless, considering the nature of the individuals in question, the ramifications will in fact be global in scale. And here, to explain it all to you, please join me in welcoming renowned geneticist Doctor Kavita Rao.”
    She pushed the curtains aside and stepped out into the light. She had to squint against the intensity of it as she made her way to the podium. There was a darkened monitor screen set up to the right that she would be using shortly. An array of microphones stood in front of her, representing a dozen different news agencies. Feist had been right: There had to be at least a hundred people crammed into the room, recording devices of all sorts aimed at her to take down every word. For some reason she had a quick mental image of a caveman 73 announcing the invention of the wheel while a cave reporter rapidly etched pictures on a nearby wall to immortalize the moment.
Not sure we’ve really advanced all that much since then
.
    Kavita paused at the microphone and gathered her thoughts. Then she launched herself into the void.
    “What is a mutant?” she asked, not expecting a response and not receiving one. “They’ve been called angels and devils. They’ve committed atrocities and been victims of atrocities themselves. Yes, they’ve been labeled monsters, and not without reason. But I will tell you what mutants are. Mutants are people. No better or worse by nature than anybody else. Just…people. People with a disease.”
    She saw a few raised eyebrows from the group. It didn’t surprise her. They’d spent years writing about the “mutant menace,” egged on by blowhard pundits like that moron who owned
The Daily Bugle
. The notion of lumping in mutants with people who were genuinely struggling with illness didn’t seem a comfortable fit with the narrative many of them already had in their heads. Well, she was just going to have to educate them.
    “Mutants,” she continued, “are not the next step in evolution. They are not the Homo sapiens to our Neanderthals, no matter how many times the term ‘Homo superior’ might be invoked by certain mutant activists. They are not the end of humankind. The mutant gene is nothing more than a disease. A corruption of healthy cellular activity. And now…at last…we have found a cure.”
    That statement was enough to rouse the interest of those reporters who had thought this was just going to be some sort of dry recitation, a topic they’d have to labor mightily to make