Free 4 Rainy Days and Monday by Robert Michael Page B

monitors, the petri dishes, the lab animals. He had believed that Doctor Spreckles would hold the key to the evolution of his original plan to use a combination of drugs, brainwashing, and technological “programming” of an army of compliant, thoughtless, soldiers who would carry out orders without prejudice, without question. He was prepared to be disappointed.
    “I am here to create death.”
    Andronicus raised his eyebrows.
    “Create death.”
    “Yes. A purge. A re-boot of humanity.” He straightened his tie and bit his lip.
    “That sounds ambitious. What makes you think this service would appeal to our organization?”
    Dr. Spreckles gathered himself and stared Andronicus in the eye. He motioned to the chair. Andronicus sat.
    Spreckles moved around the desk and sat behind it. His eyes darted past him to the window over his shoulder.
    “Your organization are firm believers that you are above the normal riff and raff of humanity. I am not here to argue the merits of this assertion. However, I will say that today over a quarter million people were born. Eighty million next year. We reached a global population of seven billion people in 2012.”
    “What does this have to do with ViVeri, doctor? These are to be our subjects. Our laborers. Our worshipers. Our people. They will serve us or die. Or die serving us. That will be their choice.”
    “Population growth is a threat to your plans. Our project is the key to rebooting humanity. We have the ability to affect, to change, to manipulate evolution. We can genetically produce drugs that are coded to change the molecular composition of the human body in precise but almost imperceptible ways. These changes can be subtle or dramatic. Our most theatrical results have come in the area of tapping into parts of the brain that lay dormant in most humans.”
    “You are talking about genetic enhancements,” Andronicus noted with pleasure.
    “Enhancements would be the wrong word, actually. You and your friends already believe you are the pinnacle of humanity. We can ensure that gap is widened. By reducing the competition. By reducing the strain, by weakening the genetic code. By shutting off areas of the brain that control survival instincts, produce anti-bodies, encourage healing.”
    “I don’t understand. I thought genetic engineering was designed to improve humanity.”
    The doctor shook his head.
    “It can, that is true. Its true beauty, its greatest strength is its ability to destroy. We can eradicate diseases, improve immunities, design strains of antibiotics that are immune to resistance; we can heal grievous wounds, grow limbs where none existed, cure cancer, fight off the effects of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, predict psychotic behavior and birth defects like spina bifida, Down Syndrome, and autism. Synthetic genomics paired with technology can create solutions that are even more creative. Solutions that can be used as a weapon. Perhaps the most sophisticated, complete, and insidious weapon ever invented. An incurable disease, if you will.”
    “You are proposing to me that your project here is basically a genetic software capable of creating new strains of disease? That instead of curing the ills of the world, you can selectively purge humanity, effectively using a manufactured drug that reduces opposition to our ways?”
    The doctor put his fingers together in a tent in front of him. His face was grim.
    “You understand me perfectly.”
    “What do you call it?’
    “Call what?”
    “The disease.”
    He looked surprised.
    “Oh, uh, we have been calling it SARC in the lab. It is just a pet name right now because we have not officially completed our work.”
    “Sarc? Latin for flesh?”
    “Yes. It is what we will create. We have established multiple ways to administer the programming: a drug, in water tables, rain, air born, and as a vaccine. It will appear as flesh, as part of a human body that belongs. Cancer with camo, as one of our colleagues put