Arlo knew he was going to join the CRISPR club the moment he saw Harriett. She was impossibly tall and magnificent, handing out flyers for a club recruitment drive. She used her imposing form and beauty to arrest fellow students into listening to her brief pitch on the future of transhumanism. She had clearly altered her own structure. No normal person was that tall, and he wondered how painful the transformation must have been. He stood in the shadow of the campus’s oldest oak trees, watching her so long that he missed two classes.
He knew he his life was a blessed one. Saved by missionaries from his war-torn ancestral home and raised in Spain, he was loved despite looking and sounding different than his other 13 siblings. The students at the concertado schoolshad been less accepting, but it provided the best education and much needed lessons on the privileged limits of tolerance. He had learned science and how to fight at the same school, and that had led him to America.
His parents had tried to encourage him to study theology or sociology, something that might be used to help people as they had helped him. His brawls with fellow students, though, had given him the resolve to stubbornly pursue his love of science, even through the quiet disapproval of his family. The unspoken agreement that emerged from this was he would be allowed to pursue his chosen vocation as long as he never broke faith with the Holy Church. When he left for America, this was only hinted at in reminders to attend Mass and questions about the priest’s sermons.
Now he had encountered Harriett, something that stood in the face of all of that. The church had decreed all genetic manipulation to be a sin, even in utero to prevent diseases in generations that hadn’t been born yet. Not only did her height advertise that she had tinkered with her own DNA, but she was participating in an organization that treated it as a some kind of social club. Arlo, thinking of his homeland with its droughts, floods, wars, and starvation, couldn’t even imagine having the resources to treat the building blocks of life as toys. The metamorphosis cost alone was unimaginable to him.
Arlo shunted his backpack and crossed the quad to Harriett who was smiling at student passersby even as most ignored her. Others glared at the fliers she was handing out with open hostility. As she locked eyes with Arlo, seeing no ill will in him, her smile increased in radiance till all he could do was take the pamphlet she handed him and mumble a hello.
She began to ask him about why he was interested when a wandering student yelled out, “Hey Harriett, does your boyfriend know you were a dude last week?”
“Oh piss off you bigot,” was Harriett’s immediate reply, neither unafraid nor ashamed. Whatever anger her tone held drained away and she came back to Arlo with a devilish grin. “I wasn’t a boy last week.” She touched him lightly on the arm and winked. “It was months ago.”
Arlo couldn’t tell if she was joking. Either way, it was going to make for some very interesting conversations.
See the author’s published work here.
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