They are all alike in their deformity. On my understanding of genetics, this is impossible. Mutation is a random thing. Were this malediction an accidental by-product of our foul world, it would not show itself in a single form, any more than victims of haphazard radiation are born with a common, identifiable deficit.
So is this, in the true sense, a plague? Some viral instruction to the hapless genes of the pre-born? Yet what I see before me is too complex for that, too ornate. Surely no single virus can build viable gargoyles out of human flesh.
I stare around me in the blue light. In all truth, what I see does not look like anything the theory of evolution can cope with, no matter with what ingenuity it is modified. This is something more, an infestation of demons. They look like some proof of pre-scientific metaphysics, an adaptation to the future, a form of life fit for the Apocalypse.
Yes. They look to me as if they have been designed to live with gusto in a world ruined by catastrophe.
I find a touchboard and bypass the monitor programming, call up the fancy loops I inserted from my apartment terminal. When I punch my surname--Mum's surname--an indicator lights on one of the cribs. I go straight to it and open it up, and take out the small pink thing that lies there.
It is loathsome like the rest of them. But plainly viable. Given normal care it will undoubtedly survive, it will thrive.
It will not be given normal care. My arms, holding it, begin to shake.
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