Numan
By Benjamin Peter Wash
Prolog
Today is January 31, 2063 AD. My name is Benjamin Peter Wash, adopted son of Matthew Wash, (known by historians as “Matthew the Human”). I am the only biological offspring of Peter Purgea and Jenny Purgea. I am human.
The courageous men and animals of whom I write faced the worst hardship, the greatest peril and challenges of mankind. Although it is a story of slaughter and bloodshed, it is also one of triumph over evil. It is a story of real humans who lived and breathed and, by their humanity, made history and shaped the world for all eternity. As you read this account, I ask that you will think about your own humanity and what it means to you. These men, women and those of various other species written of here, spent their lives struggling with that definition. Knowing that we all are human, and only human, we might have more tolerance for each other’s differences.
This is also a tribute to Matthew, Peter, Jenny, Joyce, Harold, Father Janis, Malcolm, Moo, Shep, Chimp, Tam-Julius, Silver and William, whose bravery, wisdom and self-sacrifice was an inspiration to all who survived the conflict. These are the principle persons of whom I write, each weaving his own special nobilities into this strange fabric of history.
Chapter One
The Origin of the Numan Class
The year is 2031. “Washer, gets you up.” A boy named Feeder urgently tries to wake his sleeping friend. An eleven year old, Washer, lies sleeping on the bare floor of a wooden shed on the estate of Dr. Henry Lincoln. “Washer” is more of a description of what he did for his master than a real name. His body is pencil-thin from malnutrition. Untended sores polka-dot his body. For the desperate buddy that tries in earnest to rouse Washer this is a matter of life or death. Being late often brought the sentence of death.
In another part of the mansion’s grounds a young female numan is fondled by her master. The master feels no shame. He considers it to be a matter of course - a morning routine. The numan was bought and specially trained for the purpose of “easing” his tensions.
These, and countless other numans, are waking up to a day of work, starvation, abuse and degradation. They are esteemed less than animals, less than property, less than any living organism. Legally, they are simply “masses of tissue.” For this they are classified as “Numan.” “Non-human.”
Recently it was estimated that, at their peak, there were one hundred sixty million numans in the United States. That was more than half of the total population. This is the story of the modern numans: how they came to be, how they fought for survival and how they, ultimately, won the right to life.
To understand where it all began we must go back to the year 2010 and learn about what most people would consider to be a mundane circumstance. None could expect that it would change the course of history and lead to the deaths of over 500 million people.
It is June first, about noon, at the home of Dr. Jacob Lincoln - a local obstetrician, the person who would eventually become the father of Dr. Henry Lincoln - arguably the most infamous person of the century. Dr. Jacob Lincoln and his wife, Gail, were childless. Although they tried various sophisticated techniques to obtain a pregnancy they all, in turn, failed.
If such a situation is normally depressing and frustrating for both husband and wife, Gail was especially so. Gail was burdened with chronic depression due to chemical imbalance in her brain - apparently an accident of birth. Only strong doses of antidepressants helped. Unfortunately, as many who are depressed do, Gail drank vodka to numb her sadness when her depression became severe - even after taking her medicine. This, of course, only deepened her problem. Gail also had suffered from schizophrenia and sometimes had delusion despite her regimen of pills.
Jacob finally decided that cloning might be the only way to finally achieve a pregnancy.
Cloning, back then, was a new science. It was done quite differently than it is done today. In 2010 it was still quite an unreliable procedure. Jacob described the complicated process to Gail. “First multiple eggs would be fertilized and implanted, some in you, some in a surrogate. Then we would hope one would become viable. If you had no viable embryos and the surrogate did,” her husband explained, “the surrogate would bear her embryo for the full term. Given more than one viable embryo, only one would be chosen to develop into a baby. The other mass or masses of tissue would be removed.”
It seemed odd to Gail. She didn’t enjoy the prospect of parenting a genetic copy of Jacob. It was just too bizarre. She would be married to and be mothering the same being. She knew that wasn’t a rational way of looking at it but she couldn’t help to feel that it was true.
It took a while for Jacob to win her over. Still, Gail felt an ugly mix of dread and despair. Finally she conceded, “I’ll have to go off both booze and medicine when I get pregnant with your clone.”
Jacob smiled. “You won’t regret it Gail.”
It is now June 30: 12:00 Noon. Jacob Lincoln called his wife from the clinic where he had gone to check on the results of Gail’s latest (their sixth) attempt at producing a viable embryo. His voice was urgent. “Gail! Good news! The results are positive! We have two viable embryos.”
“Two? That's fine. Real fine!” she faked a smile to herself. The “good news” was as bad as it could be. She never really expected or wanted the attempt at cloning to succeed.
“Well, tell me, Jacob. Where are the embryos? In me or in the surrogate?”
“One in each,” he said. “Since they're both equally viable, her tissue mass will be terminated tomorrow.” To Gail it was the worst case scenario - killing a clone and mothering one. She heaved a long sigh and sipped from her martini. “What else can go wrong?” Her question was soon to be answered. For the young couple there was plenty left to go wrong. Very, very, chillingly wrong.
July 2, 6 PM. Jacob and Gail sat in their living room. He, reading a magazine on the couch; she, sipping wine next to him. The telephone chimed.
“I'll get it,” Jacob said. He pushed a button to activate the speaker. “Hello.”
“Dr. Lincoln,” the voice said. It was the chief administrator of the hospital, Dr. Ager. “I have some bad news for you. The surrogate was supposed to show up yesterday for the termination. She didn't appear. She has skipped town. She went back on her contract and is refusing to abort.” Jacob was not just a little disturbed.
Gail took the news even harder. “She what? How could she do this to us! It wasn't her baby! Jacob! This isn't turning out like we planned!” she cried.
“I’m going to call a private detective to hunt her down. I'm going to force her to comply,” Jacob replied.
When Dr. Ager informed them that such law suits were doomed from the start and not enforceable in court he confidently replied, “You mean not yet! But laws can change. I will make them change!”
April 10, 2011: 4 PM. Gail gazed into the eyes of her newborn son, Henry Lincoln. They were in his nursery. She carefully diapered him. It had taken a while, but she was binding with the little baby. Her maternal instincts helped her to forget the unusual circumstance surrounding his birth. She examined his sweet face, the left half not quite the mirror-image of the right half. She knew it was her fault. She drank while pregnant and fetuses could not metabolize alcohol. This often caused birth defects, usually mental retardation. Fortunately for the Lincoln family Henry’s mental capacity was not apparently affected. For at least that period of time, brief though it would be, she accepted him as any new mother would her only son.
Tenderly, she lifted her little bundle. “You will make the world a better place to live in,” she said softly. “You will be the destiny of mankind.” She held young Henry to her breast. The baby began to suck. “You will be a force to be reckoned with. You will be a great doctor.” She sat in her mahogany rocker and looked into her child's sweet face. She sang a song learned as a child.
“Some will grow up strong and tall.
Some will grow to be just small.
You will be a watered tree.
Doing what God chose for thee.
Mamma’s here to guide you now.
She will teach and show you how.
You’ll be tender as a flower
Filled with love and spiritual power.
All you need is love from me
And your dad. Just wait and see.”
The phone chimed. It was her husband. “Honey. How's the baby?”
“Oh, Jacob. I’m breast feeding him.”
“I'm glad to hear that,” he said. “It took a long while to bond.”
But there was pain in his voice - something which Gail picked up on. “Jacob. You don't sound happy. What's wrong?”
“Honey. I have something to tell you. I don't want you to be upset - especially in your condition. It is rather, well . . .”
“Jacob,” she said abruptly. “I have just come to accept our baby. I can't stand any more bad news. I need time to adjust.” Gail's serene smile turned into a frightened frown. Her mind was now more on the phone than on her breast-feeding.
“It isn't exactly bad news, Gail. That is, it doesn't have to be. You see, my private investigator found the surrogate.”
“He did? How? Where was she? Did she have . . .”
“Yes. She had the baby.”
This bitter news unnerved Gale. No, it “spooked” her. In her state of mind the news came like a twisting knife to her stomach. “She’ll be mothering a clone of you?” She managed to say though her breath turned shallow from the tightening in her chest.
Jacob continued. “No, well -- she, she died.”
Now the chill of ice. The clone was parentless!
“She died? How? I mean, what about the baby? Talk to me!”
“It was an auto accident. That's how he was able to find her. But the baby is all right. It wasn't with her in the car.”
More dread. She put Henry back into his crib. All her muscles tightened. “I can’t do this!” she yelled. She grabbed her vodka. The 140 proof brew burned her tongue and throat.
“Gail? Are you there? They say it belongs to us. We have to accept it or be charged with neglect.”
“Charged with neglect,” she repeated to herself. Her heart - not just pounding now - but punishing her body from the inside. Her eyes and neck ached with every pulse. She took another swig.
Henry's cry became louder - like a tea-kettle screaming for attention. It was an irritating siren, in need of shutting out. She became more and more revolted by what was in the crib.
“No, Jacob! ” she shouted. “I can't mother demons!”
She peered at the crying stranger. In her poisoned mind, it was anything but a baby. It was devilish evil with a plastic shell of a human being, whose shrill cry sounded like the desperate scream a ghost might make when it enters the nether world. The eerie squall embedded, like broken glass, into her contorted thoughts. Possessed eyes stared directly at her, tracking her. She stared back, trembling. Ice filled her spine, neck, temples. Then stark panic. The bewitched woman tossed the receiver. Sprinted out of the room. Out of the house. Into her car. Sped away. The howling squall of the infant banshee chased the terrified mother further into madness. Her fleeting vehicle, without a rational driver, soon found itself racing ever faster, swerving, tumbling, twisted and afire.
So Gail Lincoln died quite violently and quite suddenly. Jacob could not endure never seeing her again. He cremated her. As was a practice among the wealthy at the time, he had her ashes mixed into paint. He commissioned an artist to create her image on a canvas and hung it on his living room wall just over the fire place.
“I swear by the spirit of my dead father,” Dr. Jacob Lincoln said, “You will be requited.” So was his nightly practice to make the same vow. “I swear,” said he, “by my father’s grave.”
Unfortunately for the world, Jacob Lincoln’s’s hate and anger for the unwanted clone, Harold, and of his own son, Henry, was unleashed on the world. His means of requiting Gail’s death was to press for the legality of post-natal abortions. For he decided that he should not have had to endure the living clone’s existence seeing it was predetermined to be aborted and was illegally kept from being so. Also he should not have had to endure the existence of a son that drove his wife into madness.
He was never able to legally abort the unwanted clone in his life but his efforts did make it possible, in time, for others to do so. For this he is hailed as a saint by pro-abortionists and a
Satan by pro-lifers.
January 20, 2015: Little Henry Lincoln and his brother, Harold, were not yet four. It was a normal day for them but a day of decision for mankind as a whole. The majority of the people in the United States were saddened, but for some it was a day of celebration. With help from various pro-choice organizations, the famed Doctor Jacob Lincoln’s relentless legal battles finally paid off. The Supreme Court came to a decision. With an five to four vote, post-natal abortions were made as legal as partial-birth abortion. From that time onward, any child up to the age of two days old could be legally aborted in a licensed clinic. Thus infants were declared to be “. . .masses of tissue, non-human. For what was a growing mass of tissue a minute ago, or as much as two days ago,” said Chief Justice Kently, “is still a mass of tissue, even though it has exited its host.” Therefore, with a stroke of a pen, post-born children were considered as non-human. They had no rights that any man would recognize or feel the need to respect. To the pro-choicers, this was a day of celebration. To the pro-lifers, it was the day when humanity was once again redefined and the most innocent and helpless of humans were once again conveniently cheated from the definition.
Post-natal abortions became as acceptable to pro-choicers as much as it was abhorred and shunned by pro-lifers. Both groups knew that the two day limitation was arbitrary so both groups found arguments to extend it. Pro-abortionists, to give them more options about the fate of their newborns - that is, extend the time in which they had to kill their children legally - and pro-lifers, in hope that some children would be spared an early death. So it went on, each extension of the age that a child could be legally aborted was welcomed by all, especially by those good people who wished to buy time to debate the matter, hoping to save some. After only a year the “age of legal abortion” went from two days, to two months of age. Then, six months later, to two years of age. After that, to six, then to twelve years. Thereafter, the killing of children was not considered to be a punishable crime at all, as long as it was done by authorization of the child’s owner. This was regardless of whether or not it was done at a legally licensed clinic.
Seeing children were not considered human until they reached twelve, it was inevitable that until they reached that age they would be treated as less than human, even disposable. Even though many were treated well during early childhood, they were sometimes aborted for no other reason than their parents had decided that they had more important things to do than rear children. It became common for parents with larger families to abort all but two of them before they turned twelve. If not aborted, then sold on the open market as house servants or to medical schools who always needed new subjects for dissection. Some women would decide to dispose of them so a career could be pursued.
We come to March 1, 2031. Henry and Harold Lincoln were fully grown, their father, Jacob Lincoln, had died some time before. It is a time of conspicuous prosperity for those who were considered old enough to be human, a time of frightful nightmare for those who are deemed not. A huge population of numans had emerged. This underclass has no rights, no happiness, no respect, whose life expectancy is not determined by the laws of nature, but by the laws of man.
Dr. Henry Lincoln inherited his father’s estate in Montgomery County Maryland. Dr. Lincoln had short, black hair and sported a well-trimmed mustache and beard - just as did his father. Hilga, his wife, was twenty-five and of Aryan descent. Her blonde hair was lavishly styled as was her clothing. Having had cosmetic surgery, her face and body were as good as money could buy. Dr. Lincoln would have it no other way, for his interest in her has always been one of show, not of love. Hilga was, indeed, merely a social convenience as her husband chose a pseudo-secret “alternate lifestyle.” His straight friends never questioned why he, of African descent, married an Aryan. Her beauty transcended race and color. They had one child, Joyce, a mulatto daughter. Joyce was fourteen-years-old and was given everything in the world she could want since she was born. Everything, that is, but genuine love. To Dr. Lincoln a daughter was needed to enhance his image as being a family man. She was a finely painted porcelain figurine, and her life just as stereotypical. It meant sadness for the girl. Because of the constant scrutiny of her father Joyce was mean-spirited and depressed. She would often cry herself to sleep, or take out her anger on the numans.
Dr. Lincoln was, as detailed above, a clone of his father. His twin was originally named “Harold” by his surrogate mother. Harold was later renamed, by the doctor “Gene.” Gene was the very image of Dr. Henry Lincoln, himself - except for the perfect symmetry of his face. You see, the doctor was born of his own mother, who drank while pregnant. Gene was born of a surrogate woman’s womb, a woman who did not drink during pregnancy as did Gail. Gene showed no signs of fetal alcohol syndrome. The physical differences between the twins were slight but noticeable to those who knew them both, if one would look carefully.
Gene’s experiences in life had been vastly different. For unlike his brother, who lived in luxury for these many years, Gene had spent ten years in the state’s maximum- security prison on the charge of murdering his father - a charge that was false, for he could kill no one. He was dim-witted because of brain damage suffered by the hand of his brother, Henry. Now, he lived in a small trailer positioned a respectable distance from the main house and was expected to work for a living at the abortion clinics as a custodian.
The Lincoln family lived in a stately home, the finest in the county. It’s forty seven rooms were each elegantly designed with an early American motif. He favored shades of red and white, hence the exterior of his house was cream with a ruby trim. His Rolls Royce, too, sported a burgundy sheen with pearl trimmings. Even his mailbox was blood-red and bone-white. In the front yard were sculptured bushes, not in the shapes of cubes and spirals as you would expect, but sculptured to look like hands, legs and young human faces - an eerie contrast to the well maintained lawn and evenly spaced elm trees that made the mansion grounds beautiful. In the back, a large labyrinth, measuring fifty feet square and made of hedges eight feet high. Natural gas lampposts flickered at night, making a cozy ambiance. And, of course, above their fireplace in their living room was the heirloom - his mother’s picture hanging so still, with her eyes eerily surveying the room. Beside it, a picture of his father of the same ilk.
Fifty meters from the house was a water spigot atop a black, two-foot plastic pipe that jutted from the ground. Beyond that were three wooden sheds measuring six by six meters. Above the first shed entrance was a sign, “Brig 1.” It was just inside the brick security wall that bordered the estate. The second, “Brig 2,” was just outside the security wall. An asphalt driveway went right up to it for ready access by the county sanitation workers. The third shed was inside the yard, closer to the house, yet still a good way off. It was labeled "Numan Quarters.”
Dr. Lincoln was in his study, transmitting from his “com,” that is, his personal computer, making a business deal. When he was finished he called to his wife in his deep, baritone voice. “Hilga!” She entered the living room and kissed her husband as he sat on the crimson couch. He puffed his thick Havana as he picked up the morning paper. “The numans have started their work but two are missing. Tell the madam she has to do a better job at keeping the numans in order. Wait. One of them is Washer.”
“Yes, my love,” she said. “And Feeder. Those two are just about used up, aren't they?” “Used up,” said she. That is, ready for disposal.
He nodded. “Yes. Tell Argyle it's time.”
“Should I tell Gene to ‘fertilize the labyrinth?’” Hilga asked. This was a reference to the practice of spontaneously aborting the numan and burying him in the labyrinth outside their home.
“No. I will be sending them to Brig Two. No more questions,” he ordered.
“Brig two? But you’ve never . . . . Why not just. . . .”
“No more questions!” he ordered again.
Brig2 was the disposal brig. Every mansion had one. It was built to house numans that were to be sent to a clinic for disposal. Being an abortion doctor he usually just took used-up numans to the clinic and aborted them. This was the first time that brig 2 was ever used. Little did the two numans, Washer and Feeder, suspect that this would be the last day of service to their master.
