Creative Writing: Equality Essay, Research Paper
Creative Writing: Equality
Nausea. To describe the whole situation in one word I would have to
choose nausea. The Expo center was packed with societies elite, eagerly
waiting the announcement of what the rumor mill had told them to be the most
important invention of the decade. The air was cold and damp, like that of a
hospital. Barley audible was the most annoying Michael Bolton song that I could
imagine. As I got entranced by the dullness of the situation I noticed that the
lights were slowly getting dimmer. As Michael Bolton’s voice became silent, Dr.
Zimmerman spherical body came waddling out.
Dr. Zimmerman was a very large, gluttonous man. I had worked with him
many times, and I had lost more than one of my ideas to his fat hands. He was
ruthless, unemotional, and conscienceless; the perfect scientist. He
painstakingly climbed onto the two foot platform in front of the podium, making
a little grunt that accidentally found its way into the microphone. “Hello?
Can you guys hear me in the back?” He gurgled in his natural grotesque voice.
With the acknowledgment of the audience, he sipped the glass of ice water which
stood on the podium and cleared his throat. “Ladies and Gentlemen, I am here
to inform you of a discovery that my team of genetic scientist and I have
discovered.” The more he said the more I wanted to hear. I wanted to shout to
make him blurt it out, but it was impossible to speed him up, attention was the
reason why he became a scientist. He didn’t care about the effects of his
discoveries, as long as he packed the expo center the next weekend. “The quest
toward perfection is finally over. Your unborn children now have the
opportunity to be everything you ever wanted them to be!” A large blue vein
slowly became visible through his cherry red forehead. “Birth defects are a
thing of the past.” Suddenly the severity of the situation slammed into me like
a subway train. “There will be no such thing as an imperfect child!” The
sound of flapping mucus in his throat was almost unbearable. The applause
began, I knew it wouldn’t stop for at least ten minutes because Dr. Zimmerman
wouldn’t let it. I ran to the bathroom to think about what had just happened.
Dr. Zimmerman was referring to the G.A.M. project, Genetic Alterations
for Mankind. The team of four was lead by him. The goal was to alter DNA of
freshly fertilized embryos, to control every one of their physical and mental
traits. We all worked with the idea that our progress would be put to prevent
defects and genetic diseases. As our hypothesizes became facts, Dr. Zimmerman
started to act strange in the lab. He began taking second copies of all of the
data, and putting it in a large manila folder which he placed under the Dunkin’
Donuts box that permanently stood on the corner of his desk. A week before our
completion of the experiment, I decided to confront him.
“Dr. Zimmerman, can I talk to you in private for a moment?”, I asked
like a school boy asking his teacher for a bathroom pass. When he agreed, I
briskly followed him into his office. “Look Jason,” it felt weird calling him
by his first name, “I have noticed
last few days.” “Look Steven,” he replied, “I know that we are all getting
very excited about the completion of the experiment, don’t read into things so
much.” Don’t read into things so much. What an obnoxious thing to say to a
scientist. He was hiding something, and now I was determined to find out.
“So, which company do you think we will decide to sell our data to? ” I asked
in Columbo like fashion. “What do you mean we?”, he responded like a rebellious
teenager. “What are you talking about Jason, we all worked on it therefore we
should all decide.” “Steve, I am the experiment leader so I will decide what
happens to the work. You were working for me and you got paid. Your job is
almost over, now get the hell out of my office.”
I think that it was Lewis Thomas that said, “Technology should be
watched closely, monitored, criticized. . . ” For some reason I don’t think he
was referring only to Jason Zimmerman. He now legally possessed the right to do
whatever he wanted with our data. Three years of my life were carelessly placed
under a Dunkin’ Donuts box to be sold to the highest bidder. The bathroom is a
nice sanctuary when the man who stole your work and used it for the wrong
reasons, is getting an applause.
The cool sensation of the hard water sent shivers down my spine. I
looked in the mirror at my bloodshot eyes. I couldn’t understand how all of
those people could have been applauding such a horrible discovery. The whole
idea of individualism would be destroyed. Roaming the earth in the next
generations would be armies of Pamela Anderson, and Joey Lawrence. We as
humans haven’t evolved enough to start creating perfection. We are too ignorant
of ourselves and superficial to even think about unnaturally creating another
being. What will happen in two hundred years? Parents will not have a choice
but to alter their kids unless they wanted them to be permanently on the low
end of society. Even an average person would seem like a fool when surrounded
by perfection.
With a world full of beautiful, brilliant people, it will start to be
difficult to recognize beautiful or brilliant. The only reason that beauty
exists is because there are things that are not beautiful. If it wasn’t for the
dumb people, there would be no smart people. Every positive characteristic is
dependent on a negative one. Therefore when the negative is eliminated, the
positive also ceases to exist. Essentially what this meant was the eradication
of comparison. No one will be praised or punished; equality would spread
like the new plague throughout the world. I decided that I had heard enough,
and decided to catch the next bus home.
I turned on the news that night, and found out that Dr. Zimmerman had
already received a grant from Dupont to fund their tests for government
approval. They scheduled the alterations to start in roughly two years. I
didn’t attempt to stop it, no one would. Technology will move forward, right or
wrong, it only moves forward. The only thing that can possibly stop it is
itself. Powerless, I reclined in my chair and looked out my window at the snow
covered elementary school.