Chronicles of Athena Lee Book 3

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Scientists have proved that conception begins with a flash of light. I don’t know if that’s really true, as I did not see the flash. My first memory is of swimming in a tube filled with a thick, clear liquid. I was breathing the liquid, not air. I later learned that it was an artificial Perfluorochemical that was allowing us to breathe as our small bodies developed. As soon as my brothers and I registered awareness, our training and indoctrination began in earnest. Our artificial conception was the work of a lifetime for many government geneticists and scientists. We were not clones. Using donated genetic samples, scientists had engineered each of our parents’ DNA to make perfect superior beings.

This sort of research had been tried several times in the past. During the 1940s German scientists had attempted to breed a “master race” using natural selection. Crude, ineffective, and horrific attempts at genetic manipulation were also conducted. That time period helped to give the art of eugenic science a terrible name.

The art of non-human genetic manipulation reached its peak in the 21st century. Scientists were constantly creating new crops and breeding smaller pets for homes.

Pressure from parental groups and educational trusts forced Congress and the President to lift the ban on human experimentation with a goal of curing or preventing childhood illness. Citizens were being born with birth defects at an alarming rate. A significant number of medical professionals laid the blame at the feet of industry and technology. Many rare and genetic-based diseases killed infants on a regular basis. That sort of research was supposed to prevent it.

With the lifting of the bans on human experimentation, all types of human modification began. While fixing birth defects had been the initial goal, other genes were modified as well. It started small with good intentions but didn’t remain that way after the government became involved.

The US military first conceived of the Superhero Project. Emulating a popular comic book hero, government scientists began using RNA retroviral vector gene transfers to create changes in volunteer soldiers. At first, the scientists helped with small things such as better eyesight, obesity, and quicker reflexes. With success came a greater push for more results. Muscle tone and stamina were increased among the volunteers. Still, politicians and military leaders wanted more. Why just create a stronger soldier? Why not make a real superhero? Or a thousand superheroes?

With the massive push for favorable results, mistakes were made. Participants began to look more like professional wrestlers than the ideal superhero figure. Combinations of steroids, retroviruses, and gene therapy cocktails of new drugs began to change the volunteers. Several soldiers started to resemble another comic book hero, a green one. But not in a good way. Bulging muscles made it difficult to hold certain weapons and to squeeze into combat vehicles. That fact alone is what canceled the program.

The volunteers were removed, and either sent back to their units or hospitalized until a reverse treatment could be found. Then it leaked to the media. The successes to this point were invalidated when the first pictures of the participants were released.

Without the drugs, therapy, and chemical cocktails, the volunteers slowly wasted away. Muscle tone was lost overnight. The former Superhero men and women appeared years older than they actually were. The chemicals either faded hair color or caused it to fall out. Gathered in a group, the superheroes resembled concentration camp survivors from the previous century. Officially, all work was stopped, and records of the experiments destroyed.

Contrary to history, not all the experiments the Superhero Project created failed. What they had been trying to do was increase stamina, agility, and longevity. This part of the program was where success had been made. A few of the longevity projects worked; participants survived the experiments and thrived. No actual superheroes were created. Not really.

America’s leaders had wanted soldiers who could run all day and not get tired. They wanted them to live longer and fight faster, with more skill. The fact that they actually succeeded was covered up and hidden away. The successful experiments were studied and dissected to learn their secrets. Many of the secret project’s originators and supervisors used some of the serums created on themselves. Why shouldn’t those in actual power have more physical power?

A few rival countries had similar programs Their programs focus had been to enhance their soldiers’ strength and stamina only. Many of those programs were sabotaged or destroyed. Any successes that the other powers had made was destroyed in the media blitz when the program was discovered in America. The surviving experiment subjects all died under mysterious circumstances.

With the advent of star travel and colony ships, there was a need for pilots and crew members who could survive the challenging trip. Many of the secret gene therapy programs were dusted off and brought to light under the auspices of helping the space programs. The media either ignored the fact that these were the same experiments or they were already puppets of the government’s.

If the program we were born into had a name, it was never told to us. We only heard it called The Program or at least that is what the scientists and trainers called it. My brothers and I were kept in the tanks until age one. I suppose that being released from our liquid prison was what being born feels like to a natural born infant.

There were fifty of us in the beginning. Fifty very inquisitive, extremely smart babies. The process of enhancing DNA was, technically, still illegal, but we belonged to the government. The eugenics program had been a huge secret for many years. We were to be the test subjects and ultimately the pilots for the new colony ships. There were several other groups of ‘enhanced’ children in the project. We found out later that they were earmarked for crew positions on our ships.

All I can remember from my first year is people talking to me and watching vid after vid. We spent our first year in state-of-the-art cocoons that both supported our growing bodies and provided everything we needed to survive. Nutrients were fed to our bodies and waste was removed. Exercise was provided using electrical muscle stimulation (EMS). Several of my brothers left this plane of existence during those early years. The system was not perfect.

We were infants that could not communicate that the electricity being piped throughout small bodies had too much current, or that the ‘food’ system had a malfunction. Well, you get the picture. The deaths were not noticed as a whole. There were several hundred of us, all in creches by this time. I am told that they fixed the problem later in the project.

By year two we could carry on clear conversations with our keepers. English was our primary language, but we spoke several others. The languages I learned were English, Spanish, German, and Russian. Some of my brothers were learning Mandarin, Hindi, Arabic, Japanese, and Punjabi. All the languages of the colonies were represented. The program’s sponsors in the American government intended for us to be able to converse in as many languages as possible in order to interact with the colonists on the ships. These specific classes were to lay a foundation that the advanced classes could build upon. As a group, we were about to turn four when the world began to change.