Wine of the Gods 1: Exiles and Gods

About half the school bullies were
standing around the exit to the bus loading area. Quite the unwelcoming committee. Chris decided that this would be a good day to walk home. After all, it hadn't snowed since Sunday, all the sidewalks would be shoveled and clear.

Why didn't my parents tell me?

The results of his routine physical prior to trying out for the football team last summer had come as a shock. Back in Cal
ifornia they'd never tested DNA; he hadn't realized they did it here. Not that knowing would have changed anything. He hadn't realized he had anything to hide.

They just said
I was "special" and "talented."

There were kids around the front entrance too, but he didn't recognize them, and they were mostly
short. Freshmen and sophomores. Waiting to be picked up by their loving parents.

Chris eeled through the crush and angled down the steps. Ignored the whispers behind him.

"That's him. The monster."

The freak.
Part animal. The boy with the genetic engineering.

A car drove by, the window dropped
down as it passed. "Hey Frankenstein, catch this!"

Chris dodged what he diagnosed as the dregs of a latte. He'd had a lot worse thrown at him since he'd plummeted from a sought-after junior varsity star to a not-legal-to-compete genetic abomination.
Next year he could drive himself. Only Seniors were given parking tags for the school lot. Chris already had his license, all he needed was to earn enough money for a car. And gas. And insurance. Even his parents were showing signs of fighting down prejudice; they weren't immune to relentless propaganda. People shunned them because they'd had their first child engineered. He was strong, healthy, good looking, smart, athletic . . . monstrous. His two younger siblings hadn't gotten any engineering at all, as the parents bent to the public switch in opinion about genetic engineering.

T
hey've started looking at me like I might murder them all in their beds some night. Like I'm the kid gone bad, on drugs, or in a gang.

He crossed the
main street, ignored the honking and rude comments from the cars stopped at the red light. The light changed, and they all honked and yelled again as they passed him. One car swerved and splashed slush from the gutter. He dodged and they all laughed. The high tones of girls. He didn't look to see who it was. It hardly mattered.

At home, the TV was on, som
e girly show his sisters loved. "I'm home." They ignored him. Old enough to catch the flack about the unacceptable older brother, too young to really think it through. Desperate to separate themselves from him, to be accepted by their peers as normal.

I understand wanting to be normal
.

He tossed his backpack into his room, and raided the fridge for food. Peanut butter and jelly, glass of milk. Everything else was fresh veggies and tofu. And Mom had complained about having to buy him
cow’s milk.
She wouldn't even buy the new vat grown meat. Maybe he ought to forget the car and just use his money to buy himself real food. Maybe if it snowed more, he'd earn enough money shoveling walks around the neighborhood to do both. He whipped through his homework and then pulled out his last library book.

Have to go
to the library again tomorrow. Maybe Mom will drop me off when she takes the girls to ballet.

He managed to lose himself in a space oper
a until his door crashed open.

"There you are!" Sibyl Dunmeyer was dressed for success in a red suit.
Tense and obviously unhappy.

He sat up straighter and closed the book.
What's wrong this time?
"Hi Mom. How was work, today?"

"Great until someone told me the news." She
hunched her shoulders.

"What news?" His stomach flopped over.

"The vote. The Congress got the genetic engineering bill out of committee and voted on it today."

Chr
is sagged back in disbelief. "They didn't pass it!"

"Of course they did. And the Senate will pass it as well. No one wants to be on the record as supporting . . . dangerous
. . . people." She blinked suddenly. A tear broke loose and tracked down her cheek.

Crying? Mother crying? It must be anger, or shame. "So they're
actually going to exile us?" Then he swallowed, tried to think. He felt like he was floating on a cloud of denial.

Or
realization.

"I mean,
me."

Then he scrambled to soften the offence. "I mean,
anyone with engineering. Good thing I'm plenty old to be on my own. I'll be seventeen, maybe eighteen, before anything actually happens."

Mom shook her head, helpless, not denying.
"I can't live in a howling wilderness. And what would your father do? He's a stock broker. And the girls?"

"
Brook and Pet would hate roughing it. I, on the other hand, will enjoy every minute of it." Chris fought down his gorge, fought back tears.

"We'll help you, help get you . . . things. Supplies." She wiped an angry hand across her cheek, smearing makeup. "You'll be fine." She
clutched the door. "We do love you . . ."

"It's just that you custom ordered your perfect baby boy. And then they changed the definition of perfect." Chris looked beyond her, and spotted his father. "I know you can't take the girls there, frontiers are no place for little girls."

His dad's hand tightened on Mom's shoulder. "They say they'll be opening gates once a month. So after the first month, send us a list of things you need. We'll bring it to you, have a family vacation for a month. It's not like we'll never see you again."

Chris nodded, unable to force more reassurances from his mouth.

"I picked up dinner, let’s go eat." Dad led Mom away.

Chris closed his door quietly. And concentrated on not getting sick.
Tears didn't count, when there was no one to see. After a few minutes he forced himself to wipe his face and go sit with his family. He didn't have much of an appetite.

It snowed overnight, two inches of wet slush, that threatened to freeze as temperatures kept dropping. He grabbed his shovel and headed out in the pre-dawn to clear the driveways of the three clients who left early, then the rest of the driveways, then he started on the sidewalks that ordinarily he'd have left for after school. Mr. Fergusson sent him away, Mrs. Burns fussed and paid him early, as if she thought the government would whisk him away tomorrow. None of his other regular clients came out, so he worked in peace, ignored the school bus as it passed. It wasn't as if his grades mattered any more.

At home, alone, he started researching the parallel worlds. They were all Earth,
of course, with some slight difference in their natural history that had split them off into a present that was just across a dimensional fold. Trans World Travel the company called itself these days. They'd previously been NewGenes, the company that had made so many genetic discoveries, years ago, before genetic engineering was made illegal. Same managers, same Board of Directors. Same stockholders, mostly some Chinese family.

Now they get to screw me all over again.

The scenes they showed of Gaia, the first colony, were pretty. Scenic. Quaint little villages with small garden patches, the observatory up on a mountain. A few big swaths of grain fields to provide the bulk for the reformulators. They had automated kitchens in the communal cafeterias in each village.

They were colonizing the worlds where humans had never evolved, but that had split away recently enough that the animals were roughly recognizable. No dinosaurs.

Chris sighed. It looked really boring, and he'd bet there was going to be someone in charge of all the children. His only hope was to delay going until he was eighteen. Several private colony companies has lists of what they recommended their members bring with them. Chris blanched at the hugely expensive items.
I am so screwed, the parents won't buy me an RV. Maybe a jeep.
Chris contemplated what he'd heard from his parents, about their current financial situation. The wonderful old boat they'd sold before moving across the country had never been replaced.
Maybe a motorcycle. Off road variety.

The phone interru
pted further studies. The Vice Principal for Junior Boys informed him he'd better be sick, else he would be truant. The man managed to get a tint of sympathy into his voice, but was unmoved by Chris's claim of immunity from school attendance requirements, as a non-human. "Get here for fourth period."

Chris wolfed down lunch—more peanut butter and jelly—and started walking.

He was greeted by the school football star. "Hey, Dunmeyer, haven't they thrown you off the planet yet?"

Chris
managed a smile. "Eat your heart out. No more school, all the land I want. Fishing, hunting. No parents.
Major
score."

Hector actually looked taken aback. "You parents aren't going?"

"Course not. Geeze, the little sisters are all natural. They wouldn't fit in at all." Chris walked past the jerk and kept going.

The looks he got from people after that changed. A bit. Some sympathy, some envy, some pity. But mostly just
the usual unthinking prejudice and bullying.

A week later, the Senate passed the bill without changes.

The President signed
it. And made a big to-do of it; he spoke about keeping the human race safe, about sensible limits on science. Chis listened in disbelief. No apology to the kids he was kicking off the planet, no remorse for families torn apart.

Two weeks later, the letter came. Apparently the government knew where all the genetically engineered people were.
It sounded like a lawsuit. Or perhaps an arrest warrant. "Subject is reported to have been engineered to contain Happy Kids, Inc. genetic suites BTSS and F23." His Dad filled it out, admitted that his "minor partial child" would be unaccompanied. That the child was not a member of a commercial colony group.

I
t only took the government four months to organize the exile.

Apparently they wanted it done and over with well before the elections. Some people tried to run, some people tried to hide their kids. The government gathered them all up, mostly with a fair amount of "stuff" for colonizing a raw frontier. Chris's parents' had spent some serious money outfitting him, but s
topped short of buying him a vehicle. Which rather limited the amount of stuff he could take.

The federal agents were anonymous behind mirrored sunglasses. They slung his two
big plastic trunks into the back of the SUV without looking in them and gestured him in. Good. He'd been afraid they'd confiscate his arsenal. He'd hugged his Mom (stoic) and sisters (crying), shaken his father's (trembling) hand already. He picked up his backpack, filled with the government recommended traveling kit, and got in the back seat. He didn't look back. A pane of something clear, and probably bullet proof, separated him from the front seat. He eyed the doors. No handles on the inside.
I'm just a kid. How dangerous do they think we are?

They drove off without talking, t
ook the interstate, but exited on the other side of town. They wound around to a huge house in an obviously rich neighborhood.

"Wait right here, kid."
As if he had a choice. But at least one of the agents had finally spoken to him.

Chris nodded, silenced and intimidated, even though he
tried hard to channel a heroic character from one of his favorite books. He couldn't see any people at the house. Well, a curtain twitched a bit. The agents returned, toting more plastic trunks. A second trip. Two kids being exiled? Then the screaming and crying started. Two
little
kids. One broke away and ran for the house. The agent scooped him, no, her, up and carried her at arms length to avoid the flailing and kicking. The second kid tried a sit down strike, and was scooped up, as well. She didn't scream, just pushed, leaned as far away from the agent as she could. They were shoved in the back and the door hastily shut. The tantrum continued, unabated even when she rolled off the seat and onto the floor. The feds jumped in the front and the car pulled away.

Chris blinked at the girls'
hair. "Wow. Blue. How old are you two? You're kind of small to be tossed out of the nest." He had to raise his voice over the temper tantrum. He met the scowling gaze of the other girl. "My parents sent me away too, but at least I'm big enough to manage on my own."

Scowl.

The temper tantrum thrower took another deep breath but just blew it out with a catch of a sob at the end. "Mommy doesn't love us any more. Steven said we were just stupid
pets
and they ought to just put us down like unwanted
puppies
."

"Steven's our step-
father. " Scowler added. "Not our real one. We don't have a real one. Mommy just wanted cute little babies with peacock hair. That was before she met Steven. Now she doesn't want us anymore. They want a
real
baby."

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