“Adam.” I caught his eye and glanced at Eileen.
“Yes!” Sal admitted. “We failed. I failed. There was a time when some of us—male and female both—believed we had a right to influence some of your ancestors for . . . self-gratifying purposes.”
“You alien piece of sh—”
“Adam. Please.”
I could feel him struggling to channel his anger, and sensed Sal willing me to acknowledge the remorse in his voice, but I couldn’t look at either of them.
“This was a long, long time ago,” I told my daughter.
“Not long enough.” Sal’s voice was hushed and quiet in its existential disgrace.
“And it doesn’t happen like that anymore, does it.” I wasn’t asking as I focused on him again. Clearly our world would be a vastly different place if our self-proclaimed gods still openly manipulated us. Temples and virgins and sacrifices . . .
“No. It does not.”
Adam slammed his fist on the table. “Then what happened to Cara!”
“It was not what you think! We punished ourselves! We saw the horrors and strife and greed and disparity that we had inadvertently wrought upon your innocents—and now we are only trying to revise what we corrupted!”
“You didn’t punish yourself enough!” Adam was half-out of his chair now and Eileen’s eyes were wide as they skittered from Adam to Sal to me and back again.
I wrapped my long fingers in a vise around Adam’s wrist. “Revise how, Sal.”
Adam glared at me, but dropped back into his chair, and I let go. Eileen was worriedly squinting at us, and I shocked her with a quick wink. It wasn’t okay, of course. Not at all. But Sal was finally giving us answers, and we needed to listen.
“For some time now, most of us have been working to isolate the overt genetic expressions of our manipulation and cull them from the general population. We believe that if we had not interfered, your species would have naturally evolved into a harmonious, thriving world-culture—possibly similar to our own.”
“Bullshit!”
“Adam!”
“No, Lila, I’ve had enough!” He stabbed his finger toward Sal. “You! You sit there, a genetically modified sociopath, telling us you’re sorry for using people for your holier-than-thou delusions of grandeur—and you expect us to believe that same delusion is going to fix everything?! According to you, the only thing wrong with humans is you!”
“Adam, please . . . ”
“And what the hell do you mean by culling anyway? We’re not your lab rats!”
“Let him fin—”
“And why are you on his side?!”
Tears sprang to my eyes.
“The adam is right, Lila.” Sal’s quiet words were as soft as if he’d taken my hand. “You feel you owe me consideration for favoring you. For protecting you and your child. You do not.”
“That’s not—”
“My body can withstand far more than you realize. What you perceived as an unbearable punishment was merely a payment to allow me come back to you.”
“I d-don’t understand.”
“So when fear doesn’t work you try guilt.” The steely hatred in Adam’s voice was horrible to hear.
“Adam, st-stop.” Cold, deep shudders were working their way through my stomach—and Eileen! She shouldn’t be here for this! “L-Leeni, sweetheart why don’t you—”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“It is alright, Lila. The adam needs to understand, and so do you and your daughter. This affects all of you more than you realize, and truly, I am trying to help.”
I crossed my arms to quell my shakes. “We need f-facts. You said most of you have been trying to remove . . . remove what? What are the rest of you doing?”
He surprised me by sighing and rubbing his eyes as if he was suddenly very, very tired. Or maybe they still hurt from those vile little machines. Adam couldn’t be right about Sal trying to guilt-trip me. No one would voluntarily go through that. Not even an alien.
“There is a schism.” He dragged his hands down his face. “What we caused is undeniable. But some of us believe the only way to rescue your species is to . . . aggressively . . . alter it.”
“Meaning . . . ”
“Meaning that some of us are trying to intermingle—strategically—the most dominant of our traits with the most unique of yours in order to create hybrids that can survive.”
“Survive what?” Eileen frowned.
“Just survive, young one.”
A Bigger Picture
The silence stretched around us like an elastic restraint, binding us to our own thoughts, allowing only our eyes to reach each other. Mine to blink an attempt at maternal reassurance to my daughter, hers to flash back in impudent defiance of anything Sal said, and Adam’s . . . ? His hazel eyes were waiting for mine. They were apologetic and comforting and as clear as the angels sparking between us.
The last of my shudders stopped as Sal continued in his morosely soothing voice.
“Your Cara was selected by one of us for this reason. She, and her brother, shared cert—”
“Why only women?”
Eileen’s interruption seemed to confuse Sal, and she pursed her lips, visibly annoyed at having to deal with such a mentally challenged alien. “I get the whole birds and bees thing, but if this is such a great idea, then how come your women aren’t . . . you know . . . with our guys?”
I had to admit that, as usual, she had a good point. Sal looked to me as if for permission to answer—which was a nice gesture, but let’s be real. I nodded for him to go on. Of all the parts of this I should’ve protected her from, I seriously doubted that the sexual habits of aliens were worse than what kids at school talked about.
“Mitochondrial DNA. Also, our females no longer bear children within their bodies as your species does. In your distant past, two females loved their human mates enough to attempt it, and one succeeded in carrying the fetus to term—but the other nearly died for her efforts.”
“Loved!” Adam’s mouth spewed the word like it was bile, and Sal’s expression became earnest—almost desperate.
“Yes! At times your species can be so endearing. So present in your struggle to live and evolve! Some of us truly loved you . . . and some of us did not.” His quartz eyes rested on me for a
