Amygdala Hijack - A Genetic Engineering Sci-Fi Story of Impending Dystopia

EP. 4 - EDGY

EARS WAS ANXIOUS TO meet with Molli and Peter in the morning, so he arrived at Peter's house an hour early, shortly after Peter departed on his bike for the coffee shop. He was frazzled and fatigued after having stayed awake, communicating with the various geedee communities on social media. Even during the night, his usual access points into the networks were so overloaded that he was waiting minutes for responses, and he nervously chewed his nails to the bleeding point.

He knocked on Peter's door and got no response, so he waited in his truck and closed his eyes. Ears had to force himself to stop looking at his phone, as the gravity of this event was just now sinking in.

Given his constitution, this news was too upsetting to ponder its myriad implications. His mind was buzzing with possibilities, and he needed to purge the thoughts by spilling them out among his confidantes.

After sitting nervously for twenty minutes and biting what remained of his frayed nails, Peter finally rolled up and knocked on his window.

"Hey, you're early, big guy."

"Peter!" Ears screamed with delight in his high-pitched voice. He flew from the door and lurched forward, clumsily hugging Peter as he dismounted.

"Dude, enough already," Peter shrugged, backing off and laughing uncomfortably.

"Sorry, Peter. I'm manic about the news, the meaning, the implications. It's exciting, scary, evocative."

"Okay, okay! Let's get inside and wait for Molli to show up," he suggested as he unlocked the front door.

Peter was quite accustomed to Ears' frenzied nervousness. Ears was a unique varint. He was a clipper, though he hated the word. Among his friends, the moniker was just another example of non-varint insensitivity and bias against those like him.

In the brief timeline of human genome modification, Ears was an early clipper. His parents were wealthy Bostonians and prominent members of its Jewish community, which might have led other kids to other places. But Ears suffered from severe self-doubt throughout his teen years, preferring the anonymity and closeness of social networks where people didn't tease or harass him because of his slight build, red hair, and freckles.

An outgrowth of obsessive introversion, Ears flirted in his early teens with modest geedee body coloring that included simple genetic changes to skin coloration, in lieu of getting painful tattoos. Once in college at Temple, he became attracted to the growing array of genetic augmentation options.

He shunned the mechanical human adaptations that included circuit and chip integration, or any degree of metal infusion or robotics, feeling those were less natural and perhaps even anti-religious. But modifying his own genetics? That made perfect sense.

One day while skipping class, he scoured the web news feeds and came upon a fast-motion video of a perfect human ear growing in a petri dish. Something about the video touched him – especially the idea that an ear's refined sensitivity might enhance his own sensitivity to the world.

Multiple eyes like the one Dirksen sported were cumbersome and maintenance intensive. Polynoses were ugly, as were the numerous options for lingual modifications like split tongues. The growing number of alternate limbs, tails, and enhanced musculature variations also seemed too extreme.

Ears wanted none of that. He desired instead to hear the unhearable, to catch the meaning behind the meaning of what people were saying.

"How are you feeling, bud?" Peter inquired. "Sleeping better?"

Ears peered up at the garage ceiling, covered in acoustic foam. This place provided him great comfort – darkness, consistency, and quiet.

"Much better with that new foam mattress. The two ears on my backside are less irritated, and it even helps with these ones on my shoulders since I'm a side-sleeper." He patted the small bulges over each of his deltoid muscles where undersized auricles hid beneath his shirt.