The Man Who Sold His Son (Lanarkshire Strays) by Mark Wilson Read Free Book Online Page B

consistently telling her the same thing: the gametes that Synthi-Co had been producing for decades now were simply no longer viable. In eighteen months, maybe two years at a push, Ennis’s Synthi-sperm would be no longer able to serve its purpose.
     
    An entire generation of people had been born as a result of IVF with Synthi-sperm, which had been eagerly designed by their prospective parents to eliminate undesirable character traits, such as anger, aggression and arrogance, or medical conditions, or other physical challenges. Now becoming parents themselves, the first generation of Synthi-sperm kids had possessed and had eliminated genes that no other generation in the history of humans had.
    The selected genes had made the human race a little calmer, a little more predictable, but genes that also made them less likely to take risks, to possess any real ambition. In the next generation, those traits were amplified. Simply put, people were becoming too docile as a direct result of Synthi-sperm being the only method of reproduction available to the general populace. The choices people had made in selecting character and physical traits had resulted in a society comprised of ubiquitously uniform cowards and under-achievers. The problem was that the DNA stock was riddled with these types of genes as a result of the first generation’s choices. Synthi-Co needed to do what selective breeding programmes had been doing for centuries.
     
    It was time to return to the ancestral wild type to retrieve genes that had been lost to the current crop.
     

Interlude
     
    Some time ago…
     
    “You can’t continue to behave like this and expect to keep your career, James.”
    He was angry this time. Really angry. The veins on his boss’s neck and forehead bulged with each word, threatening to spray frustration and anger up the wall. He hadn’t seen Grayson this angry since their university days.
      Sinclair didn’t bother with the usual apologies – he meant them, each and every time – and didn’t bother offering any of the promises or assurances that normally trickled from his mouth. I’ll see a counsellor, I’ve turned a corner, things will be different: he’d never meant those, not even a little. Instead he simply nodded along, face impassive.
    Grayson the line manager disappeared for a moment, and his friend of twenty years re-emerged.
      “It’s been ten years since she left, you need to move on.”
    They all assumed that; all thought the same thing: Fiona leaving him had left him depressed . He’s not been the same since. All that potential, wasted.
    Sinclair nodded along passively. His silence made his friend disappear and the line manager came roaring back.
    “Right, I’m done with this shite, James. Consider yourself suspended… indefinitely. There’ll be an opportunity for you to straighten yourself out and appear in front of the board, six months from now. At that point, your future within this organisation will be decided.”
    Grayson’s face softened once again. Sitting, he bored his eyes into Sinclair’s, pleading with him.
    “Get some help, Jim. It’s not too late to have some sort of a career. You’ll be demoted: there’s nothing can be done about that now. You won’t get to be in theatre again, but you could still be here.”
    Sinclair gave his friend and boss a final nod-cum-shrug.
    Grayson sighed loudly and flicked a gesture at the door.
    “Go pack up your things, Doctor Sinclair. Go home and call a therapist.”
     
    Sinclair rose mechanically from the chair, and left his boss’s office for the last time. Leaning his back against the door, he fetched a hip flask from the pocket of his white coat and drank deeply.
     
     
     
     

8
     
    “Gavin Ennis today embarked upon a visit to North America with the intention of inspecting his facilities in the northern States. Mr Ennis, as always, is hands-on in his management of his global company and will be visiting seven Synthi-Co facilities