“It really sounds like there’s a lot of truth in what I read. If fewer and fewer healthy people with high IQs produce offspring, and if more and more people with health problems and lower IQs produce offspring...Well, it just seems to make sense that in the future even more people will have health problems, and if IQs get lower and lower every generation, there will be less people to make the great discoveries that have given us the advancements we have now.”
“Do you believe that?” Billy looked at her until she had to look away with another blush staining her cheeks.
“Everything I read made perfect sense. I guess I kind of believe it,” she admitted in a meek voice and tucked her hair behind her ears.
“What I don’t believe,” she continued firmly, “is the arrogance of the people, or person, who wrote that memo. In the information I read online, the author doesn’t believe that worldwide eugenics will ever become a reality because he doesn’t think people will ever agree on what the ‘perfect’ human is. Short, dark-skinned geniuses won’t think white skin and height is important, and vice-versa. It looks like someone has made that decision, though.”
“Sarah, not everything is based on genetics. There has been research showing that genetic traits can be changed naturally. And my IQ is decent, but my mom and dad both tested at an average level.” He paused for just a second as a thought hit him.
“Wow! We might have been part of this study, or a study like it!”
“What do you mean?” Sarah asked, surprised by his excitement.
“When I was younger my IQ tested pretty high.” He shrugged. “I was retested, and then my mom and dad were also tested. We had to sign a confidentiality statement saying we wouldn’t talk about the study or share my parents’ IQ information with anyone.”
He jumped up and started pacing again. “This could explain why they didn’t want my parents’ information to be shared. It wouldn’t back up their study of people with high IQs producing children with high IQs. My parents aren’t idiots. They were in a normal range but not even at the very top end of average. I wonder if that really could have been part of this.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.” Sarah’s eyes narrowed. “Anyone callous enough to think eugenics is a good idea wouldn’t be bothered by simply choosing the results that fit his or her needs.”
Both were quiet for a few minutes, deep in their own thoughts.
“Okay, I think we need to slow down. We’re jumping to some far-fetched conclusions from the little bit of actual information we have. We can’t really be thinking that plans for worldwide eugenics are being made by the company I just happen to work for, can we?”
“Why not?” Sarah asked with a shrug.
Billy didn’t answer for a few minutes, then said, “Even if that’s the case, what could we do about it?”
“I don’t know. I was thinking about that before you got home. There are a lot of people online making claims that this kind of stuff is really happening, and they’re written off as crazy or conspiracy theorists. As far as I can tell, no one is paying much attention to anything they’re saying.”
She considered some of the claims she’d read by these people. If they were right, then Scinegue—or people who believed as they did—had been plotting and scheming for many years, and had already put many of their ideas to reduce the population into motion. She thought of some of the plans she read about utilizing simple things—like tampered medicines or foods—to kill off people considered undesirable.
The few over the counter medicines she and Billy took recently when they’d had the flu popped into her mind. She wondered if any of them could have been altered by one of those schemes. She thought of the processed foods even now in their pantry.
“We have to throw out all of the processed food!” she cried as she jumped up and ran to the kitchen
Rebecca Hamilton, Conner Kressley