Creative Writing: Equality Essay, Research Paper

Creative Writing: Equality

Nausea. To describe the whole situation in one word I would have to

choose nausea. The Expo center was packed with societies elite, eagerly

waiting the announcement of what the rumor mill had told them to be the most

important invention of the decade. The air was cold and damp, like that of a

hospital. Barley audible was the most annoying Michael Bolton song that I could

imagine. As I got entranced by the dullness of the situation I noticed that the

lights were slowly getting dimmer. As Michael Bolton’s voice became silent, Dr.

Zimmerman spherical body came waddling out.

Dr. Zimmerman was a very large, gluttonous man. I had worked with him

many times, and I had lost more than one of my ideas to his fat hands. He was

ruthless, unemotional, and conscienceless; the perfect scientist. He

painstakingly climbed onto the two foot platform in front of the podium, making

a little grunt that accidentally found its way into the microphone. “Hello?

Can you guys hear me in the back?” He gurgled in his natural grotesque voice.

With the acknowledgment of the audience, he sipped the glass of ice water which

stood on the podium and cleared his throat. “Ladies and Gentlemen, I am here

to inform you of a discovery that my team of genetic scientist and I have

discovered.” The more he said the more I wanted to hear. I wanted to shout to

make him blurt it out, but it was impossible to speed him up, attention was the

reason why he became a scientist. He didn’t care about the effects of his

discoveries, as long as he packed the expo center the next weekend. “The quest

toward perfection is finally over. Your unborn children now have the

opportunity to be everything you ever wanted them to be!” A large blue vein

slowly became visible through his cherry red forehead. “Birth defects are a

thing of the past.” Suddenly the severity of the situation slammed into me like

a subway train. “There will be no such thing as an imperfect child!” The

sound of flapping mucus in his throat was almost unbearable. The applause

began, I knew it wouldn’t stop for at least ten minutes because Dr. Zimmerman

wouldn’t let it. I ran to the bathroom to think about what had just happened.

Dr. Zimmerman was referring to the G.A.M. project, Genetic Alterations

for Mankind. The team of four was lead by him. The goal was to alter DNA of

freshly fertilized embryos, to control every one of their physical and mental

traits. We all worked with the idea that our progress would be put to prevent

defects and genetic diseases. As our hypothesizes became facts, Dr. Zimmerman

started to act strange in the lab. He began taking second copies of all of the

data, and putting it in a large manila folder which he placed under the Dunkin’

Donuts box that permanently stood on the corner of his desk. A week before our

completion of the experiment, I decided to confront him.

“Dr. Zimmerman, can I talk to you in private for a moment?”, I asked

like a school boy asking his teacher for a bathroom pass. When he agreed, I

briskly followed him into his office. “Look Jason,” it felt weird calling him

by his first name, “I have noticed that you have been acting kind of weird the

last few days.” “Look Steven,” he replied, “I know that we are all getting

very excited about the completion of the experiment, don’t read into things so

much.” Don’t read into things so much. What an obnoxious thing to say to a

scientist. He was hiding something, and now I was determined to find out.

“So, which company do you think we will decide to sell our data to? ” I asked

in Columbo like fashion. “What do you mean we?”, he responded like a rebellious

teenager. “What are you talking about Jason, we all worked on it therefore we

should all decide.” “Steve, I am the experiment leader so I will decide what

happens to the work. You were working for me and you got paid. Your job is

almost over, now get the hell out of my office.”

I think that it was Lewis Thomas that said, “Technology should be

watched closely, monitored, criticized. . . ” For some reason I don’t think he

was referring only to Jason Zimmerman. He now legally possessed the right to do

whatever he wanted with our data. Three years of my life were carelessly placed

under a Dunkin’ Donuts box to be sold to the highest bidder. The bathroom is a

nice sanctuary when the man who stole your work and used it for the wrong

reasons, is getting an applause.

The cool sensation of the hard water sent shivers down my spine. I

looked in the mirror at my bloodshot eyes. I couldn’t understand how all of

those people could have been applauding such a horrible discovery. The whole

idea of individualism would be destroyed. Roaming the earth in the next

generations would be armies of Pamela Anderson, and Joey Lawrence. We as

humans haven’t evolved enough to start creating perfection. We are too ignorant

of ourselves and superficial to even think about unnaturally creating another

being. What will happen in two hundred years? Parents will not have a choice

but to alter their kids unless they wanted them to be permanently on the low

end of society. Even an average person would seem like a fool when surrounded

by perfection.

With a world full of beautiful, brilliant people, it will start to be

difficult to recognize beautiful or brilliant. The only reason that beauty

exists is because there are things that are not beautiful. If it wasn’t for the

dumb people, there would be no smart people. Every positive characteristic is

dependent on a negative one. Therefore when the negative is eliminated, the

positive also ceases to exist. Essentially what this meant was the eradication

of comparison. No one will be praised or punished; equality would spread

like the new plague throughout the world. I decided that I had heard enough,

and decided to catch the next bus home.

I turned on the news that night, and found out that Dr. Zimmerman had

already received a grant from Dupont to fund their tests for government

approval. They scheduled the alterations to start in roughly two years. I

didn’t attempt to stop it, no one would. Technology will move forward, right or

wrong, it only moves forward. The only thing that can possibly stop it is

itself. Powerless, I reclined in my chair and looked out my window at the snow

covered elementary school.