Selected
Thirteenth

Dinner was quite as per usual. Addeck didn’t show up, Hal seemed to be on thin ice with her mother, and Vox and his father were still gone. Mrs. Bly had elaborated that there was a mistake that one of the technicians had made that needed to be fixed immediatly. They were probably going to be gone all night trying to fix the problem. But other than that, no one spoke. I picked at my food, not really eating it. I took one last sip of my water before placing my napkin on my plate. “May I be excused?” I had learned that it was always polite to ask before getting up.

Mrs. Bly nodded and I got up from the table and made my way back to my room. I had had enough with the silence and had to get out of there. I pulled out the Search Engine and sat in bed, propping some pillows up against he headboard.

“What would you like to search, Emmary?”

The whole machine talking thing still freaked me out, but I continued on. “Clinson Vaughn.”

The screen changed to bring up a list of links to all the information on Clinson Vaughn. I decided to click on the link to his biography. It brought up the same picture as before, a man in his late forties with brown hair and soft brown eyes. There was just something peculiar about him, something I couldn’t place. He looked so familiar, and yet I didn’t know why. I started to read about Clinson Vaughn, the only son to Nadaleigh and Blithe Vaughn. He joined the guard at the age of 18. He was now a Colonel stationed in an undisclosed location. I read about his career as an officer in his home sector until he got promoted to Captain and served in Sector 3 until he was transferred three years ago. This timeline showed that I would have never crossed paths with him, unless that undisclosed location happened to be Sector 16F. Which I highly doubted.

I looked through news articles that had mentioned his name, but didn’t replace anything that would have connected him to me in any way. He lived in Sector 3 for majority of his career but moved away long before I had arrived. But there was a nagging feeling that I had known him, that I had seen him before. Something.

I sighed and set the Search Engine aside and picked up my book. I was half way finished with it and was hoping to get the chance to get another before I did.

I woke up a few hours later to a pinging sound. I frowned and sat up, I must have fallen asleep while reading. I rubbed my eyes and looked at the clock, it was well past midnight now. The ping sounded again, I had never heard that noise before. I looked over to see it was the Search Engine. I picked it up to see I had a notification. I tapped the message and the woman started talking to me again.

“One of your searches has been updated, would you like to read about it, Emmary?”

“Yes.”

At my word, the screen changed to bring up a news article on Clinson Vaughn. It was his obituary. He had died in battle serving his country. I was in a state of shock. This man that I had learned so much about in such a short time was now dead. I didn’t know him, at least not really, but I had felt a little connection with him. It was upsetting to see that he had passed. I turned off the Search Engine and placed it on the night stand.

I suddenly felt very thirsty and decided to help myself to a glass of water in the kitchen. As I descended the dark stairs I saw a light turn on from a hallway I had never been down. I had assumed it was Mrs. And Mr. Bly’s bedroom. There was a muffled noise coming from the room. I continued on my way to the kitchen. I opened a cabinet, grabbed a glass and filled it with water.

Mrs. Bly entered just as I had finished the glass. “Oh, Emmary, dear. You startled me.” Mrs. Bly was in a silk bathrobe with her hair in a tangled mess. I had never seen her like this. She was always so put together, never without her makeup.

I smiled at her, “Sorry. I was just thirsty.”

She shook her head and grabbed a glass. “It’s quite alright. I couldn’t sleep and thought a glass of water would help.”

I looked at Mrs. Bly’s appearance again. Her eyes looked red and puffy. She had said she couldn’t sleep, maybe she was just tired. She sniffled a little as the water poured into her cup. It seemed like the conclusion that she had been crying was a more logical choice. “Are you alright?”

She nodded as she drank, “Yes, thank you.” She set down her now empty cup by the sink and then left. “Goodnight, Emmary.”

I didn’t get a chance to respond before she was gone. It was one of the strangest encounters yet. Mrs. Bly seemed like a wreck, barely holding herself together. I started to worry that maybe something had happened. My mind suddenly jumped to the worst scenario possible, that Vox was dead. I shook that from my mind though, if he was dead then surely she would have informed me. I set my glass down beside hers and went back upstairs. Whatever was bothering her, she surely wasn’t going to tell me.

I passed by Vox’s room and saw the light on. He must be home. I gave a light tap on the door before opening it. I saw Vox sitting at his desk, his head turned toward me as I opened the door. “Hey there.”

I smiled at him, “Hi. I was wondering when you’d be back.”

Vox sighed and rubbed his face, “Yeah, it has been a long day. I’m sorry we couldn’t go to the library.”

I waved it off, “It doesn’t matter. We’ll have to go soon, though.” I sat down on his lap and draped my arms around his neck.

His arms found my waist. “Well, if you wouldn’t read so fast, there wouldn’t be a problem.” He gave me a kiss.

“What do you expect me to do while you’re always working?”

He shrugged, “I’d offer you to come with me, but A. it’s boring as hell, and B. after our last little adventure I don’t want to piss of the old man anymore that we already did.”

I smiled at him. “What do you do exactly anyways?”

He nodded toward the desk, “Here, I’ll show you.” I got up from his lap and turned to face the desk.

“So, this morning one of the tech guys made the mistake of entering the wrong genetic code for this girl. We didn’t notice until this morning that her gene is defected and we can’t actually match her with anyone.”

He sighed, “So, we had to go through and replace a better match for this guy, and then replace all the subsequent matches after that. It’s a lot of work for one mistake.” On the desk was what looked like the Search Engine, only much larger. He tapped on it to show a huge web of lines and pictures on them.

“So here’s where the problem started. The grey lines represent who they were matched and blue represent who they are matched with now.” He clicked on a girl’s picture that showed a grey line to a guy’s picture. These people looked to be our age.

“Why do they look 18?”

“Because we have a program that’ll predict what they will look like based on their genes. We also have one that will tell us what genes their children are most likely to have.”

“That’s pretty nifty.”

Vox smiled, “Nifty? This is the most powerful system in the world. We can make generations of people through this software without them even being born yet.”

“Then why do you wait until a person is born to match them?”

“Well, there's two reasons. One is the fact that humans are very fickle. We can predict what their children will look like, but we can't predict if they'll have children. If we base generations on one person having children, and then they don't that would be years of work trying to fix that problem.

"The second reason is the fact that the program is all based on probability, there isn’t a 100% chance that a child will have the genes we predict. It's pretty close, but there’s always room for error.”

I nodded along with what he said. It made sense. I mean I didn’t have a background in genetics but we learned a few things in school, enough to know how Selection works. “So you have to manually match people up? I thought there was a program that sorted people together.”

“There used to be, but there were a lot of problems with it. The program would match people based solely on their genes, so we had a lot of Sector hopping.”

“What’s wrong with Sector hopping?” I mean I was from a different sector. Did that mean that they didn’t want me here?

“Nothing, just that people are happier when they can stay in the same sector as their family and friends. There is also a higher probability for people’s happiness when they know their match before hand.”

“Okay.”

He smiled, that charming Vox smile, “Don’t worry. I’m glad that you Sector hopped.”

I rolled my eyes at him. “So, what makes for a person to be a good match?”

Vox scratched his head, “Well there are a lot of factors that go into it. But we mostly look for defected genes and their probability of resurfacing in the offspring.”

“What genes are those?”

“You know how before Selection there were so many people with genetic diseases, right? For every 5 children born, one had defective genes. The probability of just having a mental illness alone was at an all time high. So, my great grandfather, Flint Bly, invented the ability to detect defected genes. We now can target those genes, see if a person is a carrier or not. Selection stops the people that are carriers from mating, eliminating the possibility of the gene to be carried on to the offspring. We also look at whether they will be able to reproduce. We look at what their children will look like. We basically create the perfect race of humans, free of genetic disease, just by simply pairing them up with their most compatible mate.”

“Impressive.”

He stretched out, “All in a days work.”

I smiled at his comment. “How much longer are you going to be up?”

Vox shrugged, “I’m not sure. I was hoping to get majority of this done tonight so I could take you to the library tomorrow.”

I started grinning even wider, “Really?”

He nodded, not taking his eyes off mine, “Only if you let me finish.”

“Deal.” I gave him a kiss.

I moved towards the door, but Vox’s voice stopped me, “You’re not going to sleep in here?”

I turned to face him, “You’re working. I thought I’d just go back to my room. But if you want me to-.”

“Yes.” He said grinning before I could finish my sentence.

“Okay then, I’ll stay.”

He motioned toward his dresser, “In the dresser there should be a shirt you can sleep in.”

I opened the drawer he opened last night and pulled out a clean black t-shirt. Vox’s back was to me as he continued working. I felt a little awkward changing in the middle of his room so I went into the bathroom. When I came out, Vox had turned off all the lights, the only thing illuminating his face was the glow from his desk. I crawled into bed and faced away from the light and slowly drifted to sleep.