Standing next to Tim was a Breeder. The
breeder had his ventilator firmly strapped to his face. It was what gave him
away as a breeder. His body wasn't inundated with the little nanites that
decide if you live or die. He was still all human. For a brief moment Tim felt
envy towards this young man. He got to have and raise children, even if it was at the behest of the government. Tim supposed that if the breeder ever did
anything that didn't fit with the plan a bullet would do just as well as an off
switch, just seemed so much messier.
A mess was what
was in front of him now. From what the history books said death, disease,
illness and injury used to be messy but with the invention and introduction of
certain types of technology into the biology of humanity and subsequently
everything else everything had become so clean.
Which is why,
what is in front of him now, was so bothersome. The breeder next to him was
trying to stifle convulsions, fighting his gag reflex. Tim bent down to get a
closer look at what used to be a different breeder. The ventilator still
attached to the face. Tim waited till the other agents with the scanners gave
the go ahead to touch the body. The
scanners would be uploaded into the mainframe and analyzed then the scene would
be recreated in 3d space to aid in the investigation.
Tim reached down
and pulled the ventilator off the face of the body in front of him. The breeder
that had been fighting his revulsion vomited. The alarm on his ventilator went
off, sending a screech into the already noisy street. Tim lost whatever envy he
had had for the man as he imagined the poor guy’s ventilator being filled with
vomit and him not being able to take it off till he was inside somewhere. The
breeder ran towards the nearest building stumbling as he tried to see through
the lens on his ventilator, hopefully holding his breath so he wouldn't be
breathing in his own vomit.
The body in front
of him became his main focus at this point. It was a young girl probably hadn't
even completed her first breeding cycle. What a waste. Tim wondered how much
money the government had already funneled into this woman with the hopes she
would reproduce something that could be used for more than breeder stock. Tim
remembered his breeder mother. He had been her 8th child. He was going to be
her last unless she managed to produce something that was useful. Tim had been
born and within days the tests were completed and his nanites had been injected
into his tiny little baby veins. He was then taken from his mother at the age
of 6 and placed into the advanced education system that was used to bring up
citizens, the ones that actually ran society. The breeders, they were the ones
that could reproduce. They were selected based on genetic likely hood to produce
offspring that would be useful. If you didn't qualify as a citizen or a breeder
you were not educated. You were destined to end up sterilized and working a
dead end job. These were the class of people that the garbage men, street
sweepers, and the types to become lunch ladies were selected.
The young lady laid
out in front of him was a breeder. She was attractive as most breeders were
these days. She was a mess though. It was obvious that she died a very gruesome
death. Tim's quick assessment would be that she had been show in the back of
the head with a shotgun. Most of her face had come away when he had pulled off
the ventilator.
The rest of the
scene to him didn't make sense middle of the street in a breeder neighborhood.
The gates were kept guarded and there were definitely no weapons allowed inside
the breeder area. Yet here she laid, her sun dress smeared in dirt and road
grime from where she fell. Even weirder still was that where she fell happened
to be in the only blind spot in the surveillance system. The breeder compounds
were supposed to be the safest areas in the world. They were guarded twenty
four hours a day and under constant recorded surveillance which was archived on
the mainframe. Whoever had shot this woman had managed to find the exact spot
where there wasn't a camera pointing. Tim would get access to those recordings
as soon as he made it back to his desk.
In the mean time the breeder from earlier had made it back outside with
a clean ventilator strapped to his face.
The breeder made
it back to his side. "Her name was Mady. She was 16 and was scheduled for
her first insemination tomorrow."
"Were you
her breeding partner?" Tim said as he rose from the body.
"Husband,
actually, name’s Sam." Said the breeder.
"Really?
Don't hear about marriage that much these days especially amongst breeders. I'm
assuming that it wasn't your child she was going to be getting?" Tim said
walking the still visibly shaken young man away from what used to be his wife.
"No sadly it
wasn't. We found out when we applied for the marriage that our genetics weren't
an optimum match." Sam said as he scuffed his foot on the ground. His
shoulders hunched, dejected. It occurred to Tim that Sam here would be assigned
a new breeding partner within the week.
"Sam, I know
it must be hard but do you know of any reason why someone would want your wife
dead?" Tim said as they approached the door to the breeder complex. Sam
didn't even respond he just shook his head, opened the door and stepped inside,
through the hermetically sealed doorway and into the residence proper. He took
off his ventilator turned around and with watery eyes looked Tim in the eye,
frowned then walked away.
Tim turned in
time to see the last of the cleanup crew torching the asphalt back to its
original black. The blood and mess scorched away. Almost as if the blond
breeder had never been there. Within a couple of days the compound would be
back to normal, no one except Sam remembering the face of his wife.
Breeders came and
went pretty quickly. Without the help of the nanites they died quickly from
infection after child birth or from any of the other random super diseases or
viruses that became prevalent from over population and improper use of drugs.
The population went from booming almost 8 billion people on the planet to
having millions dying in the streets within a couple years. The nanite technology
had been a work in progress but was fast tracked rather quickly. They were
initiated before the side effects had fully been understood. First and foremost
of the side effects were the near immortality of the person with them. The next
side effect was the sterility. As soon as you received the nanites you could no
longer produce children, which inspired the system as it is now.
Breeders were
looked after and protected. They were coddled almost to a ridiculous point.
What could you expect though when a small handful of people were the ones that
looked after our children and were responsible for keeping our species alive.
The death of a
breeder by murder hadn't happened in years. Tim knew that the pressure would be
on for him to find out what had happened to the young blond.
First things
first, he had to check those recordings, which meant leaving the breeder
compound and heading back to the city.
