GENETIC WARS 2078
Lines in the Sand
Jonathan S. Coolidge

	“Tau Ceti 2,” Scott thought out loud as he, his companion Elodea, and his associate Anderson Conus examined a display of an alien solar system.  “I’ve had the rare honor of being the first werewolf from Earth to breathe another planet’s atmosphere.  In a worst-case scenario, Captain Adamo says he can get the Prometheus underway in less than six months, and with it several hundred thousand people.  The official story is that we can do this if the Cozaliens come back and take over the Earth.”
	“But,” Conus answered back, “and the unofficial story is….”
	Elodea finished, “this is what we can do if Thomas Shann takes over the Earth.”
	“How many people can you fit on Conus One,” Gardener asked.
	“I could accommodate the first five hundred in reasonable comfort.  If need be, I could squeeze on board up to two thousand, provided they travelled light and were willing to put up with a food and water shortage.  The journey would be under a month ship’s time, although it would actually take twelve years and nine months as far as the rest of the universe were concerned.”
	“If you were to accompany the Prometheus, it would take upwards to two months,” Elodea answered back.
	Conus thought for a moment.  “That would reduce capacity by about four hundred.  Given the large size of the Prometheus and the current census of L.G.F.F. supporters, however, I doubt this will be a problem.  As it stands, we’ll be lucky if we can get enough people to fill half of the Prometheus at the moment.”
	“At the moment,” Scott answered back.  “Right now, Shann has very few prominent opponents.  That could change, depending on how the United States handles his offer.”  He stepped away from the wide screen monitor, wandering around the room, a library decorated with classical dark wood furnishings and accented with Tiffany-influenced lighting.  As fond as Thomas Shann was of Art Deco and geometric architecture, Gardener favored the organic comforts of the slightly earlier Art Noveau.  Gardener stopped next to a globe of the Earth, supported by a brass stand and depicting various nations of the world with different carved semiprecious stones.  The arrangement of nations was archaic, representative of how they were around the turn of the millennium.  The relic was a genuine antique, dating back to the times when lycanthropes were fiction; it was almost as old as Scott himself.  He turned it to face North America upwards, towards him.
	“The House of Representatives here in the U.S. has already passed a bill that would allow the United States to join the Control Administration of Thomas.  Under it, all three branches of government would remain intact, but the executive branch would become subordinate to Thomas Shann.  Needless to say, President Hazelwood is not entirely favorable towards it.  I’ve been asked to testify before the Senate about Shann.”
	“You and he have been allies for the longest of time,” Conus answered back.  “I know that this exodus plan is only a contengency plan, but are you ready to advocate opposing him at this point?”
	“I supported Shann when he stood for genetic engineering to favor prosperity and the rights of the engineered,” Gardener explained.  “When Warlord Emily committed suicide, I supported Shann and the Warlord’s right to continued existence,  believing that her depression was from her life experiences, not from some inherant design flaw.  But, I’m starting to find out more and more that Shann Enterprises’ genetic engineering division ‘Cat’s Paw’ is indeed engineering into their creations a serotonin and norepinephrine deficiency, with the purpose of creating people who are prone to rash, thrill-seeking behavior.”
	“People who are also easily brainwashed,” Elodea added.
	“Thomas Shann has been involved in the stuff of conspiracy theories since the days of Blue Sentinel.”  Scott stopped to look at a poster of an old 20th century werewolf movie.  “My long-time friend Selena Hawthorne once described him before the Cozalien War as just the sort of person who would take over the world.  It is entirely possible that Warlords are in fact part of a plan to engineer an army of super-soldiers.  I need not go into how his predecessors sought to use lycanthropes for that purpose.  We know now about a handful, testing themselves out on global online broadcast in the Genetic Wars show.  It  would not surprise me if somewhere near Bagdhad there were a few thousand more growing up.”  He picked up a leather-bound encyclopedia volume, intended more as a decorative statement than as a first choice of reference, though it was fully up to date and part of a sizable set.  He flipped through it as he continued.  “Shann has been using me; he has used all of us.  The L.G.F.F. became another one of his pawns when I thought he favored the rights of the engineered.  However, the breeding of people to become soldiers is a violation of the most fundamental principles for which we have fought.”  He found in the reference an illustration of an ancient document, its opening preamble displaying in elegant historic script.
“We the people.…”

	Michelle drove up to a gate post, lowering her triangular car’s window and extending her hand up to a scanning device, which bleeped an acknowledgement of a small device implanted in one of her hand bones.  The gate before her opened up, allowing access to the private community inside.  As she pulled inside, she passed under the arched overhead sign identifying the place as both a Shann Enterprises genetic research facility and a private residence community for the genetically engineered.  Michelle preferred to live outside in the real world, but the rest of her family preferred the comforts of the private community.  What troubled her about this setting was not the fact that it required reading an ID to get in, but that it took one to get out as well.
	There was one perk to the community; as Michelle walked out of her car and towards the living complex, she was not met with the usual glances of people trying not to stare in spite of at the fact that she was covered with leopard-spotted fur.  More than sixty years ago, Scott Gardener came forward and announced the existance of werewolves, made possible by alien genetic engineering.  However, even in this day and age, at least a few people still tended to stop and look out of the corner of their eyes at those who were not quite human.
	A slanted cat eye peered through a fiberglass apartment door, viewing Michelle through a fisheyed distortion in the glass spyhole.  The door opened to reveal another young leopard-hybrid lady, her smile revealing pointed teeth as she reached out to hug her relative.   “Good to see you,” she stated, and then called out, “It’s Michelle!”  Another spotted cat anthropomorph, barely a teenager, walked into the front living room, zipping up his shirt as he greeted her.
	“You were great on Genetic Wars.  I saw you take on Gary.”
	Michelle rolled her eyes.  “Don’t remind me.”  She lost the match, but she was never interested in the fight or its outcome, as long as she could walk afterwards.  “I was only there because I had to get some information about him and the other Warlords.”   As the others continued to grin with admiration, she added, “It was the only way I could talk to him.”
	“You survived a round against Warlord Gary!” the young cat man answered.  “Come on!  Do you know how many people dream of doing that?”
	“Kyle,” Michelle sighed, “Genetic Wars is the last thing I want to be famous for.”  She walked into the apartment living room, looking around, inspecting the surroundings and taking in scents to see what had changed.  “It’s just one more thing that keeps us in a different social class than humans.”  The room was as clean and well-organized as ever.  Lamps were centered on each table with mathematical precision, and furniture placement reflected similar compulsiveness.  A nearby kitchen station was clean to the point of appearing unusued.
	“I love you very much,” the other cat lady answered, “but you’re turning political on us again.”
	“I’m sorry, Tiffany, but…”  Michelle paused, nudging a coaster on a glass table.  “No, I’m not sorry.  I’m not going to apologize for going out there and living among humans.  Aren’t you ever afraid that at some point they might decide not to let you out of these shelters once and awhile?”
	Michelle’s relative Tiffany nudged the coaster back into proper alignment with its matching counterpart at the other end of the table.  “Don’t you think that’s a little paranoid?  No one is trying to force you to stay here, and you have voting rights like everybody else.”
	Michelle nudged the coaster back off-center as she replied, “a few are implying that I’m being strange for not living here, and I’d feel better about my voting rights if there weren’t so many damn election scandals these days.  I’m not even sure I trust EVA to count votes objectively; not only can rival AIs hack into her, but she’s also got enough of a personality that they can bribe her.”
	Tiffany pushed the coaster back into proper alignment.  “Just because the program has intellegence doesn’t mean it can be bribed.”
	Michelle’s feline ears flickered as she grabbed her drink and the coaster underneath.  “And, if we’re genetically engineered, how come they couldn’t fix a simple thing like obsessive-compulsiveness?  Didn’t they find that gene back in the days when computers ran that Windows thing?”
	“So she’s short a little serotonin,” Kyle answered, reaching towards his companion and petting her neck.  “It gives her personality.  Making us more like humans should if anything reassure you that they want us to be equals.”
	“The point is,” Tiffany added, “we do need people like you to remind humans that we’re people, too.  But, we can’t all be political warriors.  Some of us have to serve other causes.”  As Kyle continued to pet her neck, she squinted her eyes and purred.
	Michelle thought for a moment.  She was tempted to add that gene replacement therapy advances had already passed experimental stages for helping humans with serotonin deficiencies and the resulting depression, anxiety, or obsessive disorders, while no such therapy appeared to be in the works to correct any of Shann Enterprises’ engineered progeny.  However, she decided not to press the case for now, but instead chose to allow herself the momentary pleasure of company with the closest thing she had to family.

	“Thomas Shann is bent on world control,” Scott Gardener stated before a small panel of senators, gathered in a conference room inside the American Capitol building.  “It should be painfully obvious.”  Elodea sat with him, the two having worked side-by-side throughout the L.G.F.F.’s years.
	“Shann’s ambition is beyond debate,” Senator McGibbins answered, “The question at hand is whether or not he intends to use this ambition like Chris Bartlett did; so far, he has delivered on his promises of peace through unification.”  He was a Republican from Florida, serving as chair of the committee created to draft a bill allowing the United States to join the Control Administration of Thomas, or C.A.T.
“Shann has stabilized the Middle East, and he has been a major contributor towards Earth’s recovery from the Cozalien War,” fellow Republican Senator Graves added.  She was an aggressive elderly conservative from the midwest, representing Missouri.  “We do also have to consider the argument of the common enemy; world unification could be the thing that makes the difference should the Cozaliens return.  He already has the support of China, one of the biggest industrial powers in the world today.  American union with C.A.T. could convince Japan to reconsider their stance and add to them the two largest technological powers.”
“And,” McGibbins said, “Thomas Shann has traditionally been one of the strongest supporters of your own cause—the rights of persons with therianthropy, and now the rights of persons who are genetically engineered rather than born human.”
“In the past, Shann has supported me,” Scott answered, nodding his head with concession.  “For that matter, sixty years or so ago he helped rescue me from a research lab that wanted to dissect me.  So, yes, Thomas Shann has his humanitarian side.”
“But…” Elodea countered, as Scott fipped through notes he had written to himself.  “The Japanese are a little uncomfortable with Shann’s Genetic Wars.  It’s too much like gladiator fights; they’re afraid of seeing people born and bred specifically for the thing—in essence, slavery.  The issue at hand is not what Shann has done for humanity, but what he intends to do with it next.”
“Now that he has the intellectual enhancements of the world’s most advanced supercomputer…”  Senator Clements answered.  An African American Democrat from Louisiana, he had a reputation for a moderate political stance, emphasizing balance.  “You fear that his motives may have changed?”
“Thomas Shann is the world’s most advanced supercomputer,” Scott clarified.  “We can only speculate on the motives of such a consciousness—God knows I’ve spent years trying to figure out the Cozaliens’ ‘Four One’ and it’s motives.  Put together a think tank; see what you come up with.  If Shann is truly humanitarian, he’ll understand absolutely your reservations about jumping into world unification.”
“You’re afraid of machines taking over the Earth,” Senator Graves jabbed at Scott.  “You’re old enough to remember the old action movies about that.”
“You would know more than me about that;” Scott replied, his eyes taking on their characteristic lupine glow under stress.  “You were here on Earth during the Cozalien invasion.  I was away on the Tau Ceti mission for most of it.  You got to see what a consciousness like Four-One could accomplish.  How can you be so forgetful?”  Scott glanced around, sensing the startled dismay of the others in the room.  “With all due respect,” he added, attempting to restore the level of respect and dignity of the formal proceedings.
“Please,” Senator Kodispoti interjected, “tell us about your concerns regarding Genetic Wars and Cat’s Paw.”  A Democrat from California, he took a more aggressive stance against Shann, even recently accusing the Republican party of conspiring with C.A.T. for power.  “I understand that to be the real reason for your misgivings.”
“Warlord Emily committed suicide because she was chemically depressed.  I know I argued against that stance a few years back, but now I openly admit I was wrong.”  Scott placed a small data block onto the table before him.  “I have the report from the Medical Examiner’s Office in Las Vegas, as well as their consulting specialist on xenogenetics and genetic engineering.  You will find several segments of her genome that contain very specific flaws limiting production of the neurotransmitter 5-hydroxytryptophan.  The same faulty genes were found in a sample taken from a blood samples of a ‘bootleg’ Warlord encountered last year on board the spacecraft Prometheus, supporting the premise that their inclusion was intentional and not simply the result of the normal variants in a single human source reference.  Commonly known as serotonin, the neurotransmitter is responsible for balancing emotions and when deficient leads to a number of psychiatric disorders, including in Emily’s case depression.  However, when combined with a norepinephrine deficiency, this has also been linked to thrill-seeking behavior.”  Scott stood up and began to pace back and forth, having purposefully cultivated his lupine mannerisms to underscore the fact of his lycanthropic identity.  “I need not go into detail about Warlord Gary’s reputation.  But I do have to ask the question, ‘why’?”  Scott leaned over Senator Graves.  “Why would Thomas Shann, the man or the superconsciousness, want to create a race of thrill-seekers and adrenalin junkies?  Add to that the fact that they are engineered to have superior strength, endurance, and regenerative capabilities that outperform my own lycanthropic enhancements.”  He allowed his facial features to shift as he gazed at the senator’s eyes.  “Here’s a hint—young, testosterone-driven thrill-seekers are easily brainwashed.”
“If you are implying that Shann is training a race of soldiers,” Senator Graves answered, “and conjecturing from there that that is somehow part of a larger scheme, do you have any proof of this?”
“Always the skeptics, wanting proof.…” Scott answered back, discarding his shirt and revealing his light gray fur underneath.  “More than sixty years ago I stood before the world and showed you that werewolves exist.  Then there was that business about the CZ-aliens, about how they were experimenting on humans throughout history, and about how they could come back en force.  I was on the Tau Ceti mission, so I only caught the tail end of the Cozalien War, but I trust even after more than a decade the images are still fresh in your mind of cities burning…of the moon-sized entity hovering in the sky, staring below with its four glowing eyes…and of all the people turned into animals, like Circe in the Odyssey.  Back in 2014, no one would trust me to take the Cozalien threat seriously.  Back before 2012, people didn’t even want to believe that I existed.”
Senator McGibbins was the first to respond.  “Thomas Shann is not the same as the Cozaliens.  So far, I’ve seen no evidence that he has anything other than good intentions for the human species.”
“It’s not the human species I’m worried about,” Gardener answered back.  “It’s the rest of us.  But, we’re in this together.”

“I spoke with the Senate committee,” Scott told the image of Michelle on a large display monitor, “but I think it would have more impact if you came to D.C.”  He sat in the relative comfort of a library office chamber, still in Washington.  On the other side of the monitor, the bright, multicolored lights of Las Vegas in the evening reduced Michelle’s animal hybrid form into nearly a silhouette, except for periodic flickers of glow in her eyes as cars passed by and light shows blazed.  Her image rolled about on Scott’s monitor, as she talked into her unsteady hand-held communicator computer.
“I don’t think I could come close to your impact,” Michelle answered back, as the mulitcolored Hyatt Regency’s casino flickered behind her.  “You’re the founder of the L.G.F.F., and I can’t get even my own family to stop living in a zoo.”
Scott answered back from his more formal surroundings, “That will only drive home our point—that Cat’s Paw is doing more than simply making people, but also indoctrinating them as they come out.  Have you seen the other Warlords?”
“Yes.”  Michelle stopped for a moment so she could focus her attention on traffic as she darted in front of several stopped luxury vehicles, an upscale sports car, and an older taxi van on her way to the new Excalibur hotel.  Once on pavement, she continued.  “there’s three who are nearing their teens.  Phil and Cassandra both want to be the next Gary on Genetic Wars.  Paul is feeling more rebellious—he wants to start his own show, and he wants to make ‘deathdancing’ an officially sanctioned martial art.  Somehow I don’t see ‘Warlord Paul’ as being in the same league as Master Ushibo or Bruce Lee.”
“Both stood for knowing how to prevent conflict,” Scott pondered.  “Any chance that developing deathdancing could expose Paul to more intellegent principles?”
“I doubt it; he’s too much like Gary.  Gary’s already done some homework; he just doesn’t get it.”  She glanced around the bustling, ornate hotel lobby and its medieval décor, stopping in front of a full-sized display of jousting knights.  She then poked at her computer, clawing with her thumbs just below Scott’s field of view.  “I can be at the airport in a few hours, and I’m showing the next flight to D.C. arriving tomorrow morning.  I trust the L.G.F.F. is paying this fare.  I do want to catch Gerald Wilson; he’s appearing tonight at the Hilton.”
“Email me the receipt, and when you see him, give Gerald my regards.”

The comedian Gerald Wilson, both an actor and a stand-up comic, had been a prominent member of the lycanthropic community for a number of years, having first appeared in the 2030s in a parody of old werewolf horror movies.  Now in his late 60s, he was still very active, sometimes showing up in smaller comedy clubs as well as the larger venues.  As a champion of lycanthrope advocacy during the years before and again after the Cozalien War, he had also become a good friend of Scott Gardener and Elodea Taylor.
This time, his venue was a fairly large auditorium housing several hundred people.  Michelle sat close to the front—close enough to pick up on his lupine scent underneath his fairly mundane but very dynamic human appearance.
“Are there any fellow L.G.F.F. members in the hall?  If so, raise your hands—or paws, or hooves…or whatnot.”
Michelle joined a number of others waiving their arms back and forth with enthusiasm.
“OK, now this goes out to the rest of you.”  He took a sip out of a cup of coffee he brought with him onstage, and then shifted his features slightly, sprouting pointed teeth and a small amount of facial fur.  “Anyone want to be eligible for Genetic Wars?  Just drink out of this one by mistake.”  As the crowd responded, Michelle hoped no one would point to her, bringing up the fact that she was not only eligible, but that she had actually appeared on the show.
“So, it’s no longer fashionable to be a werewolf.  In fact, I can say ‘werewolf’ again.  Back in the 30s, you had to say ‘lycanthrope,’ because werewolves were movie monsters.  But, today, we can say it.  It’s a fun word to say.  Werewolf, werewolf, werewolf…  Now, today, it’s really more hip to be genetically engineered.  About ten years ago, after the war, the in thing was to be engineered then, but by Cozaliens.  You could have your traumatic flashback episodes, you could be reunited with family members who thought you were dead, and most of all, you could play the Cozalien scratch off game—what am I today?  Let’s see—giraffe, elephant, dog, another giraffe, hey…three wolves!  I’m a lycanthrope!  Back then, the word ‘werewolf’ was still in the process of making a quiet comeback, as people were too worried about that one guy who got turned into a nine foot wolf-like thing with four arms and four eyes.  Whatever happened to that guy, anyway?  You don’t hear anything about him anymore.  He can’t be dead—remember that this guy can regrow whole limbs.  So, I guess he’s hiding out somewhere, keeping a low profile.
“Nowdays, you have to be genetically engineered by humans to be the controversy of the hour.”  Wilson’s eyes glanced across Michelle, appearantly noticing her expression—amused, but a little uneasy.  “When the Cozaliens did it,” Wilson continued, “humans could sit back and say, ‘hey, quit throwing ethical philosophical issues at us.  We’re simple Earthling peasants trying to figure out how to get to Tau Ceti and back!’  Now, however, humans can’t blame anyone else for this intellectual dilemma.  We—I say we, because according to biologists, I’m still human even when I’m out wandering around the forest on four paws—we humans are good at building things and blowing things up, but we’re not as smart as we let on.  When it comes to intellegence, we’re all talk.  We call ourselves Homo sapiens, meaning in Latin that we’re basically a bunch of wise guys, but when we’re given the ability to create new species, we use this tremendous responsibility of divine proportions to create Genetic Wars.”
As the audience began to laugh, Michelle stood up and applauded.  Wilson’s eyes blinked as he looked towards her, standing amidst the sea of laughing faces.  He blushed as he pointed towards her.  “Holy cow, it’s Michelle Stewart!  She went a round against Warlord Gary!  Worse yet, I just admitted I watch the show, too!”

“Flight 2780, first class, to Washington, Michelle Stewart,” the feline lady told the receptionist at the terminal.  She had already passed through numerous layers of security between baggage and the gate check-in.  Though technology had streamlined the process of arranging for flights and rearranging for delays, as well as having long since eliminated the tradition of the plane ticket, security protocols had become more complex throughout the twenty-first century.  After the recent terrorist attacks involving the Prometheus spacecraft, the airport tradition of profiling passengers fell upon Michelle, whose leopard spots stood out even against a pack of openly lycanthropic wolf hybrids among the human crowd in the background moving back and forth beyond gate B-21.  The lady at the terminal, her face decorated with a miniature headphone computer and translucent eyepiece, looked back at Michelle flatly.
“Row 4A; you were chosen for a random security search.  In about fifteen minutes, we’ll have to scan you when we start boarding.”
“I’m used to it,” she answered back with a sigh.
A few minutes later, a non-descript but familiar-looking man walked up to the same terminal counter, holding a cup of coffee as people seated nearby looked up at him.  “Flight 2780, first class to D.C.”
“What is your name, sir?”
As he set down his coffee and fumbled through his coat pocket for his hand-held computer, he muttered, “Now I know my career’s going down.”  He held up his hand-held and droned out, “Gerald Wilson,” adding, “That’s with one double-u.”  As others were already watching the scene with amusement, recognizing the celebrity, Michelle’s ears perked up.
“Sorry,” the lady at the terminal answered back, blushing.  “I thought it looked like you.  My kids will never believe this.”
“That’s OK,” Wilson replied.  “My kids stopped believing me after the Easter Bunny scandal before the war.”  He then sat down next to Michelle, directing his attention towards her.  “I hope that wisecrack about ‘Genetic Wars’ wasn’t too out-of-line.  I’m really good at that—open mouth, insert hindpaw.”
“It was exactly on the mark.  The only reason I was on that stupid show was to ask Gary a few questions.  But, now I’m an action figure.”
His ears twitched slightly as he inspected her.  “Something else is on your mind.”  His lupine perceptions gave him remarkable intuition when reading people.
“It’s my family—I guess they’re my family; they’re genetically the closest thing.  They want to continue living at the research complex.  That’s another step in the wrong direction.  We non-humans are off to a bad start, and I can’t seem to convince anyone to turn things around.”
“A wise monk once told me that if you can’t change the situation, you have to change how you respond to it.  After I smacked the living daylights out of him and bit him a few times, about a week later he came down with lycanthropy.  I wonder what he’s learned, because I think we both could use his advice right about now.”
“From Vegas to Washington,” Michelle answered, allowing her own animal intuition to inspect Wilson.  For the first time, she began considering Gerald Wilson the person, rather than the famous icon.  “Not for a show, but for something else?”
“A bit of both.  When I was a kid, I got to meet Scott Gardener; he came to visit me in the hospital after he learned that I had acquired lycanthropy when another kid bit me in a playground fight.  At the time, they were trying to use me as a reason to put werewolf kids in their own separate school, supposedly to keep the other kids safe from similar incidents, but Gardener did an excellent job explaining to me where this could go and how important for my own future it was for me to take charge of the spotlight and speak out actively, rather than allowing myself as a child to be used as a pawn in adult political games.  So, I took charge of my own destiny and on national TV thanked the kid who bit me.  It didn’t stop the push to segregate or treat us like lepars, but when I became a thorn in their side rather than a poster child, it undermined their clout.  That was when I realized that I had something that could make a difference.
“Now, Scott Gardener is in Washington, with the future once again up for grabs.  I’m going over there to show some support for the one who helped me take charge of my own destiny.”  He stopped for a moment to finish his coffee.  “It sounds like we’re both in the same league.”
“Scott Gardener asked me to say ‘hello’,” Michelle answered.
“I see,” Wilson nodded, glancing around for a place to discard his empty cup.  “The old wolf must be calling you in for a favor, too.”

“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” Michelle began, “that all men are created equal.”  She addressed the Senate committee, glancing the speech she had written on a tablet display.  She inspected the podium, which had adjusted itself automatically to her height, and then set the screen onto it.  “History has taught us to include men of all races, and then women, and that this must include enabling the physically impaired.  The twenty-first century taught us that this applies to people regardless of sexual orientation, religion, or therianthropy or other genetic enhancements.  Is there any reason it should not apply to those of us who, while not human ourselves, have the same feelings, emotions, hopes, and ambitions as our human creators?  Is there any reason to suggest that this is not in keeping with the heart of this declaration as the Founding Fathers wrote it three hundred years ago?
“Until recently, I thought Thomas Shann stood for these principles.  His business venture of Shann Enterprises gave me life, and my kind was born out of the ashes of the science before the Cozalien War.  However, his ulterior motives for my kind can now be brought into question.  Through financial and emotional incentives, he has convinced most of my sibling creations to remain close to his private circles, isolated from the world outside.  But, he has done more than this.  Thomas Shann has deliberately engineered into our kind significant emotional deficiencies to weaken us and to interfere with our self-motivation, attempting to undermine our free will.  He has compromised our dignity by using us as objects to display on the Internet.  By promoting us through staged arena fighting, we are reduced in social status from citizen to gladiator.
“And now, he comes to you and asks to be Caesar.  He asks that you would give to him, this same person who pits his own children against each other for the sake of entertainment, the supreme executive control of your government, your country.
“The United States of America has fought long and hard these last three hundred years.  It fought for independence from oppresion, fought against itself to come to terms with the issues of slavery and statehood identity, fought in two world wars, resisted the dictatorships that called themselves Communism, battled against terrorists and secret adversaries hiding within, and it emerged victorious against overwhelming odds, against a force of immeasurable power from across the gulf of space.  This legacy is not something you should just hand over.  Certainly not to Thomas Shann.  You represent vigilance against oppression, whereas Shann is that oppression.  The United States must not surrender without a fight!”
A brief applause answered her, both from the committee itself and several others in attendance, including Scott Gardener and his lifelong mate Elodea Taylor.
Then, a thin, gaunt man entered the room.  He wore a black suit, an older, more formal style with a long tie.  He gestured as two other similar figures pushed in a tall, narrow box covered with black curtains bearing the teardrop and crescent emblem of Shann’s C.A.T.  Then, the first pulled the cover to reveal a high and narrow metallic object which became transparent.  A figure materialized inside, of a young man in his early forties, with the characteristic light frame and slim facial features of Thomas Shann.
“Greetings, from my home within the Cybernetically Reassessed Intellegence Network; I am Thomas Shann.  As you know, through misfortunate circumstances, I cannot appear to you in person, so my associates have created this projection device so that I may appear to you in some form resembling what was once my own.”  He spoke quietly with a disturbing absence of strong emotion, as if to reassure frightened children.
“For the longest of time, Scott Gardener and I have been the closest of friends, working together to bring about necessary technological and social breakthroughs to further human and non-human evolution, to help make us ready to deal with the greatest challenges that have ever faced humanity, both from beyond the Solar System and from within our own society.  Unfortunately, as of late, we have developed our differences.
“My interests are based on the improvement of humanity and of our genetically engineered progeny alike.  The participants of the Genetic Wars do so of their own free will, with clearly demarcated rules of conduct.  For generations, no one has criticized Wimbleton for pitting tennis players against each other.  Genetic Wars may be aggressive, but so is boxing and rugby.  Here in the United States, for a century we have watched the Superbowl, and yet we do not fault the NFL as working against the interests of their star players.  Genetic Wars is an entry point into society for a new generation of people.  It is a chance for the engineered to be heroic figures.  The majority of the engineered, however, choose not to participate, but instead to pursue other venues, and I do not stop them.  Instead, I give them the financial and emotional support that this new minority needs to kindle its initial growth, before it can become a fully developed culture within mainstream society.
“As for the alleged deficiencies I have engineered into my progeny, that is a matter of opinion and philosophy, not a statement of fact.  Our personalities are defined by the balance of many factors, and the same things that makes one weaker makes another stronger.  The excess of one factor may make one aggressive and destructive, or it may make one assertive and confident.  A deficiency in another factor may cause in some depression or wrecklessness, but in others it may cause meticulous attention to detail or courage in the face of danger.  One could find fault in my creations regardless of how I chose to balance their biochemistry.  What matters is how the individual chooses to use what one has.
“The allegation that I am working against the interests of humanity is painful, particularly when it comes from my longtime friend Scott Gardener, and further still from one of my own creations.  However, I am neither angered nor saddened, but in fact reassured.  That Michelle should ask questions and assert her own beliefs, even though they should be directed against me, is a sign that the new generation of genetically engineered beings is maturing.
“I openly invite any further inquiry into my methods or technology behind my genetic engineering projects.  You will find the work of my many partners and friends at Shann Enterprises and Cat’s Paw not only fully compliant with the U.N. humanoid genetic engineering bylaws, but also compliant with the strictest internal standards of ethics.  Do not let my work on expanding the people of Earth beyond the constraints of a single species be so unsettling for you.  My vision is of a world at peace, where all of us can channel our energies into constructive endevours, and where we can all feel secure once again in the safety of our world.  To achieve this, I again ask that you join with me.”

“In spite of a sizable rally lead by none other than lycanthropic comedian Gerald Wilson, the Senate passed by majority vote a bill pushing for a constitutional amendment to allow the United States to join the growing Control Administration of Thomas.”  As a journalist spoke on one of numerous monitors throughout the airport, Michelle hung her head as she made her way to terminal D20.  Flight 2746 would take her back to Vegas, though she entertained the thought of instead flying across the ocean to Japan, where a people could be found who were not so easily swayed by Shann’s superhuman debate skills.
She took a seat near the gate, and then took a deep sigh, allowing the noise of numerous monitors and countless passengers passing back and forth drown out her sorrows.
“I’m officially depressed,” Wilson’s voice spoke out from the background murmuring.  “I saw you on C-Span 4, and you were good.  Thomas Shann’s enhanced consciousness probably had to take a full millisecond to write that rebuttal.”
Michelle looked up, seeing Wilson with his ubiquitous coffee cup.  She lifted her head up enough to look towards him.  “How can I get my people out of the cages they place themselves in?”
“That wise monk told me he’d stick with his former testamony.  Damn him.”
“I’m going to have to let them go, aren’t I?  It’s up to me to live in the real world.”
“Real world,” Wilson answered back, pondering the phrase.  “Such a funny expression.  When you get out of school, you graduate into the ‘real world.’  I went to college instead, where again they kept talking about this ‘real world’ as though it were some mystical place.  But, I became an actor, and you know we’re not known for living in the real world.  It’s a funny thing; I hear so much about this ‘real world,’ but I don’t really think it’s a real place—it’s name is terribly misleading.”

“You are fighting a battle you cannot win,” Shann’s image told Gardener as he looked into a tablet computer monitor.  Gardener sat beside Elodea in the White House news briefing room, awaiting the President’s appearance.  Shann’s image appeared to be in a comfortable art deco lounge with elegant geometric furnishings, but Scott knew that the place he was in did not physically exist at all.  None-the-less, Shann had become more formidable in ghost form than ever as a living entity.  “If you fight us, we will devour you; you must see it by now.”
Scott looked back.  “Never.”  Then, the room went quiet as an aide approached the front podium bearing the circular eagle Seal of the President of the United States.  “Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.”
She entered quietly, taking a moment to nudge her light brown hair aside as several news cameras pointed towards her.  Then, she addressed her audience.  “My fellow Americans, Congress has presented me with a bill authorizing me to bring the United States into Thomas Shann’s world government.  After reviewing it, and after much considerations, I have decided to veto this bill.”  An applause greeted her, interspersed with mumbling and whispering.  Scott allowed his monitor and with it Shann’s viewpoint drop to the floor as he stood up to applause.
“A world of peace does not need for us to surrender,” she continued.  “If Thomas Shann’s true goal is world peace, and if his intellect is as sophisticated as the world’s most advanced cybernetic consciousness network, then he is perfectly capable of accomodating us as we are and for who we are.”  She paused again as a rattling series of clapping showed approval.  “Instead of pursuing this bill, I ask Congress to consider passing legislation to assure the rights of people who are not human, but who have human hopes and dreams.  I furthermore ask…”  She had to stop, as the din of applause momentarily overtook her.  Then, she continued.  “I furthermore ask the nations who have not yet joined C.A.T. to think again when Thomas Shann approaches each of you.  I have been given intellegence that suggests that C.A.T. is planning for war—not against an external alien force, but against us, the nations of Earth.”