Children of Eden Read Online Free Page B

me.
    When I scramble out, covered in a light dusting of plaster, Mom is waiting for me in the living room. She’s alone.
    I have so many questions, about the first Center visitor, about the chancellor, that I don’t know where to start. But first, most important, is Ash. “He was having an attack. Is he okay?” My jaw is clenched tightly as I wait for the answer. It takes a long time coming. At first that makes me think it is going to be terrible news.
    â€œI just checked on him, and he’s resting comfortably,” she says. I sigh with relief. Somehow, the rest doesn’t seem to matter as much now. That feeling lasts for all of thirty seconds.
    Mom looks at me in silence for a long moment.
    â€œWhat’s going to happen?” I finally blurt out. It is an all-encompassing question.
    Mom’s answer shakes me to my core. It’s like all of my dreams and nightmares are coming true at once.
    â€œThey’ve made lenses with a new identity, Rowan.” I wait for her to smile. She doesn’t, and I tense. Mom pauses again, then says gently, “And they’ve found a new family for you. You leave in one week.”
    My legs give out and I sink to the floor, my back pressed against the very wall that hid me just moments before.

“NO,” I SAY weakly. I’ve waited for the freedom to move all my life, and now . . . “No!” I cry again, smashing the back of my fist against the wall. Sorrow and anger are building inside me, fighting for control. I decide to let anger win for once.
    â€œI won’t do it!” I shout. “You can’t make me leave this family. My family!” I jump to my feet and don’t know whether to hug my mom or punch the wall or run for Ash or collapse again.
    It was always a possibility. I’ve known that for years. But I always believed there would be another way.
    I always believed my parents wouldn’t let me leave them. Ever.
    But there are only two fates for a second child. A life hidden away . . . or a life in a new identity.
    Well, there is one more, the usual one. Termination after conception—or after birth. However long after birth the child is discovered.
    When the Earth died just a little more than two hundred years ago, humanity was doomed along with every other higher animal on the planet. Everything bigger than a paramecium became extinct—and life probably wasn’t all that goodfor the paramecia, either. Of course, we humans were the only ones who had it coming. It was our fault.
    We were the only animals with brains clever enough and fingers agile enough to create nuclear power, to frack the Earth and poison the sea and spew out chemicals that would destroy the atmosphere. We, intelligent humans that we are, fiddled with the DNA of our crops to make a better soybean that could survive anything and feed the world—until that soybean proved so hardy and aggressive it took over the rain forests. We raised living things for food, forcing them to live as prisoners, walking in their own feces. So we dosed them with antibiotics—dosed our children, too—and then we were surprised when bacteria mutated into superbugs.
    We killed the world and ourselves at the same time. The planet began to die. The Earth’s temperature jumped ten degrees in a decade when greenhouse gases trapped the sun’s heat, turning our planet into an oven. A team of scientists had a bright idea to inject a revolutionary new product into the atmosphere to fix it.
    Can you guess how that went?
    The Earth cooled, all right. But when the sun’s radiation reacted with the new man-made atmosphere, it created a cascade reaction that killed nearly every plant and animal on the planet.
    Except a few of us. Remember our big clever brains and agile hands? The best thing humans ever did with those assets was to create something smarter—and kinder—than us. When it became obvious that the Earth was