Data delivery
The VIP delivery room at New York-Presbyterian Hospital is filled with a Tiffany-blue disinfectant light, Leah's Chanel couture gown is drenched in cold sweat, and diamond-encrusted fingernails scrape bloody binary code on the handrails of the delivery bed. As the fourth painless delivery agent is injected into the spine, the fetal heart monitor suddenly plays classic Wolf of Wall Street dialogue, "Greed is the best oxytocin."
"Fetal heart rate synchronized with bitcoin fluctuation curve." The AI midwife's robotic arm clamps down on Leah's thighs, and metal fingers scan a quantum key at the opening of her cervix. The holographic projection of the fetus suddenly raises its middle finger, and its underdeveloped vocal cords vibrate at 18 Hertz infrasound - the resonant frequency of New York's power grid.
When the lights in the delivery room go out and the emergency power kicks in, Leah sees a terrifying image in the reflection of the surgical lights: thirty iris-masked doctors replacing her veins with a fiber-optic umbilical cord. As she tries to scream, the nanobots under her tongue release tranquilizers that translate her struggles into encrypted signals sent to the Nasdaq mainframe.
"Contractions are reaching a frequency of three per minute, corresponding to peak trading volume in Graham Group stock." The attending doctor ripped off his mask to reveal the cloned face of Lucas. His scalpel was projecting a holographic keyboard over Leah's abdomen, and he was writing the newborn's first life code -- "CEO at birth, age of death set at seven."
As the Wall Street opening bell pierces the bulletproof glass, the baby's cry shakes the city like a nuclear detonation. Twenty-three financial screens in Manhattan go blue at the same time, and in a moment of blood-colored iris bloom, a photo of a newborn baby covered in data cables covers the Dow Jones. The Bloomberg terminal automatically pushes the headline, "Graham Group's 47th CEO Is Born - 0-Year-Old Genius Arrives With Blockchain Gene!"
Leah's amniotic fluid suddenly conducts electricity, and the birthing bed transforms into an electrocution chair to pin her in place. The newborn is carried by a cloned nurse to be baptized, and instead of rose petals floating in a pool of holy water, it's a special memory chip made by the Emma Foundation. As the priest recites "In the name of the Father," all the Wall Street traders' cell phones force the video of the fire five years ago -- the image of Leah pouring gasoline is being parsed in slow motion for gene-editing instructions.
"Mother-baby separation complete." The AI midwife's chest pops open into a dark compartment and removes the uterine chip soaked in liquid nitrogen. Leah could make out the chip texture in excruciating pain -- it was the very topography of the secret key Lucas had hidden in the gene bank. Even more horrifying, the C-section incision is stitching itself shut, and nanobots woven into the sheep's intestines form a glowing tattoo: "Winner of the Best Incubator Award: Leah Winters."
Newborn babies suddenly open their eyes in incubators, their undeveloped retinas projecting holographic financial reports. The Graham Group's black books for the past twenty years flow through the walls of the maternity ward, each illegal gain corresponding to Leah's maternity data from her pregnancy. As the FBI stormed the delivery room, the baby's cries suddenly shifted to high-frequency ultrasound, shattering all law enforcement recorders.
"Thank you for sacrificing your womb to human evolution." Emma's voice came from the central air conditioning vents. Leah's breast milk test report refreshed at that moment, detecting military-grade nanobots in the fat particles -- killing machines that were being assembled into quantum computers in the baby's veins, powered by what turned out to be the frequency of her shattered heartbeat.
That night, a giant billboard in Times Square broadcasts live the inauguration of the baby's CEO. The clone, attached to thirty fiber-optic umbilical cords, is delivering a speech with genetically edited vocal cords, "I pledge to transform the Graham Group into Life Removal Incorporated." His diaper chip suddenly overflows with a toxic mist that melts the board members' eyeballs into liquid bitcoins.
Leah is stroking her flabby belly in the confinement ward, and the fluorescent blue liquid oozing from her stretch marks is spelling out the countdown to death. As she tries to slit her wrists with her toothbrush, her smart bracelet suddenly discharges, "Your life is insured for nine hundred and ninety-nine billion dollars, beneficiary: the Veronica's Revenge Fund."
Outside the window, the holographic colossus of a newborn baby is annexing the Statue of Liberty torch. The new crown, a bundle of a million blockchain packets, has Leah's womb GPS coordinates etched into its base. And the real Emma, at this very moment, is breeding the 48th CEO from Leah's eggs, with a label outside the incubation chamber that reads, "Mass-produced Original Sin with a shelf life of seven years."