by The L
It began when American citizens began presenting compelling arguments why prohibition of genetic enhancement probably would not succeed. Still, they knew that genetic enhancement is a technology that simply had to be stopped. In their minds allowing genetic enhancement created chilling implications for discrimination and unequal opportunity.
They imagined scenarios where well-known financial institutions and accounting firms would advertise that, as a qualification for employment, one would have to present a genetically engineered pedigree—probably from a view of the interests of the firm. As a result of this, said practice would tend to further the interests of the corporation. Thus a sizable portion of the United States’ populace feared that, if genetic enhancement became widespread, firms would be demanding genetic archetypes as a qualification of employment.
Unfortunately, as said technology would surely be quite expensive, only the wealthy would be able to afford the services of a geneticist to enhance the abilities of their offspring. It could be assumed that, around thirty years after genetic enhancement became widely available, society at large would be on its way to a rigid aristocracy and even greater gaps between the rich and the poor—the haves and the have-nots. So they arrived at the conclusion that, simply for the sake of social stability, genetic enhancement is a technology that had to be outlawed.
But despite the fact that a majority of Americans citizens felt this way, American scientists (as well as military intelligence) had a different opinion. And this opinion stemmed from the idea that even though a good number Americans—in word—decried genetic enhancement, they secretly longed for it. Also these same Americans allegedly, in deepest recesses of their hearts, didn’t care one single iota for the have-nots.
This resolute belief that a majority of United States citizens covertly supported their efforts bolstered the scientists’ resolve to go through with their experiments. They didn’t see any convincing reason why human genetic enhancement should be banned. The bulk of them didn’t truly expect that they would end up creating a species of so called “super-sapiens”, and even if they did, so what? It was supposed that when man stopped adapting to his environment, he stopped evolving. They wondered if, perhaps, genetic enhancement would be the means by which human beings caught up to where nature intended them to be. These scientists were not, for the most part, Nazis ...but they did feel an obligation to use their knowledge to make the human species better. They figured that advancements could make some people more suitable for life in space, on other planets, or under the earth's oceans. They, like everyone else, couldn’t deny the fact that human beings were beginning to overrun the available land space on planet Earth.
So these scientists, with absolutely no regard for the wishes of the American masses, proceeded to experiment with genetic enhancement without the knowledge of the general populace. And they began by using the residents of the small town of Yamhill, Oregon as guinea pigs.
The results were that, In September of following year, an almost unearthly sequence of events began to occur in this moderately-sized, remote American town. Viscous blobs of biological material began to rain down over an area of over twenty square miles during a storm. It would happen six times in the previous year, and continue periodically thereafter. The latest was during the third week of June three years after the first incident.
This gelatinous plague came from the skies to wreck havoc on what some might consider to be an insignificantly small portion of the earth. The entire scenario read like a bad science fiction screenplay, but for the residents of Yamhill there was nothing entertaining about this scourge that had befallen them. Six times it rained down from above, leaving many of the local residents ailing, and indisposed.
Normally, in this particular town, clouds fill the skies daily and bring rain more than two-hundred and fifty days a year. So, when it began pouring on a banal morning in August, no one was particularly concerned. That is until they realized that the substance pouring down from the sky above wasn’t rain at all. It was raining tiny blobs of viscous, translucent goop. It came down in torrents, sheathing twenty square miles, and brought with it something that can only be described as a plague.
Many of the locals were afflicted with flu-like symptoms. This understandably led more than a few of them to consider the possibility that the entire ordeal was somehow connected to germ warfare—that their town may have been used as a testing ground for some new biological weapon.
A biological weapon that had the unfortunate effect of making young men want to lick the soles and suck the toes of other men. It was an overpowering sensation—a sensation so powerful that they found themselves willing to get at the feet and toes of their peers by any means necessary. It was a horrific time for these young men. It was extremely difficult for them to walk down their small town’s streets while staggering from side to side like hungry zombies. Instead of having an insatiable desire to consume brains like zombies, they had an insatiable desire to lick soles and suck toes. They encountered other young men and wanted to do this, but their pride and willpower wouldn’t allow most of them to indulge their intense wants. Instead, their waking hours were spent forcing their mind to focus on important tasks like working and eating. They couldn’t allow themselves to be distracted by little things like, oh, ripping the socks off their own brothers’ feet and sucking on the ten sweaty digits of a sibling, because once their concentration was focused in that direction they knew there would be no turning back.
Their suspicions were heightened when the substance inexplicably vanished into nothingness before it could be properly tested in a laboratory. But eventually, when the desire to suck male toes and lick male soles subsided in the men of the town, the whole matter was all but forgotten. That is until the children born of the people inflicted by the plague began to procreate some time later.
Generation after generation fetuses began to awaken in the wombs of their mothers—their consciousness’ aroused by the torrent of genetic enhancing chemicals coursing through their matriarch’s veins. Still suffering from the plague inflicted by the mysterious virulent material that had rained upon them (or one of their parents, or one of their parent’s parents) the women’s blood-cursed affliction reached their unborn children through their shared bloodstream and somehow altered them.
By the time the children were delivered into the world, their mothers’ bodies were lifeless. And born with inexplicable and a violent inclination to knock the men they were attracted to unconscious—then savagely strip these men of their shoes and socks and have their way with their feet. “Having their way” often meant sucking on their victim’s toes ravenously… even biting them till the senseless fellows moaned through their unconsciousness. These fetish minded offspring were branded with the title of Fighting Foot Fags, or “3-Fs”. And almost immediately these young people—after what they truly were and how they had come to be was made known to the general public—were marked as feared and hated outcasts. Parasitic people… people for whom you always had to keep your shoes on when they were around.