It is 300 years from now: the US still exists, but it is a very different place. The most striking difference is that the polarisation of society which began in the 1980s has now reached its logical conclusion, with the whole population belonging to one of two classes. The people of one class are referred to as Naturals. Those in the second class are called the Gene-enriched or simply the GenRich.
These new social classes cut across what used to be traditional racial and ethnic lines. In fact, so much racial mixing has occurred during the last 300 years that clear ethnic divisions no longer exist.
But another difference has emerged, between those who are genetically enhanced and those who are not. The GenRich-who account for 10 per cent of the US population-all carry synthetic genes, created in the laboratory, which did not exist within the human species until 21st century reproductive geneticists began to put them there. The GenRich is a modern-day hereditary class of genetic aristocrats.
Some of the synthetic genes carried by members of the GenRich class were already carried by their parents. These genes were transmitted to today's GenRich in the old-fashioned way: from parent to child through sperm or egg. But other synthetic genes are new to the present generation. These were placed in GenRich embryos through the application of genetic engineering techniques, shortly after conception.
There are many types of GenRich families. Some GenRich athletes, for example, can trace their descent back to professional sports players from the 21st century. But embryo selection techniques have been used to ensure that, say, a GenRich American football running back has received-in addition to the natural genes which made his unenhanced ancestor excel-generations of genetic enhancements; so the modern-day GenRich running back can perform in a way inconceivable in a Natural. Of course, all professional sportsmen are special GenRich subtypes. After 300 years of selection and enhancement, these individuals all have athletic skills which are "nonhuman" in the traditional sense.
Another GenRich type is the GenRich scientist, who has evolved by a process similar to the GenRich athlete. The foundation ancestor for the modern GenRich scientist was a bright 21st century scientist whose children were the first to be selected and enhanced in order to increase their chances of becoming even brighter scientists, who could produce even more brilliant children. There are many other types: GenRich businessmen, GenRich musicians, GenRich artists, even GenRich intellectual generalists, who all evolved in the same way.
Not all present-day GenRich individuals can trace their foundation ancestors back to the 21st century when genetic enhancement was first perfected. During the 22nd and even the 23rd centuries, some Natural families found the financial wherewithal to put their children into the GenRich class. But with time, the genetic distance between Naturals and the GenRich has increased; now there is little movement from the Natural to the GenRich class.
All aspects of the economy, the media, the entertainment and the knowledge industry are controlled by members of the GenRich class. GenRich parents send their children to private schools rich in resources to help them take advantage of their enhanced genetic potential. Naturals work as low-paid service providers or as labourers; and their children go to state schools. But funds for public education have declined steadily since the beginning of the 21st century, and now Natural children are only taught the basic skills they need for the kinds of tasks they will encounter in the jobs available to members of their class.
There is still some intermarriage, as well as sexual intermingling, between a few GenRich individuals and Naturals. But GenRich parents put intense pressure on their children not to dilute their expensive genetic endowment in this way.
With each generation of enhancement, the genetic distance separating the GenRich and Naturals is growing larger. But a startling consequence of the expanding genetic distance has just come to light. In a survey of the few interclass GenRich-Natural couples who could be identified, sociologists have discovered a 90 per cent level of infertility. Reproductive geneticists have come to the conclusion that the infertility is caused primarily by an incompatibility between the genetic makeup of each member.
Evolutionary biologists have long observed instances in which otherwise fertile individuals from two separate populations prove infertile when mated to each other. It seems that the process of species separation between the GenRich and Naturals has already begun. On current trends, by the end of the third millennium the GenRich class and the Natural class will become the GenRich humans and the Natural humans-entirely separate species with no ability to cross-breed, and with as much romantic interest in each other as a present-day human would have for a chimpanzee.
