 thought I signed on to this outfit to be a scientist, not a parent," I grumbled.
Even the off duty members of the team turned up for Keyop's 'birthday.' We were all on tenterhooks again as the tiny boy was removed from the support mechanisms of the artificial gestation chamber and asked to survive on his own. He coughed, spluttered and cried as he took his first breaths and the medical team cleaned him of the pale vernix that covered his body. His tremors worried me at first, but Bob was grinning.
"Think back to med school, Dave," he teased.
"That was too long ago," I grumbled, but I tried to relax. Bob had been present at the births of all the Halloran brood and I figured that if he considered this screaming, wrinkled, fist shaking little neonate normal, I could do likewise.
The midwife wrapped the baby in a soft blanket and handed him to Bob. "He's beautiful," Bob said.
"I'll take your word for it," I said dubiously.
"Want to hold him?" Bob offered, all avuncular generosity.
"Um..." I took a step backward, much to the amusement of the team, who laughed at my discomfiture. "No," I decided. "I'll leave that to the experts."
Keyop was sitting up in bed, reading a book about timber wolves. Princess was nowhere to be seen.
"How are you doing?" I asked by way of greeting.
He started to speak, faltered, and said, "Oh... Kay," without any superfluous syllables. He smiled ruefully. "I seem... to have swapped... one sp-speech impediment... for another."
I sat down in the chair by the bed. It was warm. "Princess around?"
"She went... f-for a cup of... hot chocolate. "Keyop picked up a bookmark from the bedside table, stuck it in the book and closed the cover. "Doctor Bob thinks my... new stutter c-could be... hab... itual rather than... ff-physiological."
"So it's going to be braces and speech therapy," I said. "There are worse things, you know."
"Yeah." He shrugged. "I'm going to... m-miss... g-gum."
"You're more coherent already," I said. "We'll have you reciting poetry in no time."
He chuckled. "There...was... a y-young man... from Nantucket..."
"I don't think so," I warned.
Princess walked in, carrying a styrofoam cup. "Hi, Chief."
I got out of the chair and let her sit down. "Our patient seems to be doing well."
"Yeah." Princess put her cup on the bedside table. "He's already making up a list of polysyllabic rude names to call Zoltar."
"Excellent attitude to have," I decided. "Just remember," I added, "when you make up my list, 'tyrannical' is spelled with a 'y' and two 'n's."
Keyop blushed beet red, and I knew I'd sprung him.
I left him wondering just how much I knew, which is always a good way to leave people in this job.
The genetic project continued to exist in name only after Keyop's birth. The boy was subject to intense study and scrutiny as he grew, and joined the other children when he turned two.
Security Chief Conway was diagnosed with an aggressive, inoperable brain tumour when Keyop was nine. In typical Conway style, he told no-one of his condition, saying instead that he needed to take a holiday. He adjourned to Camp Parker for six weeks with his extended family. The day before he was due to return to work, he sent everyone away, explaining that he had a sudden, urgent teleconference to attend to. He kissed his wife goodbye, farewelled his children and grandchildren, then sat on the shores of the artificial lake that bears his name, and shot himself.
When I heard the news and read the suicide letter he left, my reaction was to think, with no small amount of bitterness, that the vicious old puppet master had managed to stay in control right up to the moment he pulled the trigger. Even from his refrigerated drawer in the morgue, he was pulling my strings and compelling me to dance to his tune. In addition to the letter, he left a document recommending that the President appoint me Chief of Galaxy Security.
One of my first acts on assuming the leadership of G-Sec was to shut the genetic programme down once and for all. We needed to know a lot more before we made another attempt at building designer humans, and we had a team of five successful cerebonic recipients, who were already proving to be a handful.
I sealed the files and forbade anyone associated with the project to ever discuss the details with anyone, especially Keyop. I've told him as much as I think he needs to know: that he was created in a laboratory especially for G-Force, that he is unique, and that he is valued. I've never mentioned the hundreds of experimental zygotes that were destroyed or the five other babies who died before they could be born. He should never have to carry the burden of such knowledge.
As to what happens when Keyop reaches adulthood and wants children of his own, I can't say. Will his modified genes prove to be dominant or recessive? Will they be lethal, sublethal or simply deleterious? Should we even consider allowing his genetic material to join the human gene pool? Should we render him
sterile while we still can, or is his genome so modified that his germ cells will be non-viable by default?
For all his foresight and all his brilliance, Walter Conway wasn't good at working out the fine details. He made long term plans that left a lot of loose ends for other people to tie up. Undeniably,
his scheme is working and we continue to hold off the forces of Spectra as they try, time and again, to conquer our world and take it for their own. All the same, the cost to individuals has been high, and the five youngsters who make up our last and best line of defence will probably keep paying that price for the rest of their lives.
And the vast majority of the people who are alive and free because of those five can never know just how much we all owe them.
.With USF rate-of-return reform continuing to bring widespread rule changes and further revisions to broadband funding, participating in NECA's pools and tariffs is more important than ever.
Participating in the NECA pool shares the risks of inaccurate forecasting among other pool members, minimizing the effects on any individual pool member. Pooling also helps members realize the authorized rate of return on interstate investment on a timely basis, stabilizes cash flow, and minimizes the risks of unforeseen events such as natural disasters or loss of large customers. We also facilitate the preparation of mandatory data collections and file that data on behalf of our pool members, so they avoid considerable time and expense, as well as the risk of penalties or forfeiture of funds for missed or inaccurate filings.
We continue to seek innovative tariff solutions to address the changing marketplace. In addition to our rate banding process, which gives members the ability to charge rates closer to their actual costs and demand, our rate band buy down option gives members even more flexibility by allowing them to charge rates using a lower rate band than the one initially assigned by NECA. This allows members to reduce rates while still enjoying all the benefits of participating in NECA’s tariff.
A new benefit this year is our rate band flexibility option. It will allow many TS pool participants to adjust their proposed special access rate bands to a lower rate band in one or two service categories and a higher rate band in the remaining services (generating an equal revenue amount in aggregate).
A new ETS E-rate option offering to help serve schools, libraries and educational consortium with lower ETS rates.
Higher ETS speeds at 100 Gbps and 200 Gbps to provide faster services due to the demands of streaming media.
A 2019 ETS Fixed Rate Option.
Potential tariffing of an ETS Low Bit Rate Virtual Circuit Channel to be used over a consumer broadband line.
Introduced a new Ethernet Transport Service Fixed Rate Option, which provides stabilized monthly rates for all ETS customers and retention of the same rate level when bidding multi-year contracts.
Simplified the ETS real time and non-real time class of service/quality of service rate structure to apply a single per-Mbps rate across all speed options rather than the 16 rates we previously had for both intra and inter-switch Ethernet Virtual Connections.
Modified the one-way ETS Multi-Media Virtual Circuit Channel total transmission capacity for an Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line to no greater than 1 Gbps, providing consistency between the one-way and two-way ETS MM-VCCs.
Removed the requirement specifying two-way ETS MM-VCCs are only available for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line/Symmetric Digital Subscriber Line services with capacities of 10 Mbps or greater, allowing higher speeds to be provided on copper facilities.
Introduced a 500 Mbps ordering increment to the ETS bandwidth add-on optional feature on speeds of 1 Gbps, 2.5 Gbps and 5 Gbps, which allows a customer to go from 5 Gbps to 6 Gbps without having to purchase the next available tariffed speed of 10 Gbps.
Added seven new ETS speeds - 200 Mbps