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slaps. When she came back, the whistle was in her hand.
    She grabbed me and took me into her workroom, then locked the door behind her.
    Frederick pounded on the workroom door. “What the hell are you doing?” he said.
    “Stay back,” maman called. “If you try to break down that door, I’ll destroy the rest of the specimens. Then you’ll never get your second chance.” Maman held me down with pressure against my back.
    “You don’t know how many people I saw out there,” he said. “There were hundreds of them, already organized into bands, tribes, and families. We’re going to make it through this catastrophe, you know.”
    Then I felt the worst pain I’d ever had in my life. All my legs tried to move at once, but they moved in different directions. I craned around, trying to look up, and glimpsed a metal syringe pulling away from my posterior.
    “That’s what I’ve been thinking about all night,” Frederick said. “About how humanity is going to endure. And how maybe it’s wrong for us to play God. Maybe the real catastrophe will be when all these creatures: so tiny, so intelligent, and so efficient, descend on the survivors. I’m wondering, I really am, if unleashing Eve — any Eve — is the right thing to do here.”
    “What’s happening?” I said. Maman didn’t answer. She sank back, against the door. Frederick kept pounding on it. I lay there in the shallow receptacle where she’d set me down. After a few moments, maman got up and bustled around the workshop. Frederick kept saying things in the background, but I was no longer paying attention. What had maman done to me?
    It seemed like hours later when I heard a crashing noise. The door flew inwards, and Frederick charged. Maman was standing next to the door. She jabbed him with a needle. He turned towards her and slapped her on the face. He hit her again and again. She hit back at him, but it didn’t seem that she was hurting him very much. Finally he saw me on the table, and took a step towards me. He fell down. Maman got up, and looked at him for a few moments. She took him by the feet and dragged him out of the workroom.
    For the next thirty days, it was just the two of us. Maman only spoke to me one time. She told me that I was carrying eggs, and that I would soon be hatching into fifty new bodies. And even though the bodies would think and feel different things, all of them would think of themselves as me. I lay in her mattress as the eggs swelled. Sometimes she plucked me up by the wings and examined me under a looking glass. I think she’d become afraid to run electricity through me.
    After one of the tests, she nodded to herself. She put me in a covered box and went out to the dinghy. I heard the motor start, and we traveled for several hours. I felt the boat hit something. I felt her pick up the box and carry it along with her. We were walking. Was I on land now? The box was still covered. I could not see where we were or where we were going. My abdomen was swelling. My body was aching. I felt a heavy pain along my back.
    Frederick had tried to kill me. Now Maman was abandoning me. Was I so disgusting? For a moment, I was very angry with them. I wanted to hurt them all. Then I realized how awful I was. The reason that Fred and Maman had hated me was because I’d been such a brat about the tests and the whistle. But I swore that I’d show them they were wrong about me. I’d help every human being I saw. I’d be their best friends. I would do anything they wanted and I’d never, ever shy away or complain.
    When the cover was taken off the box, I was in a dark alcove, like a cupboard or shelf made of stone. Warm air washed over me. I could see a light bobbing up and down in the distance. A door opened, and I saw maman silhouetted against the light of the sun. I tried to run to her, but I couldn’t move.
    About the Author
    Rahul Kanakia grew up in Washington, D.C.. He graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in Economics in