The Doll in the Trunk

Changing the world for the better, for once and for all.

Photo by Sonika Agarwal on Unsplash

Imagine a world where something amazing happened, and newborns were 1,000% better than the ones before them. In every sense of the word.

Imagine how quickly society would change. What if baby prodigies arrived only to make the world a better place?

A place for learning, loving, and sharing.

A place where there'd be no more violence, no more chaos. And no more wars.

~o~

The youngest child of the Howard family, Kaylee, got a present: Me.

I was a doll who would make your dreams come true, regardless of how strange they might be. Like a magic wand. Unfortunately, her brothers made fun of her, and out of frustration, she threw me inside the trunk with all the other broken or discarded toys. I was forgotten and shut off. I felt lonely and heartbroken.

I could've made her life and her world better, but she didn’t even give me a chance. Incredibly, that was also her wish. To change life for the better on this planet.

And I would've been delighted to oblige.

It would've been so easy for me. Just a simple twitch here on these cells, then a little selection there on mitochondria, and voila!, a better new edition of humans.

It would also have been my most honorable deed ever. How exciting!

Her parents bought me at a thrift shop because the mother loved my colors and my eyes. I was a gypsy doll, and they didn’t know, but I was also very old. A lady never discloses her age, but I was over a hundred years old. My clothes have been changed many times over time by loving caretakers and girls who appreciate my beauty, so I was pretty well taken care of.

It’s true what they say about nothing lasting forever, but that doesn't apply to magic. It never had.

But I wasn’t the kind to give up easily, and I had my secret ways still working for me. Except for one thing: I needed sunlight to enact them.

Being where I was, there was no chance of a glimmer of it anywhere. It was pitch black, save for a crack or two at the corner of the old trunk. That didn’t serve me much. My only viable option was to wait. I wasn’t a bear, but I had to hibernate like them.

Her father, Peter Howard, was a doctor in biology, which I found very interesting. One can learn quite a bit about biology being over 100 years old. Sophie, the Mum, was a painter and a sensitive soul who liked to engage in intriguing discussions with her husband, who almost always had an opinion about her take on things. He found her to be an impressively curious and intelligent woman.

If it weren’t for the petty arguments of the children, it would have been a peaceful house and a quiet environment. But they were young and raucous—all three of them.

One particular evening, the dad got involved in a teasing suggestion by his wife about the chances of the world becoming a different place if biologists did their job properly.

I was all ears because I loved her premise and the dynamics of the conversation.

She was right, and he, as an academic, was trying to defend the reality of his work and how far back we are in our abilities to make what she suggested possible.

“We can’t, or shouldn’t, mess with nature,” he said solemnly.

“You already have, my dear,” she answered, smirking. What do you call splitting the atom?”

“Research, of course,” he replies, lighting his pipe.

“Darling, this article I'm reading could be it! And you could change the world for the better!”

“I wish we could., I wish science could. Do you have any idea of the protocols involved in every small invention in this field? The permits and patents involved?”

“No. I’m selfish enough only to see what the outcome could be. A new society, the human race advancing, a world populated by geniuses! Isn’t that incredibly exciting?”

“Indeed,” he responded.

“Well, what if you could bring the proposal to the people at AMA and all others who would be willing to listen?” She asked, her eyes sparkling with anticipation.

Lifting his eyebrow, he tilted his head and asked, “Dear, the church will be the hardest obstacle. They will undoubtedly say we are messing with God’s creation, etc, etc. If that alone didn’t kill the idea, billions would be against it, implicitly because the church says so. No, it could never work.”

“For how long is science going to be hostage to the church, organized religion, or whatever?” Sophie asked.

“That’s the million-dollar question, my darling. When, indeed?”

Peter stood up and walked towards the balcony.

“Don’t jump, dear. The Johnsons are coming to dinner, and I need you to be in top shape, not a Humpty Dumpty,” she said, teasing him.

But she got him thinking about that crazy idea. What if…

He entertained the idea for a few minutes while on the balcony, and the fresh air felt so wonderful that he asked her to join him.

The more he thought about it, the more he wanted to stop. He knew it was an impossible dream.

He also knew it would take decades to put it into effect, even if the idea was scientifically possible. Genetics would come into play, and changing the basic DNA of babies would have to be resolved before it could be possible. Families will have to volunteer for the early experiments, which would be an enormous hurdle.

He tried to let the thought go and come back down to earth. But in the back of his mind, he knew that discovering how to make this work would guarantee him the Nobel Prize for chemistry or biology and a very secure financial future. The Johnsons noticed his mind was somewhere else, not at the dinner table. So, it was up to her to let them in on the discussions.

After she briefed them on the idea, they were as enthusiastic as she was.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I wanted the conversion to continue, as I was all for it. Then it occurred to me: what if I could somehow make it happen? Not en masse in the beginning, but perhaps a disguised, secret experiment with a few newborns.

What could go wrong? I thought to myself. Once they see the results, it'll become mainstream science.

I wanted to give it a go, but I needed to get out of this trunk first.

Suddenly, I had the most amazing idea an old doll could ever have. But I demanded out of this box sooner than now. Forget hibernating. Human survival depended on me being able to communicate my thoughts, but without sunlight, I’m powerless!

Slowly, I'm trying desperately to squeeze closer to the corners, where there’s a speck of light. Without some light, my movements are even more limited, and I can only manage tiny hops to either side of me. How pathetic!

If that doesn’t work, I’m done until someone brings me out of here.

It took me hours, but I managed to get as close as I could to those spots of light where maybe, just maybe, I could put some thoughts inside Mum’s head because Peter was already full to capacity, trying to think how to introduce this crazy idea to the Academy of Sciences, or at least to his colleague and friend, Dr. Mathews.

The next day, the unthinkable happened.

Contact!!!!

I felt her emotions, so I knew I was inside her head.

Now what? I thought. I don’t even have a plan!

Then, it dawned on me…

There's a way that doesn't take so much time and effort. Herbs, minerals, and rare earth nutrients in the womb could do the miracle without having to deal with all the red tape. All I needed to do was wait until someone opened that trunk to work at my full potential.

In the meantime, with that tiny bit of light from the corner, I could try to have them think what I'm thinking and lead them to the discovery.

Again, contact!!

“Honey! Look at this, hurry! She said, almost shouting.

She continued, "If a mother in her second semester starts taking these supplements methodically + a Borneo plant extract, she’ll give birth to a super baby. Smarter, definitely smarter, empathetic, and 96% “knowing,” which means he’d have retained information from his past life. An infant full of previous knowledge with an amazing capacity for learning at a speed we don't even think is possible. That baby would be a match. A match made in heaven for the most advanced science ever in the history of mankind."

Besides herself, she goes on, “It’s all here, in this journal, look!” as she handles him an enormous volume titled, “Plants from Borneo that improve DNA in newborns.”

Peter read the first paragraphs quickly, and they looked at each other with stupefied expressions.

“OMG!’ he said. “Maybe you are onto something — if we could start at the right time.

Peter was right. It has long been determined by researchers that if certain elements are introduced to the fetus during early development, the child's nature undergoes radical changes.

Since they were all from natural sources, these elements, in the fetus, would change the child's physicality and mental ability for the better. Many mothers eagerly volunteered.

If the experiment worked and a generation of geniuses was born, it would've been no doubt an incredible success, scientifically speaking, and for Dr. Howard in particular.

~∆~

Three years later...

The news of such an amazing discovery went around the world immediately as soon as AP and other major news organizations disclosed it.

One blasting headline didn't mince words and exclaimed in big blackened bold font, “The Battle Against Evil Was Just Won!”.

Another one said, “Genius babies are Being Born by the Millions.”

This breakthrough in science was touted as the biggest since the creation of the atomic bomb for all intents and purposes, but it ended up being the opposite for this intended use.

Society, the world at large, ceased to exist as we knew it. From that point on, only thoughts, discoveries, and ideas would be discussed and entertained. There'd be no more crime, or violence, and no more lying. Only genuine progress and evolution.

The few hard-headed people who didn't believe such a change was possible turned out to be the new conspiracy theorists and were trying to recruit others to derail the entire experiment.

But the positives were so overwhelming that it was a lost cause.

I couldn't believe that I managed to work with that small fragment of light and plant the thought in their heads. As soon as that was done, everything took a life on their own and the rest is history.

Just as in a fairy tale, my wishes came true when I got into the little girl's mind, and she came to find me in the trunk. After all, she always wanted to have me around.

I was her favorite gift for a brief moment back then, until her brothers started making fun of her. But that is over and done with now.

Regardless of how hard one might think life is, let's remember:

There's light at the end of the tunnel, after all…

Photo by Sonika Agarwal

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