The Ultimate Evil

The horrified shrieks of Annamar's children filled the late night. Starting up in bed, Annamar threw back the covers and jumped upright. The kids were supposed to be asleep this late -- what could possibly have happened to terrify them so...?

Annamar ran down the hallway, following the sounds of childish exclamations of fear and dismay. They were in the front room, huddled around the freevee. Something loud, garish, and obviously quite antiquated from its lack of visual depth, was playing there.

"There, there," Annamar said, rocking the children one to each arm. "It's just a late night horror movie... babies, there's nothing to be afraid of."

Annamar scooted the kids back to bed, soothed them with a few more words and a glass of liquizine each. Eventually both went back to sleep again, but Annamar was afraid they might have nightmares. The local stations shouldn't be allowed to project anything that scary, even this late at night...!

Oh, once such things had been common, Annamar knew. There were still some old folks left who remembered those days... even some who were still... unrefined. (Annamar shuddered just a little at the obscene thought.) As long as they kept to themselves, their continued existence was tolerated (after all, Annamar lived in the most civilized culture yet created by humankind). Annamar had studied those Unrefined Days in school, had seen pictures, even videos. And yes, they still showed those old movies late at night, to send a shudder of vicarious fear through some of the more jaded people... but Annamar would never have permitted the children to watch them. Little sneaks...

Back in the days before the great scientist Hurlikos had made it possible for all reproduction to be done artificially, perfecting the pseudowomb tanks and the extrabiological DNA recombination techniques that allowed the race to continue propagating itself without recourse to unpleasantly atavistic biological methods, the viewing of such terrifying projections had been normal, Annamar knew. Everyone, adult and child alike, would watch such things all day and all night, with enormous equanamity. But those had been dark, savage times, filled with barbarism. Testosterone poisoning, estrogen rage... the entire population had lurched from one violent confrontation to another, all because of raging unchecked hormone levels. The obsession with reproductive acts of biological intercourse, and worse, non-reproductive acts of biological intercourse, had been insane. The existence of the human race, and even the planet Earth itself, had been so close to final destruction...

But Hurlikos' genius had made real evolution possible at last. Within two generations of the implementation of artificial reproductive technology on a widespread basis, selective genetic engineering had brought real, permanent peace to all humankind. Raging libidos were at last quelled, as all that ickiness became eternally unnecessary. Annamar's was a world without rape, without molestation, without harassment, with very little violence, physical or verbal. A world of gentle decency, of kindness, of empathy, of quiet dignity... a truly civilized human world, at last.

Annamar gazed down at its smooth, slim, sexless body with quiet pride. In the utopian world Annamar inhabited, physical attractiveness meant little, but aesthetic beauty still had its social rewards, and Annamar was aware that it was exceptionally aesthetically pleasing... as were its children, who had each been carefully designed to reflect the best attributes of their contributing parents' genetic codes.

Then Annamar caught another glimpse of the late night horror movie still playing on the freevee. Thrusting phalluses spewing ropes of vile stickiness, grotesquely hyperinflated mammaries, hideously glistening, hair covered pudenda, hirsute buttocks bobbing up and down, up and down... it was terrifying. It amazed Annamar that anyone could still enjoy watching such grotesquery.

With a resolute twist of its wrist, Annamar turned the fearsome images off. Thank ghod humankind had evolved beyond all THAT nastiness...!