Earth’s climate is changing rapidly due to the increasing load of CO₂ in the environment. While governments have addressed the problem, they have failed to stop its trajectory toward an unguessable future. InIX: Creation, the prequel to my World of IX series, a group of researchers genetically modify their own children to have extremely long life and high intelligence, hoping that their extended time horizon and deep insights into climate science will allow they to find a solution that eludes their parents and national governments. By the time the Young, as the gen-mod children are known, are adolescents they have far surpassed the technical prowess of their parents and normal siblings. Unfortunately, they are still adolescents. The solution they devise is to release a package of lethal viruses globally to virtually exterminate humanity. They plan to stay alive with a small cohort of others to remediate the climate after humanity is no longer contributing to the problem. But they split along gender lines about whether to do a partial release of the virus to blackmail national governments into acting or to do a global release and settle the issue themselves. To resolve their disagreement they enlist Brunna, a star geneticist who works with the Young’s parents but is part of neither group, to break the deadlock. Brunna  has 24 hours to  decide the fate of humanity.

The short story IX:Creation is currently being marketed to my favorite sci fi magazines.