Epilogue: 25 years later

Robin - Memories.

Robin was watching the Summer Olympic Games. For the first time, there were exhibition events for 'Neo Homo Sapiens'. Specifically they included three competitions for Mermaids and four for Centaurs. For the Mermaids they had 1600m and 3 km races and synchronized swimming. The competitions for the Centaurs used the same courses and rules of the equestrian competitions - Dressage, which is basically a four legged ballet, jumping, where the Centaur would have to jump obstacles in a certain order, and eventing, which is a combination of the two with an addition of a cross country race. The only difference was the fact that the 'rider' and the 'horse' were one body instead of two. In addition to those three, there was a Centaur Marathon held a few hours before the traditional marathon that signaled the end of the Olympic games for that year.

The IOC had finally decided to add these competitions since there had been a public demand for them for at least fifteen years. That demand started about ten years after the unveiling of the first Centaur.

The IOC made it clear that when it started allowing the 'shot modified bodies' they would have to follow a common set of rules and guidelines for a particular modification. All competitors would be tested both before and after their competitions to ensure that there had not been anybody trying to cheat by going outside the guidelines fixed in the rules.

Cooper High's record-breaking victory in football the Friday that Pat and I were in The Program ended up being deleted from the records, and counting as a forfeit against us. As it turned out, Tony should not have been allowed to even dress out and sit on the bench that night, much less play on the field. The reason for this restriction was simple: he was out pending a pre-trial hearing before a judge about him pulling the fire alarm as a prank.

There was plenty of evidence pointing towards Tony as the guilty party. First, there was only one set of fingerprints on the lever, and they matched his. Secondly, he was caught on camera setting off the alarm. A camera also caught him walking into the locker room that Pat and I had left moments before with the rest of the JV Volleyball team when the fire alarm had gone off.

That type of prank did not amuse the judge he ended up facing. The judge and one of her close childhood friends had ended up in a hospital after a similar prank caused a panic in the movie theater they were in. That was aggravated by the fact that Tony was arrested the day before his court appearance on an attempted rape charge. Pat and I have not seen Tony since the night of that noteworthy game. I heard from one of my friends that Tony ended up finishing high school in a detention center.

Tony ended up not being the main reason Cooper had to forfeit that game though. When Odessa Permian's coach heard someone had played while awaiting a pre-trial hearing, he requested a through investigation of all the players. As a part of that investigation, the starters on both teams were tested in several ways. One of the tests was to see if they exceeded the allowable limits of Nanobot directed alterations for athletes.

When the results of all the tests came back, it was found that all but four of the starters in Cooper's team, as well as a couple of the starters in Permian's team were exceeding the legal limits. These results lead to the reserves for both teams also being tested. Several of the reserves on both teams were also beyond the upper limits for muscle tissue enhancements. Since Cooper did not have the number of legal players necessary to start the game, it was decided to declare that Cooper forfeited that game.

Greg served some time but he got out for good behavior. When he got out, he had earned a college degree in counseling. I will admit that I was uneasy when I first found out that he had gotten out of jail early. A couple of years after he got out he called me. He thanked Pat and me for stopping him when we did and in his words "scarring him straight."

After several years, I was able to forgive Greg for what he did to me. We occasionally keep in touch. The last time we talked, Greg mentioned that he has been married for fifteen years, and has a couple of teenagers a boy, and a girl. He mentioned to us that since his time in jail, he has become involved with the community. One of his activities is talking with teenage boys, especially the athletes, and doing his part to prevent what he almost did to me from happening to other girls, including his.

I do not know how successful he has been in general. One day while I was at a supermarket line waiting to get checked out, I heard of an interesting case. A couple of teenage girls in front of me in line started talking about something that happened to a friend of theirs back on Earth. This friend of theirs and her boyfriend started making love one night at her parent's house taking advantage that they were gone for the evening. As he was getting ready to give the girl his virginity, the girl said "no."

Before she knew what was happening, her boyfriend tossed her clothes to her and got dressed. He then said that if she did not want to have sex then he would rather go without for a while than spend time in jail. As it turned out, he had gone to one of the seminars Greg gives. In those seminars Greg tried to get the point across that he only learned after being sent to jail, that "No means No and not maybe or yes. Just because she said no once does not mean she will continue to say no next time you ask. Remember to always ask if she wants to go further after that first no." The girl, who I later found out was one of my nieces, then told her boyfriend that if he did not get naked and back in bed with her that instant he could forget about not only having sex with her but also, even going out with her again.

Patricia and Roberta only played two volleyball games for the Cooper Cougars. The Monday after they played a question was raised about if they were eligible to play because of the Twin injection. There was no mention of our mind link and that would have probably caused more people to agree with the idea of us not playing.

Since our school was already being penalized for not following certain regional rules regarding Tony and a question about excessive nanobot induced muscles, they went a little overboard. After their first two games, one JV and one varsity, Patricia and Roberta were considered ineligible to play. One of the reasons given was the injection their mothers had less than a month after conception. After more than five years of debate, it was ruled that Twins could compete in team events just like anyone else.

On the one hand, it was debated that Roberta and Patricia met all the physical requirements for athletes using Nanobot injections. In fact, some of their attributes could be increased up to 10% and they still would fit in those limits. On the other hand, those opposed to Twins participating in official athletic events argued that Twins would have an unfair advantage in terms of eye-hand coordination. Experiments have shown that it' true that most Twins do have better eye-hand coordination than most non-enhanced people. It's interesting that's the case even when only one body of the Twin was present.

By the time it was finally determined that Twins should be allowed to play for school teams Pat and I had already graduated... College. We managed to graduate High School less than two years after our week in the program. This we did by testing out of several subjects. If it had just been up to Dr. Bethard, when one body of a Twin took a course, both would get the same grade.

Considering the opposition he was taking already because of us, he decided to use a more conventional approach. He suggested that the body that didn't take the course take an equivalency test and then get credit for taking that course. One example was that during the year that included our week in The Program, Roberta took English and Robert took Algebra. At the end of that year, Roberta took a test to add Algebra to her transcript and Robert took a test to prove he understood what Roberta's class had been taught in English.

We did basically the same in College, using the Clep tests as much as possible before we even started our courses. For some of the courses that did not have Clep tests our parents made arrangements with out university to have the head of that department make arrangements so that we could take a test proving we knew the material in that course.

Pat and I continued our education with us eventually accumulating three doctorates each. Officially, Patricia and Robert each have two doctorates, and Patrick and Roberta each have one but are working on a second one.

When Pat and I were kicked off the volleyball team, we knew we would have some free time. Since we both had been invited to join the previous Friday, we ended up joining the Math and Science team during the rest of our time in high school. One interesting consequence of us going from being considered "jocks" to "geeks" was that by the time we graduated, Cooper High's athletes had the highest honest GPA in the district. This was the result of tutoring sessions that some of the athletes had with some of the honor role students. Dr. Bethard said during our graduation that Pat and I had shown that because you are a jock, does not necessarily mean you have to be dumb. True, we did not last long as jocks but we made a big positive impression during that short amount of time.

During our time in the Math and Science team, we went to a number of competitions. Most of the time, both of Pat's and both of my bodies were entered into the same event in a competition. Many times when that happened, Pat and I would sweep the top four spots for our grade level and division. There was only a couple of times that Patrick, Patricia, Robert, and Roberta were all in the same event that we did not take four of the top six places.

A few competitions that we went to had two or more events going on at the same time. In some cases, there was a math and a science portion at the same time. For those competitions, one of Pat's and one of my bodies would go take the science test and the other two bodies would go to the math competition. Most of the time in those competitions, Pat and I would have two of the top three places in both the science and the math events.

Most of the time that my two bodies were in the same competition I would make an effort to have at least a couple of different answers between my two tests. I also adopted the strategy of what to do when I could not figure out the correct answer between two alternatives. Robert would mark one alternative on his answer sheet and Roberta would mark the other alternative on her answer sheet. Pat did the same thing after I mentioned it to them after our first competition where Patrick and Patricia tied for first and I took third and fourth place.

We figured an occasional tie would not be bad, so there were a few times when either Patrick and Patricia, or Roberta and Robert would tie themselves. It was amusing that there were several times that one of Pat's bodies would tie with one of mine. A couple of times Pat and I even had a four-way tie in first place. Someone accused us of cheating until it was revealed that Pat and I had competed in that particular event in four different classrooms without anything electronic on our bodies.

One particular competition stood out for me. It was a two-day statewide competition two months before our high school graduation. In order to compete we had to be in the top five in a district level competition. Then we would go to the regional competitions and need to place in the top ten places in order to be allowed to enroll for the statewide competition. Pat and I ended up in the top four of our district and we ended up as four of the top six in our region.

The first day of the statewide competition was a couple of science tests, and the second day was math. For those three tests, I gave different answers in only a few places where I had narrowed the answer down to two possibilities. After lunch on the second day was the awards ceremony. First came the awards for the individual tests. A different individual came in first place for each of the individual tests. However, Pat and I swept the second through fifth places in each test. Then came the time to announce the cumulative score. Pat and I ended up in a four-way tie for first place. The announcer then said, "Since no one had expected a four way tie we will be presenting one trophy to the four of winners. The other three trophies will be sent to their high school next week."