Prologue:
Once, a species called homo sapiens sapiens walked from africa to eastern europe and ate all the food that had been (very clearly) marked for consumption by another species: homo sapiens neanderthalensis. In the process of having their food eaten, all homo sapiens neanderthalensis died.
This was the beginning of many things. For example, homo sapiens sapiens economists were finally able to grasp the concept of supply and demand as the final homo sapiens neanderthalensis spoke his last words in a cave somewhere in western Europe (They were particularly ineloquaint: "Mother Fuckers ate all my food.")
This was also where my story begins.
I:
With humankinds exodus to the moon and outlying stars in 1969, astronauts discovered an element previously unknown to Primitive Earth Scientists. This element was Soul. The scientists involved designated this element, Soul, as SL.
II:
SL was fated from the beginning to be a niche drug. As it had no clear practical application to human life, many scientist decryed it. In 1970 SL was named Time Magazine's least impactful scientific discovery of the decade.
By the early nineteen-80s, however, SL's effect on the young and impressionable had come into stark light and Human politicians rushed to demonize SL. The case was made that "The Soul Epidemic" (as it was dubbed by the media) turned good kids bad, decreased job satisfaction, and increased birth rates.
III:
In nineteen-eighty-six a union organizer and closeted Soul Fiend named Claudia Pitzler became impregnated by a rakish hispanic jack of all trades named Felipe Arizmendi in Los Angeles, California.
At around the same moment in time Dr. Doctor, founder of the underground genetic alteration, alchemy research, SL experimentation and sunday evening potluck anarchist movement, known above ground only as "Souliloquy", made a discovery that would prove monumental in SL's future impact on humanity. Dr. Doctor discovered that it was possible to bond SL atoms onto a developing human fetus's DNA, thus altering the human genome and ushering in the next great evolutionary phase of Humankind.(!)
IV:
Souliloquy hit rough times when it's SL bonding process failed to produce a viable evolutionary step up on the human ladder, or even a viable human baby. In a report to shareholders in June of 1986, Dr. Doctor stated, "...Not only can we not make a soulfoul baby, baby, but we've so far invalidated 43 human pregnancies! Shit. If I were all of you rick(sic.) bastards, I'd get out now! (sic.)wait just a damn moment!!! If only I could... THATs it? (sic.)"
The Letter drops off abruptly, without going into details.
V:
on June 28, 1986, two days after the Souliloquy shareholder's letter's postmark, Claudia Pitzler recieved a plain white postcard with no return adress or postmark with one simple, if esoteric phrase scrawled across it: "Believe in a baby with Soul."
As Cluadia Pitzler stood on the steps of her East L.A. home, pondering this strange piece of post, she was shot in the neck with a blowgun, incapacitating her long enough for six figures in white labcoats to pull a van around, load her prostrate body inside, and drive her to Souliloquy's headquarters/shack in a Van Nuys parking lot. When Felipe Arizmendi arrived home from work that day, he found the house had been looted; among the missing items were his television, radio, coffee pot, eight month pregnant wife and his forthcoming son. Felipe went directly to a bar.
In the last month of her pregnancy, Claudia Pitzler was kept strapped to an operating table and unconcious, while Dr. Doctor struggled to make his new SL Bonding procedure a reality. On July 28, 1986 at 7:59 a.m., Dr. Doctor threw up his hands and cried, "HELLS YEAH!" The Doctor had cause for celebration, for after a month of toil inside Claudia Pitzler, he had just been the first human being to witness a SL atom fuse with human genetic code. One minute later, Claudia Pitzler's eyes shot open and her birth canal began to dilate.
VI:
Thirty-five seconds after Claudia Pitzler went into labor, the DEA SL Task Force kicked down the door of Souliloquy's headquarters/shack in a Van Nuys parking lot. The police were on a SL raid and indeed had no idea that SLquy had been trying to genetically alter human fetuses with SL. After everyone in SLquy's Headquarters had been mowed down in a hail of gunfire, believed by Historians today to have been catalyzed by an inopportune party popper set off to celebrate the Doctor's breakthrough, the DEA agents were alarmed (and rather embarassed) to realize that they had shot a pregnant woman dead. Even more alarming was that the living infant was still nestled in between her bullet-riddled thighs, crying.
VII:
When Felipe Arizmendi saw the story of his murdered wife's involvement in an underground genetic alteration, alchemy research, SL experimentation and sunday evening potluck anarchist movement on the six'o'clock news, he fled immediately back to his native Mexico, fearing any implication in his disgraced Wife's misdeeds might prevent him from finding another wife. With a dead Soul Fiend mother, an absentee cowardly father, and no one the wiser about the pure Soul pulsing through his veins, little Baby Pitzler-Arizmendi was turned state's ward and put up for adoption.
Now, nineteen years later, when SL has been all but trivialized in Human Society, history is on the cusp of discovering what difference a Soulful Baby makes.
