Nicole was sitting at the kitchen counter sipping tea and looking at a journal. She looked up as Kyle and Jessie came into the room with concerned looks on their faces. Without saying anything they sat at the counter across from her. She set her tea down and looked at them questioningly.

"Nicole," Kyle began hesitantly, "We're having a disagreement about something and Jessi suggested that we ask for your advice."

"The two of you are disagreeing?" Nicole asked in amazement, "That's unusual. What do you think I could help you with?"

"It's an ethical issue," Kyle explained. "It came up when we were discussing approaches for extracting the babies safely from their pods once they're fully developed."

"Extracting them safely?" Nicole asked with a hint of concern. "Is there any risk? I thought it was a simple procedure."

"Adam Baylin was unable to extract his subjects from their pods successfully," Kyle said. "All of the subjects before me died when he tried. That's one of the reasons he delayed so long before attempting to extract me. While he was researching approaches to safe extraction, Professor Kern decided I was worth more in the pod as a human computer and forced Adam out of the project."

"I didn't know that," Nicole grew more concerned. "I thought he intended to keep you in the pod for years on purpose."

"No, that was Kern," Kyle explained. "He would have kept me in there indefinitely if my mind hadn't rebelled. Then he wanted me terminated. Foss took me out and saved me."

"So Foss was able to safely extract you?" Nicole asked. "How did he do it if Adam couldn't?"

"It was difficult," Kyle admitted. "My heart stopped and he had to resuscitate me. I almost died."

"But you told me that Jessi was released from her pod when Zzyzx was firebombed." Nicole said. "Who resuscitated her?"

"No one," Kyle said. "It's possible that the shock of the explosion, cushioned by the fluid in the pod was sufficient, but we have another theory."

"We think that Kyle did it." Jessi said.

"Kyle did it?" Nicole asked. "Were you there, Kyle?"

"I guessed that Foss was going to blow up Zzyzx," Kyle said. "I went there to try to stop him. He knocked me unconscious and pulled me out of the building before the explosion."

"What does that have to do with Jessi," Nicole asked.

"I've accessed my memory from that visit and just before he knocked me out I was at a door. I sensed something beyond it, a contact." Kyle opened a hand, "It was the same sense that I felt when I first met Jessi, although I didn't recognize it as my reaction to her for some time."

"We believe that my pod was behind that door," Jessi elaborated. "We think that his mind, in contact with mine, prepared me to be 'born'."

"So you think that Kyle jump started your mind telepathically?" Nicole said in astonishment.

"We think that's what happens as part of the normal gestation between a mother and her child," Kyle explained. "The mother's mind links on a subconscious level with the child's mind and prepares it to function independently."

"But we aren't telepathic," Nicole objected, shaking her head in disbelief. "We can't do that."

"You have the same minds that we do," Kyle responded. "We have fuller access to its capabilities, but the physical brain is basically the same. We believe that there's a very low level communication, almost a diagnostic routine. We think that the connection is what was missing in the earlier experiments."

"So how did you survive?" Nicole asked, still somewhat reeling from the concept.

"Foss had spent a lot of time in the room with me, thinking of me as a person, not an experiment," Kyle said. "He regularly played music for me. We think that helped. It was still very close in my case."

"So how are you going to do this with the babies?" Nicole asked.

"Jessi and I will contact their minds before we're ready to take them out," Kyle explained. "We will also have to be ready to resuscitate them. We have some other things we can do if it comes to that. We think we can get them out safely."

"I didn't know you could contact anyone but each other. Is it because they're in a pod?" Nicole asked.

"We can sense a little bit of how someone is thinking," Jessi said. "It's a faint and vague signal, just a feeling." Nicole looked concerned and Jessi assured her, "It's not really mind reading. A trained observer like you can probably do the same by looking at body language and other clues. We could also project an impression, something that you might perceive as a 'nagging feeling'. A baby has less normal mental activity so the influence would be stronger."

"All right," Nicole nodded slowly. "This is certainly something to think about. The idea that a mother is in telepathic communication with her child is intriguing." She smiled, "A mother likes to think she has a special connection with her children." She shook her head wonderingly then looked at them, "But what is the ethical issue you want my advice on?"

Kyle gestured toward Jessi who explained, "I want to leave them in the pods longer. Instead of taking them out at nine months, I want to leave them in for thirteen months. That's the length of Adam Baylin's gestation." She looked earnestly at Nicole, "They would emerge being physically four months old. That's still an infant for adoption purposes. They could have parents and normal lives, all the things that we want them to have, the things that we missed. They would just be as smart as Adam and Sarah."

Nicole looked stunned. She sat for a moment and then said, "I did tell you to come to me with anything." She grinned wryly and added, "Couldn't you have started with something easier?" She took a breath, "I hadn't considered the possibility of anything besides either a normal gestation or years like you two spent in the pods – and I know you don't want that. What effect would it have? Would they be able to move things with their minds like you can? Adam could."

"Adam couldn't do it until he spent twenty years of effort as an adult," Kyle said. "If Jessi or I helped we could probably speed that process up but it would be best to wait until they were at least in their teens." He opened his hands, "As babies and children, they would probably move from being gifted to being prodigies."

Nicole nodded and commented thoughtfully, "There are prodigies naturally, of course. It's not clear that prodigies or even gifted children are happier than children whose abilities are closer to the mean. It's almost the opposite." She smiled and explained, "I've done a lot of reading on gifted children, not that it's helped much with the two of you." She thought for a moment and then asked, "What are you trying to achieve? Do you want happy children or people who can change the world?"

"Can't we have both?" Jessi asked.

"Maybe not," Nicole said. "Of course being born with a normal IQ is not a guarantee of happiness either. A lot of it has to do with the person's childhood and even then it's often a mystery." She looked at Jessi, "Why do you want to do it?"

"It's what Adam Baylin intended in the first place," Jessi said. "To make children as capable as he was without sacrificing a human mother." She looked at Kyle and added "And also what Kyle and I wish we'd been able to have, a normal life growing up in a family with a mother and father." She paused, "I want her to be as smart and capable as Sarah was."

Nicole nodded. A small smile touched her lips as she noticed the pronoun shift. She said, "At the very least, it would make the adoption process more complex. The potential parents would have to have some clue as to what they were in for. Raising a prodigy can be a difficult task." She looked at Kyle and asked, "You said you two were disagreeing. Obviously you don't think that this is a good idea. What are your concerns?"

Kyle glanced at Jessi and said, apologetically, "I don't think we should be experimenting with human beings. We shouldn't be playing God, Nicole."

"We didn't start the experiment," Jessi argued. "Cassidy did. We just have to figure out where to end it. She looked at Nicole and explained, "Kyle has always wanted to be more normal. I've wanted to make the most of our abilities. I want the babies to get the most out of this opportunity."

Nicole looked at Kyle and observed, "Jessi has a point. If you had asked me if I approved of starting this experiment I would have told you definitely not. There are many bioethical concerns about the ethics of cloning. There are protocols which should be followed when you are dealing with human experimentation. It was a reckless thing to do." She shrugged, "But that isn't the decision we are facing. The decision is when to 'induce labor'. Normally you would consider the health and wellbeing of the child and balance it with the mother's safety. Since there is no mother, then the children are our only concern. What effect on their health is an extra four months likely to have?"

"They will probably be slightly stronger," Kyle admitted reluctantly. "It won't make much difference to their bodies. Their bodies should have the nine months for optimal development although we could probably take them out now."

"So it's just their intellectual ability that we are concerned with?" Nicole asked, "Whether to stop at 'gifted' or go on to 'prodigy'?"

"Do we have the right to make decisions like that?" Kyle asked. It feels like playing God."

Nicole nodded and stared into her tea for a moment. She picked it up, took a sip, and then set it back down. She said thoughtfully, "Stephen and I made two children together. I felt them growing inside my body. We went to the doctor, saw them on the ultrasound, and listened to their heartbeats. As they grew, I felt them move inside of me, kicking at odd moments." She smiled in thought, "If you're right, we communicated as they grew. I certainly felt connected to them on a very basic level." She sighed in memory, "After they were born, we've done our best to teach and guide them into being the kind of people that we would hope for them to be." She looked at Kyle and explained, "That's, in a way, what being a parent is, Kyle, a chance to play God. Or at least to participate in the creation of life which certainly seems like a miracle."

Kyle asked, "So you think we should leave them in longer, Nicole?"

"I didn't say that," Nicole cautioned. "That is your decision. You asked me about ethics. I don't see an ethical problem with either choice. I think the two of you have the right to make that decision for them. You are best equipped to understand the consequences. You are also as close to parents as they have at the moment. Until they get their new ones, that is. Then their adoptive parents will be stuck with the hard choices."

Kyle took a breath and looked at Jessi, "You still want them to be in for thirteen months?"

"I want them to have it all," Jessi said, "brilliance, creativity, and a real childhood with a real home."

"Then that's what we'll do," Kyle agreed. "We'll leave them in until October."