It was 7 a.m. the following morning. Ethan's family's first sightseeing stop was the Royal Oldham Hospital — named after the town of Oldham it served, a satellite community on Manchester’s outskirts that had peaked in prosperity during the Industrial Revolution, although the wealth had not been evenly distributed, as was typical of society at the time. The hospital made the list because it was the site of the world’s first test-tube baby.

  They parked and walked over to a weathered blue plaque bolted to the wall outside the maternity wing. It looked like something a council might slap on the birthplace of a minor poet.

  Ethan’s dad and Danny stared at it for a moment, unimpressed.

  “Is that it?” his dad muttered.

  But Ethan… Ethan just stared.

  He wasn’t simply looking at the plaque—he was seeing through it: through time, through science, through the glass of a Petri dish and into the impossible.

  A fertilised egg. Life. Human life. Created in a lab.

  He imagined the room—bright, sterile, humming with quiet intensity. A dish, a cell, a spark. And from that, a person. Dozens. Hundreds. Millions. It was absolutely—absolutely—bonkers.

  But brilliant. Completely brilliant.

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  He stood there for minutes, eyes glazed in awe, mind spiralling through probabilities. The others had already started back toward the car park.

  Ethan lagged behind, still caught in his mental whirlwind. Then he shouted to Danny:

  “All the eggs and sperm needed to represent every human alive would fit easily into far less than one shipping container, and Noah’s Ark would be perfectly feasible. You could propagate Mars once you terraformed it!”

  Danny stopped mid-stride and turned around.

  “Still talking about saving humankind? You need to grow up, Ethan. We’re not seven anymore. You’re going on fourteen. I want to play for United, but it ain’t gonna happen. You need to think of yourself. There’ll be hardly any jobs for us, what with AI doing them all, even though you’re a bit of a genius. Anyway, humans in general don’t give a fuck about each other—except their families… sometimes. I say sometimes. Look at my dad—he doesn’t care about me. Hardly see the tosser!”

  Ethan saw a flicker of sadness in Danny’s eyes before he snapped out of it and continued walking.

  “You’re smart, Ethan, but you’re naive about the human race.” Danny turned and carried on. Talking about his dad had upset him; a lump formed in his throat. He didn’t want to shed a tear over his useless, selfish father.

  “I will terraform Mars!” Ethan shouted after him defiantly.

  “Yeah, right, whatever. You can give me a job—and throw in a private jet,” Danny said with a sarcastic laugh.

  “I will give you a job, but you’re not having a private jet. They’re too bad for the planet… unless the technology changes. Graphene batteries, for example! … I feel it’s my destiny!” Ethan shouted as Danny approached the car park.

  Danny smiled and shook his head.