DISTILLATE OF THE CHOSEN

Chapter1 —Recognition

 Selection is not survival.

It is permission. 

The bus smelled of warm plastic, oranges, and the kind of tired impatience families carried when a holiday was supposed to make them happy.

It was early spring, just before Easter. Outside Barcelona, the road slid through low hills and scattered olive groves. Inside, heads nodded in half-sleep, shoulders leaned against windows, and someone—always someone—kept the radio too loud, as if volume could keep boredom away.

At the back, a cassette player hissed with static. The tape was warped from overuse, the melody bruised by age.

“Ave Mariiiiiiia…”

Little José sat rigidly, elbows tight against his body, as if he was holding something fragile inside his chest. Ten years old. Small. Too serious. His old birthday jacket—altered so many times it barely remembered its original shape—pulled at the seams when he inhaled.

He pressed stop.

The sudden silence startled people more than the music had.

“Hey—” someone began, annoyed.

José didn’t look back. He rewound the tape with slow precision, as if time itself could be adjusted if you handled it carefully enough. Then he pressed play again, listened for two measures, and stopped it once more.

And he sang.

The voice that rose from him was not “cute.” Not “promising.” It had no childish softness to excuse it. It arrived clean and startlingly formed, as if the air had been waiting for it.

Conversation died mid-sentence. Someone laughed once—a nervous laugh—and then stopped, ashamed of the sound. The driver glanced into the mirror and forgot to look back at the road for a heartbeat too long.

José sang as if nothing else existed—not the bus, not the road, not the eyes now fixed on him. Each phrase landed with a precision that felt unearned, almost indecent in someone so young. It was the voice of a nightingale trapped inside metal and gasoline.

When he finished, no one spoke for a second.

Then applause—warm, confused, too loud for such a small space.

“Madre mía,” his aunt Dolores whispered, pressing a hand to her chest. “That’s Gaberas’s little son… the favorite one.”

José lowered his gaze, cheeks flushing, embarrassed, as if the voice belonged to someone else and had merely passed through him.

The bus continued on, but something had shifted. Even the static from the cassette sounded different now—like it had been exposed.

That evening, at the Church of Santa María del Mar, the moment repeated itself, and this time the stone kept it.

Candles flickered. Marble columns rose like quiet witnesses. The guests leaned forward instinctively when the boy stepped out from the choir line. His mother’s eyes shone with a fear that looked like pride. The priest smiled and murmured something about blessings, about gifts.

José sang the Ave Maria again, and the church seemed to hold its breath.

Outside, the city was noisy—cars, laughter, café music—but inside those walls, the boy’s voice made everything else feel temporary.

In a side aisle, half-hidden by a column, a man stood very still.

He did not smile. He did not clasp his hands like the others. He did not look moved. Professor Hans Dietrich Mayerland had come to Barcelona for a conference with a polished title and rehearsed optimism—Genome Editing: Challenges for the Future. He left before the final panel, bored by the choreography of restraint. The sound found him instead, thin at first, then unmistakable.

He stood near the back of the nave, dressed too carefully to be memorable. A dark coat, worn but well kept. A soft hat pulled low, not to hide, but to blur the outline of his face. Round myopic glasses sat lightly on his nose, the kind that suggested scholarship, fragility, harmless focus.

They lied.

Behind the lenses, his eyes were an unsettling blue—pale, concentrated, almost spherical in their stillness. They did not move with the music. They fixed. Reduced. Measured. The glasses magnified them just enough to make the gaze feel enclosed, trapped in its own precision.

Now he watched the child in a way that did not belong in public.

His face remained socially correct, assembled from habits learned long ago. The brow smooth. The posture unthreatening. But something in the symmetry failed. One side of his mouth hesitated, as if the expression had not been rehearsed all the way through. The skin around his eyes refused the reflex of warmth. No blink. No softening.

This was not attention.

It was acquisition.

José’s final note trembled, then dissolved into the stone.

Applause rose.

Mayerland did not join it. His hands remained folded, fingers touching lightly, as if pressure had already been calculated. His breathing slowed. The stillness around him was deliberate.

In the front rows, José’s mother felt it before she understood it.

She turned her head without knowing why. Just a flicker of movement at the back of the room—dark coat, hat, the glint of round glass catching the light. For an instant, her eyes met his.

And she saw it.

Not admiration. Not pride. Something colder. A look that did not stop at her son’s face but passed through him, as if measuring what could be taken without resistance.

Her body reacted before thought arrived.

She reached out and pulled José closer, her hand firm on his shoulder, drawing him in as if the space between them had suddenly become dangerous. The gesture was small. Protective. Instinctive.

Mayerland noticed.

The faintest adjustment crossed his face—not irritation, not surprise. A recalibration. As though an external variable had entered the equation earlier than expected.

He tilted his head, listening past the applause—to endurance, to compliance, to how long something delicate could be held before it learned to stop resisting.

A hunger without urgency.

The kind that assumes time will cooperate.

He had wandered without direction until sound pulled him in.

Recognition.

His gaze had the quality of a hook—quiet, precise, patient. As if something inside him had clicked into place, lifting him out of the ordinary world. José’s final note faded. The echo lingered.

Applause swelled again, but Mayerland did not clap.

He turned his head slightly, as if listening for something beneath the sound—structure, density, a hidden pattern only he could perceive. And when he looked back at the boy, there was a flicker in his expression that unsettled the air more than any cruelty would have.

After the applause thinned and people began to move again, Mayerland waited.

He had learned long ago that haste frightened what he wanted to observe. So he stayed in the side aisle, letting the church empty itself slowly—coats rustling, murmurs loosening into chatter, the spell dissolving in stages. Only when the choir dispersed and the boy stepped down from the low platform did he move.

José’s father stood near the last pew, nodding politely to congratulations he did not quite know how to receive. He was a careful man, used to gratitude that came with conditions. When Mayerland approached, the father straightened instinctively.

“Excuse me,” Mayerland said in measured Spanish. His accent was foreign but controlled, the kind that suggested education rather than distance. “Your son.”

The father’s smile tightened, a fraction too fast. “Yes?”

“He is remarkable. This is not common. Keeping his voice dawn.”

People liked to hear that. Mayerland knew it. But he did not smile when he said it, and the absence of warmth unsettled the man.

“He sings solo in the choir,” the father said. “It’s God’s gift.”

“A rare one,” Mayerland replied. His eyes flicked briefly toward José, now surrounded by relatives. The look lasted a beat too long. “Unusually intact.”

The word landed wrong.

Thank you very much for your compliments about my son,” the father said politely. He hesitated, then added, lowering his voice, “May I ask—what is it that you do? I need to understand. Are you an impresario?”

Mayerland inclined his head, acknowledging both the courtesy and the caution.

“No,” he said gently. “Not an impresario.” A brief pause. “I am Hans Dietrich Mayerland,” he added, offering a hand. “I work in Europe and the United States. I advise institutions that deal with… exceptional cases.”

The father hesitated, then shook his hand. The grip was firm, professional. Mayerland’s palm was cool.

“What kind of institutions?” the father asked.

“Educational. Medical. Cultural,” Mayerland said, as if the categories were interchangeable. “Children like your son attract attention. Not all of it benevolent.”

That did it.

The father felt the familiar tightening behind the ribs—the instinct to shield, to step between. “José is just a child,” he said, glancing toward the boy. “We are not looking for—”

“My work is advisory. I coordinate support for children whose abilities develop ahead of the structures meant to protect them.”

He gestured lightly, as if outlining an invisible network in the air. “Music. Mathematics. Literature, arts all kinds. Fields where talent often matures before judgment.”

The father listened, frowning slightly, uncertain. “José is very young,” he said. “Too young for any of this. First he must finish school. Later, we’ll think about music education.” There was a note of irritation now—not anger, but boundaries being drawn.

Mayerland did not challenge them.

“Of course,” he said. “Acceleration is rarely healthy. That is precisely the mistake we try to prevent.” He let the words settle. “We connect families with educators who know when not to push. Mentors who value form, endurance, and restraint over display. Conservatories reward exposure. We work in the opposite direction.”

“That sounds like…” the father began, then stopped. “…sponsorship?”

Mayerland smiled politely, as though the word were a simplification he tolerated.

“If support becomes necessary, it can be arranged. Discreetly,” he said. “Foundations. Fellowships. Private patrons who believe that protection is a form of investment.”

Investment. The word stayed with the father longer than the others.

“And what would that involve?” he asked. “For José?”

“Nothing immediate,” Mayerland replied. “No contracts. No commitments. No appearances.” He glanced briefly toward the boy. “Only informed choices. Proper musical education. Teachers who understand anatomy as well as interpretation. Physicians who recognize when brilliance begins to cost too much.”

The father followed his gaze. José was still smiling, unaware, flushed from applause.

“Thank you for your interest,” Mr Camberas answered at last, more firmly now. “But we really must go. We need to catch the bus.”

Mayerland did not block their way. He did not insist.

“So that talent is not spent before it matures,” he said quietly, almost to himself.

There was a brief silence.

“And what do you want from us?” the father asked, his voice low.

Mayerland considered the question.

“If you ever need counsel,” he said finally, “about training, placement, or protection—you may contact my office. Advice costs nothing.”

He reached into his jacket and produced a card.

It was plain. Heavy. Precise. No logo. No promise.

He placed it in the father’s hand.

Then he replaced his hat, nodded once, and disappeared into the moving crowd.

The father stood still for a moment, the card warm in his palm. Around them, people laughed, talked, congratulated. Life resumed its rhythm.

Only then did he take José gently by the shoulder and draw him closer.

“Stay near me,” he said quietly.

“What was that about, dad?” José asked.

The father did not answer at once. He folded the card and slipped it into his pocket, as if distance alone could make it safer.

“Nothing,” he said finally. But he did not look back to check whether the man was gone.

This chapter explores consent and control through genetic science. I’d love to hear which ethical line felt most uncomfortable here. How did it make you feel?

(You can reply with an emoji or a word.)

🌊 Unease / pressure

🧬 Curiosity / ethical tension

🤖 Fascination with AI

🕳️ Dread / descent

🕯️ Melancholy / loss