By The Numbers: 397

...was the score Cyril Wong got on the Adjusted Abbernathy-Zakharias Genetic Acceptability Test. 400 is a perfect score and Cyril beat the runner up by 76 points. This was more than good enough to get Cyril into the Human Environmental Adaptation Project.

The project was designed to speed up human adaptation to the coming Ice Age. Things had been very hot and chaotic on Earth for the last 35 years, but once the ice caps had mostly melted, the cooling began to happen. Fast cooling ... really fast cooling.

So Cyril was collected, selected, inspected, detected, injected, infected and protected until he started to adapt to the climate controlled Ice Age environment that the government had placed him and 19 other humans into.

And adapt they did, but not how the scientists had predicted.

See, the scientists figured that Cyril and the rest would get hairier, shorter and in general more like Neanderthals. It was the logical adaptation to life in a cold climate. When Cyril began to exhibit enlarged cranial growth, the scientists were fascinated. When he and the other 19 subjects took total control of their minds, they were screwed.

In a few days, scientists worldwide were working 24/7 on building an incredibly advanced spacecraft. They were aided in this by most of the population of the planet. Meanwhile, The Twenty did some genetic experiments of their own and came up with a retrovirus that actually did change humans into a Neanderthalish sort of being. Two years later, when their spacious and comfy and very well stocked spacecraft was finished, The Twenty left for Mars. Before they took off, they released the retrovirus across the globe.

And that's how you survive an Ice Age.