Matthew Icarus

[Icarus]

Miranda.

## Biography

[bio]

Dr. Icarus gave an interview to *60 Minutes* on January 19, 1970.

> “I lost a daughter. My work, every second of my life, are geared toward making sure no other parent has to experience that void inside them.”
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> —Interview with Matthew Icarus
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Dr. Icarus teaches genetics at Yale University c. 1974.

> "Violence is no more a genetic predisposition than is a taste for spicy food. Violence is in the mind. Violence does not interest me."
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> —Matthew Icarus, unpublished lecture to his genetics students at Yale University, 1974
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He opens the Icarus Fertility Clinic in 1988. Icarus Method, gene-therapy treatment to stimulate female fertility.
He gave the commencement speech to the MIT class of 1990.

> “This is the world I wanted. But there is still pain, and fear, and suffering. I guess at least now we have a chance to fight back. Against evil. Against evolution.”
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> —Matthew Icarus, unpublished commencement speech
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Icarus Fertility Clinic closes in 1991.
Dr. Icarus commits suicide in 2020, leaving behind a note:

> "I cannot fight the future. I only hope my children will."
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> —Matthew Icarus
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## Research Notes

Dr. Icarus kept research notes in which he recorded his experiments.

### Excerpts from Known Entries

* Test Subject 1102, code-named “Alpha” - "It was the most extraordinary thing I had ever seen. I now understand Einstein, Oppenheimer, Bell. I understand what it means to glimpse the face of God."
* Subject 3224, aged 7 - "3224 exceeds every expectation. What 1102 showed me was but a shadow of what this child can do. Such wonderful things he shows me. Even corporate is pleased."
* undated - "In vitro test subjects are risky. The incarcerated population provides an ample cross section of genetic material to test gene therapy on, and raises considerably fewer questions."
* undated - "These parents have no conception of what their children could become. This isn’t merely science … this is evolution."

## Diary

Dr. Icarus kept a diary in which he recorded the creation of Icarus Biological and the formation and experimentation of extrahumans. The entries date from 1972 to his death in 2020.

### Excerpts from Known Entries

* May 11, 1972 - "A human being will never be able to walk through walls or levitate above the ground. Not without certain improvements at the genetic level."
* June 16, 1976 - "I have absolutely no doubt that this technique could have saved Miranda’s life. I was too slow. Too slow by half. Never again. Nothing stands in the way of my work."
* October 30, 1982 - "I tried for days to make Subject 1102 replicate the effect, but in the end I failed. An autopsy will probably tell me more."
* 1985 - "Adult subjects are unsuitable for replicating the research conducted on 1102. No money. No test subjects. Grants are thin on the ground for a study with only one verifiable instance of success. But I saw it. I heard him in my mind. I saw what he showed me. If going to the corporate sector means seeing that again … so be it."
* September 20, 1986 - "I have no regrets. Scientific advancement never merits begging forgiveness."
* 1988 - "I don’t mind this life as much as I thought. And people ask very few questions when you’re giving them what they want most in the world."
* 1989 - "The treatment is proven to work, now. Miranda, if only you could see. All you went through was worth something, finally. Now hundreds of children will never be sick or weak. They’ll never be you."
* 1991 - "I know they’ll ask me if I knew they were making these children into weapons. I know they’ll ask about the missing parents, the experiments, the in vitro fertilization. I know someday, somebody will drag this into the light and they’ll ask. I guess I’ll lie."
* March 3, 1991 - "Subject 3224, the child in question, is in our care. His parents are dead. The president of the board tells me it was a car accident. Natural causes. I ask myself do I care that he’s lying? I’m afraid the answer is no."
* 1993 - "I thought about leaving once. Corporate put me in a room with a child who can see thoughts, lies. They made it clear I wasn’t going anywhere. I wasn’t really going to do it, but now I know how important my work is to them. Miranda, I’m so sorry."
* 1994 - "It’s odd hearing my name on television. They call me a genius, on a par with the greatest in history. When they’re not calling for my death, for trying to play God."
* 2018 - "I have no illusion that I’m in control. I’m the figurehead, the man who unlocked the door to the age of the extrahuman. But Corp is the master of their fate. Those poor children. I should have never tried to save them."
* 2020 - "Instances of violence among what Corp is calling “extrahumans” is nearly 33 percent higher than that of the general population. Suicide, depression, schizophrenia, and a host of other disorders … all off the charts. Nobody listens. Nobody ever listens to me."
* 2020 - "Corp-Co has built its empire on the broken backs of my children. I pity them. They have no idea the storm they’ve started brewing."
* 2020 - "The horror is, I can pinpoint exactly how it came to this. How I changed the world. I wanted to save my daughter. I doomed the world instead. I doomed it to Corp, and to their Squadron of thugs. I opened the floodgate, and the tide has drowned me."
* undated - "We put safeguards in place to monitor the children. Puberty is often the trigger, although sometimes the abilities manifest earlier. My silent partners are very interested."
* undated - "Out of all of the children I’ve created, the only ones who scare me—really terrify me—are the Mental powers. If they realized their abilities … who knows what they could do?"