Aria had persuaded enough sponsors and funding institutions to raise more than enough money for her research.  By February, 2213, she had the first modified embryos developing and was about start implanting them.  Because she was not sure what to expect, she started small, and in any case, she only had permission to bring three fetuses to maturity. 

Aria had found three fertile women who were willing and able to be surrogate mothers to these modified male fetuses.  They happened to be students in the program who were interested in the research Aria was doing, and perhaps the possible realities that would result.  The three students were Rachel – a petite redheaded girl from the Southwestern U.S., Jessica – a brunette from Montreal, Canada, and Devi – a cute and energetic girl from Kerala, India, who was almost as tall as Aria.  Aria had three half height embryos ready for her volunteers.  She also worked tirelessly to create a single viable zygote of the one tenth size version that she was still keeping secret.  She had already named this one Adam, even the zygote was special to her because it represented what she really wanted out of this project - her end goal.  She figured that Adam was a good name because he was the first “man” in the new form of mankind, and just as the Adam of biblical mythology, he was created as the first of his kind and for a special purpose only his creator knew…

All four of the modified zygotes had extensive changes to their Y chromosome.  All of the zygotes were otherwise extremely genetically fit, and had heightened bone density, strength, fertility, immune systems and intelligence.  Aria had confined her own modification efforts to the Y chromosome on the excuse that it was easier to add to because it was already so small, the real goal was to confine the modifications to males and make it freely inherited only to male offspring.   

Keeping the Adam zygote secret was of paramount importance, she did not want her true intentions to come out, certainly not any time soon and ideally not until her plan had reached the point of no return.  Were her plans publicly known, there would undoubtedly be considerable resistance.  Aria decided that the only good option was to impregnate herself with Adam – nobody would know that she was pregnant because he would be so small, probably less than an inch.  Full gestation would probably be reached earlier as well because of the small size, as early as 3 months by Aria’s estimation in Adam’s case.  The other embryos probably would be ready for birth after about 7 months. 

Aria had her volunteers impregnated in the first few weeks of February and she secretly implanted the Adam embryo inside herself on February 14, Valentine’s Day, a symbolic date for her because she had poured so much of her life into creating that little embryo, and she could not help be attached to its welfare, she loved Adam already even though Adam was just a single cell at this point.  That tiny cell represented the future she wanted not only for herself but for the world. 

Months passed and Aria made sure to keep monitoring herself and the three volunteer mothers who had the three publicly known embryos in them.  So far things had worked better than she could have hoped.  All three of the half height embryos were doing well - as was Adam who was developing inside her own womb.  She had to be careful as Adam developed because the tiny baby could at any moment be born, and she had to make sure that she would notice the event so that she could provide Adam with proper care.  

Aria was very excited, especially about Adam’s upcoming arrival.  She of course also cared about the three publicly known half height embryos, but with Adam it was so much more personal and exciting for her.  She knew already that he came from Caucasian donors, and had blue eyes and would have brown hair.  If her estimates were correct, he would be ready to leave the womb around May 25th and would be only about an inch tall little baby.  Even on reaching adulthood, Adam would only be about four inches tall.  The other three could be expected sometime in September.  They could be expected to reach about three feet tall on adulthood, a short stature to be sure but not too much of a reduction for the public to stomach and not unprecedented in recorded history.