Registry

The knock came at 6:17 a.m.

Not a pounding. Not a battering ram. A polite knock. That was worse.

Ellie didn’t answer. Not right away. She checked the feed on her slate—four government vans parked across the street. Two uniformed officers on the stoop. One drone hovering, lens already calibrated to her biometric ID.

She tucked her son tighter into the blanket. Leo stirred. He was always warm in the mornings, cheeks red, curls plastered to his forehead with sleep-sweat. Ten years old. Autistic. Bright as a magnesium flare. Loved satellites. Hated shoes.

The front door unlocked with a click.

It wasn’t broken. It was authorized.

“Eleanor Cruz?” The woman’s voice was soft. Trained to be. “This is a Wellness Retrieval. Under Registry Directive 4. You’ve been sent three notices.”

“I replied to all of them,” Ellie said. Her voice came out like gravel. “He’s not a threat. He’s a child.”

The officer didn’t blink. “He’s a high-complexity outlier with multiple environmental flags. Elevated sensory profile. Nonlinear communication. Comorbid processing irregularities.”

“He’s my son.”

“He’s also a data vector.”

Ellie stood between the officers and Leo. Her body trembled, but her voice held.

“He’s not going to a Center.”

The male officer—a younger one, twitchy—shifted his weight. “Ma’am, it’s not a Center. It’s a Stabilization Campus. He’ll have structure. Specialists. Regulation protocols.”

“And a number.”

A pause.

“Yes,” said the woman.

Ellie had read the leaked documents. Not the press releases. The real ones. The ones buried in whistleblower files and redacted memos. The Stabilization Campuses were full of children who couldn’t follow orders. Or who didn’t smile on cue. Or whose parents had refused the Behavior Optimization Drugs.

Some came back.

Most didn’t.

The drone beeped.

Leo blinked awake. Saw the uniforms. Burrowed deeper into his mother’s arms, like she could turn the living room into a shield.

“Mom?” he whispered.

“I’m here,” she whispered back.

The woman stepped forward. “You can visit. Once acclimation is complete.”

“Right.” Ellie didn’t move. “After he forgets my name.”

There was no struggle. There didn’t need to be. The drone tagged Leo’s biometric data, and the officers waited. Waited for Ellie to break. For the algorithm to override her parental claim.

And when it did, they reached past her—gently, professionally—and took him.

Not screaming. Not resisting.

Just gone.

Three streets away, a different family watched through their window.

They didn’t move either.

They’d already filled out the paperwork. Already flagged their son as “low risk” for reclassification. Already updated the SmartHome to broadcast state-approved learning programs at breakfast.

And prayed.

Because the next knock might not be so polite.

THIS WAS FICTION. But it might not be, soon enough.

Let’s call this what it is: a bright, flashing, sirens-screaming red alert.

Last week, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—currently serving as Secretary of Health and Human Services—announced the creation of a national autism database. On the surface, it sounds clinical. Scientific. Even benevolent. A tool to "identify environmental factors" behind rising autism rates. But beneath that clean veneer lies a brutal truth:

This is how eugenics comes back.

And this time, it brought data.

📋 What RFK Jr. Is Proposing

 Kennedy’s plan is sweeping. Using a centralized registry, the U.S. government will collect and combine data from:

• Genomic sequencing
• Prescription records
• Lab tests
• Insurance claims
• Smartwatches and wearable devices
• Educational and behavioral tracking

The goal, Kennedy claims, is to isolate the "true cause" of autism—something he asserts is environmental, not genetic or diagnostic. He’s promised results by September. Which sounds more like a campaign deadline than a scientific one.

Researchers will have access to this real-time data. External teams will be invited in. Your DNA, your prescriptions, your child’s smartwatch? All up for review.

🧪 What It Claims to Be

 Kennedy frames this as the path to prevention. A humanitarian quest. His administration claims the initiative will:

• Empower parents
• Advance medical research
• Protect future generations

But there’s a rot at the core of this logic: the framing of autism as something to be eradicated. Not understood. Not supported. But prevented.

That word carries weight. Dangerous weight.

⚖️ What It Could Violate

 Let’s talk law and ethics.

HIPAA? Already being stretched like taffy—data from wearables and third-party vendors often exists in a legal gray zone, and this initiative wants it all.

Informed consent? Sketchy at best. There’s no indication that individuals will have meaningful ways to opt out, especially if this becomes baked into federal policy.

Fourth Amendment? If the government is using real-time biometric surveillance and AI-driven analysis without a warrant or probable cause, that’s not research—that’s a dragnet.

Civil Rights protections? If autism becomes a category for special surveillance, restriction, or even detainment under public health rationales? We’ve entered the territory of targeted discrimination.

🚨 What Science Fiction Has Been Screaming About for Decades

 Let’s be clear: this isn’t new. This is old, dressed up in smartwatches and search algorithms. And science fiction? It saw this coming with eyes wide open.

• Robert Heinlein’s Beyond This Horizon: A world where unmodified humans are second-class. Sound familiar?
• John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids: Mutants hidden or exiled for their differences. “Purity” enforced at the edge of a knife.
• Sheri Tepper’s The Gate to Women’s Country: Eugenics as peace policy—decisions about who gets to reproduce made in secret, for “the greater good.”
• Thomas Disch’s 334: The poor and the genetically “unfit” live in welfare ghettos and are barred from reproducing. State control disguised as social aid.
• Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed: A being who decides who gets to breed. Who controls the population by controlling the definition of “worthy.”

These weren’t meant as instruction manuals. They were warnings.

🗣 Why We Must Say No—Loudly

 Because if they can do it for autism, what’s next?

• Hypertension? Too expensive to manage—better to "flag" at-risk people early.
• LGBTQ+ identities? Already pathologized by bad actors. Want that in a government database?
• Pregnant women? Already tracked, monitored, criminalized in some states. A database makes that efficient.
• Depression? ADHD? A non-conforming personality?

What RFK Jr. is building isn’t just a study. It’s an infrastructure. And infrastructures don’t stay on the shelf. They evolve. They scale. They spill over.

✊ Resist. Now.

 We cannot allow our country to slide from public health to social engineering.

We cannot allow science to be used as a mask for control.

We cannot allow people—children—to be tagged, categorized, and erased because they don’t fit a narrow definition of “normal.”

Speak out. Write. Organize. Protest. Call your representatives. Refuse consent. Demand transparency.

Because this is where it starts.

And if we don’t stop it now?

We already know where it ends.