In the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning (D.H.C.) is giving a tour to new students. They begin in the Fertilizing Room on the ground floor, an enormous laboratory where workers dressed in wintry white overalls and "pale corpse-colored" rubber gloves bend over instruments in the frozen, dead light. Here, eggs are extracted from human ova kept in incubators and then fertilized to produce five groups of people: Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons. (read more)