Discovery

by Douglas E Roff

  “Lucky for you, you mean. I’ve always known Adam was a bit of a sick fuck, just not with me. I always felt safe and maybe a little afraid when we were together. But he likes fucking people up. Physically, I mean. No issues with hurting strangers. Family no, never. He had an off switch for me and family, but that switch is perpetually on for ROW, rest of world. I think you are a lying, conniving scoundrel with hidden agendas as deep and mysterious as the Atlantic Ocean but messed up like him, no. I don’t see that.”

  Edward smiled at Hannah’s apt assessment. “I know this will sound insincere and totally self-serving but Adam and I, as well as Cindy, Rod, Maria and Agustin, we all love you very much. And you are family, as much as anyone else is family in our patchwork of unconnected and displaced souls.”

  “Really? Maria? I can buy the rest, sorta, but I never connected with Maria which I take is normally the kiss of death for anyone dating the boy king. Let’s be honest; Maria never thought I was the one or anywhere near good enough for Adam. As for Augustin, I maybe had a dozen words from him in seven years of hard labor. You’re the one insisting that actions speak louder than words and Maria’s actions were deadly darts.”

  “You’re wrong about Maria. And Augustin. It broke their hearts to have to accept the painful truth of what you just said about Adam. Do you think we don’t know? Do you think it’s easy for her to love her boy that much, as much as she loves her own flesh and blood, and think that maybe one day that he will do something seriously wrong? Maria understands Adam all too well which explains more about her relationship with you than you think. It’s not that Maria didn’t think you were good enough for Adam, it was the other way around. Maria was afraid of what Adam might do and was afraid you might not be able to deal with the stark reality of his true nature. She wasn’t happy when you two broke up, she was relieved. Things aren’t always the way they seem, and you don’t know the half of Adam’s real pathology. I can only say that in my own opinion, as I have said to you before, you dodged a bullet and should be relieved.”

  Hannah said nothing, just looked at Edward between bites of food she continued to not want to eat.

  “As to Adam knowing about your involvement in this little project, there are some impediments to full disclosure. First is the matter of his own involvement. He isn’t there yet but I’m banking on that just being a matter of time. In time, if there is enough of it, we’ll crack their codes and learn their secrets. Second is his level of maturity which is non-existent due to the boy king’s evident genius. It permeates every nook and cranny of his being, which is sometimes good and sometimes not so good. Sometimes he’s maddening and self-destructive. What Adam needs is a keeper or a minder, not a girlfriend.”

  Edward stopped and gathered his thoughts.

  “I’m not trying to be glib but to repeat, we love you enough to know you were destined for pain with Adam. And none of us wanted that for you or for him.”

  “That was … amazing. Is any of it true?”

  “All of it. Every single word.”

  “I’ll sign.”

  “What?”

  “Your fucking contract, you manipulative old geezer. I know it’s stashed in some folder in that old briefcase, so just get it out and give it here. And your favorite pen too. I’m done talking. Time to get to work.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Hand it over, old man.”

  Chapter 3

  Paulo sat at his desk in Princeton with three piles of paper stacked in front of him. On top of each stack was a summary carefully placed inside a letter size red folder. He had read the summaries and now needed some additional explanation of exactly what any of this should mean to him. He was seeking a timetable for completion of the projects to which the stacks related but the summaries were somewhat lacking in the specificity he required.

  Soon to be gathered in his office were two men and a woman. First was his brother, Enzo who would update and explain the least complex of the three issues: the whereabouts of the mysterious Tucson figure, the Human, who had eluded identification for going on five months. Large sums of money and extensive resources had been allocated to finding the Human pest but to date the normally effective and efficient Tracker and Captain classes had resolved nothing. Traditional methods of discovery and resolution of the problem assigned to them hadn’t yielded positive results. They were at an impasse, and new resources would now certainly be required. Enzo would give his brother the news and then requisition the assets he needed to complete his task.

  The second figure, Calista Gold, was a leading Gens research scientist from Chicago who headed up the Serum Project. Though nominally headquartered in Illinois, she traveled frequently around the United States and indeed the world, hoping to accelerate the process of refining the serums into working formulas. Her news for Paulo would not be encouraging; there had been little progress evident for over three years. When she first took over the project, there had been some initial new positive and exciting developments as well as a breakthrough of sorts. But her next twelve successive quarters of “little progress” did not sit well with Paulo who had privately and personally stressed to her the “fierce urgency of now”. She would undoubtedly explain the status of the project and ask for additional financial and scientific resources.

  The final figure was Giancarlo Garibaldi. An older and somewhat quixotic figure in the Gens leadership structure, he did not care for the Fortizi family and made no attempt to heal the already festering wounds caused by the shunning of his brother Vincenzo. It had been some ten years since his brother’s expulsion and Giancarlo missed him immensely. That Vincenzo had been accused of complicity in the deaths of certain Gens Elders at the hands of human assassins was to him preposterous. His brother, like him, was a true Gens patriot and fundamentalist who happened also to be a skilled researcher in virology. They transformed to serve the Gens Collective but preferred life in natural state. They did not engage in the business of killing fellow Gens and any accusation to the contrary was but scurrilous slander.

  Paulo cared not one wit for either of the brothers but recognized the immense importance of their work. The loss of Vincenzo had been a setback but at the time the V-1409-B program had not achieved its present status as that of critical importance. The E-5 virus study, as it was now called, had achieved results far faster than the Serum Project and was moving along quite nicely.

  From a standing start and with less than a third of the monetary and researcher resources allocated to the Serum Project, Giancarlo had made sweeping advances in part one of the two-part projects. Access to, and the use of, the DataLab Project scientific resources were a major source of progress, and, if significant results were sought, Giancarlo had delivered.

  The virus now denominated E-5 was a killer of humans without peer. It was a lethal combination of five highly virulent strains of genetically modified human diseases and was highly resistant to any known treatments, vaccines or therapies.

  The new strains of this synthetic virus had been successfully combined into a water borne carrier that could infect humanity within a matter of weeks once distributed around the world in the water systems of major cities. The incubation period was sufficient to hide the effects of the ensuing disease until it was far too late to curb its spread. But there were other problems. Serious problems.

  Chief among the drawbacks was the small issue of the toxicity of the virus to transformed Gens. This would normally alone be significant disqualifier for usage as many Gens had seldom transformed from human state back to natural state. What was still not well known was the extreme level of toxicity of the virus to Gens in natural state. This problem had long been suppressed by the researchers so that only a few were allowed access to the test results and conclusions drawn therefrom.

  Enzo was one of those who knew; Paulo was about to be added to the select group. Giancarlo estimated that if the virus was unleashed in its present strength and state, over 96% of humanity and 85% of Gens w
ould succumb within two weeks of infection. After that it would be hard to tell what might happen. The rate of mutation of the virus was off the charts and the consensus among the few researchers who knew of its virulence was that mutation might well eliminate the balance of the human and Gens populations who remained.

  And there was no cure or antidote for the E-5 strain. If the strain got out, the consequences would indeed be dire.

  Enzo and the two scientists sat across the massive desk in Paulo’s office as he finished a phone call to one of the Elders on the Great Council. The Councillor was preparing to hold a meeting with several of his regional Councillors and needed the latest update to help quell the mounting disquiet in his region. Much had been promised by Paulo in terms of progress toward resolving the loss of the Library and the war footing the Great Council was considering.

  Councillors everywhere were on edge. Most Elders recognized the seriousness of the loss of the Library in and of itself. They were just now beginning to see the connection between the loss of the Library and the possible calamities resulting from the uploading of the Library into the DL Main. All were concerned about what progress was being made in response to this new potential for disaster.

  Paulo studied the three faces in his office, then spoke, “I’m hoping you have something concrete that I can use to calm the fears that are permeating our people as we speak. And I don’t just mean here locally. That was Edwin Zuma from our South African Preserve. He has eighty-nine thousand new applicants for admission into their military training program. Last year he had eight thousand applicants and in the ten years before that, a grand total of three thousand eight hundred. Our entire Collective is on edge. What can you tell me? What progress have we made? You first, Giancarlo.”

  The old man wore his disdain for all things Fortizi as a badge of courage. Even the way Paulo framed his inquiries annoyed him. This young upstart Paulo had succeeded to the Leadership of the Gens during the post-war years following World War II. He had succeeded in securing that position though in the end, no one was quite sure how. Paulo and the entire Fortizi line had come to America from some obscure region in Italy following a scuffle with the Italian authorities. He had been a Tracker and Captain, but really, who cared? It was almost inconceivable that a Tracker and Captain from no-fucking-where, Italy could have lobbied the Leadership of the Elders and the Great Council to secure this prominent position without more to the story. Giancarlo didn’t know the story; few if any still alive did. And it bothered him to no end that someone so unqualified could be facing him across this desk. And asking him to explain himself. Unbelievable.

  “What would you like to know, Paulo? What, I mean. Have you even bothered to read my summary and progress report?” The disdain in his voice was lost on no one.

  “Mind your tone, Giancarlo,” Paulo said, “You can be sent off to join your brother if you’d prefer that to working with me. Of course, your brother may have already joined our ancestors, so it might get a little quiet. Even for you.”

  “I apologize, Paulo. I can assure you that I’m quite willing to work with the leadership of the Collective on my tasks and of course that includes you. If my tone suggested otherwise, the fault is entirely my own.”

  “Go on.” Paulo wasn’t buying what Giancarlo was selling but a minor rebuke was all that had been required to keep Giancarlo in line. It hadn’t always been that way and might not be that way in the future. Giancarlo was very old but believed he would live to see the day when the entire lot of the Clan Fortizi was properly shunned and sent off to the wilds of the Amazon rain forest. Paulo was aware of his detractors, which had grown in numbers since the loss of the Library became common knowledge. Paulo hadn’t shared with any Gens that he had foreknowledge of what Tomas was up to. Paulo knew if that information ever got out, he would likely disappear one evening along with his son, daughters and wife.

  “We have been quite successful in synthesizing the E-5 virus. While the mortality rates are extremely high among humans so too are they high among the Gens in either transformed or natural state. More concerning as an unknown are the high mutation rates making the long-term outcomes very unpredictable. We can certainly kill humankind, but we may end up killing ourselves at the same time. Our genetics are remarkably similar to humans in both transformed and natural state. This makes fine tuning to affect only humankind very difficult.”

  “What are your proposed avenues of new research? Where do we go now?”

  “I think we have to accept that we may never isolate the silver bullet that will kill just humans and reorient our new research into finding a cure. Possibly a vaccine but so far traditional methods of inoculation have proven ineffective.”

  “How do you know that?” Paulo asked pointedly.

  “Technically we don’t. We have only tested our hypotheses using computer simulations. No field testing yet. Too dangerous.”

  That was a lie.

  Giancarlo and his small cadre of Black Shirt rogue sympathisers had tested the E-5 on many occasions, just under controlled conditions in clean rooms with human subjects. Giancarlo was no longer faithful to the Gens Leadership, the Great Council or the Council of Elders. The Councils did not grasp the seriousness of the imminent problem posed by humanity and it was up to new and more aggressive Gens leadership to step up and accomplish what had to be done. Giancarlo would play ball with the Councils and their funding until he had something concrete to disclose. Then he would let the Black Shirt leader decide how and when to proceed. Giancarlo would gladly accept huge losses among his own kind if that meant the end of humanity on Earth.

  He wasn’t there yet but he was getting closer.

  Chapter 4

  “Thank you, Giancarlo. I see in your written report that you’re having some modest success with a new synthetic vaccine. Please keep us apprised of your progress on that and any other therapies that show promise.” He turned to the other scientist in the room, and said, “So, Calista, what have you?”

  “Right. Well like Giancarlo, I don’t have a lot of new news about our progress. We continue to modify our serum formula and test it on volunteers but so far, we haven’t moved the needle on a safe, effective and reliable solution to forcing or preventing transformation in either direction. We continue to make progress on the key benchmarks to success but in terms of “the” solution, no. I wish I had better news, but this research is so complex that we measure our progress millimeters at a time, not kilometers.”

  “Is there any way to speed up the research or any resources you don’t have, but still need?”

  “It isn’t resources we need. It’s a more complete understanding of the human and Gens genomes and how genes interact to create or influence one physical attribute or another.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Prior to deconstructing the human and Gens genomes, scientists, including our own, conceptualized physical attributes for a single individual as being a result of series of single controlling genes. For example, we thought there would be a single gene that controls, say, eye color. But as we delved more deeply into the human genome, we discovered that there are no single genes controlling anything. Using DNA to predict attributes in a specific single human individual was simply not possible. These predictions, which should have been highly accurate, simply were not. That being the case, scientists now believe that the complexity of the human genome results not from single controlling genes but from the interplay and influence of many genes and other genetic material on target genes. How these genes encode proteins, the degree of that influence, or the presence or absence of certain genetic material is a far more accurate way of understanding the problem. The latest research suggests that fifty or maybe even one hundred genes and other genetic material may influence a single physical attribute in an organism.”

  Paulo looked surprised, just not by the information he was hearing. Instead, he was shocked by the tardiness of this conclusion. She should’ve realized this year
s ago and changed the direction of her mandate. But Paulo said nothing, and asked “So, what is your conclusion then?”

  “I conclude that there are some twenty to twenty-five thousand protein encoding genes in the human genome. There are possibly one hundred thousand or more additional pieces of genetic material, historically referred to as ‘junk DNA’ that appear to be inactive, non-coding genes or RNA. But these are neither inactive nor are they junk. This non-coding genetic material probably still has a major effect on the encoding genes. New research suggests that at least eighty-five percent of this genetic material does something, even if we’re not sure what.”

  “So, the issue is substantially more complex than originally perceived.” An understatement.

  “Correct. Now we add in what we know about the Gens genome and try to understand why blood seems to catalyse a reaction resulting in transformation and we have a monumental task deciphering precisely how this all works. We need to understand the human genome and the Gens genome in much greater detail to begin understanding the transformative process. Finding a method and manner of determining which genetic materials do what in combination with other genetic materials, in human or Gens, is the real task at hand presently. We need to stop and recalculate where we are before proceeding. Otherwise the only way we could succeed would be by pure chance and dumb luck.”

  “And your timetable is?”

  “For?”

  “For recalculation and then progress toward a workable formula.”

  “The recalculation has already taken place. We have changed our research strategy from working on the entire human genome and the entire Gens genome to a more specific and localized analysis of the certain aspects of the Gens genome we believe is related to or controlling transformation together with a much deeper analysis of the genetics of human blood.”