The Tomorrow Gene

by Sean Platt

  Someone is in here with me.

  He ducked, feeling more or less safe only after he was in a full squat behind a pile of disassembled steel fire pits and lawn furniture.

  But the room was silent. Full but not packed — orderly despite all that had been shoved inside it. Eden’s public areas were immaculate, managing to do so while also looking like nothing ever needed cleaning. But evidence to the contrary was here, on the walls, where pool skimmers and shelves of chemicals were lined like soldiers.

  Looking around, he was alone after all. The room simply wasn’t large enough for him and someone else not to notice each other. The piles weren’t tall enough to provide cover and the utility shelves, which made vague aisles in the only-somewhat-larger space, weren’t crowded enough to be opaque. The lights must’ve been left on by accident. Because really, the only way someone could be here without Ephraim seeing them would be if they were purposely hiding.

  Like maybe under that pile of pool covers in the corner.

  His heart beat harder, certain he’d seen something move by the covers. But it was only playing shadows. He walked over to be sure, nudging the thing he thought he’d seen with a toe.

  Nobody there.

  Nobody anywhere in here.

  He exhaled. Thought of Jonathan. Tried for calm.

  A small, unattractive desk hid in the corner. A computer terminal sat on it, keys smudged with grit from use. It looked like a workman’s computer — perhaps that of a groundskeeper, who couldn’t afford MyLife surgery and therefore needed a terminal to get his day’s orders. Behind the desk was an equally unattractive chair, its cushions intact and joints loose.

  Ephraim sat. The chair squeaked. His eyes went to the door, which remained closed.

  Ephraim struck keys, unsure of what he was looking for. Then he moved his finger around the screen, tapping icons. Everything on the machine seemed to be about maintenance. Nothing to see.

  He opened the web browser. It defaulted to an internal page, designated by a long IP address followed by slashes and a series of folders. A splash displaying Evermore logo — DNA fragments twisted into something like a Möbius — was center-screen. Below the logo were two text fields, one for a username and another for a password.

  “Great,” Ephraim mumbled.

  But what did he expect? That Connolly’s company would have an open intranet? That his best trade secrets — along with any relevant secret formulas — would be right there on the front page? Only an authorized person could get into this system — and if the “authorized person” for this terminal was a groundskeeper, Ephraim wouldn’t find anything worth knowing even if he had the login.

  Maybe a talented hacker could do something with what was in front of him right now.

  Or maybe someone on the inside.

  Ephraim tapped his temple, willing another MyLife popup to appear from his hidden helper. But there was nothing.

  He tapped the username field. A cursor appeared. Then, for kicks, he tapped the A key. He had his resin and false impressions firmly in place, so nobody would fingerprint the real Ephraim Todd based on anything he touched. Not that it would be possible, with all the gunk on the keyboard.

  A lower-case A appeared.

  Ephraim deleted the letter, then tapped B.

  He repeated it with C, then D, then E. Once he’d gone through F, compulsion required him to go the rest of the way. There was no point to any of this — no more, than coming into this room in the first place.

  G.

  H.

  I.

  Ephraim’s head perked up, hearing something outside.

  He waited.

  The noise, whatever it was, did not repeat.

  J.

  K.

  When he struck K, something moved outside. The clack of the key had hidden the noise. Maybe a worker, preparing to enter the room for a pool skimmer. It might be a guest taking a lawn chair past the door, trapping Ephraim inside the windowless closet until they were gone.

  Or the sound might have been even closer. Something inside the room, watching him.

  Ephraim waited.

  I need to get the hell out of here.

  But the compulsion had him. He was the kind of guy who had to check vending machines for change. Fiona knew that about him, as did anyone who spent much time with him. Ephraim Todd wasn’t without quirks. He wasn’t OCD, but once he thought that the front door might not be locked, he had to check it no matter how certain he was that he’d set the bolt.

  He touched the L key.

  He touched the M.

  And when he erased the M and tapped N, a small suggestion box appeared beneath the username field. It read neven.

  Ephraim’s brow furrowed. He tapped the suggestion, and “neven” popped into the username field. More importantly, a line of tiny black circles, like bullet points, filled the lower field designating a password.

  Whoever neven was, he or she had allowed the browser to save the password. That was an unforgivable breach of security. Forgivable in Ephraim’s mind, given that the password was about twenty characters long. It was probably a pool guy or the girl who gave out hot towels. Why remember a complicated password when the browser could store it? And why bother, when all “neven” had access to was probably the pool filter cleaning schedule and a timecard system?

  Ephraim submitted the information.

  The system logged him in.

  But the screen changed, and Ephraim realized this wasn’t a janitor’s access.

  CHAPTER 26

  LOGGED IN AND LIT UP

  The screen displayed something that looked more like team management software than an employee portal. Nothing was labeled “clock-in” or “clock-out.” There were no obvious spreadsheets showing grounds keeping duties.

  Instead, Ephraim saw several boxes of white content bunkered in a green background, like windows looking out through an emerald wall, filled with what looked like much higher-level information.

  In one window was a list of names in alphabetical order. There were options to search or sort by column — last name, first name, on/off status, present location. Scrolling right, he saw additional fields including job title and salary.

  Salary? Who other than accounting would have access to every employee’s salary? And why? Why here, in this dingy little room?

  Ephraim’s heart thumped in his chest. His eyes went to the locked door, seeing the bright line of sunshine leaking around the edges. Who used this terminal? What was this place?

  Frowning, Ephraim turned his attention to the screen’s other windows. One showed graphs Ephraim couldn’t decipher. Another showed a systems monitor, broken down by island. Only the main guest islands, Reception, Retreat, and Strand were shown. He saw nothing about the other islands.

  The lower-right window looked almost like a file tree. Ephraim tapped one entry at random. The screen changed, maximizing in a new program. Its screen was split down the middle. On the left were entries in a content database. The right showed the contents of the file Ephraim had tapped; in this case, a dense text file full of scientific terms Jonathan might have understood but Ephraim didn’t. He understood “genes” and “DNA” and “Precipitous Rise” (which he recognized more than knew), but little else.

  He tried to read it anyway, then surrendered. It was written like something for a scientific journal, too dense for layman's eyes. There was a one-third-page abstract at the top, but Ephraim couldn’t understand even that much. Something about the removal of insertions and deletions, the fidelity of two processes called “pseudomitosis” and “pseudomeiosis,” the use of a “full genome master,” and on and on. If Ephraim had to guess, it was a report on one of the higher-end spa treatments. Maybe even the Tomorrow Gene.

  But it made no sense. Why did a base worker who’d use this room have access to what he was seeing? And if this was protected information, how had Ephraim coincidentally ended up finding the right place, the right access, the right circumstances … all of which
had fallen before him like inevitable dominoes?

  He must be reading it wrong. Change a few of the terms and the dense text on-screen could be instructions for cleaning the biohazard catch bins after a guest underwent some treatment or another.

  How do you clean up the genome so that a guest’s skin looks ten years younger? You scrape the congealed shit out of the filter when they’ve moved on to get a facial. Then you dispose of it by pseudomitosis. Or possibly by flushing it down the drain.

  Ephraim almost laughed at the absurdity of his justifying thoughts. But if he did laugh, it’d be a manic laugh rather than a genuine one. A sign that he was coming undone.

  Nevertheless, the notion that Ephraim was misinterpreting what he thought he saw was the logical explanation. But Ephraim couldn’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t true — that he was seeing something restricted, no matter how absurd the circumstances.

  This was a glorified janitor’s closet with an executive’s file access.

  Ephraim held his eyes open and steadied his gaze, capturing the document to his MyLife. After a few seconds, he played the footage back.

  And of course, the video was corrupted. Now, of all times, he couldn’t even trust his implant. Stupid fucking glitchy device.

  He took out his Doodad and snapped a photo of the screen. If one technology failed, he’d rely on another.

  With the document captured for later, Ephraim closed it. He opened a few more at random, finding them all full of dense scientific jargon.

  There was a lot about the applications of Precipitous Rise genetic technology — enough to make Ephraim wish he’d done more pre-trip research. As things stood, he understood what he read only from a slightly-higher-than-lay perspective.

  Precipitous Rise had originally been used for crops, to make them mature faster and ready for harvest earlier. If normal corn took four to six months to go from seed to cob, a Precipitous Rise crop could be ready in a month or less. In addition, yields were much higher than even traditional GMO produce. Massive greenhouse facilities running PR strains of food stock plants could more or less solve world hunger wherever they were installed — and the heartiness of the plants themselves made them suitable for installation just about anywhere, even with minimal or unclean water.

  Water quality remained a limiting factor for the human element. Starving populations who’d been hungry before started complaining about being thirsty after Precipitous Rise had been around a while.

  But scanning through documents, Ephraim saw applications of the technology he’d only heard rumored in the past. The reasons, in the end, that Wallace Connolly had taken his operation offshore and invested in the largest land reclamation project in world history to build his resort. There were documents about organ farms, but they were archival rather than about Eden. The World Health Organization and the UN had both given their blessing for most of that. Rapid-growth tissue culture work, using PR, had first made replacement skin for burn victims using their existing healthy cells as a template. Other organs had followed. Labs were soon able to replicate a spent liver, lung and lymphatic tissue, even whole new hearts. You didn’t have to worry about rejection when a Precipitous Rise farm grew new parts from your DNA.

  Ephraim took photos of it all, curious where Eden’s research had crossed the UN’s line. He could send the photos to Fiona if he could find a broadcast location he trusted. It’d make her happy and shut her mouth. And the photos would probably be good enough to start talks about getting him off Eden and back home. Which was good, given the way everyone seemed to be staring at him lately and the way some mole was leading him around by the MyLife, drawing paint lines to follow.

  Because he’d been assuming it was Fiona who’d gotten him in here. But who knew?

  Another noise outside. Ephraim thought he’d calmed down, but apparently, he hadn’t. He jumped, racking the keyboard with the flat of his hand.

  A voice outside the door said, “It’s locked.”

  Ephraim looked over his shoulder, then all along the back wall.

  Nowhere to hide. Not unless he wanted to crouch in the corner and hope that no one looked his way.

  The person outside was going away from the door. Possibly because they didn’t have the right fingerprint to open it — or perhaps to fetch the person they’d been shouting to that the room was locked, because that person had the key.

  He had to get out. Now.

  He didn’t even have time to log out, though he’d have to.

  He should sprint toward the door, wrench it open, and hope that whoever had been jiggling the knob wasn’t standing there with someone authorized.

  Someone like Nolon. Not Neven, but Nolon.

  Who was already suspicious of Ephraim, apparently, judging by the look he’d given Ephraim in the cafe earlier.

  He hoped it wasn’t Nolon. He didn’t want to have to kill him again.

  Ephraim hadn’t moved since the shout. He was paralyzed by fear.

  He looked around again, but he saw nowhere to hide.

  But …

  His eyes landed on something with a feeling of salvation. He hadn’t seen it the first time because there was a sheet of plywood mostly obscuring it, but it was there, all right.

  There was a second door at the small room’s rear, also without a lock on the inside. It might lead into an even smaller room with more pool chemicals and cleaning implements — a closet within the closet. Or it might lead out. It might be a back door.

  Ephraim tiptoed over, then carefully slid the plywood away and turned the knob. He opened the door a sliver. He could see the back side of an open room with a low roof beyond, dimly lit. Like the portico above, where he’d left Gus, but one floor below. A stack of spa facilities, one under the other. But the room was empty with only soft light and the song of running water to fill it.

  But his eyes were on the door he’d used to enter. And on the computer screen, which was still logged in and lit up.

  He had something for Fiona. It might be no more interesting or confidential than an online wiki about Precipitous Rise, but at least it was something. It’d pacify her for a while. And on the high end, it might even convince her to bring him home.

  But Ephraim had nothing for himself. No fulfillment of the reason he’d begged Fiona in the first place.

  He looked at the door. Surely he’d hear the person if they returned with an authorized fingerprint. They wouldn’t storm in. They wouldn’t expect an intruder, so they’d casually enter. And that would buy him time.

  Maybe ten or fifteen seconds between knowing someone was coming in and being discovered.

  He’d have time to get out, no matter what he was doing that he shouldn’t be.

  He pulled a pen from a shelf of miscellany and used it to prop the back door open a half-inch. The computer was only a few feet away, and he had a straight line once he slid a drum of chlorine aside.

  He could make it if they returned.

  He tapped the screen again, his pulse rapid and fingers shaking.

  He clicked backward, returning to the view showing the list of names alongside the window of documents.

  Was he looking at a staff directory? A list of guests? Ephraim had no idea.

  He scrolled.

  All the way down to the T’s.

  And there it was, plain as day in digital black and white: Todd, Jonathan.

  Ephraim clicked Jonathan’s name and found what appeared to be an employee roster, topped with a head-and-shoulders photo of his older brother. The image’s background was Eden, not the mainland. And the information on the rest of the page was Eden as well.

  And that meant Jonathan was here, just as Ephraim had always been sure that he would be.

  Jonathan’s information sprawled below the photo.

  Date of birth.

  Education.

  Employee start date.

  Hire position.

  On-staff employee enrichment curriculum and training.

  Transfer history.
/>   Ephraim stared at the screen. At a small cluster of information, glaring so close after a while that he’d swear he could see the pixels.

  Near the top was a line that read: Current Status.

  Then there was a colon.

  And one word.

  Deceased.

  CHAPTER 27

  WHO ARE YOU?

  Factually speaking, “deceased” meant nothing more than that Todd, Jonathan, employed as Lead Geneticist, Islet 14, who’d recently taken Recursive Analysis - Course 6, (On-Island) as part of his ongoing training, was no longer consuming oxygen on planet Earth.

  But the plain way it was written chilled his blood.

  Why had nobody told Jonathan’s family that he’d died?

  Why had nobody told Ephraim, who’d made a spectacle of himself searching for information back on the mainland, when he wasn’t busy having mental breakdowns?

  And what did it mean that his brother’s fate was written beside Current Status? You didn’t put life and death in Current Status. You put it in the morgue. In medical paperwork.

  You didn’t smack it at the top of an employee profile.

  Ephraim imagined Eden’s human resources department pushing through reams of paperwork, trying to sort employees into their respective groups.

  This one is currently on disciplinary hold. He goes into this pile with the others needing HR intervention.

  This one got a positive progress report. Queue him up with the others for considered promotions.

  Oh, this guy is dead? Yeah, toss him in a pile with the others.

  The door rattled. It wasn’t someone trying the knob. It was as if someone were outside, shuffling keys in a pocket.

  Heart in his temples, Ephraim jabbed at the Log Out icon in the screen’s upper right corner. The earlier screen appeared, the username and password fields blank. Then, wondering if the screen had been asleep when he’d found it, and deciding that he didn’t know how to sleep it manually, Ephraim ducked away.

  Through his tiny aisle between the chair and back door.

  The latch clicked. The door shivered open.