Genesis Code

by Jamie Metzl

  “I’ve been fucking calling you because I got a visit this morning from Marshal Dickhead.”

  I can’t help but smile. “From whom, madam?”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” she says, flipping a calling card in my direction. Anderson Gillespie, United States Marshal.

  When she starts apologizing, I realize this can’t be good.

  “Look,” she says, leaning her head toward me, “I’ve never faced a 39(c). I always knew it was possible, theoretically possible.”

  “Until now,” I say, not sure if I’m asking a question or providing an answer.

  She looks at me square in the eye.

  “Can you tell me more?” I ask.

  “Marshal Dickhead and his creepy sidekick came by after you filed your story this morning. They couldn’t have been more polite. To tell you the truth, I hadn’t thought about the NPA in years, since the fight over the original law. It hasn’t been as bad as we’d thought and God knows we’re all living off of the federal money.” She pauses for a moment reflectively. “I’d almost forgotten what 39(c) stands for. But he was kind enough to bring a copy of the law with him and reminded me that we’d all made a deal and that the tab had come due.”

  “On my story?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he say why?” I ask after a heavy silence.

  “He said he didn’t have to. He read me the text. It says in black and white that the federal government can instruct a federally subsidized news organization to not cover a particular story for purposes of national security and the news organization must immediately cease coverage or, and he was very clear on this point, after two official notifications, lose NPA funding for a period of at least five years. On top of that, those responsible for any violations face personal criminal liability.”

  My mind races to integrate this new piece of information with of the other shards I’ve been collecting. The pieces don’t fit. “I can’t believe this.”

  Martina takes a one-page document from a folder on her desk. “This is notice one,” she says matter-of-factly as she hands me the document.

  By order of Article 39, Sub-Section C of the News Protection Act of 2021, this notice hereby orders the Kansas City Star to cease and desist immediately from providing any coverage whatsoever to the death of Missouri resident MaryLee Stock. If the Kansas City Star does not fully follow this order, one more official notice will be sent. If, following receipt of a second notice, the Kansas City Star continues to provide coverage of this matter, all NPA funding provided to the Kansas City Star will be terminated immediately, upon receipt of a third notice, for a period of no less than five years and those responsible for violating the cease and desist order will face personal criminal liability as will any other media or other organization that may publish or release this content. Per 39(c)(2) of the NPA of 2021, this order cannot be challenged in any court of law.

  “We have this law for two years and nothing and now they want to apply it in a case of a twenty-four-year-old nobody from Springfield?” I say.

  Martina and I have the same thought. It’s no longer just a case about a twenty-four-year-old from Springfield. She’s no longer nobody.

  I interlock my fingers in front of my mouth and start biting the tips of my thumbs. “What are we going to do?”

  “I spoke with Terry, I spoke with Wes,” Martina says. “The answer to that is clear.”

  Of course she’d had to go to the editor and the publisher.

  “They didn’t take much time to make the decision.”

  “And?”

  “What choice do they have? What choice do any of us have? Look at all of these people slaving away out there.” She points through her glass wall to the newsroom. “If we could afford this on our own, we would. We can’t. That was our deal with the devil in 2021. That was everyone’s deal. Americans wanted news organizations, but our financial model was broken. We either signed on the dotted line and took the government’s money or went bust. We signed. We got the federal subsidies. Now the chickens are coming home to roost.”

  “That, respectfully,” I say, “is bullshit.”

  “Of course it is, Azadian,” she says emphatically. “It’s complete bullshit, but it’s cost-benefit analysis. Do we risk everything for one story, or do we take a hit in the name of the greater good?”

  I shake my head from side to side. “And Terry and Wes said to drop it?”

  “Do you really need me to answer that? I thought you were the guy with the PhD.”

  “And I thought you were the one telling me to find a story. I come back with a list of extremely strange circumstances, something that might be huge, right in the middle of a political crisis that could split our country down the middle, now the federal government is weighing in, for Christ’s sake, practically announcing to us that something big is going on, and you’re telling me to drop it?” I say heatedly.

  “Don’t be in idiot,” Martina fires back. “We need to fucking exist in order to cover anything. Why would we throw all of it away to chase one story that isn’t even proven?”

  “I can’t believe that you, of all people, can say that.”

  “Believe it, Azadian,” she says fiercely, then pulls herself back. “Believe it,” she says again more softly. I’m not sure if I’m picking up a thread of remorse in her voice.

  “What percentage of our operating budget comes from NPA funds?” I ask, changing tack.

  “That I know precisely. Wes repeated it five times in our conversation. Fifty-three percent.”

  The number deflates me.

  “It’s not just the 53 percent,” Martina adds. “It’s the difference between the Kansas City Star existing or not existing, between all of us having jobs and unemployment, between doing what we do, even imperfectly, and doing nothing.”

  “And the cost is closing our eyes?”

  “I’m not even going to answer that, Azadian. Sometimes adults need to close their eyes for a moment so they can open them again.”

  “And if I keep looking into this anyway?”

  “You know the answer to that question. We’d have to fire you to protect the paper.”

  “And you think that’s what I should do?” I say, hardly masking the edge in my voice.

  I can read the distant fire in Martina’s eyes before she puts her elbows on the desk and leans all the way forward toward me. I can almost see the words “Fuck no” forming in her mind and reaching toward her larynx.

  “Yes,” she says softly.

  18

  “I’m going to tell Terry and Wes I’ve spoken to you and ordered you to drop the story.”

  I’m feeling less loving toward Martina. “And violating 39(c) is a federal offense.”

  “It is,” she says matter-of-factly.

  “Even though I was assigned the story by the Star.”

  “I am officially unassigning you. From my and the paper’s perspective, this story is done. We’re out of it.”

  The words hang in the air.

  “And,” she adds, “I’m assigning you to a new story. The flower show.”

  “The flower show?” The assignment seems like a cruel hoax. The flower show is truly the most boring, predictable, mind-numbing story imaginable.

  “Yup,” she says in the same tone as before.

  I begin to realize what I think she’s saying.

  “I don’t want to see you or Abraham around here working on the MaryLee Stock story. I don’t want to hear a thing about it. Got that?”

  I nod.

  “Well then. We are clear?”

  I hold her gaze for a few extra moments before I repeat her words. “We are clear.”

  I find Joseph still sitting on his swivel chair facing the wrong direction.

  “Walk with me,” I say.

  I’m not sure where we should go to talk but pick the most obvious and least appealing option simply for a lack of creativity. Joseph goes in first. I join him a few minutes later, locking the door of the special
needs restroom behind me.

  I tell him about my conversation with Martina, Maurice Henderson’s call, and the Centurion and Trojan horse Jerry has discovered. “Joseph, I don’t know what I’m going to do but you need to stop working on this story.”

  He doesn’t respond.

  “You could get deported for it, or worse. I’m not willing to take that chance.”

  Joseph pauses and looks at me with his thousand-year-old eyes. “What, and leave show business?” he says with a straight face.

  It takes me a few moments to process what he’s saying.

  When Joseph had first joined the Star, I’d made it my mission to make him smile. I was rarely successful. I told him the joke about the elephant manure cleaner at the circus who gets offered a high-paying desk job at a law firm. Joseph hadn’t smiled then. Now I want to hug him for repeating the punch line back to me.

  “I’m not here for the visa, boss,” he says earnestly. “I’m here because I believe in what this country stands for.”

  Both of us recognize the awkwardness of his idealism in light of what it looks like we’re now facing.

  “Do you think your system has been compromised?” My words feel like a betrayal of Joseph the moment they leave my mouth. I haven’t even fully decided what I’m going to do and I’m already putting him at risk.

  “Could be.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “As a start I think we need new u.Ds and new e-tags so we can connect anonymously.”

  I give him the $242 in my wallet. “We can have Jerry Weisberg synch our keys when you get the new devices. You can also probably use the old computer at the downtown library and the old pay phones for your calls,” I say, still amazed that pay phones have found a gasping lease on life, double-hatted as public Wi-Fi spots, one of the few concessions the telecommunication workers union was able to secure in the National Competitiveness Act.

  “On it, boss.”

  Momentum begins to feel like a non-decision decision.

  I look at Joseph for a moment, my mind pulling me in the two opposite directions of keeping him on the story because I need him and kicking him off because of the potential risks to him.

  “Okay,” I say heavily, “find me the doctor, keep digging on Becker, figure out what she could have bought at Corner Drug.”

  He nods.

  I feel undeserving of Joseph’s loyalty as I send him out of the bathroom and lock the door.

  I tap my u.D as I wait. The blinking red light indicates four messages. Three are frantic messages from Martina escalating from “Where are you?” to “Where the fuck are you?” to “Where the fucking hell are you? Call me immediately.” The fourth is less expected.

  “Rich, this is Maurice. New plan. Meet at Swope Park picnic area C, eight thirty tonight.”

  The Swope Park picnic area is no place for a white dude, no place for anyone respectable at eight thirty at night.

  Joseph surreptitiously hands me a printout as I walk toward the stairway door. The headline from the police wire tells me all I need to know.

  “MaryLee Stock declared dead by natural causes due to heart arrhythmia.”

  19

  There was a time when people believed that humans emerged from a divine spark.

  Nonsense.

  Science has shown us definitively that organic matter can emerge from alkaline hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean, that life itself can be generated from synthetic nucleotides, that thought and emotion are merely chemical reactions, and that all we ultimately are is a massively but not infinitely complex bag of bones and water with some electrical charges passing through.

  Buddhism accepts the transience of this limited physical presence but gussies it up with concepts of transmigrating souls and reincarnation. It would be nice to think I’ll be coming back for another round.

  I’m not.

  The great futurist Ray Kurzweil has been promising for twenty years that anyone who lives ten more years can live forever. He’s only seventy-five but now struggling on life support at Mass General Hospital. Hope of overcoming mortality springs eternal but the actuarial tables plod on.

  The evangelical Christians now fighting under the banner of Senator King and his army of the righteous have a complete answer to the existential dilemma. Accept God, fully recognize Jesus as his incarnation here on earth, follow all of God’s rules, and eternal life can be yours. Oh, and one more thing. Senator King and his colleagues will be the ones to tell you exactly what God wants you to do.

  I’ve always believed, on the other hand and perhaps to a fault, that the path toward knowledge requires chasing truth down its rabbit hole to its deepest, darkest core. So the idea of an autopsy, the word itself derived from the ancient Greek autopsia, “to see for oneself,” ought to appeal. The opposite feels true as I drive toward Truman Medical.

  I uSearch “autopsy procedure.” My sexy vixen u.D voice informs me that most states require autopsies for people who die without having been attended by a physician as I absent-mindedly roll through a stop sign. In these cases, the medical examiner doesn’t need family consent.

  The process described for cutting up the body is disturbingly graphic. A Y-shaped incision is made from shoulder to shoulder and then down toward the navel. The skin is peeled back and the rib cage is pulled from the skeleton. Then the larynx, esophagus, and various arteries and ligaments are taken out. The skull is cut with an electric saw and opened so the brain can be removed.

  I’d only met MaryLee, if I can use the word “met” loosely, when she was lying dead on her carpet. I’d seen her presence reflected in the absence on her mother’s face. I’ve only been chasing her down for three days now, but the thought of her being ravaged with a Y-incision nauseates me nonetheless.

  It would be nice to believe MaryLee is smiling down from heaven or being reborn in the spirit of a newborn crying in a nursery somewhere. She is not. She is cut up and in a box. The image pains me.

  Tucked away in a corner of the pathology department, the medical examiner’s office is easy to find. The hall stinks of formaldehyde and Lysol.

  “I’m looking for someone with whom I can discuss a, a . . . deceased,” I say as I approach the nurses’ station.

  “And you are?” the receptionist asks, not looking up.

  I pause for a moment, unsure who I am. I’m not officially representing the Star, I’m not a friend. What am I?

  “I’m associated with the family of the deceased,” I say.

  “Associated?” she asks, her head still pointing down.

  “The mother, of the deceased, asked me to come.”

  “Uh, huh,” she says, “and who exactly are you here to inquire about?”

  “Ms. MaryLee Stock.”

  She finally shifts her head upward. “We are not able to provide any information to the public. The report was released earlier today.”

  “Yes,” I say, “I know. I was wondering if there is anyone I can talk with about her situation.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” she says sharply, “that is not possible. Is there anything else?”

  “No, thank you,” I say with an ingratiating smile as my mind races to conjure Plan B.

  I move back toward the elevators and step into the men’s room. I wait a few minutes before exiting and head the other way.

  I’ve spent enough time in this hospital to understand its architectural logic. I trace a figure eight, the opposite direction until I see the door I’m looking for: Martin A. Papadakis, Medical Examiner. I open the door and knock as I enter.

  “Excuse me, Dr. Papadakis?” I say.

  He looks up from his papers, startled. Jet black hair slicked back over his head, his sunken eyes, and round face give him a panda look but nothing about him seems cuddly.

  “I’m Rich Azadian from the Kansas City Star.”

  “And what are you doing in my office?” he asks coldly.

  “I’m covering the death of Mary Lee Stock.” I tell the truth and lie
simultaneously.

  “Before I ask you to leave, I’ll remind you the official report on that case was released this morning.”

  “I know.”

  “Then thank you and goodbye,” he says tersely.

  “Heart arrhythmia?” I throw the words out.

  Papadakis pauses for a moment to absorb my words. I almost sense a twitch. “Yes, Mr. Azadian,” he says calmly. “I did the autopsy myself.”

  I try to block from my mind the image of him gutting MaryLee like a fish then sawing off the top of her head. “Did you find anything else irregular?”

  “Of course I cannot speak to the press, or to anyone other than next of kin for that matter.”

  “Did you see a needle mark on her arm?”

  “This is a hospital, a confidential environment,” Papadakis spits, leaning back against his chair.

  “I understand,” I say. “Can you please tell me if you follow the JCAHO guidelines, Dr. Papadakis?”

  He doesn’t respond.

  “I believe the Joint Commission for Accreditation of Health Organizations sets guidelines for autopsies,” I add, “and I just wanted to see if you followed them.”

  “What are you getting at, Mr. Azadian?”

  “You’ve provided the preliminary report within the required three working days, but I wanted to see if you plan on retaining tissue for additional tests?”

  Papadakis’s face begins to redden with a growing rage. He takes a deep breath and composes himself. “This is really not appropriate, Mr. Azadian. Are you going to leave my office or would you prefer I call security?” He reaches toward the screen embedded in his desk.

  Even from where I’m standing near the door, I notice a slight tremble in his hand. I pause a few moments to test what he will do. His fingers don’t move. With all the strange circumstances surrounding this story, why am I not surprised?

  “So sorry to bother you,” I say, backing out the door.

  20

  I’m tempted to just drop by the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit to say hello to Toni. I haven’t seen her in six months and a little voice in my head tells me that dropping by unannounced is probably not a good idea. I hope she doesn’t see me as I dart out the door.