Change Agent

by Daniel Suarez

  Desai nodded to Durand and pushed through.

  Durand followed.

  Inside, instead of the private booth he had expected, there was a small sitting room, with normal-sized chairs arrayed around a shorter-than-usual table, at which sat a dwarf with a brooding, handsome face and tousled brown hair. He wore a collared silk shirt and LFP glasses adapted to fit antique frames. The room was otherwise covered in Persian carpets, velvet throw pillows with tassels, and oil paintings of twentieth-century Asian businessmen in suits and ties. It was as though someone had furnished the place entirely from the bankruptcy auctions of pre–fourth industrial revolution companies and raided bordellos.

  Durand guessed the dwarf was under a meter and a half tall. Except for his diminutive arms and legs, he was normally proportioned and clattered away on a totem keyboard. Several other inscrutable totem devices stood on the table beside him. Durand knew those inert pieces of plastic would look quite different through LFP glasses.

  A piece of crystal stemware also stood on the table, its mouth bridged by an ornate silver spoon holding a sugar cube. An open bottle of absinthe stood close by along with a pitcher of water. Vapor wafted upward from the man’s 1930s-style vape pen. A blister pak of printed pharmaceuticals also sat open on the table, with two tabs out of four empty.

  Desai and Durand eased into rattan chairs on the far side of the table. The dwarf’s unwelcoming stare followed them both.

  He took a pull from his vape pen and spoke with a mid-Atlantic American accent as vapor curled around him. “Radheya Desai. Not a face I’ve seen in a while. I heard you were farming juice boxes back in the Bubble.”

  “We all have bills to pay.”

  “I see you brought a menacing stranger along.” He resumed tapping at his totem keyboard. “Unannounced.”

  Desai smiled. “A business opportunity, Bryan.”

  Durand cast a wary look Desai’s way.

  “Dr. Bryan Frey, please meet . . .” Desai gestured to Durand. “Let’s just say a most fascinating friend.”

  Frey continued typing. “I have yet to meet any friend of yours I’d call fascinating.”

  “Then this will be the exception.” Desai turned to Durand. “Dr. Frey holds a degree in genetic engineering from the University of Bonn. His specialty is bioinformatics—computer modeling to develop new CRISPR edits for numerous species.”

  Durand watched Frey still tapping away. “Human edits?”

  Frey spoke without looking up. “No, those would be very illegal. What I do is considerably less so.”

  Desai gestured. “He is an editor for hire—jail-breaking closed-loop proprietary agricultural sequences. He also creates edits for house pets and the occasional chemical biohack for humans—synthesized supplements, things of that sort.”

  “Anything that hardens dicks is a big seller.” Frey glanced up. “In the humans, not the pets.”

  Durand eyed Frey dubiously.

  “Look at it this way: I’m saving the rhinos.”

  Durand spoke to Desai. “You brought me to a back-alley gene hacker?”

  Frey pointed to the door. “Piss off, ‘most fascinating friend.’”

  Desai motioned for calm. “Dr. Frey has an open mind, and he is an engineer of considerable talent.”

  Durand nodded to the printed pharmaceutical blister pak. “Yeah, he looks real solid. I crossed the Johor Strait to meet this guy?”

  “I can think of no one better suited to answer your question.”

  Frey studied Durand. “Crossed over from Singapore, eh? The Orange County of Asia. Personally, I prefer my corruption a shade less self-righteous.”

  Desai turned to Frey. “A sonic curtain, if you please, Bryan.”

  Frey sighed. “Your mistake, Rad, is that you think anyone gives a shit about what you have to say.” He fished in a nearby leather satchel and produced a metallic wand. With a click, three legs extended from it, and he placed it on the table. “This is a two-person unit, so we’ll have to get chummy.” He pressed a button. A high-pitched noise raced past them.

  Durand was familiar with the devices—white noise projector. They generated a wall of scrambled audio—canceling vibrations within a sphere and generating random noise in its place. They’d be able to speak freely without being overheard by nearby microphones or eavesdroppers. Interpol’s GCI was surrounded by them. The sonic walls near the bar doorway and the dance floor were based on similar principles.

  As Durand pulled his chair close to the table, he and Desai passed through a field of noise that buzzed in their ears. Then the sound of the bar beyond vanished. The echoes now made it sound like they were conversing in a closet.

  Desai leveled a stare at Frey. “Bryan, my friend here is wanted by the authorities.”

  Frey glowered. “You’d better mean Singapore authorities.”

  “Yes . . . among many others. And yet he is, himself, an Interpol agent.”

  Frey’s face turned decidedly grim.

  Desai continued. “He is, in fact, the lead analyst for Interpol’s Genetic Crime Division. Possibly the man most responsible for the raids shutting down illicit embryo clinics worldwide.” Desai gestured. “Dr. Bryan Frey, meet Agent Kenneth Durand.”

  Frey turned from one to the other man several times. “You brought an Interpol agent here—to my office? Are you insane?”

  Desai motioned for calm. “There are reasons, Bryan.”

  “Reasons. I can’t imagine any reason why you would bring a world policeman to see me—much less into this establishment.” He gestured to the curtains. “Please leave, gentlemen. It is my sincere hope you do not get murdered on the way out. Although I wouldn’t count on it.”

  Desai persisted. “This is a special case, Bryan. Look . . .” And with that Desai hauled off and slapped Durand across the face—the hit echoing in the closed acoustic environment.

  The surprise of the slap was worse than its sting. Durand leaped up, grabbing Desai’s wrist in a crushing hold. The table shook, toppling the bottle and pitcher.

  Frey stood. “Careful, goddamnit!” He grabbed for the water pitcher.

  Durand used Desai’s tie to pull him close. “What the hell, Rad?”

  Desai winced as Durand’s powerful fist held him. “Look, Bryan! Look.” Desai pointed to Durand’s face and neck.

  Sure enough, Durand could see the tattoos fading into place on his forearms and the back of his hand as he held Desai in a crushing grip. No doubt they were doing the same on his neck and elsewhere.

  Frey righted the spilled bottle, and looking up, his face went slack. He focused with new interest on Durand.

  Durand released Desai. “You goddamned idiot.”

  Desai straightened his tie. “My apologies, Mr. Durand. But a picture is worth a thousand words, as they say.”

  Frey stared closely at Durand’s arms as he wiped liquid off his inert keyboard. “I must confess I’m curious. What am I looking at ?”

  “Chromatophores, Bryan. Genetic tattoos. Integrated into his skin.”

  Frey gave an incredulous look. “No . . .”

  “I have microscope slides. It’s seamlessly integrated into his nervous system.”

  “How in the hell . . . ?”

  Desai looked giddy. “Isn’t it incredible?”

  “Well, it might be incredible, but I’m curious why a ‘wanted’ Interpol agent is fronting exotic synbio. Are you offering the IP for sale, Mr. Durand?”

  “The tattoos aren’t why I’m here.”

  “Undercover—is that it? Thus the whole ‘wanted man’ nonsense?” Frey dropped the keyboard onto the table. “If you came here to recruit me as an informer—”

  “Bryan, listen: these tattoos are nothing. Nothing. Mr. Durand is here to request your help on something much bigger.”

  Frey laughed ruefully. “Well, you can go screw
yourself, Agent Durand—or whoever you are. You may have some impressive Straitie toys, but I don’t talk to cops and no doubt the gentleman out front has already pegged you for a cop.”

  “I’m not here for Interpol. I came to ask for your help.”

  “Well, I don’t want to help you.” Frey jabbed his vape pen at Durand. “World-government types like you are the reason I wasn’t born both handsome and tall. My achondroplasia could have been corrected in vitro by my mother. A fairly straightforward mutation in the fibroblast growth factor receptor three gene that could have easily been modified. But no, because it wasn’t on the ‘UN-approved’ list of genetic edits, I get to stare at people’s crotches my whole life. Asshole.”

  Durand felt his temper flaring.

  “The tattoos are intensifying, Bryan. See how they’re linked to his central nervous system?”

  “That is pretty impressive—”

  Durand leaned across the table—almost up to Frey’s face. “Listen, you shit. You have no idea what I went through to get here—”

  “I pay rent here. If you so much as touch me, they’ll find your body in the—”

  Desai tugged at both the men’s sleeves. “Please! Please. Gentlemen. Sit, Mr. Durand.” Desai turned to Frey. “None of this matters. Bryan. Look at Mr. Durand—whom does he resemble?”

  Frey glowered. “Homo neanderthalensis?”

  “No! If you check the news, you will see that an Interpol agent named Kenneth Durand went missing over a month ago—presumably kidnapped by the Huli jing. Today Mr. Durand sits before you, physically transformed.”

  Frey glared. “I’m not in the mood for cryptic games, Rad. I’m busy. Now leave, both of you, before I have management throw you out.”

  “Mr. Durand was genetically edited, Bryan. The Huli jing edited him in vivo. In vivo. A mass genedit to a living organism. To a living adult human being.”

  Frey stopped cold. He looked intensely at Durand—then back at Desai. “Get the hell out of here.”

  “You’ve heard the rumors, same as me.”

  “People say lots of crazy shit, Rad. It’s just talk.”

  “Is it?” Desai put his hand on Durand’s muscular shoulder. “The Huli jing modified Mr. Durand’s DNA, making him both a forensic profile match and phenotypical match for Marcus Wyckes. Look . . .”

  Durand removed the phablet from his cargo pocket. The Interpol Red Notice was still displayed on its screen as he slid it across the table to Frey.

  “But I don’t think it was a complete transformation—I think his vital organs remain unchanged. If we run a genetic sequence on this man and compare it to his original DNA, there will be massive overlap. You don’t have to believe me; run bioinformatic models on both samples and the similarities should be obvious.”

  Frey watched Durand closely, and then snatched up the phablet, his eyes scanning the printed DNA ladders and the mug shot photo.

  Desai pressed. “Search the newsfeeds. You will see photographs confirming that the man sitting before you is the infamous Marcus Wyckes—and yet he is not. Ask yourself: Why would Marcus Wyckes come to you for help? Marcus Wyckes has an army of bioengineers.”

  Frey scrolled down, quickly reading through. He finally looked up again. “Yes. I’ve heard rumors about living edits, but around here everyone wants to be something or someone else. Desperation makes them willing to believe any rumor.” He slid the phablet back to Durand, eyeing his guest closely.

  Durand stared back.

  Frey then picked up his phone totem.

  Durand’s hand shot out to grab Frey’s wrist. “You’re not calling anyone.”

  Frey looked with impatience at the massive hand clutching his wrist. “I’m checking newsfeeds to confirm a few things. I’m sure a world policeman like yourself can appreciate the need to gather evidence.”

  Durand released Frey’s arm.

  “Keep your sausage fingers off me.” Frey became engrossed in his virtual screens. He looked into space with the dreamlike trance of someone engaging with a private light field projection. He slid something unseen in line with Durand, apparently comparing reality to the virtual. “Well. There you are. Marcus Demang Wyckes. A twenty-first-century Pablo Escobar. Mass murderer. Slaver.”

  Frey lowered his arms, clearly engaging with the reality in front of him now. “I’d like to apologize if I have in any way—”

  “Bryan! He’s not Marcus Wyckes. I’m telling you.”

  Frey pondered the situation. “Well . . . there seems to be a reward of ten million yuan for his capture, dead or alive—though I don’t imagine there will be many takers.”

  “The reward is nothing—nothing—compared to this technology, Bryan!”

  Durand leaned forward. “I’m not Marcus Wyckes. I’m Kenneth Durand. The Huli jing hit me with some sort of injection that put me into a coma. I woke up like this, and I need to get changed back to my original DNA. What I need to know is whether that’s possible. You’re a genetic engineer. I need some answers.”

  Frey let out an exasperated laugh. “I’d be guessing.”

  “The Huli jing edited me once. Could they use my original DNA to change me back?”

  Frey pondered the question. “You claim that you—an adult human—have been genetically edited, even though it’s never been proven possible. My immediate reaction is that you’re a raving lunatic.”

  Desai interjected, “You can sequence his DNA—”

  Frey held up a silencing hand. “Except. Except your face is also undeniably all over the feeds as Marcus Wyckes and you’ve got some incredible synbio tech woven into your skin. Which means you’re no run-of-the-mill lunatic.” He sighed. “If you’re really this Kenneth Durand—I would give anything to know what biotech was in that injection. It would have to be virally based—possibly XNA machinery—to get around the immune response.”

  Desai interjected. “He was swollen up like a balloon, Bryan.”

  “Like a chrysalis . . .”

  “Yes, I thought the same thing!”

  “Interesting . . .”

  Durand ignored their apparent excitement. “Just answer my question. Could the Huli jing change me back to myself?”

  Frey took a big pull on his vape pen. “If—and this is a big if—if Huli jing genetic engineers have developed the ability to edit living organisms. If they have somehow decoded gene expression, figured out how to evade all the body’s natural defenses and rewrite genetic code even as you lived and all without instigating a necrotic cascade. If they can do that . . .”

  Durand hung on Frey’s words.

  “I see no scientific reason why they couldn’t reverse it.”

  Durand slumped in relief.

  Desai leaned in. “Think about it, Bryan: editing the DNA template is the Holy Grail. If we could reverse engineer their change agent—”

  Frey interjected, “We’re not about to go into competition against the Huli jing, Rad. I rather like being alive.”

  “No, of course not. But what about selling the tech? Anonymously. In the blockchain markets. It would be worth a bloody fortune.”

  Durand cast a dark look Desai’s way. “What the hell are you talking about—selling it? Selling what?”

  “The technique only, Mr. Durand. Just the technique. A blood sample is all we need.”

  Frey was nodding to himself. “I will say it makes sense that the Huli jing would be the first to have this. They have more unwilling human test subjects for genetic experimentation than I care to contemplate. They’ve got hundreds of billions of yuan.”

  “It is unethical, without question, but think if they accomplished it, Bryan. Think what it would mean.”

  “I wonder what they’re doing with it.”

  Durand looked closely at Frey. “Will you help me?”

  Frey sighed. “I’ll need to confirm it first.
I’ll want to do as Rad suggests and compare your current DNA with the original Durand DNA.” He looked to Desai. “You say you have it?”

  “Yes. Mr. Durand has some hairs with the root attached.”

  Frey searched in his bag and came up with a sterile test kit, which he ripped open. “A saliva sample, if you will, Mr. Durand.”

  “How do I know you’ll even help me after you get this sample?”

  “Because if I can confirm what Desai says, I’ll want to take you to meet some people.”

  “What people?”

  “People with the resources to actually do something about this.”

  Durand thought for a moment. “A baby lab. You mean a baby lab.”

  Frey held up his hands for patience. “A few years back I worked with an embryo-editing ring in Thailand—a gang called the Luk Krung. These days they handle some pretty radical edits. There could still be some trace of this change agent in your cells. Some viral machinery. Something that would clue us in to how the Huli jing did it. Modeling even simple genetic edits for an embryo is computationally intensive. But for an adult living organism? I can’t even imagine. Thousands of edits in a complex sequence to thirty-five trillion living cells? We must be talking exascale computing for a significant period of time. The Luk Krung would have the financial resources to access photonic supercomputing clusters for the modeling load—which will be huge.”

  “And then they’d have it. I’d be spreading this madness even further.”

  “Don’t think for a moment that the Huli jing aren’t using it already. Do you want to get back to yourself or not?”

  Durand sat for several moments. How could he even contemplate giving this technology to yet another genediting gang? But then he thought about his wife and daughter. Of becoming the man he was once more. What he was about to agree to was outrageous. He closed his eyes and nodded.

  “Good. If it makes you feel any better, Mr. Durand, I don’t approve much of the Luk Krung, either. But I don’t see any other choice—unless you want to go ask the Huli jing.”

  Durand said nothing.

  Frey handed the swab to Durand. “A sample of your saliva, please.”

  Durand opened his mouth and swiped the swab along the inside of his cheek. He then inserted it into a handheld device Frey held toward him.