Permian- Emissary of the Extinct

by Devyn Regueira

  “Now that is bullshit.”

  Brady conjured, for the first time in her presence, the courage to display any emotion apart from courtesy distilled to its most disingenuous. Indignant affront characterized best what it was he mustered now.

  “This isn’t the Wild West, and the authority is not a band of murderers and sociopaths. Half of them are scientists themselves, for fuck’s sake.”

  Two nostrils like track marks on the broad side of a whale worked in synchrony to triangulate the source of outrage.

  “What do you expect would have become of professor Every Daniels, were that an empirical truth? Where would he be, Brady Elway Thomas, had the pounding of men’s shoulders against the door cost him his nerve and his grip and his aim? Where would he be, I am compelled to ask you, had the man in the liquor store parking lot become so tormented by the violence he’d enabled, so riddled with guilt and so plagued with sleeplessness, that when professor Every Daniels leveled the muzzle to the crux of his frontal, limbic, and parietal lobes, whispered an apology to his mother and squeezed, all to fire was a non-crimped blank round and all to rupture an eardrum? Would he be here, now, wallowing in a cell, perhaps, but alive and speaking and well fed and bitter? What say you, professor Alvin Bonman? Would the authority you know have allowed such a thing?”

  “I’ve heard enough.”

  Alvin leveled his chair and sat up straight, looking instantly and considerably nearer the age demographic to which he belonged. Brady was pleased by the support.

  “So have I. It is bullshit, all of it. The authority will hear what Bo has to say, and what happens afterwards is out of our hands. Come on, Al. Decon is probably open by now. If the next guard shift beats us in we’ll have to wait.”

  “That’s not what I mean, Brady. I believe her. About this, at least. Every was fucked in the head, sure, but he was never delusional. The authority wasn’t going to give him a slap on the wrist. He knew that. I don’t see any reason those same rules won’t apply to me. Preemptive or not.”

  More affront, twice the indignation.

  “I’m part of that authority, Bonman. Just because I don’t make the rules doesn’t mean I can’t recite them in five languages. So I’m telling you, it’s bullshit.”

  “This is valid. You are part of that authority. You are also a husband. You are the biological father of two adolescent boys, each bearing your true family name, Bingley. The elder is called Charles, for you. The younger is Frances, so named for his late maternal grandmother. A compassionate woman, Frances Beatrice Harriet was lost in the days just before her second grandson’s birth to a disease her doctors hadn’t the resources to posthumously diagnose as the supremely hereditary mitochondrial disorder it was.”

  Brady’s eyes were dinner plates, and Ma’am content to feast.

  “How the… how the fuck can you know that? I thought it - I thought you - you said you couldn’t do that anymore!”

  “I cannot. You would do well to know that a disruption of sensory access to quantum nuance in no way implies damage to the memory of accumulated observation, nor does it impede the ability to retrieve them. In the course of establishing which individuals were most predisposed to the furtherance of my interests, an effort professor Alvin Bonman may describe in full at your request, I observed a great deal about a great many people and a great many networks of association. Whether your children are inheritors of a mitochondrial disorder has since been known to me, even if the consequences, in either case, remained effectively inaccessible behind the interference boundary.”

  “I need to know which disorder. I need to know which kid. Immediately, and in that order, or I’ll act on behalf of the authority. Right here. Right now.”

  “I will refrain from divulging any further information as a matter of self preservation, you understand. There are, however, several marginally related details known to me that appear suddenly less prudent to withhold. If you cannot consider my insights on the longevity of two innocent children as deserving of your restraint, perhaps my conclusions on the computationally incalculable idiosyncrasies governing the stability of California’s San Andreas fault will suffice. If the year and month and day and conventional time of the next cataclysmic earthquake fall short, professor Alvin Bonman of the University of California, Berkeley, you might care to hear the logical outcome of similar observations of the Yellowstone Caldera. The chance remains, or so became my impression during those months when access to the facts and figures of your volatile world remained unmitigated - that the date I predicted for its next apocalypse was off only by the most delicate of margins.”

  Alvin collected a legal pad from the purpose built nook on his end of the table, and a pen from his pocket protector; its point just dull enough to meet protocol-compliance standards.

  “Alright, you win. Tell us what you need. We’re playing by your rules now.”

  “This is valid.”

  Brady had the authority to get them across site and through every door thereafter, be them physical or beauracratic. Alvin’s contribution was less contrived. The professor of geology would provide a familiarity with the scientific vernacular that qualified him to relay Ma’am’s instructions; intelligibly enough, at least, to forego a cataclysm of misunderstanding.

  Now they stood on either side of Melissa O’Lear, shadows at noon on a world with two suns. Britain’s software authority turned international asset sat, as always, a tainted afternoon breath away from her screen. Dr. Guo Chen returned with a decaffeinated tea in one hand and, as promised, a half frozen water in the other.

  “Any progress?”

  Two no’s and one yes sounded in concert. Melissa had been the sole dissenter, and where neither Alvin or Brady were much surprised that she pressed the chilled bottle to her forehead, the opposite was true of the vote she’d cast.

  “You found it?”

  “Well, no, not quite. If ‘progress’ were synonymous with ‘completed in full’, then progressive parties across the globe would spend all elections to come campaigning on contentedness, wouldn’t they?”

  Melissa quite enjoyed the taste of her own sense of humor. Brady hadn’t given himself the chance to explore whether he felt likewise.

  “So what progress did you make, exactly?”

  “Well, I’ve written the query. And a dashing little query at that.”

  “Then what’s the problem? How long will it take to run?”

  “Why no time at all, Mr. Thomas! But that is the problem, I’m so dreadfully sorry to say. Querying her six-billion base sequence for a single gene is considerably less time restrictive a proposition than the inverse - in short, our ongoing efforts to scour a comprehensive database of all recorded genomes for matches, one Statistician gene at a time.”

  “I don’t think we’re supposed to call them that.”

  Melissa’s expression devolved, for a time, into confusion of such an intensity that it formed enclaves beyond the boundary of distaste. Alvin couldn’t care less.

  “Never mind, doesn’t matter. We’re listening, Ms. O’Lear.”

  “How reassuring. In any case, the problem is that I’ve already run the query. The Komodo Dragon derived protogenesis gene you’ve insisted we locate generates zero matches, precisely. If, as you’ve implied relentlessly since barging in, it does exist someplace in her genome - the sequence has been mutated or diluted to such a degree that the similarity thresholds we’ve established are not met. Although, at the risk of promoting semantics, mutated and diluted are quite the same thing in genetic terms. Aren’t they, my dearest Guo?”

  Brady stomped a foot, instantly embarrassed for invoking the fundamental cliche of a child in a fit.

  “Sorry, I’m sorry. But time is of the essence, Melissa.”

  The sight of Dr. Chen waiting politely for the restatement of his invitation to interject reminded Brady there remained an alternative avenue with some potential for breaking the gridlock.

  “Any word on the blood sample, Guo?”

&
nbsp; “Yes, Mr. Thomas. We can expect the results any minute, or so I’m told. We should be grateful. A full battery of tests is seldom available so soon, and all the more rare on such short notice.”

  “Well, I mean, it’s not like there’s a waiting room full of these things dreading their decision to blow the spring break condom fund on a plastic handle of whipped cream vodka. So-”

  Alvin intervened before Brady’s sarcasm treaded any further across the line of common decency.

  “And they know what they’re looking for, right?”

  Dr. Chen sipped his tea, composed and polite, conducting himself at all times as if those characteristics were the central doctrines of a religion that had seen him through too many tragedies to betray for a moment.

  “Yes, the instructions were very clear. Thank you.”

  Melissa snickered.

  “If only the handwriting were held to the same standard.”

  “Forgive her, professor Bonman,” said Dr. Chen in a tone that lacked the firmness to fully support his good intentions, “she works very long hours.”

  “No sense in faulting her for the truth. Will they be able to compare the new blood work results to previous samples in-lab? Or is that something we’ll be doing ourselves?”

  “Patient software is installed on all laboratory computer terminals. The results will include everything you’ve requested.”

  “It’s a start. Thank you, Dr. Chen. In the meantime, do you know of any quick and painless way to lower the standards of your similarity threshold? If so, we’d like to run the query again as soon as possible. My instructions were not to find an exact match, just something with sufficient overlap to imply the same basic function.”

  “You’re asking the wrong person, love. I, if you could be bothered to know, would be happy to oblige you.”

  Alvin, had he been its recipient at any time prior to his impromptu incarceration, would have responded to Melissa’s brand of reflexive self righteousness with an impassioned, syntactically vibrant, and unabashedly public denouncement. No shortage of his students had learned that the hard way, and the tensile strength of his decades-spanning tenure was tested on more than one occasion.

  “My apologies, Melissa, and thank you in advance for your help. Oblige away.”

  “I live to serve. But while we’re on the subject, lovely Mr. Bonman, would you be so kind as to remind me who exactly signed off on these instructions? The omnipotent authority, was it? Generally speaking, we can expect three calls, a dozen memos, and a meeting in the frilly conference room before the almighties put pen to paper and ordain an action one blade of grass removed from the beaten path.”

  Brady’s knee began to twitch, another stomp imminent. Restraint only did him so much good, his voice cracking with the sheer volume of redirected anger.

  “I am the authority!”

  A raucous, callous, school yard laugh.

  “Certainly not on puberty!”

  Buzzing was heard across the room, quiet but thrumming at a frequency such that it sliced through the angst and the merriment. Guo unclipped the device from his belt, itself a symbiosis of 1990’s beeper technology and the vibrating discs accredited with restoring the sanity of busy restaurant hostesses the world over.

  “The results are ready. Please give me a moment to collect them.”

  Guo disappeared through the nearest nondescript door of many nondescript doors, each the mouth of a human tributary; collectively a network of rigid sphincters through which the genetics wing of the project site, that winter cathedral of bustling prefabrication, could be negotiated. Life in that room, as it was after Dr. Chen’s departure, would be remembered by its occupants, respectively, as two minutes of frustrated foot tapping, two minutes of mischievous giggling, and an uncertain quantity of minutes staring directly at the hands of the clock.

  Freshly stapled results in hand, the geneticist’s return marked an end to their silent chaos.

  “Would you like to read the results yourself, professor Bonman, or would you prefer I explain them?”

  “That will do just fine. What do we know?”

  “We know that your concerns appear to be justified. The patient’s calcium density, as you expected, has decreased. The inverse is true in hormones associated with the expression of uterine genes, where the results indicate a meteoric increase relative to the sample extracted on May 3rd - an approximate difference of six weeks. More immediate causes for concern, meanwhile, fall perfectly in line with those articulated in your notes. Namely,” he adjusted a pair of reading glasses, more habit than necessity, “evidence of a significant depletion of glucose and electrolyte levels.”

  “How serious a depletion are we talking, Dr. Chen?”

  “I would say that the results are nothing short of a cause for genuine alarm. It’s as though the nutrients are being siphoned from her body more quickly than she can replenish them. I am… generally one to err on the side of trust, gentlemen, but I feel I would be remiss at this time not to echo a form of Ms. O’Lear’s earlier sentiment.”

  Dr. Chen carried his eyes just above the page, scanning the room like a muffled boardslide clear across a skatepark rail.

  “Why query the patient’s DNA for a protogenesis gene? Why now, and, forgive me for asking, on what authority?”

  Brady’s intentions were to deflect, clear as carbon monoxide by the telltale squeeze of mental consternation on his face. Alvin didn’t much see the point, and so reaffirmed in moments that fundamental tenet of sociality; whatever their aesthetic differences, the truth comes out more easily than the lie.

  “Ma’am - that’s her name, the patient - she’s pregnant. Carrying an egg, rather. I’m not really sure if that’s the same thing. And - just one egg. She was clear about that.”

  Guo’s face turned to stone. Bitterness pinched Brady’s lips into an impassable boundary. Even Melissa’s snickering seemed to have been smothered by the wet cement of circumstance. Graced with an intermission of silence, a thing present in nauseating abundance during his time in a cell and confoundingly otherwise since, Alvin carried on.

  “In any case, she’s your patient, my student, Brady’s objective, and all our responsibility. So I need you to lower the similarity threshold, Ms. O’Lear. A dozen times if you have to. All we need is the closest thing. We’ve been told there could be a transcription error -”

  The woman before the computer and behind the suddenly implicated transcription software scoffed. For Alvin’s part, he’d neglected his own sense of pride with too consistent an abandon to waste a neuron’s weight in sodium on Melissa’s self esteem.

  “We’ve been told there could be a transcription error. Or an inscription error. Or any number of any shitload of things. Bare bones - we need to find the protogenesis gene, in whichever form, and establish whether or not it’s causing the problems demonstrated by the results. Okay?”

  “Of course.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Chen. And thank you, Ms. O’Lear. Brady - will you run back to the lab and make sure they get to work on addressing the shortage of electrolytes and - what was it?”

  “Glucose.”

  “And the glucose. Doesn’t have to be complicated. Supplements, capsules, a smoothie - whatever we need to get her leveled out while we sort out the gene problem. That’s possible, right Guo? Stuffing her full of everything she’s missing?”

  “That is unclear, professor Bonman. As you may have inferred from my statement moments ago, the rate of diffusion seems to be independent of intake to a degree that the difference cannot be overcome by traditional means of supplementation. Ma’am, as per her patient records, is fed on demand. In other words - physiological uncertainties early in the project, in conjunction with standards regarding her ethical treatment, culminated in a policy of allowing the patient to dictate her own diet. Her meals and portions, in terms of glucose and electrolyte quantities ingested, have increased consistently throughout the last six weeks. And still we find
that the densities of both are five percent short of sustainable.”

  “Five percent?”

  “Just north of five percent, more precisely.”

  “I need most precisely, Guo.”

  Dr. Chen riffled through the results, wholly dependent on the cooperation of his glasses and pointer finger to converge on an answer.

  “Five-point-two-two and five-point-one-eight percent, respectively.”

  “Fuck me.”

  “Professor Bonman?”

  The ruffles in his forehead concealed behind the palm of his hand, Alvin sidestepped the geneticist and shouldered through Brady to breathe down Melissa’s neck, both victims of his urgency left to wallow in their confusion.

  “Did you lower the threshold?”

  “Sure did.”

  “And?”

  “And…” she maintained Alvin’s eyes for as long as it took to choreograph the keyboard command, an underhanded reminder of who between them was the expert, “… now we wait!”

  “How long?”

  “Ninety seconds. Less, more, hard to say. Should be long enough to apologize to lovely Mr. Chen, anyway. You’ve left the man unattended in the midst of a chat! A dreadful habit, that. I don’t mean to scold, but poor Guo doesn’t have it in him to speak up for himself.”

  “You have caused me no offense, professor Bonman.” Alvin couldn’t immediately tell whether that were true. “I do wish to understand your reaction, however, which I hope I can be forgiven for regarding as peculiar.”

  “Ask Brady.”

  “Me? What are you talking about?”

  Brady’s surprise was genuine. Alvin was glad for it - an opportunity to deliver his message more poignantly.

  “I’m talking about the day you knocked on the door to my cell, Brady. I’m talking about the lecture you gave me on protocol - what not to do, what not to say, when to leave. I’m talking about the god damn reason we wake up at midnight once every three weeks to accommodate the sleep cycle of a herbivore from the fucking Permian.”