The God Organ

by Anthony J Melchiorri

  Despite Shaw’s orders to ignore the news streams, Preston couldn’t quell his burgeoning curiosity. He flicked on his comm card and scoured the streams. Joel Cobb had been found dead in a hotel room with a reporter named Amy Park. Early leaked reports indicated Joel had died of a stroke. Preston squinted at the words and reread them.

  Joel had a Sustain. Hell, he had been one of the first in the world to have the artificial organ implanted as a sign of confidence in his company, LyfeGen, and their products. One of the first applications of the Sustain was to produce genetically enhanced macrophages that scoured the bloodstream to break up and digest clots and plaques, effectively preventing conditions like heart attacks and strokes. No Sustain patient had ever experienced a stroke. Not a single one in the hundreds of thousands of patients who’d been able to afford to have the organ implanted.

  “Please brace,” the car’s voice system commanded.

  The vehicle swerved and Preston gripped the center console. His heart pounded with a surge of adrenaline. A tremendous crash resounded behind him, the sound of shattering glass and crunching metal tearing through the quiet darkness.

  His car continued toward the LyfeGen office as he looked back to see the wreckage of a gray car smashed into a street lamp. Smoke and dust drifted up. The car’s windshield was shattered and the entire front end crumpled. The bent streetlight shone through the broken glass to reveal the silhouette of a person hunched over the dashboard.

  Preston’s mouth hung agape. With automatic collision avoidance systems the norm, car wrecks were a rarity. Virtually instantaneous computer response times and failsafe mechanisms meant that, even with a breakdown in the local traffic systems, or even in the car itself, significant, fatal malfunctions were prevented.

  Surely, an emergency response team had already been notified by the crashed car’s computer system. No sirens wailed anywhere nearby, though.

  Anxiety nagged at him as the absence of an ambulance siren grew longer. With Joel’s death, LyfeGen would be in turmoil and the Board had called him directly to attend an emergency meeting—which meant skipping it would put him in a very bad light. He couldn’t risk his livelihood over a stranger.

  Joel had hired Preston shortly after the company’s inception and Preston was too devoted and worried about LyfeGen to be distracted by some instinctual, emotional response to a crash. Emergency medical technology was far too advanced for him to really be of any help, anyway.

  Still, he couldn’t forget the wreck. As his car turned left, passing State Avenue, he massaged his aching temple. He remembered an old story he’d heard in a college psychology course about a young woman murdered while screaming for help right outside of a crowded apartment building. No one came out to help her, and no one called the police. Everyone assumed someone else would help.

  He couldn’t believe he was like those people. Unlike them, he knew help would be arriving. That’s how cars worked; no one had to worry about anyone else anymore. But the notion that something was drastically wrong persisted. Why would the car crash like that? The vehicle had swerved like a drunk driver was at the wheel.

  Shaking his head, he realized what had just taken place. Then he directed his car back to the accident.

  When the car stopped, he ran to the wreck, fumbling in his pocket for his comm card to make an emergency response call. He yanked on the car’s front doors, but they were locked.

  An automated operator answered.

  “Describe your emergency.”

  “There’s a car crash on, uh—” He couldn’t remember the street name, despite the fact that he took the same route almost every day. He never had to know the name. There was no reason to. He looked at a green sign at a nearby intersection, and squinted to make out the letters.

  “Clark and Chestnut. Right across from BonBon Cakes.”

  A human voice replaced the tinny computer voice. “Sir, are you sure there is a car accident? We have no reports of any near your location.”

  “Yes, damn it. I’m sure. It’s right in front of me!”

  “Okay, sir. An emergency response team is on its way. Please do not leave the site of the accident. We will be tracking the location via your comm card.”

  “Got it.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Preston leaned over the shattered remains of the windshield to the unconscious person inside. Blood trickled down the man’s forehead, flowing around the tiny shards of glass embedded in his skin. He moaned but didn’t open his eyes. Lacerations covered his face and arms like a butterflied steak. Preston repressed the urge to vomit.

  “Are you okay?”

  Of course he wasn’t. What a stupid question.

  “There’s an ambulance on its way.”

  The man’s left arm was twisted in an unnatural shape and bent where no joints existed. Blood pooled out profusely from where torn skin exposed the pulsing radial artery.

  Preston tore off his tie and wrapped it around the man’s biceps as a tourniquet. He used his teeth to help secure the knot, ignoring the glass shards poking into his own skin as one hand held the man’s arm and the other twisted his mangled tie. A throbbing red light caught his attention on the wrecked car’s interface screen.

  Automated drive, navigation, and location were turned off, along with the emergency response application. Amongst the smell of burned plastic and the ferrous stench of the blood, the man’s shallow breathing carried the unmistakable odor of alcohol. Why would someone turn off their automated driving systems and choose to drive drunk?

  “I couldn’t...”

  “What?” Preston leaned in and applied more pressure in a desperate attempt to stop the bleeding. Behind him, the wail of an ambulance siren grew louder.

  “—drive...I couldn’t...it stopped.”

  The man tried to open his drooping eyelids, his dilated pupils scanning around Preston.

  Staring back, Preston was stunned. He realized something else about the scene bothered him. It wasn’t just the driving system that had been turned off; the airbags had been disabled too.

  “Oh...you won’t...you won’t fire me.”

  “What?” Preston didn’t recognize the man’s torn-up, bloodied face. He tried to construct an image of what the man might look like without the gruesome injuries, with no success. He held the man’s wrist, feeling the fading pulse.

  “I knew...I did...but I didn’t say anything.”

  “It’s okay. You shouldn’t have driven, you’re right. But you’ll be okay. You didn’t hurt anyone.”

  A screaming ambulance sped onto Clark and lit up the dark storefronts in crisp red and blue flashes.

  The man’s grip weakened. “No...I didn’t...It wasn’t me.” With his mouth open, his head fell onto the dashboard. His hand went slack.

  Paramedics jumped out of the ambulance. They rushed to the man and pushed Preston back.

  He backed away. He wanted to say something, but he couldn’t. A police car squealed down Clark and joined the scene. One of the officers got out and approached Preston.

  “Sir, can you tell me what happened here?”

  He spilled everything to the officer as fast as he could. Thoughts of the Board of Directors waiting on him percolated through his mind. He felt guilty for worrying about his tardiness.

  The officer glanced at the notes on his comm card. “This is good enough.” He tapped Preston’s contact information on the display. “We’ll call if we have any more questions, but I imagine we’ll find out plenty from the cameras at the intersection and from the car’s computer. You’re good to go.”

  Preston walked back to his vehicle. He reconfirmed his intended destination as the ambulance sped away, followed shortly by the cop car.

  The screen glowed blue on his dashboard. Over the top, a red cross symbol signified his own active automated emergency signal. The display showed the automated driving system was engaged and the GPS and local traffic sensors were on.

  As the car drove, he probed through the steps
to disengage the automated emergency system and airbags. It was a lengthy task, involving several voice commands and pressing confirmation buttons that appeared on the twelve-inch display screen. He thought it highly unlikely that anyone would consciously turn off the system without a good reason and it would be nigh on impossible to accidently disengage it. Why would a drunken man try to drive his own car and refuse automated medical attention?

  Along with the man’s last words to him, the only answers that Preston could come up with bothered him: either the man had wanted to kill himself, or someone else wanted him to die.

  Preston had calmed his nerves by the time he arrived at the LyfeGen office. The sweeping glass panes on the front of the building shone a pale green, a shadow of their emerald glow in full sunlight. The car dropped him off at the front port. He readjusted a loose cufflink as his vehicle drove away to its spot in the underground parking garage. When he reached to straighten his tie, he toyed with his collar, remembering where the tie now was.

  The front doors slid back and mint-scented air rushed out around him. Joel Cobb had always insisted that the scentsors at LyfeGen undergo a daily rotation to better invigorate his employees and inspire fresh ideas. Preston dismissed these so-called “fresh ideas” as some sort of clichéd trope but he couldn’t deny the exponential growth of the company or its tissue-engineered products. Over the past twenty years, LyfeGen had led the biotech industry in blending cellular and molecular biology with real-world clinical applications. While hundreds of other companies had seen short-lived success, FDA recalls, and bankruptcy, Joel had driven LyfeGen’s achievements with a single round of angel investments, a couple of NSF small-business grants, and minimal venture capital investing.

  Most importantly to Preston, Joel had supported Preston’s visions and improvements for the current line of LyfeGen artificial organs despite the fact that most needed years of benchtop testing, validation, and fine-tuning before earning any revenue. This support had been crucial to the development of LyfeGen’s flagship product: the Sustain.

  The Sustain implant was an artificial organ with unfathomable replicative and repair potential. Technicians and scientists grew the Sustain in the lab by taking a small tissue sample from a patient’s skin. The cells were then genetically reprogrammed to act like enhanced stem cells with lab-synthesized genes. Those genes gave the cells the capability of responding quickly and effectively to any site of injury, along with treating most diseases and infections. The cells reacted to the subtlest signals from diseased or injured tissues anywhere in the body. In response to a bodily crisis, the Sustain would pump out a squadron of LyfeGen’s reprogrammed cells.

  Several years after implantation, LyfeGen recommended genetic “updates” to ensure continued function of the implanted organ and enable new capabilities tailored for each individual recipient. It had been Preston’s suggestion to model the Sustain updates after programmer-released software. He designed a release schedule that would allow his research groups to continue developing aspects of the Sustain that were not yet FDA-approved and sell the new updates in a genetic delivery system that could be purchased like an expansion package. While the most basic version of the Sustain dealt with cardiovascular issues like the decalcification of heart valves, regeneration of muscle tissue for heart attack patients, and systematic removal of plaque buildup in the arteries, later expansions included more extensive preventative updates for early cancer cell detection and removal and specialized treatments for genetic conditions like eczema.

  The Sustain made its way into medical markets and into the bodies of those who could afford its hefty price tag. Each genetic update was then delivered according to an individual patient’s pressing healthcare needs and, more importantly, their financial means.

  ***

  Preston passed the small, ornate fountain in the lobby of the executive floor. The ceiling above him mimicked a brisk fall day’s sunlight—another one of Joel’s ideas to increase productivity. Wouldn’t employees be less likely to thirst for the outdoors if the outside could be brought into the office? Preston sighed, rounding the corner of a hallway adorned with murals of verdant trees, pulsing rivers, and stately mountains.

  “Morning.” Anil Nayak was at his desk in the office adjoining Preston’s. He was typing fervently, words scattering across a holodisplay calendar projecting the next three days. His smile appeared unnaturally sincere.

  “God, you’re here early,” Preston said. “Do you ever go home?”

  “I got a message from the Board that there was an emergency and figured I should be here, too.”

  Anil served as Preston’s second-in-command in research matters. He oversaw some of the more mundane matters associated with scheduling, supplies, and paperwork regarding LyfeGen’s research division.

  “I’ll never understand how you can be so damn perky without so much as a drop of caffeine.”

  “Nasty stuff, caffeine. I don’t want to be addicted to anything that might alter my personality.”

  “True. You’re energetic enough as it is. I’m not sure I could deal with more of you.”

  Anil let out an overly enthusiastic guffaw. “I suppose so. The Board is waiting.” He leaned across his perfectly clean desk and spoke in an unnecessarily low voice. “I think they’re getting fussy.”

  Preston shrugged. “It’s been a hellish morning.”

  “Car accident, right?”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “Don’t act so shocked,” Anil said. “Please, you know I was tracking you as soon as you were on your way. I saw that little blip on my comm card. I was confused why you were turning back toward home—did you forget to say goodbye or something? Then I saw the accident warning. Funny, though, huh?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it just kind of appeared when you got there. I saw your car was fine, but the other hadn’t even registered on the accident report map until about twenty seconds after you got there. Did you cause the accident?”

  “No, no. I—I don’t have time. I’ll explain later.”

  Preston took a deep breath and sat down at the empty conference table in his office. After he pressed a small touchscreen on the table’s surface, the virtually opaque windows became more transparent, letting in the growing morning light.

  He touched another button and three men flickered into existence around the table.

  “Carter, thank you for joining us,” Jason Shaw said; he was sitting across from Preston. A hint of irritation hung over the chairman’s words. His eyes were drawn up in wrinkles and thick, snowy eyebrows crawled just over his baggy eyelids. His teeth were as white as his hair. While the Sustain could preserve life in those who could afford it, it couldn’t completely rejuvenate them, as Shaw’s appearance demonstrated.

  “I apologize for my tardiness.” Preston didn’t bother with an explanation.

  Shaw nodded. To his right sat David Gifford, one black eyebrow cocked in skepticism. Vernon Crane sat to Shaw’s left. Crane always appeared kindly and sympathetic, whether the Board had good or bad news. There was hardly any good way to read the three men.

  “I’m going to cut to the chase,” Shaw said. Hardly any good way to read them until Shaw spoke, of course. “You’ve done a respectable job as Vice President of Research. I had my doubts, but Cobb always insisted you could pull the job off. You’ve got more business sense than I usually expect from PhDs.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Don’t start the ‘sir’ shit with me.”

  Preston squirmed.

  “Unfortunately, Cobb is gone. There are going to need to be some drastic changes in the company if we’re going to keep LyfeGen afloat. There’s going to be a media shit storm—the automated news generators are spewing garbage about us already. Once the real journalists come knocking, we’re going to have a lot more to deal with. I don’t want to see our shares dive-bomb, and I don’t want to see the Sustain getting flack—no matter what. I don’t want to hear talk about friv
olous or inept executives, either.”

  “Right, most definitely. I can start rolling out some of our current research on the Sustain’s expansion products and some other products we have in the pipeline.”

  “I don’t care about the pipeline. I care about what’s going on now.”

  Preston’s heart sank.

  “I found out about Joel’s death through that damned parasite Amy Park. The self-serving bitch dished up a story about his death before we even got word. Fortunately, she’s in custody. Suspected of having something to do with Joel’s death. I’m not sure what to think, but we need to watch our backs. If we don’t, there isn’t going to be a LyfeGen left. The news dogs will tear us apart. We need the public—and our customers—to be confident that we’re going to keep on pushing through. Not trudging, mind you, but a full-on march to success. We need to show that we’re determined to change with the times and move forward—that we can embody all that ‘progress and hope for the future’ nonsense Cobb always preached. We need to change, Carter, and we need to do it now.”

  “I understand.”

  “Good. Then you’ll understand why you’ll no longer be serving us as Vice President of Research.”

  Preston’s heart raced. He saw everything he had worked for, the long hours, the time away from Erik and Kyle, and the mountains of research data he’d produced being pulled out from under him. Every sacrifice, every ounce of effort had been worthless.

  Shaw’s eyes narrowed, his expression stern. “We need you to step up as the new CEO.”

  Preston fought to keep his jaw from dropping. “I...absolutely.”

  “Do you feel confident about addressing the reporters?” Gifford said, his raised eyebrow revealing his uncertainty. “Jason, Vernon, and I are determined to see you continue on Cobb’s path. We’ll schedule one press conference, but after that, I suggest you minimize media contact. Don’t let them think you’re hiding from them, but let them know business is...business as usual.”