The God Organ

by Anthony J Melchiorri

  “Just throwing it out there.” Jonathan leaned back. “After all, you said it yourself: we’re a business first and foremost.”

  “I don’t know,” Allison said. “I think Jonathan might have a point. I can’t really fathom the Sustain failing. Something that simple really could be the cause.”

  “We can consider that, but let’s not forget that we’re in the business of providing good healthcare. Part of that is taking responsibility for our work and fostering good partnerships with clinicians.” Preston turned to Ken Sur, who had been sitting patiently, observing. “Ken, I need you to make sure that everything is in order from the production and delivery side of the Sustain. Double-check every outgoing order to ensure we haven’t made any errors in shipment and that all the proper validation checks were performed. Do this as discreetly as possible, but also as soon as you can. I want to make sure, especially, that there wasn’t an error in the delivery of Joel’s Sustain updates. Make sure our production facilities are completely up to par should the FDA come looking around.”

  “Certainly,” Ken said. “Although I think there may be some difficulties.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “The first thing I did on the job was to check out Joel’s delivery files. But I don’t have access to the genetic data file server and Dave Stemper’s comm card is missing, so he can’t transfer permission to me.”

  In productions, the genetic files used to produce the custom implants were accessible to only a few individuals within the company to protect patients’ privacy and ensure that no one tampered with the data.

  Preston had never worked too closely with Dave, since the man was usually holed up on the bottom floors in his productions office. Preston had spent his time on the upper floors of the laboratories at LyfeGen. “Where’s his card?”

  Ken shrugged. “I’ve checked around, but the communications department doesn’t have his card or access to his files. They, uh—they think it was lost in the car crash.”

  Preston’s eyes widened. He repressed the urge to inquire about the crash. He had already made it clear he was unaware that Ken had been approved for promotion as the new head of productions. “I see. Well, Joel had the ability to grant permissions, so I should have that power transferred to me now. I’ll see what I can do.”

  After the two disparate meetings, Preston was left with more questions than answers and no clear sense of direction. He only hoped that he had made the right decisions preparing for the possibility and resulting backlash of an FDA audit. Otherwise, he could be wasting precious time turning around the negative news streams with more focus on innovative upgrades to the Sustain.

  More confusing, he still couldn’t recall approving Ken’s assignment to productions manager. He called Anil into his office, remaining at the conference table.

  “Sit, please.” Preston motioned to the chair that Ken had just been seated in. “When did I approve Ken Sur’s appointment?”

  “I don’t believe you did.”

  “Then why did he say I approved it?”

  “That was a formality.”

  “A formality for what?” Preston could feel warmth rushing to his cheeks.

  “I knew you couldn’t be bothered with it. And you’d approve anyway, so I made sure that Ken got to work faster. That’s all.”

  “So you forged my approval?”

  “That sounds a lot worse than how I’d put it.” Anil’s voice remained calm as he showed off his shining teeth with that irritating smile. “I’m just trying to help move things along and make the transition easier for you.”

  “I’m the CEO now. I need to know about these kinds of things. You can’t just make decisions on my behalf. I looked like an idiot in here.”

  “You’ve only been at this for a week. Mistakes are bound to be made.”

  “How did this happen?” Preston said, losing patience.

  “Honestly, I know Ken from—well, I know most everybody—and I figured he’d be good for taking over Dave’s position. The Board and Meredith agreed, so I made it happen quickly.”

  “What? You went behind my back?”

  “You were busy. Don’t worry; I told them it was you who sought Ken out, so you’d still get credit for it all. That way it looks like you’re really working overtime.”

  Preston clenched the conference table. “Anil. This is not acceptable. You cannot do this.”

  “What? Are you going to tell the Board that you didn’t actually know who was hired and then tell the same thing to Ken? Who are you going to replace him with? I knew more people in productions than you ever did while you were doing all your research. I feel like I did you a favor, but I apologize if I caused any offense. It won’t happen again.”

  Preston stabbed his finger at Anil. “You’re damn right it won’t. Get out of my office, and don’t do anything like that again.”

  He tried to gather his thoughts and calm down, restraining himself from terminating Anil at that moment as he watched the man leave. Then another thought sprang to his mind, one that he suspected Anil might have the answer to.

  “Stop.”

  “So soon?” Anil said, his hand on the door handle.

  “Tell me why Ken replaced Dave Stemper.”

  “Dave died. Remember that car accident when you came in the day Joel died? Turns out Dave had a little regulations problem of his own when it came to alcohol.”

  Preston sat silently, thinking over everything that Anil had said. He hadn’t recognized Dave at the time when the man’s face had been torn and battered.

  Dave Stemper had died because he’d chosen to turn off his automated driver.

  Certainly, it could’ve been a freak accident. Joel Cobb’s death could’ve been a complete accident, as well. But two strange deaths on the same day was two too many.

  Maybe an FDA audit was the least of his worries.

  Chapter 11

  Matthew Pierce

  November 6, 2063

  Using a thin glass pipette, Matthew inserted a tiny droplet of fluid into a flat, circular plastic dish. He performed this task shielded by a glass barrier. A population of LyfeGen stem cells resided in the culture dish, protected from bacterial or viral contamination by a constant flow of sterile air in the tissue-culture flow hood that Matthew worked in. His breath fogged up the glass shield over the front of the hood as he leaned in.

  The space was cramped as Jacqueline worked next to him. She passed a small plastic tube over to him beneath the hood.

  A virus resided in the tube, suspended in liquid. Instead of its own DNA, they had designed new genetic material for the virus to deliver to their cells. The viruses would attach to the cells, just as they would naturally do, and would release all the pressurized DNA strands into the cell after piercing the cell membranes. The genetic code would make its way into each cell’s nucleus, the genetic house and brain of the cell, and meld into the natural process of DNA transcripting to RNA followed by translation into amino acids which made up the backbone of the proteins that determined cellular functions.

  Jacqueline and Matthew had selected the virally delivered DNA to combat an array of diseases. They hoped to determine how many of these genetic updates could effectively be delivered at one time to the Sustain’s cells.

  And, of course, all this genetic code had to be functional.

  “Okay, this afternoon we’ll hit the cells with Alzheimer’s conditions,” Jacqueline said. “I’ve got all the proteins thawing now so we can prep the solution, right?”

  “Sounds good.”

  From the corner of his eye, Matthew saw Jacqueline smile. “Great,” she said.

  Her long hair was tied back in a ponytail to prevent it from obscuring her vision while she was working. Besides aiding her in her research, it highlighted her high cheekbones.

  Somehow, she could make a bulky white lab coat look slimming and alluring, while Matthew felt decidedly unsexy in his own ill-fitting coat.

  She put her cell culture away in the in
cubator and came back to look over Matthew’s. Her breath tickled his neck. “Everything looks good so far, huh?”

  He nodded, his eyes still glued to the cell culture in front of him. “So far. But that’s what we thought the last couple of times, too.”

  She put her hand on his shoulder and gave it a playful tug. “Come on, be optimistic.” Jacqueline sat back down on the stool beside him. “Are you and—sorry, what’s her name?”

  “Audrey.” With the transfection delivery complete, he cleaned up the supplies from the flow hood. He walked to their 4oC cooler and placed the cell-culture media inside.

  “Yeah, Audrey. Are you two doing anything grand this weekend?”

  “No, nothing grand. To be honest, she’s still upset with me.”

  “Upset?” Jacqueline sprayed down the flow-hood work surface with ethyl alcohol and wiped it with a disposable towel. “Why’s she upset?”

  “I just told her that I couldn’t—” He stopped and caught himself. His mind raced, trying to recover his story without revealing Audrey’s real requests.

  “Couldn’t what?”

  “She wanted me to, uh—well, we had to redo our kitchen, you know? And, she wanted me to do some plumbing work for the sink but I didn’t want to.”

  “So she got mad at you? Hell, I’d be happy if my ex would’ve admitted he didn’t want to do the handyman things. I think the guy was intimidated by the fact I was an engineer and he was just a dopey law guy. He always wanted to prove he had the know-how.”

  “How’d that turn out?”

  Jacqueline swirled the thawing proteins contained within the small vial to see if they were still frozen. “I think you know how the story goes. He’d try to fix something, would make it worse, and we’d end up having someone else come out to fix the LED fixtures, or reinstall the holo projectors.”

  Matthew laughed. “Yeah, exactly. I wouldn’t want to mess up like that.”

  “So that’s why she was mad at you?” Jacqueline’s brow furrowed in skepticism. “Sure you didn’t forget an anniversary or something?”

  “No, of course not!” Matthew booted up a PCR machine to analyze the genes of the Sustain cells once they had allowed enough time for the transfection to take place.

  “Just checking. No need to get defensive. Just doesn’t quite add up to me.”

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  Jacqueline sat down next to him at the black lab benchtop. She grabbed his elbow. “Look, all you have to do is tell her how sorry you are and you’ll never do it again.” She smiled patronizingly.

  “Oh, come on. It’s not like that.”

  The PCR machine buzzed to life.

  “I’m always free for a drink after work if you need to lighten your load,” Jacqueline said. “I promise I’m a good listener.”

  “I appreciate the offer.”

  A timer beeped from across the lab. The transfection time for the viruses transferring DNA to the cells was up, and Matthew went to the incubator to retrieve the culture. Jacqueline prepared a couple of the other reagents necessary for washing the cells of excess viral vectors and preserving them for further examination. As Matthew worked under the flow hood again, another beep emitted from behind him.

  “Did we have another timer for something?” he asked.

  “No. Sorry, that was my comm card. Will you be okay in here?”

  Matthew nodded, focused on the cell work.

  Jacqueline peeled off her blue nitrile gloves and walked out of the lab into their shared office space. She paced behind the windows connecting the office and the labs, talking on the card. When she came back into the lab, she stood for a second by the door.

  Matthew stopped working. “What’s up?”

  “Bad news, according to Jonathan. Sounds like the FDA is going to want to take a peek at some of our data.”

  “Already?”

  “Jonathan said to drop by as soon as we could. He didn’t say much else. Are you at a good stopping point?”

  Matthew closed the cell-culture dishes. “Now is as good a time as any.” He replaced them in the incubator.

  They walked, side by side, down the brightly lit hall. The day’s scentsors emitted hints of another autumnal theme, with wafts of nutmeg and cinnamon.

  When they arrived outside his office, Jonathan waved them in. “Close the door.”

  They sat as he scratched at his beard and took a deep breath. “This is what we were afraid of. Bad news, guys.”

  Jonathan leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling for a moment. Jacqueline and Matthew looked at each other.

  “Three more,” Jonathan said.

  Jacqueline stared at him. “Three more what?”

  “Three more Sustain customers had strokes.”

  “All in one day?” Matthew’s eyes widened.

  “Over the span of a couple of days. Now, this stays right here. The only other person who knows about all this is Preston. He told me this morning. As you can imagine, he’s quite concerned. They all died of strokes. It sounds suspiciously like Joel’s situation, but nobody’s said anything about it yet.”

  “All of them were strokes?” Matthew shook his head. “How’s that possible?”

  “They couldn’t be caused by the Sustain,” Jacqueline said. “It sounds very strange to me.”

  Jonathan nodded. “It certainly does. Preston let me know he thinks something fishy is going on around here.”

  Jacqueline raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”

  “I don’t think he’s sure. All that pressure of being a new CEO could be making him a bit paranoid.”

  “So no one else knows about any of this?”

  “Nope. And I intend to keep it that way. However, in about a week, the medical records for these patients will be sent to the FDA.”

  The FDA required medical records on deceased patients who had ever used any type of medical device or biologic implant for their own statistics, whether or not the cause of death involved an implant.

  Jonathan laid his hands across his stomach, right where a potbelly would be if he didn’t have a Sustain to control his health. “They’ll be sifting through our clinical-trial data to see if anything looks suspicious. Obviously, we aren’t hiding anything, but let’s make that as clear as daylight to them. And, like I said before, there could be a problem with the doctors. Two of these guys shared the same doctor as Joel. One of them was a lawyer and the other, believe it or not, worked at NanoTech. Ironic, huh? He worked there but liked our stuff more. The last one was just a pharmaceutical sales rep. No big loss there, huh?

  “Anyway, I want you guys to go through their medical records. See if there might be any chance of medical malpractice. Remember what I said about those doctors, Matthew?”

  “Yes, I do. But is it legal for us to be looking at their medical records?”

  “Not exactly. I’ll shoot you all the details in a secure communication. Don’t be opening up those files on your comm card in any busy restaurants, got me?”

  “Sure thing,” Jacqueline said without hesitation. Matthew glanced at her with none of the certainty she seemed to have, and began to wonder what he’d find in those medical records.

  Chapter 12

  Monica Wolfe

  November 7, 2063

  Monica sat in the Corner Street Bakery and sipped on a chai tea latte. The scent of freshly baked muffins and bread floated around the bakery, mingling with the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee. While the clatter of dishes and dripping coffee sounded from behind the counter, the morning patrons came and went quietly. Most everyone entered bundled in coats, a smattering of neutral grays, browns, and blacks, dripping with the snow that melted off their clothes. Low-hanging mist clung to the windows and fogged up the air outside as passing cars whipped up blusters of snow in their drafts.

  The warmth of the latte crept into her fingers as she held the cup, combating the icy feelings that had followed her in from the streets. When a chilling blast of air followed another patron i
nto the store, she scrutinized the new face.

  Again, it wasn’t him.

  She was sure he would show up, as he did most every day. And, today, she would risk everything.

  ***

  Monica’s interest in LyfeGen had sprouted from the conversation she had overheard at NanoTech and grew as she continued to read stories about the company and Joel Cobb’s death. A few of the articles had scrutinized church groups that had become increasingly outspoken about the abomination that was the god organ. Other stories had described the mysteries surrounding a growing but disorganized protest movement comprised of disgruntled individuals dissatisfied with a stagnant job market and a looming class divide.

  One story by a rather unscrupulous news organization called The Inquiry had even blamed Amy Park for using Cobb’s death to save her journalism career in a market increasingly run by algorithms and software that parsed common language data into mass-market stories. Fortunately for Amy, there had been insufficient evidence connecting her to Cobb’s death and she had been released from police custody.

  The market remained ripe for conspiracy theories and sound journalism alike.

  Monica had read each story with an intense curiosity even as the public mood shifted to focus on President Clark’s handling of the jobless situation and his attempt to provide an economic boost to the computer infrastructure field by ordering the repair of thousands of public networks and servers that had seen little use or were severely outdated. A few thousand temporary coding jobs would work for a while, Monica thought, but could truly do nothing to save her field in America.

  She needed an escape from her stagnant career, a way up and out.

  She had embarked on an independent, extracurricular project for NanoTech to acquire the information that the NanoTech engineers couldn’t obtain through intellectual property purchases alone.

  What she had in mind wasn’t legal, but she couldn’t remain an IT tech for her entire life and waste away. She had been reminded of the exploits of her college boyfriend Cole, who had unlocked and hacked comm cards while they were attending the Illinois Institute of Technology in downtown Chicago. His endeavors had resulted in comm card programs sophisticated enough to steal data from the nearby card of an unwitting passerby. By altering Cole’s code, Monica might be able to glean data and information from a LyfeGen employee.