The God Organ

by Anthony J Melchiorri

  Cody’s mother had never had a chance, either. She could never have afforded one of the god organs. Her life had been doomed from the start.

  As was his.

  Even when he tried to rise into the privileged class through the pursuit of higher education, his future had fallen as flat and stale as a forgotten beer can in the back of his refrigerator.

  Of course, he had never actually kept a can of beer around long enough for it to go stale.

  He needed to shake things up. Trying to find another job would be a worthless pursuit. It was time for him to make a change. He needed to be noticed. He needed to strike out on his own.

  Chapter 30

  Audrey Cook

  November 27, 2063

  In the middle of the night, Matthew slipped into their bedroom. Audrey woke up, slowly opening her eyes as he lowered himself into bed. Instead of greeting him, she peered into the dark hallway outside their open bedroom door from which he had crept.

  She had grown tired of welcoming him home from his late-night adventures—his “workouts” and “lengthy experiments.” She understood the peril that LyfeGen faced. She had read the rushed, demanding messages between Matthew and Jacqueline and Preston Carter and the deceased Jonathan Grieves and a batch of other LyfeGen employees with various titles.

  And she hadn’t forgotten the time Matthew had spent back in graduate school on his projects. She understood the demands of scientific research.

  But she found little evidence of his late-night work on his comm card. She wasn’t totally naïve.

  She had considered confronting him. Despite her suspicions, she decided against it. An external motivation prevented her from disrupting her tepid but predictable relationship with her husband.

  ***

  As soon as Audrey arrived at The Shore’s offices, Stephanie immediately called her over. Audrey briskly walked past the desks where colleagues scribbled madly on their comm cards and holoscreens. The open-air design of the office left little privacy for conversations or undistracted writing. She didn’t find the setting conducive to her work and preferred to write in a less noisy environment. But even as an investigative reporter infiltrating biotech companies and conducting interviews, she needed to put in her face time.

  Stephanie ushered Audrey into her office. After closing the door behind them, she motioned for Audrey to have a seat.

  “How is your relationship with Matthew?”

  “Is that any of your business?” Audrey said.

  “So, it’s beginning to sour.”

  “My mistake. If I’d simply said ‘fine,’ you’d be none the wiser.”

  “You aren’t a total fool, are you?”

  Audrey fumed silently. I need this job, I need this story.

  “In any case,” Stephanie said, “I noticed that Beth Childs hasn’t been upholding her work as an employee. I just wanted to check with you to see how things were going.”

  “Beth Childs is working on a rather significant breakthrough,” Audrey said, her tone sharp. “She shouldn’t be rushed, or she might completely botch the scoop.”

  “Is that so? Well, remind Beth that she’d better make amends with her husband, too. If we lose him, we lose a crucial connection to the story.”

  Audrey wondered how long she would need Matthew. Now that she had direct contact with Preston Carter, she had an enormous lead in the race to reveal LyfeGen’s inner workings.

  On the other hand, Preston had virtually been fired. He might not have the up-to-date information accessible via Matthew’s comm card.

  She still needed Matthew.

  “I can assure you that my relationship with my husband is perfectly stable,” she said. “I’ll do what I can to make sure we stay on top of things.”

  Stephanie leaned back in her chair. “It’d be nice to have an idea of what has you so excited. I have to admit, you’ve done better than I expected. Still, there hasn’t been a follow-up story on LyfeGen since Anil Nayak was announced as CEO.”

  “I’ve made a new contact,” Audrey said. “I’m not willing to say anything more, but I can promise that you won’t be disappointed.”

  “And I can trust you on this? You aren’t making this up?”

  “Do I ever make up a story?”

  With a wave of her hand and a snide smile, Stephanie dismissed Audrey back out into the office and its roar of desperate desk jockeys.

  Her meeting with Stephanie was sufficient face time for today. Audrey wound her way back to the elevator. She had no particular destination in mind when her comm card buzzed.

  A short message from Preston asked her to meet him at Calisto’s Grille on State Ave at 12:30 p.m. He had something to tell her.

  ***

  Calisto’s was a brief walk down a couple of crowded blocks. Audrey weaved between meandering pedestrians, wondering how many of these people had the leisure of enjoying the day off and how many were floating around in Chicago aimlessly with no promising job prospects and an uncertain future.

  When she arrived at the restaurant, a hostess greeted her. Preston had not yet arrived so the hostess ushered Audrey to a high table and chairs.

  The unmistakable aroma of Cajun grilled shrimp and simmering jambalaya filled the air. At another table, an auto-server delivered a fresh plate of beignets covered in a thick layer of powdered sugar. The smell of the hot cooked dough made her stomach rumble.

  A holoscreen face was projected at her table and a pseudo-human voice greeted her.

  “I’ll be your waiter for lunch today,” the gruff voice said in a terrible Creole accent. “May I get you a drink while you await your guest?”

  The mismatch of dialect and accent bothered her. Automation at these genre restaurants wasn’t always perfect.

  “Just a water with lemon, please.” There were times when Audrey felt foolish using manners with a computer, but she couldn’t shake the lessons long ago instilled in her by her parents.

  She looked around at the faux-brick walls around her, lit by fake streetlights mimicking a warm incandescent burn. Paintings of trumpets and saxophones and men playing golden instruments decorated the walls, completing the touristy vibe of the restaurant.

  “Audrey,” a familiar voice said from behind her.

  She turned to see Preston’s sharp, bird-like eyes and his tight smile. “Good to see you, Preston.”

  He hoisted himself into the seat across from her. “You as well.”

  “I’ve got to begin like any good interviewer would.” Audrey’s lips curled in a half-smile; she was still uncertain about the man in front of her. “What’s going on with you?”

  “Honestly,” Preston said, “it’s been liberating, being away from the company.”

  “You haven’t been working at all?”

  “On the contrary. I’ve set up shop in my house, pursuing my own experiments. It’s wonderful.”

  “I imagine you get to spend more time with your family, too.”

  “That’s true. Certainly an added benefit.” Then he peered back into the menu. With a flick of his wrist, he ordered the smoked butter-seared scallops.

  Audrey, tired of the water and lemon, ordered a pinot grigio from a Greater Coastal Plains winery. The white wine came from one of the boutique wineries in New Jersey that sought to overtake the notion that good American wine came only from California.

  “New Jersey?” Preston said in an affected Jersey accent. “Ever had one of their reds? I think I’ll go for a pinot noir.”

  “I’ve always preferred the whites. I think the jury’s still out on the reds from there.”

  Preston shrugged. His mannerisms and mood kept Audrey guessing what exactly was behind the enormous shift in the man’s attitude from when she had first run into him, trying to score an interview at the LyfeGen press briefing after Joel Cobb’s death.

  An autoserver placed their plate of scallops on their table, the morsels of white seared meat steaming. Preston stabbed at one with his fork, motioning to Audrey to see if she
minded sharing the plate. She nodded her approval and tried one for herself. The tender meat melted on her tongue.

  “Delicious,” Preston said. “I must admit, this kitschy place is a secret pleasure of mine. Please, don’t put that in your story.” He leaned across the table and whispered in a low voice, “I’m afraid the place will get too crowded and I won’t be able to enjoy these scallops whenever it pleases me.”

  Audrey smiled.

  “I think I found some interesting information,” Preston said. “But as per our previous agreement, I hoped you might start our conversation. Any news coming out of LyfeGen that hasn’t been printed yet?”

  “Well, my sources have been a little dry lately.”

  Preston’s brow wrinkled into a slight frown.

  Audrey held up her hands in defense. “It’s not for lack of trying, but it seems like Mr. Nayak has been running a pretty tight ship. Some of my sources believe that Nayak’s actions to blame the patients—the deceased Sustain patients—for drug experimentation is probably definitely a ruse.”

  She hoped he couldn’t tell that when she said “sources,” she really meant Matthew. Her only other legitimate source had completely cut off contact with her. The cleaning-staff member and the marketing specialist she kept as contacts were virtually useless except for hearsay and office gossip.

  “Well, which is it?” Preston asked.

  “Sorry?”

  “Probably or definitely? Can’t be both.”

  Audrey smiled as she recalled her previous statement. “I suppose there’s always some uncertainty, but it appears highly likely. Recent reports show that the deceased patients—”

  “The patients,” Preston said. “They had names. I hate it when people call them the ‘god organ victims’ or the ‘deceased patients.’ I knew most of them. Jonathan. Joel. I worked with them for years. They were friends, colleagues.”

  “I apologize,” Audrey said. “It’s the fault of journalism, you know? It’s easy to get caught up in a story and not become an actor in it. It’s like the nature videographer who films a baby elephant in the Serengeti stuck in a mud pit. He could intervene, but that would be disturbing nature and breaking the wall between the story, the reality, and the documentarian.”

  “I understand. It still irks me.”

  Audrey nodded. “So, the samples retrieved from Jonathan, Joel, and the others after their passing were apparently sabotaged.”

  “Sabotaged?”

  She recalled the jumbled DNA that Matthew had recorded in the electronic copy of his lab journal. He didn’t write overtly that the mixed-up samples had been sabotaged, but he did say it was highly unlikely that the error was due to non-human intervention. With the coincidences piling up around the Sustain, it appeared far too likely that someone had interfered, knowing full well what they were doing to the samples. “At least, severely disturbed. Apparently, all of the samples were mixed up, the genetic data switched. None of the labels matched the genetic content from the samples.”

  “That’s extremely odd,” Preston said. “When I was in research, I knew the regulations team to be meticulous with all their samples. We never had a problem that drastic or disturbing.”

  “I know. I’ve never heard of any issue like that there before.”

  Preston exhaled sharply out his nose in a stifled half-laugh. “I sometimes forget just how thorough your contacts were. It sounds like you’ve kept up your end of the bargain. Could you provide me a written report of everything you’ve found?”

  “Certainly,” she said. “I’ll get you a copy of the first draft of my next story, too, if that’ll help.”

  “Sounds great.” Preston folded his arms. “Now, here’s why I wanted to meet up with you. Given some of the recent rumors that were spread about my departure from LyfeGen, I think I know who your most prized source used to be.”

  Audrey’s heart sank. It wouldn’t have been hard for an intelligent, well-connected man like Preston to connect the dots. She wished she had come clean about Matthew before. With a sheepish smile, she opened her mouth to apologize for misleading him. But he held up a hand to stifle her apology before she began.

  “You never knew the actual name of your biggest contact, did you?”

  Audrey shook her head.

  “If you had known, you would’ve already had a hell of a story. I’m fairly certain that it was Nayak.”

  Anil Nayak was Stanley. Of course. Once Nayak became CEO, it fit that he would stop supplying her with information. He had nothing more to gain by leaking information and making Joel Cobb and Preston Carter appear to be ineffectual leaders.

  “That makes a lot of sense,” Audrey said. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.”

  “Now, bear with me. How confident are you in your theories that a radical group might be responsible for the deaths of my friends and coworkers?”

  “While the physical evidence may not be damning, I think the theory holds water. A somewhat organized radical group could take advantage of bioterrorist strategies to target those individuals associated with the Sustain. And, considering the error with the tissue samples, I’m thinking that group must have ties within LyfeGen.”

  “That seems rather complicated, doesn’t it?”

  Audrey nodded. “I suppose that if a radical religious group or some anarchist group was determined enough, they could recruit someone with the basic bioengineering skill and resources necessary to develop some biological agent that could infect a victim and cause a stroke. That person might also have the expertise to have gotten a job at LyfeGen.”

  “I’m not sure how familiar you are with more esoteric biological sciences—I don’t mean to be condescending—but that would be an extremely complicated process. Not to mention, sabotaging a Sustain organ would also take a great deal of proprietary knowledge.”

  “Proprietary knowledge? From my understanding, it might not be that difficult to cause a stroke in a person with the right combination of clotting factors injected into their bloodstream.”

  “Sure.” Preston didn’t appear convinced. “Have you ever heard of Ockham’s razor?”

  “Remind me.”

  “The simplest answer to a question may be more logical, more right than a complicated explanation.”

  Audrey frowned. “Okay?”

  “This might make more sense when I tell you about my own investigations.”

  While listening to Preston, Audrey took another bite of scallop. The remaining mollusk bits had turned cool and chewy since they began talking. She took a sip of pinot grigio. The wine washed the buttery flavor from her tongue.

  “I’ve found an unidentified set of genes in my Sustain update.”

  Audrey’s eyes widened. “Unidentified?”

  “Yes,” Preston said. “None of the DNA matches the DNA that was supposed to be on my personalized Sustain update. None of it matched the previous updates either. In fact, it didn’t concur with my native DNA or the DNA of my original Sustain tissue.”

  Audrey had another bite of scallop on her fork but let it rest on her plate. “So the update itself was compromised?”

  Preston nodded.

  “I see,” Audrey said. A host of questions swirled in her mind. She could taste the tip of an unfurling mystery, far more intriguing than a bioterrorist group infecting targets. Incorporating DNA within the Sustain update almost certainly confirmed that someone within LyfeGen was responsible. “You essentially saved your own life by refusing that last update, then, huh?”

  “It would seem that way,” Preston replied. “But how did that DNA get there? It could have happened at the doctor’s office or during transportation by any of those groups you mentioned, but that would’ve taken some intense planning and timing.”

  “I’m beginning to understand why you don’t think a vigilante radical group is responsible. The simplest explanation is that a LyfeGen employee is responsible for sabotaging the Sustain updates.”

  Preston nodded slowly. “Possibly. I
don’t want to jump to conclusions since I don’t have—well—conclusive data, but I hoped you might find something else out through your sources so we can piece this together.”

  The wine glass in front of Audrey was empty and she ignored the reminder to request a refill via the menu holoscreen.

  With lunch hour nearing a close, most of the suited patrons had left. A few stragglers sipped cocktails at the bar. Laughter erupted from a booth, drowning out the muted trumpet solo wailing from the hidden speakers of the restaurant.

  Audrey turned her attention back to Preston. “Who do you think would do this?”

  “Please keep in mind that this is entirely unsupported theory. Just suspicion.”

  “Fair enough. It’ll be strictly off-record.”

  “Thanks,” Preston said. “That would be appreciated. Joel was the first victim. He was an obvious target for a whole lineup of jealous people in the biotech industry, religious groups, even politicians. There was a period of time after his death when there were no other reports of unusual deaths. Then, after I became CEO, that second rash of strokes occurred, claiming Jonathan and the others.”

  “Right,” Audrey said. Her head churned as she tried to piece together Preston’s theory before he verbalized it.

  “This might be farfetched. But it would appear that someone within the company wanted Joel gone. They probably tried to get rid of him before by making him appear to be a weak leader. When that didn’t happen, they made sure he was forcibly removed.”

  “And when you were announced as CEO instead of that person, they wanted you out as well, right?”

  “I think so. The embarrassing stories about LyfeGen continued, and a certain individual gave Beth Childs plenty of fodder to write some intriguing exposés about the company, huh?”

  Audrey half-heartedly smiled in agreement. “That person wanted Joel’s job. And when you got it, they wanted you out. They thought they would get it. So it had to be someone who knew the company inside and out, and expected a leadership position. Someone selfish, desperate, and manipulative.”

  “That person so desperately wanted me out that they caused the deaths of completely innocent people to make me look like a failure.” His piercing blue eyes narrowed to slits as he leaned forward. “So you know what I’m thinking.”