The Genesis Code

by Christopher Forrest

  The interior of the brownstone was dark and uninviting, but well kept. Brick walls, heavy curtains, and wood floors seemed to absorb most of the ambient light, creating a dreary effect. Arakai gingerly closed the open window and crouched behind Ambergris’ dining room table. He removed the knife from between his teeth and wiped the flat of the silver blade once across his black trousers.

  A grandfather clock in the living room chimed the quarter hour. The sound brought a flash of childhood memories to Arakai’s mind. Many nights, Arakai had listened to an antique clock chime away the dark hours as he lay awake in his bed, alone, waiting for his mother to return home from work, stinking of gin and cigarettes. He had never known his father. The clock had belonged to Arakai’s grandparents, a family heirloom passed to Arakai’s mother after their death in 1945.

  Arakai’s grandparents had lived in Japan, on the outskirts of Nagasaki, for decades. On the day that America unleashed hell on the city of Nagasaki, Arakai’s grandparents had been entertaining neighbors for dinner at their home. Spared the horrific death that consumed tens of thousands in the epicenter of the thermonuclear blast, Arakai’s grandparents instead lingered in agony for weeks, suffering from terrible radiation sickness, before finally crossing the void in a makeshift hospital hastily erected by the defeated Imperial Army on the outskirts of the ruins of Nagasaki.

  There was a faint sound from Dr. Ambergris’ kitchen. Arakai forced his thoughts to return to the present. He slowed his breathing, relaxed his grip on the handle of his knife, and crept across the dining room toward the kitchen.

  Twenty-nine

  Dr. Christian Madison’s Office

  34th Floor, Millennium Tower

  Manhattan, New York

  The phone on Madison’s desk chirped. A blinking red light indicated an incoming call.

  “How are you getting a call? What about the security lockdown?”

  “I don’t know,” said Madison.

  The phone chirped again. Reluctantly, he answered it, placing the telephone receiver against his ear.

  “This is Dr. Madison.”

  “I want you to listen very carefully.” The voice on the phone was slightly garbled and had a flat, synthetic sound.

  Digitally disguised, thought Madison. “Who is this?”

  “You are in danger. Your life and the lives of thousands of others are in jeopardy.”

  Grace pointed to the speakerphone button. Nodding, Madison pushed it and gently set the handset back into its cradle.

  “Tell me who this is,” said Madison, “or I’m hanging up the phone.”

  “Dr. Madison, by now you must be aware of the murder of Dr. Joshua Ambergris.”

  “Yes.”

  “The same individuals who plotted Dr. Ambergris’ murder have set in motion a plan to detonate a bomb in the Millennium Tower on the first day of the Biogenetics Conference.”

  Grace’s jaw dropped.

  “What? Are you insane?” said Madison.

  “Dr. Madison, I assure you that I am perfectly sane. I have risked my life to convey this warning to you. I will not call again. The detonation will occur at nine-thirty A.M. on the first day of the conference.”

  Madison’s face went white.

  “Who is doing this? Who killed Dr. Ambergris?” he asked.

  Grace screamed as the door to Madison’s office swung open and slammed into the wall, punching a hole in the plasterboard with a loud bang.

  Crowe’s immense form filled the doorway.

  “Good luck,” said the voice. Then the line went dead.

  Thirty

  Quiz’s Office

  Subbasement, Millennium Tower

  Manhattan, New York

  Quiz finished off his Diet Coke and leaned back in a black leather executive chair. On a flat-panel display to his left, a music video featured waiflike blondes with thick blue eye shadow and Lycra body-suits undulating to the rhythms of trance music in a postindustrial urban wasteland. Hi-fi speakers hidden around the room pulsed with futuristic electronica.

  Quiz had located the error in his programming and quickly corrected the flaw in the code.

  “No need to tell anyone about that one, eh, Barkley?” he said to the diminutive canine. Barkley opened one eye, then closed it again.

  Another flat-panel display silently played a pirated copy of Raiders of the Lost Ark. On the screen, Harrison Ford used his coiled whip to brush a herd of tarantulas from the back of his unsuspecting companion. Torchlight cast flickering shadows against the walls of a cavern passageway enshrouded with spider webs.

  On a third screen, a three-dimensional chessboard slowly rotated against a black background. The chess pieces were fashioned from the characters of Alice in Wonderland. Quiz glanced up to see a black bishop float across the board and descend on a square next to his queen.

  “The French suck at chess,” he muttered. With two keystrokes, his queen swept in to capture his opponent’s only remaining rook. “That’s five moves to checkmate.”

  A fourth screen displayed an ongoing conversation in an Internet chat room with RIGHTSEDFRED and SCULLY2000.

  RIGHTSEDFRED: No way the Egyptians built the Sphinx.

  SCULLY2000: LOL. Dude, it was built during the Fourth Dynasty.

  RIGHTSEDFRED: No. The Sphinx is much older than that. Prof. Schoch of BU has shown that the erosion of the Sphinx was caused by thousands of years of rainfall, ages before the Old Kingdom ever existed.

  SCULLY2000: ROTFL. Most Egyptologists think Schoch is wrong. But just for the sake of argument, who do you think built the Sphinx?

  Shaking his head to clear the cobwebs from his brain, Quiz turned his attention back to the errant program he had just fixed.

  “Forgot to take my Ritalin this morning, Barkley,” he said.

  That’s what two nights of no sleep will do to you, he thought. Things get a little blurry around the edges.

  The edited program quickly located four suspicious files. Quiz examined each one in turn.

  You’ve been busy, Dr. Ambergris, he thought.

  He began reading.

  An alarm sounded on Quiz’s computer. Punching at the keys on his keyboard, he opened a secure socket to the Triad Genomics security server. He reviewed the latest entries on the security logs.

  00.854745

  << Run face recognition protocol C; all feeds. >>

  << Target: employee file #0028473. >>

  << Match found: 98% confidence level. >>

  << Camera location: Cam 24-H3 >>

  00.954326

  << Security restriction—access level D only >>

  << Sectors 2400-2479. >>

  << Authorization OC. >>

  That’s a restriction on the entire floor. Authorized by OC. Omar Crowe. What’s going on?

  Shaking his head in dismay, Quiz keyed off the alarm and refocused his attention on the computer screen displaying Dr. Ambergris’ research journal. After the fourth paragraph, his mind was spinning.

  Thirty-one

  Dr. Christian Madison’s Office

  34th Floor, Millennium Tower

  Manhattan, New York

  “Crowe, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” yelled Madison.

  “Dr. Nguyen,” Crowe said. “Would you care to tell me why you were in the building last night between four-eleven and four forty-six A.M.?”

  “What? I was nowhere near the office last night,” said Grace. “I was home sleeping, like normal people.”

  Crowe’s eyes narrowed as he spoke. “The security logs place you on the thirty-fourth floor at four-eleven A.M. You were the only one on the floor around the time Dr. Ambergris was murdered.”

  “Bullshit,” yelled Grace. “Did you review the tape from the security cameras?”

  Crowe shook his head and smirked. “As I’m sure you already know, that data has conveniently been erased from the server. For all of the cameras on that floor, from four A.M. to five A.M. Quite convenient, wouldn’t you say?”

  Madison
tried to interject. “Crowe, wait a minute—”

  “Stay out of it, Dr. Madison,” Crowe snapped.

  “You know me,” said Grace. “I had nothing to do with this.”

  “No,” said Crowe. “It’s quite apparent that I don’t know you at all.”

  “Crowe,” said Madison, raising his voice in anger. “Just stop for a minute. Listen to me! I just got a telephone call warning me that the same people who killed Dr. Ambergris are planning to detonate a bomb in the Millennium Tower on the first day of the Biogenetics Conference. Grace has nothing to do with this!”

  “I warned you to stay out of it, Madison,” yelled Crowe. “And I’d like to know why Grace is here in your office. What’s your interest in defending her? Perhaps you’re involved in this as well?”

  Grace started to back away from Crowe.

  “You aren’t going anywhere,” he said, grabbing her roughly by the arm.

  Grace cried out in pain and twisted her body away from Crowe, trying to free her arm from his painful grip.

  “I said stop!” yelled Crowe, pulling hard on Grace’s arm. She stumbled and fell, banging her head against the wall.

  Madison, outmatched by at least eighty pounds, grabbed Crowe’s wrist and tried to release Grace from his grasp. Crowe backhanded him across the face with a loud smack, sending Madison crashing to the floor.

  Grace twisted her upper body, bringing her teeth within range of Crowe’s arm. She bit down hard on the meaty muscle of his inner forearm.

  “Goddamn you,” roared Crowe, turning toward Grace and grabbing a fistful of her hair.

  Rising to his feet, Madison took advantage of Grace’s momentary distraction and launched himself at Crowe’s back.

  He wrapped one arm around Crowe’s neck, pulling hard on it with the other, trying to fasten a chokehold around his throat.

  “Let her go,” he yelled, jamming his knees into Crowe’s kidneys.

  Crowe brought both hands to his neck and fastened his fingers around Madison’s arm with a viselike grip. Struggling for breath, he began to spin around the room, smashing Madison’s body into the walls and furniture in a desperate attempt to dislodge him.

  Grace, suddenly free, grabbed a brass reading lamp from Madison’s desk. Crowe spun around, slamming Madison’s legs into the desk.

  Grace raised the heavy lamp above her head and jumped at Crowe, smashing the lamp down on the back of his head.

  Crowe dropped like a rag doll. Madison fell to the ground beside him.

  “Christian!” yelled Grace. “Are you okay?”

  Madison, his chest heaving with exertion, pulled himself up onto his knees. He took a quick inventory of his pains and injuries.

  “I don’t think I broke anything,” he said, pressing on his ribs.

  Madison crawled over and checked the back of Crowe’s head for a skull fracture. He felt a knot the size of a golf ball. His hand came away red with Crowe’s blood.

  Thirty-two

  Quiz’s Office

  Subbasement, Millennium Tower

  Manhattan, New York

  Quiz scrolled through page after page of Dr. Ambergris’ research journal. The lines of text were periodically punctuated with long sequences of genetic code. Occasionally, the daily journal entries would skip forward several days, as if Ambergris had recorded nothing for days at a time.

  Or maybe those particular entries have been erased.

  Quiz scrolled back to the first entry and started reading.

  7 March—

  Christian, I write these words not only for myself, but for you as well. Hopefully, you will never have to bear the burden of learning the truth contained within these pages. If you are reading this journal, then I have failed, and reluctantly pass on to you the secrets I have learned.

  I have made many mistakes in my life. And as I reflect on my numerous failings, there is one mistake in particular for which I have never been able to bring myself to ask for your forgiveness. After the death of your son, I was unable to help you bear the burden of your grief. The scars of my own failed relationship with my father were still too raw after his passing. The sorrow I saw in your eyes only served to deepen my own. As you looked upon a bleak future filled with endless days you would never share with your son, I saw the reflection of my own past, filled with months and years of words unspoken and opportunities forever lost.

  I deeply regret that I waited until after my father’s death to take a proper interest in his passions. I know now that his scholarly pursuits into the mysteries of humanity’s ancient cultures created in him the same feelings that I experienced as a young man discovering the wonders of science and genetics.

  I had no faith in my father’s gods, nor he in mine. For him, the answers to life’s most important questions lay firmly entombed in the past. As for me, I looked only toward the future.

  How often he tried to interest me in his newest discoveries.

  How often I politely listened, with neither desire nor intent to understand, as he tried to share with me those insights and discoveries that constituted the most important moments of his life, those moments in which he felt truly alive, for which he felt true purpose.

  My father was a brilliant man. And in realizing my failings as a son, I became compelled to know the inner workings of his mind. Ironically, in my study of his notes and the volumes, I have found a subject of common interest.

  Throughout human history there have been many myths of a great primordial language. A language that was more than just grammar or syntax. A primordial language that described the essential structure of life. The Ursprache, as it has been called, was believed to be the language that God used to breathe life into His creations.

  Like my father, I have come to believe that the Ursprache is not myth at all. Rather, the mythology surrounding the Ursprache was a primitive effort by men to describe a concept that was beyond the limits of human understanding in the age in which they lived.

  Fragments of truth wrapped in layers of legend.

  What does the Ursprache represent? What language does the term define? To modern science, DNA is the essential language of life, the great primordial language spoken by all living things. DNA, the written instructions inscribed in the human genome, contains a written prophecy that comes to pass with each day that we draw breath.

  Scattered throughout the ancient writings of human civilization are many cryptic references overlooked by modern science. References to scientific concepts far beyond the comprehension of their authors. References repeated without understanding from their original sources now lost in the mists of antiquity.

  Quiz rubbed his eyes and drank deeply from his Diet Coke. A blinking icon on his computer screen indicated that the security lockdown was still in effect.

  What the hell is going on?

  “Is he dead?” asked Grace.

  “No, he’s still breathing,” said Madison, wiping the blood from his hand on Crowe’s jacket.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” said Grace.

  Madison checked Crowe’s pulse. It beat a slow, steady rhythm beneath his fingertips. Madison reached down and grabbed the security badge hanging on a cord around Crowe’s neck. With a quick jerk, he ripped it free.

  “This will get us out,” he said.

  Madison folded the printout of the Magic Square and slipped it into his pocket.

  “Let’s go.”

  The halls were empty as Grace and Madison made their way toward the elevators in the reception area. Madison’s jaw throbbed with pain. He tasted blood in his mouth.

  “Slow down,” hissed Madison. “Walk quickly, but not too quickly.”

  Madison flashed a smile at Zoovas, seated behind the security desk.

  “Back in a minute,” said Madison. “Want an espresso?”

  “Dr. Madison, we’re locked down,” said Zoovas. “I can’t let you leave the floor.”

  Across the room, a set of elevator doors opened. Occam was inside. When he saw Madison a
nd Grace, Occam drew his weapon.

  Thirty-three

  Security Station

  34th Floor Lobby, Millennium Tower

  Manhattan, New York

  “Run!” yelled Madison.

  They darted toward a nearby stairwell. Occam and Zoovas ran after them.

  “Come on,” yelled Madison, dragging Grace through the door and down the first flight of stairs. They reached the next landing as Occam and Zoovas entered the stairwell above them.

  “Not this floor,” said Grace, panting. “The next one.”

  Madison took three steps at a time down the stairs to the next floor. Grace was right beside him.

  “This one,” she said, pushing through the door onto the thirty-second floor.

  A barrage of screeching and howling assaulted their ears.

  “The primate labs,” she said.

  The stench of urine and feces was overwhelming. A deafening cacophony of screams and howls from the unhappy residents of stacks of metal cages filled the air. Monkeys and apes shook the doors of their small prisons and drummed their fists against the metal walls of their cages.

  “This way,” said Grace. “Stay away from the cages.”

  Small hands reached out through wire mesh, grasping at their clothing. A Colobus monkey shrieked and threw a half-eaten piece of fruit at Madison. It bounced off his shoulder and slid across the floor.

  A lab technician in blue scrubs appeared at the other end of the room.

  “What the hell is going on?” he demanded.

  Madison charged forward, running straight at the lab tech.

  “Wait!” yelled the confused tech, throwing up his hands.

  Madison slammed into the man, knocking him back against a row of cages with a loud metallic bang. Small hands and fingers erupted from the wire cage doors, grasping and pawing at the tech’s face and neck, cutting his skin with tiny nails.

  “Christian—” said Grace.

  “Go,” he yelled, pointing toward an open door.

  The tech screamed in pain, twisting his body away from the hostile spider monkeys. Trails of blood streamed down his face. His left foot slid on a piece of partially masticated banana and he fell in a heap on the wet floor.