DNA

by Laurence Dahners

  “Wait a minute! I know these… aliens can manipulate DNA, but surely they can’t tell you the nucleotide sequence?!”

  “They say—and we believe—that they can. Here…” Donsaii mumbled to her AI and a video appeared on the big screen, “is Striper showing us a nucleotide sequence written out as a series of tiny dots on a sheet of leather.”

  “Holy crap! It would take all day to write out the sequence of some proteins!”

  Donsaii grinned, “Maybe more than a day. Some of the big ones have 27,000 amino acids, and it would require three times that many nucleotides to spell them out.” She shrugged, “But not very many of them are that big. Hopefully most of the ones we’ll be interested in will be much smaller.”

  Reggie blinked, “Once you generate the amino acids for the proteins in the correct sequence, the protein has to be folded correctly. Some proteins require ‘molecular chaperones’ to fold them into their correct state. Earth chaperones might be different than the alien ones.”

  Donsaii grinned at her, “Possibly. Does that mean you don’t want to work with some of the alien proteins that don’t require chaperones?”

  Reggie laughed at herself, “No! No, I really, really do want to work on this project. I just find it difficult to accept as true on a gut level… even though up here,” she tapped her head, “I do believe you. I’m just following my instincts and principles by objecting to as many of the crazy things you’re saying as possible.” She smiled, “Science, you know. You should doubt everything, right?”

  “No doubt,” Donsaii had said, grinning right back.

  Donsaii had gone on to explain that Striper had shown them the sequence for a protein that Striper believed to be very important in correcting DNA errors induced by radiation and other mutagens. “We at D5R, especially in the ET Resources branch, would be very interested in something that would radiation protect the people who go out to explore other worlds.”

  “Our cells already have multiple error correction systems in place. The chances aren’t very good that the Virgies have a better one.”

  Ell shrugged, “Perhaps, but I think they do. Their world has no magnetosphere and is subject to nearly the same radiation levels present on Mars, yet Striper claims that unintentional mutations are exceedingly rare.”

  “Oh…”

  Chapter Eight

  Jamieson looked over the men he’d hired. They were all what he thought of as “low-level.” That should be okay since they were hired mainly as drivers, specifically because they were capable of taking a car off AI control and handling it manually. Well, and because they were criminals. The kind of people who were willing to carry out a shady job, then hopefully would keep their mouths shut.

  He had drivers for a trailing car and a leading car, as well as the three cars that would force Donsaii and her kid off the road. Roger and he would be in the panel van, and Roger was the only one of these morons that would ever see the hideout. The other five would pick up their AI disabled car from parking lots around the town, drive it to the takedown location, do their jobs, then get rid of the vehicle and leave the area.

  Jamieson had had to buy six more vehicles for this project, which had felt wasteful even if they were old and used. However, he’d sworn he wouldn’t economize. He was going to buy the equipment he needed to do this job right.

  Professionally.

  He opened the case he’d brought with him and started handing out the cheap AI headbands he’d bought for the mission. “These are throwaways!” he admonished. “They’ll be our only form of communication and patched only through a PGR linker I’ve got hidden away in a secure location. Destroy them in a fire once the mission’s over, got that?”

  Everyone nodded.

  “Your codenames for the mission are, Bob, Carl, David, Earl, and Frank,” he said, pointing to each of them as their names came up. “I’m Arthur,” he pointed to Roger, “and this is George. Just in case you haven’t figured it out, you’re in alphabetical order for the takedown, from Bob in the lead car to Frank in the trailing car.”

  “Every evening from 6 to 7, get out your disposable headband, put it on, and wait for me to give you a message regarding whether we’re a go or not. If we’re a go, you’ll need to be in place by 5 o’clock the next morning.”

  Getting nods again, he continued, “Tomorrow, at 9:30 AM, we’ll have a test run. George here will be driving that old, red, Ford Focus outside.” He gestured to the parking lot where everyone could see it parked. “The target will be driving a blue Ford Focus on the day of the actual takedown so it’ll be the same size, shape, and etcetera. You’ll each be parked at the specified GPS locations I’ve sent to your AI headband.” He looked at them to make sure they comprehended.

  Jamieson focused on Frank, “When George goes by in the Focus, you’ll let us all know and pull out a block or so behind him, telling us if anybody passes you or is approaching from behind. Bob, you’ll be way in front, informing us if any cars are coming from the other direction. If someone comes early enough, you’ll have us abort the mission. If they come after we’ve already started the takedown, you’ll turn into the oncoming lane and block them from getting close enough to see us. Carl, you’ll pull out just in front of the target, then slow down to delay the Focus. David and Earl, you pull out just behind the Focus, right?” They nodded their heads in acknowledgment. “When you get to the takedown area, you’ll see the panel van. David, you’ll pull up beside the Focus. Carl slows to crowd it from the front and Earl crowds it from the back, then David forces it off the road. Try to time it so it stops right next to the van.”

  Jamieson looked around, getting acknowledgment from the others. “If needed, I’ll move the van forward or back so that the Focus is completely boxed in, then I’ll get out, open the door of the Focus, Taser the woman in the front and trank her. George’ll drag the woman out of the front while I deal with the kid in the back seat however necessary. Once we’ve got them in the panel van, everyone splits up and goes their different directions. Got that?”

  Carl put up his hand, “Can I keep the car?”

  Jamieson rolled his eyes, “Sure, if you want to go to prison!” He sighed, “Unless your head’s way up your ass, you’ll leave absolutely no record you had anything to do with this if it’s at all possible! Wear your gloves and a new clean disposable coverall every time you’re in the car so you don’t leave DNA. Facial disguises at all times during even the practice mission so no outside AI can ID you. Once the mission’s gone down, wipe anything you touched with the Clorox wipes, dump the car in a body of water and burn that disposable AI headband! Walk a long way from there, then have your own car pick you up at your new location. Get the hell out of the state.” He looked around the room, “If you can think of anything else you might do to separate yourself from this operation afterwards, do it! You’re getting paid plenty of money. Don’t go to prison trying to pull down a few more nickels!”

  Jamieson didn’t actually care if any of them got caught, except for the fact they might then get him sucked into the same shit-hole. He thought about telling them how little he cared about them, but decided he shouldn’t push them even further from a “team” mindset than their own natural inclinations already placed them.

  ***

  Zage stood in the animal care room, looking back and forth from one of his new obese rats, to another investigator’s healthy rat in the cage next to it. “Wow, these rats are really… huge!”

  “Yeah,” Vanessa said. “Their weights are about forty percent higher, even though their lengths are essentially the same.”

  “The animal handlers won’t mind doing the injections?”

  Vanessa snorted, “I’m sure it’s not their favorite thing to do. But, they do so many injections down here that they get pretty good at it.”

  “Okay,” Zage said thoughtfully. “I kind of feel like I should have to do it myself, since it’s my experiment.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s not allowed since you’re not a
n official student, and too young besides. I’ve done injections for my own projects and it’s kind of a hassle, but not a huge problem. It’s cheaper for you to have the facility people do the injections than for your parents to pay me to do them at the rate they usually pay me.”

  “I know. It just feels wrong. You were right about Dr. Turner, by the way.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “He wasn’t at all scary to talk to. It’s fun talking about science with him.”

  “Well, he might seem a little scarier if he was in control of when you got your PhD.”

  “I think it’s scary enough. He doesn’t have to let me do research in his lab, after all.”

  Vanessa hid a little grin, “Yes he does. He wants to be on all those papers you’re going to write.”

  “Really?”

  Vanessa nodded…

  ***

  With a start, Frank realized that the blue Focus had just gone by. Speaking through the disposable AI headband, he said, “We’re a go. I repeat, we’re a go.” He waited until the Focus had gone around the corner, then pulled out of his parking place and started after it.

  When he went around the corner and looked ahead to find the Focus, he saw that someone else had pulled out. At first, his brain assumed that it must be Earl, but then he realized he wasn’t seeing Earl’s big Silverado. Instead, it was some small foreign car. Shit! He thought, That’s twice! He spoke to the AI, “Connect me to the team… Abort. I say again, abort. Another vehicle has inserted itself into our pattern.”

  A few seconds later, he heard Jamieson, who Frank knew as Arthur, say, “Okay team. Relax. We’ll try again tomorrow.”

  “Come on!” Earl said over the connection, “I can bump that little Kia right off the road!”

  “Earl! Chill! This is not a problem. We’ll just do this again and again until everything works out right. No need to rush into anything. We’re in no hurry to shoot ourselves in the foot.”

  Easy for you to say, Frank thought, you’re not paying us extra for all these false starts!

  ***

  Vanessa came back into the lab from her early afternoon class and saw Zage sitting over at his usual spot. She didn’t think much of it at first, setting her backpack down and glancing at the monitor for her schedule of the day.

  Something tickled her consciousness and she turned to look at Zage. He looked… slumped. Starting across the lab, she said, “Zage, you okay?”

  He didn’t respond for a moment; then he said despondently, “They haven’t lost any weight.”

  Vanessa blinked, “Um, your rats?”

  Zage nodded.

  “Wait a minute! Didn’t they just get their first dose of your peptide yesterday?”

  Zage nodded again.

  “And you broke the randomization on your study to know which ones got the active peptide and which ones got the nonsense peptide?” She felt a little irritated because, if he’d done that, his study would no longer be blinded, a violation of scientific principles.

  “No,” he said, sounding a little offended that she might think he’d done that, “but none of them have lost more than five grams.”

  It took Vanessa a moment to understand what he was saying; then she started laughing.

  Zage turned and glared at her, “What’s so funny?”

  “That’s, what, about one percent of body weight for those rats? People randomly gain and lose one percent of their body weight all the time! Probably, mostly due to fluid shifts. You can’t be expecting to get results from this experiment in the first twenty-four hours!”

  He narrowed his eyes, “If it had the kind of effect I’m expecting, some of them should have lost noticeable amounts of weight!”

  Vanessa snorted, “You need to have some patience! Besides, you’ve gotten entirely too used to having everything go your way! Your DNA sequencing pulls out genes you thought might be present. You design a peptide and get a good pure sample the first time. Your peptide actually works to modify expression of Trim28! Nobody gets that lucky when they’re doing cutting edge research. You’re supposed to have been going down a bunch of blind alleys, making a lot of mistakes, and generally getting really frustrated before anything ever went right!”

  “But it should have worked!”

  Vanessa rolled her eyes, “And it still might, the way your luck’s been going. You need to give it a week before you decide it failed!”

  Zage sighed, “I think I need to look back through those papers and check some of my assumptions…” he trailed off.

  “No harm in that,” Vanessa said as she turned to head back to her side of the lab, “but don’t forget that if this experiment turns out perfectly the first time you run it, like the rest of your projects so far… I’m gonna have to smack you up the side of the head.”

  She glanced back to see him staring wide-eyed at her.

  She winked at him and said, “’Cause that just wouldn’t be fair to the rest of us.”

  She got a little grin in response.

  ***

  Jamieson felt his adrenaline spike, Fourth time’s the charm! Three times last week, something had interrupted them before they could make their snatch. He used to hate Mondays, but this Monday was going to be sweet!

  His three cars had the blue Focus boxed in and were forcing it off the road. The practice had really helped; there was no place for the Focus to get out of the hole they’d trapped it in. It bumped off into the grass.

  For a second, when it bounced over a big rut, he thought it might try to escape by turning right out of the box. But then the guys had forced it up next to the van where there was no place for it to go.

  Jamieson threw open the door on the panel van, took one step and shoved his sledgehammer through the passenger-side window of the car. He fired the Taser into Donsaii, a little surprised to see her cowering, rather than coming after him like he’d expected.

  Donsaii slumped, quivering, and Jamieson dropped the Taser and pulled out his trank gun. A second later a dart was quivering in Donsaii’s thigh. He reached in the window and flipped the switch to unlock the doors. He could do it without looking, having practiced it plenty of times on the team’s Focus.

  Stepping to his left, he jerked open the back passenger door and leaned in on a knee. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Roger/George leaning in the front door and grabbing Donsaii by the arm. Roger started hauling her out as Jamieson leaned over to grab the kid by one arm.

  SON OF A BITCH!

  The little shit had punched him in the nose! Hard! Jamieson’s head was ringing and his eyes were watering so he could hardly see! He reached in a pocket and pulled out the handheld Taser. His first swing at the kid missed, but the second one connected and the kid gratifyingly collapsed. Blood dripped into Jamieson’s mouth and he had to resist the temptation to smack the kid.

  Unable to see worth a damn, Jamieson gave up on unbuckling the kid and pulled out his knife, cutting the straps. He hauled the flaccid kid out of the car and into the van. “You’d better drive,” he said to Roger.

  Roger gave him a wide-eyed glance, then grinned, “What the hell happened to you?”

  “Little bastard punched me in the nose. Get us going. I’ll tie the woman up.” Though he worried that Roger might have figured it out, he was still careful not to let anyone on the team know exactly who they were kidnapping. He worried that one of the team might turn Jamieson in, just in the hope of a reward.

  Roger climbed into the front and dropped the foil curtain. The van bounced up on the road and started rolling while Jamieson started restraining Donsaii with an inordinate number of plasticuffs. Then he turned and did the same to the kid, using ordinary plastic ties since plasticuffs didn’t come small enough for a kid.

  He sat back, lifting his headband to wipe at his eyes and staring at Donsaii. When he’d been tying her up he’d thought she felt kind of… soft. He’d been expecting a super athlete like her to be much more muscular, even though, as a woman, he still thought she�
�d be less muscular than the men he dealt with. Surely she’d be a lot more toned than this! Could I have been wrong? he worried. Maybe this isn’t Donsaii after all?

  He lifted the headband to wipe his eyes some more and looked at the kid. The little bastard had already recovered from being Tased and was glaring at Jamieson. Jamieson rubbed gingerly at his nose, “You little shit. I think you broke my nose!”

  The kid’s eyes narrowed, “Why are you doing this?!”

  For money, Jamieson thought. He said, “I work for some people who want your mom,” he waved at Donsaii, “to share some of her secrets with the rest of the world.”

  The kid blinked, looked at Donsaii, then said, “That’s not my mom.”

  Jamieson’s guts cramped and he turned to look at the woman. He knee walked over to her and looked down at her face. He tugged at her hair, Not a wig! He rubbed hard at her nose, then at the rest of her face, No facial disguise prosthetics! Shit! Shit! Shit! He went back to her hair, parting it and looking for any evidence of strawberry blond roots. No, it looked like real brunette hair!

  “Besides,” the kid said, “my mom doesn’t have any secrets.”

  Reaching in the pocket of his coverall, Jamieson pulled out some heavy scissors and started cutting her clothes off. None of her skin looked as pale as Donsaii’s. Once she was naked, he looked in her armpits and her crotch for spots she might have missed while coloring her skin. It was all the same, not a speck of her looked like it belonged on a strawberry blond. Aw crap!

  He pulled the blanket over the woman, stuffed her clothes into a metal locker, and turned with his scissors to the kid. Staring wide-eyed, the kid said, “Why’d you cut her clothes off?!”

  “Need to make sure you guys don’t have any tracking devices on you,” Jamieson said as he started to cut the kids clothes off.

  The kid started thrashing around violently, screaming, “Stop!”