Fringe 03 - Sins of the Father

by Christa Faust

  Walter had only hinted—in an erratic, elliptical way—at the idea that had possessed Julia since the day she had discovered this unique protein coating. The idea itself was like being in love. It consumed every moment of her waking, and haunted her dreams. And it was tied directly into her two deepest passions.

  Virology, and epilepsy.

  The first part of her theory was both exciting and terrifying, and full of potential to revolutionize the world. It involved taking this seemingly harmless build-up, and using it to replace the normal protective protein coat around a genetically modified virus. Theoretically, that modification would give a virus a kind of chemical skeleton key that would allow it to unlock, penetrate, and actually rewrite the host’s DNA.

  It was genetic sculpture at its most sublime, and could be employed on a living subject. Of course, if such a virus were allowed to reproduce unchecked, and infect free-roaming host organisms outside of a sterile lab environment, it might lead to an epidemic of horrific mutation.

  But, there was another, even more exciting implication—something that Walter had never considered. Because he had no reason to think of it. His life hadn’t been torn apart by the terrible consequences of epilepsy.

  Like Julia, Walter had been desperate to find a way to undo a traumatic loss in his life. He was endlessly trying to access a gateway, via the chemical crutch of LSD, Cortexiphan, and other artificial, mind-altering substances. But what he didn’t have was the naturally chaotic brain chemistry that allowed Julia to achieve altered mental states—always in the form of her seizures. Seizures during which she occasionally caught teasing glimpses of the same kind of organic gateways that Walter had sketched and documented in his journal.

  Julia’s plan—which she knew would take years and years to bring to fruition—was to find a way to create a genetically engineered viral key that would unlock her own psychic potential. To saddle and break her epileptic power like a skittish wild horse, so that she could ride it through the membrane separating her from an alternate universe.

  One in which her little sister might still be alive.

  There was precedent, after all. Peter was living proof of it. And if it could be done once, it could be replicated.

  Only, her version was infinitely more subtle. Rather than snatching her living sister, and bringing her back to the universe in which she had been killed as an infant, Julia planned to stalk and eliminate the other-universe version of herself—the one who had never murdered her little sister.

  And then she would take her place. To seamlessly slide into her fantasy of a fresh start, with a family that would love and embrace her without the toxic grief, blame, and utter loathing that had poisoned any hope she had ever had of a relationship in this universe.

  Yet she couldn’t get too far ahead of herself. She had to take it one step at a time. Check and recheck her work. Confirm her results. Be meticulous, and careful not to let her emotions get in the way of her goal.

  With the lab to herself, Julia took the opportunity to pull Walter’s journal out of its hiding place again, and double-check to make sure there weren’t any other critical passages that she might need later, even if they didn’t seem particularly relevant right now.

  The book was filled with scrawled schematics for wacky inventions and irrelevant mechanisms, but there were also a hundred little cryptic notes and asides scribbled in the margins. Individually, they didn’t seem to mean anything, but when considered in the broader context, they took on profound and ominous significance.

  * * *

  She was sitting on a tall stool with the small leather-bound book open in her lap, thumbing through the most recent entries.

  “Hello, Julia.”

  She almost jumped out of her own skin. It was that smug bitch, Carla Warren, popping up like a judgmental fairy godmother.

  Julia had always disliked the pretty, perfect blonde, for a million reasons. She hated Carla for the way men fell all over themselves to give her everything she wanted.

  How all she had to do was bat her big blue eyes and flash her kittenish smile, and everything was handed to her on a silver platter.

  But, as much as Julia resented the way men reacted to Carla, she found herself studying her nemesis, filing away all of her subtle moves and gestures for future use. Because Julia had already saved up more than half of the money she would need for cosmetic surgery. Eventually, she would become the kind of woman for whom men wanted to do things.

  Things that would further her long-term plans.

  Still, the trait Julia really hated in Carla wasn’t her looks. It was the fact that she wasn’t any kind of real scientist. She called herself a “theoretical physicist,” which—as far as Julia was concerned—meant bullshit artist. A sanctimonious, stuck-up windbag who sat around all day talking about a bunch of imaginary ideas, rather than getting her hands dirty with the real-world, meat-and-potatoes kind of science that really mattered.

  Even worse, Carla was religious. She was always going on and on about spirituality, and irrefutable morality, and other made-up black-and-white fairy tales that had no place in a scientific laboratory. She was the diametric opposite of a scientist, in Julia’s eyes. Nothing but an ethical hall monitor. A tiresome, pretentious Goody Two-Shoes who thought scientific inquiry should be restricted by her arbitrary rules, just because she said so.

  And now, here she was. The hall monitor, come to stick her pretty little nose into Julia’s business.

  “What are you doing?” Carla asked, glancing down at the book in Julia’s lap before she was able to close it. “Isn’t that Walter’s handwriting? What is that? Where did you get it?”

  There was no time to think. She had to come up with a plan to spin this unfortunate intrusion in her favor, and fast.

  Then it came to her, in a perfect moment of awe-inspiring clarity. The way to get rid of Carla once and for all—and Walter, too, while she was at it. That way, no one alive would possess the knowledge that she had.

  It was almost too perfect.

  “Carla,” Julia said, making her voice all quivery and sincere. “I’m so glad you’re here. I need to talk to you. It’s about Doctor Bishop.”

  Carla’s perfect, unblemished forehead creased with worry.

  “What is it?” she asked, taking a seat on a stool and putting a gentle, motherly hand on Julia’s arm. It took effort not to flinch at her intrusive touch. Julia’s heart was pounding so hard, she felt as if it was going to leap out of her chest.

  She had never been so excited and nervous. One wrong word, and she would blow it.

  She forced herself to take a deep slow breath, hoping her hesitation translated into something that read like genuine concern.

  “You’ve been working with him for years,” Julia said. “So you know that he’s, well, eccentric. But…” Julia paused dramatically, allowing a little quiver to start up in her lower lip as she placed her flat hand on the cover of the diary. “Oh, Carla, it’s so much worse than I thought. He’s a very sick man. A dangerous man, I think.”

  “Listen,” Carla said. “I know Walter. Better than anyone, I think. Even Elizabeth.”

  Julia looked up sharply, narrowing her eyes.

  She’d always wondered if Carla was having an affair with Walter, but had never seen any real evidence to back up her suspicions. Now, she suddenly found herself wondering again. It didn’t make sense that a beautiful woman, who could pretty much have any man on campus, would go for an odd duck like Walter. But stranger things had happened.

  Julia herself never really understood the point of sexual relationships, anyway, unless they could be used to achieve a productive goal. What goal might Carla be striving to achieve by sleeping with Walter? “Bumping uglies,” she had heard it called colloquially. Assuming, of course, that those uptight religious beliefs even allowed for such behavior.

  “I know he’s got a lot of complex issues,” Carla added. “But I honestly believe that the good side of him is still there. Still worth fi
ghting for.”

  “That’s what I thought, too,” Julia said. “Until I read this diary. Now I’m afraid of what he may do. Afraid that he’s planning something terrible. Something that could have catastrophic consequences. He…” She paused again, this time to try and stifle helpless giggles that she struggled to disguise as sobs. “I think he’s going to… tamper in God’s domain and try to create his own universe!”

  Julia looked up at Carla, wondering if maybe she’d pushed it just a little bit too far with the “God’s domain” thing. But Carla looked serious—and concerned. She was taking the bait.

  It’s working!

  She felt the same kind of cold, ecstatic rush that she always got when a tricky and complicated experiment went exactly the way she had planned. She handed the little book over with what she hoped was a solemn, serious look on her face. Now all she had to do was let Carla read through Walter’s madness, and then carefully plant a little seed about how best to deal with it.

  * * *

  When Carla had finished reading through Walter’s journal, she paused for a moment with a deeply pained expression that made Julia want to jump up and cheer. But she didn’t. She stayed seated and quiet, arranging her own face into an exact mirror image of the one worn by the other woman.

  “You’re so right,” Carla said. “It is worse than I thought.” She frowned, gesturing toward Julia’s little experiment with Peter’s DNA. “What are you doing here? Surely you’re not attempting to implement this madness?”

  “Listen,” Julia said, spreading protective fingers over her results. “It’s just that… well, I thought maybe he was just crazy. I had to confirm his theory about the unusual residue that forms around the DNA of an organism that passes between the universes, and see for myself. He was right, and here is the proof.” Julia could see the pieces of her plan sliding smoothly into place. “This discovery, if it fell into the wrong hands, could be incredibly dangerous.”

  She gave Carla a moment to look over the notes that contained her results, feeling a little bit sick with anxious adrenaline. This was where things could go very wrong.

  “You’re right,” Carla said again. “This is far too dangerous. It has to be destroyed. All of this.”

  Together they dumped all of the samples out into the steel sink, then tossed Julia’s notes in after them and turned on the hot water. Watching the ink run as the wet pages softened and turned to useless mush made Julia feel sick to her stomach, but it was the perfect gesture to prime Carla for what needed to happen next.

  It was a small sacrifice to make for the greater goal. She didn’t doubt for a second that she’d be able to extract another sample from Peter, later on, once she was closer to the completion of her plan.

  Eye on the prize…

  “Yes,” Julia said. “We have no choice.” She paused for effect, then added, “The journal must also be destroyed.” She chose her words very carefully. “But if we just throw it away, it’s not going to mean anything to Walter. He’ll be angry, but he won’t understand why.”

  “I agree,” Carla said. “He needs to address it himself as a symbolic gesture. That’s the only hope I… we have of reaching the old Walter. The good Walter.”

  Julia had absolutely no idea what Carla was rattling on about. She’d only known Walter for a short time and, while he was obviously eccentric, she hadn’t noticed anything particularly bad about him at all.

  Of course, he was adamant in his refusal to subjugate scientific curiosity to the dubious authority of Carla’s fairy-tale God. Maybe that was what she thought was the “bad” part of Walter. Yet in Julia’s book, this was a good thing.

  It didn’t matter, though. What mattered was that Carla walked away from their conversation thinking it was all her idea. Particularly one aspect of it.

  “He should burn it,” Julia said. “The diary.”

  Carla nodded. Her eyes were far away, as if contemplating her options, or whatever occupied her pretty little blond brain when it wasn’t getting all up in other people’s business.

  “He’s coming back in at eight o’clock, isn’t he?” Julia continued. “To work on that mental generator he’s been tinkering with in his spare time. Why don’t you come back then, and have a talk with him. It’ll be more private.

  I’ll be long gone, and you’ll pretty much have the whole building to yourselves.”

  “Good idea,” Carla said. “But what about you?” Again, the hand on her arm and the sweet, simpering, oh-so-concerned look. “Are you going to be okay? If you need to talk, I’m always here.”

  “Thank you,” Julia replied, struggling not to roll her eyes. “I’ll be okay. I think I’m going to apply for a transfer to another department. I just want to forget all this madness. Start fresh.”

  “I think that’s probably best,” Carla said. “But don’t be a stranger, Julia. Any time you need to talk… I mean it.”

  Julia would have rather eaten broken glass, but still she made herself reach out and hug Carla, exactly as she’d seen other students do in the past.

  “I will,” she said. Then she glanced around. “I’m just going to clean up here, and head back to the dorm.”

  Carla nodded and turned to go, taking Walter’s journal with her.

  As soon as her nemesis was out of sight, Julia took her hidden copies of the relevant pages and tucked them carefully away in her backpack. Once everything was clean and straightened up, all she had to do was wait for Walter to return.

  Walter arrived a few minutes early, carrying a number of large, awkward packages and nearly tripping over his own feet as he entered. Julia ran to his side and helped steady him, taking one of the packages from his arms.

  “Here,” she said. “Let me help you, Doctor Bishop.”

  “Thank you, Astrid,” Walter replied, seeming distracted—as if he was already thinking about something else.

  “Astrid?” Julia frowned. “My name is Julia.”

  “Oh, of course it is,” Walter replied, tipping his head to the left and muttering to no one. “Why did you say her name was Astrid?”

  Julia frowned at him. His eyes were glazed and pupils dilated.

  He’s on something, she thought, and she felt like cheering. This was too perfect.

  “Did you drop acid again, Doctor Bishop?” she asked.

  “What?” He turned to his left again, making it look as if he was listening to someone or something other than her. “I suppose you’re right,” he said to thin air, “but I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

  “Will you be working on your generator again tonight?” Julia asked, already knowing the answer, but wanting to confirm it.

  “It’s a new blend,” Walter replied, answering her first question and ignoring the second. “Seems to have a strange effect on my sense of separation between the past and the future. But I believe it will also boost the electrical output that I’m able to channel through my generator.”

  “Well, you’d better be careful—remember the last time? When you blew the circuit and set the phonebook on fire?” Julia set Walter’s package on his workstation. “Here, let me check all the burners, and make sure the gas is turned off.”

  Walter ignored her completely, focusing on whatever was going on inside his head. Julia smiled and walked over to the closest burner, gripping the knob so hard that its cold metal edge dug deeply into her fingers. She paused, her heart slam-dancing in her chest, feeling light-headed and sweaty. It was one thing to plan something like this, but another thing to actually do it.

  It was just the smallest movement of her wrist. Just the slightest turn to the left. Just enough to allow a slow, undetectable leak. So that when Carla tried to make Walter burn the journal…

  It doesn’t matter. They don’t matter. I’ve got what I want.

  Just do it.

  She turned the knob, and quickly backed away.

  “They’re all off,” she called over her shoulder. “It’s safe now.” She picked up her own backpack, and head
ed for the door. “Have a good night, Doctor Bishop.”

  She could hear him muttering to himself as he hunched over his packages. He probably didn’t even know she was still there.

  On her way out, she took the small fire extinguisher off the wall and slid it into her bag.

  * * *

  Walter thought he heard a female voice coming from behind the centrifuge, but it sounded strange—distorted and foreign, as if it were a weak pirate-radio broadcast, perhaps from another country. The only words he could make out were, “Doctor Bishop.” And even though it was his own name, something in the vowels seemed sinister, unrealistic. The sibilant sh sound lasted far too long, resonating snakelike inside his left ear.

  He turned back toward the green fairy with whom he’d been conversing, and found that she was gone. In her place was a younger version of himself. Twenty-two and utterly guileless in that ratty old Norfolk jacket he’d worn every day until it disintegrated into rags sometime in the mid-seventies.

  This younger Walter was staring at him with a worried frown.

  “I think we might be in trouble,” Younger Walter said.

  “Trouble?” Walter frowned. “What kind of trouble.”

  For a moment, Younger Walter didn’t speak. He looked emotional and unsure, as if struggling with a difficult task, like the decision to euthanize a suffering pet. When he opened his mouth again to speak, the voice that came out was a woman’s voice. A soft, familiar voice, speaking words that he would never forget.

  “Walter,” this impossible voice said. “There has to be a line somewhere.”

  Then another voice spoke, coming from behind him and to his right.

  A male voice.

  His own voice.

  “There’s only one God in this lab.”

  Walter spun to face the source, and saw yet another version of himself. This one was older than the first, but still a few years younger than he was now. His eyes were cold and hard, like iron. As if they belonged to someone else.

  “Walter?” The woman’s voice again.