The Premise
A novel by Andy Crossfield
Text copyright 2014
Andrew N. Crossfield
All Rights Reserved
To my father Robert, in grateful recognition of his lifelong love and support
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Where You Were When You Heard
Chapter 2 The Man Is A Ghost
Chapter 3 Be Careful What You Wish For
Chapter 4 A Discovery Is Made
Chapter 5 Life Gets Complicated
Chapter 6 The Better Mousetrap
Chapter 7 A Gift From Heaven
Chapter 8 The Darkest Side of Vegas
Chapter 9 The Fitful Sleep of the Guilty
Chapter 10 The Puppet Master
Chapter 11 Jack Meets His Match
Chapter 12 The Mother of All Bad Days
Chapter 13 The Trouble With Truth
Chapter 14 From Honduras, With Blood
Chapter 15 Reconciling The Impossible
Chapter 16 Maid in the Shade
Chapter 17 The Thread Unravels
Chapter 18 What Stays In Vegas
Chapter 19 Flight of Discovery
Chapter 20 The Meat-Up
Chapter 21 The Reunion
Chapter 22 A Friend Is Lost
Chapter 23 The Debt Collected
Chapter 24 His Master's Voice
Chapter 25 The Seat of Power
Chapter 26 The More Things Change…
Chapter 27 Necessity's Daughter
Chapter 28 A Friend's Farewell
Chapter 29 Matched Wits
Chapter 30 West Coast Revelation
Chapter 31 Evil's Root
Chapter 32 Dissention
Chapter 33 Metamorphosis
Chapter 34 Coming Clean in D.C.
Chapter 35 Loss of Control
Chapter 36 The World Reacts
Epilogue
Chapter 1 Where You Were When You Heard
No matter how many of these he did, Jack Colder always got nervous. When he first started his tour, he had more hair and weighed a respectable 160 pounds, not bad for, as he called it, a 'tall average'. Now, gazing into the backstage mirror, he saw the effects of pissing people off every night, eating too much junk food, and getting little or no exercise… a cascading, cumulative effect of trying to save the world on his terms. What he did for science!
Jack didn’t need to work; residuals from six best selling detective novels brought in a substantial and steady income. But he did still need stimulation; not to mention the exposure to new ideas for his always eagerly anticipated next book. "Intriguing plot ideas don’t come often to people who write in their bathrobes." he would tell friends who questioned his unusual lifestyle.
At 48, he had accumulated both more than he imagined and less than he hoped. With wealth came fame and even adulation. His for the taking when he occasionally caved in to his publisher’s persistent pushing to attend those perpetual book signings. Fortunately, his face was one of those with average features that could easily pass through everyday life without being noticed. The best of both worlds he thought, at least in the fame department.
His wealth allowed him freedom. He had never been given anything, and he never once felt guilty about acquiring his fortune. He had earned it. More correctly, he’d created it; pulled it all out of the ether that was his imagination. His creativity was the source of his pride in his accomplishment, a fact worth even more to him than numbers on a bank statement. Jack marveled after finishing the final draft of a new book, that the simple ability to choose the sequence of words on a page could lead to riches.
His marriage, on the other hand, kept his creative ego at bay ̶ a stark reminder that he was irretrievably flawed and unable to have a relationship on any terms in which he could not control both parties. That was why he liked writing, and why his marriage lasted only four years. He struggled to understand how he could be so adept at constructing motivations and the actions they produced in his fictional characters, yet fail so completely at recognizing them playing out in real life.
He had hoped by now to have children and a loving family, but he knew his difficulty with relationships would only lead to disaster and kids with repressed personality disorders or worse. Jack always tended to exaggerate the neuroses of his imaginary children. It took the sting out of contemplating the failure he felt for not trying harder in his marriage.
After his divorce, Jack slumped and endured a year of writer's block; a condition he never believed existed until it had him in its clutches. He lost interest more than anything ̶ he could still write, just not convincingly, and as one deadline after another came and went with no tangible product to submit, his publisher began to think that he’d burned himself out.
That’s when he met a guy on a plane. Jack never even got his name, but their brief conversation changed his life’s direction. His aisle-mate was a stockbroker about Jack’s age and temperament. He too had divorced, found himself lost and directionless, but discovered a resurrection of sorts in the old phrase, "Those that can’t, teach."
It was about the time of the market crash, the one in 2001, and the broker had burned all of his clients by keeping them fully invested as the dotcom stocks tanked.
He had made a fortune trading their accounts during the boom times of the 1990's but with the crash, the ride was over, and he didn’t have the energy to look for new clients again. Then the broker hit upon a novel idea. He sold his firm to a national brokerage house for millions, and signed their non-compete for millions more. Then he developed a seminar on how he did it and began charging struggling brokers around the country thousands to sit at the fountain of his knowledge.
The idea was a hit, and he crisscrossed America going from one glitzy resort destination to the next. He began instructing brokers on how to reel in the whales he never could. There was one difference now; he himself was a whale, and he traveled in their circles. He learned from the inside what appealed to and repelled the wealthy when it came to money managers and confidantes. He parleyed that knowledge into concepts and strategies that would allow others to win over mega-clients of their own.
That conversation was the inspiration Jack needed to create his writing seminar ten years ago. It was an elegant solution to the inability to write. Teach others. In doing so, he got to experience in them the spark that had faded in himself, all while enjoying the best hotels and resorts in the world. When home, he taught a criminology course at the local university, and when on the road, he taught, wrote, collected interesting stories, and studied people for mannerisms to use as characters in his ever-expected next book.
Then Jack’s interests took another turn one sunny Sunday three years ago when Dr. John Morales, a psychology professor at the university dropped by his beach house in La Jolla. They began discussing the new and interesting discoveries that were being made in the world. Truly transformative advances had been achieved or discovered in the past decade, but what fascinated John even more than the discoveries, were the completely unexpected negative reactions of society to these discoveries.
Those with absolutely no scientific training were fueling public resistance to everything from the existence of climate change or the efficacy of vaccines, to disputes about the role of education and even the validity of the scientific method. No longer, it seemed, were we as a society in agreement about even basic truths. How could society ever hope to advance, they wondered, if the discoveries that led to that advancement fomented such caustic suspicion toward change?
That conversation intrigued Jack, and instilled in him a desire not just to observe, but to contribute. Ever since, Jack had a higher calling, and ironically, that higher calling involved deception.
At eight o'clo
ck sharp, the theme from Dragnet started; Jack’s cue to go to work. An off stage announcer began to speak in a deep voice. "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Toliver Theater in mile high Denver! Tonight, we have a most interesting presentation from that master of suspense, Dr. Jack Colder. Jack is a best selling author with six wildly popular novels to his credit and another one soon to be released. He’s a criminology professor at San Diego State University who has studied and taught the aspects of crime to hundreds of students and millions of readers. Sure to make you think and guaranteed to be interesting, put your hands together for Dr. Jack Colder!"
Jack checked his hair one last time in the backstage mirror, licked his teeth and straightened his tie, then jogged through the curtain opening into the bright light that awaited him.
"Good evening everybody!" Jack said as he grabbed the mike off its stand with practiced flair. "Thank you, thank you. My name is Dr. Jack Colder, and do I have news for you! Firstly, there will be a change in topic for this evening. While I remain open to questions about how I wrote and constructed the plot in my latest book, Death in the Shadows, and while I would very much like to lead this group in the creative writing lecture you all came to hear about, an event of enormous importance has just occurred that I am anxious discuss with you.
"As you know, I am a criminologist by training. You might just say that in my case, crime does pay, and if you count the advances and book royalties, it pays very handsomely." Jack paused for the polite chuckling that line always drew. "But on to why I have elected to veer from my planned course this evening. I want to share with you some absolutely amazing news.
"Just over an hour ago, in a lab near Baltimore, a scientific team whose work I’ve been following closely issued a report online that will appear soon in the scientific journal Medicine detailing a discovery that will change all our lives.
"It’s a bit technical, but the short version is this," Jack paused and took a sip of water for dramatic effect. "Delving into the human genome, scientists have isolated, and have now been able to correct, the genetic defect that causes human criminal behavior!
"Ladies and gentlemen, you will remember this night, October 20th, 2016, for the rest of your lives. Specifically, where you were when you heard that we have discovered a cure for crime!"
Chapter 2 The Man Is A Ghost
(Four days earlier)
Two men hurried down the sterile corridor of the Institute of Food Technology, looking in each lab. The object of their search was Dr. Mark Moran, a driving force of the Institute and one of its founders. Dr. Moran’s association with IFT began back when funding and recognition were difficult to come by. Now, IFT had so many client companies paying for their seal of approval, it was getting very hard to maintain their reputation for objectivity.
The institute, which was based in Chicago, tested all types of submitted food products. With the proliferation of genetically modified food and organisms (GMF/GMO), consumers needed a way to determine which products fit their needs and lifestyles as well as a trusted party that could allay their fears that the GMF’s were somehow unsafe. Everything from processed snack foods to straight-from-the-field produce was tested for the presence of carcinogens, fungicides, biological agents, and items surprisingly permissible as so called NDLs or 'natural defect levels', such as insect parts and rodent hair.
To do this, IFT increasingly delved into the molecular structure of food and tried to discern what differences existed between genetically modified and natural foods. Then, they consulted their extensive database for the specific effect these differences had on a wide range of subjects; children, young adults, seniors and even pets and livestock. Obtaining a 'Superior' from IFT was difficult, but highly prized by both the producer and the consumer.
"The front desk said he signed in to this floor, now it’s just a matter of finding him" said Ramy Basra, the director of IFT Labs.
"I hope I haven’t put you to too much trouble," the visitor said with an apologetic tone. "If my meeting hadn’t been pushed up, I could have come over tomorrow as we had planned."
"Oh, no trouble, Walter, you’re just lucky we are all here on Sunday. We’re trying to put a dent in the testing backlog around here. Let’s go check his lab…."
They turned the corner and almost ran into Dr. Moran as he was coming out of his lab, holding a bulky rack of samples.
"Oh, there you are Mark," said Dr. Basra, "we’ve been looking for you! Mark, this is Walter Convive, from that hedge fund I mentioned last week, Concordia Partners, remember?"
Ramy nodded his head, affirming he'd told Mark about the visit as he made the introduction. "Walter, meet Dr. Mark Moran, our chief geneticist and the developer of many of the labs current projects. Mark left his practice to teach at Loyola, then we were successful in luring him here."
"I thought this wasn’t until tomorrow, Ramy?" interrupted Mark, looking a bit overwhelmed.
"My apologies, Dr. Moran," Walter said as he extended his hand, then realized Mark was unable to shake and hold his samples at the same time. "I had a change in schedule and have to get back tonight, I hope I’m not inconveniencing you…."
"No, I s’pose not, I’m told I always have time for potential investors." Mark said while shooting a disapproving glance at Ramy to make sure his comment landed with the intended force. "What did you want to see?"
"Well now," injected Ramy, "I’ll just leave you two to get acquainted. Walter, so good to meet you, I’ll be in my office when you get through, be sure to stop by. See you later Mark! Oh, and Mark? Remember, be nice!"
Dr. Moran looked over his glasses at his newest babysitting charge. Blast, he thought, how can I work when I continually have to bring investors up to speed?
"So, how much do you know about what we do here Mister…can I call you Walter?" Mark asked, struggling with the sample rack and preoccupied with the prospect that his workload just got heavier.
"Oh, by all means, please do, and what shall I call you, …Mark?"
"Dr. Moran would be fine, …it’s the only respect I get around here anymore, it seems," Mark said as he turned to watch Ramy whistling and almost skipping down the hall away from them.
‘So, …you were saying…" Mark asked dryly.
"Oh, what do I know of the work done here? Well, you have built quite a name for yourselves I must say. The 'UL of the food world', wasn’t that the comparison in the Time article?"
"Well," Mark said, "that's the media, always looking to sound bite everything. We do much more than analyze food products, you know."
"Yes, the Institute has led the way on GMF’s in many interesting areas, has it not?"
"Right you are Walter. These days genetically modified food is our prime focus. We're trying to find a balance between creating a food that can provide more nutrition, while using fewer resources to grow it. That’s what is consuming my time. And my nights and weekends too, if you really want the truth."
"That’s why I’m here, Doctor. Concordia is also interested in how that can be accomplished, and, let’s just say we would be able to solve the funding needs of anyone who is on the fastest track to discover a solution."
Convive was becoming more animated as they walked down the hall in the direction of Mark’s office. Mark could see he was not the typical sort of snoop investors usually sent in to check their progress.
"Well, we believe we are on a very lucrative track" Mark said. "Have you signed the Non-Disclosure Agreement with Ramy?"
"Yes sir, signed and delivered before I ever set foot in the building. I know my way around an NDA, but that was one of the most extensive documents I’ve come across. We don’t want to steal what you’re doing, we want to be a part of it, Doctor"
"Tell it to the lawyers, Walt!" said Mark as he motioned for them to walk as they talked. "All I know is our approach is radically different from anyone else in the field." Mark said, instinctively pausing to look down both ends of the corridor before he continued. "Instead of trying to modify the plant
to produce larger foodstuffs, which requires in almost every case the application of more fertilizer, water, etc., we are concentrating on making more of the plant edible."
"What’s that?" said Walter, stopping short and almost causing Mark to run him over. "Make more of the plant edible?"
Mark nodded, pleased Walter understood the significance of such an objective. "Let me explain it this way," Mark replied as he began to lead Walter down the hall and picking up the pace as he talked. "Nature is full of lessons that teach us how to modify what we have, into what we wish we had. It’s called of course, evolution. Birds weren’t equipped originally with wings; they evolved as an instrument of survival. And humans have made the greatest strides of all in doing more with less strength, less fur, and less speed than their rivals; in order to survive.
"A great example of more from less is all those really bright colors we see everywhere on T-shirts and traffic signs. Have you ever wondered why those Day-Glo colors are so much brighter than other colors?"
"Not really." Walter said, now trying to keep pace with Mark. "Why?"
"Because those manufactured colors perform a kind of miracle!" Mark said with a professorial smile. "When light strikes an object, a portion is reflected, creating an image when it strikes our eye receptors. Now of course, light is made up of visible and non-visible light, wavelengths we can see, and those we can’t… you with me so far?"
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