The Pillars of Abraham

by Ian Young

  ‘Turn right,’ I say, pointing at the road sign I don’t look at. ‘Santa Monica Business Park’s down here.’

  Mason checks the mirrors again. He’s spent more time looking at where we’ve been than where we’re going; it’s a miracle we haven’t crashed. He drags the wheel around and filters into the traffic turning into Ocean Boulevard. We’re looking for Datalabs, the institute Seth suggested could decode the DNA.

  ‘There,’ I say. ‘Thirty-first Street, turn left. It’s … hang on, keep going.’

  Mason cruises along the road, ducking low to see the names of businesses on the top of buildings, or hoardings.

  ‘There!’ I almost screech. ‘Datalabs, that’s the place.’ It’s like I’m awakening, academic instincts distracting my brain from the trauma.

  A small parking lot in front of the building has one space left and Mason reverses the car in. I stare at him.

  ‘Who reverses into a parking space?’

  Mason raises his eyebrows. ‘It’ll be quicker to get away if we have to leave in a hurry.’

  ‘Well, yeah, but …’

  ‘Andi, they won’t stop. They’ll send another Vrazi.’

  ‘Oh come on, they won’t even know you’ve killed him yet.’

  ‘They’ll know.’

  ‘Even so, how long will it take to send a replacement?’

  ‘Minutes. The Pillars of Abraham will have contractors in every city, guys on the Circuit.’

  ‘The Circuit?’

  ‘It’s what we call the private security industry that so many ex-soldiers get involved in.’

  ‘Including you?’

  Mason pauses for a moment, perhaps wondering if his admission would make him the same as the killer who came after me. Eventually he nods.

  ‘But I’m very much involved in protecting people, not God’s artefacts.’

  ‘Howie’s artefact.’

  ‘Right.’

  I wonder how closely knit this Circuit is. ‘You didn’t take that guy’s mask off. Did you know him?’

  ‘Not at all,’ says Mason with barely any interest. ‘There are tens of thousands of us. Besides, you join the Pillars of Abraham, you cease to exist. The poor chap would have been an American – ex-Marine or suchlike.’

  I want to press him. ‘But you didn’t even take a look.’

  ‘I killed a guy with no face, no identity. It’s like a pilot dropping a bomb. You’re detached from what you’ve done.’

  Perhaps not knowing the person you’ve just killed makes it easier. Mason certainly seems unstressed by what he’s done. He turns and looks at me for the first time since I mentioned the dead man in my home.

  ‘Are we just going to sit here chatting, or should we go in?’

  The receptionist at Datalabs looks at me as though I’ve walked into the Emergency Room with some fatal illness. She stands and walks around the counter, mumbling and fussing like my mother used to do. She’s about the same age, unusual for a tech company (don’t they always employ young, cool people?) and her two-piece suit would work better in a law firm, I think.

  ‘Are you OK, deary?’ she asks, holding her arms out.

  ‘Fine,’ I say, wondering just how events had etched themselves on to my face. ‘Just had a bad day, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure you’re OK, deary … can I get you some coffee?’

  ‘That’d be great, thanks. Black, no sugar, please.’

  ‘And for you, deary?’ the woman asks Mason.

  ‘Strong but milky, please, ma’am.’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s just a machine, deary. Any sugar for you?’

  ‘No thanks, and I’ll take it just as it comes.’

  ‘We’re here to see Karl,’ I say, hoping the coffee could follow on.

  ‘Oh, yes, let me call him first.’

  Karl looks almost like Seth: jeans hanging off his butt, hair tickling his face and a white coat hanging loosely from his shoulders. He sounds like Seth too. Everyone in LA, to my ears at least, sounds like they want to be either a surfer or an actor.

  ‘Hey, guys, welcome to Datalabs, good to see you. Jeez, just heard about the professor guy at UCLA.’

  ‘Yes, Professor Dyer, he’s my boss. This is … this was his.’ I hand the ball to Karl and he swirls it around in his hands as though about to pitch it.

  ‘Alrighty, let’s take a look.’

  We follow Karl down a corridor and into his lab. He keeps up his sense of shock about Howie, talking about when it’s your time, it’s your time, as though everything is predetermined. And this guy’s a scientist?

  ‘He was murdered,’ I say, ignoring the glare Mason is giving me.’

  ‘Shit!’ Karl stops his philosophical musing on life and gapes at me. ‘How can you know that? The police said it was hit and run, said the guy panicked and ran off.’

  ‘Well, they got it half right,’ I say.

  ‘Look,’ interrupts Mason, ‘we don’t know what happened, let’s concentrate on examining the ball.’ His tone is sharp, like he’s still in the military, but Karl doesn’t seem like the type of guy who would take orders.

  ‘Chill, dude, I’m on it.’

  Mason nods and smiles. ‘Thank you.’ Ever the Brit.

  Seth provided Karl with the code he’d use to crack the DNA sequence earlier, and it took him only a few hours to unravel a large chunk of the data held within the synthetic DNA. The biologist feeds the string of binary digits into a computer and waits for the software to churn the data into something readable.

  Slowly the computer begins to produce images similar to the ones revealed earlier at the lab at UCLA; images of animals past and present, and more images of humans at various stages of evolution. I suggest to Karl that each strand might contain the same data, so while the results were loading, he begins work decoding another strand.

  Mason and I watch in fascination as the Earth’s animal history scrolls down the computer monitor, from early bacteria to the dinosaurs, the rise of the mammals and finally to our own evolution. And all the time, species come and go until we are left with the main groups of animals we know today. All the images we saw earlier. But then something new appears on the computer monitor. The earth’s timeline continues beyond the present day.

  It’s human, but not as I recognise it. This is obviously someone’s idea of how we might evolve if time continues for, what? Another one hundred thousand years?

  ‘This is your story, Mason,’ I say, nudging his elbow. And as if to prove my point, he makes that humming sound again, like a prehistoric human before words were invented.

  ‘Where do you think you are on this timeline?’ I try to hide my grin as Mason looks down at me.

  He keeps his expression neutral. ‘I’m more evolved than you give me credit for.’

  ‘My guess is Neanderthal?’ I don’t know, but baiting Mason takes my mind off what’s happened so far today.

  ‘Forgive me, Dr Menendes,’ he says as though about to open a debate on campus. ‘My understanding on current thinking is that we are not, in fact, evolved from Neanderthals, but Cro-Magnon, a separate species. Is that not right?’

  ‘It was just a joke, Mason, forget it.’ I thought Brits were famous for their sense of humour. I know I shouldn’t look at him right now because there would be that smug grin on his face. Why are all Brits so goddamned patronising? Like they’re the only ones who went to college. I’m the one with the PhD, but it seems like Mason thinks he’s far smarter, as though being British meant you were just born smarter. Ridiculous, I know. After all, America leads the world in technology, American Universities are the most highly regarded, and American businesses are the most successful. What do the Brits have? History. If ever there’s a nation living off its past it’s Mason’s. Get
over it, buddy.

  ‘Now that’s interesting,’ says Mason. ‘What have we here?’

  I was looking at the monitor but not really taking in the changing images.

  ‘The end of the world,’ says Mason. ‘Look, there’s the sun expanding, engulfing the solar system and consuming everything before … yes, there it goes, exploding.’

  ‘Supernova,’ says Karl, without looking up from his decoding task.

  ‘Right.’ Mason has a grim smile, as though the end of the world is actually about to take place – nigh, as apocalyptic Christians say.

  ‘This is evidently a representation of Earth’s life, its history, and someone’s idea of how things will pan out in the millennia to follow.’

  ‘Yes, that’s it,’ I say.

  Karl looks up and joins us at the monitor. ‘What’s it?’

  ‘Can you replay the last minute or two?’ I ask.

  Karl fiddles with the computer and we watch again the death throes of a star.

  ‘This is exactly how our solar system will end its existence,’ I say, my cheeks burning. ‘A record of our world from start to finish, but coded billions of years ago – before it began.’

  ‘Sounds like someone planned it all,’ says Mason, grinning. ‘God, perhaps?’

  ‘No!’ I snap. ‘I mean that clearly the Bible is entirely made up.’

  Mason raises an eyebrow. ‘I think we all understand the Bible is largely allegorical.’

  What the fuck does that even mean? I glare at Mason; it’s like he’s deliberately choosing words I wouldn’t understand.

  ‘This proves that creationism is wrong,’ I say. ‘If the Bible is false, then how can anyone reasonably make a case for the existence of God?’

  ‘Just because the Bible is … is metaphorical, a fable representing something of moralistic virtue, doesn’t mean there is no God.’

  I clench my fists wondering if Mason would hit me back. ‘If you mean the Bible is full if bullshit then just say that!’

  ‘Not at all,’ he says, calmly as you like. ‘You don’t have to believe in God to derive value from the lessons set out in the Bible.’

  ‘Yeah, but that’s the point,’ I say. ‘It’s a manual for how to live your life written by those who want to have that influence, and using a made-up deity to frighten everyone into following their lessons. It’s like a teacher in high school controlling the kids by telling them there’s a bogeyman in the storeroom waiting to eat them if they misbehave.’

  Mason smiles – and that fucking humming noise again. It’s as though he’s ending a silly argument with a child.

  ‘This is going to help me open the store room door and prove there’s no bogeyman.’

  Karl has some kind of ‘whatever’ grin across his face, or that’s how I interpret it. He starts to clear up the lab – one experiment over, getting ready for the next – whistling away to himself what sounds like The Simpson’s theme tune. Mason, though, paces the room pretending to be a scientist weighing up the merits of a groundbreaking paper.

  ‘I’m no great Christian,’ he says, ‘but can you imagine if you really did find some kind of evidence to disprove God?’

  ‘Shocker,’ says Karl, interrupting the third verse of The Simpsons.

  ‘Precisely,’ says Mason with a lingering look at the back of Karl’s head. ‘It would tear the world apart.’

  ‘Of course it won’t,’ I say with fury. ‘Think about it. A world without religion – all those wars, all that suffering, it’d be over.’

  ‘I’m not sure that would be the outcome,’ says Mason. His tone is gentle, almost conciliatory, but I still want to throw the damned ball at him.

  ‘I’ve fought against religious zealots all my life. It was hell—’

  ‘It can’t have been hell, hell doesn’t exist, for you that is.’ Mason winks at me. He actually winks.

  ‘You’re not even funny.’ I feel my cheeks burn. ‘My father kicked me out of the family home when I renounced his religion. It’s why I moved to the US and became a scientist.’

  ‘I’d already guessed there was conflict with your father.’

  ‘How? How could you possibly guess?’ Now he’s some kind of psychologist.

  ‘Your relationship with Professor Dyer,’ he says simply. ‘Probably the same age. Classic sign.’

  I step forward and slap his face, staring at him as he barely moves, barely notices the strike. If he wants to hit me back, he can, I don’t care. But quickly the frustration that has built since I met him last week collapses and I consider that I’ve just slapped the guy who killed another man earlier, the guy who saved my life. He must think I’m crazy.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says, nodding his head as though meeting the Queen. ‘I deserved that.’

  ‘Yes, you did … I’m sorry too, I shouldn’t have hit you.’

  Karl turns around and grins. ‘Hey, are you two, you know, dating or something?’

  I hope my expression, which burns me from the inside, had the same effect on Karl. Mason, though, is quick with his English diplomacy.

  ‘Andi’s had a frightful day of it, our brief acquaintance has been, for the most part, rather more cordial.’ He smiles at me. This time I feel he is less patronising and more apologetic. A new beginning, then?

  ‘I have to get this thing fully analysed and peer-reviewed,’ I say. ‘Then I need to tell the world.’

  ‘Jeez, it’ll take weeks to sequence this amount of DNA,’ says Karl. ‘Sounds like you haven’t got the patience for that.’

  ‘He’s right, Andi, go public with what you’ve got, then give this thing to a museum. It’s nothing to do with God. If they know what it is they’ll have no reason to come after you.

  ‘Who are they?’ Karl makes quote marks with his fingers and pulls a face as though talking of mystery men. ‘Who’s coming after you?’

  ‘Some sad group of church men,’ I say, ‘desperate to possess what they think comes from God. How wrong they are.’

  ‘That’d sure make the God-botherers powerful if they have an artefact from the main guy.’ Karl cracks an imaginary whip. ‘Indiana Jones, right?’

  I shudder at the thought and pull the lab coat together, suddenly feeling a chill like an atheist walking into church, like me walking into my father’s church.

  ‘How do we do it?’ I ask.

  Mason shrugs, not his area I guess, which makes a change. Karl also shrugs but looks like he’s about to offer an idea.

  ‘Give it the military?’ he says.

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that,’ says Mason with a short laugh. ‘It’d be the last you’d see of it.’

  ‘A journalist, then,’ says Karl. ‘I know the science correspondent for the LA Times, I could call him.’

  ‘That should work.’ Mason nods at me as though trying to convince me. ‘I think we should contact this chap straightaway, Andi, let him run with it so, well, we don’t have to, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Make the call, Karl.’

  It’s like standing in the hospital corridor waiting for news of a birth: Karl tapping his foot on the floor, Mason checking the street outside every minute, and me chewing all of my nails for the first time since I was about twelve. Mason is clearly wondering who might turn up first: the journalist or another Vrazi. There is no way they could locate us that quickly, even if another murderer has been set on us already.

  I scroll through the images on the computer again, staring at pictures of animals, animals that would be familiar to every human, and some that wouldn’t. There was a whole group of hideous-looking dogs I’ve never seen before, and humanoid figures that definitely haven’t appeared in any anthropological record of human origins. Whoever created this record had made some predictions about life that hadn’t worked out
. Either that or we haven’t discovered these extinct species yet. That’s entirely possibly, I suppose. There must be all sorts of bones and fossils still out there that we haven’t dug up. Mason refuses to accept that this is a prediction of the Earth’s timeline. For me, though, it’s a fair prediction of how things would end up in the future, but no one could know the whole lifespan of our solar system before it started. Not even God. I mean, why would he? Surely, if there is a god, he (or she – why not?) would just light the spark and sit back and watch what happened. But, as a scientist, I run experiments after I’ve worked out the probable outcome. The experiment is to prove the theory. What the hell am I saying? Life is no experiment: it evolved from amino acids. There is no reason for us, and no other explanation for us. We just are. But whatever the origin of the ball, it may well outdate the Earth itself.

  The thought that Howie might have been right about the ball’s origin makes my eyes prickle. I know if I blink, tears will drop on to my cheeks. I turn away from the two guys and press the sleeve of my lab coat to my eyes, soaking up the tell-tale moisture. Mason’s clipped voice snaps me back.

  ‘He’s here, unless the Vrazi are wearing loafers and slacks now.’

  We watch as the Times’ science journalist strides from his car, looking around as though he might find some scientific story right there in the parking lot. Karl sent his assistant down to meet him and less than a minute later he reappears in the lab with the newspaper man.

  ‘Hey, how you doing, Karl?’ says the journalist, then nods at Mason. ‘Frank Steiner – and I’ve heard them all.’

  I glance at Mason to see if the comment puzzles him as much as it does me, but Mason seems more ruffled by the outstretched hand that Steiner is ignoring.

  ‘So what’ve you got for me, Karl?’ says Steiner. Clearly no one else here matters.

  ‘Hey, dude,’ says Karl, showing Steiner the palm of his hand like some kind of Native American. Perhaps he is. ‘This is Dr Menendes from UCLA, I’ll let her explain.’