Hiding beneath the much used and dented worktable was a gleaming cast alloy elevator cab designed to handle great weight. Stepping in through a wide doorway, Lori waved him forward with a smile. “Time to meet Tokyo and see the Sanctuary. Turns out we do animals as well as vegetables.”
Sevier detected a mustiness that didn’t comport with the antiseptic look of the elevator box. The door closed with a warning beep, and the cab began a surprisingly rapid drop to a hydraulically cushioned landing below. “What kind of animals?”
With the door’s hissing open, Lori’s perpetual smile became an actual laugh. “Donkeys.” He knew he looked confused, which he hated, but Lori continued as they stepped out of the elevator. “They really love kale.”
Three Steps out of Four
“What you are looking at, Mr. Blume, is the future of human resilience.” Tokyo Yamanaka drew in a deep nostril breath, preparing for his least favorite topic of conversation—explaining to non-epigeneticists what they really did here in Paradox. “Our mission at CMS is to save human consciousness from human stupidity.”
“Please call me Sevier or Sev.” He was in a subterranean space that looked like a science-fiction movie, standing next to a girl whose heat was building on him so that she was impossible to ignore, about to get a lecture he knew he wouldn’t be able to grok, from a man with crazily augmented eyes. He had seen eyes like that in science articles, covered with lenses that shifted from macro to micro depth of field and focus. “Maybe you could explain what I am looking at in slightly more concrete terms.” Sevier rotated his head to indicate the arena-sized assemblage of clean rooms, airlock doors, and mysterious machinery. “And what does CMS stand for? I’m sure I have heard the initials, but I can’t place it.”
Lori laughed again, which he found reassuring. She walked over to a conference table to take a seat. “We are going to want to sit for this. Tokyo is actually pretty down to earth with his explanations, but there is nothing intuitive about the story.”
“Yes, please sit. Would you like some coffee? Danni has instructed me to give you the whole truth, which makes it much easier.” Tokyo blinked purposefully, and his eyes changed, the rising lids revealing a more normal configuration albeit with strangely yellowish sclera. “Coffee?” He must have greeted them with the crazy eyes for effect. “To begin, CMS stands for Crafted Methylation Services. It’s a medium-size company that provides a variety of genetic services, mostly to governments and large health organizations. Paradox, our little commune here on the high plains, is a hidden node buried deep within its impenetrable org charts. Here we do something called genomic imprinting.”
Tokyo had produced three coffees from the machine in the white wall as he talked. Sevier noted it was the same model he had used recently at the red brick wall in Krakow, back when things were first going off the rails. “Better give me a little color on genomic imprinting, too. It’s been a while.”
Lori cut in before Tokyo could get rolling. “Sorry to interrupt, Tokyo, but maybe it would help if I explained why first. Why so much effort, money, obfuscation, and deep science?”
Tokyo nodded and sat down. Lecture postponed.
Lori stood, and Sevier found himself staring at her nipples, centering her chest under the charmingly stretched grey tee shirt. He quickly looked up to her face, embarrassed. “The problem we are trying to solve is simple, provided you accept our premise, which is: Human consciousness, at this moment in time, is experiencing an inevitable decline. It can’t be stopped, so we had better find a way to preserve what wisdom we have currently, because it won’t be long before we are all too stupid to figure out how to save it, ourselves, or anything else.”
She picked up a marker and drew a bell-shaped curve on the wall. At the bottom left she wrote 700,000 years ago. Part way up the slope from the left, where the upwards rise became extreme, she wrote 5,000 years ago, and as the curved peaked and flattened she wrote 1900 A.D.
“I won’t take the time right now to explain how those dates were calculated, other than to say your unfortunate target, Serendipity, did all the heavy lifting.” Making one last notation on the bell curve, just starting down the right-hand slope, she said, “That’s now.”
Sevier pushed his chair back with a hard shove from the conference table. He was an impatient young man with a bad habit of finishing other people’s sentences for them. He knew it, but he didn’t try very hard to correct the annoying mannerism during the best of times, and right now he was tired from the mystifying travel and confused by the unlikely final destination.
“So, you guys are sure you have seen the future, and in it we, humans, are fucked. And your little cult here is planning how to run away. Let me guess. Railgun to Mars?” The escape to Krakow, the astonishing introduction to the crazy band claiming to be behind Serendipity, the days of pinballing around the world, the descent as pilgrim into this valley of grey-clad weirdness—it all crashed in on him and he closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead so hard he could feel his sunburned skin shedding a crispy layer under his fingers.
The saving grace of Lori’s voice brought him back. “Well, kind of, except for the Mars part.” Then brightly, “This is where Dr. Yamanaka picks up the story. Doctor, what do you do down here?”
Tokyo Yamanaka, along with the perpetually inflamed crazy eyes that allowed him to interact directly with various of the imaging machines in the lab, had a headache to match the pained expression on Sevier’s face. Too much time on the 0.005 electron microscope. “Okay. But promise me this will be the last time for at least six months. I just did this with you a couple of days ago.”
“It’s a promise, Tokyo. Sevier here is an anomaly. We are trying not to add votaries. You will like him. He’s a quick study.”
Lori appeared to find Tokyo tolerably amusing, so Sevier made up his mind to ignore his own headache and pay attention.
Like a schoolboy called before the class to give a report, Tokyo Yamanaka unfurled his small body and changed places with Lori, picking up the marker and gazing for a moment at the bell curve on the wall. He shook his head in apparent disgust and turned to face his audience of two. “Okay. Listen up people. We do four simple things down here in the Sanctuary and I’m going to explain them one at a time.” Looking at Sevier, he digressed again, “What are you anyway? I like to know what I’m talking to. I know what Lori is and that she can keep up.”
“You must know Morley. He calls me a techno wanker.”
“Yeah, I know Morley well, but I’m not sure he is much of a judge of techno. I’ll grant you, he probably knows a wanker when he sees one.”
Lori felt a funny twinge. Motherly instinct? “Okay, boys. Enough.”
Sevier smirked to himself, noting Yamanaka’s apparent sense he had won a round and Lori’s natural impulse to herd and manage. The lecture resumed.
“All right. Let me try and explain genomic imprinting in terms you, Mr. Blume, can understand. You can think of it as the sum-total of the four steps I will describe, so if you can grasp each of them you should have a good shot at understanding the whole.”
Sevier decided not to even bother getting pissed at this pompous asshole. Lori, Danni, and company must hire such people out of necessity. Bella Aire, Tokyo Yamanaka, little Napoleons living in the desert and lording it over little high-tech ant hills. He thought he started to glimpse the point of the cult, too.
“Step one is to prepare our cellular material for elasticity and manipulation. We do that by subjecting the cells to histone-driven alteration, which returns them to their embryonic state. Young, wriggling, and vibrant, the cells are maximally open to formative epigenetic exposures. It’s much like the seeds that Bella is working with upstairs.”
Tokyo got a look on his face that Sevier could already sense meant he was about to say something he thought was very clever.
“Imagine reversing biological time on your own cells until they reverted ba
ck to their very inception: undifferentiated and ready for any kind of life. Pre-wanker, so to speak.” Sevier could feel Lori glancing at him in warning. He just kept smiling.
“Then comes step two. This is where we augment the cells for longevity and a tendency towards dominance. We turn them into gamergates by inserting special methyl groups into their DNA. It’s a tricky process, but we have it down at this point. It’s why I wear these special lenses.” He blinked and brought back the disconcerting eyes for a quick moment before hiding them once more.
“Well, now we are ready for step three, which, if I do say so myself, represents the absolute cutting edge of epigenetic science. I’d have a Nobel if we weren’t sworn to secrecy and hidden away here in the desert.”
Yamanaka cast a wistful look at the outside world and Sevier took the opportunity to look at Lori, making several things clear in a brief meeting of eyes. This man was a dick, he (Sevier) was being very good about it, and they had all stepped over the crazy line.
“In step three, we utilize the quantum probability laws within isolated sets to entangle the cells of the host human with those of the host donkey.”
That was it, once again, for Sevier. “What the fuck are you talking about? Donkeys?”
“Well, technically mules.” Tokyo stood self-corrected.
“Why do I keep hearing about donkeys? I thought we were getting to some explanation of how Danni and Morley lived so long.”
“Yes, yes. That, too. I just told you that the cells were manipulated for longevity, didn’t I?”
Sevier ran his fingers through his hair in a way that reminded Lori of Norris in the histograms, and she jumped in to try and keep things from completely breaking down. “Sorry, Sev, I should have mentioned it back at the beginning. Apparently when Danni first decided that the tipping point had come for humans and whatever constitutes their consciousness, she wanted to figure out how to leave the planet and colonize another world. But her husband Simon was convinced that humans had missed the boat on managing inter-planetary travel. He claimed we were already getting stupider at a rate he calculated would trap us in the gravity well of earth and its immediate vicinity forever. I take it he didn’t think getting just to Mars would help, in any case.” She just laughed a wonderful gentle laugh, while putting her hand on top of his. “Then, in what they all say was a moment of religious catharsis, Morley suggested they move human consciousness, lock stock and barrel, into a modified race of donkey.”
“Mule.” Tokyo was still trying to be the precise scientist amongst barbarians.
Sevier held up his hand. “Okay. Ignoring the obvious fact that it’s insane, why donkeys?”
Laughing again, Lori said, “As I understand it, Morley just liked donkeys. He was experimenting with peyote at the time and spending his days at the Cabin where there was a small herd of them. He became friends with them and claimed they were the animal most perfectly designed to survive both climate disaster and human folly.”
Tokyo cut back in, now with a more professional attitude. “In an ironic miracle, it turned out that mules, being a natural hybrid, were the perfect host for our manipulated cells. They carried the crafted genetic imprinting forward to subsequent generations. With ease.” He was growing excited. “When a female horse and a male donkey mate, they produce a long-eared mule. If it’s a male horse and a female donkey, you get a short-eared hinny. Going forward over generations, either sub-species remembers what it is, since the sperm and egg are both etched with precise and observable epigenetic notations. We just add another etching stage. It turned out that the mules worked best.”
“So, donkeys are your space ship? What are you planning to have them do, stand around grazing while they watch the humans decline into a failed species?”
“Pretty much.” Lori could tell that if it wasn’t for her, Sev would be running away about now, down the dusty forever-highway. “Add in a crazy vegetable producing cult as a cover, and a sort of virgin birth story to explain the holy donkeys to all the votaries, and you have the perfect hiding place in our crumbling world. Everyone makes good money off the hydroponics, which also explains the need for lab equipment and crazy scientists like Tokyo. Plus, they all get a wafer at morning vespers that is basically pure mescaline. Amazing stuff. You will see.”
“A modified alkaloid from the phenethylamine class.” Tokyo just couldn’t help but be insufferable.
“How many people, or votaries, know about all this? Like this hidden lab?” Sev turned his head quickly towards a loud noise, like a bat hitting sheet metal, coming from down a disappearing corridor.
“Just a few know what’s down here, and it’s called the Sanctuary.” Tokyo was softening towards Sev, employing his limited supply of empathy to imagine how confusing this must be. “And that noise you just heard was our next donkey host agitating for dinner. We did the Morley and Danni donkeys quite some time ago. Andrzej’s has been back to pasture for over a month.”
“Holy shit. You folks really are completely fucking crazy. Who is next up for donkey-land?”
Lori gripped his hand tighter, and he knew it as she said it. “Me.”
Tower’s Shadow
On a bench that lent anonymity, with pigeons and other old men, Morley sat and waited. The greenspace was called Pumphouse Park, where he sat when he parted ways from Andrzej, hard up against a towering seawall to the west and in the shadow of Freedom Tower, his eventual destination. He felt a marvelous freedom all around him. Nothing in his pockets except a lightly charged Coincard, an ancient radio phone, a couple of light head masks with special air filters, and a few peyote wafers, having left all identity in a safe hotel room a mile or so away. Even his dash, taped to the back of a drawer in the battered dresser, abandoned and set to wipe at the first foreign touch. He did have a sweet coffee and warm bagel bought from a hover cart on Fulton Street, so all was right with the world for a moment. He had a few hours to kill before Andrzej would return. He could feel the blades of grass growing under his feet, and the shouts of children playing hung like bird calls in the air. He thought of kites and made them appear in his mind’s sky. He settled himself, sinking gracefully into the character of a secondWorld pensioner.
A few blocks east but a world uptown, Andrzej embraced his official persona with a deadly resolve that had emerged from rage and vengefulness during the hours of dullingly ordinary travel. Arriving unannounced at the NYC offices of the International Brotherhood of Mechanics, he met immediately with a startled Manager who had not planned to begin his day with a visit from one of the venerated IBM Stewards. It was an urgent and secretive investigation of a potential threat to core infrastructure right within the city center. He, Andrzej, needed to access the virtual modeling of both air and wastewater systems for the lower west quadrant, all structures, and a workstation with privacy.
Andrzej thanked the Manager for his help and closed the door to the office he had been given, after reminding him of the need for total discretion regarding the visit. National security was often a quiet and unseen business.
He logged on knowing that his trail going forward might soon be uncovered by invisible defenses as he felt his way towards a plan of attack. Given her erratic behavior, he had no way of knowing if his proxied Serendipity avatar would stay opaque. This musty physical node on the second floor of the historic old City Hall might soon be a glowing target, the door behind him suddenly kicked in, a red spot of imminent energy death locked onto his back. No. They wouldn’t kill him there. Anyway, stop thinking about it.
His first stop was Realtime Location Assistance. He found Donald J. Murcheson first, stationary in a third-floor restaurant at One World Trade Center. Breakfast at 9:37, ninety floors below his TIC office. Next was Leslie Massoud, moving south down 5th Ave. at 37 MPH in a private podrone. Andrzej queried for the destination: One World Trade Center, a breakfast meeting of the Masters of Data.
A final RLA query, typ
ed with numb fingers and shortness of breath: Angela Brodonski. Null result. He reminded himself that no system was perfect and stepped back out of the RLA dash, hoping that Serendipity was sweeping up behind him.
He entered the virtual mechanical beast that was One World Trade Center, moving first to the Security Matrix, which was surprisingly old. The building recognized humans courtesy of the U.N. Authority facial recognition system. Fair enough. So, who should Morley be?
Andrzej wished he had Serendipity to do this for him. On another screen, he brought up the building’s visitors log, filtered for the TIC executive floor as destination and the last two months as timeframe, and scanned down the results looking for frequent visitors who only came in the morning. Morley would be arriving that afternoon, and they didn’t want to alarm the building with two copies of the same human. A courier, of course. It was the height of prestige to use human couriers for sensitive documents. Lester Handler, a recent TIC hire, that was who Morley would be. Andrzej copied the pointer vector and then looked up Morley. There he was. He pasted the pointer onto Morley’s profile.
On to the building’s air handling system—Andrzej’s specialty. The plans had been entirely remastered ten years back, including the As-Built notations by the original contractor. It was too clean and easy. There was an engineering closet two floors below the TIC penthouse executive floor, and the final air supply trunk line passed right through it. Nine years back a new filter-insert station had been added. High micron, electrostatic, replaceable on a semi-annual basis.
Finding the HVAC contractor was easy, then back to the visitors log to filter for them. Every six months for the last three years the same maintenance man had accessed that floor and closet. Andrzej would be Robert Bishop for the afternoon. Mr. Bishop had even noted the access code for the door in his checklist log, just so he wouldn’t forget.
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