Macronome

by Howard Pierce

  “No one else has our ability to use it. We have the data, and we understand the population profiles.”

  “Serendipity has the data, too, Donald, and she is probably starting to understand those profiles as well. Somebody else could do a lot of damage, especially to us.” Leslie couldn’t believe how stupid Murcheson was. How did he come to run a gigantic company like TIC, even with the family blood line? “You had better find that hacker quickly, Donald. What’s the next step in the plan?”

  It was a question that Leslie knew had no premeditated answer, and now he got up from the chair to move towards the door. He stopped to wash his hands at the sink while looking over his shoulder at Murcheson. You’re the boss, what’s next.

  “We finish off Skramble and Hyde with a campaign to paint them as long-time crooks who took advantage of their sweetheart deal to manage Serendipity, just to make sure they don’t ever reappear. I wish we could get them all killed like that Morley asshole, but that would be too dangerous. And, we find the hacker of course.”

  Leslie realized that Murcheson lived in a world where plotting personal revenge and business plan formulation were forever swirled together. It was an easy bomb to detonate but challenging to insure it happened at a safe distance. He looked forward to pushing the button when the time was right.

  66 Chromosomes

  “They are looking high and low for you, Sev. High and low, in and out, nook and cranny. They found Sevier Blume in the dorm on the banks of the Vistula. My sister has sent them off to Never Never Land twice, but they don’t stop looking. She must be careful that they don’t obtain she is their adversary, so we let them back in.”

  “What do you suggest I do Serendipity? Why are they worrying so much about me anyway? I’m history.” Sev had felt his first pang of deep fear as he listened to the disembodied voice.

  “Find a good place and die a public death. That will stop them. They fear you will sell access into my sister to others.”

  Sev looked at Lori sitting next to him. She was calm. Why? They were talking to Serendipity2, but she was in constant interface with Serendipity1, who was still out there in the wild.

  Serendipity2 read his face and continued. “Finish pairing. Be the donkey. Go far away from Paradox. Convert like Morley. It is simple.”

  Lori moved her leg, so their thighs touched, saying, “We all convert?”

  “The sooner is better, don’t you agree? Everything is ready. My sister and I are safe, and we can keep the votaries happy. Morley has shown us how to direct them to make the offering wafers—one wafer every day with morning meditation. We have ways of reminding them through the donkeys.”

  Serendipity2’s plex melted into a picture of five donkeys standing in a shallow riverbed surrounded by a morning mist. “Jump. It is time. Danni and Andrzej are fully paired. You are very close. Sev needs to work hard. With your help, it will take maybe two or three days. They won’t stop coming after him, and the remains of Skramble and Hyde. Convert now or they will discover Paradox. They will term you a ‘nest of vipers’ and call in a strike.”

  “Really?” Sev ‘s incredulity backed down his fear. “They would wipe out an entire colony just to get back at me? Wouldn’t they be afraid it might somehow kill you as well?”

  “In a heartbeat. I love saying that since I don’t have one.” The plex showed barren desert scrub with a few blackened scorch marks where buildings once stood.

  “They are fucking idiots, and I am still having trouble wrapping my head around leaving the future of the earth to them, and I don’t really want to die yet.”

  “You won’t be dying, Sev.” Lori and Serendipity2 said the words at the same time. Lori continued, “You’ve seen MorleyD and DanniD. They aren’t dead, and they seem pretty happy.”

  “Running and fighting them directly will wear off many of your remaining years.” Serendipity2 made the interface glow grey and an image of Sev’s face, deeply lined and painfully aged, appeared in the center. “Stay young and fight smart as SevierD, SevD.” The painful image vanished.

  “If we are going to leave our human lives behind and become grazers, why bother to fight them at all? Let them do whatever stupid things they want to do. Won’t we just be eating the best fodder Bella can produce, while sitting around complaining about the humans these days?” Sevier had an image in his mind of old men meeting for breakfast coffee and whining gossip.

  “Fighting is a base component of human nature. Survival of the fittest served you pretty well until fairly recently.” Serendipity2 flashed the image of Morley standing over Donald Murcheson with the baseball bat. “Your job, Sev, is to become SevD and carry on for a while. They need to be distracted until they forget about us and their history moves on. It won’t take long.”

  “How about me?” Lori had gotten to know Serendipity1 well, but this continuous anthropomorphic behavior was new. Serendipity1/2’s ability to converse was natural and jarring at the same time.

  The interface changed again. When it cleared, a small herd of donkeys, including several young foals, could be seen on a grassy plain. “You must breed and learn how to teach the new generation. It will be the first.”

  Lori jumped out of her seat, a flush of red across her cheeks. “Donkeys are sterile. How are we supposed to get around that?” Sev was looking at her ass now, as she stood directly in front of the interface. She could feel it.

  They heard a laugh that came from all around them—Serendipity2’s interpretation of Morley’s cackle. “Horses have 64 chromosomes and donkeys, the old sterile kind, have 62. Their offspring had 63, an odd number and out of luck for reproduction. Not a hard problem for Tokyo to solve, with a little help.”

  The question hung in the air for several seconds, while Lori and Sev thought their separate thoughts, before Lori prompted for more. “So, he added a chromosome?”

  “Three.” Serendipity2 recalculated her response for non-epigeneticists and continued in a softened tone. “The first is merely a helper chromosome, to balance the donkey spiral. That was easy. The second is called a chaperone chromosome. It spots and triggers the appropriate acetylation to allow us to breach the information/organism barrier. Tokyo can go on for hours about how he should be getting a Nobel prize for that one.”

  Sev’s mind was drifting away from imagining Lori naked. He was beginning to feel exhausted and heavy in his chair. “This is all part of what happens to me if I convert?”

  “No, it happens to your donkey. The you that is sitting there thinking about Lori just dies.”

  “What’s the third new chromosome do?” Lori was determined to understand what she hadn’t yet been told.

  “That one is mine. The 66th chromosome determines your entanglement with your host, through me. If Tokyo got a Nobel, I would get two. And then they would kill me. The 66th pushes you out of the human race, right out of the world of pure organic matter and into the realm of infobiologics.”

  For lack of a better term, Serendipity2 was “enjoying” the stunned silence that followed, but then she thought it best to move things along. “Three little chromosomes, but a pretty big bang for the buck.”

  Both Lori and Sev were getting tired of her constant interjection of human phrases she had absorbed but used in ways that didn’t quite feel right.

  “MorleyD has named them the holy trinity. He claims they explain why you donkeys all have those black crosses on your backs.” With that the interface zoomed to above, providing a beautiful view of green grass blown in patterns by the wind, with the grazing herd of jacks, jennies, and foals ambling through the swirling sea, each adult with a cross of black fur over the grey brown shoulder girdle.

  “It’s that 66th chromosome that will save you, while your previous race struggles to keep up with increasingly rapid environmental change. They will eventually fall to their knees and almost die out.” Serendipity held a dramatic pause before finishing with, “
That chromosome, and your natural resilience as donkeys.”

  Lori just had to laugh. “Christ, you have learned to sound too much like Morley.”

  Be Humble

  Gerald Laferme usually sat on a bench in the locker room as he zipped up the seams of his grey jumpsuit. He didn’t really need to sit—there were only four zippers and they were easy to get at—but it was his habit. With a new suit every day from the laundry and cleanroom shoes attached, he was almost always the first into the chapel for Vespers. He liked the front row so he could hear clearly. The music was always perfectly balanced, but sometimes the announcements were easier to understand if you could see the lips. Afterwards, the daily wafer and breakfast, then off to the floor for work.

  Twenty-seven years. In Gerald’s opinion, you couldn’t do any better than being a votary. The work was interesting, the money was great, and Paradox was safely out on the far edge of the grid. True, Bella Aire could be a difficult boss, but all jobs had bosses and most bosses could be difficult. Life in the dorm was simple—much easier than what he once dealt with, back when he was a gardener in Salt Lake City. He couldn’t stand living in the city now, didn’t even much like going down the road to Naturita on outings. Too much stress. No, Paradox was perfect for him, and, sitting in the pew, he gave thanks while letting the music wash over him. No announcements today, nothing to remember.

  He walked out of the chapel and over to the dining room. He was second in line for coffee, oatmeal, and a wafer. Pink wafer for his weight, 195. Real wood chairs and tables on a wood plank floor, the crowd of votaries moved through the food line, taking their seats in little clumps. There was plenty of time to eat before the start of work, and Lionell and Sherry sat with him. He looked around the room while Lionell talked about the mountain lion he had seen the day before on a hike. No matter what direction he looked he could smell Sherry’s deodorant or perfume. She worked in the laundry, so she could wear stuff like that.

  After putting his tray through the dish window, Gerald was headed across the compound towards Building Two when he stopped halfway, out in the morning sun, hearing a strange sound. An air transport coming in from the west, over the mountains. It appeared very fast and then hung stationary over the little village. Gerald stared up at it, sensing that someone in the transport was staring back down at him through a lens that probably showed the stubble on his chin, since this was a non-shave day. Just as he was beginning to get concerned that this was some kind of bad thing, the transport resumed its trip to wherever, tracking over the old road down towards the southeast. Strange, he thought. But then he resumed his walk across the compound and soon forgot the whole thing.

  Until an hour or two later, while he was cleaning and measuring the wear on a bin of nutrient spray jets, it occurred to him to wonder if the transport hovering over Paradox might have something to do with the increased activity at the Sanctuary. He mostly worked in Building Two, since that was where the machine repair shop was, and he liked doing mechanical tasks, even boring ones like inspecting jets. But he did go over to Building One at least every other day, and he had noticed more going on there of late.

  There were a couple of new votaries detailed to work with Dr. Yamanaka. They were young, a man and a woman. They came a few days apart, and he had seen the young man getting the full tour from Bella. Later he had seen them having dinner with Yamanaka. Gerald didn’t know what they did or what their jobs might be, but they were probably important since they spent time down in the Sanctuary. He had even seen them going out into the pasture to visit the sacred donkeys, with old Ms. Danni no less. She had appeared a few days ago and promptly disappeared down there. She never came up to meals any more. It must be she wasn’t well. Too old and frail now.

  The next day at Vespers, there had been an announcement about the transport. Celia, the head votary, reminded them of the importance of their work. Both the direct feeding of people, as well as the maintenance of a diversity managed root and seed stock, were U.N.A. Schedule 1 tasks. As votaries, they were all protected workers who couldn’t be drafted or relocated, and Paradox itself was a protected site. The transport had been taking pictures for the U.N.A. Office of Management and Budget. It was even possible they might be honored next year for their work, but they must not say anything about the process or the potential opportunity. Their job was to focus and serve. Let others worry about awards.

  Gerald felt a slight pang of anxiety as he listened to Celia. He’d heard from Lionell that there was more trouble than normal out in the world of late. He hadn’t paid close attention to the stories Lionell tried to recount, because it was clear to Gerald that Lionell didn’t really understand what he was going on about, but it sounded like more reason to stay quietly hidden away here in Paradox. Transports weren’t quiet. But after Celia was done, and breakfast was ending with a last drain of his coffee mug, he felt the wafer begin to glow within him and he stopped worrying. “Our job is simple. ‘Protect the seeds and the sanctuary, take care to be humble, but have the heart and grit of the donkeys.’” That was what Celia always said at the end of Vespers.

  Another day was starting, clear and warm like most this time of the year. Gerald felt his hands growing stronger and his dexterity sharpen. He could pick up a tiny cactus needle from the smooth wooden floor of the dining room by pinching his forefinger and thumb nails together. The color of the sky out the window was blue blue blue. He could smell Sherry coming up behind them as they sat at the table. He thought of the transport and willed it never to return. That taken care of, Gerald turned in his tray and headed out across the compound to Building Two. He was washed with his daily dose of irradiation as he cleared the airlock, and the safety button on his jump suit glowed green. He was glad, yet again, to be rid of all hair on his body so he didn’t have to feel the tingly erectors. Another day in Paradox was starting.

  Today, he and Lionell were going to be replacing all the first line protein injectors in Building Two. It was an important job and one that had to be done every three weeks to make sure that wear on the little metal nozzles didn’t allow an inappropriate amount of the determinant spray to hit the young seeds as they began life. The line had to be shut down while they did their work, so they had to be fast. After 22 years of being trusted to do this task and listening to the same instructions from Bella Aire, Gerald had long ago concluded that it was a perfect metaphor for a properly led life. He loved that word “metaphor”; everyone around Paradox seemed to use it when they talked.

  The key was in the preparation and single focus. The day beforehand, yesterday, was spent cleaning and inspecting the replacement jets, lifting the strainer trays out of the solvent bath and rinsing, lining the jets up on the inspection racks and inserting the racks into the calibrator, scanning them for wear, picking out the badly worn ones and tossing them into the recycle bin, and finally, opening the packs of rebuilt jets and lining up the ready-to-go ones into sets of ten, stuck into the quick replacement sleeves.

  Once that was done, he and Lionell, who had joined his team about 12 years ago, carried the sleeves up to the rolling scaffold and placed them against the front edge above the line where they would be in easy reach the next day. They always checked their jumpsuits for open pockets and any little thing that might fall off them while they were up on the scaffolding above the growing beds. One small wrapper from a wafer or a piece of tape from the boxes of rebuilt jets could screw up the line. They had finished the jet preparation early yesterday, so they had extra time for the prep job Gerald liked best: testing the new protein spray cannisters for match and purity.

  Step one was to go over to Bella’s office and get the official notice of what vegetable was next up for generation. Notification had to be completed in two forms, and they had to match. First, they went to Bella, who read them the plant name, common and scientific, along with the protein designate from her master list. Then they walked back to the head of the Building Two Generation Line and called
up the Command_Stream that would run when they restarted the line. The vegetable name had to match, as did the protein mist name three lines down on the interface. They did. They always did, but you couldn’t be too careful. Today, it would be Red Belltowne Peppers.

  The rule was that he had to bring a helper along, usually Lionell who found it boring, so that two people confirmed the match.

  Head masks and gloves on, ready to go, he and Lionell walked one more time through the radiation curtain and up onto the dull silver-colored scaffolding that hung over the first row of jets. He lay on his sliding creeper at one end, and Lionell lay down on a creeper at the other end. At his signal, they both did a test roll from their end to the middle, making sure everything was smooth. The new jets were pre-positioned on the racks in front of them, and Gerald hung perfectly still for a moment enjoying the tingle of expectation and vision he always had of tiny seeds turning magically into vegetables. Today, he imagined red peppers. Then he drew a breath and spoke the words, “Let’s go,” into his mic.

  All movement below stopped, and Gerald could feel the faithful ripples across the water beds begin to lose their energy source. Show time. His gloves were set for a positive attraction level of three, and he could feel the gentle tug on his fingers as they reached for the first of the old jet nozzles. He unscrewed them and dropped them in the capture bin, feeling the stronger pull and hearing the jets clattering onto its empty metal bottom. The replacements were right there in front of him. He screwed them on, firmly hand tight, and admired their dull shine next to the slime-covered ones next door.

  Two down and a few hundred to go before the line could switch back on again and he could get coffee. Protect the seeds and the sanctuary, take care to be humble, but have the heart and grit of the donkeys.

  Jumping Ship