“Are you making better headway?”
“We are. We have increased our research into organisms that undergo fundamental transformation, mostly insects and some small animals like frogs that transform from an immature stage in one physical form to a mature stage in another physical form. We are focused on understanding the catalyst of that change at the genetic level. If we can make progress there, maybe we don’t have to fully understand the human/Gens genomes as much as how to circumvent the process using the catalysts of other transformative species.”
“I see. Instead of trying to discover how we transform, let’s see how they transform and create a short cut for us. Promising, indeed. And the timeframe for completion?”
“We are close, I believe, to the breakthroughs we need. We have made significant progress in the identification of key components of our research and, if we’re on the right track, we will be on schedule for completion within a matter of, say, a few years.”
“How many years?”
“I would still estimate we’re at least one year away from any meaningful clinical testing and two years away at the earliest from project completion.”
“And if we aren’t on the right track again?”
“Could be ten years. Hard to say. The complexity of this project was never correctly understood from the very beginning. The benefits of unlocking the human and Gens genomes alone were supposed to provide us with all the answers we needed. That was a pipe dream. Now that we understand the complexity involved, we can refine our research to target specific areas of fruitful research. And we could expand our resource base to expedite the process. That could shave a year or more off the schedule.”
“Meaning?”
“We could outsource certain kinds of research to human labs and let them do the grunt work on the human blood side of things. That would allow our scientists to concentrate on the Gens genome alone.”
“Any risks?”
“Of?”
“Discovery, of course. Of them somehow putting the pieces together to excite idle and curious minds.”
“None to speak of. The human labs will just do what we ask and no more. It is not likely they would ever imagine what the true purpose of this research is. Besides, silence and secrecy are exactly what these labs promote as the reason to employ them. Let’s take them at their word.”
“Do it then. Do you have a budget?”
“Attached to the summary in your stack.”
“Good. Then if you’ll excuse us, I’d like to have a private word with my brother. Thanks to both of you for coming in and I look forward to our next quarterly meeting.”
The two scientists looked at each other, gathered their papers then stood up and walked briskly out the door. They each had reason to fear for their futures following this meeting. Both were aware of the new pressures facing Paulo and his intolerance for failure or slow progress was well known. They would have results for him or be on a one-way flight to the Preserve in the wilds of Outer Mongolia.
They say the Gobi Desert is just beautiful in springtime. They hoped never to find out if that was true.
***
“So what part of those conversations did you already know about?” Paulo asked Enzo when the two scientists had left and the door to his office firmly closed. “Any of it? All of it?”
“All of it, of course. You assigned me the task of staying on top of what they are doing. I have weekly conference calls with each of them and their senior staffs. And I have popped in at their labs to nose around and poke through their computers, their security and their work flow. I would say that both are trying to do their jobs but only Calista seems to be rolling with the punches and adjusting on the fly. The problem she described is one I am certain you already knew about which not only came as a total shock to our own scientists but probably to every geneticist in the world. We thought we were on the verge of unlocking the secrets of God, but it turned out to be a bit more complicated than “one gene, one trait”. Now finding the right soup mix in one hundred twenty thousand or more pieces of genetically active and inactive influential material might be harder than first contemplated. Dr. Gold has done an amazing job despite this new reality, and she has responded to these new conditions without complaint. I think she’s afraid you’re going to reassign her and her entire Clan to a new wilderness resort if she fails you.”
Paulo smiled but didn’t respond right away. He cocked his head back, stared off into space then calmly said “I think I’m going to have the old man killed. I don’t like him, and I trust him even less, especially now that his brother has resurfaced. I suspect he is aware of everything his brother has been neck deep in for the past ten years and is part of this new underground that thinks it’s so covert and clandestine. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”
“The Black Shirts?”
“Yes. Saldana Ri and her merry band of renegade Gens warriors. I’m going to have to crush them soon before they get too well organized and start attracting too many new converts and the wrong kind of attention. I suspect that the times we live in are the perfect conditions for her kind of chaotic rebellion. We don’t need this as a distraction and we have way more pressing needs now. I’ll deal with them later unless you think we should move against them now.”
“I don’t see the urgency. Finding the Human is our top priority and we have had zero luck with that project. And before you decide to send me off for failing you in this assignment, please talk to the Trackers and Captains who have been leading the search. There is nothing on this guy. No-thing.”
“Who are you using?”
“The top available teams that have urban experience and the best history of success with search, recovery and technology. We’ve used every resource from public and private databases, the DL Main and just about every investigative and security firm in America who has ever worked with us in the past. Still nothing. Nobody seems to know who this guy is. And just so you know, we’ve talked to everyone who has ever worked on or had anything to do with the DL Main at any time in the recent or distant past. That includes government, academics and private industry. This guy is either so important he’s been buried deep or so unimportant that no one knows or cares who he is.”
“What’s your recommendation for finding this guy?”
“I wish I had one. Once we’ve exhausted all our traditional resources, it may be time to find some new personnel who can think through what we are obviously missing here.”
“Any ideas?”
“Nope. I was hoping you had some thoughts on my failure.”
“Not a failure Enzo. Just not a success – yet. In the fullness of time, we’ll find him.”
“You’re sure about that, are you?” Enzo was far less sure. He knew what his teams had done and how thorough their search protocols were. It had netted exactly nothing. Zero.
“I am indeed. If we don’t locate him, he’ll eventually come to us. And I will bet a bunch of your money on that.”
“Why would he do that? What could he possibly gain from exposure?”
“If he believes any part of what he may have found, he’ll want to begin sharing and confirming the data. Unless he keeps the project very close to home, someone will leak and then he’s ours. If he keeps it close, he’ll be tempted to contact us just to see our reaction and to let us know what he knows. Then he’ll want something to keep quiet or at least that’s what I’m hoping for. Then we pay him off, locate him and eliminate the threat permanently.”
“And if he doesn’t want anything?”
“Oh, he’ll want something. Or he may just ignore us, but I think the latter is very unlikely. The best we can hope for is that he hasn’t read anything, and the Library is just sitting in a warehouse collecting dust. We still need to locate it but there would be little harm done if that’s the case.”
“Your orders then? What would you like me to do?”
“Keep looking and handle this you
rself. Keep me updated.”
“What will you do?”
“I’m going to look where we don’t expect to find him and use some new resources I have always tried to avoid. Let’s see what we find then.”
“What do we do then?”
“What else? Find him, interrogate him and then kill him.”
“What else indeed.”
Chapter 5
The group of nine well-dressed Gens Elders met in a secure conference room in the basement of a two- hundred-year-old building now owned by BioGen International in Geneva, Switzerland. It was their annual meeting made more convenient by the advent of jet airplanes that could whisk the aging leadership anywhere in the world in a matter of hours. In the distant past, the Great Council would meet somewhere in the world every five years for a period of three months or longer to settle old business and determine the course of the Collective for the next five years. It was a system that worked well for the leadership and did not impinge too severely on the prerogatives of the then all-powerful Regional Councils.
But the times, transportation and communication had changed so radically in recent years that some on the Council felt no need any longer to meet face-to-face; their communities were happy to have global decisions made via secure conference facilities and leave the real decisions where they ought to be, in the hands of the Regional Councillors.
The Lesser Councils, Regional and Local, had ceded some of their authority to the Great Council over the years; however, it was never intended to be the absolute governing authority it had become since the end of World War II. The Great Council was intended to be an advisory body that could streamline and modify various real-world Gens issues of a challenging life among humans. The historical raison d’etre for the organization was to codify and modify the Code of Strictures, the governing code of conduct for every member of the Gens Collective.
The Code was first proposed and developed over one thousand years ago in the centuries following the chaos for the Gens Collective that was the fall of Rome. During the Roman era, the Collective had found sufficient organization and opportunity within the laws and culture of daily Roman life to keep the Collective and Gens youth busy, safe and occupied. The strict and sometimes brutal rules of Rome were perfectly acceptable to the Collective, which could hunt, war and kill with virtual impunity.
That some Gens warriors took the wide latitude they were given to excess and extremes at times and had to be reeled in occasionally by Elders was the ostensible reason for the creation of and necessity for the Code. The arrogance of some of the Gens warrior elites, in the opinion of many Elders, had crossed the line and put the entire Collective at risk of discovery. Rather than live among humans in secrecy and harmony, some warriors felt it was time to reveal themselves and take a higher station in Roman life. This had to be stopped at all costs and the few who attempted to make exposure a reality were dealt with harshly and quickly.
Over a quarter of the transformed Gens warrior class in Italy was eliminated in the purge that was to follow.
The brutal nature of Gens warfare and tactics was not something discouraged by the Roman military; it was instead a cult that Rome had tried hard to nurture and grow. This was the Cult of Mars Gens Populi which imposed its will through terror and fear for well over one thousand years. As a cult later dedicated solely to the protection and safety of the Roman Emperor, it took no part in the politics of Rome and was strictly neutral in the contests for human leadership. They served the office of Roman Emperor with fierce dedication and committed themselves, their families and their Clans to protecting the very concept of Roman power and authority which had raised them up and given them status in the human world.
Great Roman Generals and statesmen, most notably Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla, extensively employed the Cult of Mars Gens Populi warriors to great effect. Not only did they perform well and fearlessly in battle, but the Cult became a kind of Praetorian Guard available to carry out secretive and dangerous missions which could not be entrusted to any other Roman soldier or assassin.
The methods employed, and results achieved were seldom questioned by Rome but as the centuries progressed and Roman leadership began to fail in the west, the Gens began to disappear from a civilized world they no longer recognized, and many returned to the wild. Many others travelled East, to Byzantium.
The fractured nature of the post Roman world reflected the growing tensions in the Gens world caused by the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. For a lengthy period, the Gens largely withdrew from the world of humans and repopulated the wilds of Europe, ignoring the human misery and chaos of the so-called Dark Ages. Similar events eventually took place all over the world so that by the eleventh century AD, the Gens Collective globally was prepared to take a step never contemplated. The Regional Councils, which had always ruled in their territories without a central authority, were now ready to become organized on a grander scale. They determined to set down new rules for Gens conduct to be followed for the benefit of all the Gens Collective.
The sole goal was to make certain that the fact of the Gens existence would remain hidden and a secret until the Council, and the Council alone, decided otherwise. The first Great Council was convened in Vienna in 1048 and was comprised of the regional heads of the eighteen Homelands. The Council remained in session for over a year and completed work on the original Code of Strictures two years later. As unanimous consent was then required to enact any part of the Code, it was rather short and dealt only with narrow issues of extreme or dangerous conduct threatening to the Collective as a whole. It also set forth new rules of behavior relative to the limited circumstances under which humans could be “taken” for sport or as prey without prior approval of a governing Local or Regional Council.
At this time, the number and structure of all Councils were also agreed upon. There was a Great Council responsible for creating and maintaining the Code of Strictures. However, the Great Council then had no other governing authority or power to punish. The clear majority of real power resided with the eighteen Regional Councils, which had always existed and had developed independently in each territory. The administration of regional authority was delegated to the local Councils and Councillors who were in turn selected by the Gens electorate. It was the Gens form of democracy, though not the earliest on the planet. It had been modelled after the Greek City-States.
No Gens position of authority or leadership was hereditary but certain Clans did amass power and exercise it over long periods of time. As time passed, more and more inconsistencies became apparent in the conduct of ordinary life causing the Gens to adopt more political structures that had some resemblance to human institutions. Eventually this led to the current Council structures, which added additional Regional Councils in 1832 to reflect a large growth in the Gens population.
Representation grew to accommodate the needs and size of the growing Gens population but also to provide a mechanism to carry out the enforcement of the Code. As the Councils grew, so did the power of the Great Council. From its earliest mandate until the present, strength and importance of the Code of Strictures had also grown as a practical guide to a unified Gens Collective. And that unification had always been squarely centered on one pillar of agreement: maintaining the secrecy of their existence. This was the guiding principal of the Great Council and no Gens had ever served who didn’t accept the wisdom of this principal as an inviolable tenet of the Gens Collective.
This year would be like no other, however, and the issues at the forefront this year were existential in nature and pressing. In an organization in which the time needed for consideration of changes or new rules might easily be measured in lengths of decades or longer, quick and immediate decisions were very rare.
But this was far from a normal year, however and Paulo knew he had to make clear the fundamental importance of the decisions they would need to make very soon.
Their very existence depended on it.
> Chapter 6
“I want to turn now to our research projects and update you on two of them. The Serum Project and the V-1409-B program, which we now call the E-5 virus study, have been in development for the past fifteen years and we’ve made both substantial progress and experienced some unforeseen setbacks.”
The faces in the room were curious but cautious when discussing either of these projects with Paulo. As a trained scientist himself, there was no one better to spearhead these two solutions to the human infestation than Paulo. But the rest of the Great Council was worried about the direction Paulo had mapped out for the Collective moving forward. There were too many unknowns and his faith and reliance on science did not always sit well with all the Councillors. They hated making decisions based solely on the scientific information Paulo thought was relevant. What was he leaving out? Why hadn’t the Council of Elders been convened to suss out other options? Paulo had departed from tradition when it suited him and misused the Code of Strictures to then stifle or eliminate any dissent. What had been intended as a brake on the concentration of too much authority in the hands of an “executive” was now being employed against the interests of the Gens Collective by the Clan Fortizi, backed by military factions and the Tracker and Captain classes.
Paulo had the backing, however, of the seventeen largest Clan factions in the world. They made up a majority of the military as well as close to 100% of the scientific and business communities that had grown up around servicing the needs of the transformed Gens. There were now close to forty-seven Great Clans worldwide, but few had taken to transformation as a way of life to this degree. The Seventeen accounted for approximately twenty percent of the Gens global population and had specialized in the internal politics of the transformed Gens community. The Seventeen also dominated as Gens who had infiltrated human professions, the human military and police establishments and the human political realms.
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