“Or a machine gun,” Nick tacked on.
Clarice stopped what she was doing and looked at him with confusion. “Why would a machine gun be in the kitchen?”
“Why would a cutlass?”
“Touché.”
The two fumbled through the dim light and knocked a few pots and pans to the ground. The clangs made Clarice yelp and Nick swear. Thankfully, no walking dead rounded the corners or rose from the shadows, and they found the stairwell without further incident. To Clarice’s silent joy, the door swung open without protest or animated corpse waiting behind.
Clarice peered over the railing. “Emergency lighting is on.”
“Of course,” Nick said as he closed the door behind them and then looked for a locking mechanism. “It’s on everywhere.”
“No, I mean it’s actually working well,” she said. “I can see down the entire stairwell.”
“Maybe that means the power is better down below.”
“Could we be that lucky?”
The two descended, going two floors down and through another red fire door. On the other side of the door, the hall ran both right and left. And as Dr. Forbes had promised, the heading to the right yielded another door with a code lock.
Clarice peered through the door’s Plexiglas window and saw three zombies, all with their heads craned back and staring at the sprinkler system.
“Now what?” she whispered, eyes fixated on the unholy trio.
“I don’t know, but we need to think of something fast.” He grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her around. At the other end of the hall stood two more zombies. One wandered in a side room, and the other moaned and staggered toward them.
Clarice yanked open the door, shoved Nick through, and pulled it shut. A chirpy little beep sounded just before the locking mechanism clicked into place.
“That should hold,” she said, pushing on it once for good measure.
“Yeah, but you backed us into a corner.” Nick’s eyes darted about. “We’ve got nowhere to go.”
“At least I cut the number of things we have to worry about from five to three,” she replied, trying to sound confident in her hasty decision. But she knew her fiancé was right. Nothing but warning posters and announcement boards lined the walls between them and the group of zombies down the hall.
One of the monsters turned from the sprinklers and looked directly at the pair. Then the other, and then the third. At that point, the collective six thoughts between them all made their desires known: another snack had been served. They groaned, and with arms stretched out, they started to lurch forward.
“Any more bright ideas?” Nick asked, his back pressed against the door. A loud thump against it caused him to turn. A corpse on the other side turned its head into a battering ram and struck again.
“The one on the left has an ID badge.” Clarice pointed a shaky finger at the one she picked out. “We can run past them, grab it, and get into the next area before they can catch up.”
“Sweetie, if you get me killed I’m going to be really pissed off.”
“I haven’t yet, have I?” she replied with a wink. “Besides, don’t you know you’re supposed to charge an ambush?”
Nick exhaled sharply. “Yeah, and when your brother did, he had an M-16 and a squad of marines behind him.”
Ten feet separated the two from the three, and the latter’s groans intensified.
“Now or never,” Clarice prompted. She took the initiative and charged, and Nick followed without choice. She ran straight for the leftmost zombie, making a deft sidestep while snatching the badge with one hand. With her other hand, she plunged the chef’s knife deep into its torso. The blade, meant for chopping vegetables and not for undead defense, broke when the handle twisted in her grasp.
The zombie staggered backward and looked down at its ribcage. The other two remained focused on their objective and continued pursuit.
“In the head!” Nick yelled as they ran. “You have to hit the head!”
“Hey, I got the damn badge, okay? Feel free to stab the next one if you think you can do any better,” she said. Her legs pumped, rocketing her down the hall. Clarice skidded to a stop once she reached the end. Sweaty, shaky hands slid the badge through the electronic scanner. The little red light on the side stayed red. Clarice tried it again, and again the little light did not change, and the door didn’t budge.
“Is it the right badge?” Nick asked.
Clarice looked at it again. “Epsilon, right? It says it right here.”
“Try the other way?” he suggested.
She flipped the badge over and ran it through one more time. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said, punching the wall with the bottom of her fist. “Doesn’t anything work around here?”
Nick plopped down and flipped open his laptop. The boot and connection to Tau Seven’s wireless system took an excruciatingly long time. The entire process seemed even longer as the dead trio rounded the final corner and let out a collective moan.
“Any day now!” Clarice said, bouncing on the balls of her feet and wondering if a roundhouse might have any effect on them. Not that she was a ninja master, but in grade school, she’d taken a little Taekwondo. Hopefully, she still had some latent talent from it.
“I’m working as fast as I can,” he said. Nick flipped through countless directories, cursing every time he had to backtrack. Finally, he found what he was looking for. “Read me the numbers at the bottom,” he said.
“One, four, nine, one, six, eight,” she said. “You’ve got like twenty seconds, tops.”
“Could you make this any more stressful?” he replied, entering the digits.
“Did I mention we’re about to die?”
Nick double tapped the enter key and jumped up. “Try it.”
Clarice sucked in a lungful of air and kept it from escaping as she slid the card one last time.
The light turned green, and a happy little welcome message played. Welcome to the primary research lab. I hope you discover all that you are looking for. Please return equipment to its proper location before you leave. Have a nice day!
The two nearly trampled each other as they barged into the laboratory and slammed the door shut behind them.
Clarice leaned against the door, her heart racing. “Just once,” she said with a forced smile. “Just once, I would like for something to end easy. Is that too much to ask?”
“Well, we’re here and alive,” Nick huffed, leaning forward, hands on his knees. “That’s at least something.”
The room they were in was considerable. A massive, spidery machine was perched on the domed ceiling. Tubes and wires of all shapes and sizes formed the web on which it clung. Underneath that, sitting on the floor on what looked like a hotplate was a capped jar. It was the size of something one might bring a bit of jam in when going to a picnic, but nowhere near large enough to contain one’s main supply inside the refrigerator.
“So what do they need?” Clarice asked as she rifled through some papers on a nearby desk. Scant lighting made reading them a chore, and she quickly gave up.
“Backup data from the servers in the corner I’m assuming,” Nick replied, pointing with his hand. “And the UCK, whatever that is.”
“It better not be that thing on the ceiling.”
“He said he’d call when we got here,” he said as he walked over to the server racks. “Bets on what it is?”
Clarice looked around and tossed the thought over in her head a few times. “It’s going to be the jar. Everything else is deranged around here. Why wouldn’t it be as well?”
“Seems a little silly even for them to only want a cheap piece of glass,” Nick replied. “We could have gone to the supermarket and gotten one if they were that hard up for containers.”
The phone next to a computer terminal rang. Clarice stepped over and picked up the receiver.
“Ah, yes,” Dr. Forbes said. “I’m glad to see that you both made it to our finest lab.”
>
“Thanks for the heads up on those freaks in the hall,” Clarice replied.
“I do believe I warned you to be careful,” he answered calmly. “Did you get a knife as I suggested?”
“I did,” Clarice replied.
“Good. Are you both okay?”
“Yes.”
“No bites, scratches, cuts or the like?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite certain,” she said, already getting tired of speaking with him. “Can you tell us what you want from here so we can start figuring a way out? We’ve still got some friends at the door.”
“Yes, I noticed that when I was monitoring your progress on the camera displays,” Dr. Forbes replied, ignoring her edgy tone. “There are a number of data banks at the other end of the room. I see your fiancé has already taken an interest in them. At the bottom left are the external hard drives that are plugged in. Those are what we want. They will easily pop out if you pull on them, but before that happens we need to have the system run a diagnostic check.”
Clarice nodded to herself. “Okay, how do we do that?”
“Above the drives should be a button that says ‘Sys-Sync’,” he replied. “Push that, and the little LED lights to the right will flash red. When they turn to a solid green, you can pop them out.”
She relayed the instructions to Nick, who in turn started the procedure.
“How long will this take?” Clarice asked.
“A little bit,” the doctor replied. “So you might want to get comfy. I think I left a pack of playing cards on one of the desks if you want to pass the time.”
“Great,” she said as she picked through the contents of the desk. “What else are we getting?”
“The UCK,” he answered. “Do you see the thing that looks like a jar in the middle? It’s the size of something one might bring a bit of jam in when going to a picnic.”
“I knew it!” Clarice exclaimed. “I knew it was going to be that stupid piece of crap.”
“And how is that?” Dr. Forbes asked. There was a hint of taken offense in his voice.
“Given everything else that has occurred, it had to be something so utterly stupid,” she said with a smirk.
Dr. Forbes was silent for a number of seconds. “Do you...” he said slowly. “Do you know what it is?”
“It’s a jar,” she scoffed. “It holds stuff, and currently it’s empty.”
“I can see how you might think that,” he admitted. “But I assure you it is more than a jar. It is the UCK—the Universe Creation Kit—and something we’ve been working on for a long, long time.”
“I usually get my jars by going to the store,” she replied, unimpressed. “It saves a lot of trouble in having to make one. Apparently, there are entire businesses out there designing, making, and selling all kinds of jars in all kinds of sizes for all kinds of purposes.”
“It isn’t the jar that’s important,” he explained, “but rather, what’s inside the jar.”
“What’s in it?” Clarice asked. “You have some sort of gas or something?”
“Nothing is in it,” he replied. “Absolutely nothing. No gas. No liquids. No jellies. Absolutely nothing.”
“Yeah, that’s impressive,” she said, rolling her eyes. “My bank account often has nothing in it, too. You don’t see me trying to file for a Nobel Prize.”
“Since we have a bit of time, let me give you a brief overview of what you’re looking at,” Dr. Forbes said. He started to drum his fingers loudly on the desk he was at as he went on. “Are you familiar with bioethics?”
“Not particularly,” Clarice admitted. She picked up a handful of push pins and a large rubber eraser from the desk and jabbed them into it.
“It’s a fascinating world of debate,” the doctor said. “It’s a hot little subject where people from all over come together and discuss what they should and should not do in realms like biology and medicine.”
Clarice plopped down in a chair, anticipating that this conversation might take a while. “Sounds fun,” she said, letting her sarcasm drip extra thick. She turned to Nick and showed off her creation. Four pins protruded from the bottom of the rectangular form, as well as one from each end. “Hey, look, a push-pin pig.”
“It’s only fun for those who like to make and follow lots of rules,” Dr. Forbes answered. “One objection raised in bioethical committees is the accusation of scientists and doctors playing God.”
“Oh, like messing with DNA and stuff?” she interjected. Clarice was glad that at least some part of the conversation would be familiar.
“Yes!” Dr. Forbes said with enthusiasm. “Exactly like that. People say it’s unethical for us to manipulate genes or end life for any reason. They say that the scientific world shouldn’t play God.”
“And you think you should?” she asked, setting the miniature pig on the desk and looking for something else to play with.
“Well, it does seem a bit unfair, don’t you think?” he replied unexpectedly. “Such constraints aren’t placed on anyone else. You don’t see a movie ethics committee discussing whether or not someone can play God, do you? Not to mention little plastic dolls get to play baby Jesus at least once a year. But that’s a minor point. You see, even if we overlook the double standards set by society, playing with genes and cloning sheep isn’t playing God at all.”
“Oh?” she said. The tone in his voice led her to believe this conversation was about to take a new twist.
“No, it’s at best playing God-lite,” Dr. Forbes explained. “All those microbiologists and medical researchers are catering to their egos when they say they play God. And don’t get me started with surgeons either.”
“What exactly do you mean by God-lite?”
“What I mean is that at best they’re tinkering,” Dr. Forbes said. “Did they honestly do anything Godlike? No. They haven’t made anything new. Now, if someone came along and made a new, living creature entirely from scratch, then yes, that could be a candidate for playing God. But not just cloning one. That’s like claiming to be a world-class author because you know how to work the Xerox machine.”
“Let me guess. Your UCK creates life.”
“Oh, it does much more than that,” he said with pride. “Or at least, it will once it works. First, you have to understand a bit of the theory behind it. Are you familiar with the Pet Rock?”
“A little before my time, but I know what they are.”
“The Pet Rock had a sister product marketed in a similar way,” Dr. Forbes continued. “Only it wasn’t meant to be a joke. It included instructions on training the rock in a simple, but scientific manner, and it included a phone number to call when the pet was properly trained to collect some prize money.”
“You want me to believe that some guys expected a rock to move about on its own?” she asked incredulously.
Dr. Forbes laughed. “Oh, dear Lord, no,” he finally said after composing himself. “Not one bit. It was an experiment designed to transform nonliving matter into living matter. Basic stuff that’s taught in the most academic science courses. Even the shoddy public schools have that one right.”
“It’s been a while since I was in class,” Clarice said. “But I don’t think it was quite that simple.”
“Well, the mechanism is still up for debate, which is why they were trying it,” Dr. Forbes stated. “Statistically, it’s incredibly improbable for one bit of non-organic matter to spring to life. In order to overcome that probability, you have to watch it for a long period of time. So instead of a few people carefully watching a few rocks, it was much better, number-crunching wise, to have lots of people watching lots of rocks in case one decided to hop up and run off. See?”
“Not really.”
“Think of it like this. If you had one lottery ticket each week, it would most likely take a long time for your numbers to come up. However, if you had a million tickets, you’re much more likely to have one picked and thus not have to wait a
round so long to get the prize money.”
Clarice sighed. “So how does this relate to your jar again?”
“To a degree, the UCK is an extension of this line of thought,” Dr. Forbes replied. “More important, if one really wants to play God, why stop at the mere creation of life? Why not go for the whole enchilada and create a universe? Think how much more we could accomplish if you got to actually play God in all that He does. We could create limitless amounts of creatures, planets, or whatever else we like. We could even sit back and amuse ourselves as our new creations debated among themselves as to our own existence. They might even grace us with a Psalm or two. Of course, they would wonder who created us, and so forth, but that’s an entirely different topic.”
“Well,” Clarice said reluctantly. “In a twisted way, I see what you’re saying. So what’s in the jar?”
“As I’ve said before, absolutely nothing is in the jar,” he answered. “All of our models for the origins of the universe start at the beginning of time. Now before that, we know there was nothing. Not just empty space, but nothing. No space, no time. Nothing. So if we want to play God, we need to start where the Universe started, which was nothing.”
“So the jar has nothing?” she repeated, trying to wrap her mind around the concept.
“Precisely!”
“Then what?”
“Then we wait for something to spring forth,” Dr. Forbes answered as if the answer was obvious.
“Say again?”
“We wait,” he repeated. “Eventually something will come out of it.”
“What? How?” she said. Her mind had now liquefied. “Don’t you have to do something? Anything?”
“Look,” Dr. Forbes said. “We all know our universe started as nothing. If we do anything whatsoever, we’ve violated all of the known starting conditions, and as such, we have ‘something’ as the cause. Follow?”
“No, but go ahead anyway.” She rubbed her temples and prayed for patience. “It seems odd to wait is all.”
“Well, yes, waiting is a problem,” Dr. Forbes admitted. “Because waiting is still something, too. Though we’ve managed to make a hole in the fabric of space, we haven’t figured out how to suck time out of a jar yet. But we’re hoping that probability will outweigh that factor.”
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