The Darwin Variant

by Kenneth Johnson

  It was fascinating to watch Mitchell manipulate government leaders the way my uncle’s ranch dog could work a herd of sheep. Mitchell also lassoed media bigwigs like the owner and managing editor of the Journal-Constitution, and local captains of various industries like Jefferson Boswell, Angelo Perini, or Murray Grenwald. They all fell right into line after they’d been unknowingly dosed with the CAV-B. Amazed by the increased intelligence they’d been gifted with, the receivers of the CAV-B virus—whom the Friends referred to as the B’s—all instinctively understood their status as being secondary and answerable to the secret society of the Friends. They also understood that a goodly portion of their future profits would be tithed, but that was okay because they’d be making multimillions more now. Tantalizing hope was also held out that any of the B’s who performed well enough might be elevated to the elite CAV-A status of the Friends.

  Mitchell had the usual power broker contingent of aides and security personnel headed by a tough-as-nails former black-ops Ranger master sergeant, a shaved-headed bull of a man, named Elia Dubrovski. But his chief advisor and confidant was Dr. Lauren Fletcher. While she didn’t attempt to match Mitchell’s manner or charisma and was customarily aloof, she was more than a match for him in potent intelligence. They were an extreme power couple. Their public relationship was exceedingly professional, and whatever personal side there may have been was kept tightly under wraps, although I certainly had suspicions from the get-go. If they were intimately involved, however, it was definitely not exclusive, at least on Lauren’s part, I learned. Pleasantly.

  In addition to being a compadre to Mitchell and Lauren, my own newfound mental brilliance was enabling me to achieve startling advancements in medicine and epidemiology that would help humankind. It seemed very likely that my first triumph would be the HIV/AIDS protocol that Lauren had handed off to me and to which I made groundbreaking modifications. The clinical trial Eric Tenzer was part of was particularly promising. Obviously, a success might bring deservedly large financial rewards, but I convinced myself that would be merely a collateral gift.

  On a personal level, I felt for the first time in my life that I was completely liberated from all past insecurities. I now possessed an unparalleled confidence—that I was not only one of the grown-ups in any room, but one of the very best. Lauren’s enhanced IQ might still top mine ever so slightly, but otherwise I was equal to or surpassing in intelligence everyone else I encountered. Even Mitchell. It was a tremendous rush. I reveled in it.

  And I felt mighty pleased with myself, how I’d risen to become one of the MVPs on what I then knew was clearly the winning team.

  18

  PRIVATE LIVES

  Dr. Susan Perry. . .

  Lilly was generally very stoic, but she’d been accustomed to us taking a daily afternoon walk and began to feel extreme anxiety being inside all the time. To keep us both from going stir-crazy in our secret hideaway, Lilly and I occasionally ventured carefully outside. I kept us as incognito as possible. Our auburn hair was dyed mouse brown, pulled back under baseball caps, and we wore sunglasses. We usually just walked the neighborhood or sometimes took a bus. I didn’t risk driving and being pulled over for even a minor infraction. Lilly, of course, could recite the entire city bus schedule. Each time one wheezed to a stop, Lilly would check her watch and nod. “R-right on time.”

  Under the tightening influence and surreptitious supervision of the Friends, the state and local government had everything working more efficiently. I knew that was logical: bipartisan efforts happen more often and effectively when people from both parties are on the same secret side. A majority of the public were as approving as Lilly. But others were fearful of where and how our society was being led. By early December I had collected a number of such people. The first were a handful of scientific colleagues who helped me set up a modest chem lab in the family room and kitchen of our funky rental house. Eric was uneasy about it. He was still getting his HIV treatments twice a week and fearful of us all being discovered. But we knew we had to search for a way to stop the cancer-like creep of the Friends’ behind-the-scenes domination. With careful vetting of newcomers, we gained more scientific colleagues, and our house became a gathering place for other dissidents as well.

  Chunhua Lee, a five-foot-two powerhouse with degrees from Beijing’s Tsinghua University and Columbia who’d previously worked at the CDC, was our resident electrical whiz. She’d dismantled a complex Axio Scope.A1 Polarized Light Microscope on the kitchen counter, where she and pale, gangly young Princeton biochemist Alex Farquar were trying to repair it.

  Chunhua had brought several sympathizers into our group including her Columbia pal Nate Balfour, a stocky, midforties journalist for the Journal-Constitution. Nate wore 1970s-style aviator glasses, had a bushy Afro, a low tolerance for idiots, and machine-gun-fast speech. He was poking through our refrigerator, chattering with disappointment, “Jesus, you guys, this is all bunny food. I just quit smokin’. I need a nummie.”

  Alex reluctantly opened a lower cabinet, revealing a crumpled bag of peanut butter cookies. Seeing my surprise, Alex shrugged sheepishly. “Forgot I had ’em.”

  “Oh, sure.” I smirked, reaching for one, but Nate intercepted the bag.

  “Me first!”

  “Whoa,” I blurted. “You turning into an A?”

  “Lemme tell you something, Suse,” Nate said rapid-fire as he pulled out a cookie, “the day I turn into one of those A-holes, you can pull the cookie bag over my head and call the firing squad.”

  Alex, whose manner was mild and precise, asked, “So what exactly did they say at your paper?”

  “Okay,” Nate said as he chomped the cookie, stepping away from the fridge, which Lilly quietly reopened to restore everything to perfect order. “So the publisher called everybody together today? Smarmy bugger, I didn’t like him before he sucked the comet, but least back then he left us alone to—”

  “Nate, tell us what the hell he said,” Chunhua prodded.

  “Okay, okay.” Nate flopped onto our seedy, threadbare couch. “He was unofficially discouraging any articles about some people that might be perceived as overly critical.” Nate leered. “The sonuvabitch told us, ‘that sort of writing wouldn’t be constructive for our changing society.’”

  “So they’re getting more overt about censorship. Shit.” I paced, glancing at Eric, who had an uncomfortable expression while correcting homework in a battered Lincoln rocker. “I’m sorry. This must be awkward for you sometimes.”

  Eric shook his head. “You know I’m in your corner, Suse.”

  “But on the other hand, you might not still be alive if it wasn’t for them.”

  Eric drew a breath. We all knew that his need for the Friends’ experimental medication was tugging against his innate sense of what was right.

  “But you can’t let ’em off the hook for all the other crap they’re tryin’ to pull, Eric,” Nate said, pointing with another cookie. “And if the erosion of the First Amendment at newspapers ain’t enough for ya, how about this one: our local NBC station is dropping Saturday Night Live.”

  Jimmy-Joe Hartman. . .

  Right around New Year’s I wuz standin’ kinda dumbstruck in the dinin’ room of Poppa’s old cheapo South Atlanta house. I been lookin’ at a sciency book with all kinda math e-quations I couldn’t make hide nor hair of. It wuz one of a stack that Poppa’d been readin’. My poppa Joseph, who was a damn janitor at the CDC. Dumb shit that I wuz, it’d took me almost a couple months to figure out what wuz goin’ on with him. I’d heard a buzz on the street ’bout some kinda brain-booster drug come down from that comet, but you hear so much weird-ass conspiracy horseshit, I didn’t pay no ’tention. Till it wuz right there in my face! “So this stuff is real?” I wuz plenty pissed. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me, Poppa?!”

  He didn’t even look up from the thick book he wuz turnin’ the pages of, readin’ superfast. “Not important, son.”

  “Not important!?” I sputte
red, lookin’ at my sister, Claire, who’d just come in from her hospital. “Did you know ’bout this?” She didn’t say nothin’, but her face was a giveaway. “You did! How long? Over a month?!” Her face stayed froze. “Thanks, Claire! What a fuckin’ family.”

  “Stop that talk.” Poppa looked up, firm-like. “It’s not important.”

  “Not—” I laughed out loud. “What planet you livin’ on, ol’ man!?”

  Claire snapped like a switchblade. “Don’t speak to your father like that!”

  “You one of them special ones I heard tell about, Pop? On the damn A-team, or whatever, and that ain’t important?!”

  “Not to me, son. Not to Jesus, neither.”

  I sniveled. “Well, Jesus ain’t around t’appreciate all y’can get from it.”

  “James Joseph,” Poppa said religious-like, “it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.”

  “Amen, Poppa,” Claire said quietly, pattin’ his old shoulder.

  I seen I wuzn’t makin’ no headway, so I switched gears, chillin’ back. “Yeah, ’kay. Amen, Poppa.” I got all calm-like, set down beside him. “You know what it is, Pop? You wuz raised so po-white that you got used to just takin’ the scraps. But you don’t have to do that no more.” Poppa looked back at his book. “How’d it happen, anyway?”

  He let out a sad little sigh. “Wudn’t my idea, son.”

  “Why’d they do it to ya?” No answer. I leaned closer. “What’s it feel like?”

  He kept readin’ his book, shaked his head a mite. “Not good.”

  “Probably just takes some gettin’ used to, huh?” Still no answer, so I said real soft, kinda smilin’, “But Poppa, bless your heart, now that you are one of ’em, can’t you help me to—”

  “James Joseph.” Poppa closed his book. “Son.” He looked in my eyes. “Let it go.”

  I jumped up. “Don’t start in with that ‘let go, let God’ bullshit!” Claire grabbed at me to stop, but I steamed right on. “I don’t want no fuckin’ hereafter! I want the here and now! Want my brain boosted! Want the perks!”

  “What you want,” Claire said real low and deadly, “is some humility. Like your poppa.”

  I yelled at her, “What I want, Miss Goody-Fuckin’-Two-Shoes, is some God damn respect!”

  “Well,” Poppa said quietly, “y’never gonna get it by takin’ his name in vain.”

  “But I’m gonna get it.” I wuz hotter’n a pistol. “You’ll see!” I bashed the front screen door open and steamed off down the sidewalk.

  Dr. Susan Perry. . .

  By early January 2021, our ragtag team had grown to over twenty dedicated scientists, some were still working at their regular jobs while secretly moonlighting here. Others had gone underground full-time like I’d had to. Our fledgling lab facilities had spilled out into the ramshackle two-car garage and now included some more sophisticated pieces of bootlegged equipment. In addition to physical experimentation, we were all convinced the Friends must have some Achilles’ heel, so we constantly brainstormed, theorizing on the best biological avenues for exploration that might lead to some viable antidote.

  Katie was reading in one corner of our piecemeal living room. Though staying at Eric’s small place, she’d started biking quickly through back alleyways to do her studying where she wouldn’t be alone so much. I was at a table, doing research by digging into Lilly’s magical memory of the CDC library. As usual Lilly poured out information faster than I could write it.

  “Wait, wait, not so fast, Lilly,” I said, beleaguered. “What date?”

  She was watching a documentary about dolphins with the sound muted as she rattled off flatly, “August, ’92. Bio-science Journal, Kristenson, Anna B., ‘The proto-incubation period of tested retro viruses was not vector related, but did correspond to varied sequencing of ASN, PHE, GLY, LEU,’ and Trust the F-Friends, and there’s also—”

  “Wait.” I blinked. “Stop. What was that?”

  Lilly tipped her frizzy head toward the TV. “I saw ‘Tr-trust the Friends.’”

  “What?”

  “Yeah,” Lilly said, glancing away. She never looked into anyone’s eyes, even mine. I rewound the DVR, then pressed play and watched as a dolphin swam toward the camera.

  “There.” Lilly pointed. “‘Trust the F-Friends.’”

  I’d had a frustrating day. My patience was thin. “What’re you talking about? I didn’t see anything.”

  Lilly picked up her iPad to start a video game. “It’s th-there.”

  I rewound the DVR again, then clicked it forward frame by frame—and sure enough there came a single frame where “Trust the Friends” was faintly superimposed over the grinning dolphin. I felt a chill, staring at it for a moment. “Lil, you really are exceptional.”

  “Uh-huh,” Lilly mumbled, engrossed in her video game.

  I stared at the frozen video frame, imagining what other subliminal messages the unaware public was being brainwashed with. It hardened my resolved to fight them.

  Then I heard the secret knock announcing a compatriot outside the door.

  Through the peephole I saw it was Eric, with a peculiarly profound expression on his face. I opened the door. He was carrying a small bouquet of daisies. His smile seemed forced and his manner subdued. I was immediately concerned, but didn’t want to press.

  Katie had also spotted the strange expression on his face and worried aloud, “Eric? What’s wrong?”

  Eric remained silent for a moment. He seemed in a state of combined anxiety and confusion. My first fearful thought was that he had been infected with the CAV-B or had been compromised. Or we all had. He took three daisies from his bouquet and handed one to each of us, smiling wistfully. “You know, daisies have become my favorite flower. So simple.” He breathed a very long sigh. “It’s too bad more people can’t be confronted with the possibility of an early death, because it makes you grasp at life more than ever.”

  I barely found enough voice to question, “Eric . . . ?”

  He went on, “‘When a man knows he’s to be hanged in a fortnight—’”

  Without looking up Lilly flatly completed the quote, “‘It concentrates his mind wonderfully.’ Dr. Samuel Johnson, London, seventeenth of September, 1777.”

  Eric swallowed, very emotional. He whispered, “Exactly right, Lilly. As always.”

  Katie was really concerned. She took his hand. “Eric, is it the AIDS?”

  He looked at us, paused with his eyes brimming. He was barely able to speak. “Yes.”

  Katie and I both drew a breath, fearing the worst. Eric said, “They developed a cure. Hutch. The Friends . . . I’m cured.”

  We stared at him as his tears spilled over. Katie hugged him tightly. “Oh, Eric!”

  Lilly was impassive, but I immediately joined Katie at Eric’s side and pressed my cheek against his. “I’m so happy for you.” But if Eric had seen my face, he would have seen my very mixed emotions. Of course I was happy for him and for everyone with the horrible disease, but I also knew this new triumph for the Friends would bring an even deeper acceptance of their shadow leadership.

  And it did. Only a few weeks later at a special convening of the Nobel Institute in Stockholm, we watched on TV as Bradford Mitchell and the Reverend Dr. Abraham Brown looked on proudly, though Hutch watched stone-faced, while Dr. Lauren Fletcher received the coveted Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In her acceptance she publicly thanked her CDC colleagues, including Dr. R.W. Hutcherson and other . . . friends—she clearly enjoyed using that code word—who had “contributed so meaningfully to her triumphal achievement over this dreadful disease.” That brought strong applause. She then announced, “The AIDS cure is already being manufactured in immense quantity by Everett Biochemical, a BioTeck Industries Company, for immediate sale worldwide at a surprisingly low cost and will be supplied to many poverty-stricken third-world countries at absolutely no charge.”

  That brought the black-tie
audience, representing the world community, to its feet. They gave Lauren a thunderous ovation. And though that audience didn’t know it, their praise extended to all Lauren’s growing number of secret Friends and “worker B’s.”

  Clarence Frederick. . .

  Since Rupert Green was executive secretary of the BioTeck board and moved in loftier circles than I, I’d only encountered him a couple of times in social situations. The last was at that Ashton High football game. At times like that, we only spoke for a moment. Never about company business.

  But after the Nobel ceremony his office sent word that he wanted a personal walk-through of the Everett Biochemical plant where I was VP and the HIV/AIDS cure was in production.

  My wife, Simone, personally approved my tie that morning, otherwise I was in what she called my uniform: one of my low-key three-piece suits—that day a gray pinstripe—and a pair of wingtips. I liked to think my careful grooming and general demeanor attested to the fact that I was a conservative man. That I was earnestly determined to keep Everett operating smoothly and upper management pleased. My track record at the plant was so solid and reliable that Green and his Friends had not offered me CAV-B, nor did I ask them to do so. My eagerness to serve was already a matter of long record. I felt relatively confident that I could continue along my career path until retirement in another ten years or so. I say “relatively” because I can be a worrier.