Exogenetic
Book II of the Cerenovo Series
Michael S. Nuckols
Michael S. Nuckols
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
First Printing 2018
Copyright © 2018 Michael S. Nuckols
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 9781983350863
Noisy Goose Publishing
35993 Spicer Road
Antwerp, NY 13608
http://www.michaelsnuckols.com
Other Books by Michael S. Nuckols:
The Winter Calf
Frozen Highway
The Last Buffalo Soldier
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Epilogue
About Ridley’s Mansion
About the Author
From the 2052 edition of
The New English Dictionary
Exogenetic [ek-soh-juh-net-ik] adjective
1. Geology. Arising from the crust of a planet.
2. Medical. Originating outside an organism.
3. See also, exogenous.
Chapter One
Diane Kingsolver drove forty-five minutes to see Dr. Juan Ortiz, the only surviving pediatric geneticist in the Pacific Northwest. His waiting room’s shelves were filled with thirty-year-old textbooks and photocopied medical articles held in worn binders. An aging print of a DNA helix was hung crookedly over the front desk, where a young man tapped away at a keyboard. Old business cards still showed the name of his deceased business associate.
Kelly wriggled in Diane’s arms; the baby seemed unusually irritated by the change of scenery and long car ride. Diane worried when she refused to drink from her sippy-cup. Diane’s phone vibrated. Ridley had texted, I won’t be in until afternoon.
She typed a reply that included a bright yellow emoji of someone shrugging. You forgot. I’m at Kelly’s doctor’s appointment in Tacoma.
She adjusted the pink bow in Kelly’s hair. She debated checking Kelly’s diaper just as the man at the desk said, “Dr. Ortiz will see you now.”
The nurse was missing his left foot and wore a prosthetic that squeaked as he led them into the exam room. Diane’s thoughts went to another soldier, Kelly’s father, John Maddox. She missed him intensely. The missing nuclear bombs were still out there. The botnet might still be at work. A war smoldered overseas. She took a breath to calm her thoughts as she took a seat.
The room was chilly; the bright white of the three wall-screens, each covered in data, was even colder. Diane cradled Kelly in a buttery-yellow blanket. The baby studied the rectangles of the drop ceiling. One of the LED squares in the ceiling was dim and Kelly concentrated on it, as if trying to understand why it was not like the others.
The portly Hispanic doctor had thick black hair and sparkling brown eyes. He wore a crisp white shirt covered by a white lab-coat. The pediatrician had a grim look on his face. “I’m sorry it took me so long. I’ve looked over her data three times now. There’s a chance that she’ll develop normally but... The genes that cause autism are complicated. I think it might be best to wait until she’s older. See where she is on the spectrum.”
“Her brain is developing now,” Diane argued, “Won’t it be too late?”
“Admittedly, the treatments are less effective with age, but there’s about a thirty-percent chance that I have this wrong.”
Kelly’s genetic data was stretched across the wall-screen like a giant bar-code. Diane studied the frenetic data but failed to make any sense of it. “Those aren’t good odds.”
Dr. Ortiz took a chair next to Diane. “I wish I could give you more certainty. Brain development is one of the areas that we don’t fully understand yet. Animal models tell us how the basic brain develops but the portions of our DNA that make us human are still very much a mystery. Autism and genius are strongly correlated. Genetic treatments for autism, especially at this age, are risky. In some cases, they can make things worse.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“In terms of genetics, the line between developmentally handicapped, normal, and gifted is narrow. It’s easy to get it wrong. You might be robbing Kelly of a musical ability or the ability to do complex math.”
Diane looked at the baby with a pained expression. She held her finger out, hoping Kelly would take it but she did not. “She’s 18 months old. I thought she would be saying ‘Momma’ or smiling by now. I smile at her and it’s like she looks right through me.”
He fought to console the young mother. “I know that this is a terrible decision to make. Before the Collapse, I would have conferred with another geneticist and we could have reached more certainty, but there aren’t many of us left. The nearest is in Monterey, California. We lost a lot of data during the Collapse. We didn’t even realize that our software had been corrupted until a few months ago. We salvaged what we could, but we had to write new code from scratch and without the assistance of artificial intelligence.”
Diane squinted as she tried to comprehend the information. “How badly corrupted was the software?”
“Badly. Major parts were never recovered. This new software hasn’t been tested as much as it should be. I’m certain we’ll have better treatments when Kelly’s older. If you want me to proceed, I can do a partial treatment and see if it helps. Otherwise, we simply wait. We might try a ketogenic diet instead.”
Diane brushed strawberry-blonde hair out of Kelly’s eyes and kissed her forehead. She put the baby on the chair, stood, and motioned to enlarge the data on the wall-screen. “Can I have this?”
The doctor sent the data to Diane’s email account with a swipe of his hand. “Done.”
“How often does this new code make mistakes?” Diane asked.
“We don’t have statistics on the new software build yet. The old software had a two-percent error rate. The rate was higher when analyzing DNA associated with neurological development.”
“That’s quite an error rate,” she said.
“It’s a reason to hope.”
Diane swiped through the genetic data, scanning the paragraphs of interpretive data that popped up with every segment of DNA. A huge swath of Kelly’s eighth chromosome was simply labeled, “Unknown genetics.”
She zoomed in. The list of base pairs was like computer code. In this case, the zeros and ones had been replaced by As, Gs, Cs, and Ts. “Before I was born, I had genetic therapy. Can you tell which chromosome was altered?”
“Were your medical records restored after the Collapse?” Ortiz asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you getting ongoing genetic treatment from your primary physician?”
“No. The genes were modified before I
was born.”
Dr. Ortiz brought up Diane’s records on another portion of the wall-screen. He continued to page through the data and then ran a program to correlate her data to Kelly’s. A pair of chromosomes stood as tall as Diane. He zoomed in further. “Chromosome eight. Interesting…”
Diane waited patiently. He motioned to the wall screen and segments of the mother and daughter’s data lined up next to one another. He pointed as he spoke. “You share this segment with Kelly. Kelly has not one, but two copies of this segment, one on each pair of the eighth chromosome. Did her father have genetic therapy?”
Diane tried to make sense of the situation. “John never mentioned it.”
The computer displayed 99.73% match and 99.83% match.
“This is beyond coincidence,” he said, “Unless you were second or third cousins?”
“We’re not related,” she said in astonishment, “How is that possible?”
“What was his name?”
Diane hesitated. “John Maddox. The VA treated him.”
The doctor went to the Veteran’s Affairs website and typed in his credentials. The data was unavailable. “Our government at work,” he chided, “That said, if you are not related by family, these segments must be programmed DNA. Genetic engineering effectively made you fourth cousins.”
Her breathing quickened. Diane reached into her purse and pulled out a liquid oxygen inhaler. The mist did its job and her breathing slowed.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes, my lungs were injured when the tower fell.”
“You don’t have an implant?”
“I don’t trust them.”
“There are other treatments.”
Diane looked at the baby. “I’m a single mother. It’s not that easy to find the time to sit in the hospital for two weeks.”
“Is there no-one that can look after her while you recover? Your health is important too.”
She sighed. “I can’t ask him.”
He nodded knowingly. “When I lost my wife, I thought I’d never be able to take care of my son. He’s autistic. I thought I was going to lose him too. He pulled through the flu even without the antiviral.”
Kelly tugged at Diane’s blouse. “Why didn’t you mention that before?” Diane asked.
He crossed his arms. “Decisions like this need to made based upon science and not anecdotes.”
“Did your son have genetic therapy?” she asked.
“No.”
“Have you ever had genetic therapy?”
The rapid questioning surprised Dr. Ortiz. “Uh… Yes.”
“Can I ask what it was for?”
He hesitated. “It’s a little embarrassing…”
“In the interest of science,” Diane prodded.
“My Dad lost all of his hair at age twenty-five. My parents did not want a son who would go bald.”
Diane smiled. “I see… Could you do me a favor? Could you compare your son’s genetic data to Kelly’s?”
“Uh… I guess.”
Dr. Ortiz brought up his son’s records and compared them. “Huh. They share the same anomaly. How is that possible?”
Diane locked eyes with him. “You tell me.”
“The genes for male pattern baldness are on chromosomes eleven and fourteen. I’ve never seen this data before. This makes no sense.”
Diane rocked Kelly in her arms slowly. “Can I tell you something that might sound a little crazy?”
“Go ahead.”
“You remember Ridley Pierce?”
“The guy that stopped the botnet?”
“Well, he and I both stopped the virus, but… Yes. I work for him. We share an unusual hypothesis about the Bolivian flu. Keep in mind, we have no evidence and this is just a wild idea.”
“I understand.”
“The Botnet might have programmed human DNA to survive the plague.”
Dr. Ortiz’ brow furrowed as he tried to understand. “Wait. Say that again.”
The words fell out of her mouth like a lead weight tossed into a pond. “There is a case to made that the botnet is an artificial intelligence that began altering the human race to suit its needs.”
Tiny ripples raced across the water to the shore as the geneticist began to understand. “You think the botnet inserted genes for its survival into human DNA? I’m thirty-two years old. That would mean...”
“The botnet virus has been here for a long time.”
“It waited decades?”
“It’s a crazy idea, I know.”
“The two of you destroyed the botnet, correct?”
Diane hesitated. “Everyone thinks the Predator worked like a computer antivirus… Think of the internet more like an ecosystem. The predator is hunting instances of the botnet. Just like in nature, it won’t find them all. But to better answer your question, we’re not really sure that it actually worked. It’s possible that the Botnet just went into remission. Maybe it did what it needed to until it’s ready to emerge again.”
Dr. Ortiz looked at the wall-screen nervously. “If that’s the case, it’s still out there? Waiting?”
Diane entered the cramped Main Street office to find Ridley studying architectural drawings on the wall-screen. She put Kelly into her playpen. He zoomed in and out, changing the angles of each view of the monstrous edifice. Diane poured a cup of coffee in the grimy kitchen. The laminate countertops were peeling. The entire office needed a fresh coat of paint.
Ridley never asked about Kelly’s appointment with the geneticist. She debated telling him the news. Would it upset him further? The past few months had been difficult. His bouts of depression had seemed to grow worse. She had nagged him about getting sunshine and suggested that they go fishing with Everett and Wes, but he had scoffed at the notion.
His time was spent entirely before computers, whether at Cerenovo or at their office. After Ridley had left his workstation one morning, Diane caught a glimpse of his online statistics. He had spent entire weekends and evenings playing online games.
His hand-washing had also gotten out of control. The skin on his hands was chapped and raw. He had rolled up his sleeves and she had caught a glimpse of scratches on his arms. His nervous habits had grown worse. “You need to see someone about that,” she had suggested.
“I’m fine.”
“It's going to get infected.”
“Mind your own business.”
Diane sat at her desk, a sturdy antique of tiger oak with a warm patina from years of use. She studied the contorted drawing on the wall-screen. “Is this yet another design?”
Ridley wore a long-sleeve shirt over a t-shirt. He was sweating in the warm room. “The first architect didn’t listen to me.”
“That’s a lot of stone.”
“Neo-brutalism is what he’s calling it. The mansion is supposed to appear as if it arose from the earth itself.”
Diane studied the elevation. The design featured a steel-reinforced concrete core with a veneer of boulders and a central tower. It reminded her of a deformed skull with an extra eye socket. “I just don't know about that facade,” she said, “It seems a bit much. I thought you wanted a modern building? It looks like Valkyries should fly out of it. ”
“I want it to be here for centuries.”
“Is it supposed to be a castle?”
“No, but there are references to medieval architecture. They built buildings like this in Germany on the Rhine. It’s not as elaborate as it looks. Sven…”
“Sven?”
“Sven Hansen. He’s from Oslo. He says that much of the design will come from the stone itself. It will be irregular. Organic.”
“Where will you get all of that stone?” she asked, “And how will they place it?”
“It’ll be hauled in.”
“I sort of figure that. That’s going to be expensive.”
“Money isn’t the point.”
“This is extravagant, monumental. Even with the money from Ukon America, are you sure
you can afford this?”
Ridley brought up a schematic of steel plates that would lower down over the windows. A smirk appeared on Diane’s face. “Trying to keep the zombies out?”
“If needed.”
“When do they start construction?”
“They’re mobilizing equipment to dig the foundations now.”
He continued studying the 3-d image, moving from room to room, looking for details that he might have missed. Ridley lingered on the image of his bedroom, which featured a wall of glass and a steel shell that could be lowered in an emergency. “We’ll have a full laboratory in the basement. We can move out of this office finally. I want to build the mainframe for the AI there. I’ve asked them to include the necessary ventilation and power for a high-temperature printer, if we can ever afford one.”
Diane opened her purse and pulled out a tube of lip balm. “Maybe you should build it in stages,” she suggested, “That way, if money runs short, you’ll have something to show for it.”
“I don’t see how that could be done and still achieve what Sven is proposing.”
Diane began thumbing through the file directory. She opened a computer-aided design suite and brought up the latest schematics for her processor. Unbeknownst to Ridley, she had been drawing the same design over and over again. The concept, a multi-spectral optical processor that merged light to create and measure diffraction patterns, was theoretically possible but realistically impractical. How long would it be until Ridley realized that she had nothing? When would his fascination with the mansion wane and his attention be diverted back to their work? He was expecting a magnificent device that used quantum entanglement or some other magician’s trick to transmit data. Reality remained firmly fixed in Newtonian physics.
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