2156

by C M Dancha

  The second video image was Rollie's office door. What drew Raul's attention to this monitor was seeing Rollie leave his office dressed for the outdoor inclement weather. Ten thirty in the morning seemed like an odd time to leave the building for any reason other than going home sick. Raul was tempted to follow Rollie and find out where he was going. He elected instead to use the city's monitoring system to keep tabs on him.

  It was illegal for Raul to use the city's video system. He only did it in unusual circumstances where the risk was worth the reward. Raul stepped into his office and contacted one of his paid sources in city government. This person was authorized to use the city monitoring system. He patched Raul into it without asking any questions.

  Raul sat back and watched Rollie on the holographic screen in his office. His friend meandered through the city streets for ten minutes until he ended up outside a building. Raul recognized it as Rollie's apartment building. He watched Rollie vanish into the building. Raul thought about shutting off the video, but he was curious why Rollie would be going home at such an odd hour.

  As he thought about possible explanations, he noticed an attractive, dark-hair lady enter the front door of Rollie's building. Even from a side-view she looked familiar, but he couldn't identify who she was or where he might have seen her. He waited another fifteen minutes for either of them to reappear on the street. When that didn't happen, he set the city system to record mode. He left his office went to the company's cafeteria for a cup of coffee. He hoped that a walk and some caffeine would clear his head, so he could see the best investigative avenue to take.

  As Raul paid for his drink in the cafeteria, the dark-hair woman was taking off her black business suit and crawling into bed with Rollie.

  She snuggled up to him from behind and started kissing him on the neck.

  "Hi, do I know you, lady?"

  Sophia gave Rollie a weak slap on the shoulder and pretended to be offended. "You better know who I am mister. I've spent enough time in this bed with you over the last couple of months."

  Rollie rolled over, looked seriously into her eyes and said, "Oh, yeah, I remember you. You're that gal from Archives. The one I've been trying to meet for so long." Rollie's playfulness was endearing. It was the thing she needed to hear to feel romantic again on another misty, overcast day in Zurich.

  As he stroked her backside, she asked, "Are you going back to work today?"

  "No, Claude and I are pulling another all-nighter in the lab. So I'm going to get some sleep after you leave. How long have you got?"

  "About an hour before they start wondering where I am."

  "Well, in that case, Madam, we better get started." Rollie needed to catch up on his sleep but decided he had other needs which were more important. He pulled her closer and started to take her, beginning at her head and moving slowly to her toes.

  Halfway into foreplay, a thought raced into Rollie's head forcing him to stop pleasuring her.

  "What's the matter, Rollie? Why did you stop?"

  "I'm sorry, Sophy. I just thought of something."

  "Are you going to share it?"

  Rollie ignored her request and went back to work with his hands and mouth. But he still had a figment of his earlier thought rolling around in his brain. There would be plenty of time later to dissect why Raul mentioned the special guest coming to Phoenvartis in an office which might be bugged. Unless he knew for certain there were no bugs in the office! Rollie smiled on the inside at his clever and sneaky friend.

  Chapter Twelve

  Deceit, Mystery and Aretha Franklin

  When Rollie woke up, the sun was dropping behind the mountains. The street lights were automatically coming on as darkness moved across the city. For the first time in several weeks, Rollie felt as though he had a few hours of quality sleep. Having Sophia come by for a mid-morning romp in the sack relaxed him enough to forget about the ReLife project problems. He was now refreshed enough to spend another ten hours in the lab with Claude. With luck, they would make considerable progress toward the goal of replicating animals and humans that were mentally and physically sound.

  He had another two hours before meeting Claude. Rollie decided to clean up and have a decent meal at one of the local restaurants. His diet during the last couple of months was irregular and filled with junk food. He could see a bulge developing around his midsection and the jowls on his face growing plump. He had to get back to taking care of himself no matter how much stress the ReLife project caused in his life.

  In a sudden burst of energy, Rollie dropped to the floor and did fifty leg lifts, sit-ups, and push-ups. He should have started an exercise program with fewer repetitions, but the words of his former football coach rattled around in his head. "No pain, no gain." He laughed, knowing that tomorrow there would be plenty of pain but little gain.

  Slightly winded, Rollie got to his feet and went to the bathroom to take a shower. This was his time to listen to music from hundreds of years before. He loved classical music by Bach and Beethoven and a few other masters. If it wasn't classical, he had a real fondness for the music produced by Motown Records during the 1960s and '70s. There was something about the beat of these tunes which reached deep into his soul and made him want to dance like a teenager. He was one of the few people left on planet Earth who knew anything about Motown music. He knew where it originated and the artists who recorded on its label. He wondered if anyone, other than himself, knew what a record label was.

  After drying off to Aretha Franklin pounding out "R-E-S-P-E-C-T," Rollie dressed and headed to the kitchen to see if Sophia left any notes. He had grown accustomed to finding her short notes on either the kitchen table or hanging on the food dispenser unit. None of them mentioned love but they all described her admiration and respect for various aspects of his life. He was usually amazed by how she could isolate a single facet of his personality and honor it. She described it as though he were the only person on earth who possessed that positive trait. Regardless of whether he agreed or not, Rollie always felt a little better about himself after reading one of her notes.

  For the first time he could remember, Sophia didn't leave one of her gushing notes. She did, however, put a small box on his kitchen table with a note which read, "Found this outside your door. Contact me when you can. Want to see you soon. Love, Sophia."

  Rollie stood at the table staring at the word love. Did she mean love as in, I love you, or was this a pleasant way for her to end a note to a friend? Could it be she was falling in love with him or was she being the perfect girlfriend? Just as he was getting used to her personality traits she threw him a curve ball called love.

  As Rollie unwrapped the box from Grandmother LeeLee, his thoughts turned to how he felt about Sophia. In a few short months, the woman in black who flirted with him one night in the Schwarzenbach Tavern had walked into his life as a lover and friend. She also got a job at Phoenvartis and became friends with his assistant. It was as if they were predestined to become enmeshed in an intimate relationship. And, nothing in the cosmos was going to stop it from happening.

  Sophia's explanation for this rapid coming together was quite simple. She believed that the life forces of two people could be so attracted to each other it was inevitable they would meet and have some type of intimate relationship. This was one of several new age beliefs Sophia espoused. She also believed in reincarnation and described in detail being a slave girl in ancient Rome. At first, Rollie found her off-the-wall comments and stories comical. But he stopped laughing when he realized how serious she was about her beliefs. Was it possible that part of her brain short-circuited occasionally? Or was she one of those people who were so smart they couldn't help having thoughts most people found bizarre? Regardless of her strange beliefs, there was no question she was a tigress in bed.

  For now, he thought it best to ignore the affectionate closing to her note. If she was really falling in love with him, it would come out again. As soon as the ReLife project stabilized he would take ti
me to learn something about this woman other than her sexual preferences. Who was she? Where did she come from? What did she want from life? And, what was the real reason they met and became involved? Being a suspicious person, Rollie considered the life-force explanation a pile of malarkey. He guessed their union was somewhere between coincidence and sinister. But time would eventually lead to the real reason.

  He removed the wood box from its container and placed it on the table in front of his chair. It was about twelve inches long by six inches high and wide. It was made of pristine maple burl, sanded and polished to a near-perfect, semi-gloss finish. The small, round bird's eyes in the wood glowed like the eyes of a live, winged creature. There were no nails holding it together. Rollie guessed the artisan who put this box together almost 400 years before used some type of interlocking dowel system to keep it solid. Whatever the fabrication and assembly method, the joints were impossible to see.

  A capital "H" was carved into one large side of the box. It was in an old Roman English font and at a uniform depth of one-eighth inch. This lone letter was approximately four inches tall by two inches wide. It was detailed sanded and polished just like the rest of the box exterior. Rollie could not remember if his grandmother ever explained what the "H" stood for.

  Rollie vaguely remembered seeing this box twenty to twenty-five years before. Grandmother LeeLee showed it to him one afternoon in her kitchen while the other kids were busy playing outdoors. He remembered her treating it like the most precious thing in her life. The only thing he could remember about that afternoon was Grandma LeeLee's words. "One day this will be yours, Rollie. So don't forget what I told you about the secret of this box." Now, years later, he wished he had paid attention to her. He could kick himself for not listening to her instructions. But as a young lad, he was too busy worrying about what his buddies were doing outside.

  Rollie turned the box slowly in his hands. He hoped this would bring back the entire conversation with his grandmother from so many years before. He was ready to give up trying to find a way into the box when gravitation took over. The top swung open on a set of concealed hinges. A small piece of paper dropped out of the box and floated to the table.

  Rollie put the box back on the table and picked up the note. It was from his grandmother and read: “Sunny Boy: what I promised you long ago. I've received word from Him that you need this now. Remember what I told you. The obvious isn't always obvious. Love Grandma.”

  He read and re-read her note several times. She was trying to communicate some type of encrypted message to him with her cleverly worded note. Now, he was very mad he hadn't paid attention to her so many years before. There was something special about this box. If Grandma LeeLee said he needed it now, then it was imperative that he remember its secret as soon as possible.

  Thinking about Sophia, examining Grandma LeeLee's box and singing along with Aretha Franklin had consumed the extra time allocated for a decent meal. He had fifteen minutes left to walk to the lab and meet Claude. It looked like another night of eating second-rate food from the company dispensers. If he had known it was another night of junk food, he wouldn't have bothered exercising.

  Regardless of how bad his next dinner would be, Rollie was excited about meeting with Claude. The first phase of animal testing was scheduled that night. With any kind of luck, there would be a few new cloned animals on planet Earth by morning. Fortunately, the company was closed tomorrow so they could work all night and into the next day if they wanted. Rollie looked forward to a productive evening, cloning simple animals like frogs and mice which took less than an hour each.

  About the same time Rollie arrived at Phoenvartis, Raul Hakala was getting ready to go home and get some sleep. He had a big day planned tomorrow plotting access codes and times from critical areas of Phoenvartis used for the ReLife project. He planned to backtrack four to five weeks looking for any obvious patterns. Repetitious and odd behavior didn't necessarily prove someone guilty. But it often pointed to prime suspects and unauthorized or even criminal behavior.

  Half a world away, Grandma LeeLee was rocking back and forth on her front porch swing. She had an unfiltered, hand-rolled cigarette hanging from her lips. She was warned a hundred times by her personal physicians to give up smoking but was never able to kick the habit. Yet, she had outlived the six or seven physicians who warned her about the evils of smoking.

  She needed the calming effect of her cigarette this afternoon. She knew there was something wrong with her grandson Rodolfo. He was in danger of some sort. She could see in her mind's eye an evil and ominous cloud hanging over her grandson's head. It was black as night and threatened to injure her beloved Sunny Boy in some way. She knew the black cloud represented a person rather than an event or situation. Someone close to Rodolfo was planning to harm him.

  As Grandma LeeLee worried about her kin, Sophia was communicating with her contact person at the Black Cross in Berlin. What she didn't know was Raul Hakala had already identified her as the woman entering and leaving Rollie's apartment building. A fast-forward scan of the city monitoring system gave him an excellent, face-first image of her leaving the building. He loaded the facial image into the company's identification system. After a quick scan of the database, it came back with a match to the new girl hired to run the Archives department. The system also told Raul she didn't live in Rollie's apartment building. It didn't take a genius to conclude that she and Rollie had something going.

  Klaus Ekstrom sat alone at a table in the Faulkner Tavern pounding down shots of vintage Irish Whiskey. He was trying hard to forget the miserable day he just fought through.

  Chapter Thirteen

  A Night in Hell

  Fifteen hours later, Claude Ekstrom and Rollie Sweats sat in the company cafeteria wondering why their animal testing was a bust. It had been a tough night filled with a few successes but plenty of failures. Rollie massaged his brow with his right hand, hoping to calm his splitting headache. The coffee he drank wasn't helping either. He promised himself to bring a container of whiskey to the next 'all-nighter' to either help celebrate or drown his sorrows.

  Of the twelve animals they replicated, only five turned out physically sound. They had all their limbs and the internal organs were correctly positioned. There were no apparent maladies or disfigurements. Also, the five survivors appeared to be acting the same as non-cloned animals of the same genus.

  The evaluation of their mental capacity was a guess based on a couple of hours of observation by Claude and Rollie. These animals, which consisted of two mice, one small dog, and two frogs, seemed alert and responsive to external stimulus. They over-ate just like their non-cloned counterparts. A brain scan of each revealed waves like those found in the same non-cloned species. Unfortunately, these observations and tests didn't guarantee the cloned brains were functioning properly. Until they could communicate with cloned animals or humans, the two scientists had no way of confirming the accuracy and functionality of replicated brains. Based on the pathetic results of the first round of cloning, the idea of communicating with a replicant seemed far in the future.

  The seven animals who did not clone correctly were monstrosities. To refer to them as mutants or freaks was a compliment rather than a slur. Rollie could still see the twisted, deformed bodies of these pitiful victims. But what scared the crap out of him was the perverse expressions on their faces. If eyes were truly the windows to the soul, these things somehow knew they were hideous and not meant to live.

  Fortunately, most of them died within an hour of being taken out of the CR47 incubator. The one which survived beyond an hour cried and writhed in terrible pain. It looked at Claude and Rollie with pleading eyes wishing to be shown mercy. Finally, Claude couldn't take anymore and put the pitiful thing out of its misery.

  Only five of the seven failures were autopsied. Rollie and Claude realized examining every creature was a waste of time. There were no noticeable similarities in their deformities. The few external limbs and internal org
ans which appeared to be normal were not similar from one to another. Rollie was hoping the failed clones would show the same deformities in part or whole. Similarities among the failures might have revealed a clue about why some cloned replicants were a success and others were a disaster.

  Simply touching the failures during autopsy gave Rollie the willies. He and Claude wasted no time and completed each examination within fifteen minutes. If they wanted to spend more time examining the bodies, they could review the autopsy videos later. Rollie couldn't wait to dispose of the bodies in the combustion chamber designed to incinerate hazardous waste.

  The five successful clones were now critical to understanding if cloning in the CR47 could be done with a high rate of success. These five animals needed to be analyzed and evaluated thoroughly. If there was a common denominator among them which guaranteed successful cloning, it needed to be found. There had to be a common link between these clones which the seven unsuccessful clones did not have. Until it could be found, Rollie was hesitant to move ahead with more testing. He didn't think he could tolerate seeing more deformed and mutated animals.

  "Claude, can you take the mice home and keep an eye on them? I'll take the puppy and frogs to my place."

  "What do you want me to do with the mice?"

  "Well first, take two other mice from the lab so you have two clones and two non-clones. Treat all four the same. Feed them the same food in the same proportions and at the same time. Put their cages side by side. Watch their behavior and put a recorder on the cages. Think of some tests you can put all four mice through. Maybe create a maze and see if the cloned mice can negotiate it as well as the non-cloned mice. Be creative, Claude, and use your imagination. There must be several tests you can think of to determine if all four mice act the same. Oh, by the way, mark the mice on their bellies so you don't get them mixed up."