The Genesis Flaw

by L. A. Larkin

  ‘Are you leaving?’ he asked, nodding at her car.

  She stared at him, uncomprehendingly at first.

  ‘Oh, no; sorry.’

  He drove on and she exhaled loudly; she had been holding her breath. Cramming the note into her bag, she checked the doors were still locked and the alarm set. Then Serena walked to work, all the time wondering who had written the note, and if she should call the number on it.

  Pausing outside the Gene-Asis building, she peered up at its 256- metre tall exterior, and then down into its 2000 square metre glass and steel atrium. Staff entering the building brushed by her whilst she stood rooted to the spot. She watched them place their faces in one of the many retina scanners that released the ten massive security doors leading to the elevators. Serena made her decision: she would call the number. But she would have to be quick, as she was running late. The number rang a couple of times before a man’s deep voice said, ‘Hello.’

  She hesitated, then ended the call. Shit, shit, shit. Why did I do that? She paced the pavement, and then redialled.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Who is this?’ Serena asked, sounding more aggressive than she’d intended.

  ‘Who’s asking?’

  ‘You left a note on my car.’

  ‘Amber, is that you?’

  ‘Yes. Why did you leave me your phone number? What do you want?’

  ‘I didn’t mean to scare you: it just seemed the best way to contact you.’ He spoke slowly. ‘I didn’t want to talk to you inside the Gene-Asis building.’ His voice had a baritone richness and an ocker accent.

  ‘Why do you want to speak to me?’

  ‘Because you have an interest in the Gibson Lab, and I know all about that place.’

  ‘I don’t understand. What makes you think I’m interested in this lab?’

  ‘Because I overheard Kylie’s conversation with you, when you tried to get into the file. That wasn’t a good idea, Amber. Try that again and you’ll be fired.’

  ‘You sit next to Kylie?’

  ‘Not usually.’

  ‘So, how did you hear our conversation?’

  ‘I told you. My ears pricked up when she mentioned the Gibson file.’

  He was dodging the question.

  ‘It was a silly mistake, that’s all.’

  ‘As you wish. But if you change your mind and want to know what’s in that file, you have my number.’

  ‘But why would you tell me? It’s a top-security file.’

  ‘Because … Amber, I have to be careful to protect myself. I’m taking a big risk talking to you at all. If I’ve made a mistake, I’m sorry.’

  The line went dead.

  Serena felt as if the ground had just shaken beneath her feet.

  Chapter 32

  Racing into the atrium, she bolted past the cafés, restaurants and stores, and lined up at one of the retina-scanner queues. It was like placing her face in a giant camera lens, inside of which were two retina scanners, one for each eye. The security doors slid open, and she passed through the metal and explosives detectors unscathed.

  Squeezing into an already packed elevator, Serena shot to the fifty-fifth floor, all the time mulling over her recent encounter. If this man knew of her attempt to access the Gibson Research Lab file, then who else did? Did Bukowski know? No, she doubted it. Serena was sure she’d have been fired by now if he suspected her of spying. So was this note-leaver friend or foe? And how did he know what was in the file? She’d check out the staff list as soon as she could.

  At her desk, she could see Bukowski standing behind his, leaning forward on his knuckles. He was looking angrily at a man she recognised from her tour of the IT department on day one. Serena couldn’t hear what was said but the IT man’s body language was very defensive, whilst Bukowski’s head jutted forward, his fists clenched on the desk. The man nodded and beat a hasty retreat, opening Bukowski’s door. She heard the tail end of their conversation:

  ‘I need this fixed now, do you hear? I cannot have the system running this slow.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Bukowski,’ replied the man, red faced with embarrassment. He scurried off.

  ‘Who was that?’ Serena whispered to Liz, both of them, heads down, pretending to work.

  ‘Larry Griffiths, Service Desk Manager.’

  ‘What was that all about?’

  ‘I don’t know for sure but I think Al is pissed off because the METRO update means his connection drops out all the time.’

  ‘METRO?’

  ‘Yeah. METRO includes our antivirus software, our firewall, and our intruder detection and prevention systems. Last night, Larry installed an updated version and now every computer in the building is running really slowly. And Al’s connection drops out. He’s thrown a wobbly.’

  ‘Oh,’ Serena said, watching Bukowski walk towards her, his jaw clenched. She pasted on a big smile and said, ‘Good morning, Al, how are you?’

  It was as if, having earlier witnessed a tornado, she were now sitting in the tranquil eye of the storm. He was calm and smiling warmly.

  ‘I’m great. Couldn’t be better. And how was your evening?’

  ‘Wonderful, thank you.’

  ‘Can you come into my office, please?’It was expressed as a question but he didn’t expect an answer. As she followed Bukowski, Serena noticed Sue watching them out of the corner of her eye.

  ‘So, what did Chris tell you?’

  ‘Nothing unusual, Al. He talked about his divorce, how much he misses his kids. He mentioned he was offered a job at another company but decided to stay at Gene-Asis.’

  Bukowski smirked. ‘Is that what he said? Go on.’

  ‘We talked about you and your career, but nothing about the projects he’s working on or anything like that.’

  Bukowski nodded, his fingertips touching to form a triangular shape like the beams of a roof. ‘Go on.’

  ‘That’s it, really. The rest was about London, curry houses and me.’

  ‘Good. Thank you, Amber. Now, can you get Gav Rayner, the Minister for Agriculture, on the phone for me? You may need to drag him out of a parliamentary session, so just say Al R. Bukowski needs to speak to him urgently.’

  He emphasised the ‘urgently’ with a certain severity, yet smiled at the same time, much like a wild bear might appear playful before it swipes you with its deadly claws. Serena rang Gav Rayner’s personal assistant, Martine, in Canberra. Yes, he was in the House and would not be available to call Mr Bukowski until the afternoon. With some trepidation, Serena called Bukowski on his internal line and explained the outcome of her call.

  ‘Did you tell her who was calling?’

  ‘I did, Al.’

  ‘I’d like you to give Martine another call,’ he said, speaking slowly, ‘and explain that our conversation cannot wait until this afternoon. Can you do that for me?’

  ‘Certainly, Al.’

  She called Martine and repeated Bukowski’s words. Martine sighed and, clearly irritated, said she would see what she could do. Serena didn’t blame her.

  Checking nobody was watching, Serena scrolled through the staff database and found the list for the Gibson Research Lab. There were sixty-seven names, forty-two were women. This left twenty-five men. But there was no way she could guess the name of the note-leaver.

  She glanced into Chris’ office. He wasn’t in yet. Then Serena noticed Sue clearing up his untidy desk. She looked miserable. Serena ducked her head round the office doorway.

  ‘Hey, how are you?’

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ Sue responded, clearly not pleased to see her.

  Serena partly closed the door. ‘Sue, look, I know you like Al and please believe me when I say I’m not interested in him.’

  ‘Oh sure,’ she said sarcastically. Then she shook her head. ‘Anyway, I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about Chris.’

  ‘Why? What’s happened?’

  ‘Chris is sick.’ Sue didn’t look at her and continued picking up the paper files messily
layered on the desk. Chris was certainly out of sync with the company’s ‘no paper’ policy.

  ‘He looked fine to me last night. What’s he got, a hangover?’ she joked.

  ‘You saw him last night?’

  ‘Yes, went to the Taj Mahal. Turns out we’re both mad about curries.’ Serena wanted their dinner date to be out in the open.

  ‘Well, Al tells me he rang in this morning and he’s fallen into a deep depression, so he’s been given extended sick leave.’

  Serena remembered Chris at the bottom of the restaurant steps, sobbing. Her flippancy evaporated.

  ‘That’s terrible. I had no idea he was prone to depression.’

  Sue leaned closer to Serena and whispered, ‘Al told me Chris is bipolar. But I can’t see it myself. Yes, Chris gets down sometimes and he found his divorce hard, but my dad’s bipolar and Chris has never had the severe mood swings Dad goes through.’

  ‘Why does Al think he’s bipolar?’ Serena carried two sticky takeaway coffee cups and several empty lolly wrappers to the bin.

  ‘Says Chris has seen a specialist recently, who diagnosed bipolar.’

  ‘Why don’t we send him a Get Well card? That might help, him knowing we’re thinking of him.’

  Sue looked over Serena’s shoulder into Bukowski’s office.

  ‘Al says we’re not to contact him. No phone calls, nothing. I already suggested sending flowers but Al told me not to. He said Chris was being looked after, he’d made sure of that, but it would set him back if we contacted him.’

  Serena followed Sue to the filing cabinets.

  ‘So how long is Chris away for?’ she asked.

  ‘Indefinitely. I’m being assigned to Lily Phung in the R&D department.’

  ‘What? You’re leaving us?’

  ‘Yeah;temporarily, I hope. The word is she’s a real bitch. Aren’t I the lucky one!’

  Serena’s phone was ringing and she raced back to her desk to answer it.

  ‘G’day. Gav Rayner here, for Al Bukowski.’

  ‘I’ll put you straight through, Mr Rayner.’

  As she did so, Bukowski looked up and gave her a salute and his ‘I told you so’ grin. Well, he certainly had clout. But why would Bukowski cut off contact with Chris when he was ill? She had seen Chris wracked with guilt last night and felt in some way responsible for the onset of his depression. Perhaps their conversation had triggered it? But how could Sue not have known he was bipolar? They’d been working together for years. Checking her inbox, she found an email from HR explaining that Chris was on indefinite sick leave and that his duties would be covered, until further notice, by Lily Phung. Under no circumstances was Chris to be contacted.

  Serena was worried. She scrolled through the staff database searching for Chris Mann’s home address and phone number:

  Fiona Malone

  Paul Manning

  Simone Manor

  Aura Maples

  Kenji Maruyama

  Chris’s name was no longer in the database. It was like he’d never existed.

  Chapter 33

  Increasingly concerned about Chris’ welfare, Serena tried the public phone directory, hoping he might be listed, but he wasn’t. Her phone rang and it was Larry Griffiths from IT, wanting to speak to her boss. But Bukowski was in a meeting with the CFO.

  ‘Can I take a message for you?’

  ‘Er, yes, I suppose. Can you tell Mr Bukowski that we have a solution to his problem?’

  ‘Oh, you mean the connection dropping out because of the update. Yeah, it’s been a real pain.’ Serena winged it, hoping she was saying the right thing.

  ‘Oh, I wasn’t sure if he’d informed you. Well, can you tell him we have a solution?’ He sighed, clearly not happy.

  ‘And what’s that? He’s bound to ask me.’

  ‘Really? I don’t think I should say anymore—you know, security and all that.’

  Serena daren’t press him further, so said she’d pass on the message. It was time for a visit to her friend Colin Chang. Nipping out of the executive suites, she made her way to the IT department. The doors slid open and she counted the seconds before it closed again: five. Serena knew that the time of her entrance to the IT department was recorded via the retina scanner, so if she ever needed to enter without being monitored, she would have to piggyback another member of staff, following them in, hopefully without being challenged.

  She found Colin peering short-sightedly at his computer screen. He was wearing glasses today but they didn’t seem to help much. Serena sat on the edge of his desk.

  ‘Oh, Amber, good to see you’

  The glasses were very thick, and he removed them hastily, placing them on his lap.

  ‘How’s your day been, Colin?’

  ‘Busy, very busy. And you?’

  ‘Not bad. My boss has been a bit cross today, though.’

  ‘Oh, we know,’ he nodded. ‘He gave Larry a real serve this morning.’

  ‘Yes, I heard some of it. It’s about the METRO update slowing down all the systems and the connection dropping out, right?’

  ‘Yes, but the problem is that we have to turn METRO off to solve it. That is very dangerous for the company. No METRO means no intruder detection, means competitors can spy on us and we won’t know they’re doing it.’

  ‘So, what’s the solution?’

  ‘We find an alternative to METRO that doesn’t slow the system down or cause disconnections. But that will take a few days.’

  Serena moved closer to Colin, whose eyes kept darting to her cleavage, visible in her wrap-around sleeveless blouse.

  ‘But you know what Al is like. He’ll want action now.’

  ‘Amber, you know I can’t talk about this. I will get into trouble.’

  ‘Come on, Colin, I’m his PA. I’m the one who gets barked at when I’m being too slow. I need a little reassurance here. Please.’

  She smiled sweetly and placed her hand on his. A trickle of perspiration ran down his left temple and he stared at her hand as if it were covered in diamonds.

  ‘Please,’ she begged.

  ‘Okay. I’ll tell you but you must not tell anyone, okay?’

  ‘Promise,’ she said, withdrawing her hand.

  Colin leaned forward.

  ‘METRO will run all night but will be turned off during the busy parts of the day, until we can roll back the update or work out a patch. So, between twelve-thirty and two, we’ll turn METRO back on to check for intruders.’

  ‘But in the mornings and afternoons, the system is off?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Colin, shaking his head in disbelief.

  ‘And the evening? When does it come back on?’

  ‘Six.’

  ‘Why would Al risk that? He’s paranoid about security?’

  ‘It happens all the time. Senior management gets frustrated and can’t wait. Al can’t work, so we have to turn it off. At least we’ll be able to monitor traffic during the middle of the day.’

  ‘Well,’ she sighed, ‘at least Al won’t be so grumpy with me now.’

  Colin gazed up at her, squinting in myopic adoration.

  ‘I hope not,’ he said and smiled.

  ‘I’d better get back to my desk. Oh, by the way, do we have any visitors from the Gibson Lab here today?’

  ‘Yes, one’s here. Why?’

  ‘How long’s he been here in Sydney?’

  ‘Arrived this morning. We very rarely see those guys. We call them the desert rats,’ said Colin, chuckling to himself.

  ‘What’s his name?’

  Colin’s eyelids fluttered in confusion. ‘Oh, I thought you knew him.’

  ‘No, but one of the girls I work with fancies him. I said I’d try to find out something about him.’

  ‘The Gibson crowd—very strange people. Don’t say much. I guess they can’t, given all the secrecy around what they do.’

  ‘But you can tell me his name?’

  ‘Don’t know. Not seen this one before. Oh, wait a moment. I
think someone called him Ben.’

  Serena slid along Colin’s desk so that she was within whispering distance. ‘What do they do out there?’

  Colin puffed out his chest, clearly flattered she was asking his opinion; it was rare that anyone did. He looked around to check he couldn’t be overheard. ‘All I know is, it’s like a city in the desert. High security. Lots of big dome-shaped greenhouses. It’s our Southern Hemisphere base, where all the new crops and animals come from. I’d like to see it one day.’

  ‘Sounds amazing. Anyway, where’s this guy sitting?’

  ‘He’s over there.’ Colin nodded in the direction of the server racks.

  Across the frenetic IT floor, she saw a big man in jeans and a white shirt sitting quietly at his computer. He looked up from his desk and locked eyes with Serena. He nodded very slightly and then returned his gaze to his computer. She blushed. There was recognition in his stare. This had to be the man she spoke to earlier.

  ‘You know him?’ asked Colin.

  ‘No, Colin. Are you sure he wasn’t here yesterday?’ If he wasn’t, then he couldn’t have overheard my conversation with Kylie.

  ‘I didn’t see him, but he could have been. Why?’

  ‘Oh, something one of the girls said. You know.’

  Colin nodded enthusiastically.

  As Serena took her leave, Colin stood up suddenly, dropping his glasses on the floor.

  ‘Amber. You want to meet for lunch today? Or coffee, maybe? Or …’

  ‘I’d love to, but can we make it tomorrow?’ she replied, desperate to get away.

  Chapter 34

  Alone in the elevator, Serena shouted an exalted ‘Yes!’ She planned to make the most of the spy ware being off for much the day. She still didn’t know what to make of Ben, but he also might prove very helpful.