by A. T. Avon
‘DNA sequences found in the genomes of prokaryotic organisms,’ said Houellebecq. ‘Bacteria, archaea. The sequences are derived from DNA fragments – fragments from viruses that’ve previously infected the prokaryote.’
Missy was still confused, but she took a stab at understanding. ‘What, like junk DNA? Some kind of remnant DNA or something, like you told me about in the Japanese lab?’
‘Sort of. They’re used to detect and destroy DNA from similar viruses during subsequent infections. So they play a key role in the antiviral defense system of prokaryotes. Crucially, Cas9 or “CRISPR-associated 9” can detect and cut specific strands of DNA.’
‘Like scissors,’ said Missy’s father, clearly trying to be helpful. ‘Genetic scissors.’
Houellebecq said: ‘Humans were just starting to puzzle out how to use these scissors when the pandemic hit. We were cutting and pasting DNA, but at a preschool level.’
‘And you think the substance is what, capable of the same?’
‘Possibly,’ said her father. ‘I mean, would aliens be insane to think we could do it?’
Missy recognized the old metal gymnastics at work.
‘Cas9 enzymes,’ said Houellebecq, ‘together with CRISPR sequences, form the basis of CRISPR/Cas9. It can be used to edit genes within organisms, so yeah… it’s not theoretical. We know it works. We use it as a basic biology research tool, or to develop biotechnology products. Like I said, at a preschool level. And we were hoping to graduate to high school, using it to treat diseases one day.’
‘And?’
‘And, it’s entirely possible that whatever civilization sent the substance not only knows this is possible, but has mastered the technique. So much so, it can deliver it as a weapon.’
‘Or as a gift,’ interjected Missy’s father.
Houellebecq shook his head. ‘You need to let that idea go, Daniel. In real life, this substance is like a giant blender. Cross-species transmission via a range of viruses, then the editing. That’s what is happening, and we have to open our eyes to the consequences. The girl Missy just mentioned, the girl that attacked us, she wasn’t first generation. This thing has been here on earth for a long time, setting off domes, altering populations, and that’s only the half of it because these changes are being passed down, generation to generation.’ Houellebecq paused to swallow his chewing gum. ‘It’s not targeting humans exclusively, either. It’s been moving through all kinds of different animals. You say it’s all for a good cause, but what if it isn’t? What if it makes changes to our DNA, to animal DNA, for its own purposes? Those changes would be permanent. Are permanent. Each generation is passing them down to the next, meaning the entire process of evolution is being altered. It’s a leap, a…’ He searched for a word but came up short. ‘Don’t you see, Daniel? There’s no way to know how humans can survive it. Even if we do, on the other side we’re… well, we’re something else. We’ve survived, but we’re not even human anymore.’
Missy looked back down into the pen, its high-tech walls coated in rat blood. ‘How, though? How can the virus edit like that without making mistakes? Surely that sort of editing would cause –’
Her father held up one hand, cutting her short. ‘Missy makes a good point. Maybe the random editing of the DNA is failing, with failure equaling death? Maybe it’s connected to the nests somehow, to the murder rate? Sometimes the virus kills, sometimes the zombies, but…’ His voice trailed off. ‘No.’
‘But?’ Missy prompted.
‘A sort of cleansing process,’ he said under his breath, ‘but even if we’re right about that, we can’t prove it, not before it gets here. We’re out of time.’
‘Which is all the more reason to stop and eat a nice meal,’ Houellebecq said. He turned and went to leave. ‘We’ll pick this up tomorrow – after I’ve had some sleep. It’s been a long week and we’re just going in circles.’
‘You don’t think this is progress?’ Missy’s father asked, sounding almost hurt.
‘It feels like it,’ said Houellebecq, ‘but that’s what worries me. We’ve still got an experiment that doesn’t match real-world results and… what else? Nothing. Theories. I can’t take more theories to Tang. The man wants certainty – and fast.’
‘Then stay,’ said Missy. ‘We’ll run through it again.’
Houellebecq had already entered the airlock. He shook his head in reply, and the look on his face – was it fear? – said he had more than food and sleep on his mind.
Chapter 8
Somewhere in the Gobi
The following morning, after a fitful night’s sleep, Missy made her way to her father’s apartment. She was escorted by two guards, both of whom were armed with automatic firearms. They used pass cards to get through the first few doors, then fingerprints and retina scans for the last set.
The building was all metal and rounded edges, reminding Missy of a documentary she had seen on the internet. Prisons somewhere in the center of America, designed for violent inmates. There was nothing appealing about it, nothing welcoming… And yet, what choice did she have?
Outside is worse, she reminded herself, as the guard knocked on the door to her father’s apartment.
Her father opened the door, but didn’t invite them in. Instead, he stepped out into the corridor. ‘These gentlemen have kindly offered to help me show you around,’ he said.
‘Have you checked on the DNA results yet today?’
‘For the last two rats? Not yet. They were only killed an hour ago, Missy.’ Her father didn’t seem to want to discuss the two alpha rats in front of the guards. He changed the topic slightly. ‘I hear you’re interested in DNA.’
Missy was confused. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘Last night – Houellebecq told me.’ Her father gestured for her to lead the way on down the corridor. ‘He told me when you were scared in the Japanese lab, you asked a lot of questions about junk DNA. Is that the conversation you referred to yesterday?’
‘I guess, yes.’
Missy hadn’t completely forgotten this conversation, but the details were fuzzy. All she could really remember was that viruses could somehow live on permanently in DNA, and that they did so in human DNA. They became part of it or… something.
She was about to say as much when she noticed another huntsman spider. This one had made its way up onto a small drink fountain built into one wall. ‘What’s with all these giant spiders?’ she asked.
‘I asked Tang the same thing when I was first transferred here,’ said her father. ‘He said they came in with the building supplies, got established when this place was first being constructed, then bred up.’
‘I don’t like them.’
‘They’re harmless.’
‘They’re not venomous?’
‘They are, but not enough to threaten us.’
Missy though of her earlier questions and realized she could ask them now. ‘How big is this place? How far into the desert are we?’
‘Big,’ said her father. ‘And a long way.’
‘That’s not very specific.’
‘It’s what I know.’
‘Some tour this will be.’
He smiled. ‘You said no more surprises. And I figured it’d be easier if I just showed you. There’s a lot you still don’t know.’
They walked on, and as they did Missy felt her father put a gentle hand to her shoulder. She fought down the urge to flinch and pull away, but soon found an excuse to subtly break contact. Her father still had a lot of explaining to do.
‘I’ll explain as we go?’
‘Okay.’
Her father began to speak as they walked. He explained that the arc was actually written all in capitals. “ARC”. It was an acronym, standing for Alien Research Centre. ‘It was my design, my idea. It’s built in the shape of a Swiss cross, with five air-gapped, entirely separate, square segments. We’re in the middle box right now, the center box. Then there are four more. North, east, south and west. All are
the same size, so that’s where our cross or plus sign comes from. This center box is the only one with people in it, though. The only one with staff. At least, for now.’
‘What are the remaining four segments for?’
‘I’m going to show you one of them now. They’re equal in size, as I said, but… well, here, look – we’re about to enter the northern one right now, so it’s best I just show you.’
They had reached an elevator, and one of the guards guided them in before ordering the doors shut. The elevator went down a long way, perhaps on a diagonal, though Missy wasn’t able to determine exactly how far because it contained absolutely no glass. The walls, ceiling and floor were all the same dull silver.
‘So when exactly did you design all this?’ she asked her father.
‘Truthfully, the design wasn’t my idea. I suppose you could say I was headhunted. Frank Moore was the first person to take my work seriously. This was after the Carrick.’
‘The Carrick?’
‘An accident – on a submarine. He also visited me in China. This was in the early 1990s. You possibly remember?’
‘Not really – just that you were gone a lot. And crazy.’
He smiled – but sadly. ‘Starting at the end of the 80s. I went across to China. Cardiovascular research.’ He paused as the elevator opened and they all exited.
They entered a narrow corridor and her father continued speaking. ‘What I was able to show Frank in Weifang convinced him that the world faced an unprecedented threat. I was working with a woman then by the name of Mrs. Liu. She was a survivor.’
‘I met her family,’ said Missy, ‘her descendants.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. And the little girl in that house just about killed me.’
‘Ah. That’s what you were talking about earlier, with Houellebecq? Back at the pen?’
‘Yes.’
Missy’s father pondered this for a moment, then said, ‘I can’t remember exactly how it unfolded, but by 1993 I was completely out of academia. I had started work on the ARC, or what is now the ARC. It was of course very primitive back then. We had none of the technology we have now.’ He pulled his lips to one side, as if reconsidering. ‘But even then, the basic concept was the same. Five square segments, all air-gapped.’
They had reached the end of the corridor, and the door which now blocked their path was entirely different to those which had preceded it. It was clearly heavy-duty, as if designed to keep out invaders. It required not only a fingerprint, like most other doors in this area of the facility, but also retina scans. One of the guards dutifully provided both and the door swung open of its own accord, hissing under the pressure of powerful hydraulics.
Missy caught her breath. She had seen large rooms before, large sheds. She had seen the hangers which built commercial aircraft and other such engineering marvels. But this structure dwarfed even these. It’s steel skeleton, coated in what looked to be a skin of aluminum, seemed to run on indefinitely. And inside, far below her and also running out towards the north indefinitely, were endless beds.
‘Unbelievable,’ she said. ‘What is this place? They’re all beds.’
‘Yes. 15,000 beds to be precise. And what you see here is replicated exactly in the other three segments. East, south and west. A total of 60,000 beds.’
Still staring out, still looking for an end to this vast hangar, Missy moved to step through the doorway. But her father held her back.
‘Careful,’ he said ‘we need to extend the ladder first.’
Missy realized there was nothing to step out on to. Beyond the elevator, beyond its open door, there was a steep thirty-foot drop.
One of the guards pressed a series of buttons on his cell phone and a ladder emerged from the metal wall.
‘Okay,’ said Missy’s father, ‘now climb down very carefully. The last thing you want to do is fall from this ladder and break your neck. Not in the current circumstances.’
‘There’s a good time to do it?’
‘Well, right now our chances of airlifting you out are slim to zero, so…’
Missy went first. She turned 180-degrees and started down the metal ladder, taking each rung carefully. It reminded her of climbing down into the Japanese lab, of the explosion which had mutilated most of the Chinese team that had been with her at the time. But there were no explosions here.
Halfway down, she heard herself say, ‘what are the beds for?’
The question had been on her mind from the beginning, but she had been distracted by the bizarre route down into the huge shed, down to ground level.
‘For sleeping on,’ said her father, now following her down the ladder. ‘It’s a military barracks. They’re military cots. You’ll see that after every tenth bed there’s a small kitchenette. That’s stocked with a week’s worth of food for ten men. Obviously, we run water down here as well, and we have the ability to send more food in at will.’
She reached the bottom and looked around.
‘Crucially though,’ said her father, still coming down the ladder, the two Chinese guards following him, ‘we can cut off the supply both food and water should we decide to.’
‘Like the rats back up in the pen,’ said Missy, noting the obvious similarity.
‘Yes. Although hopefully this experiment works better when the time comes, because we invested a lot more in it, both financially and in terms of personal stakes.’
Her father reached the bottom of the ladder and joined her. ‘You probably already know, but I’ve set this facility up to fail.’
Missy glanced at him. ‘What?’
‘I was kidnapped, brought here against my will, forced to work against my will. I resisted passively, by refusing to identify or correct errors. For years now.’
Missy took a few steps forward, stopping at the first of the bed. It was Spartan in the extreme. Metal frame. Sheets. One blanket. She gazed out at the endless beds before raising her eyes to the vast, naked metal frame of the roof.
‘So what’s changed?’ she asked. ‘You didn’t want it to work, but now you do?’
‘You, Missy. And honestly, I fear I’ve left it all too late. You were never supposed to come here. Now I have to somehow get this place operational in the space of a few weeks. Maybe less. We don’t know. With every day that goes past, we receive less and less data from the outside world. It makes it harder to predict what’s coming. When it’s coming.’
‘We’re in the middle of a desert, how do you know anything’s coming?’
Her father started forward, tapping each bed with his fingertips as he went. ‘The answer to that question lies in the documents you stole from the Japanese lab. That’s how Tang knows I was deceiving him.’
‘About what?’
Her father didn’t answer. ‘I knew about it from eyewitness testimony,’ he said, ‘from survivor accounts of the first outbreak in Weifang.’ He had moved well ahead of Missy now, and she followed, lifting her pace to catch up.
‘In my research, I came across the second major outbreak in Weifang, during the Great Leap. This one had survivors, people I could interview. That’s what convinced me there was a pattern.’
He stopped at one of the beds. Missy stopped too. She saw that her father hadn’t been lying. Every ten beds, there was a sort of kitchenette. Each one contained the same precisely arranged collection of nonperishable food items: all in bland beige packs with Chinese writing on the outside.
‘What was the pattern?’ she asked.
‘Eyewitnesses were never able to tell me where the dome came from, but they described a situation in which the ill chose to leave it because it pained them.’
‘It left them feeling worse?’
‘Correct. Meanwhile, in many cases, the healthy were drawn into the dome.’ He started walking again. So did Missy. The soldiers followed, both looking bored.
‘But it was Mrs. Liu’s account that convinced me the domes served a much greater purpose.’ Her father spun, animate
d now. ‘It’s my opinion they exist almost as a sort of rewind or abort button. This goes back to the hallucinations, as they were described to me by eyewitnesses.’
‘Go on,’ said Missy, even though he didn’t need any encouragement.
‘Once infected, the ill… well, I suppose you could say their behavior became erratic, as if under some kind of spell. The more stories I listened to, though, interviewing survivors, the more I realized it wasn’t a spell, but a hallucination – quite possibly a collective hallucination.’
‘Collective?’
‘Yes, as in, everybody was able to see the same hallucination.’
‘How is that possible?’
‘Mrs. Liu told me that her husband was the first to get sick in her region of the city. It was her opinion that he triggered one of the domes. Naturally, once it was established, he wanted to leave.’
‘Because it hurt him?’
‘Because it hurt him, exactly. Now Mrs. Liu had no idea what was coming, no idea how this new sickness would spread, but she’d heard stories from her own mother – about the World War II outbreak. This was no ordinary village she had grown up in. She’d seen some of the mutations from the first outbreak for herself, even though her own family had been spared.’
Missy’s father lowered his voice. ‘She could’ve have lied to herself, could’ve convinced herself it was nothing. But instead, she recognized the threat that loomed for what it was. And so she refused to let her husband leave the house.’
‘How?’
‘Even when he became violent, she refused. It was painful for her to do it, too. He swore, he was violent. She had to tie him to his bed. He taunted her. He spoke of an especially beautiful woman, offering herself to him.’
‘And she persisted – she kept him tied up?’
‘The whole time, yes. And it got worse. As time went on, this woman asked him to do things, awful things, things which went well beyond the sexual. The beautiful woman told him to kill his wife, his children. She told him to mutilate those he loved most in the world, and he tried to do it.’
‘That must’ve been…’ But Missy couldn’t imagine the courage it would’ve taken to keep such a person in the house. ‘She would’ve needed to sleep, to rest. She… she must have lived in constant fear.’