GENESIX: THE TRILOGY

by Greg Logan

  Cosmo took a drag of his cigarette. “I tell you what I feel like I’m contributing. Jack shit. That’s what I feel like I’m contributing, and what I’m gaining from all of this.”

  He glanced to the road. A white, mid-size sedan with the Mercedes logo on its grill was passing them.

  He said, “Don’t you ever think you might want something like that?”

  “A car?” Quentin wasn’t quite following his meaning.

  “Not just a car. But the kind of car that says you’re worth somethin’.”

  Cosmo glanced at a girl walking past them. She looked maybe early twenties and wore a denim miniskirt, and she had long hair that bounced freely as she walked.

  He said, “And wouldn’t you like some of that? Wouldn’t you like to be the kind of guy a girl like that would want to be with? Money is what it takes.”

  “Well, money is one thing we have very little of, I’m afraid.”

  Cosmo nodded, and tossed his cigarette butt onto the sidewalk. He was about to crush it out, but thought what-the-hell, and let it smolder away. He pulled a pack from his shirt pocket and fished out another one.

  Cosmo might be immune to the ravages of cigarette smoke, Quentin observed, but nicotine addiction seemed to have a hold on him.

  Cosmo lit up. With Cosmo, since he was a firestarter, this meant with little more than a thought he caused the end of the cigarette to suddenly glow and begin to smolder.

  He said, “With our powers, why should money be a problem? I mean, look at what we can both do. Between the two of us, and I mean just us two, we could beat the entire Boston Police Department. They couldn’t stop us. Add in a few of the others, and the National Guard wouldn’t be a threat at all. We could have anything we want. We could write our own ticket.”

  “The thing is,” Quentin said, “that would mean stealing. And possibly killing people.”

  Cosmo shook his head, “Hold on right there, buddy. I remember when we had our little gang together. You, me, LaSalle and Mandy. We robbed more than one place.”

  “But that was for a higher cause.”

  “You know what you can do with your higher cause. I was there for the money. For the money we could take, and never be stopped. And so was LaSalle. Now, Mandy was a troubled girl. I’ll give you that. She was filled with hate, and she was in it just for the revenge. But me and LaSalle, we was in it for the money. And I don’t see why we can’t still be. All that money is just there waitin’ for us. Waitin’ to be taken.”

  They came to the edge of the sidewalk and waited for the light to change so they could cross the street. This was Boston in the fall, on a warm day in the early afternoon. The streets were almost bumper-to-bumper with traffic, and the air was heavy with car exhaust.

  Quentin said, “Are you saying we should rob a place? A bank, or something?”

  “What I’m sayin’ is we should quit livin’ under bridges and in old condemned apartment buildings.”

  “I have never taken something that wasn’t mine, except in the interest of the greater good.”

  The light changed and they began to walk across the street.

  Cosmo said, “But why can’t we? With money comes power. Why do we have to let others have all the power? What’s so wrong with us having some? Them power brokers in New York and right here in Boston, they’re not so ethical. What they do isn’t all that much different than just walking into a bank and holding it up.”

  Quentin stopped at that comment, and Cosmo stopped with him. The people walking behind them tossed them annoyed glances and then walked around them.

  Quentin said, “We’re better than that, Cosmo. We’re about pushing for a higher ideal. We’re about building a society that’s above the pettiness and the weaknesses that so trip up this one.”

  “Yada, yada, yada,” Cosmo said.

  “Please, my friend.” Quentin put a hand on each of Cosmo’s shoulders. “Don’t even think like this. Our society has solidarity. We have ideals and we have respect. Respect amongst our peers, and self respect. These are things money can’t buy.”

  “Money would buy a new Mercedes, though.”

  “But money cannot buy peace of mind or lightness of heart.”

  Cosmo shrugged. “I suppose.”

  And yet, as they walked along, Quentin didn’t think Cosmo sounded all that convinced.

  FIVE

  The team met in a conference room at the facility. In the center of the room was a long table, made of lightly stained pine. April thought it was important to have Earthy touches in the sterile and artificial environment of the facility. She had found the table at an antique store in Boulder.

  At the center of the table was a cubical monitor which could be seen from four different directions. An idea Scott had taken from the old Trek series. It wasn’t hard to reproduce. There was also a larger monitor against one wall.

  Scott sat at the head of the table. To his right was Jake, followed by Akila, Chuck and Rick. Across from them sat April, Sammy and Jeff.

  Jeff was seventeen years old. No longer the young adolescent he had been when he first met them. He was now as tall as his father and with shoulders that were widening, and his voice was a half octave lower than it had been.

  Scott had just finished explaining his findings about the genesis gene. His latest round of tests had confirmed it. The genesis gene had been artificially created, and it didn’t mutate from generation to generation. A genesis gene scanned from a corpse buried over a hundred years ago had the exact same configuration, right down to the molecular level, as the gene in Scott or the others. Except for Jake, who had no genesis gene. And of course, Sammy. Scott had found the gene was always dominant. No such thing as a recessive genesis gene. And he could find no trace of the gene’s existence prior to 1820.

  “This gene had to be introduced to society somehow,” Scott said, “and I don’t think it was accidentally.”

  He was wearing a t-shirt that read I Grok Spock. A reproduction of t-shirts popular in the late sixties. April had found one online, at a Trek site, and gave it to him for Christmas. He also was in his lab coat, its tails thrust behind him like a sort of split, white cape.

  “Okay,” Jake said. He was leaning back in a swivel chair. “To make sure we all have this straight, you hypothesize someone, starting after 1820, began somehow implanting the gene in people.”

  “That is correct.”

  “And to find any more information, we’re going to have to take a little trip back to the past.”

  Scott nodded. “I don’t see any other way. I’m really hesitant to go tripping about in the past, because I don’t want to risk altering the timeline again. We all know what an accidental alteration did to Akila’s world. But we need these answers. The genesis gene seems to reproduce and has increased in number drastically. In other words, the percentage of people carrying the gene is drastically higher than it was just two generations ago.

  “We’re not going back to the 1820s, though. The gene seemed to show up only sporadically at that time. However, there seems to be a higher concentration of it in the Boston area starting around 1880.”

  “So,” Jake said, “we’re going back to 1880.”

  Scott nodded.

  “Another thing to wonder about,” Akila said, “is how the gene got introduced to my world.”

  Scott gave her at thoughtful look. “Good point. One more question to add to our growing list.”

  April took a sip from a bottle of water. “If the gene is synthetic in nature, then how can it reproduce from one generation to another?”

  Sammy said, “We hypothesize the use of nanobots.”

  “Seriously? That’s creepy.” She couldn’t help an almost involuntary glance downward at her hands and arms. “You mean, like, these things are inside my body? And have been for my entire life?”

  “If so,” Scott said, “they’re not the conventional nanobots we use here. They’re of a much more advanced technology, and much more microscopic in size.”r />
  Jake rubbed his chin. “More highly advanced technologically than the stuff you and Sammy are working on? That’s a little unsettling.”

  Jeff said, “Who, on Earth, could be more technologically advanced than you guys? And, I mean, think about it. We’re not talking about now, but back in 1820. You’re saying there was someone more advanced than you are now, but back in 1820?”

  Rick gave him a cautious look. “Maybe it’s not from this Earth.”

  Scott held his hands up. “Now hold on, everyone. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  Chuck said, “Aliens? I mean, is that even possible?”

  Sammy nodded. “We have proven the existence of extra-terrestrial life.”

  All eyes were now on Sammy. He told of how, years earlier, when he had been scanning the heavens, he discovered the presence of a possibly metallic object moving along in a direct course. Spectral analysis indicated the object was propelling itself along using a sort of matter/anti-matter conversion.

  Jake looked to Scott. “And you never thought to share this information?”

  Scott shrugged. “It’s on the list of things to check out or to keep watch of. Do you know how long that list is? I figured this was extremely low priority. We don’t even know if the object was some sort of manned vessel or not. It was so far away, the spectral analysis wasn’t all that conclusive. And besides, you seem to get a headache anytime I start going into this stuff too much.”

  Jake nodded. “You got me there.”

  April said, “Scott’s right. We’re all getting way ahead of ourselves.”

  She was still glancing down at her hands, a little creeped out by the thought of nanobots cruising through her body.

  “First,” Scott said, “we need more information. We’re not going to get it sitting around here. I need to take a small team with me. The smaller the better. And conduct a little fact-finding mission to the past. Very covert. We’ll make absolutely minimal contact with the people there. We’ll take tricorders and take readings. Lots and lots of readings. Then, we’ll return to our time and correlate it all and see what we can figure out.”

  Chuck said, “You take all the fun out of time travel.”

  “Well, any fun in time travel could prove to be incredibly dangerous. Again, look at Akila’s world. Despite my insanely high IQ and Sammy’s photon computer brain, we had to learn the hard way. And the cost was cataclysmic.”

  “Yeah,” Chuck said, looking from Jake to Rick to Jeff, with wonder in his eyes. “But wouldn’t you like to have the chance to just, I don’t know, shake hands with Abraham Lincoln?”

  Scott said, “Not possible. Abraham Lincoln was killed in 1864. We’re going back to 1880.”

  “Kill joy.”

  Scott nodded. “That’s me. Okay, like I said, I want to take a small team. As small as possible. The more of us, the bigger the chance to pollute the time line. I’m thinking of April and Jake.”

  Sammy said, “Um, if I may. I understand it’s my job to remain at the facility and monitor things. But I’ve been itching to get in a little field duty.”

  Scott’s brows rose. “You want to come along?”

  He shrugged. “I am a scientist. You should have another scientist with you to help conduct those scans. And you built me with enough physical strength and speed that I could assist with security also, if need be. Though, I can’t imagine there would be much of a need, on this mission.”

  Scott looked to Jake. Jake said, “I could stay behind on this one. Akila, Jeff and I know enough of how Sammy’s computer works. We could monitor the mission from here. I wouldn’t be disappointed to sit this one out.”

  Jeff said, “You should bring me along, too. To get you there and back again. That way you don’t have to monitor your time-travel technology.”

  Scott said, “I appreciate you volunteering, but we need to keep this team to as small a number as possible. We can use the teleporter.”

  Jeff shook his head. “That thing is dangerous. Believe me. It’s too linear, too limited. Things can happen in the timeline. There is such a thing as a time storm. Did you know that?”

  Scott was looking at him curiously. “No, I didn’t.”

  “I’ve seen them.”

  Akila said, “Hasani mentioned that to me, once. There was a time storm once, so we had to delay one of our time jumps.”

  “No offense meant, Doc, but to attempt time jumps without even knowing about the existence of time storms is like trying to sail across the Atlantic without any knowledge of thunderstorms. I mean, I can feel one right now.”

  Scott was looking at him with a mixture of curiosity and wonder, so Jeff continued. “It feels kind of like when you’re on the beach, and it’s sunny but there’s a cloud bank on the horizon, and those clouds are coming at you. The wind picks up a little and you can smell rain on the air but you’re still standing in the sun. The storm is from..,” he looked past them, as though he were trying to see in the distance, “the year 1384. It spans maybe five months of time. Nothing anyone’s going to be able to feel while standing on Earth, unless they’re like me. I bet Hasani can feel it, too.”

  “Time storms,” Scott said, still a little incredulous about how little he knew about how Jeff’s power worked.

  Jeff nodded. “There’s another one going on right now, about eighty years ahead of us. A small one,” he held his left hand out and pointed toward the wall. “In that direction. About two dimensional planes over from ours. No different than one of you hearing a distant thunder clap.”

  “When this is over, I want to sit down with you and pick your brain about the nature of time. In as much detail as you can possibly give. Apparently there’s much we don’t know.”

  Akila said, “I’m surprised you two haven’t sat down and talked this through, already.”

  Jeff said, “I’m not a scientist, so I don’t think about it clinically. It’d be like trying to describe, in scientific terms, what walking is. Or breathing. It’s just something I do, and I seem to have some sort of instinctive feeling for it.”

  Scott said to Jeff, “Will the storm back in 1384 affect our time travel?”

  “It would if you used that crazy machine of yours. But, no. I can get us there. We can sidestep around any tachyon waves thrown off by it.”

  “How about that one eighty years from now?”

  Jeff shook his head. “It’s two dimensional planes away from us and doesn’t seem to be coming our way. But the more people I bring with me, the harder it is, so we really can’t make the team any larger than the four of us. Any more and it might get a little dicey.”

  “I could stay here,” April said.

  “No.” Scott looked at her. “We might need you for reconnaissance. There’s no one here who can do that like you.”

  She beamed a smile at him.

  “So,” Jake said. “A team of four. You, April, Sammy and Jeff.”

  Scott nodded. To Jeff, “How much preparation do you need for this kind of time jump?”

  Jeff said, “A couple minutes, maybe. I just have to look in that direction and make sure the coast is clear.”

  April had to ask. “To make sure the coast is clear? Aside from time storms, what else could there be?”

  Jeff shrugged. “Other time travelers. I’d hate to crash into somebody.”

  Scott’s mouth was hanging open. “There are more than just you and Hasani?”

  Jeff shrugged. “Sure. There’s a team from the future. Way ahead. Scientists. They wave when they go past. They check out earlier ages. I’ve seen them a few times. I’ve also passed older versions of myself, and younger versions.”

  Scott was feeling like he might have to sit down. Except he already was.

  Jake said, “You can both talk about all of this after the mission.”

  Scott reluctantly nodded. Too many proverbial irons in the fire can drive you mad. “All right. Let’s focus on the mission at hand. If there are no more questions, then we leave in the morning. We s
houldn’t be gone more than a few hours. We can shoot for 1880. We’ll wander about Boston and very covertly take tricorder readings. Then Jeff will bring us back.”

  Jeff nodded. “Sounds doable. Any particular day in 1880?”

  “How precise can you be?”

  Jeff shrugged. “Like walking across the floor.”

  “Summer,” April said. “Let’s go when the weather’s warm. Let’s try to avoid winter.”

  Jeff nodded.

  Sammy said, “It might wise for us to beam in after dark. It might make us a little less noticeable as we wander about the city.”

  “Will do,” Jeff said. “Let’s say, July twenty-four, ten o’clock at night.”

  Jeff seemed to look into the distance, again. “Hard to tell from here, but I don’t think it’s raining. It might be easier for us to get around the city if it’s not raining.”

  April said, “We’ll need costumes. We can’t very well go like this, especially if we don’t want to attract attention to ourselves.”

  “How soon can you put something together?” Scott said.

  “Pretty quick. There’s a costume shop in Boulder. I can zip over there and check it out for anything we don’t have here.”

  By zip over there, Scott knew she meant to go quantum. He had developed a shoulder bag she could use which, like her battle suit, would turn quantum with her.

  “All right, gang,” Scott said. “I guess, tomorrow morning, the mission is on.”

  SIX

  Jake felt a little restless like he often did the night before a mission, even though this time he would be staying behind. He had thought a little time in the gym might take the edge off. He took twenty minutes to work up a real sweat on a heavy bag, remaining as powered-down as he could get to allow himself a real workout. But it did no good at all. He was still restless and antsy. He then ran laps for half an hour. Still no good. He was now sweaty and worn out, but still restless in a nervous kind of way. He decided to give up and head to the quarters he shared with Akila, and hit the shower.

  He blasted the hot water onto his face, then turned around and let it work on the tightening muscles at the back of his neck and his shoulders. Felt good, but it wasn’t doing anything to take the restlessness away.