Genesis Code

by Jamie Metzl

  I’ve always thought that if we live lives on our own, self-reliant in the best Emersonian sort of way, we can just take responsibility for ourselves. But as I watch Toni walk toward the Rocket Café, I recognize yet again that I’m wrong. The moment we want to protect someone is the moment we put them in danger by connecting them to us, by breaking the hermetic seal of our individual self-reliance. No wonder my mother calls me all the time. Caring for someone is a terrifying thing.

  I wait.

  Ten minutes, twenty, thirty. I tap on the dashboard and look at the bat phone lying dormant on the passenger seat.

  She’s just meeting a veterinarian, I remind myself. I’m lost in thought when I hear the first click of the opening door.

  She steps into the car with a formality I’ve never before seen from her. She has become the part. She straightens her back, interlaces her fingers, and places them palms down on her left thigh as she turns her entire torso to face me.

  “That,” she says slowly, “is an interesting man.”

  I bend my head down slightly, my eyes still fixed on hers. She’ll tell me when she wants to.

  “He did fall for it. He’s never actually met Becker, only dealt with his assistants from time to time, so it was easy to convince him I was one of them. I told him we were concerned we weren’t making enough progress.”

  “Did he know what you were talking about?” I ask.

  “That’s what I wanted to test. He said he was concerned, too. I think he was nervous.”

  “Why?”

  “That he wasn’t delivering. He started to talk about Dolly.”

  “Dolly the sheep?” I ask, the synapses firing in my mind. Becker experimenting with genetic manipulation on his ranch, his ‘chosen one” murdered carrying a genetically enhanced embryo?

  “He said that they’d never really perfected nuclear transfer, and the problem with copies is that they’re slightly off from the originals, that 227 sheep embryos didn’t make it when they were trying to produce Dolly.”

  I’m speechless.

  “The way he spoke about the ranch, I don’t think he’s the one leading things, just the person they call when something doesn’t work.”

  “One of the leaders of the anti-science evangelical wave sweeping the country is cloning cattle on a well-guarded ranch?” I say incredulously.

  Toni nods. “I told him how concerned we were and that Reverend Becker was beginning to think he was partly to blame for the lack of success.”

  I’m impressed with her technique.

  “He got pretty nervous. I think the ranch may be his biggest client. He said most people didn’t understand how difficult it is to make a cow a specific color, especially when it’s not normal.”

  “Did you ask . . .”

  Toni looks at me and I stop speaking.

  “Red,” she declares.

  My body stiffens. I feel a spark igniting in the depths of my subconscious, lighting a fuse that traverses my central nervous system. The idea had struck me as odd when I was ten years old in Bible class but somehow had lodged in my brain undisturbed for twenty-nine years. Until now.

  “Search red heifer,” I bark into my u.D.

  Options pop up, then the vixen u.D voice purrs through the car speakers. “In the days of the Holy Temple, all who sought to enter were required to be spiritually cleansed by being sprinkled with the ashes of a flawless red heifer burned in its third year. According to messianic sources, the procurement of a red heifer for this purpose is a necessary precondition for the rebuilding of the Temple, itself a precursor to the Second Coming of Christ. Rabbinical sources assert that no flawless red heifer has been born in Israel since the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, nearly two thousand years ago.”

  The idea seems insane. “Tell me more,” I order.

  A screen pops up with options.

  “Read me the scripture.”

  The voice options flash and I choose the obvious one. The God in whom I don’t believe surely has a pronounced British accent.

  “Now the Lord said to Moses and to Aaron, tell the people of Israel to bring you a red heifer without defect, in which there is no blemish, and upon which a yoke has never come. And you shall give her to Eleazar the priest, and she shall be taken outside the camp and slaughtered before him; and Eleazar the priest, and shall take some of her blood with his finger, and sprinkle some of her blood toward the front of the tent of meeting seven times. And the heifer shall be burned in his sight; her skin, her flesh, and her blood, with her dung, shall be burned; and the priest shall take cedarwood and hyssop and scarlet stuff, and cast them into the midst of the burning of the heifer. Then the priest shall wash his clothes and bathe his body in water, and afterwards he shall come into the camp; and the priest shall be unclean until evening. He who burns the heifer shall wash his clothes in water and bathe his body in water, and shall be unclean until evening. And a man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer, and deposit them outside the camp in a clean place; and they shall be kept for the congregation of the people of Israel for the water for impurity, for the removal of sin.”

  Toni and I sit, stunned. What kind of lunatic would want to breed an extinct cow then burn it in a dung fire to pave the way for the Second Coming? My mind races back to my conversation with Carol Stock about Becker’s big plans for the Second Coming of Christ. The pieces fly together as the image congeals. The young girl adopted at the same age that Virgin Mary was given to God, the girl initially named Lee whom Becker renames MaryLee, the gifts of the three Kings, the genetically enhanced embryo. It’s almost too big to believe, yet the pieces glide together with shocking precision.

  “We’ve got to learn more,” I say feverishly. “Did he give you any information about what’s happening at the ranch?”

  “He said that they didn’t even allow him in to what he called ‘the lab,’ and that he was doing everything he could.”

  “Did you ask him what he knew about the lab?”

  “He said if I wanted to know more I should talk with Dr. Allison.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “I acted like I knew. I’m guessing it’s the head of the lab.”

  “How did you leave things?”

  “I told him we’re going to be keeping a close eye on him and then walked out in a huff.”

  I’m still shaking as we drive toward the ranch. Finding the ranch isn’t hard. The Dallas Morning News article mentioned the name and general location. A few people we approach on the side of the road point us in the right direction.

  When we get to the entrance, a small sign on the locked gate connected on two sides by a tall electric fence reads Rapture Grove Ranch.

  I SatMap our current location to see if there’s another entrance. There isn’t. The satellite image shows a barn and a medium-sized white shed I assume is “the lab” at the center of a vast property.

  “I guess we wait to see what happens,” I say, settling in.

  Forty minutes later the gate opens and a large white Hyundai pickup drives through. The truck turns left at the road. I hit the gas and squeeze through the gate just before it closes.

  “Think they saw us?” I ask Toni.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I have a feeling we’ll find out.”

  We pass acres of grazing cattle before seeing the barn and white shed in the distance.

  The roar startles me before I see the three pickups screeching toward us from behind the barn.

  The trucks race forward as if they are going to ram us.

  I throw my right arm over to cover Toni as I slam the brakes. She instinctively grabs it and pulls it toward her as I jam the car in reverse and the trucks close in.

  Two of them bear down toward me from the front as another speeds past to block my retreat from behind.

  I slam the brakes again to spin in a new direction but the trucks are now closing in from three sides.

  Just before impact, all three trucks skid to a halt around me, blocking my exit
in every direction. A massive cloud of dust swirls around the vehicles. My heart is pounding, my left hand is clenched around the steering wheel, my right stretched stiff holding Toni across her shoulders.

  “There’s our answer,” I say breathlessly.

  A tall, lean man looking to be in his early fifties jumps from one of the trucks in front of me and marches in our direction. His jeans, cowboy boots and hat, and furrowed face say cowboy, but his blue blazer and focused gaze say executive and his eyes say “danger.” No one ever said the rapture would be pain-free. Three men approach behind him, each with a pistol on his waist. I roll down my window.

  “What the hell are you doin’?” he demands in a thick Texas accent.

  “Sorry, sir,” I say, “my wife and I are lost and we were coming for directions.”

  Toni leans forward and bats her fake lashes. It doesn’t work.

  “The hell you are,” he says menacingly. “We saw you enter the compound before the gate closed. Now are you goin’ to tell us what you’re doin’ here, or—”

  I don’t want to hear the next part of the sentence. Given the menacing animosity on his face, it can’t be good. “Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about. So sorry if we’ve disturbed you.”

  I wonder if I should mention Cobalt Becker and Dr. Barkley but decide to leave well enough alone.

  “If you can just point us in the direction of Fort Worth, we’ll be on our way.”

  “Fort Worth,” he repeats, clearly not believing a word.

  I have a sinking gut feeling he’s thinking of ways of disposing of us.

  He lifts his arm and starts snapping pictures of Toni and me, our car, and our license plates from the u.D around his wrist. He stares at me with terrifying other-worldly eyes.

  “Let me put it to you this way,” he says, the words slithering through his teeth, “to get to Fort Worth you take a right out the gate, left on Route 6, and merge onto I-35 North.”

  “Thank you,” I say with overblown earnestness.

  “But if I ever see you back on this property, you’re not goin’ to get out this easily, not this easily at all.”

  I don’t doubt him for a second.

  “Got that?” The words are not a question.

  I nod to cover my inner gulp.

  He points at the truck behind us then moves his finger to the right. The truck moves.

  I pull back carefully. If my driving makes a statement, it is submission. The gate opens as I approach, then closes behind me.

  Toni and I drive silently for a few minutes.

  She breaks the heavy silence first. “That guy was not kidding.”

  “I know,” I say.

  “I guess the rapture has an army.”

  40

  “Joseph, you look terrible.”

  Even traveling up I-35 at seventy miles an hour, it’s impossible not to notice his eyes sunken even more deeply, his hair even more disheveled, his skin more sallow. I worry I’m asking too much of Joseph, throwing him an unlimited number of urgent research requests while he’s still doing who knows what in his day job since being tossed into general research pool at the Star.

  “Thanks, boss,” Joseph replies.

  “Did you meet with Professor Chou?”

  “I did, boss.”

  “And?”

  “Jerry was right. This stuff is unbelievably complicated.”

  “Was he helpful?”

  Joseph ignores the question. “The forty-seventh chromosome,” he says.

  “Tell me,” I say.

  “From where?”

  “From the start.”

  “The start is Gregor Mendel.”

  “After that.”

  “Is Louise Brown.”

  “The first test tube baby?”

  “Yes,” Joseph says, “then the decoding of the human genome.”

  “I’m with you,” I say. “Go on.”

  “Then the Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis and Selection procedure, PGDS. They fertilize multiple eggs and let each begin dividing, then extract one cell from each embryo and read its full genome. They pick the one or two embryos they want, extract another cell from each of those, then stimulate those cells to start dividing before implanting them into the mother or the surrogate. And as doctors get better at understanding the genes taken from the fertilized eggs during PGDS, parents know more and more about what they are selecting,” Joseph says.

  “Yup,” I say curtly, trying to push Joseph forward. That having kids through old-fashioned sex leaves too much to chance is something privileged mothers-to-be around the world are fast realizing. “The forty-seventh chromosome?” I ask, frantic to figure out if MaryLee is Cobalt Becker’s Dolly.

  “Every person has around twenty-three thousand genes, all of them carried on the forty-six chromosomes arranged in the famous double helix connecting them.”

  Toni can’t take it anymore. She shakes her head wildly from side to side.

  Joseph, of course, can’t see this and keeps marching forward like the diligent Indian Institute of Technology graduate he is.

  “Any two people have genomes that are 99.9 percent the same, but the .1 percent accounts for most all the genetic differences between us.”

  “Joseph,” I say impatiently, “everyone knows this.”

  He ignores me like a trial lawyer dismissing the entreaties of opposing counsel as he lays the foundation of his case.

  “From everything we know, most people with extra chromosomes have problems. Down Syndrome is just an extra copy of chromosome twenty-one. Doctors have gotten pretty good at replacing mutated genes with normal ones for single gene mutations for things like cystic fibrosis, but Professor Chou says we probably still don’t know enough about complex functions, like intelligence, determined by multiple genes working together. On top of that, all people are different and the same genes can mean different things in different people or even change because of environmental factors, they call it epigenetics. Of course, part of us is also formed through our experiences after we’re born.”

  “Joseph!”

  “Almost there, boss. There are different ways to insert new genes into the cell nucleus. By far the most popular way is by using a modified virus to carry a new gene into a cell, but genes inserted this way don’t tend to be stable and can often be rejected by the immune system. The second way is to replace one gene with another in a lab. The third—”

  “Let me guess,” I say.

  “Ten years ago, a plant biologist in Korea figured out how to use a synthetic additional chromosome process to add new traits to plants.”

  “The forty-seventh chromosome?” I repeat impatiently.

  “Kind of, boss,” he says earnestly. “Different plants have different numbers of chromosomes, but she showed it was possible to meaningfully introduce multiple genes into a cell by creating an artificial additional chromosome.”

  “In plants. How about humans?”

  “I asked Chou about that. It seems like we’re a long way from there. The next step up the chain is mice, and a few scientists are starting to experiment with the same technique at Cornell Medical College in New York. They created an extra chromosome in mice and used it to induce pituitary dwarfism.”

  “Humans, Joseph?”

  “Four years ago, a scientist in China found a way to correct the problem of extra copy chromosomes in monkey fetuses during the PGDS process by adding an additional chromosome with synthetic genes to improve cellular functions, but as far as we know artificial forty-seventh chromosomes have not been inserted into humans. Professor Chou said the pieces are coming together to help scientists decipher the vast complexity of each person’s genome and then try to figure out how problems might be fixed. As enormously complex as our individual genomes are, they are not random, which means they are ultimately knowable and manipulable. It’s just that we haven’t figured this all out yet in mice and monkeys, so the jump to humans would be too great a leap for years, that’s not even taking into
account the ethical issues.”

  The implication rocks me. In spite of all the promise of this incredible technology, something about manipulating the human genome makes me instinctively uneasy on some kind of deep, primal level. “So either Bright Horizons knowingly impregnated MaryLee with an embryo they knew had a natural mutation or they did it with an extra chromosome introduced with a technology that, as far as we know, doesn’t exist for human use?”

  “That’s it, boss, but if it’s the first, no clinic would impregnate someone with an embryo that had been selected in order to be defective. The US Supreme Court held,” Joseph pauses to slide through documents on his wall, “in 2018 that genetically deaf parents couldn’t select an embryo in the PGDS process to make sure their kid was deaf. So how could they implant someone with an extra chromosome?”

  “I guess if the chromosome carried genes people thought were good.”

  “But that’s theoretically illegal too, boss, even though no one’s ever done it before. And besides, understanding what genes to load on an extra chromosome seems a lot more sophisticated than we know how to do, even though the Chinese have been working on this for years.”

  “Maybe they know more than we think. Maybe it’s an experiment.”

  “Two more pieces of the story you need to understand, boss, DNA decoding and synthetic biology.”

  “Go on.”

  “Twenty years ago it cost $3 billion to sequence the human genome for the first time. Now we’re doing it using the same techniques they used to make semiconductors before most of them went organic. It costs about fifty dollars a pop and can be done on a jacked-up u.D with a nanopore microsequencer.”

  “I know, Joseph.”

  Joseph rolls on. “But it was a lot easier and cheaper to sequence the genome than to analyze it until labs started using the same graphics chips used in video consoles.”

  Joseph pauses to make sure I am following him.

  I nod.

  “So with so many people getting sequenced around the world and the data being pooled,” he continues, “scientists are learning more and more about what each gene does and how they interact to form complex human traits. It’s the ultimate big-data challenge.”