Yes, the Scots were a people well-known to be susceptible to the pox. And though this lineage made up half her DNA, she was alive. Her skin was perfect. That could only mean one thing. The heritage which protected her health, and her lovely skin, could not have come from her European ancestors. It was from her Lakota ancestors. Amazing, he thought. And the resistance was stronger. A dominant gene. Nothing could make a better gene-therapy candidate.
He was excited beyond belief.
She eyed him, and squinted.
“I’m William Potter. Genetic engineer, London. Screening for disease-resistance genes.” He patted his backpack lightly, “Brought all my stuff with me.”
She laughed. “So, you’re working? From London? I understand, then. You’re different from them, and I think you didn’t come for the food.”
“Left here a long time ago.”
She nodded and typed.
“When my parents died,” he explained. “The last flu epidemic. I was college-age, your age. Listen, I’m collecting samples. Sending the DNA back to clone the genes. Would you?” Words failed him.
He took three deep breaths and watched her slender fingers tapping on her tablet. “I’d be honored if you’d join the study,” he said. “I ask for one blood sample from each volunteer, that’s it.”
Watching her perfect face, he ate. He waited. That skin! Like the finest mask. The One. Blush-bronze in color and velvet soft. How long had it been since he’d seen anything like it? Forever. But something whispered in the back of his brain. And for some reason he didn’t understand, he thought of his wife. In her perfect mask, she had looked like a stranger and a ghost on the video screen. Why did the look seem so familiar, now, in every detail?
She asked, “You believe it’s in the blood?” The young woman pulled her eyebrows together and pursed her lips.
He thought her mouth looked like a ripe, violet-hued fruit.
She tipped her head back and rolled her shoulders. “I’ve always thought its spiritual, too. Survival can’t be only a physical thing; it’s related to strength, to strength of the family. And clean living, you know. Just look at how they were. Plymouth might have been different, but you know at Jamestown,” she lowered her voice to a murmur, “some of them were cannibals.” She shook her head. “It’s right in their diaries, them, the colonists who dug up graves and ate the dead. Maybe their living too, you know. What did they think would happen? They would take over the earth when they came?”
He choked on the pie and pushed his tray back. They probably did. Almost certainly. “It’s in the genes,” he said. “Not the blood itself, but your cells float in the blood. Those cells have the DNA and genes. That’s what makes you beautiful.” He coughed loudly. “Ach! Healthy. I meant healthy. Fit. Every cell in your body has the same blueprint. Knowing what that is, it could save lives. That’s what I do.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Gene therapy,” he said.
She finished typing in her notes and put her tablet away, hoisting her bag up onto her shoulder. “Yes, I know about that, your gene therapy, your genetically modified organisms over there. All right Mr. William, researcher man. Come on, Englishman gene-hunter, let’s go, I think I will join your study, and you’ll get what you’re after, and then you know what? I will interview you, you’ll see; I’ll make you change your mind about that.”
Following her across the hall, William was mesmerized by the black braid swaying low across her back. When he looked up, he recognized a European skin poacher lurking by the shelter door. The man’s hungry eyes followed The One.
William’s heart sank. He had her now, yes, perhaps for a blood sample. He’d have her genes and he’d go home, copy them, synthesize the one disease-resistance gene he was after, sell it, and name it W-factor.
No, he’d name it after her, he corrected himself. Sioux-Woman-factor. S-W-factor. But what would become of her when he had what he needed, left on the train, and was back in his lab?
“Are you satisfied?” she asked, stopping in the open doorway, a silhouette framed by the searing afternoon sun. He knew she was looking back at him, standing where he was among his pock-marked and homeless kinsmen.
He couldn’t see her eyes, her face, or her beautiful skin because of the glare, but he imagined that she was smiling, making fun of him. And he couldn’t answer. When she turned to go, he followed her closely.
No, he was not satisfied! He was most painfully disturbed! No one, anywhere, should ever be hunted. Standing behind the Lakota woman, the European gene-hunter who had spent his life trying to create a new future, unexpectedly wished he could go back and change the past.
A Word from J.J. Brown
Disease susceptibility has shaped our history in countless ways; soldiers more often died of infectious outbreaks than of battle wounds in crucial wars. Our fate, as a society, is tied to our ability to survive, as well as our capacity to love one another. While prevention through vaccination has globally eradicated some infectious diseases, like smallpox, some epidemics continue, and new plagues emerge, like HIV, MERS, and Ebola—any of which may affect our future in unexpected ways.
J.J.Brown is a health journalist, editor, and author of books and short stories. She was born in the Catskill Mountains of New York and lives in New York City. J.J.Brown completed a PhD in genetics and worked as a research scientist for twenty years before turning to writing.
http://jjbrownauthor.weebly.com/
http://www.amazon.com/J.J.-Brown/e/B0068QAKIM/
@jjunebrown
https://www.facebook.com/JJBrownAuthor
The Blackbird Sings
by Therin Knite
What if the Cold War had ended in a short but devastating hot war? In September 1983, the Soviets launched a brutal nuclear assault against the Pacific Coast, killing millions and setting off a war that changed the face of the world forever. With the Pacific Coast irradiated, and its infrastructure destroyed, the US collapsed in on itself, and from its ashes was born a new nation with a focus on protecting its people through the use of a different sort of advanced technology—cybernetics. Thirty years later…
THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE
Web Archive
Top Headlines — September 27, 1983
1) Soviet Nuke Strike Decimates Pacific Coast by Joanna Carpathian
2) Millions Killed in Soviet Nuke Attack by Roger Wilhelm
3) USSR Declares War against US with Brutal Nuclear Assault by Michael Francis
4) Millions of American Citizens at Risk of Radiation Poisoning by Alice Patrice
5) Nuke Survivors Flee East to Escape Deadly Fallout by Rebecca Carter
1
Colorado
July 15, 2015
THE ELEVATOR TO THE END OF THE WORLD jostles like a truck over rough terrain.
Lights flicker and flare as the seconds tick by, highlighting and shadowing in succession the people who stand around me. To my left is Zane, silent and stoic, a hint of violet in his irises. He’s reading email and catching the news on his Visual Field, or ViFi, as the kids are calling it now. He must have refreshed his cached feed before the copter ride out to Colorado. There aren’t any community neural networks near the Fence, and my brain’s been quiet for hours. The buzzing of a thousand minds, all bumping against my own, cut down to nothing by the distance from civilization.
The only other mind I can feel is Zane’s. He has the FBI’s standard network chip in his brain, same as me, so as long as the two of us stay within a mile of the other, we’ll be in direct contact. Beyond that, we’ll have to use the satellites to interact. Which means lag. And most of the time, in these situations, deadly, dangerous, stained with blood—lag can mean the difference between living free and dying hard. I would like to avoid the latter.
I cannot feel the other two men in the rickety box beyond my human senses. They’ve got outdated tech in their heads, last decade’s best offerings, before the networks went up and telepathy became the buzzword of the year. I heard
a rumor back in Washington that the soldiers at the Fence are stripped down to basics for the duration of their assignments. To ward off thieves from beyond the Fence. Raiders who want steal the latest cybernetics, sell the tech to the highest bidders, to the supposed “Warlords of the Wastes.” Though what the people of the Ash Lands want with money, I don’t know.
Maybe the payment is food or shelter.
Either way—the soldiers in the box with me must be poor souls indeed. I’ve had networked tech in my head since elementary school. I couldn’t imagine being so disconnected from the rest of society for years at a time. What loneliness they must feel. What maddening silence must ring in their minds. I wonder if their assignments have long-term effects on their mental health. Wouldn’t surprise me. The government too often sends its soldiers through unnecessary trauma.
If this mission wasn’t vital to the protection of the free world, I would claim it one of those times. Excessive. A waste of resources. But the assassin who fled beyond the Fence that separates us from what’s left of a forgotten world—that man struck a blow to the heart of the North American Republic last week, and he must be punished.
I left for Colorado immediately after Senator Zuckerman’s funeral, an event attended by thousands and watched by millions more. Friends and enemies alike.
I left to chase a killer off the edge of the Earth.
So this mission isn’t excessive at all. It will, however, be traumatizing. No doubt.
When I return home to Washington next week, next month, perhaps even next year, I doubt I will come with no emotional baggage. I was tempted to preemptively schedule a psych session, to be honest. Because you don’t go beyond the Fence and return unscathed. If—
“We’re here,” one of the soldiers says nervously and turns around. He nods to me in deference and outright ignores my partner, even though I’m a foot shorter than Zane and quite petite. A slip of a woman, my grandmother called me once. Either the soldier knows me by reputation—he learned my name from my ID card—or there’s something in my gaze that implies I’m the deadlier of the two FBI agents in the box.
Maybe I look meaner than usual. I didn’t have my coffee this morning.
The soldier, Barnes, says, “If you’ll follow us, Agent Blackbird—”
The other soldier, Dalton, jabs his elbow into Barnes’s side.
Barnes sputter out, “I mean, Agent Lane! Agent Lane. Sorry!”
Ah. It’s the reputation then.
Finally, after a trip four minutes and twelve seconds long, the elevator shakes to a stop at the top of the Fence, and the two soldiers, whose names I only know because the chips in their badges ping my brain, escort us from the box on its last legs and onto the top of the Fence. A brisk wind blows across the narrow metal platform, a platform framed with rusty supports and lined with automatic machinegun turrets. Every barrel is pointed at the barren ground on the other side of the Fence. The Ash Lands side of the Fence. A field of fire-wrecked cars, imploded buildings, cracked and grassy roads—crumbling remnants of society—that stretches on as far as the eye can see and curves out of view around the horizon.
Even my enhanced vision spots no life in the ravaged wasteland. Which isn’t a complete surprise. Most of those who live in the Ash Lands don’t want to be seen by us. They resent the Republic. They blame us for their plight, for abandoning them after the Soviet bombs dropped all those years ago. To some degree, they are right to. To some degree, they are wrong.
A gale gusts over the fence, whipping loose strands of hair across my face, as I trudge behind the two soldiers and Zane, who is both awed and horrified by the sight of the Ash Lands in all their “glory.” I feel his mind collapse into a frenzy of thoughts, a touch of panic in the mix. He’s wondering how in God’s name we’ll be able to track down Red Matheson, the assassin, when the man could be anywhere on the continent west of the Fence.
He’s right to panic. The only reason I don’t is that I have met Red Matheson, and I know, from spending two minutes in his presence, in the immediate aftermath of Senator Zuckerman’s murder, sitting on my knees in a growing pool of blood, putting pressure on a wound my brain had long logged fatal, surrounded by the screams of innocents…
I know Red Matheson cannot go more than five seconds without gloating until he froths at the mouth.
He’ll talk to the people of the Ash Lands. And so will Zane and I. And someday, tomorrow, the next day, or the next…one of them will confirm if Red Matheson is going where his maps suggest or not.
Then I will find him.
Then I will kill him.
Then I will restore honor to the North American Republic.
With the wind gnawing at my cheeks, gray clouds roiling above, and Zane to my left breathing deeply, in and out, a calming sequence we all learned in training—I walk to the edge of the platform and peer down. Two ropes have been unspooled, almost two hundred feet long, and tied to the highest beams of the metal rigging, to give Zane and me a way to climb down to the other side of the Fence. There is no rickety elevator on that side. There is no door, no gate, no entry. Those from the Ash Lands are not welcome in the NAR. Those from the NAR are not welcome in the Ash Lands.
I am about to discover why.
And I don’t think I’ll like the answer.
* * *
THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE
Web Archive
Top Headlines — April 14, 1984
1) Soviets Surrender to European Forces in the Wake of Moscow Bombing by Gordon Marshall
2) Congress Disbands as Citizens Riot in DC by Joanna Carpathian
3) New York Stock Exchange Shuts its Doors for Good by Rebecca Carter
4) Coalition to Establish a “North American Republic” Meets in Pittsburgh by Michael Francis
5) Hospitals See Astronomic Rise in Radiation Cases as Survivors Flood Major Cities by Alice Patrice
* * *
2
Former State of Utah
August 1, 2015
“Kara!” The harsh whisper jerks me awake.
At first, there is darkness all around me and nothing in the sky but the dim glow of stars through thinning clouds. Then my ViFi boots up, and my eyes automatically switch to night vision mode, cloaking the terrain around me in an eerie green glow. I haven’t used night vision since my last mission in Iraq, four years ago, when a tip from a terror informant blew up into a bullet-filled footrace through the streets of Baghdad. I lost my left hand in that fight—a fight I won—though you’d never know it now. The fake one looks and acts like the real one, down to the prickling of cold rain on my sensitive skin.
Zane is crouched in a defensive position beside me. His mental voice slips into my head with an edge of nervousness. We’ve got eight people approaching from the northwest on horseback. They’re still too far out for my ViFi to scan for weapons, but this is the Ash Lands, so I assume they’re all armed. How do you want to proceed?
I roll over onto my stomach and push myself up to match Zane’s stance. We’re tucked behind a couple of cracked boulders, with a steep plateau rising up behind us and a little stream twenty feet in front. Much of the Utah terrain we’ve crossed so far has been flat, dry, desert like, and utterly deserted. But yesterday, we reached an area skirted by rising mountains and dotted with sheer cliffs, and the soil became less dusty, more damp, grasses and other small plants growing in intermittent patches. An area that can sustain life.
Human life included.
Following Zane’s line of sight, I spot the riders. From their shapes and sizes, I’d guess they’re all men; my enhanced senses aren’t capable of telling me much more with the half-mile distance between them and us. Except that they have no tech in their heads at all. They’re base human, brains untouched, and their minds are totally veiled to me. It’s even worse than with the soldiers from the Fence, because at least I knew there was something in their heads, even if I couldn’t connect. At least I knew the soldiers were on my side.
These approaching rid
ers are impenetrable walls in terms of precise thought and feeling. I’ll have to use their words and body language to interpret their intentions, dispel their lies, tease out the information I require.
Zane runs a hand through his dark hair and sighs. I can tell he forgot to turn on his homeostasis management again, as he’s shivering in the cold. We have non-autonomic software to handle climate and weather shifts so that we don’t get distracted from the mission in the field. But Zane is new to this assignment, and he only finished his upgrade surgeries a few months ago. I can’t expect him to be the perfect partner and remember everything, at least not yet.
I nudge him with my elbow and gesture to his shaking hand. “Forget something?”
He stares at his goose bumps for a moment and then swears under his breath. A second later, he stops shivering. “Sorry, Kara. It slipped my mind.”
“Not the biggest issue at hand.” I nod in the direction of the oncoming riders. The hoof beats of their horses grow louder as they echo off the cliffs around the stream. The riders don’t appear to have any intention of slowing down, their horses charging forward at a full gallop. Which I assume means they don’t know we exist. They haven’t been alerted by a lookout or informed by a spy and set upon us. This is an accidental meeting. Potentially a fortunate one. If Zane and I can spin this right.
Alt.History 102 (The Future Chronicles) Page 28