The Genesis Code

by Lisa von Biela

  A few minutes later, Cleary knocked on the door. Josh logged out of his program and activated the screen saver. “Come in.”

  Cleary entered and took a seat in front of Josh’s desk. He folded his arms and said, “Yes?”

  “I met with Harris and the others and they selected Terry Simmons as the first recipient. I just phoned him and set up an appointment for 10 AM tomorrow.”

  Cleary frowned. “Just like that? He went for it?”

  “Oh, no, he has no idea. That was one of the things we discussed with Harris. To avoid leaks, we’re not telling Simmons ahead of time. We’ll do the procedure before he leaves the exam room—and I’ll program the device so he won’t recall the implantation.”

  “So why does he think he’s coming in?” Cleary sat back, folded his arms tighter and crossed his legs.

  Josh didn’t like his tone. “I told him there was an issue with his lab results. Just enough to get him to come in. Once he’s here, we’ll tell him it’s a biofeedback device to help with his stress level. The procedure only requires a local, and that’s what I want to do. However, if he refuses to accept it, we will resort to a general.”

  Cleary sat silent, his lips thin and white. Josh took it as his cue to continue. “I’ve already initialized the device and loaded it with the materials Reyes provided. These steps—as well as the manufacture of the individual devices, of course—will remain my responsibility. However, I need some minor assistance in the actual procedure—especially if he decides to be uncooperative. Going forward, I may need you to perform implantations when I get busier preparing devices.”

  “And why do you think I would participate in installing these things in the employees?” Cleary leaned forward, his normally placid face pulled into a sneer.

  Josh was surprised at the strength of Cleary’s reaction; he hadn’t indicated any problems with the idea until now. “The procedure is simple. Even you should be able to handle it. Harris said you were available to assist me—if you have a problem with it, perhaps you should take it up with him. He’s the one who signs your paycheck, not me.”

  Cleary looked taken aback. He unfolded his arms, looked down, and rubbed his fingertips together nervously in his lap. “Describe the procedure,” he said in a whisper.

  A thinly veiled threat about his job, and he settles right down. Good to know. Josh held up the device, handling it by the edges. “Here’s the implant. The clear covering is just to keep it sterile—you peel it off right before insertion.” He turned his head, pointed to the area just beneath his ear. “This is where it goes. You make a single incision, a millimeter or so wider that the device itself, then carefully lift the dermis away from the bone. The unit needs to rest against the skull, not between dermal layers. Don’t want it to work its way to the surface—plus it can transmit more cleanly lying right against the cranium.”

  “What about bleeding?”

  “I’ve already coated the unit with a layer of Vitamin K to act as a coagulant. You quickly slip it into the pocket you’ve created, and the coagulant does its work. Then dab a little topical skin adhesive over the incision, and it’s done. No aftercare needed.”

  “Then what?”

  “Well, that would be it, as far as the implantation. If and when Reyes has more data to feed to Simmons, he’ll supply me with softcopy files, which I will translate and transmit to the device from here. No need for Simmons to return for maintenance.”

  Cleary grunted. “Are we done?” He rose to leave.

  “Yes. If you think of any questions in the meantime, let me know. Otherwise, you keep quiet during the visit. Simmons only gets the explanation I already told you. I don’t want any needless trouble.”

  Cleary left without further comment, shutting the door a bit more forcefully than necessary.

  Josh shrugged. He had Harris on his side. If Cleary balked, he had no doubt the old washout would be booted out of there faster than he could set down his ancient stethoscope.

  Cleary didn’t concern him. The device was working, and tomorrow, it would reside in his first human recipient. He felt reasonably confident it would work without side effects. It had to, because to ensure the deal with Harris, he’d forged lab reports to show that Genesis had already been successfully tested in human subjects.

  CHAPTER 17

  Terry stared into the frozen food display, exhaustion crushing him into lame indecision. The glaring fluorescent lamps of the convenience store forced false daylight upon him despite the late hour. He reminded himself he had to get something—he hadn’t had time for grocery shopping lately, so there was nothing edible at home. Yet not a single thing in the display case appealed to him, though he was hungry to the point of having low-blood-sugar shakes.

  Waiting for inspiration to strike, he glanced around. The place was nearly deserted. Normal people knew to get their dinners before midnight signaled the start of a new day. A teenaged couple dressed in Goth black studied the potato chip offerings. An older guy with a belly protruding from beneath his stained T-shirt browsed through the soft porn mags. Sighing, Terry turned back to the task at hand.

  Nothing new had appeared in the freezer section while he’d taken a break from his quest. He reached in for a frozen pizza. Came on its own tray—a no-brainer to cook up. He grabbed a six-pack of the best beer the store offered—a purported microbrew actually manufactured by a domestic conglomerate—and approached the cash register to pay.

  The scrawny kid behind the counter looked barely old enough to sell alcohol. Likely not college-bound, considering the time it took him to make change for Terry’s twenty. He pocketed the bills and coins and exited the store.

  His black Mercedes C350 looked decidedly out of place among the battered old cars of the other customers. He stuck his dinner on the floor behind his seat and got in. He started the car; the dash clock informed him in green numerals that it was now 12:25 AM Already a new work day, he thought grimly.

  He sped through the night on his way home, the meticulously engineered driver’s seat gently cradling his weary back. A light rain had begun to fall, creating reflections of the street lights and traffic signals in the blackness of the tarmac.

  Terry was relieved to encounter little late-night traffic on the fifteen-minute drive home from the convenience store. Selecting his dinner had been more than enough challenge itself. He felt as if all the life and energy had been drained from him. With each passing hour, he became more and more convinced that he was not going to find the problem with OMTrade. Not now. Not ever.

  He pulled up and pressed the opener. He studied his house while he waited in the driveway for the garage door to open. A two-story Tudor, the style he’d always wanted. Nicely landscaped grounds. Rising property value in a good, quiet neighborhood.

  And no one to share it with.

  He’d had the occasional girlfriend, but no one who stayed around. The culprit? Not his manners, not his looks. Certainly not his bank account.

  Always the job.

  He’d yet to find a woman who could understand what he was talking about, let alone one who was willing to put up with the small sliver of his attention left over from OneMarket.

  And now the call from the company doctor. He shook his head, pulled into his garage and parked.

  Terry stepped into his kitchen and set the bag on the counter. He started the oven, slid in the pizza, and set the timer. Then he opened one of the beers and sat at the breakfast table while he waited for the pizza to heat.

  He finished the beer and started a second one while he contemplated the doctor’s call. He didn’t like any of it. Not serious, but they wanted to see him quickly. Yeah, right. Everything was going to hell. He stared at the drops of condensation on the beer bottle, too exhausted to think through what seemed like doom on all sides.

  When the timer buzzed, Terry took the pizza out of the oven and tossed it onto the table. He sat back down and started to eat, trying to stop worrying, at least for a while. He didn’t taste the food; he mech
anically put it in his mouth, chewed, swallowed, and repeated the process.

  Done eating, he sat back in the chair and glanced around the kitchen as he nursed his third beer. A gourmet kitchen for someone who’s home only to sleep. Silly. All the latest gadgets lined the counter in neat rows. A center island lay covered with computer magazines, rather than anything related to preparing a meal.

  His whole house was the same way. All the latest and greatest digital delights, there for him to enjoy. But with his workload, home had become the place to stuff down take-out food, sleep, shower, and do it all again. He had no time or energy to enjoy the home theater, the game room—and no friends to invite over.

  What was the point? It was all just a vicious cycle. OneMarket gave him the income to afford all these things—and it also kept him from enjoying them. He bowed his head. The point would become moot soon if he didn’t solve the problem. They’d fire his ass, and he’d have to find a new job with a normal income. He’d lose this house for sure.

  He glanced at the kitchen clock. Nearly two in the morning already. Great. He groaned and rose from the table with an effort, and trudged off to get ready for bed. He had to get in extra early to make up for the time he’d lose at his doctor’s appointment.

  CHAPTER 18

  Mark poured himself a cup of coffee, his fourth of the day. Nine in the morning, and I’m already drunk with caffeine. He looked around the break room. The four tables with their chrome and plastic chairs sat empty, as always, in a cold pool of fluorescent light. He never saw anyone taking an actual break, but the level in the coffee pot magically fluctuated throughout each day. He wondered if he ever would encounter anyone lingering away from their desks.

  OneMarket felt like a merry-go-round—one where some evil carnie kept ratcheting up the speed, and the mounts gradually shifted from horses to fanged demons. Mark willed the malevolent image from his mind and tried to focus on his plans for the day. He dumped some white sugar into his cup for extra energy, then headed back to his cubicle to review OMTrade’s performance logs.

  He sat in his chair, flexed his shoulders, then scrolled through the logs on his screen. Finding nothing unusual, he sat back and sighed with momentary relief. He was sure it would take another crisis to find the lurking problem—Terry had made no progress on his own—and he wasn’t up for a recurrence today.

  Someone tapped quietly at his cube opening. He turned to see Terry standing there. Dark shadows lay under his eyes, betraying a lack of sleep. Terry had looked worn lately, but today he looked much worse than usual. His hands were jammed in his pants pockets as if he didn’t know what to do with them.

  Terry cleared his throat. “I’ll be away from my desk for a while.”

  “Sure. No problem. We can go over these logs later—they look OK today, actually. So far.”

  Terry lingered as if he had more to say. Mark waited. Terry’s moods had been unpredictable lately from the strain, and he didn’t want to set him off.

  Terry looked at the floor. “I’m—the doctor called me to set up this appointment.”

  “Is…something wrong?”

  “Yeah. But he wouldn’t say what. Just said I needed to see him.” Terry rubbed his temples with the heels of his hands. “No sleep at all last night.”

  Mark searched for the right thing to say, but could only come up with, “Oh. Um, good luck.” He felt like an ass the minute he said it, but he was at a loss. Terry didn’t normally discuss personal matters, and he didn’t know how to react to this unexpected revelation.

  “Yeah.” Terry walked away.

  Mark turned back to his review of the system logs. None of it registered. It just rolled by like abstract, meaningless glyphs. He rubbed his eyes. Strange, he wasn’t close to Terry on a personal level; they never saw each other outside of work. He spent far more time with him than he did with Sheila these days, yet he knew precious little about his private life. Terry never mentioned a girlfriend, or any friends outside work.

  He felt guilty for not showing more empathy, but Terry had caught him by surprise with his news. Under the circumstances, Mark wasn’t sure where to draw the line between showing concern and prying.

  Hopefully, the problem wasn’t serious.

  Terry took a seat in the deserted waiting room and picked up an ancient woodworking magazine from the ragged pile on the table. He thumbed through it, unable to concentrate. The edges of the pages rippled from the sweat on his fingers. He tossed the magazine aside and wiped his hands on his pant legs.

  The frosted glass window slid open a few inches. “Mr. Simmons?” asked the receptionist.

  “Yes?”

  “They’ll be with you shortly.” The window slid shut.

  Terry rubbed his hands together. He could think of nothing to calm himself while he waited. His fear snowballed until his heart thumped and his mouth felt like sandpaper. His palms refused to stop sweating. He couldn’t stop speculating on what the problem could be. He’d felt fine until now. Well, except for being completely exhausted from work. But it was from work, wasn’t it? Not from something gone wrong within him. And he hadn’t been eating well. Maybe something stress-related was starting to do some damage…

  The door to the exam area opened. “Mr. Simmons? Doctor is ready for you now.” The middle-aged nurse’s face provided no clues. He could have been called in for a hangnail or an exotic brain tumor. He stood, feeling a little wobbly in the knees. The nurse wordlessly led him back to an exam room and left him there to wait alone.

  As he sat awkwardly on the edge of the exam table, he felt like a little kid waiting in the principal’s office for his punishment. How bad would it be? Was he working himself up needlessly?

  Terry glanced around the minimally-equipped room. A high-intensity lamp, a plastic bottle of rubbing alcohol, some glass containers with cotton balls and gauze pads. A glove dispenser next to the sink. He wondered just how sophisticated an operation this company medical office was. How good were their procedures, anyway? Maybe this was all a false alarm. Maybe the slightest thing, even if insignificant, gave them something to do, a way to justify their expense to OneMarket. Terry felt a little better at the thought.

  A knock at the door started his heart pounding again. “Mr. Simmons?” Dr. Tyler stepped in, accompanied by another doctor Terry recognized from a routine visit some time back. “Good morning. This is Dr. Cleary.” Dr. Tyler indicated the other man, who nodded, but said nothing.

  Terry wondered why both doctors were present. His unease grew. He reminded himself that, no matter what they said, he could always get a second opinion, even if he had to pay for it himself.

  “I’ll get right to the point. I know you’re very busy,” said Dr. Tyler. “The anomaly we found is in your cortisol level. It was quite high—this normally indicates the patient is under considerable stress.”

  “Well, that makes sense. I am on a very difficult assignment right now.” Terry felt relieved. The test just reflected reality. Big deal.

  Dr. Tyler continued as if he hadn’t heard Terry’s remark. “The problem with a high cortisol level is that, over time, it can result in systemic damage. It’s been implicated in a number of different illnesses, heart disease being just one of them. I noticed you have a very slight cardiac arrhythmia—”

  “What?” Terry felt his stomach sink.

  Dr. Tyler raised a hand to ward off Terry’s interruption. “No need to panic, Mr. Simmons. It’s mild enough right now that it’s not a problem; you wouldn’t even notice it. But my concern is that if it’s due to the cortisol levels, then it could turn into a significant problem if we don’t address it now.”

  “Well, I don’t know what I can do. If it isn’t this assignment, it’ll be another. Stress is part of the job here.”

  “Yes, I know the nature of your work won’t change. My recommendation addresses that.”

  Terry noticed Dr. Cleary had said nothing the entire time. He stood near the sink with his arms folded, his mouth tight. Terry address
ed Dr. Tyler. “What do you recommend?”

  “Biofeedback. A bypass of the autonomic stress response, if you will.”

  “How does that work?”

  “You’ll still experience stressful situations, of course. But we can help you short-circuit your body’s response to that stress, such that you should produce far less cortisol than you do now. And so we short-circuit the part of the stress cycle that actually does the harm.”

  Terry was confused. “But how?”

  “We have a tiny biofeedback device that does the job. It picks up the physical signals of stress, then interferes with the transmission of those signals. And so it breaks the link between the experience of the stress and the creation of the harmful cortisol. Much simpler than it sounds.”

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  “It is fairly new. But it doesn’t get the press because it’s not a drug-based solution.”

  “So do I have to come in for treatments?”

  “No. It’s a tiny device we’d place right here, just under the skin.” Dr. Tyler pointed just beneath and behind his ear.

  “A device? I don’t want something implanted. No way.”

  “It’s really quite small. If you experience any problems at all, we can easily remove it and reassess the situation. But I’m certain you won’t even know it’s there.”

  “Isn’t there something else I can try first? Something less invasive, like yoga. And if that doesn’t work, then we can talk about this.” Terry desperately backpedaled, trying to bargain his way out of the situation.

  “Mr. Simmons, if you had even moderately elevated cortisol levels, that would be a prudent approach. But your levels are acutely high and probably have been for a while. You have arrhythmia. Your health is already at serious risk. If you want to stay in your job—and stay healthy—I really must insist that you allow the procedure. Today.”

  Terry swallowed; his throat was so dry it hurt. “You said if I had any problems, you could take it out?”