The Genesis Code
Page 27
Hairpin. He’d never make it at this speed. He closed his eyes, and floored it.
EPILOGUE
Things are good now, Sheila reminded herself. Or at least as good as they’re ever bound to get. I’ve got to focus on that.
She glanced over at Mark as they rode their mountain bikes side by side on the pine tree-lined dirt trail, making their way back to camp in the soothing early autumn breeze. He’d finally gotten back to his normal weight and muscle mass, even regained a healthy color. The constant competitive drive that had plagued him in his days at OneMarket had mostly faded now.
He was almost the Mark she’d once known. Almost, but not quite.
They pumped hard to get up the last hill before their campsite, then relaxed and coasted down the other side as they caught their breath. She could see their 4Runner just around the curve, heralding the edge of camp.
Mark braked to a stop beside the truck, dismounted and took off his helmet. “You hungry after that? I sure am. I’ll get started on dinner.” He smiled and went to the barbeque grill to start preparing the charcoal.
“Yeah, sounds good.” Sheila bit her lip and turned away so he couldn’t see her face while she tried to compose herself. It was still difficult to not dwell on what they’d lost. She wondered if it would ever get easier, or if it would get even worse.
Two chairs faced the fire pit—not the four chairs it would have been.
As little time as Mark had for Sheila when he was at OneMarket, he had even less for their friends—even their closest, long-time friends, the Hartmans. Jim and Cathy had been patient for a while. They called and had Sheila over without Mark a number of times. But the phone calls eventually stopped coming.
And now, even though OneMarket was in the past, the Hartmans were still gone, relegated to one of the gaps in Mark’s mind. Sheila still remembered the night she’d invited them over as a surprise. She was sickened and mortified when she realized he had no idea who they were. Mark had become extremely agitated as they gently tried to help him remember. The Hartmans left soon after, confused and disturbed by his reaction.
Now it upset him to even talk about them, or any of the other less important things that he could no longer recall. So she’d stopped trying.
The settlement they’d eventually received from OneMarket had solved their financial worries. They were out of debt and set for life, even if either—or both—of them developed special medical needs in the future. Sheila shook her head at the irony of it—and the price they’d paid. She still blamed herself.
That horrible night two years ago, she and Molly had headed straight home when they couldn’t find Mark’s 4Runner in the parking lot. The ride was the most painful, rending trip of her life. Even Molly had fallen silent and short on ideas. They’d sat down to organize their thoughts, then called the police, only to be told that Mark hadn’t been gone long enough to be considered missing.
Mark had arrived shortly after they completed the call, disheveled and wide-eyed, waving a plastic bag around. And then he’d told them what had happened, and showed them what was in the bag. Without the thing in the bag, Sheila would have never believed him. He looked like a crazy man, and the story was crazy.
Molly immediately contacted an attorney friend for advice before they did or said anything further. What followed were months of filings, police investigations, private detective work, and initially a stonewalling from OneMarket—until they informed them they had half of the device. Molly’s attorney friend had suggested they hold that information back until the right time, and he’d been right.
It was the key that changed everything. Suddenly, Simon Harris and his lawyer waved a nearly blank check in their faces.
Thankfully, they cashed that check while it was still good. The criminal charges and scandal brought OneMarket down. A competitor bought their business and assets for pennies on the dollar. Several key OneMarket people were convicted, and Harris would likely have been as well had he not committed suicide.
Funny though, Mark had insisted there was another doctor—a Dr. Tyler—who was the mastermind. But he’d resigned that night and was never heard from again. The doctor who supposedly saved him, Cleary, had turned out to be in cahoots with Harris, and wasn’t the savior he’d posed as on that night.
Sheila figured Mark’s confusion had something to do with the scrambling they’d done in his brain. He simply remembered that night wrong, and had the two doctors interchanged. Mark insisted his recollection was correct, but he was starting to doubt himself and backed off more as time went on.
At any rate, it’d be a long time before any of the bastards saw the outside of prison. Sheila was grateful for that much. The crime had been so technologically novel that new case law had to be established to deal with it. There’d be appeals, of course, but the press had run with the story and outraged the public so thoroughly that any appeals were unlikely to succeed. She was glad the furor had at last died down, allowing them to regain some of their privacy.
Sheila sat in one of the chairs and watched Mark carefully tend the steaks on the grill. Neither of them had to work if they didn’t want to, but Mark planned to try for a new position somewhere anyway.
“That smells wonderful, hon,” Sheila said as the aroma of the cooking steaks wafted toward her.
Mark smiled back at her. “I haven’t lost my touch.” He saluted her with his tongs.
Sheila got up, fetched the potato salad from the cooler, and set their places on the picnic table. She took out the bottle of Merlot, opened it, and poured some into two paper cups.
Mark brought the steaks to the table and put them on their plates. He sat down beside Sheila and raised his paper cup. “To our future.”
Sheila raised hers and touched his. “To our future.” She sipped her wine and forced a smile. Maybe it would be OK again. Someday.
Standing at the counter in his lab in North Carolina’s Research Triangle, Josh Tyler held the newly completed device up to the light, seeing beauty in its detail even with his naked eye.
The OneMarket disaster had taught him an important lesson, and he’d adapted his strategy accordingly. He’d sell his new devices only on their accepted, mainstream use: subcutaneously implanted electronic medical records. The technology was hot and demand was growing in the health insurance industry. That gave him a nice, broad selection of potential suitors, especially since his version offered greater capacity and faster transmission rates than any other similar device on the market today.
And it gave him an acceptable, benign cover for his research, too. Research only he would be privy to, since whoever bought his technology would only know about the medical records storage and access capabilities of the new devices.
They wouldn’t know about the brainwave sampling and sculpting algorithms he incorporated into each tiny device.
He would already know each recipient’s identity, of course, to be able to update the correct medical records onto the correct devices. So he would be able to examine brainwaves from identified individuals, study them, compare them to others. He could arrange them into groups—political, demographic, whatever he wanted—and analyze them in that way. With permanent implants like this, he’d have endless data to study and work with.
Then he could take more desirable waveforms and shape a less desirable group or individual’s waveforms to conform. He smiled as he gently placed the powerful new device into a protective plastic display case. He could personally—and without interference—create and control a new form of evolution. An evolution of ideas, attitudes, and desires. It would be the greatest experiment ever done on the function of the brain and how to shape it.
And all he’d have to do to verify the success of his experiments would be to watch the evening news.
He glanced at the clock on the wall. It was time. He straightened his white lab coat to look professional and impressive, picked up the device, and went to check if his prospective investors had arrived for their meeting.
&n
bsp; Other books by Lisa von Biela now available or coming soon from Crossroad Press
Ash and Bone
Blockbuster
Broken Chain
Down the Brink
Incidental Findings
Skinshift
The Janus Legacy