Annaliese sighed. “I feel guilty too, but it’s too late. All we can do now is the best with what’s left. Why do you think I’m working on this study?”
They sat in silence for a moment. “Have you talked to Kalea since she and Mom had the argument last week?” Avery asked.
“We messaged a few times about the study and I did talk to her this morning, but it was ‘Merry Christmas’ and small talk. I guess I should call her to find out what her take is on this thing with Mom.”
“Mom is mad at the world. This whole thing with Dad hurt her, and she wants to hurt the world back,” Avery said. “She’s always angry. I could barely stand it at Thanksgiving, and I’m surprised you wanted to bring her up here.”
“I hoped getting Mom in a different environment would help her,” Annaliese said. “I guess it worked in some capacity. She hasn’t said anything to me about the argument with Kalea. But then again, she hasn’t mentioned Kalea or the rest of the family since she got here.”
“I feel like I’m in a trap. I feel guilty about not spending time with Dad while he was alive. I also know I should cherish the time I have with Mom now, but she’s so moody and unpredictable that I don’t want to be around her.”
Annaliese laughed. “Grief has that affect on people. You never know what you’re going to get. It turns people into emotional shape shifters.”
“Will she ever be the same?”
Annaliese looked in the kitchen. “None of us will ever be the same. Sometimes you can’t go back, and this is one of those times. Everything’s changed, and we changed with it. The question is; what will we become now?”
Avery followed Annaliese’s stare. “It will be interesting to find out.”
Chapter 35
“Ma’am, there’s an Evan Stanton here to see you,” Marcel, the housekeeper said from the doorway of Annaliese’s study.
Annaliese smiled and stood. “Mr. Stanton, thanks for coming over. Please, have a seat,” she waved to the chair across the desk from her.
Evan smiled and sat as Marcel walked out and closed the door softly behind them. “It was no problem. My in-laws live up here, so I was in the area. Thanks for seeing me.”
“So you’re the investigator in the funeral board case my mother filed.”
Evan’s smile dropped. “I’m not here in an official capacity.”
Annaliese smiled at him. “I know. That’s why I asked you to come by the day after my family flew back to their respective homes and while my husband was playing golf with some friends.” She looked out the window. “Nice days like this are rare in late December.”
“The weather here is similar to back home, except not cold enough for snow.” Evan pulled out his computer. “Dr. Boyce, I promised not to take much of your time, so I’ll get right to the point. I am working on the investigation into the cremation of your father, and the funeral director found something abnormal on his internal investigation that I thought you might be interested in for your study.” He tapped the display app to project the screen in mid-air over Annaliese desk. “Ross Gilbane, the defendant, in this case, has been working in the funeral industry for over twenty years. It’s a family business that’s been handed down from his father and his grandfather. He knows his stuff, and he welcomes the opportunity to integrate what technology he can into his business. He was required to upgrade his scanning equipment to ensure that bodies for processing didn’t have nanotech that needed to be deactivated prior to cremation or preparation for burial. He decided to overhaul the entire scanning module of the funeral home and had recently begun a practice of running complete scans of bodies prior to preparation. Your father was among one of the first used in this process.”
“I remember hearing about that in the news,” Annaliese said. “It’s an effort to make autopsies all digital. Kieran told me that South Carolina passed a law last session to make that the industry standard in the state.”
“Most states are doing that, but it’s taking some time to implement because the equipment is expensive, and supply hasn’t caught up with demand,” Evan said. “Mr. Gilbane has been nothing but cooperative. In fact, he wanted to call you himself with these findings, but given the sensitive nature of the case with your mother, I told him it would be best if I reported it instead.”
“I can understand that. He doesn’t need anymore trouble.” Annaliese paused. “By the way, please call me Annaliese. We aren’t working in an official capacity.”
“Okay, Annaliese. We’re in luck because Mr. Gilbane usually waits to do these scans until the body is ready for the cremation process, but since your mother didn’t sign an order; his staff did it right away before they injected the preservation chemicals into your father’s body.” He looked at her. “I apologize for being so graphic.”
Annaliese gulped, and then shook her head. “I’m a psychiatrist and did work on cadavers in medical school. It’s nothing I haven’t heard.”
“But it’s your father.”
“Please continue. I need to know the details if it relates to my study.”
Evan nodded. “The burial process requires that embalmment and chemicals be introduced to the body as part of the preservation process for potential viewings, which your mother indicated she wanted. As soon as your father’s body arrived at the home, Mr. Gilbane’s staff immediately ran a scan before beginning that process.” Evan tapped his computer, bringing up digital images of a body on the computer showing a thermal scan. “This scan was taken approximately one hour after Mr. Kerner’s time of death. Algor mortis should have been setting it and it seemed to be, but very slowly. In fact, his body was still registering 97.5 degrees at that time.”
Annaliese whistled. “That is unusual.”
“What’s more unusual is that there were very few signs of shutdown and decomposition. He was definitely dead. There’s no question about that. He had no heartbeat or neural activity,” Evan swiped the screen to show the flatline scans of biological readings. “Nothing was happening in there, but here’s what’s strange. It’s like the body was in stasis. None of the rigors had fully set it. Pallor mortis hadn’t begun at all. That usually sets in quickly, but his skin tone looked as bright and healthy as a day in the garden. There was no rigor mortis either. No indication of stiffening whatsoever. It looks like livor mortis was in progress, but the blood was congealing slowly. For all intents and purposes, he looked like he was sleeping. It’s like his body just stopped.” Evan paused and looked at her. “I have pictures of the body that Mr. Gilbane’s staff took when they picked your father up that prove this. I’ll give them to Dr. Patel, but since it’s your father, then I’d prefer that you not look at them.”
Annaliese nodded. “That would be under Dr. Patel’s committee anyway.”
“What you might be interested in is this,” Evan swiped the screen and brought up a neurological scan. “There’s electrical activity still happening in the brain. It’s not neurological. We established that much. Some random neural firing after death is normal, but it shouldn’t be happening over an hour later.”
Annaliese leaned toward the projection of the scan. “You’re right; it’s not from neurons firing. Can you zoom in?”
“I was hoping you’d ask that,” Evan zoomed in on the scan. “Mr. Gilbane couldn’t figure out what that was, or where it came from. He even contacted some scientists at the university to help him, to no avail. I had a few other contacts too, but we’ve come up short.” He looked at Annaliese. “Have you seen anything like this?”
Annaliese studied it. “It almost looks like some sort of protein pattern.” She zoomed out, gasping as a wavelength pattern started to emerge. “I have seen that. That’s the wavelength running through our satellite systems.”
“We wondered if you’ve been able to break it down further.”
Annaliese shook her head. “We’re still waiting for the satellite upgrades to finish installation and go live.” She zoomed back in, looking at the patterns. “We haven’t taken any scans
this deep on our subjects.”
Evan tapped at his computer and pushed it toward Annaliese. “If you’ll put in your UserName, I’ll transmit these files to you.”
Annaliese tapped at the computer. “I’m entering the group access account so everybody on the team will have it. Is that all right?”
“It’s why I’m here,” Evan took the computer from her and slid it in his briefcase. “Annaliese, I won’t lie to you. I don’t think this complaint against Mr. Gilbane is going anywhere. His father was a member of the board for years prior to his retirement, as was his grandfather. He fired the staff that was responsible for handling your father and paid for everything. Plus, if I understand what your mother told me correctly, your father changed his mind about being cremated after his dementia set in, so the family attorney wouldn’t allow him to change his life documents to put his wishes for a burial in writing. This is one word against another, and that usually goes nowhere. I think Mr. Gilbane’s going to get a fine and a private reprimand so the Board can say they did something.”
“And if these findings are useful to the research study, then the Board may not be inclined to take any action at all since it contributed to a larger study at the federal level,” Annaliese said.
“True.”
Annaliese sighed. “I tried to talk Mom into dropping this case and the civil suit. She’s still pretty raw over everything that happened with Dad.” Annaliese stared out the window at the winter sun casting shadows of bare tree branches across the house. “She watched him die twice.”
“I know, and I’m sorry,” Evan said.
“But this won’t bring him back. Nothing will.” She stopped as she realized that tears were running down her cheek. She grabbed a tissue from a box on her desk and swiped them away. “I’m sorry. It catches you at the strangest times.”
“I’ve been an investigator for this board for ten years, and I’ve seen the worst of the worst.” Evan stood and Annaliese stood with him, shaking his hand. “I’m sorry if anything I said caused that.”
“No, it wasn’t you. I’ve been locked up in here for nearly a week with the family.” She smiled. “In fact, I wasn’t supposed to do this now. I was under orders from my teammates on the study to take a complete break from the study during the holiday hiatus. They’ll be screaming at me for downloading more data during the break, but we need it. Thank you for coming.”
“It’s not a problem. Like I said, I was in the area,” he tapped his phone. “I just e-mailed you my business card in case you have any questions about the data. I’m flying back the day after tomorrow, but I’m willing to help out any way I can.”
“Of course,” she said, as she ushered Evan to the door, “and thank you. I know the team will be excited to have this data. It gives them something new to work with until the interstellar systems are able to give us more data to work with.”
“Anything to help,” Evan stopped at the front door and turned to face her. “I wasn’t going to say it, but Dale Zeigler was married to my wife’s cousin, so I have a personal stake in this. I just want to know what’s happening.”
Annaliese’s smile faded. “As do we all.”
Chapter 36
It’s time.
Kalea’s eyes popped open, taking in the image of her alarm clock faintly glowing three o’clock in the morning on January 1, 2097. “What do you mean?” she asked, groggy.
Annaliese received the final piece of data and the interstellar upgrades went live yesterday. It’s time for revelation.
“I thought we had a few more weeks.”
The others have modified the probe. They’re trying again, and the satellite upgrades will allow the deep space satellites to pick it up. It’s imperative that humanity knows us first. Get ready.
“They aren’t all in place. I’m not supposed to go back until next week.”
We will prepare you for your return to the Capitol.
“What about Annaliese?”
She doesn’t know what she has yet, but she will soon. The one that approached you before Christmas went to her. He gave her everything, just as we hoped. It won’t take long for the team to make the discovery now that the satellites are functional.
Kalea sat up in bed, breathing in the lights surrounding her. “I’m ready.”
Chapter 37
“You were supposed to take a break,” Dr. Patel said, as the images of scans ran across the wall of Annaliese’s office.
Annaliese smiled. “Relax, Dr. Patel. This is the only work I did over the break. This gentleman was only in town for a short time, so I took advantage of an opportunity.”
“I don’t care if she worked on break,” Mandy pored over the data on her own computer, “this is the best data I’ve got yet.”
“The satellite system upgrades running ahead of schedule helped, too,” Galen said. “There’s no doubt about it. The data from Mr. Kerner’s digital autopsy is an exact match with the deep space signals we’re getting.” He walked to the wall and grabbed two square screens projecting from his computer, bringing them side by side. “The left is the signal through the satellite systems running from deep space to here. The right is what we saw in the autopsy. They’re an exact match.” He zoomed in on both scans. “There’s the specific pattern. What’s happening on the inside is mirroring what’s happening on the outside.”
Annaliese synched her computer projection with Galen’s, stood, and rounded up several squares to bring them next to the two main scans. “I got neurological scans from the unstable patients that died after acts of violence. That pattern is in their scans, but it’s fractured. It’s like it wasn’t able to take a firm hold in their mind. I’m not sure why.” She swept in more squares from the left. “These are some scans from our current subjects in the study. They’re all the same. They have that pattern. The question is, why did some die, and some live?”
Dr. Patel stood, gesturing at the wall. “May I?”
They nodded and each took their seats, allowing Dr. Patel to log in to the projection and control the graphics. He swept the open windows to the side and brought a single screen. “This is a graphic of the pattern that we’re working with. Parts of it are unique to the individual, but those differences are slight. Overall, this is what we’re seeing, both in the patients and in the satellite systems. There’s no doubt that it’s a brain wave with something embedded in it,” he zoomed in to the bright, wavy lines that made up the wave. “I stared at this until I nearly went blind before it occurred to me to get more basic. I did a cross-reference check in the national database for this pattern and came up with this,” he swiped in another scan with his right hand beside his window.
Annaliese squinted at the scan. “That looks like a strand of RNA.”
Dr. Patel nodded. “Exactly. It looks like electronic RNA.” He tapped at the bottom bar on the wall and brought up another graphic. “Since it’s an energy strand, I asked Mandy to help me run a cross diagnostic with the neurological scans from our patients.”
Mandy stood, taking a place beside them. “My first scan was from Mr. Kerner,” she ran the video. A strand of RNA filled the screen. “I’m zooming in on a single strand.” She tapped the screen, where the energy RNA appeared running up the biological strand. “The energy scan shows that it bound with the amino acids in his RNA.”
Everybody gasped.
“That’s not all,” she increased the video speed. “If you watch this time-lapse of the twenty minutes it took Mr. Gilbane’s staff to run the scan, you see something interesting.” She pointed to the top corner of the screen. “It looks like the energy strand is separating from the proteins in Mr. Kerner’s RNA.”
“Whatever happened to him was coming undone,” Annaliese said. “Can you run a time-lapse on the separation?”
“The scan was only in progress for twenty minutes. Do you want to view the whole scan?”
“Show me the first five minutes.”
Mandy tapped her computer. The whole room watched in sile
nce while the energy slowly unwound from the RNA. Annaliese zoomed in on the acids for a few moments, then stopped. “It’s amazing. It looks like the energy started by pulling away from the amino acid in a single transfer RNA strand, and then it spread through the messenger RNA to the rest of the cells.” She zoomed out the scan and put it on fast forward, nodding. “It’s amazing. The transfer RNA is still sending information through the messenger RNA in a dead body.”
Dr. Patel nodded. “That might be why his rate of decomposition was slow. I looked at the pictures at intake, and I wouldn’t have thought that he was dead. In fact, Mr. Gilbane’s staff couldn’t start the embalming process because the body was still too warm, and the blood had barely congealed. That’s why the body was in a freezer.”
“So they could cool it down for processing,” Mandy said.
“Do we know if that happened to the other victims that spontaneously cremated?”
“I don’t know,” Dr. Patel said. “I contacted both families to request that information. Bruce Burke is coming back for a follow-up next week, and said he’d bring the information with him. Valerie Nettle’s’ great-niece said an autopsy scan wasn’t run.”
“So we don’t know if this lack of decomposition prior to cremation in Carson Kerner was an isolated incident, or something that happened to them all?” Mandy asked.
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