The Bar Code Prophecy

by Suzanne Weyn

  “Don’t worry, Jack has landed on this roof before,” Eric said, though his expression was not confident. “And that was with the first swing-lo.”

  Grace kept her eyes fixed on the twisting sculpture and remembered what she’d learned in biology: the double helix represented a spiral polymer of nucleic acids held together by nucleotides that base-paired together. It was how genetic information was stored and copied. Genetics was what Global-1 was all about. It had started as a company that made hybrid food and grew to one that made animal clones for meat production. Now it was trying to make hybrid people. And it was doing everything in its power to control the population, just as they had cornered the market on the world’s food supply. We’re just a product to them, like cattle, Grace had seen Ambrose Young quoted as saying in a recent article — the image had stuck with her, even though she’d thought at the time it was overblown. Now she considered it in a different light as the swing-lo rose ever higher.

  What’s Genetics Got to Do with It?

  Article by Allyson Minor

  Reporting from the California Institute of Technology

  GMO: genetically modified organism. All your fruits and vegetables are genetically modified. As far back as the early 2000s Global-1, acting under the company names of its subsidiaries, was granted patents on its hybridized foods. In the 2010s, it filed for and received patents for its cloned sheep, cattle, and pigs. These were then used not only as meat for consumption but also as living tissue for its organ cloning programs. Maybe you’ve seen the famous photo of the rat with a human ear growing from its spine. And then Global-1 turned its attention to you.

  That’s right: you. And all your human friends and family. How would it be if you could fly? Or see in the dark? It might be cool. It might save lives.

  The problem is that Global-1 thinks that since it is going to such huge expense to develop these technologies that could improve you — just as they believe they’ve improved the tomato and the pig — they should also have a patent on you.

  Put simply, Global-1 wants to own you.

  And it practically does.

  It has already branded almost all of us who are seventeen and over with its bar code tattoo. I resisted for a while but gave in so I could enter college. I was suspicious but even I didn’t know that my genetic information was being studied and stored within the lines of the Bar Code or that nanobots introduced into my bloodstream during the tattooing process were adding a machine component that could be manipulated by Global-1 at will.

  The brave individuals who have been able to resist the bar code tattoo and who have exposed these outrages to the public are not convinced that the danger has been resolved. Despite calls for his resignation, Loudon Waters, the Global-1 pawn, is still our president. The bar code tattoo continues to be the law of the land.

  “We’re just a product to them, like cattle,” Ambrose Young has told the Senate.

  But why would the government listen to resistors? If we are cattle to Global-1, then the government is a herd of sheep.

  Decode remains committed to guarding your freedom. Support them in any way you can. When you meet a Postman — the Decode organization that works to keep you communicating off the grid — ask how you can help.

  Eric and Grace sped lightly down the dimly lit top floor of the GlobalHelix offices. The roof door had been locked, but luckily it was an old-fashioned lock, and among the few items Eric carried in a backpack was a lock-picking kit.

  Once they were inside, they headed down a flight of stairs to an executive suite of offices. It was strange for Grace to think that just this morning, she worked here. She pointed at the line of light emanating from under the door of Dr. Harriman’s office. She’d never been inside it, but she knew where it was.

  “He’s still here,” she whispered to Eric.

  Or at least she hoped so. It could also be a trap.

  There was only one way to find out.

  “Dr. Harriman?” Grace inquired as she opened the door.

  Dr. Harriman looked up sharply from the laptop on his desk.

  He did not look happy to see her.

  “Grace! What are you doing here?”

  “I need to talk to you. You’re the inventor of the bar code tattoo. Do you know why there is a priority file on me?”

  “Well, you’re certainly a direct young woman.”

  “I have to be. My family is missing. I’m trying to find them and I can’t afford to wait.”

  It was as if Grace could see his scientific mind weighing the options. “Maybe I do know something about it,” he hedged. “Who is your friend?”

  Eric stepped forward. “My name is Eric Chaca.”

  “You’re Native American?” Dr. Harriman inquired.

  Grace thought this was a strange thing to say, but Eric seemed to know why Dr. Harriman was asking. “My father is half Hopi, half Irish,” he answered. “My mother is full Cherokee.”

  “Have you come to talk to me about The Bar Code Prophecy?”

  Grace turned toward Eric — the prophecy, again — but Eric wasn’t paying any attention to her. Instead he and Dr. Harriman were locked in a meaningful stare.

  “I didn’t come for that,” Eric said. “I had no idea you knew anything about it.”

  “But you know about it, don’t you?” Dr. Harriman said.

  Nodding slowly, Eric approached Dr. Harriman. “First things first,” he told the older man. “Why is there a top priority file on Grace?”

  Dr. Harriman’s ice blue eyes darted thoughtfully between Grace and Eric. Grace’s heartbeat quickened with anticipation.

  “There is a special top priority file on Grace Morrow because she is the daughter of the inventor of the bar code tattoo.”

  “Your daughter?” Grace spoke softly as the impact of his words struck her.

  “My daughter,” Dr. Harriman confirmed.

  Now it was she and Dr. Harriman who studied each other with keen eyes, each searching for physical features that might connect them. There was nothing Grace could see. Where his eyes were bright blue, hers were a deep brown, like her hair. But slowly she realized that the shape of her eyes and line of her eyebrows were the same. She owed the ridge of her cheekbone to him, too.

  “The darker gene often dominates,” Dr. Harriman remarked, as if reading her thoughts. “But I see much of myself in you.”

  “Why didn’t you want her to get the bar code tattoo?” Eric asked while Grace stayed almost frozen, finding it hard to absorb this shocking new piece of information.

  “I’d like to explain all this to you someday, but there’s something you should look at right away.” Dr. Harriman beckoned for them to come around his desk and look at his monitor screen.

  Global-1 police swarmed the bottom floor lobby.

  “What’s going on?” Eric asked, alarmed.

  “They arrived just minutes ago. They want me but I’m sure they’d be delighted to take you two, as well,” Dr. Harriman explained calmly. “So far I’ve locked off the executive elevators and the emergency stairways, but I’m sure they’ll figure some way up eventually.” He looked at them sharply as a new idea occurred to him. “By the way, how did you two manage it?”

  The deafening flap of helicopter blades suddenly roared around them. It sounded like more than one. “Drone helicopters,” Dr. Harriman observed. “I once wanted to be a helicopter pilot. Now the profession doesn’t even exist. It’s all drones.”

  “Why do they want you?” Grace asked. “You work for Global-1. Aren’t you on their side?”

  “It seems I’ve turned renegade on them,” Dr. Harriman explained. “No longer cooperative.”

  The chopper blades were growing louder.

  “We should go,” Eric said.

  “How are you proposing we leave?” Dr. Harriman asked.

  “We’re in a flying craft that takes only two,” Eric said. “I’m afraid we have to leave without you.”

  “I saw a photo of it online,” Dr. Harriman said.
“I read that it was used when this building was attacked just six months ago. Can’t I squeeze in?”

  “Come on, let’s go, Grace,” Eric urged, taking her hand and pulling her along. “Sorry, Dr. Harriman, there’s only room for two.”

  But you should take him, Grace thought. After all, Harriman was the prize. He was the one Decode would want. Grace was nobody.

  Still, Eric had made his choice. And he wasn’t going back.

  Together they ran back to the roof door. The moment they pulled it open, gale force winds assaulted them, stirred up by the two drone helicopters over their heads.

  Staggering under the wind of the whirring blades, they ran under the blinding lights from above, crouching toward the swing-lo. A line of red appeared inches from Grace’s feet and she followed its line to its source — the helicopter nearest them. “Laser stun!” Eric shouted over the thunderous roar.

  At the swing-lo, they dove inside. Eric activated the engine but didn’t turn on the lights. Immediately the craft began to rise. It was four feet in the air when a man’s hand grabbed the side. Dr. Harriman was trying to climb in.

  Acting on an impulse not to leave him stranded, Grace seized Dr. Harriman’s arm and began to pull. Another line of red pinged off the side of the swing-lo, raising sparks.

  “He’s too heavy for us to carry!” Eric shouted.

  “We can’t leave him out here like this!” Grace countered, gripping Dr. Harriman. It took all her strength to pull him in, his legs still dangling over the edge.

  The swing-lo weaved wildly. Grace clutched the scientist, terrified that he might fall.

  Red laser lines crossed the dark night.

  Eric regained control of the craft and flew horizontally to the right, staying below the helicopters. There was a moment’s respite in the laser attacks, and it seemed they had outrun the helicopters or at least eluded them in the dark.

  Grace craned her neck around Dr. Harriman. Although she could not see the copters’ lights, Grace could still hear them. They sounded close.

  Suddenly they rose on either side of the swing-lo, their lights nearly blinding. Eric pulled back on the throttle and the craft rose abruptly above the helicopters. The red lasers sparked on the sides. Pulling the throttle to the right, Eric sent the craft speeding horizontally, creating a distance between it and the copters. “We’re going dark,” Eric announced as he shut the swing-lo’s lights and flew out of the beams coming from the helicopters.

  The shaking that Grace had noticed earlier was now very strong. Eric drove the craft toward the tops of some trees. Their speed increased tremendously and Grace looked to Eric for an explanation. “I’m riding an air current,” he explained. “It’s pushing us along like a wave.”

  The swing-lo was suddenly flung upward with amazing force. “We just collided with one of the helicopters!” Eric explained. “I think they’re cloaked.”

  “Do you mean invisible?” Grace asked.

  Eric nodded. “Stealth technology.”

  “They are cloaked,” Dr. Harriman confirmed. “I developed the technology for Global-1 myself.”

  “Hang on!” Eric told them. “I want to go higher into this fog to get away from them.” When they had climbed steeply, the craft hung in the air a moment and then began to shake violently,

  “What’s happening?” Dr. Harriman demanded.

  “We’re too high!” Eric announced pointing to the gauge, which read 1000 feet. He reached under his seat and pulled out a nylon bag the size of a backpack. “There’s one under your seat, Grace,” he said. “Give it to the doc. You and I will share.”

  Rummaging under her feet, Grace withdrew a nylon bag identical to the one Eric held. “What is it?”

  The sounds of cracking metal made them all turn toward the jagged tear at the side of the swing-lo.

  “Parachutes,” Eric replied, pulling open his sack.

  “But it’s pitch black out there!” Dr. Harriman cried.

  “Just put it on, Doc,” Eric insisted.

  The swing-lo rattled even more violently. “Put this on, Grace,” Eric said, handing Grace a harness. “You’re going to clip on to me.”

  “Listen, Doc, we’re low to do a sky dive,” Eric instructed as he and Grace got into their halters. “Pull the rip cord right away, as soon as you jump.” He showed Dr. Harriman where to pull.

  “Grace, as we exit, tuck your chin and try to arch your back,” Eric explained, speaking with rapid urgency. “Don’t be scared. You’ll be clipped to me.”

  Eric attached Grace to his harness just as, with a horrific sound of tearing metal, the swing-lo ripped apart, its pieces disappearing into the night.

  Suddenly there was nothing beneath Grace’s feet. She wanted to scream but the tremendous force of the wind blowing into her face snatched away her breath. They were falling through the night sky.

  Grace was too amazed to be terrified.

  How was this happening to her? She was high up in the black night, free-falling rapidly through the sky.

  Then all, at once, with a tremendous whoosh, the chute opened over her head and she was floating, drifting toward the earth below.

  Grace opened her eyes and, in the first soft light of morning, saw Eric asleep a few feet away, his nylon backpack at his side. She sat up quickly, alarmed and confused about how she’d gotten into this field of dense tall reeds. And what was she sitting on?

  The nylon parachute beneath them snapped memory back to her: The wild feeling of falling through the night sky; her immense relief when the parachute opened; the hard rolling landing, tangled in the lines and nylon of the chute. Finally they had staggered into this field of high stalks and grasses and collapsed in this small clearing, grateful to be alive.

  Her last memory was of watching the lights of the two cloaked drone helicopters fly off, having abandoned their pursuit.

  Assuming, no doubt, they had died in the crash.

  Standing, Grace searched for Dr. Harriman but didn’t see him — though in this high grass he might be asleep just yards away. Opening her mouth, she was about to call to him, but decided that she didn’t want to wake Eric. Not yet, anyway.

  Grace needed time alone to think about everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours.

  There was so much to absorb, to try to make sense of.

  She was adopted. That was okay. Her family was still her family, the only family she’d ever known. But it might explain some of the differences she’d always been so aware of — why she was the only one who was good at math, including her parents; why she was the only one of them who was athletic and had no fear of heights; and probably why she alone was slim while the others tended to be shorter and rounder.

  All at once Grace knew who she looked like: Dr. Harriman. But with brown eyes. So who was this brown-eyed birth mother of hers?

  Grace remembered Kayla’s story of being part of an experiment. Mfumbe had said there was nothing like that in her file … but still, it seemed possible. She would insist that Dr. Harriman tell her everything. He owed her that now. She had saved him from the Global-1 cops.

  Turning her gaze to Eric, she felt less angry at him, not as betrayed. It was just that she had liked him so much and had loved thinking he returned the attraction. She could deal with this new relationship though. He was a good guy and she was glad he was around. She felt safer with him. She would never be able to trust him completely — but maybe she could trust him enough. He hadn’t left her stranded at GlobalHelix when he should have taken Dr. Harriman instead of taking her. That said something about his feelings for her, at least.

  “Grace?” Eric rubbed his eyes as he sat up. “Are you okay?”

  “No broken bones,” she reported.

  “Boy, you have a lot of guts,” Eric praised her.

  It brought a smile to her lips. “Thanks.”

  “Are you all right? I have some first aid stuff in my pack if you need it.”

  Grace was aware of her stinging arm that had bec
ome scraped when she landed, but the pain wasn’t too bad. “I’ll be all right. How are you?”

  “Still in one piece,” he reported. “You’ve had some day, huh? How’s your head?”

  “Spinning,” Grace admitted.

  “No kidding,” he sympathized. Eric stood and checked the area. “No sign of Harriman. I hope he made it down okay.”

  It hadn’t occurred to Grace that Dr. Harriman might not have survived the jump. “We should look for him,” she said urgently. “He might be hurt.”

  “You stay here and call out to him. If we get separated in this tall grass, we might never find each other again.”

  “We can find each other; we have our phones,” Grace said out of habit. She could always find her friends in crowds when they each had their phones — which was always. Ever since she could strap her bendable phone around her wrist, Grace even slept with it.

  Grace checked her wrist, and the image of Eric tossing it, in pieces, out the back of the speeding truck came back to her.

  Eric raised his eyebrows, shrugged, and grinned at her reaction.

  As the realization of her phoneless state returned to her, Grace frowned deeply. It was disconcerting not to have her phone and she felt terribly vulnerable without it. She had never before worried about being lost. With Tilly always crooning directions in her ear and friends only a finger glide away, she was never lost. It was as if she’d suddenly gone back in time to some long-ago past when people lived without being able to always contact each other.

  “You’d be in a Global-1 police station right now if you had your phone,” Eric reminded her.

  Grace wondered if that would have been so bad, but Eric and the others seemed convinced that it would be. So did Dr. Harriman.