The Zen Gene

by Mains, Laurie

  She had been afraid of him when he opened the door at Andi’s house and he hoped this first impression could be overcome. It was clear Andi had never talked about him and then out of nowhere this strange man shows up and everything goes to hell.

  “I’ve been thinking about what Tyler told you about infecting you with his virus,” he started. “I think he is wrong about what could happen. I don’t know if you are aware that I am a geneticist and I know there are many things including viruses which do not get passed from mother to child. In all probability he is wrong about your future offspring having the virus.”

  He watched darkness gather in her face as her expression hardened and she looked him in the eyes.

  “Like he’s been wrong about everything else?”

  The tone of her voice left no room for arguing further on that point. He winced at the sharpness of her comment but he was also buoyed by her strength of spirit. This was a strong young woman, he thought, she will be a survivor no matter what happens. She was right to say that Tyler had been correct about most things. Her fears, given what was at stake, were well founded. There were many reasons for her to be upset about what he did to her not the least of which was it made a lot of assumptions about what she would do with her life.

  Before he came over to talk to her Andi told him that Zen had completely freaked out on Tyler when he told her she will be glad to have a baby with the virus.

  ‘A baby will spread POrna all over the world,’ he said. When she started crying he tried to undo the damage by explaining to her how an infected baby would be a good thing for the world.

  He looked at her face now and could not imagine what she must be feeling or what kind of horror movie scenario was running through her mind when she thought about someday giving birth to an infected baby. She must surely wonder, he thought, what else would be wrong with it.

  “The problem is that Tyler does not understand that what he did was wrong. To him it was a perfectly reasonable action to take and it never occurred to him you would not want to do it,” he said.

  After he said it he shook his head at the extreme awkwardness of how he was approaching this. He watched the negative effect his ill-chosen words were having on her. He decided to try a different tack completely.

  “He believes you are his girlfriend. You realize that, don’t you?” he said.

  She got up from the table and walked to the sink and spit an orange pip into it. She turned on the water and flipped the switch for the garbage disposal and used a finger to slide the pip and pieces of peel down the drain. The noise of the grinder saved her from having to respond to his question right away. The truth was she did not know how she felt or what she thought about any of this, not that there was anything she could do about it. The whole freaky idea of him giving her his stupid virus was creepy.

  Did she want to know someone who would do a thing like this? The real problem was she had no choice about any of it. She was already infected and there was no way to undo it.

  “I kind of understand what you’re saying. He thinks I’m his girlfriend and that made it okay to infect me because he doesn’t get the whole concept of right and wrong, like laws or rules. I get that part, but it still hurts that he would do that to me. I was sick in bed for over a week. I thought we were friends and then he treats me like some kind of lab rat to do his weird experiments on,” she said.

  “Andi told me that when you were sick in bed and he refused to go to school and he came over every day to be with you,” he said.

  “So what, he hates school,” she said.

  He heard the bitterness in her voice and he knew he was losing his opportunity to reach her. He decided to get away from reason and facts and make one last attempt.

  “Can I just say this, Zen? I know it’s not my place but I think you need to hear it,” he said.

  He got up and walked over to her. He stood in front of her and looked her in the eyes. “In my heart I believe that he loves you, but he doesn’t have words to express what he feels. He cannot show you the normal signs of love a young woman would expect to see, but his actions reveal his heart. I do not profess to know how his mind works, but I have eyes and I’ve seen how he looks at you. No matter what you decide to do, please remember that what Tyler did was not from malice or indifference, it was from love. Remember also he created this virus because of something you said to him. He obviously sees a future in which you and he are together and this should tell you something of his feelings for you,” he said.

  Her lower lip trembled and she turned her face away not wanting him to see her tears.

  “I guess I know,” she said.

  He put his hand on her shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze and then turned and walked to the door and let himself out.

  When he got back to Andi’s he let himself in and found her flaked out on the couch.

  “I think she will be okay, and I don’t think she will report him to the police or anything. So far she has not told her mom, but she has a lot of stuff to think about,” he said.

  She sat up and he flopped down beside her and smiled.

  “What did you say to her?” she asked.

  “I told her he did not do it to hurt her and he’s probably wrong about the baby thing,” he said.

  “Is he wrong?” she said.

  He thought about it, shook his head, and grunted a negative.

  “But he could be?” she said.

  There was a tinge of desperation in her voice.

  ”I wouldn’t bet on it. To quote Zen, he has been right about everything else. If those two had a child together, which is not likely given how she feels about what he did to her, their offspring would almost certainly be a carrier. It would be somewhat less likely if she has a child with someone else but the bigger problem they face is not a child with the virus. It is when word about POrna gets out to the wider world they will be in danger,” he said.

  “In danger from who?” she said. The look on her face showed equal parts confusion and fear.

  “Almost anyone who has an interest in killing or controlling people, which includes arms makers, religious groups, governments, and probably a whole lot of people we can’t imagine,” he said. He felt her tremble as the meaning of his words sank in and he put his arm around her shoulder to comfort her and she drew closer to him.

  “How can we protect them from that?” she said.

  He understood the fear and turmoil she was feeling and he squeezed her in support. Her fears for Tyler and Zen matched his own. It was strange how only a few hours ago he did not know he had a son and now he found himself caring deeply about him and what might happen to him.

  “I’m working on an idea. It is possible we won’t have to worry about any of this, but I do not want to discuss it with Tyler in the house,” he said.

  She turned and looked at him questioningly. She was wondering why he did not want him there but she agreed.

  “Okay.”

  He wanted to keep her mind off the bad news, at least until he sorted out his thinking about the plan, and he changed the subject. “I told Zen he loves her,” he said.

  He watched her face to see how she would react and he thought he saw something cross her eyes. It was only a flicker and it was gone as fast as it came but it meant something.

  “No shit, Sherlock,” she said, smiling a little too brightly, and he noticed that too. “He has been crazy about her since they were little kids, and she has always adored him,” she said. This last statement was said with less enthusiasm and he remembered how complex Andi was emotionally. When they were together in Toronto he often found himself trying to guess why she reacted in a particular way and it was this past experience which allowed him to more accurately read her now.

  He detected the hurt she was feeling in the tiny down-turned margins of her smile and when she spoke he realized her words were an attempt to conceal what she was feeling. It was also clear to him she didn’t want to appear foolish by revealing the petty jealousy s
he felt about Zen’s close relationship with Tyler, but she was having trouble covering it up. She watched his face and knew he was reading her, because he always could, and she decided it was time to steer the conversation towards another subject.

  “Do you think it would help if I sent him over to her with some food,” she said. “I don’t think she has eaten all day.”

  “I think that would be a great idea,” he said, hoping to defuse the tension his comment created by trying to be funny, “and if he comes back unscathed we will know my Svengali charms have worked their magic upon her.”

  She could not help it, though she did not feel like it, she laughed. It was his crazy sense of humour that drew her to him in the first place.

  “I will prepare the bandages in case your magic has weakened, Oh Great One,” she said.

  She wore a smirk on her face when she said it and he knew he was successful. She made up a tray and called Tyler up from the basement.

  “Zen is upset with you. I made sandwiches for you to take to her,” she said. He did not say anything because he was staring at the tray of sandwiches. “When you give them to her, if she lets you stay for a while, don’t eat them all,” she said.

  She read Tyler’s mind and he chuckled when he heard her say it to him. He left with the food and she reminded him again as he walked out the door not to talk about viruses or babies. The door slammed and she watched out the window to see if she would let him in and when he did not come back she grabbed two beers from the fridge and rejoined him on the couch. He was sitting in the semi-darkness of the living room staring out the window deep in thought.

  She handed him a beer and took a long pull on hers. It had been a dreadful day and she was weary but she knew they needed to talk about everything that happened and what they were going to do about it.

  “Are you up for a conversation?” he said.

  “Are you kidding? Where do you want to begin? Explosions, viruses, terrorists, weird genetics, or infected babies?” she said. There was an ironic half smile on her weary face. “There is no shortage of interesting and entertaining topics to choose from,” she said.

  He laughed partly because he was amazed she had a sense of humour after a day like this. He also knew she could not have much energy left after working a full shift and with all the other things which happened she must be completely exhausted. He would try to go easy on her but they needed to cover a lot of ground. He knew this would have to be the end of the small talk. There were important decisions to be made and they had to be made tonight. “I’ve been trying to sort out what needs to be done,” he said.

  “I need to find a good lawyer,” she said as she slumped lower on the couch. “If the Sergeant dies do you think they will charge Tyler with manslaughter?” she asked.

  “I don’t know how the law looks at things like this but there is something else something potentially worse which you do not know about,” he said.

  Her face went white and he watched her brace herself for the next salvo of bad news in a day of seemingly non-stop hits. Her eyes were wide with expectation and her bright irises were dilated with fear as she wondered what could possibly be worse than what already happened?

  “When we were driving to the Emergency room, Lieutenant Hunter told me they found a corpse in the abandoned factory where Tyler has his lab,” he said. The sharp intake of breath was all he heard as her eyes closed, squeezed tight, in an effort to end this nightmare. “When I was talking to him downstairs he confirmed it but more importantly he told me how the person died,” he said.

  “Who is it? Did he do it?” she whispered urgently, eyes closed, wanting to gather all the pain she knew was coming into a single survivable blow to get it over with, not daring for a moment to allow it to be true yet knowing full well it could be.

  “No not directly. He said it was a street person who broke into the factory and he went into the lab he was using at the time and started opening stuff,” he said.

  She cut him off, “This is all wrong, Lee. I need to call a lawyer and then the police. If he didn’t kill him then whatever happened to him was an accident. They’ll understand won’t they?” she pleaded.

  “He did not directly kill the street person but, unfortunately, there is more to it,” he said.

  “If the Sergeant dies his death was accidental and I’m sure it can be handled by a competent lawyer. The death of the person in the factory was also an accident but what he died of is the problem,” he said.

  She stared at him, her face a mask of confusion, her eyes asking the question her mouth could not form.

  “Tyler told me he died from exposure to anthrax,” he said.

  The deep lines of fatigue and confusion on her face told him she was starting to sink from all the stress and bad news.

  “Isn’t that—?” Her voice trailed off leaving the question unfinished.

  “Tyler looked for and found anthrax spores at the farm across the road. He told me he was planning to use it as a delivery agent for his virus because he thought it was more virulent but he gave up on it after the homeless person broke into the lab and died from exposure to it. He could no longer safely enter the lab and he sealed the door with duct tape.

  The problem is the authorities will not understand what he was trying to do when they discover the cause of death was anthrax. It is a big red flag for them because terrorist groups have used it as a weapon in the past. Do you remember stories about people receiving letters in the mail with anthrax inside back in the eighties?” he said.

  She nodded. She vaguely remembered news stories about it.

  “Luckily he gave up trying to use it when he witnessed first-hand how dangerous the spores are. The immediate problem we face is potentially much worse than his POrna virus. When the body is discovered the local authorities will notify the federal anti-terrorist unit in Ottawa. Anthrax is high up on their watch list.

  They will not be convinced he was trying to do something positive for humanity and they will almost certainly demand he be tried as a terrorist.” He watched the growing look of horror on her face as the truth of what he was saying and what it might mean for their son sank in. She was absorbing it when he said “Here is my plan. POrna is potentially a much bigger issue but for all practical purposes the authorities do not know anything about it yet. This anthrax problem, on the other hand, cannot wait. It must be dealt with immediately. My plan is simple I will go into the lab tonight and clean it up and remove any traces of anthrax spores,” he said.

  Her hand covered her mouth and her eyes were sunken and dark with worry. “Can you do that? I mean, what if it kills you too?” she said.

  “I have the necessary training to handle hazardous agents and thanks to Hunter I have a high quality bio-suit to wear,” he said. He paused and sipped his beer giving her time to absorb what he said as he decided how to approach the next item they needed to discuss. They sat in silence together as the seriousness of the situation sank in. “There is one more thing we need to talk about,” he said.

  “Oh my God. There’s more? What is it?” she said.

  “Will you let Tyler go in with me?” he said.

  Andi’s hand flew to her throat in a gesture which was instinctively defensive. He asked her to put her child in danger and to her shocked horror she was actually considering it. Too much was happening too quickly and she no longer felt in control of anything. Their lives had caught fire and there was no time to think about anything except putting out the flames threatening to devour their son. Lee came back into her life and it was wonderful and it felt right. Now he was asking her to do this and she was terrified. It felt like she was gambling with Tyler’s life and if she lost it meant she could lose both of them.

  “I will go with you,” she said.

  The desperation in her voice tore at his heart. What an awful situation I have put her in, he thought. But there was no other way.

  “It has to be Tyler. He knows exactly where to find the virus and anthrax spores an
d what needs to be done to clean the lab. There is no other way to do it, if I could do this alone I would in a heartbeat, but it would take too long to find all the contamination and I could easily miss something which could identify him. Has Tyler ever been fingerprinted?” he said.

  When he asked her this question the remaining thin strands of control slipped from her grasp and she let out a sob. Everything they talked about up to that point was in the abstract but fingerprinting and everything that implied made the danger to her son concrete and immediate. She envisioned him being forcefully fingerprinted and she lost what little control she had left.

  ***

  Zen turned off the kitchen light and walked through the darkened house to her bedroom. She turned on the ceiling light but did not go in, something had made her pause, and she stood in the doorway gazing in. The room looked different somehow; it seemed unfamiliar, like it belonged to someone else, someone much younger. It did not give her the feeling of safety it usually did. She felt like the things inside belonged to a former life, one she no longer lived.

  It was not just what Tyler did to her that made her feel this way this feeling had been coming for a long time. The things in her room were from childhood. Her stuff was scattered everywhere and she did not know why but the sight of it scattered about made her feel ashamed. She began to pick up the clothes she’d thrown on the floor. They were everywhere and she felt embarrassed for her lack of caring as one by one she picked them up and put them into the laundry basket.

  She was confused and uneasy about everything that happened today and as she straightened the shade on her Princess Jasmine bedside lamp she frowned at the thick layer of dust.

  She was thinking about Tyler because he was confusing, she wondered if Dr. Mann was right about him? She supposed that in his own weird way he did love her. She thought she saw something in his face today when he looked at her while they stood in the sunbeam together.

  She lifted the lid on her jewelry box and looked at the baubles and girl stuff inside, and she picked up a pink plastic hair comb. She could recall the day she bought it at Zellers and how cool she thought it was though now she could not recall the name of the cartoon character embossed on it. She dropped the comb into the garbage can beside her desk.