Forever and Ever

by Dan A. Baker

“What a long strange trip it’s been,” she muttered, touching the picture.

  “We’ve got to go,” Will said, holding her tightly. “We need to find out what’s really going on.”

  Jasmine felt her mental equilibrium slip for the first time in her life as she sat in the Jeep with Will, waiting for Victor. She turned suddenly in her seat, feeling light headed, and for a long instant she was not sure she was really where her senses were telling her she was. It was a terrifying moment of decoupling with reality, and it rattled her. She bit her fist to stop the spinning.

  “There’s a piece missing in Victor’s story. I know there’s a piece missing,” she said aloud. Will jumped into the Jeep.

  The steel link gate went up slowly. Victor’s Ferrari started out. Will heard the deep whomp of a big American car being floored. A beat up old red Dodge Van leaped from the curb and tore down the street, broad siding Victor’s Ferrari in an explosion of glass and silver paint chips.

  The van backed up and rammed the Ferrari again. A tall rangy blond man jumped out screaming. “The enemies of God shall feel his righteous wrath today!” He pulled a long black shotgun out of the van and leaped over to Victor’s window. “Death, death is the wages of sin!” he screamed, firing into the window. Victor’s head snapped backward in a vicious arc. The protester fired repeatedly, and then he looked carefully into the shattered Ferrari. He raised his hands above his head, dropped to his knees and prayed. “Thy righteous servant comes to thee!” he yelled, putting the barrel under his chin. Just before he pulled the trigger he looked at Will and Jasmine; his wild eyes were gleaming.

  Nothing moved and there was no sound in the long moment of hyperactive reality. Will looked up and then down the street. Jasmine watched transfixed as Will slowly walked across the street, opened the passenger door and grabbed Victor’s black legal cases, and then quickly opened the trunk. Jasmine watched the demonstrator’s pink brains slowly slide down the white wall of the building in the weird pale orange streetlight. Will quickly backed the Jeep up and loaded the twelve heavy legal cases.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  As Jasmine fumbled for the fake rock with the house key, she had another loss of equilibrium. Just for an instant, she couldn’t remember where she was. It was like waking up in a dark hotel room somewhere on a long trip. She staggered back. Will caught her and held her for a moment. “We’ll be alright,” he said.

  This is the point at which the human fabric tears, she thought.

  Walking into the house was like going on a tour. She felt like she was in someone else’s house, looking at the things she and Earl had accumulated during the years. She sat down in the quiet living room and thought about soldiers.

  This is what it feels like to be surrounded by fear and death. Her ears were still ringing from the noise of Will’s gun. She saw the brains of the protestor running down the wall when she closed her eyes, and then the fear washed over her. Maybe they will kill us, she thought. The pull of the gravity of death was so strong now she almost wanted to go into that strange black place. Go into it so the hurting would stop.

  Victor is dead. She thought about him now, trying to see the good in him again. Victor had changed during the many years she had known him. When they were graduate students, she was attracted to him by his slashing brilliance and his immense capability. He tried to temper his forceful nature in the year they lived together, but he just couldn’t. “It feels like its right behind my eyes, and I can’t turn it off, I can’t stop it,” he would say, repeatedly.

  Victor was the first man that Jasmine had really tried to understand, and to accommodate, but it was too much. When she left him for Earl, he was shattered, but he understood. The last time in his life he looked at her, he still had that pleading look that made Jasmine look away, hoping he could find happiness somewhere.

  The picture always hung in his office. She remembered that morning so long ago, when Victor gave his new camera to a surfer to take their picture, looking out at Maverick’s on a cold winter day. Victor, the warrior, while surveying the battlefield, with his arm around a beautiful girl with long blond hair. He told her then that she was the only woman he had ever loved.

  Jasmine and Will sat down in the guest room downstairs. It was a big room with a nice picture window that looked out on the garden in thebackyard. They spent what seemed like an hour in the shower. Victor’s blood was on Will’s shirt. Not much, just a small streak, but it sent Jasmine reeling back into the earlier part of the day.

  “Do you think it was a coincidence?” Jasmine asked softly.

  “No, but it wasn’t them,” Will said.

  “Why?”

  “They wouldn’t kill him like that. They’d wait for a while and round up the money first. This way they lost it all. There was no one there to go through the car and take his briefcase. That’s why I waited for a minute. I think it’s the other player, but I don’t know for sure.”

  “He was the same man who accosted me a year ago,” Jasmine said.

  “Victor’s killer accosted you?”

  “He was a regular demonstrator at Genetechna. He was there everyday.”

  “That can’t be a coincidence. Let’s go to bed. That was enough intrigue for one day,” Will said, too exhausted to think anymore.

  Will went into a deep sleep while Jasmine sat on the side of the bed, looking at the gun. She could see the place of nothingness when she looked at the gun. She tried to sleep, but mostly just rested. The events wouldn’t play anymore in her battered mind. It was all just a deep sonorous tone.

  The hours dragged by until the darkness became dark blue, then delicate shades of color appeared out of objects. Jasmine got up and walked out on the deck. The garden was a shambles, but there were some early strawberries. The soft wind off the ocean washed over her. She sat down on the deck and listened for the sound of the surf, but it wasn’t there. The Hummingbirds were still flying around the empty feeder, the little hum from their wings made Jasmine smile. “Life finds a way, and it doesn’t forget,” she said, for no particular reason.

  Seeing the life return to Darla and Easton consumed her thinking now. Marjorie was bursting with life at the end. She found herself wishing Earl could have seen his treatment working.

  The tears fell on the deck one after the other in the early morning light, as Jasmine tried to shake the deep pathos she felt for her friends, and somehow find the strength to do whatever she needed to do.

  They ate breakfast on the deck, mostly inhaling the cereal and strawberries. The latte tasted so good, Jasmine thought as she sipped her favorite drink. The machine was expensive, and the Algerian coffee from Italy was hard to get, but the taste was exquisite and it made her feel at home. Will carefully swept the house for listening devices, but they talked mostly on the deck anyway.

  “The Church tried to outlaw coffee in the 15th century. They wanted to make it a mortal sin to drink coffee.”

  “Why?” Jasmine asked.

  “The Christians went 0-3 against the Arabs in the Crusades, and coffee came from the Arabs. The Church was a little sore, so the coffee had to go,” Will said. “But Pope Clement and others prevailed.”

  “I’m going to the FBI today,” Jasmine said.

  “That’s a bad idea.”

  “I have to get back into my world. I have to somehow get back into the world of propriety, of law, of daylight,” Jasmine said wearily.

  “You’re assuming they’re straight, but what if they’re not?” Will asked. “Why wouldn’t the FBI be straight?”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, their reputation is not quite what it used to be; and for that matter, the entire Federal Government is unpredictable. They might go along with these people, and throw you into the briar patch. You could be handing them everything they need to send you to prison, if they find the bodies. Think about it. That whole Federal Government is a vast vending machine, in Earl’s words.”

  “Then I’ll go to the press,” she said.

  “
Which also plays into their hands,” he said, wearily.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do these guys want?” Will asked.

  “Power,” Jasmine said.

  “And, what else?”

  “They want a lead.”

  “Exactly, and we inadvertently gave them a twenty-year lead in life extension technology and gene therapy engineering. They can easily whip up the political will to restrict and ban research in this country, just by prosecuting me. What do they need to do this?”

  “They need hysteria,” Jasmine said.

  “And you’ll hand them what they need to manufacture hysteria. Do you see what a bad idea that would be?”

  “I have to get out of this!” Jasmine screamed.

  “You go to the press, the TV news guys twist it, and suddenly you’re a Dr. Frankenstein. They’ll have just the story they need to crack down on garage biotech. I don’t think they’ll send you a thank you note, but they might.” Will stood up.

  Jasmine felt the weariness reach up for her again. She tried to speak, but lost her question in a flurry of confusion.

  “Victor told me why the Police never came to arrest me with the bodies.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “They didn’t get my work. They never saw the behavioral work Nielsen and I did. I only brought a few pieces of it with me to Havasu, and the runs on the Rockcrusher were just the homologies. They were useless without the rest of the data. Nielsen wanted it that way. They need me,” he said, stretching out his legs.

  Jasmine said nothing, as the pieces of the puzzle slipped together.

  “We developed ways of assaying personality traits that I haven’t even told you about. We are twenty years ahead of current knowledge, and they know this. They must have broken into the house just after we left and found out it was not on my mini-mainframe. If it was, they would have set me up for the slaughter out there, and it would have worked. Now they need me.”

  “How are they going to get you to you?”

  “Probably through you,” Will said, in his peculiar clipped manner.

  “Me, they’ll attack me?” Jasmine asked.

  “That’s a little clumsy for these guys.”

  “I want out of this so badly. I want to walk in the sunshine again,” Jasmine said. “I have to go look at Roy!” She leaped up and grabbed her purse. “He’s the only one left!”

  “See if you can talk Jonelle into a trip somewhere for a month or so, right away,” he said as she reached the front door.

  “Why?” Jasmine asked.

  “Just do it. Do it now,” he said, opening one of Victor’s legal cases.

  Jasmine decided to take a walk on the beach to gather some energy. It was still early and Roy wouldn’t be up yet. The smell of the ocean and the beautiful sounds of the small waves rolling up and dropping on the dark sand at Linda Mar beach reached into Jasmine and washed away some of the raw pain. She walked to the end of the beach and paused, looking at the place where she almost died. She thought about the time in the white light and wondered. She wondered what was there. Then she climbed the steep path up Rockaway Head.

  The wind picked up a little and a big California hawk flew over her for a while, hoping she would make the little field mice run as she walked through the scrub grass. The wildflowers were in bloom and the fog bank was hovering over the horizon like a global comforter. She watched the wind trace cat paws on the dark green ocean as it streaked down from the Northwest. The wind was cold but not harsh.

  She closed her eyes for a few minutes and felt the ocean absorb some of the rolling fear and conflict from deep inside her.

  “Roy will die if you don’t follow these instructions,” a man’s voice echoed behind her.

  Jasmine spun around. A tall gray haired man in a dark blue jacket stood there, holding a Manila envelope, smoking a cigarette. He had a long thin face and his watery eyes looked intense. He leaned very close to her, held her arm tightly for a moment, hurting her. “Don’t follow me,” he said, and walked off, dropping the envelope.

  The quick rush of anger stopped cold when she looked down at the envelope. Roy’s school picture was taped to the front. The jarring shock lasted longer than she expected and froze her in place. The visceral fear from the pain in her arm and the closeness of the man’s face jolted through her, as she turned to face the ocean. The torrents of emotion became one, just as they had yesterday.

  Will had the contents of several legal cases spread out across the living room floor. There were bank books, neat stacks of bearer bonds, Swiss franks in plastic wrappers, U.S. currency in six-inch high blocks, credit cards in three long black leather cases, and two large black velvet boxes. Will picked one up and took it over to the light. “Watch this,” he said, opening the heavy box. The diamonds glittered in the morning sunlight. “Nothing but the best for Victor,” he said.

  Jasmine said nothing. Money never impressed her and neither did diamonds. She showed the envelope to Will, who looked up at her, finally realizing something had happened. They took the envelope out on the deck and opened it.

  DON’T GO TO THE AUTHORITIES.

  DON’T GO TO THE PRESS.

  Will looked at the sheet of paper.

  Jasmine turned the envelope over so Will could see Roy’s picture.

  “A man gave me this and said Roy will die if you don’t follow these instructions,” Jasmine said.

  “I was hoping we were ahead of them,” Will said.

  “Control,” Jasmine said.

  “Control,” Will said, “I play ball, they shut down the biotech underground and you behave, or Roy dies. That’s their game.”

  “They probably went to a pheromone suite. They would have to get close to him to trigger expression. We could hide him, but this group is too smart for that. I think they’ll do it the other way,” he rolled his head back.

  “What’s the other way?” Jasmine asked.

  The phone rang in the kitchen while Jasmine’s cell rang in her purse. She answered them both. “Jasmine, thank God you’re here! A man walked into the backyard last night. He sprayed something in Roy’s face! I wasn’t home, but Roy told me about it. Now he’s sick and he’s throwing up. He looks terrible!” Jonelle said.

  “I’ll be right over,” Jasmine said, looking at Will who was holding the paper up. He turned it around and saw a message on the back. It read:

  SIX HOURS EXPRESSION

  30 DAYS UNTIL NEXT EXPRESSION IF NO OFF

  DEATH IN FIRST HOUR OF NEXT EXPRESSION

  “Jonelle said they had a man in the backyard with an aerosol device spraying something at Roy last night. He’s very sick,” Jasmine said.

  Will tapped his finger on the note, “Pheromone trigger. They wanted to show you that the gene is switched on. It’s up to you to switch it off and keep switching it off,” he said. “This could be history’s first genetic kidnapping.”

  “Could we find it?” Jasmine asked.

  “We’d need a mainframe cluster and a lot of luck. Marjorie’s might work, but it might not. We’d also have to determine the exact pheromone trigger. It might be synthetic. That could be tough, and we’d probably run out of time.”

  The door chime interrupted Will. They looked at each other for a moment. A big truck labored up the steep hill and turned around at the end of the street, finally backing into the driveway with a hissing of brakes and the loud metallic rattle of a diesel engine.

  “Dr. Metcalf, good morning and congratulations! I’m Megan Philips-O’Brien from Channel Five news, and we would like to do a short on-camera interview with you!”

  Jasmine was stunned. “I’m not ready, not now. I just…”

  “Oh please, Mrs. Metcalf! The entire Bay Area is so thrilled about your Nobel,” the chirpy young reporter said. “We would love to hear your reaction to the wonderful news of your Nobel Prize for medicine! Would you like a few minutes to get ready?” Another media truck lumbered up the hill.

  Jasmine looked at Wil
l, frantically trying to consider the implications of press. Will nodded his head.

  “I’ll be out in a minute,” Jasmine said. She leaped into the hall bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. The devastation and strain of the last two days made her eyes look hollow, and her skin so deeply tanned and weather beaten, made her look like a homeless woman. The phone rang in the kitchen, as she fumbled to find Jonelle’s home number. Will brought the phone in to her.

  “I’ll be right over Jonelle! We think we know what might be causing Roy’s illness. How long has he been sick?” Jasmine asked, dropping her overnight make-up case.

  “He woke up complaining of a stomach ache about midnight. He was sick about an hour ago, but he seems to be resting now. Maybe it was a stomach bug, or something. Who was that man? What was that spray, and why did he spray Roy?” Jonelle asked, trying hard to settle down.

  “I don’t know, Jonelle. I’ll be over soon.”

  “Are you alright?” Jonelle asked.

  Jasmine said nothing as the tears rolled down her face. She then said, “No.”

  “Jasmine, what’s happening to you?” Jonelle asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jasmine said, her voice cracking. “I just don’t know.”

  The first interview went well. Jasmine was able to shake off the fear and shock of the threat to Roy just enough to strike a confident poise with the reporters. Brian Burstein from Channel 7 was the last in line and the most efficient.

  “This backlash in the scientific community sprang up overnight,” he said. “There’s been a lot of talk about biotech scientists acting up.”

  “I’ve been out of touch for a few months,” Jasmine said.

  “What you said on camera was good. I think you’re going to be hearing from the biotech world about leading this new movement to protest some of these restrictions on research,” Brian said.

  “When will this air?” Jasmine asked.

  “Not sure. Today is a big news day. There was a big murder in Foster City last night. We still don’t have a name, and they can’t seem to find a next of kin.

  Getting into the Jeep snapped Jasmine back into the last few days so violently she had to get out for a minute. There was one of Darla’s sketchpads, one of the mangled bright green Frisbees from the dog pen, and the flattened, dirty Styrofoam coffee cups from the lost night in Santa Claus. A fear for Roy’s life stabbed into her heart now, as she tried to gather the strength to get back into the Jeep. She thought of Earl as she pulled the shift lever into reverse, and how much he wanted Roy to live.