Biohack

by J D Lasica

Up in the air was an understatement.

  That’s where Tornquist’s legal mind came in. Waterhouse had recruited Tornquist last year for one reason: He was one of the nation’s leading experts on intellectual property rights. Not that there was anything remotely intelligible about the entire field, as Tornquist liked to say. Intellectual property law was a confusing thicket of case law and statutes about patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets, with little rhyme or reason governing much of it.

  And in the Age of DNA, it was about to get infinitely more muddled .

  After twenty minutes at a decent clip, they both stepped off, hearts pounding, and headed for the weight machines.

  “Okay, let’s start,” Waterhouse said. “What has your research turned up?”

  Tornquist looked around and saw they were the only ones within earshot. “Just for the record, I assume any discussion of grave robbing is purely hypothetical in nature and there is no intent on the part of any party to carry out such activities. Is that correct?”

  This was a little fiction Tornquist always insisted on, even when they were alone. They both knew that planning a criminal activity was not covered by attorney-client confidentiality. So Tornquist inserted a disclaimer into every discussion about the grave operations in case things went south later. He would stir in a few hypotheticals, sauté with scenarios, season with conjectures, and garnish with eventualities, so that he wound up with a thick stew of plausible deniability.

  The charade was annoying as hell but understandable. “Correct,” Waterhouse growled.

  Tornquist sat on the lat pull-down. He liked to talk between reps. “Let’s talk criminal liability first. Most of the relevant statutes date from the 1800s. Penalties have always been fairly light. That’s because most acts of grave robbing were committed by medical students. Apparently, there was one hell of a cadaver shortage back then. The statute of limitations on these things runs three to five years. After that, you’re home free on the criminal front.”

  Just as he thought. Waterhouse wasn’t worried about these nickel-and-dime grave robbing statutes. They were all written in an era when no one understood the value of the DNA that could be extracted from the bones of the dead. No, these criminal statutes were just a nuisance.

  “What about civil liability?” He was mostly worried about the company’s exposure to massive civil lawsuits .

  “Bottom line?” Tornquist hunched forward after doing fifteen reps. “Generally positive news. There’s a hole in the law. There have been a few times in history when the law hasn’t caught up with new technology. This is one of those times. We are definitely charting new territory.”

  This played to Waterhouse’s sense of adventure. They were pioneers, trailblazers—the Lewis and Clark of the new millennium! They would be the only ones with access to the DNA of the Legends. In perpetuity.

  Tornquist took a gulp from his water bottle. “Patent laws don’t apply. Neither do copyright, trademark, or trade secret laws. Right of privacy? The courts have never extended it to a corpse.”

  “All right, that’s good,” Waterhouse said. “Let me update you on the living legends.”

  There, the picture wasn’t so rosy, and Waterhouse filled in Tornquist on the latest. All the living celebrities they approached—sports stars, movie stars, Hollywood stars, supermodels—were holdouts, to a man and to a woman.

  “The agents for the baseball greats and the supermodels all say that sequencing their clients’ genes is out of the question. We just heard back from the representatives for the basketball legends about our latest licensing offer. A flat no, even after we upped our offer to $10 million apiece. Ten million for a few drops of blood, and they turn us down.”

  Not that cut and dried, but Tornquist knew that.

  “The agent for George Clooney made an insulting counter-offer. No better luck with the agents for any of the actresses on our list.”

  Waterhouse moved to the other side of Tornquist and began attacking the chest press.

  “What about the dead legends, if you don’t mind my asking?” Tornquist asked.

  To Waterhouse, this was one of the unappreciated wonders of the genome. DNA didn’t care if you were dead or alive—your genetic code could be lifted either way. All that mattered was that the DNA be accessible and relatively intact. The obstacles were often more legal than scientific, thanks to deceased legends that had talent agencies or estate attorneys.

  “We made some discreet inquiries at the agencies that represent Marilyn Monroe, Einstein, and Frank Sinatra,” Waterhouse reported. “They ruled it out, despite the attractive royalties package we offered. They’re happy to license out their clients’ digital image—but not their DNA.” He made one final thrust before setting down the weights. “Princess Diana’s people won’t even return our calls.”

  “No surprise.”

  The bottom line was that not a single Hollywood star or sports legend or tabloid celebrity would agree to sign over DNA rights, at any price. So over the past few months security chief Gregor Conrad’s operatives had begun scouring the globe, rounding up genetic material from both living celebrities and dead legends. Three of Conrad’s men, with the dubious nicknames Phantom, Sunshine, and Hardcore, had done so well they’d scored commission bonuses.

  They certainly had a lot of avenues to pursue. Just about anything was fair game for DNA sequencing: a hair follicle, a semen stain, a drop of blood, a wad of gum, a licked envelope, a sliver of bone, a sneeze captured in a tissue, a cigarette butt with a trace of saliva. Anything with human cells—just three or four information-rich cells out of a person’s thirty trillion cells would do. Not reproductive cells—almost any cells!

  Waterhouse began ticking off to Tornquist an inventory of the items already in hand from the Hollywood celebrities—an upper left bicuspid, secured from a dental office; a pint of blood donated at a mobile blood bank; hair clippings obtained from a salon on Sunset Boulevard; a sweaty bandana tossed into a concert crowd; fingernail clippings purchased from a Rodeo Drive manicurist. They’d begun acquiring sports memorabilia, too, including the glove of a legendary center fielder that was auctioned off at Christie’s.

  Waterhouse had paid out sums ranging from $3,000 to six figures for each item. Certificates of authenticity, nondisclosure agreements, hold-harmless clauses, and indemnification agreements were all signed, sealed, and delivered. He was waiting for the green light from Tornquist before sending them on to the DNA Sequencing Lab.

  “What say you, counselor?” Waterhouse watched Tornquist move to the cable biceps bar.

  “I’m not comfortable with how all of those items were obtained,” Tornquist said. “That said, there’s generally no privacy in the things people throw away. And while the law hasn’t addressed our precise situation, we do have some precedents on our side, which I’ll get to in a minute.”

  “Well, I hope so.” He knew there were billions to be made on people’s neurotic little insecurities. Every day people stream into plastic surgery offices, clutching magazine photos of celebrities and saying, “I want to look like this!” And every day they pony up for a sad little nip and tuck when they could be passing on the real thing to their offspring. Far more difficult to alter one’s looks with somatic cell gene therapy—your genetic destiny is partly baked in—but Lee’s lab coats were working on it.

  “Let’s run through the rest of your list first,” Tornquist suggested. “I have an idea that could make all of this case law moot.”

  “All right. Last week I filled you in about Lennon. Are we on strong ground there?”

  John Lennon—the most marketable musician since Beethoven! Waterhouse had nearly keeled over when he found out that Yoko had John cremated. What was she thinking? But Gregor Conrad tracked down Lennon’s green 1973 Chrysler Town & Country station wagon, bought by a Beatles aficionado at Sotheby’s for $7,000 in 1984. The auction house provided solid documentation that John and Yoko were the last owners—Sean Lennon was even conceived in the back sea
t. The car had been in storage in a garage in Queens ever since—complete with marijuana roaches and beer bottles on the floor. Waterhouse shelled out $5,000 for just the roaches, beer bottles, and rights to the hair fibers and semen stains that Henry Lee’s lab coats found in the back seat.

  Tornquist shook his head grimly. “Might be problems there. Semen conjures up all sorts of invasion of privacy concerns. And the roaches? I’m not sure the car’s owner could sell us marijuana cigarettes legally.”

  Christ! He hadn’t thought of that.

  “All right, let’s talk Lincoln and JFK. Any exposure there?”

  Last spring, Blackburn had organized a small operation as a trial run. Waterhouse knew that removing Lincoln’s remains was an impossibility. His coffin was embedded in steel and tons of concrete six feet underground, due to some amateur body-snatchers back in the 1870s who’d gotten the coffin halfway out of its sarcophagus when they were caught in the act by Pinkerton detectives.

  But Blackburn found another way. He instructed Conrad to hire some freelancers to infiltrate the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington. After closing, they broke into the glass display case on the exhibit floor and made off with locks of Lincoln’s hair, bone fragments from his head, and the bloodied shirt cuffs of the doctor who performed Lincoln’s autopsy.

  On the same night, another team of Conrad operatives broke into a vault on the west side of the National Archives and removed the bloodied shirt worn by John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Breaking into the National Archives was no cakewalk, but it was certainly easier than launching a grave operation in the middle of Arlington National Cemetery.

  Waterhouse couldn’t resist a smile, recalling the tabloid frenzy the next day. Lincoln and Kennedy’s blood-stained garments, both stolen from government installations on the same night, both removed in paramilitary-style operations.

  Lincoln and Kennedy! The conspiracy nuts had a field day!

  Tornquist wiped his sweaty jowls on his sleeve. “Well, you’re getting into commercial use of stolen property. That raises all sorts of red flags. But the further back in time you go, the more solid your case.”

  He hopped on a leg extension machine and began doing leg lifts. Waterhouse followed him over and began doing 200 pounds on the power bench.

  “Not every heir or property owner will be able to show standing in court.” Tornquist grimaced between leg lifts. “Who owns the skeleton of Leonardo da Vinci? His descendants, 500 years removed? No. The Chapel of Saint-Hubert, where he’s buried?”

  Tornquist caught his breath then answered his own question. “When you bury your grandmother, does the cemetery become the owner of her remains, free to do with her as they please? No!” He finished his set on the device, letting the weights crash to the bottom with that emphatic No! “Of course, there’s always the moral dimension of grave desecration.”

  Waterhouse rubbed his brow with a towel. As far as ethical considerations, he had not a moment’s pause about desecrating a grave. The dead had had their day. They had no use for a tooth, a bone, a scrap of skin. Out of their debris and rubble, he would build an empire.

  Tornquist turned to face Waterhouse squarely. “We’ve been discussing modern celebrities, the recently dead, and the long-ago departed. The law puts them all into different categories. But I think I’ve found a way around the law. If a case ever got to a civil trial, I think I’ve found a way that would allow a company to make commercial use of even illegally acquired genetic material.”

  “What are you talking about?” Waterhouse asked.

  “DNA from a Hollywood celebrity, a supermodel, or a dead president. I think I’ve found a way to get them in through the back door, so to speak. It’s pretty goddamn ingenious, if you want to know the truth.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that.”

  “Let’s take a hypothetical. Elvis Presley.”

  Waterhouse smiled wryly and tapped the canister in his pocket.

  “Say you’re running a genetic enhancement enterprise that came into possession of some Elvis DNA. You’re not in the business of selling slivers of the original Elvis. You’re sequencing Elvis’ genome and identifying the sets of genes that make up this unique individual, everything from his eye color to—one day—his magical voice.”

  “That’s the vision.”

  “As you know, identical twins aside, no two people’s genomes are exactly alike. And as unique as you and I and Sharon Sullivan are, we share a lot of the same exact genes. Somewhere out there, there are other people walking around with the same genes for eye color, hair color, and so on. It’s the totality of all of our genes and experiences that make us who we are.”

  “I don’t need a science lesson,” Waterhouse interrupted.

  “What’s to stop you from selling gene clones—stretches of DNA—that just happen to be identical to Elvis’s? Dead ringer genes. Elvis knockoff genes. There’s no law to prevent it.”

  “You’ve lost me. Knockoff genes?”

  “Here’s how Henry Lee explained it to me. From a biochemical standpoint, any two humans are more than ninety-nine percent alike in their genetic inheritance. That always surprises people, but it’s true. We’re more than ninety-nine percent the same. What that suggests is that few of us really have a unique gene—it’s the sum total of all 20,000 or so genes that makes you different from me.”

  “Okay, so what?”

  “So this. Say Brad and Brenda Brentwood are two of our rich clients. They’ve gone through preimplantation diagnosis, and they’ve settled on a male embryo they like, except for one thing: the poor little zygote has the gene for male pattern baldness. They’re willing to pay a premium of $50,000 for you to switch off that baldness gene, with the usual guarantees that it won’t otherwise affect their child. And you say, well, for $90,000 not only can I switch off that gene, I can insert a replacement gene that would give the child the exact same black wavy hair that Elvis Presley had.”

  Waterhouse still didn’t see how this would play out. “But I’d be using a DNA strand from Elvis to give them that. Right?”

  “No. Here’s the good part. You’ve got some Elvis DNA, so your lab knows the exact nucleotide sequences that code for Elvis’s hair. But there are thousands of other people out there with those same genes, resulting in the exact same set of hair. I’ve asked Harrison about this, and he says he can set up a search program in the quantum computers’ database to sort through all the human genomes we have on file to look for exact matches on those snippets of DNA. A person with dead-ringer genes, in other words.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then we find someone with the right knockoff genes, pay him a nominal sum, go back to Brad and Brenda Brentwood, and tell them we have Elvis’s DNA on file and we can offer you a trait for your baby that matches Elvis’s DNA 1,000 percent. Whether the Lab uses the dead-ringer DNA or Elvis’s actual DNA, the end result is exactly the same. Sort of like a digital copy, identical to the original.”

  Waterhouse nodded slowly. Now he understood. “So in effect, for that one trait, they’d still be getting Elvis’s exact hair—but it would be coming from a different source. A source with no legal baggage.”

  Tornquist thudded his black eyelids and nodded triumphantly .

  Waterhouse let his 200 pounds of weights crash as the realization sank in.

  “That’s brilliant!”

  “Think of the implications,” Tornquist said. “Once the science gets there, you’d be able to market any trait—breast size, eye color—from any source, living or dead. Marilyn Monroe’s cleavage. Jack Kennedy’s smile. Morgan Freeman’s baritone. Ol’ Blue Eyes’ vocal chops. All quite legal, using knockoff genes instead.”

  Waterhouse felt a giddy, intoxicating thrill begin to build. When he had first begun planning the grave operation, he had expected some of the sales and marketing would have to be done through exclusive back channels. But if Tornquist were right about this, the entire process would be much simpler. He felt dru
nk with possibilities. No celebrity target would be off-limits. No genes of historical legends would have any legal obstacles.

  Waterhouse rose, ready to end his workout. Then he remembered: one last bit of business. He drew the small canister from his pocket and set it on the seat of the power bench. He unlatched the metal box and opened it. “I want you to see this.”

  Tornquist came over, bent halfway down, and peered inside. He pulled out a small sealed plastic bag and held it up to the overhead lights. He squinted at it, like a kid looking at a jar of bugs. “Whose is it?” He dangled the tiny pouch of black hairs aloft.

  “You were just waxing poetic about him a minute ago.”

  “You’re playing with me.” Tornquist examined the pouch closer. “Elvis? Is that you? You’re goddamn playing with me, Waterhouse.”

  “I don’t joke about shelling out a hundred thousand dollars.”

  Tornquist put the bag of hairs back into the canister and fished out the last two items. A red cloth pouch wrapped around a tiny test tube holding a small piece of skin lying at the bottom—a wart—and a small airtight plastic bag holding a toenail .

  Tornquist inspected each item. “Nice.”

  Waterhouse gave the barest hint of a nod. “The hairs were procured from Elvis’ Los Angeles hairdresser. Toenail collected by a maid who found it in Elvis’s bedroom at Graceland and kept it as a keepsake. The wart was removed from Elvis’s right wrist by a Memphis doctor in 1957. If you look at pre-’57 photos of Elvis, the wart’s right there. The collector supplied bedrock-solid documentation—they’re the genuine articles.”

  “Good Christ.” Tornquist returned all the items to the canister.

  Waterhouse slid the canister back into his pocket. The wart, toenail, and hairs were already insured for $10 million with Lloyd’s of London.

  He was relieved he wouldn’t have to dig up Elvis’s grave at Graceland. Hundreds of thousands of fans still flocked to Graceland each year, and millions continued to buy his records. Elvis! The epitome of celebrity, of staying power. Now that’s romance . It’s exactly what he was looking for with the DNA Legends—heroes who are larger than life.