by Jamie Metzl
Maurice’s face goes pale. “Are you okay?” He looks into my eyes, then Toni’s, then places a hand on each of Toni’s shoulders. “Toni?”
She looks at him, stunned, then nods tentatively.
“Gas at Heller’s earlier today and gas here,” I add. “Whoever is doing this is after something.”
Maurice lets go of Toni and faces me. “What do you think that is?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the dog, maybe Toni, maybe me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” I gasp, frantically reviewing the options. “It looks like the dog was genetically hacked in some way.”
Maurice stares, taking in what I’m saying. “What the hell?”
“I need you to give Toni protection,” I continue, “at least until we know what we’re up against.”
“All right,” Maurice says solemnly. “You may both need it. All I can spare is two twelve-hour shifts of two men each. Where will the two of you stay?”
Do I send her to her parents’ house in Independence? Should we both go there? Could that put her parents in danger? Does it make sense for us to split up? At least if I keep her at my place I’ll be able to keep an eye on her. “My house,” I say, looking over at Toni.
Her face is recomposing. She confirms the decision with her eyes.
“Can you have KC Power and Light shut off the gas lines leading into my house and maybe also the electric?” I ask, still only beginning to fathom that Toni and I just came a moment away from being killed.
“Will do. We’re in touch with them now. It looks like the blast in Heller’s lab came from a cyber-infiltration of the KCPL system. I’m guessing this one, too.”
I turn toward Toni and wrap her tightly in my arms. “I’m so sorry,” I repeat, feeling betrayed by the inadequacy of my words. I hold her as we watch her photos, her diaries, every vestige of this physical space, the memories, my Tesla, and the corpse of poor Sebastian broil in the massive inferno.
“He was a good little dog,” she says wistfully.
He was, I think to myself, maybe so much more.
“I should call my parents,” Toni says, breaking our private silence amid the deafening roar of the flames, sirens, and yells of firefighters coordinating their attack.
I hold her as she does, and for another hour as we watch the fire slowly die, the flooding lights illuminating the smoldering ruins. As the heat subsides, the November chill reaches ever deeper into our bones.
It’s nearly 3 a.m. when the first two police officers assigned to protect Toni and me deliver us to my place in Hyde Park and take up their positions at the front and back doors.
As we walk into the kitchen, Toni screams and grabs me.
“Okaerinasaimase, ureshiigozaimasu,” my Haruki 2300 personal service bot says, his expressive eyes opening wide over his shiny, white, round face. He places his hands on his thighs and bows deeply from the waist. “Gobujini modorarete ureshuugozaimasu.”
“That scared the bejeezus out of me,” Toni pants. “I thought that thing was out of juice.”
“Me too,” I say, wrapping my arms around Toni. I’d quickly grown leery of Haruki after it started linking to my u.D and appliances and following me around asking hundreds of questions during its initial LifeSync set up last year. When Haruki had gotten stuck, unable to navigate his four feet of shiny white carbon fiber through the clutter of my house to get to the recharging dock, I’d felt almost relieved. I’m just a bit embarrassed that only now, with Toni in such a fragile state, has Haruki suddenly found a burst of energy somewhere and reverted to his Japanese factory settings. “It’s okay, baby,” I say, tightening my grip. “Let’s go up.”
Haruki has run out of steam at the bottom of his bow and returned to his inert state. I roll him aside and lead Toni up the stairs, then prepare a bath and sit beside her as she bathes. When she invites me in, I take off my clothes and join her. Melting into each other’s arms as the smell of ash slowly recedes, we drift off to sleep.
29
The thought has somehow fought its way through the dreamy meandering of my subconscious. The electricity is still on. My body jerks awake.
I don’t know how long we’ve slept, but the last hints of warmth in the water tell me it can’t be more than half an hour. I pull Toni into me.
“Baby,” I whisper, trying to not convey concern.
Her body wiggles slightly, then folds into mine until it begins to recognize the discomfort of the cool water and with it, everything else. Her eyes open with a start.
“Come on, sweetheart,” I say softly, helping her up and wrapping her in a towel. She’s half awake, and I’m hoping she’ll be able to go back to sleep. I lead her over to the bed.
She stops halfway there. “I was having a crazy dream,” she murmurs.
“Go back to sleep, baby,” I whisper. Any dream is better than this reality. I lift the comforter and ease her in. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
I say the words but am not convinced. How can everything be okay when someone willing to kill has not been identified or stopped?
“I dreamed there was—”
“Just close your eyes, sweetheart,” I say, placing my hand on her head. “Get some rest. We’ll talk more in the morning.” I wrap her in the comforter, already rehearsing my conversation with Maurice.
She moans slightly, then rolls over to her side.
When I’m sure she’s asleep, I strap my u.D on my wrist, push in my earpiece, and head into the hallway.
“It’s not even 5 a.m.,” Maurice grumbles.
“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
“How’s she doing?” he asks, getting his bearings.
“I’m not sure it’s all sunk in yet. She’s still asleep.”
Maurice lets the silence rest. It’s clear this is not why I’m calling.
“Maurice,” I say, still feeling like an idiot for neglecting this last night, “the power and gas are still on. I’m really sorry to bother you this early, but I thought those were getting shut down immediately.”
“KCP&L was supposed to shut off those links last night. I’ll make a call right now.”
“And I may need an additional patrol car to take me to work. Until we know what we’re up against, I think it’s probably best to be careful.”
“I don’t disagree with your logic, my friend, we just don’t have that kind of capacity.” Maurice pauses. “But maybe we can get one of the department’s retirees to drive you around and keep an eye on you. You’ll need someone to actively drive the car in this kind of situation. The self-driving protocols are too predictable. It might cost you a few bucks. What time would you need it?”
“Would it be too much to be picked up at seven?”
“Probably,” Maurice says. “I have someone in mind for the job, one of the retirees, Tom Callahan. You can negotiate the terms when he gets there.”
“Thank you, Maurice. I really appreciate it.”
I tap off the call, then tap my u.D to shut off the wi-fi transmissions from my appliances. As I race around the house double-checking, I pass inert Haruki still bowed in the corner of my kitchen. Grabbing a modafinil from the back of the cabinet and popping it in my mouth, I vow to never again let my guard down like I did last night. Then I step into the garage and set up the generator.
A few minutes after seven I hear the car pull up. I walk quietly upstairs and back to my room. Toni is wrapped cocoon-like in the comforter.
“Baby,” I whisper, trying to find a tone that wakes her enough from her sleep to hear what I have to say but not so much she won’t be able to go back to bed. “I need to go to work.”
As the words leave my mouth I realize how poorly they’ve expressed what I’m trying to say. Of course, I need to file a story on the explosion and fire at Toni’s house and update the one I filed yesterday on the destruction of Heller Labs, but if that were my sole motivation I would not be leaving Toni alone after everything she’s been through. I need to go to
work because I am terrified that whoever killed Heller and triggered the two explosions is still out there, because we’re all in grave danger as long as that’s the case, because I have very little faith that the Kansas City Police Department will have the capacity or drive to understand in any meaningful way how the many strange and disparate data points all fit together.
She rolls her head slowly to face me and opens her eyes halfway. “Really?”
I place my hand gently on the crown of her head. “Go back to sleep, baby. Believe me, I’d rather stay with you. The police are outside the door. Your parents are coming by in a couple of hours. The coffee is in the pot. Just sleep as long as you can.”
A brief flash of wakefulness crosses Toni’s face. “Are you sure?”
“I won’t be long,” I whisper, knowing and feeling guilty on some primitive level because I should be staying here.
Toni’s look asks me if I’m confident I know what I’m doing.
“Go back to bed, sweetheart. I won’t be long,” I repeat.
She leans her head back grudgingly.
As I head out to the blue Lincoln parked in front, Tom Callahan steps out to greet me. He’s a bit short with graying hair parted on the side, an unkempt mustache, and a paunch, but I get the sense he can still pack a punch when he needs to. I reach to shake his hand. He takes mine to guide me into the car.
“The key is to minimize your exposure to the unknown as much as possible,” he drawls. “I’ll get you where you need to go in the quickest way possible. Big boss says we need to keep you safe.”
“No argument from me,” I say. “I just hope the guys at the house feel the same.”
Callahan observes me in the rear view mirror waiting for his reply. “I’m old school,” he says.
I’m not exactly sure what he means but the idea that there’s old and new school somehow makes me nervous.
The feeling of guilt is still with me as I step into the newsroom at 7:15 a.m. The entire floor is silent. I turn the corner and see Joseph waving his hands as he shifts the scores of documents across his cubicle’s digital wall.
He jumps up and rushes over when he sees me approach. “Boss,” he says. The small word overflows with concern.
We stand facing each other awkwardly. It’s as close as Joseph comes to a hug.
“Thank you, Joseph,” I say, responding to the words he would have expressed verbally if Joseph were that kind of person. “Toni’s okay, I’m okay, but someone seems to have wanted the dog or us dead and we’ve got to find them.”
Joseph nods slightly, understanding the implications of my words. “The police?”
“I just don’t trust they’re trying to pull all the pieces together.”
“And no one else—”
“I don’t know, Joseph,” I say. “Not anyone I know of.”
A quiet determination defines Joseph’s face. “Let’s do this, then.”
We walk to one of the small conference rooms and tap the icon to turn the glass walls into four frosted electronic whiteboards. I dictate the text for each category—Hart, Wolfson, Tobago, Santique, other big health companies, Heller, Heller research, Heller Labs, Toni’s house, Sebastian—then move each to a different section of the walls with my hand. Then Joseph and I start filling in the spaces around each of these data points. I dictate from my notes, and Joseph weaves in the information and files he’s collected. The data hubs around each of our big categories are filling, but no matter how much we add, it’s clear the narrative spokes connecting them are missing.
“What’s going on here?” The angry voice disrupts our trance-like focus.
Joseph and I turn, surprised to see Sierra in her blue blazer and khaki slacks looking like she’s just come from playing polo.
“I could’ve sworn we agreed yesterday we’re working together on this,” she says, her eyes scanning the walls.
An embarrassed look crosses my face. “You’re right, I’m sorry,” I fumble. “It’s been a bit of a rough night and I …”
Sierra places her hand on my arm. “I understand,” she says. “I heard about the second explosion. I’m glad no one was hurt.”
“Only the dog,” I say.
Sierra looks at me, surprised. She squeezes my forearm firmly. “But if I’m on this story, you can’t freeze me out. Got it?”
I nod.
It’s not enough for Sierra. She looks me straight in the eye. “Are we good?” she repeats, waiting for my verbal response.
“We are good,” I say, noting Joseph’s interest in Sierra’s assertiveness out of the corner of my eye.
She lets go of my arm.
“So what have you learned about the health companies?” I say.
“I thought you’d never ask.” She taps her u.D and her files splash onto the wall. “Five of the biggest health companies in the world are competing with each other to develop the miracle cancer cure people have been saying for years is just around the corner. All of them are investing hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars in finding it, all of them spending heavily in Washington, London, Brussels, and Tokyo to tilt the regulatory environment in their favor. All of them spreading rumors that a major breakthrough is imminent to drive up their stock prices and increase the pool of capital available for acquiring smaller businesses, superstar researchers, and specialist research labs.”
She moves her files into the space around the “other big health companies” section on the wall with a few waves of her hand, the virtual data folding around the title like a mosaic. “And it looks like each is waging a pretty consistent campaign to subtly—or sometimes not so subtly—undermine or even sabotage the progress of the others.”
She flips open stories of companies working in the middle of the night to have laws changed to thwart their competitors, stealing star researchers from other companies, and even hacking into each other’s networks to sabotage particularly promising research data.
Santique is one of the corporations, but nothing other than the connection to Hart and Wolfson is unique. The disparate data points float, remaining disconnected.
Sierra, Joseph, and I mull together before the wall, sometimes silently, sometimes asking each other unanswerable questions, sometimes moving pieces of data from one category to another.
I feel the vibration, then tap my wrist. Franklin Chou’s massive face appears over the data on our wall. He’s wearing the same clothes I saw him in last night. His furrowed face radiates a seriousness I’ve never seen before.
“You’ve got to get here immediately,” he orders.
30
The armed university guard stops us at the door to Franklin Chou’s lab. “And you are?”
I give him our names. “Can you tell me why you’re asking?”
“We need to know who’s coming into the lab,” she says.
Chou sees us through the window and steps out to greet us. “It’s okay,” he says. “They can come in.” He ushers us in nervously.
Chou already knows Joseph, but I introduce him to Sierra.
The lab, even at this early hour, is already a symphony of activity.
“What was that about?” I ask.
“University security found someone dressed in black with a face mask trying to get into the lab at 3 a.m. When they approached him, he tasered the two guards and ran. They couldn’t track him. Now they insist on having guards here twenty-four seven.”
“Are your guys in touch with KCPD on this?” I ask anxiously.
“Yes,” Chou says, “but you should probably follow up.”
I feel a surge of insecurity. “Someone is putting together the pieces as quickly as we are collecting them. I’m sorry.”
Chou has already moved on. “That’s not why I called you.” He stands in front of a massive wall screen, letters and color codes scrolling across. “This is one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen.”
We stare at him expectantly.
“I hope it’s okay I’ve brought in more stud
ents. When I saw the preliminary data I knew I needed more firepower. You have no idea how significant this is.”
Chou takes a deep breath.
“Because the skin graft yesterday showed skin cells of both a young and an old dog, the first thing I did was look for those kinds of markers in the cells taken from the blood sample. It didn’t take me long to find signs of decay in the mitochondrial DNA, suggesting a much older dog than Sebastian.”
“Confirming,” I say, “that Sebastian was young and old at the same time.”
“Or young but had once been old. I ran a full genome analysis, then compared Sebastian’s genome to the standard genome for a brown Labrador Retriever in the National Center for Biotechnology Information database. Canine genetics are notoriously complicated from all the breeding, and there really is no such thing as a fully standard dog genome, but sequences that were off the norm were segregated into a separate file.”
Chou looks soberly at the three of us before resuming. “Some of the differentiations were exactly what you would expect in different dogs of the same breed.”
“But—” Sierra jumps in.
“Others weren’t,” Chou cuts her off. “My next thought was that few dog breeds are pure and this might be just a remnant of interbreeding, so I ran those sequences through the full set of canine genomes at NCBI. Again nothing.”
I have a growing premonition where this is going.
“The next logical step was to run sequences through the entire NCBI database, so I had one of my guys plug us in to the university system for more processing power. It took two hours for the rough match to come through.”
I stare expectantly at Chou.
“Your Dracula jellyfish,” he continues. “Turritopsis nutricula melanaster.”
“So the dog has young cells with old genetic markers and sequences inserted from the genome of immortal jellyfish?” My mind races through images of Heller’s roundworms and mice, Benjamin Hart and William Wolfson. “He’s named after Johann Sebastian Bach, lived in a home where the Bach sonata is programmed to play forever, and morphs back to youth like a jellyfish returning to its polyp stage? Is that even possible?”