Consigning Fate: Beginnings Series Book 23

  “What do you mean?”

  “When El and I went to the future, one of the problems was the Killer Baby population went out of control. What if we stopped them from being Killer Babies, by halting the formation in the fetus stage?”

  “How?”

  “Find the mutation factor and change it,” Dean said. “This way we wouldn’t have to kill them we can make them as normal as possible by going into their DNA early. Hell, you’re part jackrabbit.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But, Dean. I can’t do that.”

  “Do what?” Dean asked.

  “Change their DNA.”

  “Not you.”

  “You?”

  “No.” Dean shook his head. “The clone.”

  “Why the clone?”

  “Because he’s smart.”

  “How do you know?” Frank asked.

  “He’s me, he has my brain power, and he invented an artificial womb.”

  “And room.”

  “Yes.”

  “If he’s so smart and he’s you,” Frank said. “Why can’t you do it?’

  “I could. But I’m still in my infancy on DNA. Most of what I do and accomplish is by chance and or accident. If he has full knowledge or has a better grasp of DNA, he could do it.”

  “OK. So how do we get the clone to do it?”

  “Take Harry with you,” Dean said. “Bring him to the clone and tell him your theory about stopping the mutation during the developmental phase.”

  “But you’re working with Harry.”

  “True.” Dean paused in thought. “Can you get him one?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Frank shrugged. “I’ll get it tonight.” He looked at his watch. “Anyhow, I have to go. You need anything?”

  “No, I’m good.”

  Frank took Harry to the cage. “Night, Harry.” He leaned into him. “Ow, he bit my lip.”

  “Well, if you wouldn’t kiss the Killer Fetus, Frank, that wouldn’t happen.”

  “He has to feel the love, Dean.” Frank put him in the cage. “Love stops him from gnarling flesh.”

  Dean laughed with a shake of his head.

  Frank walked to Dean. “Is my lip bad?”

  “You’re bleeding.”

  “Oh.” Frank shrugged, wiped the blood, and gave a pat to Dean’s back. “See ya’ tomorrow.”

  Dean nodded. When Frank left, and he was secure in the fact that he was gone, Dean quickly pulled out the HG Wells. He set it on the counter and stared at it in wonder. “Come on, Robbie. Hurry up. I have information and I wanna play with this” He looked at his watch. Like a kid at Christmas time staring at a wrapped gift, Dean grew more excited and anxious by the minute.

  <><><><>

  There was a Donny Osmond song in the seventies called, Sweet and Innocent. The words starting out, ‘I love the little wiggle in your walk.’ George couldn’t help but sing that song in his head when he looked at Tigger.

  Tigger climbed up on the bar stool next to George.

  “You wanted to see me?” he asked.

  “How are you, Tigger?”

  “Bored. How about you?”

  “I’m good,” George said. “What do you mean bored?”

  “They haven’t really found me a job yet. Stuck me in the fields.” Tigger signaled for a drink.

  “You know, you really are much too young to be drinking.”

  Tigger laughed. “I could say you’re told old to be drinking. But we all defied a plague, so who the hell cares, we’re on borrowed time. When did you start drinking?”

  “Drinking for real?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean when you drink, you drink for real.”

  “Forgive me,” George said. “I mean regularly. Not until I was thirty.”

  “Wow. You waited a while. So what’s up?”

  “I have a very big proposition for you little man.”

  Tigger tilted his head. “Is that a dig?”

  “Yeah, actually,” George nodded. “If you can toss them out, you gotta take them.”

  “OK, I’ll give you that.”

  “All right. As you know, we have your father in a jail of sorts.”

  Tigger nodded.

  “And as you know we are on the verge of war with an unknown foe,” George explained. “Every man is needed Tigger. You’re father has skills, viable skills that are needed. We have bridged the differences between us and we have to unite. I have an idea that I think will finalize the bridge, but that’s neither here nor there right now. You’ll find out later about that. I don’t want to punish your father. Beginnings doesn’t want to punish your father.”

  “You want my father to work for you?”

  George held up a finger and shook his head. “Work for us all. Be part of the team. That is step one of my plan.”

  “Get my father to work with the plan?”

  “Yes. Cross working,” George said. “We send people here, Beginnings sends people our way. Something I’m gonna bring up to Frank tomorrow is the fact that I want to send men over here to be trained by the UWA.”

  “Show unity.”

  “Exactly. Your father is not buying the unity bit. I think after my final step in the plan he will. But the country is a big country; the west isn’t big enough for him and Frank.”

  Tigger laughed.

  “I want Mike to be stationed on the East Coast with us and work with Bertha.”

  Tigger’s eyes lit up.

  “See, I knew that would spark you.” After a shudder, George continued. “Tigger I want you to come back with me to Quantico. I fly out tomorrow or the next day and I would like you to come with me. First, you would be able to get through to your father.”

  Tigger chuckled. “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, I do. He’s trusts you. He knows you wouldn’t lie. You convey how he is needed and how he has to move on and work as a team player. I think he would.”

  “What will you have him do?”

  “Train leaders. I already have that figured out. He would train men to be in leadership positions. To get that started, I’d like you to come with me.”

  “Join the Society?”

  “You’re wrong there. You wouldn’t be joining the Society; you’d just be living on the east coast. Working with us.”

  “Can you get me a job where I’m not bored or picking tomatoes?”

  George laughed. “I can use a good clerk. How are your organizational skills?”

  “Suck, but I can type and all than other stuff.”

  “So does that mean you’ll fly out with me?”

  “Do I get to see Bertha?”

  George swallowed. “Yes.”

  “If I don’t like it out there, I’m not stuck, right?”

  “You’re not a prisoner. It’s no longer one side or the other. If you want to leave, you leave.”

  “You’re not using a bad recruiter line on me are you?’

  Again, George laughed. He watched Tigger tap his hands on the bar. “Well? Does this mean ‘yes’?”

  Tigger downed his drink. “I’ll start packing.”

  <><><><>

  “Jesus Christ, Robbie.” Dean flung open the door. “It’s midnight. I’ve been waiting forever.”

  “Dean, I had to work. Geesh.” He took off his coat and laid it on the couch. “I wanted to get here as soon as possible.”

  “Sorry, I’m just antsy.”

  “I know.” Robbie followed him into the other room, Dean’s lab. He noticed the HG Wells. “You haven’t played with it, have you?”

  “Not since I initially touched it,” Dean said.

  “I can’t believe I found this.”

  “Me either.”

  “So, like, Dean. Obviously it took you somewhere. Where?”

  “The woods. You?”

  “The great plains complete with Indians.”

  “No, shit.”

  “Scared the fuck out of me.”

  “This needs our
attention. But we also can’t just press buttons, we are going to have to learn this machine.”

  “Without a doubt.”

  “But first …”

  Robbie nodded.

  “Sit down, Robbie.”

  Robbie did. “I take it you got results?”

  “Yes, I believe I have come up with a conclusive answer.”

  “And?”

  “Not so fast.” Dean joined him at the table. “I’m gonna give you some whys first, OK?”

  Robbie nodded.

  “Your science lesson for the day. There is no such thing as taking an adult, cloning an adult, and getting an adult. You take an ovum, remove all chromosomal values and traces, and insert it with the DNA of a subject. After chemicals and generations, you get cell division much like the conception process. When the embryo is old enough it’s planted into a host mother. It’s called Embryonic or reproduction cloning. It is never a one hundred percent exact clone.”

  “Why?” Robbie asked.

  “Because one, especially a male, his DNA is inserted into a host egg. A woman different than the mother is going to carry that. There will always be traces from the cell division or host mother in the clone. Minor, very minor, but differences. Unless the egg is that of the actual mother, and an artificial womb is used. Which we know they have in the future. My clone would be a perfect clone copy of me if I hadn’t used Melissa’s egg. He was grown, I’m gathering in an artificial womb. I … cloned myself. My embryo was frozen. The purest clone we have or had was Ellen. I used her egg, her DNA, and if she could have carried her clone. Perfect. But, I destroyed her clone and all other clones except my own.”

  “My father’s too.”

  “Yes.”

  “Could someone have dug up his grave and extracted DNA to create a clone in the future?”

  “Possible. But unless they came up with a new way in the next hundred years, I doubt it, the clone would still have a marker in its DNA to say it is a clone.”

  Robbie nodded his understanding.

  “So with that lesson out of the way, I can say, with a hundred percent certainty that the body we dug up is not a clone.”

  “So what …”

  Dean held up his hand. “I am really serious, Robbie, I went back and forth on this issue. Was it Joe was it not Joe? For the purpose of this discussion, we will say Joe One and Joe Two. Joe Two being the body of … Joe.”

  “So my father did die?”

  “Listen to me.” Dean pulled forth a folder. “Several things can mutate DNA, a virus, radiation. Joe Two had our virus, but Joe Two also had traces of radiated mutation, meaning his was exposed to radiation at some point.”

  “Radiation?”

  “But he hung out at Jason’s lab. However … I’ll get to that in a minute. Differences, Joe Two had a bite mark on his left leg. Severe, matching that of a wolf. He also had traces of sulfur in his hair, which could have come from the explosion. Do you recall your father being bit by a coyote or wolf?”

  “Not to my knowledge.” Robbie said. “So there are differences. How can this be? Could it be a new type of clone?”

  “A clone would not have the same scars as its original. Joe Two had the procedural scars on his chest from his treatments. Joe Two also had the DNA mutation of my healing agent. The DNA I used to clone Joe was that of pretreatments.”

  “The hair …”

  “The hair is different. Gray. When Joe One died, his hair was not gray.”

  “Dean, I’m confused. First, you give me reasons as to how it isn’t my dad, and then you give me reason to why it is my dad. Which is it?”

  Dean paused. “This is where it gets tricky. Robbie, I firmly believe one hundred percent, without a doubt, that the body in the tomb, was indeed … Your father.”

  Robbie’s head hung low.

  Dean continued. “But the mystery continues.”

  Robbie looked up.

  “We have your father in a tomb buried six miles from here,” Dean said. “And we have your father a few days ago eating a jam sandwich at the trailer.”

  Suddenly, Robbie’s whole demeanor switched.

  “Your father is the one who had lunch with the clone.”

  “Oh, my God.” Robbie’s eyes closed. “Oh my God.”

  “The password thing Danny told you about … that’s him.”

  “So Andrea knows. That’s why …”

  Dean shook his head. “We can’t be certain of that.”

  “But she claims to see him …” Robbie shook his head. “No, she doesn’t claim to see him. She claims to sense him. Hear him.”

  “His ghost.”

  Robbie smiled. “Invisible suit.”

  Dean nodded.

  “Joe’s not in the future. Joe’s not dead. Dead men don’t eat jam sandwiches a month after their death. Your father is alive and well and is hiding out pretty damn well.”

  Robbie finished the sentence with a tone of relief. “In Beginnings.”

  Dean lifted a finger. “End of mystery one. Now onward to another. If Joe isn’t dead and is hiding in Beginnings, then …”

  Robbie nodded. “Why.”

  “Exactly.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  April 1st

  When Johnny Slagel started bartending at the Dan at the Creed Saloon, he became, in a short period of time, much like the Creedvillians. A person who rarely saw the light of day. Closing shop about four in the morning, Johnny would stay up all night and sleep all day.

  Tigger, though out late himself, needed little sleep. And aside from that, he had to go to Beginnings to pick tomatoes at eight in the morning.

  He didn’t know when he’d see Johnny again and had to talk to him.

  Johnny felt it in his sleep. At first it was vivid, snapping him to a lucid state while he dreamt, then he realized, the warm breath he felt was actually someone close to him. He opened his eyes.

  “Morning sunshine,” Tigger said. “Can you get up?”

  “What time is it?” Johnny asked.

  “Seven.”

  “Is it some sort of joke?”

  “Could be. It’s April first.”

  Johnny groaned and rolled over.

  “Johnny seriously, I have to talk to you.”

  “Tig, I’ve only been in bed an hour and a half. Play your April Fool’s joke on me later, I promise you can ‘get me’ then.”

  “It’s not an April Fool’s joke; I really need to talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  “One me, the other ... your father.”

  It didn’t take long for Johnny to open his eyes fully. He gave a just a second finger to Tigger and removed the covers.

  Even though he had only been in bed a short period of time, his bladder felt full and he went to empty it.

  “By chance you didn’t make coffee, did you?” Johnny asked, flushing the toilet.

  “Yes, I did. I don’t have much time. I have Hector the horrible on my back about being on time.”

  Johnny laughed as he came from the bathroom. “What’s up?”

  “Last night I went to Beginnings.”

  “Oh, yeah, I wondered where my town drunk went. You missed it. Sebastian did a strip tease for a bachelorette party last night.”

  “Why would I …” Tigger’s eyes widened. “Did you see? Did you see?”

  “Tig.”

  “No, Johnny, you had to see.”

  “I know you’ve been wondering.”

  “I have. No one would show me.”

  “Well, that’s because you can’t walk up to these people and ask them to expose themselves.”

  “Ok, that’s true.” Tigger handed Johnny a cup of coffee. “Did you.”

  Johnny sipped. “From where I stood, he had no hair, but it looked as if it were normal.”

  “Aw.” Tigger shook his head. “I thought it would be neat to see it translucent like everything else.”

  Johnny shrugged. “It looked normal.”

  “Oh, well. I stil
l wonder about the women. Maybe they’ll make that Creedville Porn like I wanted.”

  “You’re twisted. So what did you want?”

  “I was in Beginnings last night. I heard … this is what I heard from very reliable sources, I hear your father is coming to town to see you today.”

  The coffee nearly dropped from Johnny’s hand. “You’re April Fooling me.”

  Tigger shook his head. “No, that’s what I heard.”

  “From where?”

  “George.”

  “How does George know?”

  “Seems George talked to your dad about mending fences. I mean, if Beginnings and the Society can do it, so can your dad and you.”

  “Ah, Tig, that would be so cool. I hope he does.”

  “I do, too. Johnny. I do, too. Speaking of Dad’s …” Tigger cleared his throat. “My dad is in prison in Quantico for trying to kill George, shooting your Uncle Robbie, and disabling the love of my life.”

  “I know.”

  “So, George called me to talk to me. With this impending war, they need all the men they can get. All the good men. He wants me to go talk to my father, to get him to wise up and work for us all. He wants to have him run a leadership school.”

  “Wow. So what does this mean?” Johnny asked.

  “I’m leaving Johnny. I hate to leave you, but I am. Even if for a short time. I’m heading out with George.”

  “You’re joining the Society?”

  “No. There is really no Society anymore, it’s all part of the US, and I’m just living on the east to do my job. This would be, get my dad to make a turn around, see Bertha, and work as a clerk.”

  “Tig … Tig I don’t know what to say.”

  “Tell me I’m making the right decision.”

  “Well, yeah, you are. Especially now since the Society isn’t the enemy. I think that’s cool. You going, you working over there, will help everyone over here understand things better.”

  “Why don’t you go John?” Tigger asked.

  Johnny looked up. “What?”

  “Go.”

  “With you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did George ask?’

  “No. he didn’t this is my idea. George loves you. You love George. He’s always been there for you. I think he needs you, Johnny. Come with us.”

  “I can’t. I can’t.”