Anthem's Fall (26 page)

Ryan turned, his socks sliding against the tile floor, and walked to his closet. He sat before it, his gaze resting on a locked trunk pushed to the back. A plaid shirt lay draped over the top, the wrinkled arm falling over the front of the trunk and concealing a heavy padlock. His attention lingered on the heavy trunk for a long time, his expression pained. With a heavy heart he reached out and pulled the trunk to him, the metal scraping against the tile. Slowly and despondently he turned the dial of the padlock and removed it from the latch. Ryan carefully opened the trunk and stared in suffering silence at what lay within.

With a delicate touch, Ryan reached into the trunk and slowly pulled out the child’s burnt and tattered crimson cloak. He held it up silently and looked with anguish at the armor that rested underneath it. On the breast of the armor, a grave and familiar symbol reminded Ryan that it was not a dream, but a memory. He stared silently at his Imperial First Class armor and the embossment upon the chest: the crest of house Nerol.

K
risten Jordan sat quietly on her couch, untouched takeout sushi for two on the coffee table and a television program murmuring on her dated flat screen. She could not bring herself to look at the containers of food or the show, so instead Kristen stared contemplatively out the window into the fall night. Beyond the rusty fire escape and the building across the street, her studio had a surprisingly impressive view of the city considering her monthly rent. The lit skyscrapers of Midtown shone through a dreariness of fog that had taken hold of Manhattan. High above the lofty rooftops, she could trace a dome of light as it illuminated the moisture hanging over the city. With a tired gaze she looked out at the skyline as the rooftops disappeared into the foggy mists of the heavens.

Ryan was coming over, and Kristen was thankful for it. There was something about him that calmed her. By all accounts he should have made her nervous, as she was usually shy around guys she liked. And yet every time they were together she felt at peace with everything. At first glance he was so attractive, painfully so. It was sometimes hard to hold his eye contact and keep herself from blushing. But his looks were of an athletic type that she did not usually go for. Her affection for him was not based on his attractiveness; it was something about the way he carried himself that drew her in.

Looking out over Manhattan, Kristen realized that she would have been utterly alone in this city—in her little social sphere of scientists and laboratory small talk—were it not for him. Her research had come to alienate her from everyone. She would not let it stand between her and others any more, especially Ryan.

The thought of the next morning’s scientific convention at the hotel amid all those tall buildings made her ill with angst. The day would prove to be a great networking opportunity, but Kristen’s discovery of Professor Vatruvia’s private research had left a vile taste in her mouth. Any thought of the Vatruvian mice in their secluded cages made her feel sick. Kristen could not stop thinking about Cara’s revelation: the Vatruvian cells were stronger than the natural cells they replicated. Would the same phenomenon hold true for larger systems? Were those mottled mice with their bluish eyes
superior
to natural mice?

Kristen’s apartment doorbell rang and snapped her out of her thoughts. She roused herself from the couch and pressed the intercom button. “The buzzer’s broken, I’ll come let you up.”

She slid her feet into her slippers, pulled on an old MIT sweatshirt, and walked out to the stairwell, leaving the door ajar behind her. Beyond the lobby, the October night was chilly and wet. Ryan was waiting outside, the hood of his rain jacket pulled down over his forehead. He smiled at her through the drizzle. She folded her arms with a shiver as she pushed open the door. The damp autumn air was cold and laden with the smell of cigarettes from people smoking outside the bar next door.

“Hi,” Kristen said.

“Hey. I brought some booze.” Ryan held a bottle of wine wrapped in a brown paper bag. “You like red wine?”

“If it has alcohol in it, I’m happy. I need a drink.” Kristen laughed mirthlessly and held his gaze.

“Yeah,” Ryan sighed. “Me too.”

Kristen looked to the congregation of smokers standing under the nearby awning. Someone must have said something funny, as there was a great roar of laughter. “I’m okay with going out for a round or two if you want. Don’t feel as though we have to stay in—I can totally throw on a change of clothes and go out for a while.”

“Eh,” Ryan shrugged and regarded her thoughtfully as he passed into the doorway. “I’d rather stay in, to be honest.”

“Okay. I ordered some sushi.”

“Perfect.”

They walked up the several stories of aged stairs to her apartment. Kristen took the wine from him as he looked around her tiny studio, the bed by the window and the living area set up around narrow walls of exposed brick.

“I like your place,” Ryan said.

“Thanks. The rent is actually pretty reasonable, considering.” Kristen flipped on the kitchenette light and rummaged through a drawer for the wine opener. “Tell me about the meeting with your professor.”

Ryan let out a halfhearted groan as he took off his shoes and sat down on the couch. “More of the same. I think I’m going to have to turn my mind off and play the game.”

“And whose advice was that?”

“Yours,” Ryan admitted. “I guess I’ll have to start following your advice more often. How are things going with your research?”

Kristen twisted the wine opener into the cork and smirked grimly down at the bottle.

“That’s a loaded question.”

“Oh yeah?”

Kristen nodded. She picked up two glasses from the cupboard and sat down with him, curling her legs beside him. “Professor Vatruvia has really let me down, to be honest. It’s strange. He’s so brilliant in some regards, and so woefully lacking in others. I don’t think he’s thinking clearly about what we’re doing with the Vatruvian cell. It’s as though he has no notion of the fact that we’re working on something that could have a huge impact on the world—whether it be for good or bad. He’s pushing forward just for the sake of pushing forward.”

“ ‘Now, I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,’ ” Ryan said quietly, his voice matter-of-fact as he leaned forward and poured some of the silken burgundy wine into each glass.

“I beg your pardon?”

“ ‘Now, I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,’ ” Ryan repeated with a dark smirk. “It’s what Robert Oppenheimer said when he watched the detonation of the first atomic bomb. The bomb he created.”

“Right,” Kristen said with a slow nod. There was a sadness to Ryan that she just noticed, not maudlin or readily apparent, but nonetheless there behind his sharp gaze. It was easy to overlook amid his good looks and easy smile, but she saw it clearly for a moment. He was trying to hide how much he truly cared about a world that had little interest in hearing about its flaws. People wrote him off as uncompromising, but Kristen could see that it was not based in stubbornness—it was based in sorrow. He carried a curious grief within himself, as if it were a memento to something in his past. Kristen decided to let him divulge that grief in his own time, and simply said, “I thought I recognized the saying.”

“He was a genius and an artist, the visionary of an age, and his gift to the world was a weapon. I wonder if it was at that moment—only right then—as Oppenheimer watched the mushroom cloud rise into the skies over the desert,” Ryan shook his head, “that he realized the true nature of what he created.”

“I think it’s sad,” Kristen said, “I’m sure he never really thought anyone would drop one. He invented the technology and then lost all say in its use to lesser men.”

Ryan took a sip of his wine. “More motivated men.”

Kristen nodded.

“It’s not with the calculations in front of them, but in the man beside them that most brilliant minds make their blunders. The science is the easy part, from a certain point of view.”

“I assure you, what we have done with the Vatruvian cell has been anything but easy.” Kristen tilted her gaze at him. “If that’s what you’re implying.”

“No, no. That’s not what I meant.” Ryan shrugged his shoulders uncertainly. “I have my own past to bias my opinion on the matter, so don’t think this is directed at you. It’s just that, my father was a pretty serious scientist, and I always resented his blind faith to the notion of progress.”

Kristen sipped her glass of wine coolly. It was the first time he had mentioned his parents since he told her they died when he was a teenager. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you’ll have to take my word for it, my father was no fool. In fact, he was far from it. But you don’t need to be a historian to know that throughout history technology has been used for evil just as much as it has been used for good.”

“Of course,” Kristen said.

“So despite his intelligence, he chose not to acknowledge that one simple truth. Ultimately, I think the world becomes a better place only through the willful actions of living men, not from the furthering of scientific knowledge.” Ryan brought his palm to rest on Kristen’s leg. His hand felt warm on her thigh. She liked it. “Take my father for instance. He devoted his unbelievably brilliant mind to the search for answers in technology, when—in my opinion—no true answers have ever, or will ever, be found there. What answers could he have discovered had his brilliant mind been devoted to solving one of the countless everyday problems facing society instead of trying to expand academia’s rote knowledge of physics and chemistry?”

“And by
answers
, you mean what exactly?”

“I couldn’t even venture a guess. You know, the grayer social issues. Human rights, politics, poverty and so on. I don’t know—but I also could never claim to be genius.” Ryan laughed silently and met her gaze with a serious expression. “Just an observer of it.”

Kristen sighed heavily and took a generous gulp of wine. She rose and walked to the window and looked out over the foggy skyline. A cool draft rippled off the glass. Down on the sidewalk a growing line of stumbling young professionals were waiting to get into the bar. She could faintly hear their pent up rowdiness through the windowpane. Kristen leaned against the window in silence, holding her wine numbly. She felt powerless, like she was a little girl once more, with an infantile voice that could be easily disregarded. Next to the world renowned Nicoli Vatruvia, her opinion meant nothing to anyone. Kristen could not stop thinking of the strange bluish eyes of the Vatruvian mice.

With all her heart she wanted to tell Ryan everything she knew, all the things she had seen. Ryan seemed so grounded, so trustworthy. He was unlike all of the men she worked with every day in her labs: each of them so academically gifted and yet so unsophisticated. She could see Ryan in the room’s reflection against the dark window. He was humble—a trait she rarely saw among university crowds. Ryan regarded his intellect and his handsomeness without the slightest hint of conceit or self-absorption. She desperately wanted to trust him.

“What is it?” Ryan asked, a genuine concern in his voice.

Kristen turned from the window with a sigh. The notion that Professor Vatruvia had made her sign a nondisclosure contract was too much to bear. It was selfish and ignoble of him. The reason he lacked trust in her was because he knew she would have the wherewithal to tell people about the mice. It was her common sense he mistrusted. Kristen recalled the wavy signature of the Secretary of Defense on the contract, and the tacit threat in Professor Vatruvia’s voice as he had pointed it out to her. Artificial life, one of the greatest discoveries in the history of science, was being propelled by a handful of like minds behind locked doors.

Kristen was glad Ryan was with her, that she did not have to be alone for the night with nothing but her own disillusioned thoughts to keep her company.

“I agree with you, in part,” she said with a swig from her glass. “The ambition of science can be scary. It’s the awareness of that ambition that makes me fear the future of the Vatruvian cell.”

“How do you mean?” Ryan asked.

“I’ve seen something that has challenged every conviction I have, as a scientist and a person. And now I don’t know what to do.”

After she fell silent for a time, Ryan leaned forward on the couch. “Are you going to tell me what you saw, or leave me guessing here?”

“I can’t tell you,” Kristen said quietly, feeling suddenly overwhelmed. “Professor Vatruvia made me sign a nondisclosure contract backed by the Department of Defense. When I signed the contract, I agreed not to tell anyone what I saw.”

“Department of Defense?” Ryan said, bewildered. “What do they have to do with your research? I thought the Vatruvian cell was an amoeba sitting on a microscope slide?”

“It was.”

“Was . . .” Ryan repeated with a hint of misgiving. “And what is it now?”

Kristen finished her wine and sunk back down next to him. She poured herself another more liberal portion. “It’s something gargantuan enough to force a mere witness of it into signing a nondisclosure contract drafted by the Secretary of Defense.”

“Man,” Ryan said. “You must be in a tough position. Secrets aren’t easy to live with.”

“Yeah.” Kristen rested the side of her head on his shoulder. “The burden of what I saw is weighing on me like nothing I could have ever imagined. And the position I’m in now is atrocious. I’m stuck between keeping my word to a zealous man I barely recognize anymore and the despotic nondisclosure agreement he made me sign, or risking my entire future by breaking my word and going public with what I saw.”

“So I take it there’s now something more to the Vatruvian cell than what was applauded in the
60 Minutes
special I watched the other month.”

Kristen nodded, her cheek still against his shoulder.

“Well, if what you saw really is overtly dangerous, then I think the public will approve of you coming forward with what you know. Even the Department of Defense can’t compete with the will of the people.”