The Zen Gene (7 page)

“Rifle scopes have self-destruct charges?” he said, astonished.

“We are living in the technological age Lee,” McLean said and continued, “Obviously he later determined this was not what happened. There was no detonation and he could offer no other explanation for this reaction and neither could the others. The other effect they all reported was odd and we are having trouble sorting out its significance. Along with a debilitating headache, the soldiers experienced an inability to open their eyes.”

“Was that a reaction to the pain?” he asked.

“We are not certain yet but my guess is no. This eyelid effect can last for some considerable time after the head pain subsides. One of the soldiers was unable to completely open or control his eyelids for more than two days. Imagine a soldier in combat who, when he attempts to fire his weapon, is struck blind for a few hours to several days. Now you can you see why Western was concerned enough to kidnap you.

Our medical team ran exhaustive tests, including fMRI, known pathogens, viral, psychological, everything they could think of with no conclusive results. One finding that is interesting but probably meaningless is the unexpected concurrence of higher than normal poliomyelitis antigens in all the soldiers including the unaffected fourth soldier.

None of them were given booster shots for polio for this mission, it is believed they must have encountered a hot carrier either enroute or in country and this exposure activated their immune systems. The good news is their immune response was normal and none of them contracted polio. That was the only anomalous physical finding we found.”

He thought about what Jonas was telling him but he was confused. Something about this did not track. Why would three out of four soldiers have the problem and not all of them?

“Was the unaffected soldier able to act normally? That is, aggressively?” he said, the concept of normal behaviour clearly did not apply to this group.

“Yes. As a matter of fact he saved the other three. He basically wiped out a group of heavily armed insurgents and then carried his buddies out one at a time to safety,” he said.

“You mean he traveled back and forth physically carrying these guys?” he said.

“Yes. It was close to three kilometers each trip,” he said.

That is an incredible feat of endurance, he thought, “Can we ascertain if they were all exposed at the same time to the polio virus? Four people simultaneously becoming positive for the polio antigen doesn’t jibe with my understanding of how the virus usually works. It sounds more like a deliberate infection,” he said. “Were you able to determine if they were in physical contact with someone who was infected on the ground in Afghanistan like a cook or a physician?” he asked.

McLean laughed and then winked at him.

“Who said anything about Afghanistan? And no there was no contact we could determine,” he said. They were both getting into the hunt and it was a bit like old times.

“Were the relative levels of antigen the same in all the subjects?” he said.

“I don’t know but I’ll find out,” Jonas said.

“So after reviewing their data this is all you’ve found?”

“I’ve looked through the entire series of medical test results with Lieutenant Sedulca, the lead investigator, at least a dozen times, and after many hours of pouring over the results I found nothing that caught my eye or interest with the possible exception of Lieutenant Sedulca,” he said grinning.

“Well that’s a good thing as far as I’m concerned because if the problem was easy I would be pissed off. What is she like?” he said.

“Short and sweet like me,” he said.

While they were talking Jonas reached into his pocket and took out a crumpled piece of note paper. On it he scrawled, ‘Be careful what you say they are listening’. He put the paper back in his pocket and motioned to the computer screen in front of them. It was one of half a dozen computer screens in the room which all showed the same scene. He pressed a key and the video showed an adult male lying on his left side curled into a tight fetal ball on a standard hospital bed.

His eyes and mouth were clamped shut and he could see the soldier’s straining bulging jaw muscles. It looked like every muscle in his body was clenched. His whole body was in spasm as he writhed in pain. It was video footage from the oldest of the stricken soldiers taken while he was still in Afghanistan.

“I suppose by now you’ve realized the military types think this has something to do with our work at U of T,” Mc Lean said.

“No shit, Sherlock,” he said.

McLean laughed.

“Okay, Lee. I will leave you to it. I’m going to see what the big cheese wants and then I’m off to another meeting. You can stay here the whole day if you want. Everything we’ve done is on the computer. See you later,” he said.

***

McLean headed to Western’s office, knocked on the door and let himself in. Western was sitting at his desk and had a scowl on his face when Jonas sat down.

“Let me tell you what I know about Lee Mann. I understand you were hoping he would be some kind of criminal mastermind and the creator of this thing but I’m afraid you’re gonna be disappointed,” Jonas said.

Western turned away and stared at his computer screen he did not like McLean; as far as he was concerned the guy was a freak and nothing more. He tolerated him because he was ordered to bring him onboard. Someone in Ottawa insisted McLean be part of the investigation ostensibly because of his research background but Western suspected McLean was connected to someone high up at National Defense HQ in Ottawa. If he could figure out McLean’s Ottawa connection he might find a way to get rid of him, but without knowing who it was, it could be a bad move to dump him. Anyway he might need him if things go wrong with the kid. He let him prattle on about Mann not listening waiting for him to finish.

“Okay Jonas thanks for the update. Have you arranged things regarding the kid? If we need to grab him you and Sedulca will have to move fast.”

“We’ll get him and stash him just like we discussed but I’m hoping it does not come to that,” Jonas said.

“Me too.”

Western had found a way to compromise both of them so they would not pose any threat to his plan. He let him believe he and Sedulca would be in for a cut of the proceeds when he sells the kid’s formula. Using greed to draw them in and control their actions was expedient for now. He would deal with him and his friend Sedulca after the deal was done but for now he would let them assume all the risk. If things don’t go as planned and they run out of time they will need to grab the kid and stash him away until he can arrange a sale. It was a smart move to get them to do all the dirty work, if they are caught and charged with kidnapping, nothing will lead the authorities back to him.

If they get caught it will all be on them, a plot hatched by the bent psychologist and the schizophrenic biologist. No one will doubt it, especially after he releases the video tape of their pillow talk: lying in bed conspiring to kidnap a sixteen-year-old kid.

It amazed him how lax people were about there home security. They had no idea they were under surveillance, they simply assumed because they were ‘in on it’ they were safe. He let McLean babble on for a few more minutes then sent him away. What he needed was for him and Sedulca to isolate whatever it was the kid created. If he could get his hands on the formula he would not need them and there would be no reason to grab the kid.

It made him sick to be in the same room with McLean. When the time came he would enjoy putting his knee on McLean’s neck and ridding the world of one more disgusting degenerate. Western found himself grinding his teeth and slamming desk drawers searching for cigarettes until he realized what he was doing. He could not understand the craziness that swept over him. He was in a rage, ready to throttle McLean for no reason and the weird part was he had not smoked for twenty years.

He was becoming alarmed by these weird uncontrollable thoughts and impulses.

Yesterday he almost destroyed the dashboard of his car smashing it with his fist when a car cut him off in rush hour traffic. When he caught up to the car at the next traffic light he realized he had pulled his service weapon out of its holster. He did not know what he might have done if it had not turned out to be an elderly woman driving. He put the incident down to stress from this kid thing, there was an awful lot riding on it, possibly everything.

***

Frank Sedulca held the door open for Jonas as they walked out of the lab building. They did not try to maintain the pretense they were just friends. Officially the Canadian Military no longer cared about sexual orientation as long as it did not interfere with their work.

“What did you think of Lee Mann?” McLean asked as they got in Sedulca’s car.

“I only caught a glimpse of him but he doesn’t do anything for me. He did not strike me in any way whatsoever,” he said, “so he was your big crush back at U of T eh?”

McLean shrugged, Lee never suspected it not even close, but it was true he’d been attracted to him all those years ago.

“Well you know the thing about straight guys; they don’t all suck,” McLean said.

They laughed at the joke though they both experienced the pain of rejection after falling hard for a guy who either did not get it or was repulsed.

“So what is going on, why is Colonel Klink so hot for us to grab the kid?” Sedulca said.

“Things are developing fast. If it goes off the rails he thinks grabbing Tyler is the best way to control the formula. We haven’t been able to figure it out and we’re running out of time. If the circle of people who know about this gets any wider we could be shut out of the money.

I have no problem with grabbing the kid, this virus or whatever it is, will be worth millions maybe billions to the right people. Western has this Pentagon buddy he thinks can make a deal with a defense contractor he knows so, for now, we play it cool and do what Western wants,” McLean said, “if the Americans won’t pay the Chinese or Russians will and if we have the kid we won’t need Western to make the deal. Those countries won’t have any problem getting the formula out of the kid.”

POrna

“Let me see if I’ve got this right,” Zen said. She had a grin on her face and was watching him from the corner of her eye as she removed the elastic band from her ponytail. She shook loose the long strands then bent from the hips as she tossed her hair forward. It was long and thick but because she was tall it did not touch Tyler’s spotless floor. While her head was down she attempted, unsuccessfully, to comb the large knots out with her splayed fingers.

Her face was hidden from view by the mass of curly brown tangles but the rest of her was visible and he found his eyes drawn to her interesting shape.

She saw him checking her out and it made her smile. After falling down the ventilation shaft she knew there would be no putting it off she had to wash her hair when she got home. There was a bumpy line of yellow and purple bruises forming on both her forearms which she had not yet noticed.

”You found this stinky old laboratory and decided to become a mad scientist?” she said. “Is that about right?” Straightening up she faced him and used a single raised eyebrow to emphasize her doubts regarding his sanity. “Tyler, you helped me with my genetics paper but you totally flunked grade seven science. What makes you think you can do real science? Don’t ya have to be like a scientist or something?” she said making quotation marks in the air.”

She continued to tease him as she gathered her thick tresses and re-applied the elastic band creating a messy ponytail.

“I got a C,” he said. He was not defensive about many things but Andrea gave him a hard time about his marks and behaviour at school and he was sensitive about it. Zen knew that raising the subject of school was almost the only way to get any reaction from him. Like an older sibling, she knew exactly how to push his buttons, and she used his problems at school to get him worked up and talking.

“It was a C minus and you totally flunked,” she said, walking as she talked, moving freely around the lab looking at stuff and occasionally wrinkling her nose. “It certainly is clean in here, not like your funky bedroom,” she said.

He shrugged. “It needs to be clean,” he said.

She continued to wander around the room examining everything but so far keeping her promise not to touch anything. She was amazed by the elaborate secret world he created for himself. It reminded her of how little time she spent with him these days. She knew he was into science, he has science stuff all over his bedroom, but she had no idea he was into it this much. This looked like a real laboratory.

Aside from the times he helped her with her genetics assignments he never talked about science with her but then he never talked about much of anything. She knew it was not fair and she should not tease him about his school work because he was trying hard to get it right. She suspected it was not the work he had trouble with but the teachers. They did not understand him and they split into two groups; those who thought he was doing it on purpose to piss them off and those who considered him learning disabled. She spun around and looked at him and was sure he was checking her out again.

“Please tell zee members of zee jury vut monster you are cre-a-ting here Herr Doktor Tylershtein?” she said. Pointing her index finger at him like a lawyer in a bad daytime drama then grandly gesturing around the room to the various pieces of scientific equipment with her other hand.

“Unt vere did you get all ziss fanshy shmanshy schience shtuff anyvay?” she said.

He laughed at her crazy accent but continued to watch her nervously as she roamed about the lab. He was enjoying her performance but he was worried she might touch something or open something. He never thought about anyone coming into the lab and if he had it certainly would not be Zen, she was too unpredictable.

At any moment she might do something completely crazy. There were dangerous things in the lab and exposure to some of them could make her sick. The problem of how to explain what he was doing, and why he was doing it, was occupying him, he realized, now she’d seen his lab, she would not be put off.

He was hesitant to say anything at all in case she told mom because for sure mom would tell Andrea. He was aware, from his past attempts, that he had zero talent for deception and less than zero if it was Zen he was trying to deceive. She always seemed to catch him whenever he lied so he decided to tell her the truth.

It was the best solution; he would not have to make anything up, and she would not understand the science anyway. The events leading up to his decision to build the lab were continuous and linear in his mind. He had trouble judging where to jump into the explanation so he began at the beginning.

“Remember that time Andrea went to Edmonton and I stayed with you and mom?” he said.

“Yeah, I remember, that was a long time ago,” she said. She was curious how anything that happened five years ago could possibly relate to what he was doing in this place.

“You told me your father was killed in a war.” he said.

Zen’s face reddened and she stopped flitting about the room alert to what he was saying. She forgot that she told him that and watched his face for a sign of what she thought was probably coming. She remembered the exchange clearly. When she was thirteen and he was eleven they were reading comics on her bed and he asked about her father.

She lied and told him the first thing that came into her head. He caught her off guard with the question and she was flustered and made up a story about him dying in a war. She did it because she did not want to tell him what actually happened to her loser father. She hoped he forgot about it but now it looked as if he was going to call her on it. Why else would he bring it up?

“When you told me what happened to him I didn’t know what it meant so I looked up war online. I found out a lot of stuff about it but I could not find the reason it happens. The weird thing I kept seeing was people all agreed it is a bad thing but it keeps happening all the time. I found data online about violence in apes that said violence is a product of biology. When I read that I came up with a plan of how to stop it,” he said.

“Stop what?” she said.

She was listening carefully to him because she thought he was talking about her father but she had obviously lost the thread of the conversation.

“Stop war,” he said.

“What are you talking about Ty? No one can stop war. It’s been going on for like a billion years.” She looked at his eyes to see if he was talking about war or something else. ”You know,” she continued, “like World War One and Two and all the other littler wars. Geez Ty don’t you know anything? It’s impossible to stop people from doing something they really like to do,” she said. She was relieved that, for the moment at least, he did not seem to be talking about her father.

“I did it,” he said.

“Did what?” she said thinking he was onto yet another topic then she saw him make a gesture, pointing to the battered bar fridge with fake wood siding on the door. It was sitting all alone high up on a pile of bricks at the far end of the main workbench.

It was emblazoned with yellow caution tape from the dollar store and secured by a school combination lock and a two yard long piece of heavy chain he found outside the factory.

“I stopped it,” he said.

She looked to where he was pointing and laughed playing along with his joke. She went up on her tip toes and performed a gangly long-limbed pirouette and then glided, not ungracefully, across the room to stand before the bar fridge. She examined it for a few moments then leaning over delicately placed one hand on top and used the other to dig a knuckle into her cheek in a failed attempt to look coy before dramatically sweeping her out-stretched hand across the front of the fridge as she seamlessly morphed into Debbie Darling the beautiful game show demonstrator. She favoured the audience with her most dazzling television smile.

“Here we have it ladies and gentlemen. Take a look at what the delectable Debbie Darling has displayed for us in our grand prize showcase number one. That’s right folks you heard it here first. Our very own Doctor Fryin’ Pan, the world’s weirdest mad scientist, has invented…” she paused for dramatic effect, “THE END OF WAR!”

He laughed at her performance. He loved it when she did one of her over-the-top television personas Debbie being the best. He clapped his hands with polite but appreciative applause when she took a bow.

“Zo mein Herr Doktor Hamburger unt Fries, how does ziss magical potion of yours verk?” she said. She was having great fun teasing him but she could see he was enjoying it too so that made it okay. He was laughing at her outrageous German accent.

“How it verks?” he said.

“Yes Mr. flunked grade seven science the world wants to know,” she said. She pretended to hold out a microphone for him to speak into but he did not get the microphone reference so she crossed her arms and challenged him with a raised eyebrow instead.

‘Well?” she said.

He looked at her and tried to determine what he should tell her but then decided it didn’t matter what he said she wouldn’t believe him anyway.

“It’s complex,” he said.

“Try me,” she said evenly.

He looked at her but avoided her eyes as he began to explain.

“I re-purposed a common virus as a vector for 9800 base pairs of reptilian DNA which codes for mRNA when activated and instructs new neuronal growth in the basil ganglia,” he said.

She listened and her mouth fell open. It took her a moment to recover and, in an effort to hide the fact she did not understand anything he said, she responded by saying, “You are a totally weird science junky Ty.”

She laughed and before he could react she skipped over to him and put him in a headlock which she could do because she was taller than him. She tried to give him an Indian hair burn but he shrugged her off and sidestepped away patting down his hair.

“Anyway you shouldn’t be messing with viruses. They are bad for people and some can even kill ya,” she said, “or worse,” she added darkly.

She had resumed her natural place of dominance as the older and wiser of the two.

“What are you really making here?”

She said this because, after thinking about it, she concluded he was trying to put her off with his crazy answer to confuse her.

He was engaged in wondering what was worse than dying and he regarded her warily as he leaned against the far edge of the countertop ready to move away if she tried anything else. He was attempting to think up another way to explain it to her but he couldn’t come up with anything so he began to imitate Mr. Davies the science teacher. He pretended to adjust his glasses and checked to see if his fly was open multiple times and she recognized him right away and laughed. Mr. Davies’ self-conscious mannerisms were famous at school.

“Nnnnot all vvvviruses kkkill,” he said, clearing his throat like Mr. Davies did. “Ahhh ddddidn’t you ahhh bbbbarf vomit your guts out for a wwweek few days last NNNNovember winter? Well, Ms. ZZZZZen, that was a vvvvirus, a bug if you will, and you ahhh dddidn’t even dddddie. TTTThere you hhhave it.” He took a deep bow and made a big show of checking his fly one last time.

“No, I didn’t die, but believe me, for a while there I wanted to. And stop with the Mr. Davies stutter already. He can’t hhhhelp it yyyyya know,” she said.

They both laughed.

“It’s okay. The virus I used was modified by someone and it was never a killer; I only use it as a kind of mailman,” he said.

“A mailman, what kind of dopey virus is that? Does it only strike at Christmas time?” she said and laughed at her joke which he didn’t get.

“So what do you call this mailman you invented?” she said.

“Poliomyelitis-Okinawa ribonucleic acid, I call it POrna for short,” he said.

She looked at him to see if he was kidding and when she saw he was serious she guffawed. She laughed until tears streamed from her eyes and she could hardly catch her breath. When she did, she said “Porno, you called your invention Porno?” She hooted again and bent over holding her stomach because she was laughing so hard it was starting to hurt.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

She had laughed so hard she needed to pee. In between hoots she asked him where the washroom was. He was torn because he did not want her wandering around inside the factory alone but he wanted to check temperatures again before Andrea got home. He only had about ten minutes before he would need to leave. He did not have time to show her where the washroom was so he told her to grab a flashlight.

“It’s dark inside,” he said

She made a face when he said that. She did not like the sound of it but she badly needed to pee and she grabbed one of the flashlights piled on the counter top and turned to go.

“Try it,” he said.

She tried it and the battery was dead and she tried another and another until she found one that worked. By this time she needed to find the washroom in a big hurry but before he would tell her where it was he made her promise not to raise a lot of dust. He also handed her a small electric lamp to take with her to test any outlets she found in the washroom.

Though he had been working and playing inside the building for years he never once ventured into the women’s washroom. It was one of Andrea’s rules she taught him when he was a kid, and though he was desperate for an electrical source, he would not break the rule. Before she left he warned her not to go near lab four with the duct tape on the door. He made her promise.