Authors: J. Manuel
Miles Baker awoke to the warm aroma of his coffeepot as it strained its filtered, natural spring water through the freshly ground, dark-roasted beans waiting eagerly to give up their drained goodness—
Ahhh! The best part of waking up, yeah that’s how that commercial went.
Miles stretched as he dreaded what came next. The part the commercial never talked about, the rest of the goddamn day.
His television had come to life moments before his feet hit the cold, faux-wood floor. The television helped clear the cobwebs but never quite like mother-nature’s call. The bladder was the morning’s best motivator
.
A series of quick tip-toes led him down the cold corridor, toward the bathroom, just as his bladder sprang to life. The bathroom lights flickered to life then peaked to a controlled brightness, bright enough to make him squint, but dim enough to prevent the migraines that had been coming on stronger and more frequently in the last few weeks.
“Miles, you’re getting old.” He stared, saggy-eyed, at the old man who pierced deeply back into his vacuous eyes. The two dark spheres seemed to sap the light from the overhead bulbs as the dimmers responded to the sun creeping through the wooden slats of the second floor condo’s bathroom windows. He brushed his teeth and scolded himself for not having replaced the batteries in his toothbrush last time. For all of his engineering degrees he’d never been able to remember to fix the electric toothbrush or to just buy a new one. The bristles whirred pathetically for a few seconds before sputtering to a halt. He scowled disapprovingly at the brush. With half-a-mind to make a half-hearted attempt at a decent brushing, he dropped the brush into the sink. He’d just get another one, today, for sure. The problem was the cold. Definitely the cold! Batteries were horrible in the cold.
Now in the living room, he checked on his computers. It was chillier in here. He had to keep the computers running cool. That was more important than him freezing his butt off. Besides, Miles was concerned with something much more pressing. He had to find little green men. The living room was filled wall to wall with computers, twenty in all, not counting his various tablets and smartphones. All of them, when not otherwise occupied by his work, were churning out data packets for the S.E.T.I. @Home project. He was a nerd of the highest-most order, a romantic optimist fundamentally. He had to be if he believed that one day he would find intelligent, alien life.
He took a quick glance at his 70-inch, wall-mounted, display where he’d patched in all of the data from his computers. However, like yesterday and every day for the last fifteen years, there was no signal. He waved his hand vaguely at the display and brought up his ‘Von Neumann’ screen. A couple of months earlier, he had decided to increase his processing power exponentially, but there was no way of reaching that goal without a massive cash inflow. Unfortunately, his employer was not the bonus-giving type especially since Miles wasn’t exactly bringing in the kind of money that his classmates from MIT were with their high-frequency trading algorithms on Wall Street, in London, and Hong Kong.
So he just had to be clever. Miles put on his hacker’s
white hat
, and wrote a little code that would find the computers of conservative fundamentalists, mostly from the Bible Belt; the kind that didn’t believe in evolution. The little code would run through the browser histories of all of the computers it encountered looking for search terms such as ‘Evolution lies’, ‘Bill Nye + sucks’, ‘Neil de Grasse Tyson + sucks’, and not surprisingly ‘porn’—
boy there was tons of that in the histories
. Once located, his program would inconspicuously download the S.E.T.I. program onto the hard drives of the unsuspecting and witless owners. While the computers were actively in use by their owners, presumably on social media or on various pornography sites, the program would borrow half of their processing power to run the S.E.T.I. algorithms through the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing protocol, BOINC for short. As an added bonus, Miles had added a few lines of code, which he had called, ‘One for God, One for Science’. The bonus code created a Twitter account for each of the pious. The Twitter account would follow and retweet anything Bill Nye and Neil de Grasse Tyson tweeted whenever religious messages were being tweeted or posted on social media. In the case of ‘gay porn’ queries, the pious would receive social media feeds from George Takei;
Oh my!
Miles had converted approximately 30,000 computers so far, and he had catapulted in the standings of the S.E.T.I. top participants. But even with the growing flock, he had not heard a message from the heavens. Despondent, he poured himself a steaming-hot cup of coffee and pulled his never-ironed khakis out from under a keyboard that itself was covered in coffee stains, some fresh, some dried, and some added by Miles’ unsteady hand as he reached across the clutter of electronics. He grunted—annoyed at the balled-up denim shirt that he couldn’t quite reach. Miles hurried his clothes on, waved god-speed to his relentless listeners, and headed out the front door, tired, wrinkled, and brilliant as ever.
Moments later, Miles stepped outside into the parking lot. It was bone-chillingly brisk this morning.
“Should’ve brought my jacket,” Miles muttered as his lips trembled at the cold bite of the morning chill. He managed a stuttering “m…morning,” as Tracy from the third floor bounded out in front of him. Tracy had that cheery, springy bounce in her step that made her legs that much more attractive and gave her breasts that extra perk that drove him nuts at all other times of the day but made him want to strangle her in the mornings.
Miles drifted off, daydreaming about Tracy, as he followed her long, exposed legs down the parking lot toward her car. A sudden, loud sneeze startled Miles back into the world, and he recoiled instinctively as he caught the moist mist in his face; some had definitely gone into his mouth.
“Damn it! Cover your mouth,” he growled as he rabidly pawed at his face with his sweater sleeves. The guy kept walking, face buried in his hands. He offered an apology that was interrupted by yet another sneeze.
Must be a new neighbor
, Miles thought as he tried to catch the guy’s face. Where’d he come from? He looked around trying to figure out which car the guy had just stepped out of. The bastard would get his; nothing like slashing a couple of tires to even the score.
“
Asshole!
” he yelled back over his shoulders at the now distant man.
Miles wiped at the spray that had gotten into his left eye and rubbed at his cheek vigorously trying to scrape off several layers of skin. The best part of waking up so far this morning had definitely been his cup of coffee. He was still pawing at his face when he reached his car. He had a forty-five minute drive to work that was sure to be lengthened by the traffic on I-95 south, toward Boston. He shuffled angrily into his car, his toy, a Tesla S Roadster, the envy of all nerdom. Other guys might have their Beamers and Benzes, but he had this and hardly anyone had it. He named her ‘Tracy’. He knew how to turn her on. A wry smile crept onto the corner of his mouth.
“Oh, baby, can I touch you here?” he said out loud as he caressed the ignition button with his index finger and imagined it was soft, pink flesh. The sudden throbbing at his temples brought him back from his fantasy.
Damned migraines,
he thought. He had to call Dr. Lakowski to change his meds again. He shouldn’t be getting any migraines. The meds he’d been on for the last few months were working pretty well. In fact, he couldn’t remember when he’d last had a bad migraine.
Oh well,
he thought, he’d call at lunch time. Now he just had to somehow make it to work in time to not piss off Karen, aka, ‘Madame Butterfly’, his endearing term for the young, super-genius, can-do-no-wrong, probably slept her way to cushy funding and her own lab, boss of his who was five years younger than he was. He was tired of working on her damned pet project. Thousands of hours had been wasted on some geometric design. Where did she get off blaming him for his algorithms not working? Well, at least he wouldn’t have to deal with the damned project anymore since Karen had sent him the schematic of a new design that she said would work. He’d looked at it quickly and had run it through his backup system at home, since he hadn’t been to work in a few days, and it looked promising—
whatever
. Maybe now he could get back to his work.
“Screw her and screw the sneezing guy, too!” Miles grumbled as he bolted up in his seat and angrily jabbed at the electric starter button. Or rather he thought he did. He tried again, but he couldn’t quite reach the button. He was having trouble extending his arm, which he now realized was numb. It was probably just the cold.
Miles brought his hand up to his mouth to blow on it, which was the only way to battle these cold autumn mornings in New England, that is of course, if you didn’t wear gloves. He tried to blow. Nothing came out. His face was numb. He was dizzy. His head started throbbing. The throbbing grew stronger, too fast to be okay. He was in trouble. He grabbed at his chest pocket trying desperately to get to his phone. He couldn’t. Miles slumped suddenly in the Tesla’s bucket seat, dead.
He’d be found by Tracy around 6 p.m. later that day on her way back from work. He’d soiled himself. She told the police that she’d found Mike―at least that’s what she thought his name was, or Mark―in his car by himself. “It was so sad how things like that can happen. You just never know,” she’d say. “So sad... ”
The official cause of death would be noted as an ischemic stroke. He had otherwise been a healthy-ish, thirty-year-old Caucasian male, slight build, brown hair, and brown eyes. There wasn’t much else to write in the medical examiner’s report. Other than the medical examiner’s professional opinion and lack of physical evidence to point to anything nefarious, Mr. Baker’s death was pretty cut and dry. Maybe he’d drunk too many energy drinks or popped a lot of party drugs in the past? His type was always into that kind of party drug scene, and too much partying sometimes caught up with you early. The medical examiner gave the body another glance, scrawled some intentionally illegible notes, and left the room. Her assistants would put the body away and handle the arrangements with whatever family members would come inquiring. It was Monday afternoon, and she was on to happy hour. Just a few days left until her retirement. She’d learned through all of these years to just write the simple, obvious causes of death. It helped the families move on. It was better this way. It was better for everyone. Questions brought misery. And so, nobody bothered to test for neurotoxins, let alone test for a particularly nasty one that had been used by professional assassins throughout the Cold War and that was seeing a recent resurgence in popularity. There was no reason to, at least not any that Miles Baker, or anyone else was aware of, but at least for Miles, that question no longer mattered.
Paul Eckert was not the type to lounge around, not even in those moments when he arguably could. Anyone in his position, as CEO of BioSyn, one of the fastest growing, private, biotech companies in the world, would have taken the time to kick up his heels for a moment and appreciate his nearly unmatched, executive-office view of the gorgeous Manhattan skyline. Not Eckert. He never looked up in admiration. He always looked down. The lessons were there. He had always learned from looking down on people. From his vantage point, he could see them scurry, darting from corner to corner, point to point, except of course, for the fat ones. They only moved as fast as the tide of people about them could disturb their inertia. These floaters sucked what little energy there was around them, but they eventually fell with a thud, giving back the inertia that they had consumed their entire lives.
Eckert consciously touched the bridge of his nose, twice broken, and traced down to orbital bones, smashed too many times to count. He massaged his once cauliflowered ears; he’d had them surgically repaired. His current face perfectly hid the story of his past. As he leered down at the throngs, he recalled the first time his nose was broken. A fist from a fat fuck had done the damage. He could still taste the blood, so warm, thick, and salty, like gagging on spoiled molasses. He had stumbled to his knees, regained his wits momentarily, in time to see the fat fuck’s big boot crash into his face. That was also when his orbital bone was shattered for the first time. He was beaten senseless. Eckert smirked at the recollection. He lay in the street that day a bloody, pathetic mess. He would not get back up. There would be no comeback.
As he lay on the pavement, in broad daylight, convulsing, he learned the most important life lesson. The truth is that people never get up. There are no miraculous feats of will that propel you to rise to your feet. There is only weakness, weakness of the person pounding away at your motionless body as the dull thuds of boots fade into nothingness. You are at their mercy. If they pause, if they tire, if they are weak, they allow you to live. You thank their weakness when you regain consciousness, alone, battered, broken, forever changed, perpetually in fear of your own mortality, fleeting as it is. You can no longer ignore the truth that there is no plan. Nothing is ever okay. There is just one truth, you live or you die by your own hand or you suffer at the hands of others. His hands had granted him life without weakness from that day on.
- - - - - - -
While its corporate headquarters occupied prime Manhattan real estate, BioSyn’s labs, where it made its money, were located upstate, just outside of Syracuse. The labs occupied a sprawling 100 acre complex that was surrounded by a dense, deciduous forest. Some well-known pharmaceuticals had been birthed here, though nearly eighty percent of BioSyn’s product line had been purchased for less than reasonable sums. BioSyn’s investors lauded its hard negotiation skills while its competitors despised what some described as its bullying tactics, others still, suspected criminal collusion with Chinese generic pharmaceutical manufacturers. In all cases, under Eckert’s leadership, BioSyn quickly turned these modest investments into windfalls by marking up the retail price by some 300 to 500 percent. Eckert had also led the charge to transition manufacturing from the United States to mainland China, and when China became too expensive, he threatened to offshore production to Vietnam. The Chinese capitulated and granted BioSyn a ten-year agreement to manufacture their products at steep discounts.
With most of its steady income safely offshore, BioSyn had the luxury of working on purely proprietary projects within the walls of the state of the art complex. These were the high-risk, high-reward projects that, if successful, would revolutionize medicine, and more importantly, add billions to the balance sheets. However, the reality of pharmaceutical development was that most of the projects flamed out almost as quickly as they were conceived and that cost money.
Over the last five years, BioSyn had purchased most of the uninhabited land near the original laboratory building. It immediately began the frenzied construction of the complex, the likes of which, had been unseen in the county. The county commissioners praised BioSyn for bringing hundreds of middle-class jobs and families to Onondaga, which had collapsed economically during the “Great Recession” a decade earlier, and from which it had yet to recover. BioSyn promised to hire local workers for the construction phase of the project and gave priority to Onondaga County residents in hiring for the high-tech laboratory positions, one of Eckert’s masterful strokes. Eckert was a great businessman and a greater politician. His coup de grace was instructing the legal department to include residency restrictions in every employment contract from janitor to engineer.
But the project had its hiccups, usually stubborn property owners who did not appreciate the kind of Manhattan progress that BioSyn was bringing up north to Onondaga. Eckert led the charge for BioSyn once again, partnering with Onondaga County to use imminent domain to uproot some of the more recalcitrant landowners in the area who had held out against BioSyn’s buyout offers. Eckert had earned notoriety and respect for the methods. He’d charmed most and strong-armed a few holdouts into giving up their properties, some of which had been owned for generations. But there had been one couple who had managed to resist: the Belinskis. They were octogenarians who had survived the Second World War. They had fled into the woods when the Nazis had overrun their Russian village during the summer of 1941. The next couple of years found them fighting alongside the Krasnaya Armiya as partisans. They were proud Russian Jews, and years of persecution had toughened them up. Years of living under Soviet rule had made them tougher still. Their life was basic, fulfilling, mostly living off of the land, making their own clothes and food. Boris had suffered from infertility because of his exposure to radiation during his service in the Soviet Navy. And though she wanted children, Marina eventually came to terms with her lot.
Boris and Marina made their way to the United States after the fall of the Soviet Union. Boris saved the little money that he had made during his years of selling hand-carved picture frames out of his shop on Brighton Beach. Marina saved what she could from her years making borscht and pierogis in the kitchens of several Brooklyn restaurants. Though they had earned very little, they had saved most every penny, which meant that the happy couple had more than enough to purchase their little dacha upstate, as an eightieth birthday present to themselves. A return to the countryside is what they had worked for all of these years. Fate led them to their little plot, and they looked forward to living out their days here.
So when Mr. Eckert arrived at their doorstep, they were suspicious from the outset. They had been hospitable, asking him to come into their little cabin and to sit down for some of Marina’s borscht. Mr. Eckert turned it down, something about an allergy to onions. That was strike one. Strike two came when Mr. Eckert refused to indulge Boris in a few stories, which like most Russian stories, spanned the length of ‘War and Peace’. The last strike came when he refused a third shot of vodka. Most conmen accepted the first or even the second shot, but never the third. They were always too worried about keeping their stories straight to risk that third shot. Vodka was truth. Mr. Eckert was a skillful liar, a politician of some sort, Boris and Marina would later agree, but the fact that he was an impatient man, refused borscht, and vodka, gave him away.
“Allergiya dlya luk?” Marina had never heard of such an allergy.
Boris looked at her and sighed, shaking his head, “Amerikanski!”
“Bolshoi shishka!” Marina exclaimed. The conversation was over. It was time for chai.
“Tak.”
Eckert’s luck would turn a few weeks later when Boris Belinski suffered a stroke. Marina would soon pass from a broken heart. They had died intestate and without any heirs. Eckert instructed the county paper to omit their obituaries. It was uncovered during the probate of the estate that the land had been liened by the county for failure to pay taxes. He made some phone calls and within a matter of weeks he had arranged to purchase the lien on the land. BioSyn’s attorneys would foreclose soon thereafter. Everything had fallen into place for him. His colleagues at BioSyn could not believe his dumb luck. The company’s financial backers took notice of Eckert’s take-no-prisoners approach and his ability to deliver. He had the touch. They would ensure his swift rise to power.
He was immediately promoted from project manager of the upstate expansion to Vice President of Operations, the steppingstone to the Chief Executive’s office. BioSyn’s operations expanded dramatically under his leadership, and the board thanked him by giving him the top job. They were enamored with Eckert’s alpha-male confidence and charm. With Eckert as the face of the company, there was no telling where they would go. They did know one thing, though: Eckert would make them lots of money at any cost.