The Genesis Code (7 page)

Donald Ebersole’s Cubicle
WXNY, Channel 10
Queens, New York

Ebersole continued his impromptu lecture while Flavia scribbled notes on her pad.

“Every second, roughly fifty million of the cells in your body die. Amazing, is it not? From the recipe contained in your DNA, new cells are created to take their place. Your genetic code, written in every cell in your body, recreates your body as you age.”

“Okay, I think I’ve got it. So where do introns fit in?”

“Good question,” said Ebersole. “So what about introns? Big chunks of our DNA appear to be nothing more than a jumble of repetitive, random sequences that are rarely, if ever, used. Geneticists call these junk sequences introns.”

Flavia frowned.

“How can we visualize introns? Try this. If DNA is like a television show, then introns are like enormous commercial breaks that interrupt the real program. Except in our DNA, the commercials are longer than the actual show.”

“I think I understand,” said Flavia.

Ebersole continued. “Do we really understand them? No. We still have no idea why introns are present in our DNA or what they actually do, if anything. And what is being done? Nothing. No significant research on introns has been done in years.”

Flavia flipped to a fresh page in her notebook and continued writing.

Ebersole took another bite from his breakfast sandwich. When he spoke, crumbs fell from his mouth onto his wrinkled shirt.

“Interesting, is it not? A few years back, there was one paper published by a pair of geneticists from Japan. As I recall, it wasn’t well regarded by the mainstream scientific community. These Japanese scientists claimed that their measurements clearly revealed the Fibonacci sequence and the Golden Ratio in the structure of human DNA.”

“You’ve lost me again. The Fibonacci sequence? The Golden Ratio?”

“Not given to mathematics, are we? These are mathematical concepts. There’s an easy way to explain the Fibonacci sequence. Start making a list of numbers. The first two numbers on your list are zero and one.”

“Okay,” said Flavia, jotting numbers on her pad.

“Now add a third number to your list by adding the first and second numbers together.”

“Okay. Zero plus one equals one.”

“Now make a fourth number by adding the second and third numbers in your list. Keep doing this, over and over.”

Flavia stopped writing.

“The series that you get is zero, one, one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen, and so on. Mathematicians call this the Fibonacci sequence. And if you divide any number in the Fibonacci sequence by the one before it, the answer is always close to 1.61803.”

“What’s so special about that?”

“The relationship between successive numbers in the Fibonacci sequence, 1.61803, is called the Golden Ratio. It’s also called phi. You can find the Golden Ratio in nature, art, and music.”

“I don’t get it. How?”

“It’s a puzzle, is it not? The Golden Ratio shows up in nature in the arrangements of leaves on plants, patterns in the growth of crystals, graphs of animal populations, critical values of spinning black holes, and the shapes of pine trees and chicken eggs.”

Ebersole logged on to the Internet. He typed as he talked.

“Where else do we see it? Many places. Claude Debussy used phi in his music, and Le Corbusier employed it in his architecture. Leonardo da Vinci used the Golden Ratio when he painted the
Mona Lisa,
and the Greeks used it when they built the Parthenon.”

Flavia consulted her notes. “And these Japanese geneticists found the Fibonacci sequence and the Golden Ratio in DNA?”

“Here it is,” he said, reading from the computer screen. “What did they find? According to their calculations, human DNA measures thirty-four angstroms long by twenty-one angstroms wide for each full cycle of the double helix spiral. Thirty-four and twenty-one are numbers in the Fibonacci sequence, and their ratio is 1.618, the Golden Ratio.”

Ebersole smiled. “Remarkable, yes?

“But like I said, no one seemed to take much notice. And that was years ago. For at least the last five years, no one has made any progress on introns.”

Flavia thought for a moment. “What if I told you that one of the keynote speeches at this year’s International Biogenetics Conference was going to be about introns?”

“Who’s the speaker?”

“There are two copresenters listed on the agenda. Dr. Grace Nguyen and Dr. Joshua Ambergris, both from Triad Genomics.”

“I don’t know Nguyen,” said Ebersole. “But what do I know about Ambergris? He’s a heavy hitter. He won a Nobel Prize for his work on the Human Genome Project.”

Ebersole smoothed the wispy goatee on his chin.

“The International Biogenetics Conference is like the Super Bowl for geneticists. If Dr. Ambergris is giving a big presentation on introns, I’d wager that he plans to announce a major discovery. What do I think? I think you may have a big story here.”

Dr. Christian Madison’s Office
34th Floor, Millennium Tower
Manhattan, New York

When Madison returned to his office, Grace was waiting inside.

“Grace?”

She turned to face him. Her eyes were red from crying.

“I thought security escorted you to your office. How did you get back in here?” asked Madison.

“Quiz. I called him and asked. He worked some magic to override the security lock on your door.”

Her lower lip quivered.

“Is it true?” she asked. “People are starting to talk. Is he really dead?”

Madison nodded grimly. “I’m afraid so.”

Fresh tears welled in Grace’s eyes. She reached out to Madison. He held her tightly as she cried.

“I can’t believe this is happening.”

Grace stepped back from Madison’s embrace and smoothed the wrinkles in her white linen shirt. She wiped at her eyes with the flat of her hand.

“They want to talk to you,” said Madison.

“Who does?”

“Giovanni. And Crowe. They want to know what Dr. Ambergris was working on. I told them as much as I knew. Which wasn’t much,” said Madison.

Grace bit her lower lip. “He didn’t want anyone to know. At least not until tomorrow.”

“Giovanni thinks someone may have been after his research.”

Madison related the substance of his conversations with Giovanni and Crowe. Grace’s hands trembled.

“I suppose it’s possible,” she said. “Dr. Ambergris made a big breakthrough,” she said. “He was going to announce it at the Biogenetics Conference.”

“Tell me,” said Madison.

Dr. Christian Madison’s Office
34th Floor, Millennium Tower
Manhattan, New York

She took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled.

“I don’t know everything,” she said. “Dr. Ambergris kept a lot of his work to himself.”

Madison rolled his eyes.

“You may think I was Ambergris’ new golden child, but that’s just not true. Sure, I worked with him a lot, but Ambergris kept me at arm’s length. He was very secretive. Almost obsessively so.”

Madison was silent.

“Why don’t you believe me?”

“Okay,” he said. “For the sake of argument, let’s say I believe you.”

Grace sat on the edge of Madison’s desk. For a moment she seemed lost in thought.

“I don’t suppose it matters anymore,” she said finally. “This is what I know. Dr. Ambergris planned to announce his discovery during our presentation at the Biogenetics Conference. His research clearly shows that certain introns in human DNA follow Zipf’s law.”

“Zipf’s law?”

“Yes. It’s a statistical pattern common to all human languages. All languages follow what linguists call Zipf’s law.”

“I’ve never heard of Zipf’s law,” said Madison.

“I hadn’t either. It’s an odd concept, but it’s not that hard to understand. If you take any book, written in any language, you can see Zipf’s law at work. Count the number of times each word appears in the book. You might find that the most frequently recurring word is ‘the,’ followed by the second most recurring word, ‘of.’ The least common word might be xylophone, which appears only once in our imaginary book.”

Grace picked up a yellow notepad and pen from Madison’s desk. Flipping to a blank page, she drew a graph with a straight line running from the upper left corner to the lower right corner of the graph.

“If you plot this data on a graph, with the frequency of recurrence on one axis and the ranking of the word according to its frequency on the other axis, you get a perfectly straight line.”

Grace pushed several strands of fine black hair behind her ear, then continued.

“This straight line will appear for every human language, whether it’s English, Chinese, Greek, or Swahili. If you try and perform the same analysis on a bunch of randomly generated characters, you just get a chaotic-looking graph—no order at all. The Zipf’s law pattern shows up only for human languages.”

“But if that’s true…if Zipf’s law only applies to human languages…”

“Yes,” said Grace. “The logical conclusion is inescapable. It’s the revelation of a lifetime. Of a hundred lifetimes. Think about this for a moment. If genetic sequences in human DNA follow Zipf’s law, then the human genome, or at least part of it, hides some form of language.”

“That can’t be…” said Madison.

“I know it seems impossible to believe,” said Grace, “but Dr. Ambergris was absolutely convinced that human DNA hides a coded message. An enciphered text. Hidden in the building blocks of the genome.”

“What kind of message?”

“An intelligent communication. A message we should be able to decode and read. Dr. Ambergris called it the ‘Genesis Code.’ He worked countless hours trying to decipher it.”

“Did he have any success?”

“He thought he was very close. But he wouldn’t even let me help him with the decryption. He worked mostly at night, alone here at the lab, keeping notes on his computer.”

Madison grimaced. “Whoever killed Dr. Ambergris also stole his optical drive. His notes are gone.”

“Maybe not,” said Grace. “He never saved files or data to the mainframe or his hard drive. But I know he was in the habit of hiding his research journal on the Triad security server. To him, that was like hiding a valuable diamond inside the dial of a safe. It was a place no one would think to look.”

Madison thought for a moment.

“We have to find that journal,” he said.

Madison picked up the phone and dialed Quiz’s extension. Quiz answered the phone on the first ring.

“This is Quiz.”

“It’s Christian. I need a favor. It’s important.”

Dante Giovanni’s Office
Executive Suite, Triad Genomics
Manhattan, New York

Crowe picked up Giovanni’s phone and dialed a three digit extension. “This is Crowe. I—”

The voice on the other end of the line interrupted.

“I don’t care who’s been complaining,” Crowe barked into the receiver. “The lockdown will remain in effect until I tell you otherwise. Are we clear?”

Crowe waited for an affirmation.

“Good. Now, I want you to scan the security logs. The system logs everyone in and everyone out each day. Find out for me who was on the thirty-fourth floor between ten-thirty last night and six
A.M.
this morning.”

Crowe switched the phone to his other hand and leaned on the edge of Giovanni’s desk.

“No,” he said. “I’ll wait for the results.”

Giovanni, still seated at the conference table, crossed one leg over the other and plucked a small piece of lint from his trousers.

“Put it on speaker,” he instructed.

Crowe punched a button on the base of the telephone and replaced the receiver into its cradle. For almost a minute, only silence emanated from the speakerphone.

Then, a voice.

“Sir, after you left at ten thirty-two
P.M.
, only three people remained on the thirty-fourth floor—Dr. Ambergris, Dr. D’Amico, and Marilyn Sams.”

Crowe addressed the speakerphone.

“Dr. D’Amico works in the animal labs. I am familiar with her. Who is Marilyn Sams?”

“Technician, sir. In our IT department.”

“And does Ms. Sams generally keep such unorthodox hours?” asked Crowe.

“One minute, sir.”

There was a short, staccato burst of typing.

“I’m showing an IT service ticket for Marilyn Sams for the thirty-fourth floor router,” said the voice. “Service log notes report servicing completed at nine fifty-five
P.M.
”

Another burst of typing.

“Sams left the floor at ten-oh-three. Security log shows Dr. D’Amico left the floor at eleven-oh-three. Not unusual for her. D’Amico is a night owl.”

Crowe leaned forward. “So Dr. Ambergris was alone on the floor after about eleven
P.M.
Did anyone arrive on the floor between eleven
P.M.
and six
A.M.
?”

“One minute.”

More typing.

“Yes,” said the voice. “Just one person entered the floor during that time frame. Dr. Grace Nguyen passed through the security door adjacent to the elevator banks at four-eleven
A.M.
”