Xeno Sapiens (4 page)

It was but a short leap from there to
the point where the codons of every chromosome could be
synthesized. They could be altered, improved, extrapolated upon. It
didn’t matter if the cells were dead or alive, if only she could
get the blueprints mapped, like the most intricate set of Tinker
Toys or Lincoln Logs ever devised. She hoped eventually to take DNA
from extinct species and synthesize cells from them. Further along,
with the use of cytokines, even ova would not be required as
organisms could be constructed fully formed and mature from raw
elements.

She thought of scraping some of the dead cells from the
last passenger pigeon, a bird named Martha, mounted and on display
at the Cincinnati zoo, and plot it. Map it out and plant it into an
ovum so the world could watch as an extinct species was reborn, not
ironically, but fittingly, like the Phoenix from the ashes of
oblivion.
Any
DNA not ancient or degraded could work. Superstrains of
food crops and livestock for a hungry world could literally be
cloned in vitro from basically raw materials. On the taboo side of
the scale, the clones of dead humans, noble and ignoble, could be
brought back, resurrected to give new accomplishments. Einstein,
Tesla, Dickens, Mozart. All could breathe again.

By this time, on top of her research
and internship at the ER trauma center, Dr. Grey had decided to
take a sabbatical and had left Ingrid to teach his classes. She was
exhausted and utterly strung out and that might have been what gave
her the crazy notion to try and catalog the human
genome.

She knew that a French group had
cataloged the fifty thousand or so genes that made up the genome.
Her problem was how to acquire that information. She hardly
believed she could ring them up with a cheery hello and say she was
Ingrid Milner, sophomore med student, howya doin’ and, by the way,
could you transmit all your research on the human genome to me free
of charge?

She didn’t speak French, but imagined
the reply would be something she didn’t want to hear in any
language.

A few days after this mad notion took
root, she appeared at Jake’s dorm room, red eyed, thin, and hardly
coherent. Jake was at the University on a full scholarship. At age
fifteen he had been writing computer programs in his own language
and hacking into the most sophisticated telecommunications systems
to avail himself of free long distance calling. Three years later
he had racked up an impressive total of nineteen thousand dollars
worth of calls before the feds dropped the hammer on
him.

The strangest thing about the whole
operation was that the federal men had a representative from the
victimized baby bell in tow and, instead of arresting Jake, had
hired him. Ingrid knew she would have to have his particular
talents to get what she wanted.

His room was modern day Victorian,
decorated in splendid excess with VDT’s, printers, modems, faxes
and CPU stacks everywhere. Miles of cable crawled over the floor,
some connected, many others hanging loose like vines hacked off by
a machete and left to dangle. He had the only private air
conditioner allowed on the floor, the rest of the dorm strictly
temperature controlled by central air conditioning, and the room
was like an iceberg. She supposed the powers that be at the
university were willing to allow Jake his excesses in order to keep
him as a student.

“
I need your help, Jake.”

“
You look like you could use
somebody’s help,” Jake had replied in a Bobby Bowden
drawl.

“
I need you to hack a computer for
me.”

“
That shit’s against the law,” Jake
said, his eyes wide. “I almost got sent up to the big house for
that once before.”

“
Jake, don’t tell me you’re not
hacking into somebody’s database every other day.”

Jake grinned. “I’ve just got better at
not getting caught. Live and learn. Whose system and where is it
that you want... borrowed.”

“
It’s in France.”

Jake didn’t blink.

“
There’s only one problem, oh Great
One.”

“
What’s that?”

“
I don’t speak French.”

Ingrid looked puzzled. Jake
explained.

“
Programs are written in machine
language, no problem there. The rub is that I’d hate to get into
the guts of the program and then not be able to figure out a
password simply because the only French I know is Merci Boo-koo. I
assume you don’t want me to do this simply because I can,
right?”

Ingrid gave a weary nod.

“
So,” Jake went on brightly, “once I
get in and get the printer to start churning out hard copy, it’s
likely going to be in French, too. I won’t even know if I’ve got
what I’m looking for.”

“
We’ll cross that bridge when when
come to it. I’m sure there’s someone around here that can speak
French.”

Jake thought about telling her he knew
whatever she wanted pirated, she wouldn’t trust to anyone to
translate, but didn’t.

“
Alright, Ingrid. Just give me the
name of the place and tell me what you want. I’ll see what I can
get for you.”

“
The name of the place is the Academy
of Natural sciences, in Paris. I don’t know the French for it. What
I need is a catalog of the human genome. Can you do it?”

Again, Jake didn’t flinch. “Give me a
few days. I’ll call you when I find out something. I may have to
download the entire database. It’ll be like looking for a needle in
a haystack. Is it important?”

“
From my standpoint,” Ingrid said,
“no. Mainly curiosity. On a larger scale, very
important.”

“
That’s a big risk I’m taking to
satisfy your curiosity.”

“
You don’t have to do it.”

“
Are you nuts? We’re partners in
crime, aren’t we? The data I’ve been feeding you from big Pharma
isn’t written in BASIC, you know, and they don’t give it away.
You’re creative in your way, I’m creative at appropriating
information.” He cracked his knuckles and sat down at his console.
“Let the artist work.”

Ingrid left him clacking away at his
keyboard, knowing he would work well into the night. She had given
him only the scantiest information, but he knew how to navigate the
invisible data highways of computer networks like a spider seeking
prey in a web. Her last glimpse of him before she left was of a
huddled figure, the light from his desk lamp shining on his face
and making rainbow colored glints in his shiny, curly black
hair.

It took longer than she expected for
Jake to get back to her and she began to wonder if the sparse
information she had given him would be enough. But about a week
later, Jake called her.

“
Ingrid,” he said. “I’ve got what you
want, I think. Maybe you should come over here tonight and see if
you can make any sense of it.”

“
What do you mean?”

“
It’s the craziest thing. I got into
the database and started downloading and came up with a bunch of
files with labels like X, Y, Ras, HLA, CD-10, all kinds of weird
names. The X and Y I know, but these others,” he trailed off. “No
clue.”

“
I’ve got to teach a class at five
this afternoon. Bio 101. Freshman gut course. I’ll cut it short and
be there by six thirty.”

“
Okay, but it’ll have to be tonight.
They could change the password at any time and I’d have to find it
again.”

“
How did you find it in the first
place?”

“
Snotty computer types are
insufferably arrogant. They think their files are pretty well
protected so they don’t bother disguising their passwords very
well. I just thought about what I was looking for and thought about
passwords I might use.”

“
What was it?”

“
Prometheus,” Jake said. “One so
arrogant he stole fire from the gods to give to man.”

Ingrid hurried through her class. She
let the fidgeting mob loose at six fifteen and hastened across
campus to Jake’s dorm room. She felt as if she were on some macabre
commission in the dead of night, but it was summertime in Florida
and the sun was still thirty degrees over the western horizon and a
balmy wind blew cottony clouds across the sky.

But Jake’s room was different. With the air conditioning on
to protect the touchy computer circuitry, and the only light being
the high strength lamp at his terminal, she felt like the ape men
discovering the black obelisk in
2001: A Space Odyssey.
She was about to see the very
basics of life itself. She shivered, wishing she had brought a
sweater. Jake had heavy, insulated draperies over the windows to
keep the room virtually frigid. The air was filled with the scent
of ozone and the calm hum of electronic circuitry patiently
awaiting its call to duty.

“
Ready,” Jake asked.

“
Let her rip.”

“
I’ve opened the file marked
‘Genome’,” Jake said, staring at the electric glow of one of his
many screens. “If you need to go back for anything, we can do that,
too.”

Jake tapped in a few instructions on his keyboard, then
clicked enter. The computer beeped and a series of lists flashed
rapidly over the screen, scrolling upwards too fast to be able to
read anything. Another beep and the printer head in the large
printer flashed to the left margin with a mechanical clank,
reminding Ingrid of the robot machines she had seen in factories.
She expected to hear a rapid fire
clack clack clack
, but the printer was eerily quiet,
churning out page after page of documentation with only a soft whir
and a sibilant hiss as it spun the paper out in a long
ribbon.

Ingrid took a look at some of the
documentation, spooling it up in her arms. As Jake had predicted,
most of it was in French, but a surprising amount of it was in
English. Ingrid read what she could, trying to concentrate over the
soft but implacable click and clank of the printer’s rapidly
cycling head. After two minutes or so, the printer abruptly stopped
and the drives in the computers whirred, their LED’s blinking back
and forth rapidly and alternately.

“
What’s wrong,” Ingrid
asked.

“
Just wait.”

After agonizing moments the printer
groaned aloud with a long moan, as if the database was only
grudgingly giving up its information. The terminal beeped again and
the printer spun into renewed life, spewing out page after page of
lists with nothing more than unending combinations of the letters
A, G, C, and T.

Ingrid studied the lists, the computer screen mirrored in
her glassy eyes, recognizing some of the combinations, seeing
other, new ones that seemed to strike her like a sledgehammer. She
thought of what she had done with these kinds of instructions, of
what she
could
do if she weren’t probing mainly in the dark. And here was
the key to unlock it all.

“
Ingrid,” Jake asked. “Are you okay?”
He waved his hands in front of her eyes, but she acted as if she
didn’t see it. She had tensed up, crumpling the paper she held in
her arms against her chest. She stood frozen, her eyes locked on
the far wall.

The terminal beeped again and the
printer started up on another file. Ingrid snapped out of her daze
and dropped the scroll of paper on the floor.

“
Stop it,” she said.

“
Are you sure?”

“
Yes,” she said softly. “Stop it now.
I’m not ready for this.”

Jake’s finger hovered over the break
key. He looked once more at Ingrid.

“
Last chance.”

She nodded. Jake clicked the break key
and the terminal buzzed instead of beeping.

The printer stopped in mid-whir, the screen flashed one
last hurrah, and the characters
hda1: What is your wish, O Great
one
appeared
on the screen, followed by the flashing command line
prompt.

“
That’s it,” Jake said.

Ingrid stooped down and began scooping
up the printout.

“
Help me with this, will
you?”

“
Don’t crumple it like that,” Jake
said. “You won’t be able to read it.”

“
I don’t want to read it. You have a
shredder?”

“
Of course I have a shredder.” He
sounded wounded. “Do you think I’m stupid?”

They spent the next half hour
obliterating all traces of the night’s work. Jake even had to erase
the program he had written to break into the database. Ingrid
insisted on it. Unfortunately, she was so naïve about computers she
didn’t even think to ask him to dump the backup copies that had
been registered simultaneously on six different computers and
twelve drives, but he didn’t bother to tell her that. What could it
help?