CODE X:Episode 1 (10 page)

Biggins pulls out her cell phone, hits a
speed dial button, “Dubrowski, get ready.”

Chapter 29

Two Alomet
security guards enter through the doors of Alomet Research Center
and stop at the receptionist. One is carrying a small silver
suitcase with a handcuff locked to it and his wrist.

“Dr. Vicki Collins, we have a special
delivery for her, and it can only be personally delivered to
her.”

“She’s in the rear corner of the lab, with
her assistant, Candy.” She points to the rear of the massive
laboratory.

They march back to the area and see her bent
over an electron microscope.

“Dr. Collins?”

Vicki looks up and answers, “I’m Dr.
Collins.”

“We have this package to deliver to you on
orders of Dr. Landau. Please place your thumb on the recognizer and
look into the iris recorder to accept delivery.” He pulls out what
looks like an iPad with a small flat camera he extends from its
recess and holds the device out for her.

She places her thumb on the pad and it
flashes green. Next she moves close to the eye scanner and again it
approves her identity.

“I just need your physical signature on the
pad.” She signs the pad and a paper receipt prints out for her.

The guards unlock the cuff and hand her the
case. They turn and walk out.

Vicki almost caresses the case, and then
turns to Candy. “This is a section of Dr. Einstein’s brain.
Announce to the staff to assemble immediately. I want to get the
whole team heading in a new direction.”

Candy picks up a telephone receiver, punches
a button, and over loudspeakers announces “Attention everyone. Come
to the outside of Dr. Collins office at once. She has an important
announcement to make.”

The entire lab rustles to life and start
heading towards her office. They stand and wait for her to
speak.

“Everybody, I want to head our research in a
new direction. We’re going to use the molecular electric current
detector as the lead tool for this new theory I want to pursue. As
you know, we still don’t understand how the gene’s molecules send
specific instructions for the completion of a perfectly cloned body
part. We have a complete spaceship and all the disassembled parts
of it sitting in front of us, and only a manual for the major
sections of the ship to put it together. We are missing thousands
of pages for the final assembly of the small parts to make it a
working model. That is true for human DNA.”

She picks up a model of a DNA molecule that
is cut away.

“Using chemical traces helped identify
approximately 10% of the manual. I think that when life begins,
electric charges in the molecules send out the instructions to
start forming a complete human. We can see life start when the cell
starts dividing. The thinking was the euchromatic part of a cell
was just empty space. That is not true. We will focus on attempting
to discover the electric charges that I believe are the switches
for signaling instructions to the molecules for the formation of an
identical human cell from the clone donor.”

A young doctor raises his hand.

“Yes, you have a question?”

“Are we to stop searching for chemical keys
and aren’t we already successfully cloning mammals? Doctor, what
would be the difference?”

“Yes to the first part of your question.
Finish the chemical testing. As far as mammals, they are cloned,
but the new cells are older, the animals die early and get sick.
Today, a cloned human part is identical in cell structure, but, it
is not like the identical copy that would allow us to replace the
original. The telomeres are shorter. The cell is as old as the
donor.”

Vicki paces back and forth, “If we could
find the switch, which I believe is composed of electric charges
molecules produce and send instructions to the DNA strand; we could
make a perfect, healthy human. We could solve autism, eliminate
cancer, replace defective heart valves, or heal a weak heart with
cell replacement therapies.”

“Today, a section of Dr. Albert Einstein’s
brain was delivered to us. I will send sections of it for you to
regenerate the DNA along with each team’s schedule for using the
molecular electric current detector. I want us to be testing 24
hours a day. Stop and think about it for a moment. If we are
successful, the huge benefits gained will allow us to reverse
strokes, cure cancer, MS, Alzheimer’s and all neurological diseases
connected to the brain. Chemical keys are a dead end, let’s
discover the unknown.”

The group applauds her. Vicki smiles, she
knows she will succeed with her new theory. She loves seeing what
no one else can see. It’s what she does best.

Chapter 30

Inside Vicki’s
lab, she’s applying DNA tests to liquid synthesis before testing.
Her assistant Candy Kelley, 24, assists.

Candy confides to Vicki, “I can’t wait to
get pregnant again.”

“You said you weren’t married.”

“We get a $100,000 bonus for having a
baby.”

Vicki bursts into tears. Candy puts her arms
around her.

“I’m sorry Dr. Collins. What’d I say?”

“My fiancé was killed; we planned on having
a big family.”

“Oh, Dr. Collins, if I’d have known.”

“Nick made me believe in fairy tales. He
said we’d always be together.”

“He must have been very special. I’m so
sorry.”

Vicki has collected herself. “Who pays you
to have babies?”

“The company. They started to offer the
bonus to all the women here about three years ago. Since Jimmy was
my fiancé and we were living together, we decided to have a
baby.”

“Alomet encourages you to have children out
of wedlock?”

“Oh yes, the doctors help us if we have a
hard time getting pregnant. We’re treated like royalty.”

“Royalty? What do you mean?”

“The community, the church, the company,
everyone tells us over and over...God wouldn’t have made us so
beautiful if he didn’t want us to go forth and multiply. They
encourage us to develop relationships with the staff here. They
told us we were all tested for matching compatibility, or else we
wouldn’t be working here.”

“Candy, would you like to come over to my
apartment after work, I’d like to meet your son.”

“Why I’d love to. I’ll bring Jimmy, my son’s
dad, so you can meet him too. Just give me time to change my
clothes.”

“Oh, goodness no. Come over as you are. I’ve
been somewhat lonely and it’d be fun to watch a child play again
with no dress up involved.”

Inside Vicki’s living room, she watches
Candy’s son, David, playing with a toy truck he brought with him.
The two year old has blond hair, blue eyes, and is very slender,
which is a contrast to her mother and the father, Jimmy, who are
both big boned. Both parents also have blue eyes. This is the same
Jimmy who was driving Henry on the Parks attack.

Candy whispers to Vicki. “You’re probably
wondering why David looks so different than me and Jimmy. The
doctor said our recessive genes became dominant.”

“Not really. I just find it strange they
encourage you to have children out of wedlock and pay you money to
do so.”

Jimmy overhears her. “Come on Dr. C. Why you
making such a big deal out of this?”

Vicki’s interest is really piqued by the odd
couple, the strange policies of Alomet and the boyfriend who
projects a dislike for being there. There is something odd going on
in their father-mother relationship, not counting the non-matching
facial or physical features of either in the little boy.

“Candy, would you mind if I took a sample of
your son’s blood?”

“I mind.” Jimmy is quick to answer.

“No, Jimmy, he’s my son too. If Dr.
Collins...”

Inside the Alomet Security Surveillance
Center, a security officer watches this scene play out real time in
Vicki’s living room on a bank of huge TV monitors in front of
him.

“...wants to run some tests, I don’t see
what’s wrong.”

Jimmy sets the glass of Coke down hard that
Vicki brought out for him to drink earlier. “I’m out of here Candy.
You piss me off when you start listening to other people instead of
doing what I say.” Jimmy rips his jacket from the back of the sofa.
He angrily storms out.

Jimmy’s odd behavior makes Vicki even more
curious. She takes notice of the Coke glass he was drinking from
for a few brief seconds. Something is just not right between
them.

The officer snatches a phone and presses a
call button, “Dr. Landau...”

Chapter 31

Vicki shuts the
door behind Candy in her office. “I’ve asked you in here to get
your help for some tests I’m going to be running on myself. I don’t
want anyone on the staff to know about the experiment I’ll be
doing, except you. I’ll want you to confirm the results.”

Candy leans forward, “That’s quite an honor.
Are you sure I can do it?”

Vicki nods emphatically, “Oh yes. Let me
tell you what I’m going to be looking for. I want you in the loop
continuously following up on my experiments, double checking my
results. Professor Einstein left his brain for study to help
mankind figure out why he was so much smarter than everybody. So
what I’m going to do is reproduce his DNA strand here in the lab.
I’m also going to be testing my DNA to compare it to his.”

Candy’s eyes widen, “Wow!”

Vicki takes a relaxed position as she sits
down at her desk. “I’ve always been embarrassed to tell anyone how
easy it was for me to get ahead in school. That’s why I want you to
promise you won’t tell anybody what we are about to discuss.”

Candy sits down across from her and leans
forward in her chair. “I promise.”

“School has always been a snap for me. I was
born with a gift. Plain and simple, I was born with my memory
skills. That’s the reason everything came so easy for me. I have
almost a photographic memory. When I read information, it stays in
my memory. Puzzle solving? The answers seem to fall in place, they
appear so clear to me when I study the problem.”

Candy frowns, “I always had to study at
least two hours every night in nursing school. Gosh, you were
lucky.”

“Very. That’s why I feel it so important to
study the gap switches in our DNA. But, I’ll also be looking for
similarities in our DNA that might provide solutions to improve the
intelligence of all people.”

“Dr. Collins, I feel honored to be working
with you.”

“Candy, do me a favor. Do not hero worship
me. I’m just one person born lucky. I am treating you like an equal
and I want you to treat me the same way. We’re a team, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Now, I want you to draw my blood.”

Candy leaves the office and a few moments’
later returns with a blood sample collecting basket full of test
tubes. She puts the compression band around Vicki’s arm and draws
two tubes of blood.

“There, I’ve got your sample.”

“Now, I want to draw your blood for the
testing of your son’s DNA we talked about”

Candy hands Vicki the blue compression band
and holds her arm out for Vicki. “I don’t think you’ll find
anything unusual about me and my son. But, I don’t mind
volunteering if you think it will contribute to the project. Jimmy
is kind of put off at times in being a parent. But, I’m glad to
help.”

Vicki finishes drawing two tubes of blood
from Candy and puts them in her desk. “We’ll go over the results
together when we get them completed.”

Chapter 32

Vicki looks up at
the clock, hurries to take her lab coat off and glances around the
lab with an intense study of the other techs. She drops her pen on
the floor, stops, looks down at it, and then scoops it up. She
hurries over to the DNA pipette tubes on station one, picks up a
printout and pretends to look at it.

Candy enters the lab and walks over towards
station one where Vicki glances up and expresses surprise. She
sighs relief that Candy’s here and moves closer to her, lightly
touches her on the shoulder, leans over and asks in a whisper, “I
almost forgot to ask you, did you change the blood samples on your
son?”

“No... I took his sample at home and marked
both blood vials with his name. I haven’t touched them since I gave
them to you. Why?”

“Nothing, lab vials were moved. I thought
maybe you moved them.”

“No. You look a little worried Dr.
Collins.”

“Not really. I just feel like some things
aren’t where I left them. You know when you misplace something and
don’t remember where.”

Candy replies, “Oh boy, don’t I know that
feeling.”

“Say, I would really enjoy it if you had
lunch with me today?”

“Sure!”

Candy and Vicki are eating their salads on
the restaurant patio. It’s busy and crowded with a lot of
background chatter from the patrons.

After sipping a drink, Vicki asks, “Tell me
the procedure they used to impregnate you.”

Candy sighs, “Well…”, she takes a bite of
her salad before continuing, “…I can’t tell you too much because
the first thing Dr. Landau did was anesthetize me.”

“What?”

Candy moves her fork back and forth in the
air as she speaks “Jimmy and I were having trouble conceiving
because of my poor egg quality. He said the pregnancy had a much
better chance of taking when I’m totally relaxed, so he put me
under.”

Vicki nods and puts her wine glass down.
“Can I trust you with something?”

“Oh yes Dr. Collins. You’re like a sister to
me.”

“From now on outside the lab, I want you to
call me Vicki.”

“You make me feel like I’m
special…
Vicki
.” Smiling wide, she looks down and lets out a
small giggle.

“It could put you in danger. Promise me you
won’t tell a soul what we talk about...Not even your
boyfriend.”