Sacred Flesh

For everyone who has ever wondered if it’s real
.

He sits staring at the ceiling, waiting for the contact to return to the small sparse room, they must be happy, he thinks, I brought the box just as they instructed, just as we arranged. Now, time to collect the rest of the payment. But why must they keep me waiting like this? Suddenly, he looks up at the gray metal door as it swings open. Quickly standing, he nods at the tall thin man in a brown suit.

“Pedro, you have served our group well. We are very grateful to you for bringing us the box. You have no idea how much this means to us.”

Pedro steps in front of the man with the dark beard who just minutes earlier accepted the small brown metal box. So lightweight, he thought, what possibly could be so important for them to spend so much money to get their hands on it?

“You have the rest of my money then?” Pedro asks.

“Of course, I told you we’d take care of you didn’t I?” He says with a slight smile.

“Yes,” Pedro nods.

“How ‘bout a drink first, you know, relax a little.”

“No, I can’t, should be going.”

“Very well, at least I offered. Sorry Pedro . . .”

Pedro’s eyes open wide in shock and disbelief as he sees the snub nosed revolver pulled from the man’s jacket pocket. The attached silencer muffling the volley of successive shots as Pedro falls back over the lone card table, landing hard on the tile floor, lying in a growing dark red pool of blood.

“Clean up aisle four,” the man says sarcastically while putting the gun back in his pocket, turning on his heels he exits through the gray metal door which quickly clangs shuts.

“Our helper friend is done then?” says the old man sitting behind the large wooden desk, his thin white hair combed back over his large round egg shaped head.

“Oh yeah, he’s done. I just hope we didn’t jump the gun so to say. You’re sure we won’t be needing him?” He says while standing in front of the old man, hands in the pockets of his brown suit.

“No, no, I’m quite sure our friend fully fulfilled his need to us. Now, you understand of course, I would have loved to just let him go on his merry little way but not with this job, it’s too big, too big to risk even the slightest chance.”

“Yeah,” he answers nodding his head.

“The eleven of us, we are the only ones who know. The only ones until we reveal ourselves to the outside world that is…Where are the others anyway? The few who are here on location, I expected them a half hour ago. We’ve gone to all this trouble and expense. I want to open the damn box and have a look!”

“Do you think this is
the one
?”

“Well, Mark I sure as hell hope so. We got the other two as well. Any one of them could be a true sample, of the three one has got to be the real deal,” he says lending back in his large black leather chair.

“What about the woman who has begun carrying?”

“I would have waited if I had known that we were going to be able to acquire the other samples. I didn’t even know that they still existed. That’s why I went ahead with her I thought the one we had must be from Him so I found that scientist who was willing to do the work necessary to impregnate.”

“But now we don’t know if the child she carries is from the sacred DNA or not,” Mark says.

“No, we don’t know for sure. The discovery of the other samples is a real monkey wrench in the works,” the old man answers.

“But we must have
The One
now,” Mark insists.

“Oh yes, I’m sure we do. We will run DNA tests on all three samples. Hopefully, the results will indicate that we were right in the first place, that our woman friend is indeed carrying Him. That would be the best. Then we just wait a few more months and continue on with our work.”

The old man’s eyes suddenly look up at the sound of footsteps and the opening of the large wooden office door. Three men, all looking hurried enter.

“Sorry, I know we’re late,” the first one says walking over toward the old man’s desk, while pushing back his unruly dark black hair. “It took forever to get out of the house and when I went to pick up the others the damn bridge traffic was all backed up and . . .”

He stops speaking at the sight of the old man’s raised hand. “Thomas, Peter, John, it’s here gentlemen we finally have all three samples. The third one arrived tonight, not long ago in fact.”

“Excellent! It’s been so long,” Peter says: his face lit up like that of a child on Christmas morning.

“Shall we?” The old man slowly lifts himself up from behind the desk and walks over to a hidden wall safe, punching in the combination he opens the secret portal and extracts a small metal box.

“Simple enough huh?” he says while carefully walking over to a large conference table in the middle of his office.

“Will the lights hurt it? Should we turn off some of the lights?” Peter says nervously while his hair again drops in front of his eyes.

“No, I’ve never heard that. Where do you get that about the lights? Leave the lights alone, come on, let’s look.” The old man slowly places the box on the table, while the other members gather around him. “Ah yes, this will change everything, if it is what we think,” he says looking them all in the eye.

“The testing will begin soon?” John asks.

“Yes. We are hoping. Oh, and gentlemen since we have arrived at this crucial point I think it imperative that from now on we address each other by our
Elite
names only.”

“Good idea,…Haggai.”

“Good morning Joyce.”

“Good morning Professor Dunbar,” she says while he pulls a stack of mail from the rack of mail slots in the administrative assistant’s office. Quickly and haphazardly he glances through it while trying not to upset his briefcase and large Styrofoam cup of coffee.

“No university award today Professor?”

“Ha! Nah, guess they haven’t had time to get a hold of me yet,” he says almost smiling.

“Oh, there was a young lady in here looking for you, ah, Missy Simpson, she left a

note, wants to know if she can turn her paper in late, something about having to take one of her sorority sisters to the hospital. It seems a few of them fell out of a window at a frat party last Saturday night.”

“Yeah, I saw that in the paper, never fails every year. Twenty – seven years of teaching here and I still get stuck with such brilliant students, anything they do manage to learn from my class I’m sure they won’t retain beyond the next kegger . . .opps,” He quickly regains control over his coffee cup, “Sorry Joyce.”

“No problem,” she says pulling a tissue from its box and wiping up the small coffee pool on the edge of her cluttered desk.

“Well, if young Missy returns tell her that I’m not in okay?”

“Sure, professor,” she says while he hurriedly exits, disappearing down the long hallway toward his office.

“I don’t want to be on any damn chancellor search committee. Hell, I’ve done that before doesn’t anyone remember?” Jim says while sitting at his desk leafing through a stack of papers.

“Why do they bother us old goats?” says Glenn, the skinny man with thin gray hair, thick glasses and heavy eyebrows, sitting in an old worn chair across from Jim’s desk.

“I’m not doing it Glenn, no way. I don’t have time for that stuff. I got this grant thing coming up and I’ll be damned if I’m missing the boat again. Those clowns have got to cough it up this time. I’ve lost out to so many asinine s.o.b.‘s most of them barely out of grad school. This is it! If I don’t get this grant money what the hell am I going to do?”

“Got any kind of money put away? You could go off and write a book or something. You know, that could really draw attention to your ideas without the university being involved.”

“Nah, my wife and daughter spend all my cash.” He throws the Styrofoam coffee cup towards an overflowing trash can in the corner. “They don’t understand the risk they are taking if they move ahead with the helper clones. I just have a bad feeling about the long term risks but no one wants to listen they just want to hop on the bandwagon of the latest technology.”

“And ride it all the way to the bank,” Glenn says.

“Exactly! The university is supporting the helper clone idea because it means a quick buck in their pockets. Sure it’s possible to manipulate the genes to produce helpers but I just don’t think it’s going to work out in the long run.”

“What would they do?” Glenn asks.

“Their genes are manipulated, some turned on some turned off, the end result is a helper clone that can perform tasks but lacks a conscience or personality which makes them different from the full clones who have their own personality like anybody else.”

“Weren’t they making some full clones last year?”

“Yeah, it can be done but it’s so expensive that it isn’t widely done or even accepted too much by society. Thus, there’s not much profit to be made in full clones, but the helper clone industry promises profit, a cheap labor source, they are eyeing all kinds of things that they could do and of course everyone involved is seeing dollars signs before they look at anything else. I know they are going to have real problems if they continue on this path but I can’t prove it, not at the moment at least but I could if I had the time and money to complete the research,” Jim says.

“What was that thing you were working on?” Glenn asks.

“See, I believe the helper clone idea is just bad science however, I think it
is
possible to create a ‘
working flesh
’ model. It would be a group of cells that can be programmed to complete work tasks, these aren’t human forms we’re talking about just small flesh machines, not really alive like an animal but more like a plant that can do all your house work, no conscience just a task completer. This could be the future but try and find some support for it: very weak. Helper clone is quicker and promises money faster but they are ignoring problems. There’re just greedy letting money come before the science.”

“Well, I don’t know, maybe—”

“No one wants to listen. I feel like I’m just collecting a paycheck until retirement and then a pension but meanwhile I’m teaching this rudimentary stuff over and over again. You know the sad quality of students coming out of high schools these days. Remember when we started teaching? Kids seemed to have something between their ears, not all of them, but the science majors could be smart, some ‘em were pretty damn bright too. You just don’t see that caliber anymore. I’m sure you have the same experience with your history students.”

“It’s just a sea of faces Jim, that’s all I see up there lecturing. Just a blank sea of faces, talk at ‘em, grade the crap they turn in and move on, never to be seen or heard from again, just a job like any other.”

“Kinda sad to see you so resigned Glenn, don’t you want to leave your name to some important research? You know: something that will have meaning down the road?”

“I just want to leave my name on the side of a sailboat somewhere,” he says smiling while slowly standing up.

“Well, I gotta take one more shot at this grant before they think I’m too old to be taken seriously I could make this idea work if I had the chance. I tell you I’m so sick of teaching. I used to love it I really did but now forget it,” Jim says.

“I need to go grade some finals. Are you going to be around later?” Glenn says reaching for the doorknob.

‘Maybe.”

“Okay,” he walks out of the small office gently closing the door behind him. As Jim moves a large stack of mail on his desk an odd looking envelope falls to the floor. He quickly lends over picking it up, “What the hell is this?” he says to himself noticing the strange lettering.

“Why do we have to meet down here?” Roman asks.