The Bar Code Rebellion (12 page)

Digging in her purse, she took out her handheld
computer and loaded the chip. “I don’t know if anyone realizes it, even Dr. Gold, but his data-collecting computers are almost
too
powerful. They were designed by a real genius, a student in the infometrics department, and when they encounter a program they can’t open, they act like hackers, breaking into systems that are heavily password-protected.”

“I wish I’d invented that,” Jack said, his voice oozing respect.

“Tell me about it,” Allyson agreed. “And get this — the real reason I call that main computer Helen of Troy is because I think it might even contain a Trojan-horselike program that collects log-ins and passwords as it runs. Helen of Troy gains root access to other computers in a way I’ve never seen. Somehow it even got into a file protected with both voice
and
radio frequency identification systems.”

“That’s crazy, final level,” Jack murmured, obviously very impressed.

“No kidding. When I saw the file I’m about to show you, I knew it had to be highly classified. I grabbed it before anyone else saw it. I’m not sure why, exactly.”

“When you do things instinctively it usually seems to be the right thing to do,” Kayla commented.

“I guess so. I didn’t know what else to do. I’m not sure what Dr. Gold’s politics are. So much
research here has Global-1 backing, even though they hide behind the smaller companies they own. A lot of the time the scientists doing the research don’t even realize they’re working for Global-1.”

“You got it all on an e-chip?” Jack questioned.

“Two e-chips,” she said. “It’s a massive file full of subdirectories. I loaded the subs onto a chip that I have hidden somewhere else. I thought it would be best to keep them separate.” She flipped on the speaker. A robotic voice read out loud the words that appeared in the monitor window.

“Wait until you get a load of this,” Allyson said as the robotic voice began.

Kayla and Jack listened, spellbound by what they were hearing.

REPORT ON GLOBAL-1 NANOBIOTECHNOLOGY PROGRAMS

Global-1 has been in the vanguard of cloning advances since the turn of the century when it became the majority shareholder in every major biotech company in the Western world and large parts of Asia. Its two main branches are known as AgroGlobal and GlobalHelix.

AgroGlobal was largely responsible for exerting the influence needed to shift the world’s food supply over to 100 percent genetically altered produce by the year 2018. GlobalHelix was originally founded in 2006 as an adjunct to AgroGlobal. Its stated purpose at the time of its creation was the genetic enhancement of livestock for consumption as food and for breeding. It relied heavily on the pioneering cloning techniques of Dr. Ian Wilmut in the previous century.

GlobalHelix later became a pioneer in the field of splicing genes to create transgenic animals. These were first developed using mice, through a microinjection of DNA into the nucleus of the egg. The ability to add genes to an organism has been instrumental in the study of human disease. It also has other practical applications. For example, the milk of livestock can be genetically altered to contain large amounts of pharmaceutically valuable proteins such as insulin or factor VIII for treating sick humans. A human gene such as that of insulin when expressed in the mammary glands of a sheep was
found to be a breakthrough treatment for diabetes patients in 2014.

This biotechnical therapy was quickly rendered obsolete by the development of insulin-releasing nanopores in 2015. Advances in molecular-size robotics created this breakthrough wherein specially programmed nanobots were injected into the bloodstream where they released insulin at regular intervals. The financial blow this dealt to GlobalHelix proved temporary since GlobalHelix was able to acquire the company responsible for the insulin-issuing nanobots. From 2015 on, GlobalHelix has invested heavily in nanobiotechnology research and development.

Another major area of interest for GlobalHelix was the development of transgenic animals for organ transplant into humans. They were the first to successfully splice human genes into pigs to create organs for human transplant. Problems of organ harvesting were eliminated by using pigs as donors, and the problem of organ rejection was overcome by splicing human genes into pig organs. This scientific breakthrough enabled GlobalHelix to have laws prohibiting cloning and gene splicing overturned by the beginning of 2020.

GlobalHelix has moved rapidly into the exciting world of human cloning since 2020. Its worldwide companies — Global-2 in Japan, Global-3 in Brazil, Global-4 in Mexico, and Global-5 in France — have been able to circumvent U.S. restrictions on human experimentation by moving their research to countries with less stringent laws.

Ongoing programs being carried out by the Global-1 parent company and its offshoots are listed below. These links can only be opened by radio frequency authentication and eye scan, followed by voice recognition.

“What’s going on with the nanobots?” Jack asked.

“Smart! You zeroed right in on it,” Allyson commended him. “As you know, to call something nano means it’s measured in billionths of a meter, which is just about the same size as a molecule. Since the mid-1980s, scientists have talked about constructing self-replicating nanomachines that could assemble atoms into molecules. It’s the same thing that living cells do naturally.”

“So they’re mechanical cells?” Kayla asked.

“Basically, yeah. Cells are like living nanobots. Nanobots are similar in size to molecular proteins and DNA. They can be engineered to have specific or multiple functions. If you inject a person with a nanobot, the bot could analyze a cell’s contents and send the information back to a microarray machine like you saw today. It could also deliver drugs or destroy a cancerous cell.”

Kayla’s father had once shown her an old Pac-Man game from his childhood. Kayla remembered the aggressive dot gobbling up everything in its path and imagined it was a nanobot destroying living cells it didn’t approve of.

“This is the part that bothers me,” Allyson said
as she activated the Applications of Nanobiotechnology link. Several subheads appeared under a heading marked
HIGHLY CLASSIFIED.

• Propeace12 Release
  
• Vagus Nerve Stimulator Release
  
• Vagus Nerve Stimulator Intensified Release
  
• BC12 Virus Release
  
• Program Activation Dates
  

“My mother was addicted to Propeace just before she died,” Kayla recalled. Mrs. Reed had taken the powerful tranquilizer with increasing frequency after Kayla’s father died, and many days she’d seemed like a zombie wandering around in a trance.

“What’s a vagus nerve stimulator?” Jack asked.

“I did some research when I saw this link and discovered that back in 1997 a company came out with a device to help patients who had epilepsy. It was surgically implanted in the upper chest, and its wires were threaded through the patient’s neck to send timed electrical pulses to stimulate the vagus nerve leading to the brain. In 2006 it was approved for treating patients with severe depression.”

“Did it work?” Kayla asked.

“Yes and no. Some people liked it and claimed they felt better. Other patients felt no difference and complained that it put a quiver or a rumble in
their voices. It was discontinued in 2022 after gene therapy cured epilepsy and they came out with the new genetic antidepressant drugs.”

“Let’s get into the link and see what our pals at Global-1 are up to,” Jack suggested.

“Can’t,” Allyson told him. “My handheld won’t open these links. They have yet another level of eye scan security on them.”

“Can the superinfometric computers handle it?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” Allyson replied. “I don’t know if they can break through an eye scan. Even if we could get them to open the files, it would be tricky to do it without everyone else in the laboratory seeing.”

“What happens there at night?” he asked.

“I have a key, but it would be suspicious if I used it in the middle of the night. Security would inform Dr. Gold, and I’d have to explain.”

They walked together down to the Caltech campus. Along the way, Jack told Allyson about the secret algorithms he was trying to uncover. She agreed that Helen of Troy might be able to locate the codes, but they had to tell it where to look first. The supercomputer was accessing such a high volume of information that even if it did feed the algorithm codes to them they might not be able to sift through the mass of data in time to realize they’d received the codes. “We have to narrow and isolate its search,” Allyson said.

They reached the building where Allyson did her research in Dr. Gold’s facility. She walked in alone and spoke to the guard at the front desk, claiming to have left an important book upstairs. He said he would like to let her in and would even go with her, but he was alone for the rest of the week since the other guard, his partner, was out sick. His being alone meant he couldn’t leave the front desk.

Out of luck, Kayla, Jack, and Allyson went back to the apartment without much conversation, each seeming wrapped in a private concern. Kayla guessed Jack was working on getting them into that building the following night. Maybe Allyson was going over the information she had, trying to make sense of it. She might even be thinking about the question Jack had posed to her — how to find the secret bar code algorithms.

Kayla knew what was absorbing
her
mind. She couldn’t stop thinking about the G-1 project Allyson had stumbled upon titled: Production of Identical Sextuplet Humans During the First Cell Cycle of Nuclear DNA Transfer.

Kathryn Marie Reed had had a child called KM-1-6.

Sextuplets?

It was nearly two in the morning when Allyson used the remote to shut the wide-screen TV that hung flat against the wall. “That is too banged out,”
she said as the screen went black. The public service announcement that featured the Kayla look-alike, the one claiming to be Kayla, had just been on. “It’s obviously a digital fake.”

“Maybe,” Kayla allowed. “That’s what Mfumbe thought, too.”

In an overstuffed chair in a corner, Jack mumbled in his sleep and flung his hand over the arm of the chair.

“Why do you say
maybe
?” Allyson asked as she rummaged in her freezer until she produced a quart of chocolate ice cream and then stuck two spoons into it. She brought it back to the futon couch and offered Kayla one of the spoons. Kayla gratefully accepted it.

She told Allyson about meeting Kara and Kendra, and of her vision of the palm reader with hands so much like her own.

“Have you opened the link about the sextuplets?” she asked Allyson.

Allyson immediately realized what Kayla was thinking and sat there a moment, spoon still in her mouth, pondering it. “Let’s look now,” she said, going for her handheld computer on a nearby table.

With Kayla watching over her shoulder, she activated the link. Quickly, they began reading. Kayla didn’t understand much of what she saw. It talked about how DNA was the molecular basis of genes and how DNA fragments containing genes
could be copied in a host cell, usually a bacterium. The genetic makeup of the resulting cloned cells was called a cell line and was identical to the original cell. Then it went on to talk about somatic cells and germ cells. She read phrases such as:
Mammalian differences are achieved by systematic changes in gene expression brought about by interactions between the nucleus and the changing cytoplasmic environment,
which eluded her completely.

After a few minutes more of reading text that was mostly incomprehensible to her, Kayla stopped, bewildered. Allyson read on before she finally lifted her head and stared at Kayla. “You know what this all comes down to, don’t you?” she asked.

Kayla shook her head. “I’m not exactly sure,” she admitted.

“Cloning.”

Kayla stared back at her as the meaning of this sank in. “But there’s no reason to think this has anything to do with me, right?”

“I read ahead and I found something interesting,” Allyson said. “Was anyone in your family named Kathryn Marie Reed?”

Kayla’s eyes darted to the bottom of the screen. As with the nanobiotechnology section, there were additional links marked
HIGHLY CLASSIFIED
. They named different experiments and gave the names of the people involved in them. She scanned them
rapid-fire until she came to the line that stopped her cold:

• Genetic Enhancement/Manipulation Program: Donor Kathryn Marie Reed
  

Ocean waves crashed into the nearby shore. A full moon illuminated the scene in wavering silver light. Kayla was walking along the beach when she saw a dark, moving line approaching.

A line of people was walking toward the water. Their hair was on fire. But they didn’t seem to care. They stared straight ahead, progressing steadily toward the waves.

Mfumbe was in the line, the top of his head ablaze, his eyes fixed blankly ahead. Kayla ran to him but he didn’t recognize her. “It’s me,” she cried, shaking his arm as if to wake him from his trance. “Don’t you know me?”

He turned and she saw that Kara and Kendra were behind him in the line. Farther back, a third figure and fourth figure had her form and hair, but their faces were a blur.

The line passed her by as they walked into the ocean, quickly disappearing between the silvered waves. Mfumbe was up to his shoulders, about to disappear below the water, too. Crashing through the surf, she grabbed his arm. “Stop!” she shouted.

For a moment he seemed to recognize her. “Kayl-l-l-a?” The line of drowning figures echoed
his words. “Kayl-l-l-a!” The drawn out, repeated
l
spread across the moving ocean until it was amplified into a wild, wind-borne ululation.

The line continued on into the sea. Mfumbe was in water up to his chin now. She had to swim to reach him. “Stop!” she screamed as she splashed through the churning water. “Stop! All of you, stop!”

“Kayla, wake up! Wake up!” Her eyes snapped open and she gazed up at Jack sitting beside her on the futon couch, his face silver with the moonlight coming in through the window. “You were dreaming and yelling ‘stop’ in your sleep.”

With a shudder, she sat up and remembered the dream. It had been so frightening. Tears sprang to her eyes.

He put his arm around her, pulling her closer. She rested her head on his chest.

It felt so safe to have his arms around her, so good. But she was glad Allyson was asleep on the pullout sofa just yards away, preventing anything further from happening … for now.