Chapter 10

Previous Chapters

Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9

Fire, fear, enemy, predator, cold, cave, full moon.

The sun was up, and the city of Boston was waking up to a new day.  The street was getting busy with workmen.  Newspaper distribution people, people who needed to report to work early, joggers, grocery carrying trucks.  It was busy enough for nobody to pay attention to the lonely man, shivering just outside the Nova Research and Exploration Laboratory.  The man was reading the morning paper paying close attention to the front page.  He was looking around to see any activity.  He knew he wasn’t much of a spy or detective, so he was trying to describe to himself what he would expect if there was some kind of activity that would jeopardize his plan.  Police cars, marked and unmarked, parked around would be a good indication.  There were none that he could see.  Most of the parked cars were empty, and those that weren’t, were commercial, being loaded and unloaded.  People that were out of place or out of context could be another indication.  He couldn’t spot any.  He even looked up to see if there was anything suspicious.  Again, there was no indication of any activity.  He calmed down a little.

The lab main gate was shut.  He walked over and used his badge to get the door open.  The door buzzed gently and the lock was released.  He pushed it in and walked into the hallway.  He made sure the door was shut behind him before he disarmed the alarm system.  He forgot to do it a few times, and knew how awkward it would get if the private police called and started asking for passwords.  One time, shortly after that password had been changed, he forgot to disarm the alarm system coming in.  When they called and asked for the password, he gave the old one.  Ten minutes later, the place was swarming with private police officers and uniformed cops.  He certainly didn’t want that to happen this morning.  The door shut behind him, the alarm system disabled, and no apparent activity, he was on his way to the place he spent most of his time in the last ten years almost.  He knew that his time was short, but he also knew that chances are that this would be his only chance to get anything out of the lab.  He wanted to be in and out quickly, and at the same time he wanted to take everything he needed.  One more thing, he thought.  His visit at the lab should not be readily obvious.  Of course, he knew, his badge registered, and so did the disengagement of the alarm system.  Still, he knew, if nothing else was suspicious, nobody would dig into the badge reader logs or the security camera files.  At least not anytime soon.

Michael Moore walked in, and was immediately flooded with a feeling of familiarity.  He quickly looked at the coffee corner, the Xerox machine, and the small kitchenette.  He looked around and realized that he was going to miss this place a lot.  Fifteen seconds later he was at his office.  He unlocked the door.  The computer was irrelevant, he thought.  All of the files were on the server and its attached storage array.  Just recently, the lab bought a brand new an IBM Blade Center, and attached to it a Dual Rack XIV system.  It was a state of the art configuration.  But Michael was a particularly meticulous researcher.  He had all his files backed up on disks.  External hard disks and DVD media were his preferred choice for back up.  The reason was simple.  It was always easier and took less time to recover from data loss using media.  There were two small disk cabinets next to his bookcase.  He took all the disks into his bag, and right away replaced them with brand new media.  A first glance would suggest that nothing was touched.  Obviously, further investigation would yield that all disks were empty.  But, he thought, hopefully by then, he would be far away.  Michael turned his computer on.  Months ago, Art told him that he had to have means to delete all the data off the servers and the storage arrays.  Michael had no idea how one would go about ensuring the deletion of data from network attached servers and storage systems.  Art didn’t know either.  The difference between the two was that Art knew how to get it done.  He never mentioned a name, but one day he showed up and told Michael to install a script on his PC.  The script, Art said, would look for all the files related to his experiments and delete them.  It will delete them in a very pervasive way, ensuring all bits were set to zero, on the server, on the storage array’s primary data bank, and also on the secondary data banks if any existed.  In fact, the script was smart enough to install itself on the network, and identify the set of files even if they were introduced to the network in the future.  Michael brought up a terminal window and typed “delete -911 –all –exp*.*”.  The local disk drive started to rotate.  Michael hoped that Art knew what he was doing.

He looked around, and decided to leave all his diplomas, prizes, framed published papers behind.  Screw it, he thought, dead people don’t need recognition.

There was one other thing he didn’t want to leave behind.  Roger was a rabbit, but he was also some kind of pet, and even a friend.  But he knew that taking Roger would provide a very clear clue to whoever might come after him.  Roger would have to stay.

Michael shut the light, locked the office door, and went over the hallway to the main gate.  He armed the alarmed system, open and shut the front door and was gone into the morning sun.  Nobody was after him, nobody seemed to care.  It looked like his mission was accomplished.  He wanted to call Barbara and see how she was doing, but they agreed to not use cellular phones altogether.  He hailed a taxi and headed to the Marina.  If all goes well, Barbara, the girls, and Mrs. Mitchell will be there to meet with him soon.  He started thinking about his experiments.  Mike was sure that his experiments didn’t uncover anything worth killing for.  Or did he?  He started thinking about it.

He tried to separate fact and speculation.  It wasn’t as easy as he thought it would be.  Junk DNA wasn’t junk after all.  That was a fact.  Junk DNA was changing overtime.  That was a fact as well.  Modified junk DNA found itself in sperm cells, and moved on to descendants.  These were all facts.  Speculating about how the changes occurred and the contents of the changes was clearly speculation.  Michael was after all a scientist.  He was trained to look at data, and try to understand what was the evidence buried in the data.  Sometimes, he knew, it leads to nothing.  But other times, it was a gold mine.

Michael Moore tried to organize what he knew so far.  He was good at making lists, so he made one in his mind.

1.    Organisms are born with a certain amount of DNA that takes no part in synthesizing proteins.
2.    Junk DNA of an organism contains all patterns of its father before conception.
3.    Junk DNA changes over time.
4.    Some information is recorded in junk DNA over time.
5.    Based on the last experiment, the one Michael communicated to Art, trauma was registered in DNA very quickly.  In fact, it took less than two weeks for certain cells to show the modified DNA throughout the body following the trauma.

He thought about it.  If there was a way to interpret the data recorded in the DNA, it would provide a peek into the experiences the organism went through during the course of their lives up until the moment the DNA was extracted.  Michael continued to think.  It was established, that organisms carried a precise copy of their father’s junk DNA, and that the experiences split afterwards.

There were so many questions to ask.  How long of a history is recorded?  What kind of events is recorded?  How does one go about interpreting the patterns?  That would take plenty of computer work, he asserted, and then he figured something out.  He remembered that Arthur, his flamboyant friend asked him to prepare disks with data he was able to collect, before and after trauma.  He never asked Art what he was doing with the disks, and who was looking at the data.  Michael knew that there must be somebody out there who was familiar with the data.  He knew that a certain person have an idea of how to interpret the patterns.  Someone who is probably in danger, and who can probably help a lot in understanding what was going on.  Michael had to find this person and talk to him.

Mike took a deep breath, but the next thought took out all the air in his lungs in a gasp.  Yes, he thought, if this speculation was even close, it was worth killing for.

The possibilities were vast.  Was it possible DNA has developed a way to register events and experiences?  Assuming that this was indeed the case, there was a lot of work ahead trying to interpret the kind of events registered, how they were expressed, and the mechanism to encode and decode them.  Should we expect really old events to be registered in the DNA?  How old?  What if, Mike thought to himself, there was a two billion years worth of historical record written in our DNA?  What if we could actually see evolution history in words or pictures?  What if the human genome was the minor part of the DNA exploration?  What if we put resources in trying to understand our origins inside our bodies rather than outside the Solar System?  What if?

Mike was so overtaken by those thoughts that he almost missed the unfamiliar car that pulled over across the street.  Barbara, her mother and the two girls came out of the car.  He was about to step out of his hiding place when he saw a strange man coming out of the car.  They all crossed the street and headed for the marina.  Mike had no idea who the man was, and whether it was safe for him to follow them all to the boat.  He was weighing his option and then he saw Barbara signing with her right hand.  She was making an “O” sign with her right hand, connecting the thumb and the index finger, spreading the other three fingers like a peacock tail.  He was pulled back ten years.

He knew they were safe.  He knew the man could be trusted.  He walked silently behind them.  They entered the marina and walked over to the north side where “Lady” was parked.  They were carrying two small bags.  Michael waited for them to board the boat. He waited for five minutes, looking frantically in all directions.  A man was unloading the day’s catch from a small boat; another was cleaning the deck of a large yacht.  All activities around him seemed to be in context and unsuspicious.  A flock of seagulls crossed the sky at low altitude struggling with short and cold gusts of wind.  He looked around one more time and started to walk to the boat.

Walking slowly, looking around on occasion, Michael made his way to Lady.  The ramp was short and steep, he climbed it carefully.  At the top of the ramp he stopped, looked around one more time and went onto the deck.  There was nobody there.  He was surprised.  He was sure he’d seen them board the boat.  He checked again, but “Lady” was certainly printed on the small rug at the end of the ramp.  Michael has only been on this boat only, and he wasn’t very familiar with the ins and outs of the vessel.  Then Michael heard a short whistle.  He turned around, his heart beating fast.  A small opening on the floor revealed the face of Barbara.  He went over, the opening fully opened, and he stepped into a staircase leading down to the engine room.  The cover closed and Barbara led him to the main cabin.  It took a minute for his eyes to get used to the dark.  He squinted, and when he opened his eyes again, he saw Barbara, her mother, and the girls.  Stephanie and Diane were obviously very excited.  Barbara and Michael hugged each other, the girls; giggling, joined the family hug.  Beatrice Mitchell was standing close to her daughter’s family.  She let out an audible sigh and joined the family hug.  At that moment, she felt after many years, that her son-in-law was a family man.

Michael couldn’t speak for a while.  He was pale and unshaven, and he looked shaken.  He sat down on a sofa and said: “some tea would be really nice”.  Beatrice, who knew the boat very well, turned around and put up an electric kettle.  Soon enough they were all sitting around the breakfast area having tea and biscuits.  The girls were watching a DVD in the main cabin.  There was some tension in the air.  The two women looked at each other, and Barbara started.  “Michael, please repeat everything you said to me for Mom”.  She added “Mom knows some really powerful people around town and elsewhere, and we need some help here”.

Michael started to tell the two women all that happened to him in the last day or so.  This time, he was telling the long version.  Beatrice Mitchell’s were wide open when he was talking about Arthur Lewis, and then even wider when he was talking about his discovery and its possible implications.  When he concluded Mrs. Mitchell said that for the time being, he should stay off-shore.  She said she needed to make a few phone calls.  Michael looked at his wife for a second.  She responded by saying that Mom was using a “dead” phone, and that there’s no way that phone would be traced.

Michael and Barbara went to the main cabin and watched Dora with the girls.

Michael was reflecting on the last twenty four hours.  He was never a hero, never a fugitive.  He never got in trouble with the police, not even with the IRS.  In twenty four hours, his friend and colleague were murdered, he had to run away from his own lab and then break into it.  In the last twenty four hours, he had lost access to his home, and so did his wife and children.  His life turned from certainty to complete chaos.  He wasn’t sure what he needed to do next.  He did know that he needed some time and possibly some evidence before he could go to the police and convince them that he had nothing to do with his Arthur Lewis’s murder.  He was shaken, he was tired, and the only good thing was that he was reunited with his family.  Although, he thought, one never knew for how long.

He then remembered that Arthur was supposed to speak at the Massachusetts Convention Center that night.  The Computer Hacker Convention started the evening before, and Art was giving the keynote address.  Michael Moore knew right away that he would have to attend.  He was hoping that among all the participants, one would shed some light on the death of Art Lewis.  He told Barbara about his plan.  Barbara as expected said that he was out of his mind.  She said that the convention itself, even under different circumstances, was a bad event to attend, given most of the attendees were in trouble with the law anyway.  She added that the police would also attend undoubtedly, and that various organizations who had any knowledge of the research would show up trying to either put their hands on the results, recover some of the investment, or try to get rid of anyone standing in their way.

Michael had to agree with her.  But she caved when he said that this was his only way to be exonerated.  She didn’t like it, but had no other suggestion.  He agreed to go in disguise, and he also agreed that she would go with him.  Also in disguise.

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