Dead of the Nite

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Nine months into the study project, Simone gave me an independent task, a secretive task that would forever bind us. The task seemed simple enough at first, a new DNA sample that required decoding and classification. Since this was our bread and butter for the previous nine months, I thought nothing of it at the time. I proceeded with my task as just another redundant exercise. As the results began to pour in, I realized that this was not human DNA, not even mammalian and yet it had features I had seen in cases of study dealing with respiratory birth defects. I asked Simone, but she just smiled and dismissed it as just another sample. I wanted to ask Doctor Colsen but shied away, she was always rather abrupt with me anyway. The sample piqued my interest. I began a classification analysis. True it was not mammalian, but more of an Ichthyoidal representation and yet there were respiratory indications that were indicative of air breathing lungs. That night I indulged myself in library study looking for a fish that could breath air. I knew of the walking catfish but could there be others more remote, one with a distinctive biomedical interest, one that could be of interest to Simone. For weeks, I spent every spare waking moment in the library. I am sure that most people on campus including the librarian thought I had changed my major to ichthyology. Through the long nights one name kept appearing, Channa gigantus of the family Ophiocephalus or simply the Burma Snakehead. The fish itself was a rather ugly carnivore, slender with a long dorsal fin. The fish was prized as an exotic delicacy but I think more importantly to Simone was its other distinguishing feature. It could survive out of water for days on end, writhing its way through the terrain until it located a new source of water and food. Its rudimentary lungs provided the air for survival. Evolution, creationism, and Freud, it was obvious to me that Simone's hidden agenda must be based in religious belief. It had to be a chance to prove or disprove creationism, but which it was I had no idea. Months passed quickly but with tedium of work that seemed incessantly redundant. The results of the Channa sequencing were finished sufficiently for Simone's purpose. It seemed she had what she needed, but I was no closer to deciphering her intent. Professor Colsen's displays of furtive gestures grew with age. There were conferences, dinners and other faculty functions that she always seemed to find a way to get Simone to accompany her. I began to wonder if there was a relationship until that night I found Simone alone in the lab with papers strewn everywhere. She was exhausted, her eyes sagging from lack of sleep, her skin a dull pale white. She kept murmuring quietly, shaking her head while scanning some printouts. She startled when I put my hand on her shoulder. It was obvious from the frightened look she gave me as she hurriedly covered the printout with other papers that she thought I was Professor Colsen. I could see the relief when her eyes focused enough to recognize me. She began crying and put her arms around me without speaking. She muttered softly under her breath just two words, "Help me." It was then that Professor Colsen entered the room, saw Simone with her arms around me, scowled, and left the room. Her quickening step resounded off the tile hallway. Simone was nearing collapse, my dorm room was closer so I gathered her research and headed to my room almost carrying Simone most of the way. I put her down on my bed where she fell into a hard, fitful sleep. I watched her until almost dawn when I started drifting off. I had made up my mind. I would ask her point blank just what was going on. Morning came and went without either of us stirring. It was late afternoon before I awoke, Simone a little later. I poured her a hot cup of coffee and just stared at her. Maybe it was the look, maybe she didn't know if I had read her papers. The effect was the same, answers to the questions I had sought for so long.
She sipped her coffee slowly before she started her oratory. "My father was a famed geneticist, a pioneer in cloning. If I told you his name, you would instantly recognize it for it is infamous within the medical and scientific community. I assumed my mother's maiden name after schoolmates began calling me Frankenstein's daughter. My father despondent by ridicule took his own life leaving my mother and I to our own devices. Mother had her own ancestral estate on an island near Majorca as well as land in the Alps within Alsace Lorraine. Within these remote estates, we found peace for a while. I was provided with the finest schooling money could buy and excelled scholastically. When I turned 16 a package was delivered to me. My mother was livid when she saw the seal on the package. My father's crest was embedded in the red wax. My mother begged me to burn it without opening it but it was my father's, a father I dearly loved and I could not part with it. The package contained my father's journals, his life work. Frankenstein was trying to perfect the reanimation of life, but my father was trying to perfect the creation of life. Within the journals were the key to eliminating the need of evolution, a way to recreate the human form in a variety of adaptive jumps allowing survival in an infinite numbers of hostile environments. Imagine divers that need no SCUBA, Eskimos that no longer require clothing to survive the elements, desert dwellers that can survive on the same water ration a camel would. Through selective genetic splicing, anything was possible provided the host DNA strands were correctly correlated. Some of the theories were recognized and widely lauded for their theoretical possibilities. It wasn't until my father crossed from theory to experimentation that the ridicule began. The church was the first to criticize the theory, but science criticized the experimentation. They compared my father to Hitler. They labeled him "The new Father of the Master Race." As I read on, I became enamored with the concepts. I wanted to prove my father's theories. It became my life's ambition to restore my father's reputation and help mankind at the same time. I also knew that under my real name, the cloud of my father's reputation would forever stall the pursuit of my ambition. So, I obliterated every association with him allowing me freedom to achieve my goals. No one else besides my mother knows anything about this, no one but you. Will you help me?" She was so beautiful, so noble, so vulnerable, God help me, I couldn't refuse. She stayed in my room the rest of that night. In the morning, we went to the lab after an early breakfast. Professor Colsen was already there. She stared at me with contempt and a fury that I had rarely seen in my short life, then she smiled. The smile was cold, dark and decidedly evil. I was glad when she left the lab. For the first time, Simone showed me the depth of her work, every intricate detail. It was unbelievable. Her theories were light years beyond what I thought was the cutting edge of genetics. She was taking genetic manipulation and cloning to a new frontier. She had found a way to mix traits found in varying families, classifications and subspecies of life and splice them into human DNA. If correct in her assumptions, minor sequencing changes in a single cell introduced in the forming ova would breed a new race in a single step. Evolution would be passé. Immense jumps in the evolutionary process would be available in a single step providing new adaptive races where needed and to suit every environment. Furthermore, the DNA was dominant, self-replicating and bioresistant producing exact images of the original in every generation. No birth defects, no medical conditions, immune systems that could be modified pre-birth to fight any virus or bacteria that evolution could produce. The concept was staggering. I would have thought it a great storyline for comic books if I wasn't looking at the theoretical proof now before my eyes. Then a chill went down my spine. It occurred to me, people would kill for this information, not just any one particular faction of people but anyone. People would kill to have it, kill to stop it, or kill because of the possibilities of what it could do. I calmed myself.
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Dead of the Nite

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