GeneSix (5 page)

The football guy yelped in pain, stepping back and grabbing his hand.

“Those knuckles might be broken,” Scott said. “You might want to get to an ER.”

The bartender now had a baseball bat in one hand. “Whatever you do, you’re not doing it here. Get out.”

Rick turned toward the door. “Come on, Mandy. Let’s get out of here.”

But the girl looked at Jake, cocking her heard a little, squinting her eyes in a way that was a cross between a challenge and saying she liked what she saw. “Mind if I stay?”

Jake shrugged and sat back down. Scott was sitting to one side of Jake, and the girl slid up onto an empty barstool at his other side.

“Come on, Mandy,” Rick said. “You staying with this loser?”

The bartender said, “You’re the one with the broken hand. Now get out of here before I call the cops.”

Rick and his buddy stormed out of the bar. The rest of the patrons, maybe fifty of them, mostly at tables but some at the bar, all college-age, broke out into applause.

Jake said, “God, I hate this.”

Scott clapped a hand to Jake’s shoulder. “You’re a hero, buddy.”

“I’m a freak, is what I am.”

The girl said, “So, you going to buy me a drink?”

Jake shrugged. “Why not?” He looked to the bartender. “Whatever she wants.”

“On the house, man,” he said. “For all three of you. That was outright cool. Never seen anything like that, before.”

“Hopefully you’ll never have to again.”

The girl ordered a vodka martini.

“Jake, you know what you need?” Scott said, his face ready to burst with the laugh he was trying to suppress. “What you really need is a costume. I’m serious. I mean, a cape, tights, the whole nine yards.”

Jake shook his head. “I wish I could just ignore you,”  and he tipped his mug of beer for a chug.

Scott continued. “I mean, think about it, man. Here you are, the most powerful human who ever walked the Earth. Whether you like it or not, the newspapers are pinning the label
superhero
on you. Seems a shame to disappoint your fans.”

Jake slammed his beer mug down on the bar, slopping suds up and over the side. “Will you stop it? I mean, can’t we just go out for some beers without you having to make a jackass out of yourself?”

“Oh, come on, Jake,” Scott said.. “All the superheroes have their emblem on their chest. You should have a big stylized
S
, in a triangle. Right in the middle of your chest. And a big red cape...”

“What you should have is a big strip of duct tape right over your mouth. It would make the world a better place.”

They were each twenty-five, sitting in a bar in Boston. Scott was studying for his doctorate – actually, he was flying through the courses, often instructing his instructors. Jake was serving as his lab assistant and Man Friday.

Jake stood at an even six feet. He had an athletic build, because he had been an athlete before the accident that turned him into a meta-human. Soccer. Baseball. He no longer competed because it was not fair to do so against non-powered humans, but he continued to keep himself in shape.

“You know,” Scott said, “you look kind’a like Christopher Reeve. Anyone ever tell you that?”

“Not if they want to live long, they don’t.” Was it starting to get a little dark in here, Jake wondered. Were the lights dimming a bit? No, it must just be his foul mood.

Scott was laughing. And laughing. The way a guy will when he has been consuming too much beer. He got control of himself long enough to tip the mug and down a few more mouthfuls of beer, then continued laughing, wiping the foam from his mouth with his sleeve.

The girl said to Jake, “Is he always like this?”

Jake said, “Only when he’s drunk. When he’s not, he’s worse.”

Scott said, “Oh, stop sulking, will you? You’re just mad because you lost your buzz. Power-down, and have some more beer.”

“Forget it. I’m not in the mood, now.”

“Is that true?” the girl asked. “”Your power is not, like, always on? You have to turn it on and off? Like a light switch?”

Jake reluctantly nodded. “Can’t we talk about something else?”

Scott said, “Actually, it’s more like a volume switch. I theor..theorize,” he was stumbling over the word because of all the beer, “
theorize
, that it is always on to an infintis..inf..small degree. But he can increase the volume, which increases his physical strength and seems to increase his stamina and his tolerance to injury. We’ve observed that when he’s significantly powered-up he doesn’t get hungry, and doesn’t even need to breathe. Though, of course, he can’t speak without exhaling, but he doesn’t seem to need oxygen. As such, I theorize – there we go – that he might be able to sustain long-term exposure to outer space without a protective suit.”

Jake had buried his face in one hand. “Do we
have
to do this now?”

“Sorry,” she said. “I’m Mandy Waid.”

She extended her hand and he shook it. More politely than enthusiastically. He said, wearily, “Jake Calder.”

“Yeah.” She said with a smile. “I know who
you
are.”

“So,” Jake said. “You seem like you have at least half a brain. What were you doing with that loser?”

“Oh, Rick? I was just trying to land an interview. I’m a journalism major, and I write for the campus paper. It’s not like I’m dating him, or anything.” The vodka martini was now in front of her, and she took a sip. “Well, just once. But what-the-hell, you know?”

Jake shook his head. The longer this night lasted, the more he found he simply wanted to be left alone.

She carried a small purse that seemed to match her skirt, and from it she pulled a note pad and pen, and began quickly jotting stuff down. She looked over to Scott. “And you are?”

“Scott Tempest,” Scott replied.

“Scott Tempest.” She knew the name. “Wow. Both of you, sitting right here in this bar.”

Jake nodded. “The smartest frigging man on the planet, three sheets to the wind.”

“Look,” she said, once again directing her attention to Jake. “Why don’t we get out of here? Go someplace a little more private?”

He turned his dark gaze toward her. “You lose the interview with the jock, so you want to make up for it with the superhero?”

“No,” she said, putting her pad and pen away. “Nothing like that. This will be totally off the record. What do you say?”

Scott said, “It’ll do you good, Jake. You don’t get out enough.”

Jake turned from Mandy to his drunk friend. “And whose fault is that?”

“All right, all right. Everything’s
my
fault.”

“Well, it really is. Can you get home okay?”

“Can I get home okay? Can
I
get home okay? I’m the smartest man on the planet, remember?”

“The smartest man on the planet who can’t remember to do his laundry or gas up his car.”

Jake looked to the bartender, who said, “I’ll call him a cab.”

“Thanks, man.”

Serving as assistant to Scott Tempest meant a good many things. Body guard, which Jake was quite good at. He also was called upon to offer muscle when it came to one of Scott’s bizarre experiments and some heavy lifting was required. It also meant accompanying Scott when he went into the field. All of this was monitored strictly by the United States government, and most of it was listed as classified.

Scott Tempest was indeed pursuing a doctorate at the University of Massachusetts, in fact four of them simultaneously. But even more importantly, the school was serving as a cover for Scott’s activities, a cover that was funded by the government.

For instance, when Scott theorized time travel might be feasible, if he only had the materials to construct the necessary devices, the government took him seriously enough to offer wads of cash so he could get the materials he needed for further research.

Teleportation, the process of breaking down an object to its molecular level, sending those molecules along on a laser beam, and then reassembling the object in another location with every molecule in its proper spot like reassembling a puzzle, was theoretically possible.

“You’re nuts,” Jake had said, when Scott first mentioned this to him.

“Undoubtedly. But it
is
theoretically possible.”

Scott presented his theory regarding teleportation, along with his six-hundred page proposal, to the Secretary of Technological Development, a member of the President’s cabinet whose very existence was classified. For his trouble, Scott was presented with a check for half a billion to begin initial research and development.

Scott Tempest was what the government referred to as a meta-human. His synapses fired at more than eight times the speed of the average human. By his own somewhat modest estimation, he was probably the smartest human to have ever walked the face of the Earth. And since humans had more raw intelligence than any other creature to evolve on this planet, that made him simply the most intelligent living being ever.

“Kind of makes you stop and think,” he said once, over a beer.

“Kind of makes you get a little nauseous,” Jake said.

Scott had reached the reading level of the average adult by age three. He was doing calculus at age five. He completed his first doctorate at eleven. And all of this without really trying. Comic books took up as much of his time as with any kid his age, and he wasted many hours in front of the television and playing video games.

It was for his thesis when he went for his first doctorate that he discovered the existence of the meta gene, or the g
enesis
gene as he called it. Or sometimes, the
genesis six
. The gene that, when triggered, causes what he referred to as a flash-forward in evolution.

There was no guarantee it would affect every human the same way, though with him, it caused his mutated intelligence level. Despite his super-intelligence, however, he had never been able to determine what made the genesis gene become active.

Scott tried to publish his thesis, and that was when he first got the attention of the Secretary of Technological Development. The Secretary strongly encouraged him not to publish it, because certain knowledge might become dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands, which sounded a little like melodramatic paranoia to Scott, so the Secretary reworded it.

“Imagine the chaos,” he said, “if this genesis gene theory was released to the general public. Crackpots trying to find ways to trigger their own gene, so they could turn into some sort of super-humans. Imagine the harm they could do to themselves. No, such things should be carefully monitored.”

And so, the University of Massachusetts became the place from which Scott pursued his study of science. Scott was to focus mainly on projects that benefited society, with funding and gentle guidance from the government.

Scott decided, however, he also needed a social life, and at age twenty-one, despite the Secretary’s disapproval, took a job making pizzas and moved into a local house shared by four other college kids. One of them an engineering major by the name of Jake Calder.

Jake relayed all of this to Mandy Waid as they walked along the streets of Boston. The pavement was damp from a light rain that had fallen earlier in the evening. There was minimal traffic, and occasionally a young couple out on the town would stroll by them.

“So,” she said, “I get why he calls it the
genesis
gene. A flash forward in evolution. Sort of a new beginning, I guess. But why genesis
six
?”

“Something about it being on the sixth bonded pair of the X chromosome.” Jake shrugged. “It’s all Greek to me. I don’t know. When he starts going on with that technobabble it gives me a headache. And he can go on for hours.”

“You know, I would never walk these streets at this time of night alone, but I suppose with you I am about as safe as a girl might be.”

He shrugged. Had his mood been a little lighter, he might have made some sort of flirtatious comment, like,
I hope not too safe
. But he was still down because of the incident back at the bar.

He wore a jean jacket, and he walked with his hands in his pockets. She held onto the loop of one arm as they walked.

“I would think,” she said, “that if I had your kind of power, I would be the happiest girl in the world. Literally nothing can hurt you. You can live life truly on the edge, on an edge that can barely even be imagined by the rest of us.”

“I would rather just be a regular guy,” he said. “A normal person. Leading a normal life.”

He was twenty-five years old, he explained to her. His intentions had been to have a master’s in engineering by now, and beginning work for one of the top technological corporations in the country. Instead, he was working at U-Mass, employed by the U.S. Government to, essentially, baby-sit the world’s most incredible genius. 

Jake had been helping out in the lab two years earlier when the accident happened. At that point, he was simply helping a friend. Scott had developed a reactor that ran on what he called
zeta energy
. Why zeta? Jake had asked him.