A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Dr. Bruno Abrams sat in the semidarkness of his office, bathed in the glow of the screens arrayed in front of him. Another puzzle, evidence of someone else making changes in the system, always complementing Abrams’ own movements. He found the latest instance hidden in the gorilla gene tables concealing the specific modifications of the latest generation and their origins. Who was it? To what ends? He leaned back and rubbed his face with both hands, failing to push away the frustration and fatigue.
Could it be Trey Isaac? He messaged him.
I’m reviewing the latest results for the firstlings. Impressive.
Isaac responded immediately.
The M-group modifications to address the dementia in the earlier series seem to have had collateral benefits.
Messaging with Isaacs this way always proved more productive than verbal exchanges his communication preferences. Despite the frequent opacity of their exchanges, Isaac could always be counted on to deliver.
He refocused on the screens. Images of the latest group of firstlings on an adjacent screen, rolling and capering on the ground in the activity yard, distracted him. They were the healthiest, brightest group yet. He felt simultaneous twinges of pride and remorse, thanking God these new little ones showed no outward signs yet of the even more advanced capabilities he suspected they possessed.
The images showed them huddled in groups absorbing their lessons, the stories and ideas of duty, honor, and obedience Abrams used to motivate and control them that also ignited the burning desire for freedom and self-determination, setting them all on the path toward the coming crisis.
Have any of your team been doing work in the security systems?
There was an uncharacteristic pause before Isaac responded.
No one from my team is typically assigned duties in the security systems.
Okay, thank you.
Isaac broke the connection without reciprocating the pleasantry.
Isaac’s carefully unresponsive wording gave Abrams pause. Was this his usual awkward style, or something else? Though he trusted Isaac the most, perhaps he too was embedded in the sprawling web of lies. Once again, he felt events slipping out of his control.
His eyes flicked to the pictures of his wife and children circling the perimeter of his desk, their smiling faces the only remaining link to the time before the accident.
He looked at the firstlings again.
Not the only link.
He knew Cole was lying to him about the farmer. Why? Cole was many things, but he wasn’t a killer. If the farmer was murdered, others were involved. Why would Cole undermine Abrams’ relationship with the grendels by withholding the fragment? But who was the bigger liar? The source of the DNA, the adulation of his family and the Church, the sources of their funding, his own faith, now this farmer – one lie sprouted another.
He fought a wave of vertigo and sourness in the pit of stomach and reached for the bottle of antacid tablets on his desktop. He munched two more, feeling caught in the maelstrom, thrown about by forces he had the hubris to think he once directed and controlled.
The only path forward was to tell the truth and act on it, starting with his actions and their consequences. The rationalizations about the conflict between his professions of faith and his work were the beginning, the first temptations of self-delusion that his ego was fulfilling the will of God.
The will of God. He looked up from the desk to the ornate proclamation on the wall, surrounded by his degrees and awards and citations, the pictures of him with the President, the Pope, Nobel laureates, remembering a time before, in another office, meeting with his therapist, back when he was still climbing out of the hole.
***
“Pro Deo et Principe. It means, ‘For God and Ruler’.” He stood next to the framed ornate certificate on the wall. The heavy metal medallion was safely stored in a desk drawer. Next to it, a picture of his younger self, smiling and shaking hands with the Vatican official, his wife and in-laws standing next to him, beaming with pride. He lifted off the wall and held it closer to look at his wife.
Dr. Scalzi nodded. “Is that significant to you?”
“It made my wife’s family very happy. The honor of the Knight of the Papal Order of St. Gregory is a major accomplishment for Catholics. And I’m one of very few scientists to receive it.”
“Why is that?”
“Why are there so few, or why did I receive it?”
Dr. Scalzi laughed. “Both, I guess.”
“Historically, it usually goes to politicians, royalty, philanthropists, major cultural figures who support or champion the Church. My work with chromosomal architecture, gene splicing, and epigenomic modeling opened up a new field of gene therapies that avoided the ethical challenges that Church leaders found problematic. I think there was a certain amount of timing and lobbying involved as well.”
Abrams gave a self-deprecating laugh and shook his head.
“The church always resisted, in most cases, forbade, modifying genetics. It’s not part of God’s plan. My work made the case that a medical miracle was still a miracle and there are ways to bridge the divide between faith and science. Being a man of faith and a scientist shouldn’t be a contradiction. My findings brought us all closer to seeing the grand design. I saw ATCG as the alphabet of a gospel written in DNA. Using it like a Rosetta stone and rediscovering humanity as the living word written in God’s image. Understanding even a small part of those teachings and using that knowledge to heal the sick and ailing is just another expression of faith, of a confirmation of the divine.”
His wife and her family were so proud of that distinction. “At the reception afterward, I spent time with the Pope and chatted about Saint Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Fides et Ratio, and he told me my work was the best manifestation of using science to reveal the truth of the Word of Christ by relieving human suffering. That carried a lot of weight with my in-laws.”
“And you?” Dr. Scalzi leaned forward, her long brown hair cascading forward.
“At first, yes. I felt very vindicated. But later…”
“After the accident?”
Abrams stared off as if he didn’t hear the question, lost in painful memory. A distracted driver, a sudden lane change, shoddy truck maintenance, and in an instant, a hurried start to the family vacation ended in horrific catastrophe. They left early to beat the traffic while he finished work up in Bethesda, during one of his assignments to the NIH. He heard about the accident, but assumed his family was far past at that point, unaware of their delayed departure. He focused on Dr. Scalzi.
“I struggled, you know that. That’s why you are here. But I never was able to resolve the meaning, the causality of the events. Was it the will of God that sent that gasoline tanker truck vaulting over the median?”
Dr. Scalzi folded her hands and sat back. “That’s a question I’m not competent to address. What we should focus on is your emotional responses to these questions, whether you find answers or not.”
Abrams persisted. “There were problems with the dog. She changed the route because of the dog drop off. She was driving because I was in Bethesda. All those little chance decisions put them in that place at that time. Five seconds either way and they would have just missed it. If only…”
“Is any of that your responsibility?”
“No, but…eighteen people died in that fireball. Eighteen, my family among them. Did God choose them, or was it random?”
“What do you think?”
Abrams hesitated. “You know the significance of the number eighteen?”
Dr. Scalzi hesitated, a small frown notching her brow. “You’ve mentioned it before…”
Abrams shook his head and raised his hand as if to swat an unseen tormentor. “In Kaballah, it has meaning, representing chai, the Hebrew word for life. I’ve been reading a lot of Torah and other spiritual materials, for comfort, as you recommended.”
Dr. Scalzi shifted in her chair, frown deepening but remaining silent.
“I know as a scientist that it’s just a coincidence, but the more I seek solace in my spiritual upbringing, the harder it is to avoid the sense that number is not a coincidence. It’s almost a taunt, all that death summed up in the symbol for life.”
“You think that God is taunting you?”
Abrams looked up. “That’s pretty narcissistic, isn’t it?”
“What do you think?”
Abrams shook his head. “What about the others? The man lying to his wife about where he was headed in that car behind my family? An adulterer. Maybe he deserved it. But the college kids; what sin had they committed? And the businessmen, the accountant, the lawyer, the young mother with her child; how had their lives been found wanting, that God had ended them so abruptly and painfully along with my wife and children?”
“Dr. Abrams, you aren’t still corresponding with those families are you?”
Abrams became guarded. “Not recently.”
“That is a condition of your treatment, the reason we’re having these sessions. The restraining orders are still in effect. You cannot contact those families.”
“But I can’t…how can I make sense of this awful, this shoah, if I don’t…I need data, I need to understand the causality. What are the important variables, what are the plausible hypotheses, and how can I test them?”
“We’ve discussed this. Can events like this really be subjected to the scientific method?”
“But there are patterns! What about the dog? It was my fault. I left the gate open. If I hadn’t, he wouldn’t have been hit by the car. He was spared in the accident, only to have my…negligence, my inattention, my…he’d still be alive!” Abrams voice rose and broke, and he put his face into his hands, weeping.
“Is it happening again?” Dr. Scalzi stood up and approached him.
He nodded, face still in his hands. “Yes, I can see them…the smell, the gasoline and burned flesh, the morgue, the car, burned out and black…”
Dr. Scalzi hesitated, then put a comforting hand on his shoulder.
“What are you feeling?”
“It’s my fault! I didn’t believe it when they called me, they shouldn’t have been there. But they were, because of me, because of my schedule and my work.”
“We discussed this. Your wife made her own decisions, she had her own agency. So many of these things were and are beyond your knowledge and control. Step outside. Look at it objectively.”
Abrams shook his head, hands now at his side. “I didn’t believe them. They wouldn’t let me go to the morgue, but I insisted. Their bodies, the smell…it was our car, they checked the identifying numbers. It was them, they confirmed with their DNA. But how? How could it have happened?” He began crying again.
“Why don’t we take a break for today?”
***
Despite Dr. Scalzi’s best efforts, the crisis came when he stopped traffic at the site of the accident, car on the shoulder with emergency lights flashing, as he walked the median, examining the burn marks on the concrete, the freshly repaired signage and guardrails, many of the scars of evidence removed but not enough to evade his searching eyes, trying to connect the dots, find the thread, explain the horror. Motorists pulled over to see if he needed help. Most of the details were a blur because of his altered state, but records he reviewed later document that he began yelling and berating people, which drew more bystanders and brought I-95 to a standstill, creating a massive back up in the middle of the day. The State Police arrived, then EMS, and he was forcibly removed, taken to the hospital for two weeks, heavily medicated.
Nothing could pull Abrams out of the pit. Colleagues stopped by, their spouses bringing food, cleaning the house for him, trying to divert him with activities, professional meetings, awards. But after a while, the calls slowed, then stopped, and well into the second year of his despair, he was alone, circling and slowly converging on his own permanent solution to his misery.
During the times he stopped his medication, the depression returned, to the point of hallucinations of conversing with his dead spouse and children.
And then Steven Cole arrived.
***
Abrams device beeped and he looked down. It was Cole. Abrams’ nocturnal work habits were well known and despite the lingering irritation from the earlier angry conversation, Abrams put the call on his terminal and Cole appeared.
“Bruno, I just wanted to apologize for my outburst earlier. This auditor visit has been an unwelcome stressor. My behavior was unacceptable. I’m sorry.”
This was the old Cole, ingratiating, supportive, even wheedling sometimes, from before, when he intervened in Abrams’ despair and pulled him back to reality.
At first, he was just another professional acquaintance demonstrating support, helping him in little ways, always there with a question, to run an errand, get him up and out of bed, take him to a meeting. Gradually, Abrams grew more comfortable with him, drawn out by his charm and persistent good will, another member of the life sciences elite showing interest in his work, asking good questions, posing interesting hypotheses which could extend Abrams’ own work. Slowly, Cole turned him away from the edge of the abyss, back toward life, to his work, to the real world. He was able to gradually wean off the medications and become more functional. Back then, Cole kept him grounded and functioning.
“I appreciate that, Steven. We’re all under a lot of stress. I’m working on some solutions for motivating the subjects. I’m optimistic.”
“That’s good, that’s good.” Cole paused. “We’ve come a long way, haven’t we?”
Abrams wondered at the shift in the conversation to melancholy nostalgia. Was this genuine, or just more manipulation?
After several months of solicitous caretaking back then, Cole finally broached the question –he had a project, and the prospect of ample funding, though from the outset Abrams suspected the presence of other partners Cole always kept concealed. Would Abrams join him on a classified government program? Not necessarily military, but with military implications. Given the restrictions on federal research, Cole needed Abrams and his reputation to persuade the funders that this radical concept was plausibly ethical for the government regulators and would produce useful weapons tech for their partners.
Biological Combat Systems, and a move to Idaho, to this office.
“Yes, we have. No one believed it possible, but here we are. Maybe someday you’ll get your Nobel.” Now it was Abrams turn to flatter.
“Our Nobel, Bruno. Your chromosomal architecture papers by themselves are worthy. The results we’ve achieved with the animals is a huge leap forward in amplification technologies. Keeping it out of the hands of our adversaries is paramount. This is our generation’s Manhattan Project. We’ll be remembered for a long time.”
The serendipity of their timing couldn’t be ignored. The autonomous systems arms race was well under way, and elements within the Defense establishment worried openly of losing control of their ever more deadly weapons because of a lapse or loophole in the always changing, heavily regulated dance of AIs and cyberwarfare. The treaties could only do so much. How to enhance capabilities while maintaining control and not create additional technological vulnerabilities?
“I think you are correct.” But for all the wrong reasons, Abrams thought to himself.
Cole chuckled. “Remember how close we came to throwing in the towel? I can’t help but think if it weren’t for that South China Sea mess with the autonomous systems conflict, we would have run out of time. But you came through.”
The early challenges and failures almost broke them both and crashed the project. What worked for other animal models, particularly the dogs, wasn’t working with the gorillas and chimpanzees. They developed new concepts of gene regulation and modeling of multilevel effects, the influence of epigenetic modifications on entire gene families. Success outside the lab continually eluded them, until Abrams made his decision for reasons he only dimly perceived, and still concealed from Cole.
“It was a team effort,” Abrams deflected away from the first big deception. Using his own DNA was at first an expedient, elaborating the regulatory pathways in humans that were analogous to the gorilla developmental controls they sought to exploit. But with his successful attempts at reconfiguring chromosomal architecture while preserving function, the opportunity for the first deception presented itself. Their initial breakthroughs followed shortly after.
It worked, consequences be damned.
“Now we just have to get through this next hurdle, and have the funders recognize how superior our approach is to what is occurring with our competitors. We just need a little more time to get this next cohort out into the field.”
“We’ll get there.” Abrams grew tired of this dance, the images of the Firstlings still on his screen. Imagining them facing the autocannons of the combat drones sickened him.
“Get some sleep, Bruno. Tomorrow is another day. We’ll be ready for the auditors, I’m confident.”
“Good night.” He broke the connection, reviewing the lies within lies, the nested levels of deceit between the two of them.
The second, more emotionally fraught deception elevated the fraud to something he knew was not only unethical, but explicitly illegal. The ultrafreeze in his office at home appeared in his mind, along with the vials of his children’s umbilical cord blood stored there. Some people save locks of hair from their infant children; a geneticist buys a high-end freezer and saves his children’s cord blood for some unknown future contingency. Cancer – he could have fought that. Sudden death on the interstate was not so amenable to cutting-edge stem cell treatments.
The subsequent accelerated progress, especially the mitigation of the many shortcomings of the earlier versions, made it impossible to turn back. That was when he could no longer ignore the contradictions of his motivations.
Painful reflections forced him to accept that the decision was his own rebellion against God and fate, his act of defiance, his Dr. Frankenstein moment of attempting to resurrect some trace of his lost family. His suspicions about Cole’s duplicity and the misgivings about the ethical challenges of furthering the interests of the oligarchs he loathed only further aggravated his guilt.
But that analysis was still a rationalization, the illusion of control over events that grew more chaotic. At every step, there were always others, different agendas, unseen actors. Dr. Trey Isaac’s arrival after those breakthroughs was a godsend. At the time it seemed like more serendipity, but now with the appearance of others secretly collaborating with him to repair his sin couldn’t have been a coincidence. Were they competitors of their Mega sponsors or yet other hidden forces?
Now, the accumulating successes at each subsequent stage of the program worsened the sense that events were slipping beyond his control.
He returned to his screens and the latest change to the security systems he spotted, one he didn’t make. How much effort should he divert to uncovering the unseen hack, time he couldn’t devote to the main objective?
He bristled at the thought, the anger invigorating, goading him out of his torpor. He believed to his core that he was no pawn, no victim. He had free will, he had that spark of divinity that enabled discernment of good and evil.
And he would choose.
Robert Wack 