Genosimulation (A Teen & Young Adult Science Fiction): A Young Adult Science Fiction Thriller (14 page)

She held them back from him.

"I went through them more than once. Did the run a few
times."

"The results surprised you? What, then?" His tone
suggested that they would not be a surprise to him.

"Bothered me, rather."

"Sexually harassed?"

"It's ... let's go somewhere else, okay?"

They went.

Zomy let Lia lead him through the long corridors, away from
the bowels of the building, to the main elevator. This elevator had no
conventional buttons, only a keyhole in a steel door. Three key turns, and the
door opened. They went up several floors up to the second elevator that also
needed a key. The third elevator, outermost, was the conventional kind without
a key. But it was occupied by a big confident guy with a full vest and a loaded
gun.

Grinding, clicking. And then up, up, under the gaze of
strict security cameras, to the heat of the summer, embracing young, green
lawns.

They didn't leave the Institute. Lia felt too exhausted to
begin to explain such an exit to their commanders, and Zomy did not hurry her.
Life in there was quite closed, and under constant surveillance - despite the
extensive security vetting done during recruitment, and then regularly every
year. Many prohibitions were in place in that world, but on the grass outside
the Institute they were allowed to sit down. And so they did.

"You already know the answer, right?" she said,
twisting a blade of grass.

"I guessed at it."

"Otherwise you wouldn’t let me run your father. You
already knew what the answer would be."

"You know ..." he began, his eyes looking away to
the horizon. "It wasn’t my idea to preserve his hair. It was my rabbi's
command. He told me to cut off some of his hair, what little was left to him.
Then he put it in this pendant, and closed it around my neck. Weird."

A minute’s silence passed between them. Lia finally felt the
need to break the silence.

"I didn't know you had a rabbi.”

"I had. Once."

"And now?"

"Forget it."

"Are you religious?"

Zomy did not answer her. She let another minute pass, and
then another. And more. The test results were within Zomy’s reach - but he made
no attempt to take them. Its engines straining in the distance, a fighter plane
took off making low but intrusive noise.

"Your father ran eighteen times," she said
finally.

"Oh. Interesting."

"That's one more than you, Zomy."

"Apparently."

The plane passed, leaving silence studded with birdsong.
Zomy adjusted his oxygen valve slightly. He had more than thirty minutes in the
tank, he noticed. Well, there was still time.

"What’s your explanation for this?"

Zomy looked at her, as if for the first time. She was the
doctor, a geneticist. Why did she turn to him for an explanation? His eyes
begged for an answer, but did not find it in hers.

"Zomy?"

*

Stopwatch: It occurred to me, and don’t ask why or how, that
things are connected.

Looking for a challenge: What things?

Stopwatch: Mechanisms of death.

Looking for a challenge: There’s more than one?

Stopwatch: I don't know. But we found one that determines
the personal time of each and every one of us. And I think we've found another
one now.

Looking for a challenge: Explain, explain!

Stopwatch: Well, trilobites. That's the explanation.

Stopwatch: At some point they lost their death mechanism,
and multiplied and multiplied infinitely.

Stopwatch: And then, boom! No more trilobites…

Stopwatch: A mechanism for the whole race to die was
activated.

Looking for a challenge: What, all of them suddenly died?

Stopwatch: No.

Stopwatch: I think they all suddenly stopped reproducing.

Stopwatch: It probably wasn’t sudden, maybe over a few tens
or hundreds of years.

Stopwatch: But in terms of evolution it was sudden. A split
second.

Looking for a challenge: And ... how did this happen?

Stopwatch: Again, this is my hypothesis, to apply the word
correctly.

Stopwatch: It’s suddenly like science fiction and I’ve no
proof that you will get a serious academic reception for your book.

Stopwatch: The Film Academy may like it.

Stopwatch: But I have the feeling that we have that same
internal clock.

Stopwatch: Pacemaker mutations…changes.

Looking for a challenge: What changes?

Looking for a challenge: What are you talking about?

Stopwatch: You know the those watches that don’t need a
battery?

Stopwatch: Kinetic.

Looking for a challenge: I bought this one for my wedding. A
Swatch, kinetic. Without numbers.

Stopwatch: Oh, it's the net metal one?

Looking for a challenge: Yes, you see the mechanism?

Stopwatch: It's beautiful, I like it. Great taste!

Looking for a challenge: Thanks.

Stopwatch: So these watches are driven by movement. Every
movement of the hand winds them.

Looking for a challenge: Yes.

Stopwatch: It’s as if they’re on borrowed time, constantly
cheating their end.

Looking for a challenge: ?

Stopwatch: As long as you move the watch is alive. When you
stop moving it, it’ll stop working eventually. And every time you move it you
postpone its death a little.

Looking for a challenge: Clocks reverse-calculate their own
end?

Stopwatch: What?

Looking for a challenge: Shlomo Artzi, doesn't matter!

Stopwatch: I didn’t understand…

Looking for a challenge: Let it go! Just a line from a poem
of his.

Stopwatch: He sings about watches?

Looking for a challenge: No, cats! Forget it!

Stopwatch: What cat?

Looking for a challenge: LEAVE IT.

Stopwatch: Ok, ok.

Stopwatch: In short, that's how our DNA is built. As long as
it evolves and achieves significant changes in evolution, it holds off its own
end.

Stopwatch: So if there are no changes, the stopwatch starts
ticking.

Looking for a challenge: And trilobites, you say, stopped?

Stopwatch: I think so. If animals have no need to change
because they control the environment, there will be no major changes to the
DNA.

Looking for a challenge: I don’t like your point.

Stopwatch: Me neither, so what? The DNA gets tired, bored
with itself…

Stopwatch: There must be development! If not, then death…

Stopwatch: For humans there are no changes in the genome for
generations.

Stopwatch: So we don’t like it, but there’s another issue.

Looking for a challenge: So move it!

Stopwatch: Since we stopped being changed by our environment
and we took control of the environment, there haven't been too many mutations.

Stopwatch: When it's cold we don’t grow fur, we kill sheep.

Stopwatch: If we get sick, we don’t develop pandemic natural
immunity, but antibiotics.

Stopwatch: Medicine kills any changes in the genome, because
it kills all the genetic factors that forced us to change.

Looking for a challenge: OK, I got it.

Stopwatch: Agriculture.

Stopwatch: Technology.

Stopwatch: Meanwhile the clock is ticking.

Stopwatch: Eighteen generations since my dad.

Stopwatch: Seventeen generations from me.

Stopwatch: Sixteen generations from my children…

Stopwatch: If there are any.

Looking for a challenge: How long is seventeen generations?

Stopwatch: It’s considered each generation is roughly 25
years.

Stopwatch: So 400 years, say.

Looking for a challenge: It's quite a long time.

Stopwatch: It’s just an evolutionary second.

Stopwatch: It’s too late to develop mutations.

Stopwatch: Don’t even try. Who would give up the medicine,
the technology?

Stopwatch: It'll never happen.

Stopwatch: Ever.

All at once ... all the red lights came on.

Alarm.

The modem lines near Zomy’s terminal were attacked by
hysterical flashing. All the lights flashed out of sequence, evidence of
something seriously not right. At that moment two phones began to ring out a
warning, and one pager began to vibrate.

A delay of two seconds then the speaker system, flooding the
air around his head, started making noise.

Zomy froze for a beat.

The alarm did not reach him at first. He was thinking about
something entirely different, deep in his heart, a complex calculation going on
in his head. He was deep in the Enchanted Garden, the spider trying to control
the army, an interesting event that he had not come across before.

Another beat.

The alarm kicked in ... but too slowly. Almost ten seconds
since the first alarm, and only then did he begin to wake up, begin to be aware
of what was happening.

Even then, a few seconds passed before his adrenal gland
realized something was going on. Something that was not supposed to happen
here. Something that he did not believe would ever happen here. Not for him.
Not here.

And by the next pulse of the alarm he woke up.

His pupils widened.

Both hands, until now slowly stroking the keyboard, began to
tiptoe a crazy dance. Eyes opening wide and quickly, he saw data that caused
his breathing to stop for a moment. No, it just could not be!

His reaction speed doubled. His fingers moved too fast for
the eye to follow, tapping forcefully on the keys, like a loud humming.

More data streamed to the screen, absorbed by his eyes,
decoded and swept out again in vital seconds. New windows began to appear on
the screen, orders were given, fiery words were keyed in, and questions like
"Are you sure you want to do this?" received a positive response.

There was only one way to deal with the attack.

Shut down. Turn off the system!

And fast.

His reaction speed increased even more. Close procedure.
Closed. "Yes, I'm sure." Closed. Closed. "Yes, I'm sure."
Closed. Turn. Stop activity. Lock all movement. Closed.

Finally, after the last stroke, he leaned back, his heart
pounding like a madman.

A long breath. Frantic. Relax. Relax.

His pulse began to return to normal, breath rising and
falling more slowly. You can relax. Everything is fine. The attack was halted.
Here, you can see…

And his heart rate jumped again.

Unbelievable - but the data leak continued. Something,
someone, was pulling information directly from the vault - the central computer
of the Institute - and Zomy’s lockdown instructions did not stop it.

On the contrary.

The alarm, he knew, would be activated by even a light
information leak, even just the tiniest trickle, and this happened regularly,
apparently. It was a sensitive alarm - but not too sensitive. It was designed
to alert to hacking - just in case of minor information theft.

But now the pace changed.

And precisely when all the internet connections were
supposed to be closed, when the outside world was meant to be completely sealed
off, the data stream accelerated dramatically. The dribble became a tremendous
stream. A flood.

Zomy watched in amazement as the information was sucked out
of its safe. As the system streamed trillions of gigabytes - going, going,
copied out through the broken bridges (really?) and locked gates (maybe not?),
to a location unknown.

It bordered on the impossible.

On the spur of the moment, Zomy jumped up from his chair and
broke quickly from the room. He ran down the hall, all excited, and only after
a few steps he remembered he had left his oxygen bottle behind.

But that did not stop him. On the contrary, Zomy increased
his speed, telling himself that anaerobic capacity – the kind that would let
him work his muscles in the first half-minute - does not require any lung
function.

Still, he reached the elevator panting heavily.

Key.

Turn.

A sweaty press of a button.

Breathing - a second, a third. Something in his lungs began
to creak. Slight burning began to form in his chest. Suffocation.

He forced himself to breathe deeply, as much as possible,
frustrated that even his deepest respiration gave no sweet sense of fresh air.
On the contrary - it was the last struggle of a drowning man, without a drop of
oxygen.

Black spots began to dance before his eyes.

His legs wanted to give out.

Stop. The door opened. Right or left?

He chose the right direction and began to try to run. The
black dots increased, occupied more and more parts of his line of vision.
Somewhere behind him, someone called his name. He did not bother to turn
around.

Another few stumbling steps, and he saw the door before him.
Then paused, looking right and left. Yes! There it was, right where he was last
working. Red and transparent, solid and reliable.

Punch. A hit.

The crunching sound drew more than one person from his room.
More voices were calling his name, but he could not hear them. A tool that he
wanted… he could ... but in front of him was another door. And nine keys.

What was the secret code?

He dragged it from his mind, somehow, leaning heavily on the
wall. Eight presses, hash mark… but a red light disobediently flashed in front
of him.

Missed something out. Enter the code again.

That took another five seconds. Five more seconds lacking of
oxygen, fainting imminent. His lungs were screaming, clamoring, demanding
oxygen. And immediately.

Eight clicks, this time more carefully. Pounding. And…

Green light. The door swung open, and Zomy fell into the
cooled room. Somehow, the almost frozen air slightly softened the roaring fire
in his lungs, alleviating the pressure. But it was an illusion. The computer
room was filled with oxygen.

He looked around almost not seeing it. His hand tightened
around the smooth wooden handle, so heavy. And suddenly he was not sure he
could even lift the weight.

But he had to try. Must.

His legs collapsed and he fell to the floor, injuring his
nose and hand. Stayed down, no matter… the floor was just fine, if he could
only keep going...

Behind him came another voice. Dim, distant, not belonging.
An irrelevant firestorm strangled him, his blood baking hot, his hand burning,
a thick bundle of cables, he could make them out only with difficulty,
somewhere at the end of the tunnel that was once his vision.

Crawl. More. Now for it.

Swing it.

(What if you get electrocuted? What if …)

He brushed aside the thought, and struck.

The axe in his hand, which he had taken from the fire
cabinet, sliced through the main power cable, disconnecting the datasafe,
physically, from the outside world.

The world went dark. 

* 

And here I'm going to take the big risk, perhaps for the
first time in this book. The risk that someone will make connections and begin
to understand that what I write here is true, not fantasy.

That something did happen, sometime in the summer of 2001. A
computer event that not many remember, but maybe someone does, and now he’s
raising an eyebrow and asking himself if it really can be. And no, I'm not
saying I will risk more and say what software it was, and how long the blackout
was. But it did. For a short period of time, and raised quite a few questions
and doubts because it was the basis of a very popular free service, and
suddenly it stopped.

And Customer Services did not respond. And nothing worked.
And so it was for quite a while, as mentioned above. Until suddenly it came
back.

And there was, of course, an explanation for this one.