Paradeisia: Origin of Paradise (14 page)

Cynthia was shaking her head, “I'm not blaming you, of course, but is all this really necessary?  Those police are just standing there like homeless people.  Susan will never let me live thi
s down.”  She put her hands out, “I mean look what they've done to the lawn!  And all the tape?”

“It's the government, mom.  If they can find an excuse for tape, they'll use it,” he said.  He knew his mother was not really this pretentious.  He suspected she was really griping only to downplay the gravity of the situation.

“Our home used to be the pride of the neighborhood.  Now it’s the
spectacle
of the neighborhood!”

“As soon as my test results come back negative, they'll take this all away.”

A silver car suddenly pulled up as close as it could get to the house.  A man in jeans and a leather jacket emerged and stood with a phone to his ear.

Wesley's phone rang.  He answered it, “Hello?”

It was the man outside speaking: “This is Special Agent Jarred Kessler with the FBI.  I need to talk with you.”

Wesley's heart jumped, “Great.  What's up?”

Jared’s response surprised Wesley: “Have you received any request for ransom?”

“Uh, no.  Why?”

“Good.  I'd like to speak with you in person.  Does that place have a back door?”

“Yes.”

“Meet me there.”

“You know we're under quarantine,” Wesley said.

“Yeah, I know.  I'll see you at the back.”

Jarred was standing on the large wood patio off the sliding doors at the rear of the house, just as he had promised.  Wesley opened the door and said, “I won’t shake your hand.  Don't want to transmit anything, just in case...”

“Okay, that works for me.”

Wesley led him into the formal living room where they took seats.  His mother went off to the kitchen to “get drinks,” though he knew she'd be listening closely.

Jarred said, “You probably know I'm not the agent assigned to your case.”

“Yes.  The last time I heard from him was when I reported it.  He didn't sound very interested.”

Jarred nodded knowingly, “Ah.  Well, I don't want to disappoint you, but I'm not here about your case.”

“No?” Wesley couldn't hide the fact that he was disappointed.

“No.  I'm on another case, but I thought you might have some information that could be helpful to me.”

“Okay.”

“Now, you've said that your wife was pregnant, and then she wasn't, and the baby had disappeared.  Into thin air.”

“Yes.”

“
What do you think happened to it?”

Wesley hesitated.  “Well, I guess I think someone took him.”

“So here's your challenge:” Jarred raised his hand to accent his words, “What did your unborn baby have that a kidnapper would have wanted?  Every criminal has a reason for what he does.”

Suddenly there was a crash and a cry from the kitchen.  Wesley leaped up, shouting, “Mom?  Are you all right in there?”

His mother cried back, her
voice agonized, “Wesley!  Help!”

Wesley and Jarred dashed toward the plea.  Wh
en they went through the doorway, they saw Cynthia laying on the floor, shattered glass and ice cubes catching the light all around her.

CDC

Doctor Compton walked down the fluorescent-lit hallway, Doctor Guy Giordano at his side wringing his ball-cap in his hands.

Most of the other PhD's at the facility wore lab coats, but Doctor Giordano hated what he saw as pompous bunk: either you had it or you didn't, and a lab coat didn't prove anything.  Doctor Giordano wore what he'd always worn growing up in his home city: a button-up black shirt, jeans, a chain with a crucifix, and a Philadelphia Phillies baseball cap.

Guy said, “Are you sure I should be at this meeting?  I don't wanna piss her off again.”

“Don't worry about Karen.  I have you here for a reason.  If you have something to say, say it.”

Doctor Giordano snorted with a smile, “So I'm your fall guy.”

“You got it,” Doctor Compton said.  Suddenly, his phone rang.  Looking at the ID, he said “Speak of the devil.”  He answered, “I'm afraid it's bad news, Karen.  Very bad.”

“Shoot.”

“Three new deaths matching the symptoms, and one new case.  The new case came from a house we already had quarantined.  The cadavers of the other three are being brought to our lab.”

“Please tell me they were all in Towson.”

“Yes, except for the new case.  But like I said that house was already quarantined and there's almost zero risk there was transmission from there.”

“Quarantine Towson.  We have the authority now.”

“Already in motion.”

“And what's the word on the virus symptoms?  Any way to contain it?”

“When you get to the meeting we'll tell you what we know.”

Kinglsey

Doctor Kingsley had stopped at the convenience store and picked up some bottles of something strong.  He drove out to the woods by the Loch Raven Reservoir and drank all of them.  Then he slipped back into his car and, without buckling his seat belt, floored the gas, pulling onto Route 146.  He swerved along the road, passing the acres of wild woodland on either side until he sped onto the Dulaney Valley Road Bridge.

There, against the white backdrop of snow-covered trees, the silhouette of a man stepped from the bridge guardrail into the road.  With eyes that seemed ghost-white, he looked at Doctor Kingsley and raised his arm out towards him.

Doctor Kingsley swerved just as the bumper struck the man, throwing his body up over the windshield.  As if in slow motion, Doctor Kingsley saw the head hit the wiper well and the arms flailing as the body cascaded up off the left side of the windshield.  But at the same instant, Doctor Kingsley felt the right side of his car lifting wildly into the air.

The car flipped several times to jolt over the top of the rail and plunge into the frigid water.  As the water boiled up all around him, chilling him to the bone at first his legs, then waist, now chest, he did nothing to try to escape.  Doctor Kingsley did not even unbuckle his seat belt.  He simply closed his eyes and prayed,

“
Hail Mary, full of grace.

The Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou amongst women,

and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God,

pray for me a sinner,

now at the hour of my death.”

China Academy of Sciences

It took two days, but finally the head of the Academy of Sciences called Doctor Ming-Zhen back to his office.  When he arrived, his superior mot
ioned to a chair, “Tell me how the platypus as anything to do with dinosaurs?”

“The platypus is local to Australia.  That much, I'm sure you know.”

Zhang grunted.

“It has the eggs of a reptile,  the bill of a duck, the tail of a beaver, the feet of an otter, the fur of a mole, the eyes of a lamprey—that's a blood-sucking fish—the sex chromosomes of a bird, and a cocktail of venom that includes three proteins all its own.  It has mammary glands and produces milk, but is lacking teats so the milk seeps out of its skin and pools in crevices for it's young to lap up: they wouldn't be able to suck on teats since they have bills.”

Doctor Ming-Zhen explained that the creature had so many aspects derived from so many different animals that when the original English discoverers sent a pelt back to Europe in 1798, it was thought that somebody had sewn the duck beak on as a hoax—they even checked for the stitches.

“But of course no one had sewn on a duck beak.  The platypus, as it turns out, derives its DNA from a menagerie of creatures.  When its genome was fully decoded, it was found only to be 80% mammalian, and had genes found previously
only
in reptilian, bird, amphibian, and fish DNA.”

“What does that have to do with Antarctica?” Zhang asked.

“I'm getting there.  But first, let me tell you about another example: the leatherback turtle.”

Zhang raised his hand in resignation, “Tell me.”

“It has been assumed that sea-going reptiles invaded the water via evolution numerous times, even in prehistory, despite the obvious insurmountable obstacles such as air-breathing lungs and dependence upon external sources of heat.  This has been assumed because there are many different types of sea-going reptiles which could not have possibly all evolved down the same tree branch—for example, sea-snakes could not have evolved from sea turtles or vice versa.  They would have had to take to the seas independently within their family lines.

“Now the leatherback turtle overcame the heat issue via a simple, but evolutionarily impossible solution; it is the only reptile that possesses fatty insulation known as brown adipose tissue, and the only reptile that regulates a high body temperature.  This brown adipose tissue is the expression of the UCP1 gene, and, aside from the leatherbacks, is found only in mammals, amphibians, and fishes.  Not one other reptile has UCP1.”

“Antarctica?” Zhang said agitatedly.

“Yes, so, I suspect that, if we were to find a fossil with enough DNA, we could prove conclusively that dinosaurs have no place at the earlier stages of the evolutionary tree.  I suspect that they utilized genes common to many different types of animals.  For example, what if we find in a dinosaur a gene that is common only to higher primates?  I believe we will find such an abundance of commonality and generational skips as to make the dinosaur a clear contemporary to all other life.  Dinosaur DNA would conclusively prove that they were not earlier.”

Zhang sat back, contemplating.  Then he said, “And you think that the DNA would really survive, and be accessible?”

Doctor Ming-Zhen nodded, “Oh yes.  Dinosaur DNA has already been found.”

“What do you mean?”

“You haven't heard of Doctor Mary
Schweitzer?”

“No,” he replied.  “I haven't.  And let me guess, it has something to do with Antarctica.”

“No, not this time.”  Doctor Ming-Zhen explained, “Many years ago, she was only an obscure scientist, but her mentor was the world's most respected paleontologist of that time, the late Jack Horner.  This gave her access to his tremendous cache of dinosaur fossils from Hell Creek.

“She was examining one of his recently excavated tyrannosaurus bones, when she found something inside that left her dumbfounded.  She was so dumbfounded, in fact, that she called Doctor Horner and verified her procedures with him.  When
they were confident that she had not made a misinterpretation, they announced her discovery to the world.”

“Which was?” Zhang asked, drumming his fingers on the desk.

“She had found soft tissue. 
Soft tissue
in something that was supposed to be 65-75 million years old.

“Now, by simple experimentation, it had already been shown that soft tissue could likely not survive beyond 100,000 years.  But there it was, the tissue of a dinosaur.  And it wasn't deemed to be soft tissue by some molecular analysis: it was recognizable as such by
sight
.”

“All right...”

“Its appearance under the microscope was nothing to what Doctor Schweitzer found next.  Inside another tissue she examined were fragments of actual DNA.  In a fossil supposedly millions of years old she found the DNA from tyrannosaurus rex.”

“I have never heard anything of this.”

“Of course you have not.  That's because, at first, we scientists cried foul.  But, within a few short years, peer review and independent analysis had proven her analysis to be correct.  The world had its first glimpse of dinosaur DNA.  Now did the world's museums saw open their bones and see if any dinosaur DNA was in them?  No, they did not.  Her discovery was quietly swept under the rug.  None of us every spoke of it because we all knew what it meant: we were wrong.

“Dinosaurs were not as old as we said they were.  She had dinosaur DNA, and it was there despite the simple fact that it
couldn't
be after sixty-five million years: a study from Australia showed that DNA within fossilized bones can survive a maximum, absolute maximum, of six point eight million years before complete and total degradation, assuming the rate of decay is constant.  65 million years?  Not a chance.”

“But I thought the age of these fossils was perfectly established by dating?” his superior questioned.  “Radioisotope dating, I mean.”

“Ah, radioisotope dating...  Isn't that every paleontologist’s favorite tool to tickle our ears?”  Doctor Ming-Zhen smiled, “This, as in everything else related to the study of prehistory, is an art-form as much as it is a science.”

Zhang pulled back in his chair, tilting his head skeptically.  “You must be joking.  You have me wondering if you are not the imposter they say you are.  Do you hold nothing sacred?”