RESTORATION (a science fiction novel) (RESTORATION (the science fiction trilogy)) (31 page)

John went home and prepared the DNA kits for shipping via his secret helper at the bank, an associate that he paid handsomely for a simple delivery service, no questions asked.  The procedure was simple, he would go into the bank with a deposit pouch and make a “so called” deposit by giving the teller a bag with the contents and some cash for payment.

The teller already knew where to take it per their standing agreement.  The guy hadn’t let him down in more than ten years, and why would he? It was easy money! 

After Alan left Red Lobster, he went home and smoked a cigar.  It was one of the Cubans that John smuggled in through his man at the bank.  Dodge palmed it to him on his way out of the restaurant.     

“Don’t get caught, and for god sakes, don’t inhale it!”  He whispered.

Alan had no intentions of inhaling it.  He wanted to keep his new body healthy.  Besides, it was a cigar, not a cigarette.  He stayed up late out on the porch until each of his neighbors turned off their lights and no one was about.  He sat there and slowly smoked the outstandingly smooth and aromatic cigar.  Just him and the crickets, and a frog or two.  It seemed like the best one he’d ever had.  Maybe it was just because it had been over twenty years since his last one, or maybe it was really that good.  After all it was a Cuban. 

The next morning John went to the bank to make his deposit.  One of the clever things about this system he had with his bank pal was that the contents of the bag were always in a little metal box.  John had these tough little boxes made that could only be opened with magnets placed in just the right spots and with great accuracy.   

The boxes were stainless steel construction with a red anodized coating.  The triggers inside were regular steel with very light spring loads to counteract the magnetic pull of the “keys” as it was.  The exterior of the boxes were covered all over with laser etched words and numbers in a random pattern that made them very curious to look at.

The magnets had to be placed upon the exact number or word for the box to be opened.  Each of the magnets had to be of the right magnetic strength.  Too much magnetism would move the tumblers too far while too little would not move the tumblers
far enough.  Either error would result in the box not opening and this made the locking mechanism very complicated to defeat. 

The trusted receiver of his deposits possessed the coded magnets and the cipher to determine where to place them to get the boxes open.  Couriers were simply not paid enough to be trusted.  Everyone knows the best way to keep a delivery boy honest is a good lock on the package. 

John always put the metal box into the deposit pouch with five thousand dollars cash, it was always the same amount of money regardless of the value of the contents.  This insured that the delivery boy was never tempted to smash the box open. 

If you show up one day with ten times the normal payment in the pouch do you think the delivery would ever get there?
of course not!  He assumes the value is out of this world because you paid him so much more than usual and he makes off with the contents and the extra cash. 

So . . . ,

Rule no. 1  Always put a lock on the package.

Rule no. 2 Always pay the same amount.

Rule no. 3 Always say the exact same thing.

Rule no. 4 Act the same regardless of the contents.

John’s courier always went to the same pawn shop with the
package, that was the rule.  What he didn’t know, was that the pawn shop owner was a direct employee of John’s, not to mention his cousin, and that the whole shop and operation were John’s own personal smuggling operation for anything and everything that he wanted to get in or out of the country, even people. 

John and his cousin had an agreement, John paid him big bucks and his cousin did whatever he was told to do, no questions asked, zip the lip, top secret, and especially above all, don’t tell anyone about what we’re really doing, especially family! 

They never dealt in anything harmful like drugs or weapons, it was mostly Cigars, Snuff, Caviar, Wines, a few exotic cars that wouldn’t pass emission laws in the U.S. etc.   Surprisingly they found out that they could actually make excellent profits by selling things to overseas buyers that these crazy people would bring in to pawn off. 

The shop was supposed to be a front but had turned somewhat legitimate because people would bring in things like an old moped, one of those antique motorized bicycle like things. 
Foreigners collected these things and the American built ones like the Indian brand brought huge dollars in the foreign markets, unbelievable. 

John had already forwarded shipping instructions to his cousin about this deposit and his bank connection knew to always take it to the same place and drop it off. 

He went in to see his man at the bank.  He slid the package over to him.

“Deposit this as usual.  Thanks,” he said, with no other communication.  This teller was always glad to see him.  He made several times his regular salary just by delivering a few packages each month for John.  He never asked what was in the packages and never attempted to open the box, or at least didn’t succeed at it anyway. 

Later that day John got a text message from his cousin
         “Deposit received, forwarded to receiver next day a.m.”  This meant the contents had been shipped overnight early a.m. delivery to the farm.  He sent a message to Jason.

“Package ETA, tomorrow early a.m.”  A few minutes later he received a reply.
         “Copy that, JB.”

He had already discussed their time tables and their goals with Jason Bluffton when he hired him to do the genetics work there at the Farm.  He knew the kind of man Jason was and had no doubt he would have the chambers ready and all the base tissue seeded and ready for the DNA.

It would only be a few days and their new clones would be the size of a normal human fetus in the later part of the first trimester.  Once past that first step extreme accelerated growth would be induced, the clone would grow to the equivalent of a ten-year-old child in just one month.  The growth would have to be slowed down a bit for the pubescent stage and then accelerate again after that.

It was now common place to grow a full adult clone in just two or three months.  The government programs did it much more slowly using older technology but to their credit it was very reliable and stable.  Rapid growing required constant monitoring to ensure everything was going just right. 

Only the wealthy that needed or wanted a replacement much sooner could afford this luxury and would usually have it done privately and paid big bucks for the services.  There were only a few companies doing it and each laboratory was very heavily licensed and regulated by the USCRA (United States Cloning Regulations Agency).  

What they were doing was highly illegal but it had to be done, there was no other way to stop the hackers, especially if the government was involved, and as of right now they didn’t know. 

They planned to start Dodge’s clone first because they needed him to be there at the farm with his electronics and engineering prowess to accomplish more of the tasks required.  A week or so later Jason would be starting John’s clone. 

They were about to attempt something that had never been done before, they were going to clone a person while his surrogate was still alive and allow them both to go on living.  They knew that the government had probably already attempted this and maybe even succeeded but there was no doubt it was beyond top secret and they had no public knowledge of it.  John had conducted numerous searches in the most private and top secret records servers but found nothing.  It was probably on paper only for added security.

What they were about to attempt was groundbreaking for the private sector and it was very exciting.   All of the surrogate’s life would be uploaded into the clone and the clone awakened.  The big question was this, what about the soul or the PS2 as scientist liked to call it?  If a person is not brought back after a total death incident within one hour, it just doesn’t work. 

Scientists had speculated that it was due to the soul leaving the body completely because it had a consciousness of some sort.  They now believed that it had an awareness of the presence of life, or the circumstance of death, when death was final, it had to leave.  But what would happen if they cloned a person while the original was still living? Would the universe or some higher power, maybe even God, assign a soul to this new life?  Or was this energy that we believed manifested as the soul somehow attached to the life force of the physical body?  Could it be shared with two bodies? After all, if the two bodies are from the exact same DNA, like identical twins or even triplets, that start out in the womb as one cell and then split to become two or more children, all would be said to have their own souls.  These questions remained unanswered by science to date, but they hoped to find out more as they proceeded with their experiment. 

There would be a lot of questions answered by this cutting edge research and experimentation.  At the very least, even if the two Dodge’s and the two John’s couldn’t exist at the same time, they would at least have back up clones ready should they be killed at any time by the hackers. 

The only way they could find out for sure was to try it.  Jason Bluffton was absolutely riddled with anticipation that he would have the opportunity to do this for the first time ever.  If it worked, it would be truly groundbreaking and even though he
couldn’t receive credit until later, it would be worth the wait. 

Jason knew that when they got to the bottom of this whole thing they could come out into the open.  When that happened, he would be recognized in the science world as a ground breaking pioneer of genetics and the leading expert on PS2.  He was glad they offered to pay him handsomely for his services but he would have done it for a lot less just to be involved.   

The next morning Dodge went to work as usual with anticipation of hearing news later that afternoon regarding the package that John was sending to the farm.  Things were beginning to click, their operation was moving ahead quickly and he was anxious to hear if the clone pods were active and if the DNA was received in useable condition. 

Dodge knew Jason was
solid, he was the kind of guy you would want on your side if you were under fire with your back against the wall.  John checked him out, and found him to have a good reputation with prior employers.  He also had the drive, the gift, that special something that only a small percentage of the people in the world seem to have. 

The team was coming together nicely and soon they would have the farm running efficiently with everyone working toward a common goal.  John was continuing to look at the lives of several other people that he was considering for the team.  He was studying the resumes of their lives.  Not the kind they had posted on the Head Hunter sites for career advancement, but rather, the actual paths of their lives, their accomplishments, their associates, their families, their living resumes. 

He was good at digging deep into a person’s past and finding the most hidden skeletons and dirty laundry, but he looked at the positive things too. 

A mere twenty miles away Jason Bluffton was signing for a package at the Farm.  It was not a large package but it was
certainly a valuable one.  Before the delivery truck could even make it back out to the road, Jason was already opening the package.

He was watching the driver pulling away in the distance but his focus was on the little box right in front of him with the red “Urgent” label and the black “Fragile” label.  He opened it carefully and removed the foam padding and the protective bags. 

The temperature and humidity indicators were intact and still green in color which meant that the shipment was handled correctly and without potential damage.  The DNA samples appeared to be in perfect condition.  It was time to go to work.  The clones would soon be growing.

Dodge had a plan in place to get his privacy back and begin turning the tables on the hackers. 
But as his Mother used to say.     

“If you want to make an omelet, ya gotta crack some eggs.” 

He knew this masterpiece of a plan was going to take some effort.  He had very carefully placed the little dome that he and John made directly over one of the bugs.  It was a clear plastic dome with a hole in the center to allow sound to enter but with a liner that would not allow the bug to transmit normally.  The device contained a microchip that John programmed to do some simple repeater functions.  It received the audio signal from the bug but stripped off the status messages from the carrier signal. 

The status messages included things like the battery level function, GPS coordinates, and temperature.  First John developed a program that would begin to listen to the bug and pick up on how it transmitted the data.  Dodge only had to leave the dome over the bug for about one hour in learning mode.  With this step complete, he downloaded the data from the device to his skyphone and sent it to John.  He removed the dome according to John’s instructions and placed it in his bed side stand drawer for future use. 

About two hours later John called back and told Dodge to go in the bedroom and place his phone near the bug for five minutes with the ringer turned off and then retrieve it.  In about fifteen minutes John called.