Double Helix Ch. 18

The application I had used to package the email acted much like a virus, and we used it to contact people that we suspected might have their email intercepted. Upon the email being opened, the code would trigger and extract my message along with the VPN software, sending it straight the terminal's tiny memory. That would only happen if the correct hardware node address on the accessing terminal were detected by the application. If someone else tried to open the email, the application would delete itself, making it appear that the file of the picture being sent had arrived corrupted. It would also dispatch a message back to me through another circuitous route that entered the darknet. That's how it was explained to me, anyway.

Since I hadn't gotten a message to indicate that the email had been intercepted, I could only assume that either my mother had not read it yet, or she had looked at it and decided not to contact me.

"Wendy," I said, sighing. "You don't need to stay here. I can check the logs later and see if they connected."

"Oh, I'm fine. This chair's actually pretty comfy."

I reached over to pet Ingrid's head a few times, and she turned to try to bite me.

"Careful, she's a little shithead," Wendy said. I noticed that the stupid cat didn't try to bite her.

"I can see that," I said. "Thanks, Wendy."

She turned the page in her book. "Don't thank me. You get to go work in the dirt and the cold."

"Right," I said with a laugh. "Guess I better get back to it."

We finished the rebar and broke for lunch. When Daniel arrived with the concrete mixer truck, we all converged back on the work site to pour and work the concrete. Once the stuff covered the bottom of the pit to the proper depth and had been worked smooth, that phase of the job came to an abrupt end. We then turned our attention to another part of the project, the access tunnel.

My design for the lab included an exit to the surface at the far side, but once the structure was completed, it would only be used in an emergency. A pair of metal doors would open upward against the weight of about six inches of gravel and dirt, aided by counterweights that would lift the doors if a pin were pulled. For ordinary access, the lab connected to the cellar of the house through a long tunnel. Stan had dug a trench for the tunnel to within a few feet of the house, and now he and Nock dropped into the trench to work with a pick and shovel.

The roof of the cellar was at surface level, so the tunnel needed to descend about eight feet for its floor to be on level with the lab's floor. I had decided to place stairs at the house side of the tunnel so that most of the structure would be safely underground. Stan and Nock carved dirt away in an upward slope at the indicated point as myself and Nissi dug out the trench from the top. Stansy was keeping watch on top of the barn.

Meanwhile, the steady thump of metal on concrete came out faintly from the side of the house as Tilly carefully broke apart the cinder blocks lining the cellar wall with a sledgehammer. There were no load-bearing structures there, but the blocks acted as a retaining wall, so we wanted only to take out as much as we needed to. Nissi, working nearest the house, jumped back as one of the blocks exposed by her digging suddenly cracked. Another blow vibrated through the wall and part of that block crumbled, leaving a hole a few inches across that opened into deep darkness. "Hey there," came Tilly's voice from the hole.

"Don't worry, babe," Nissi said. "We'll get you out of there." Tilly's chuckle echoed out of the hole and the hammering started up again as we resumed digging.

A few more hours and we had a six foot trench that sloped down to fourteen feet, then ran straight to the big pit where the lab's foundation was curing. From there, we proceeded in stages, adding base for the tunnel, then rebar, and then concrete to form the floor. We built the stairs by placing stringers made for the purpose on either side of the sloped part of the trench and attaching stringer forms to hold the concrete's shape as it was poured. By the time we stopped for the night, we had concrete curing along the entire floor of the pit and the trench. Then we took two days off to allow it to set.

The Ed we had spoken to a few days prior had put together his timeline and notations of Renault's postings very quickly, and Tilly and I introduced Nock to it, explaining how we needed his help to convince the agency that what sometimes looked like unhinged rants contained a significant amount of truth. Nock told us we were both off our rocker, but agreed to study it carefully before making conclusions. He worked through the night, apparently cross-checking Ed's work with Renault's original postings and other sources of information. By morning, he grudgingly admitted that there was too much truth for it to just be coincidence, but warned us that the Agency was going to be a lot harder to convince than he was.

The remaining construction took several weeks. While most of us worked on the lab, Alice and her kids took care of the greenhouse crops, with an occasional assist from Tilly or Stansy. We had decided to delay a couple of plantings to devote more labor to the lab, but we already had plenty from our first few harvests to carry us through and even continue to sell up north.

With the foundation dry enough to resume, the construction work suddenly became a lot more dangerous. Working as a team, we lowered the precast columns by crane, each of them over a ton in weight, into the pit and maneuvered the rebar jutting from their ends into holes made by inserting metal cylinders into the concrete as we had poured it. The holes were then filled with more concrete, sealing the columns in place as it dried. The exterior walls went in too, a series of four-inch thick panels that were slotted into the foundation in much the same manner as the columns, and the joints between them sealed against moisture. When complete, the walls stopped a few feet short of the surface.

Concrete support beams then went in on top of the columns across the long dimension of the room out to the walls. Finally, we cast the roof ourselves using forms and rebar to create a single, solid piece of concrete, which would have better strength than precast panels.

"Are we sure this thing won't collapse under its own weight?" Nock yelled over the roar of the concrete mixer, as Stan helped me to direct the slurry of wet concrete from a vertically-hung hose onto the wooden structure. I looked his way and caught his good-natured grin. He, Stansy and Nissi were waiting for us to move on to a new section so that they could begin leveling and smoothing.

"The bathroom worked, didn't it?" I called back, referring back to a time that seemed like ages ago. "This is just a slightly larger scale."

"Bathrooms don't kill you if the walls fall down," Stan said with a grin of his own. "Just saying, boss."

"It'll hold," I said seriously. "Everything's rated for four times the weight we're loading it with. I wouldn't try driving the excavator over the top of this thing when it's done, but it would probably take it." I felt only a bit less confident than my words made it sound.

I followed Nock's sudden glance over his shoulder and spotted Wendy running our way from the house. I'm not sure how he knew she was coming, since he had been facing the wrong way and the concrete mixer was a loud and constant drone.

"Take it, Nock," I yelled, stepping aside as he grabbed the other side of the thick hose. I hurried to meet Wendy away from the equipment where we could talk easier.

She literally skidded to a stop in front of me on the loose soil. "Hey, Norm," she said, "I'm here to get Stansy."

I turned and waved her over. "What's up?" she said.

"You said to come get you if you got an email for your son," Wendy said.

"Oh," Stansy said. "Excuse me."

I looked after her for a moment before deciding to follow her inside. Stansy was seated at the terminal and looked up when I walked in. "So?" I asked. "What's the verdict?"

"He doesn't want to come," she said, staring at the screen. "He doesn't think they'll go after him, because he's a half." Her lips pressed together and she looked up, blinking. "I tried to make him understand, Norm. Why doesn't he get it?"

I considered my words carefully before answering. "I know you tried, but it's his choice." She shook her head slightly and suddenly I realized there was more to it than that. "You were hoping he would choose you over his dad, weren't you?"

She gave me a venomous look and stood up. "Fuck you, Norm."

She stalked out and I flinched as she slammed the back door.

"What did I do?" I asked. I was about to follow her out, but had another thought. I sat down behind the terminal, opened a text editor and began typing.

Mom,

I understand if you're reluctant to talk to me, or if you didn't trust the email I sent, but I need to get a message to Sharon. The government has started taking reverts like her. If you know a way to contact her, you need to warn her. Please.

Martin.

I sat back with a long exhale. I had to hope that it would be enough.

The back door opened and Nissi called. "Hey Norm, we need you out here!"

I quickly ran the software to package the message and send it, but she called me again before I had finished. "Jesus!" I yelled back. "You guys can't hold it together for five minutes?"

Nissi appeared at the doorway. "It's been fifteen minutes, you dope. Nock and Stan are fighting over how to pour the concrete for the next section, we're done working the first section and nothing's getting done."

I laughed. "Typical. I'm done here, let's go."

Nock looked up as I approached. "Alright, here he is. Boss, would you tell this rank amateur here that he's doing it all wrong?"

Stan rounded on him. "Amateur? Who's been running all the big machinery while you've spent most of your time hanging out on top of the barn?"

"Guys!" I said. They both looked at me. "Shut up! Stan, start up the flow on the concrete again. Nock, get over here and help me direct this hose."

"Alright!" Nock said, clapping his hands together. "Let's do this."

It took a few more days to pour the walls for the tunnel and finish up with the roof. While that was curing, we ran underground conduit from the house to the lab to carry electricity from the house, and pipes to carry water from the well. We then had to wait while the poured parts of the structure cured, but in the interim, took delivery on the equipment, which we stored in the barn until the lab was ready.

With the end of March approaching, we installed the wiring and plumbing inside the lab and erected the interior walls and the drop ceiling. The actual lab was a forty by forty foot square starting at the side farthest from the house. The remaining twenty by forty rectangle, nearest the house, was built as living quarters, complete with bathroom, kitchenette, bunks, and food storage.

I had decided, shortly after reworking the lab as an underground structure, to design the space to double as a shelter. It might not help if we were raided by the feds, but if officials from the Department of Agriculture showed up for an inspection, we could all pile into the cellar, and from there enter the lab. The door to the access tunnel was built to blend perfectly into the cinder blocks around it and could be locked quite securely from the inside, and the ventilation ducts that supplied the lab with fresh air came up beneath the house's small wooden porch. We had installed hidden cameras all over inside and outside, and even a solar-powered wireless model clipped to the southern fence, watching the road.

The greenhouse would still be a problem in that scenario, but Tilly was working on that. She had already added a radio switch to trigger the collapse of the walls remotely, and was drafting a design to cover the whole area afterward, including the solar farm, something to do with using a huge sheet of canvas covered in soil that could be pulled over the whole thing after it had collapsed, using cables and winches. I wasn't sure how she was going to get an entire acre of canvas together, but that was for her to work out.

In any case, our shelter was stocked with enough food to last us all two weeks, and we would have air and water as long as the electricity stayed on. That was probably the weakest point, but there was little we could do about it. As a bonus, it gave us a bit of extra living space if the house ever started to feel cramped.

Once the walls were up and the lighting, air conditioning, power outlets and water fixtures had been installed and connected to their various sources, we used the emergency exit to bring the lab equipment inside. By that time, the whole structure had finished curing, and we were ready to finally bury it completely. That was a relatively simple process of hauling in dirt we had previously excavated to pile on top of the concrete roof until it reached the level at the surface, compact it, then pile on more until it matched the level and density of the soil around it. The emergency exit was likewise covered in dirt, but only to a depth of a few inches. We would need to watch the erosion to ensure that it didn't become exposed.

The interior of the lab had enough space for six or eight people to work comfortably without getting in each other's way. Partly that was due to the different equipment and workspaces needed, but we had also tentatively discussed the possibility of bringing more people here to work. I didn't yet know how we would manage that, but we would figure it out.

In addition to the equipment for observing, replicating and manipulating DNA strands, the lab was equipped with a new computer server, a rack-mounted Korean model that Stan claimed would run circles around Sasha's MC in terms of processing power and storage capacity, and four terminals. I anticipated that Nissi would be spending a very large proportion of her time down here, so had painted the walls in the living quarters in pleasant, cool colors and had hung a few of Stansy's paintings of nature scenes on the walls. She had continued to produce them at a slow but steady rate since moving to the farm.

We had everything finally set up, facilities and equipment assembled, calibrated and ready for use, by the end of March. We held a little celebration down in the lab that night, broadcasting audio over the darknet for anyone who cared to tune in and listen, which turned out to be a lot of people, more than three hundred. Nissi's project had become common knowledge not just among the researchers and engineers in the universities, and thousands of users, many of them simply refugees still in hiding in safe houses, but with a thirst for something inspiring to follow.

Since the very beginning of the darknet, we had kept our location a secret, in case word got out from about our activities. Everyone referred to us either as Node 1 or simply The Farm. That second name had taken on a kind of mystery on the darknet, and one of us would sometimes find idle speculation on the message boards about the meaning of the name, and if there were some kind of sinister implications to it. One thing that was difficult to mask and easy to figure out from context was that our geographic location was somewhere within the borders of the United States.

The next day, Nissi started her work, though in reality it had started months ago. We were able to stream video live to the rest of the team, in addition to the results she uploaded, so she got plenty of feedback from members of the team that were more experienced in lab work in general and genetic engineering in particular. I also put in some time as her lab assistant, being no stranger to that environment.

Her first task was to validate the results from the multiple anti-aging clinical trials, using Nonna's own cell cultures. We applied each of the treatments separately so that we could observe the effects in isolation. The enzyme treatment that would break down non-metabolized cellular waste products showed early results as the cells' lysosomes began to work more efficiently. Restoring the telomeres, the end caps of DNA that protected it from errors when her cells divided, took much more time to evaluate, since we needed to test the DNA over multiple generations to know if the treated cells suffered fewer errors than the cells in the control sample.

In another sample, all of the treatments had been applied simultaneously, so that we could evaluate whether there was any danger in doing so. None of the trials had attempted that, and it was Nissi's theory that they had all been conducted independently of one another for some reason.

This last sample showed the fastest and most efficacious improvement. After only a few weeks, those cell cultures had begun to resemble tissues taken from a young adult, rather than a septuagenarian. "This is going to change the world," I said, watching on a terminal the video display from a microscope Nissi was operating. If these treatments were as effective as they appeared, no one ever needed to die of old age again.

"It's certainly encouraging," Nissi said, head still down on the microscope. "We're still evaluating all of the data, but I think we might be ready to start the actual treatments on Nonna in a few weeks. Restoring healthy cell function will improve her overall health and improve the chances that the viral vectors we use for the genetic treatments would reach the cell nuclei to deliver their payloads." She straightened and turned to me. "Next, we're going to snip the Alzheimer's right out of her DNA. At the same time, we'll fix her telomeres and restore mitochondrial function. We'll monitor her for a time, and then we'll stimulate the creation of stem cells to replace lost tissues. If it all works out like we hope, then she'll be ready for the treatment to remove the plaques."

"If not for the Rot and the Ban," I said, "her disease might have been cured years ago. Medical science was right on the verge of making us all immortal. The timing seems awfully inconvenient."

Nissi shook her head. "Improbable events happen all the time, Norm. Look, the chances of any one Uranium-238 atom decaying is very small, even over a very long time frame. Give it 4.5 billion years and you only get a fifty-fifty chance. But put a gram of Uranium atoms together and you get thousands of them decaying every second. It's just that there are a whole lot more of them sitting there not decaying." I didn't buy that explanation, but I just nodded along.

We planned to Nonna's treatment the first week of May. I had been paying closer attention to her behavior the last six months, and it was painful to watch her slow decline happening before my eyes. Some nights, she seemed almost normal, able to carry on a conversation about current events. At other times, she was hopelessly confused, shouting angrily at us in Russian. We kept her pistol locked in the gun cabinet in the den, and had placed all the knives in the kitchen up high in a cabinet that most of us could only reach with a step ladder. Sometimes it was all that Nock and Wendy could do to get her to calm down.

Still other times, she would stare at nothing, as if lost inside herself. These last were the rarest, but they seemed to be getting more common as time went on. And once, Nock had heard the front door open and close in the middle of the night and had run outside to catch her as she tottered aimlessly down the dirt road in her bare feet and nightgown, oblivious to the cold.

On the appointed day, Wendy and Nock arrived with Nonna, who kept arguing with Nock. Nissi had curtained off one corner of the lab and set up a padded table with basic hospital equipment. Wendy tugged on her hand, pulling the old woman towards it, but she balked and shook her head, saying something in Russian that sounded terrified and defiant.