Last Man On Earth (3)
Boy Mozart
The laboratories were just as busy on that morning as they had been the
morning before. Carlos felt that there were probably subtle differences
that could be detected if someone worked here. Maybe everyone talked in
hushed voices, even when discussing something other than the suicide.
Perhaps there was someone hiding in a closet somewhere weeping. It was
Schencker's job to find out if there was anyone who cared enough to feel
badly about the death, perhaps even knowing the deceased well enough to
have an idea why it happened. Carlos looked around and recorded as much
as he could, but he doubted any of it would be useful.
After interviewing most of the senior middle-management, Schencker had
yet to find out anything about the dead man.
"They're trying to disassociate themselves from him," he explained to
Carlos as they waited for the person who would conduct them on a tour of
Bascome's laboratories. "The less they appear to know, the less likely
it is that they have to appear in court or do anything distasteful like
their civic duty. They don't want the other management types whispering
behind their backs, 'Oh there goes Nichols, that guy that worked for him
killed himself, YOU KNOW'." Schencker snuffed out his synthetic
cigarette in an ashtray close to his hand, and brought out the pack.
Carlos stood nearby and listened to his tirade, mindful of the fact that
Schencker was feeling frustrated at this point and just needed to talk.
Carlos was beginning to understand the feeling.
A woman wearing a lab coat walked into the breakroom where they were
waiting. Carlos thought for a moment that she might be the person
dispatched to be their guide, but she went straight for the soft-drink
dispenser. A moment later she stood up, drank from the can she'd just
purchased, and said "Are you the guys from DPS?"
Schencker looked up. "Why do you ask?"
"I'm supposed to drag them around and point out all the really neat
things that go on in this place and bore them so badly that they'll want
to leave as soon as possible. If you're them, I suggest you lie about
it."
Schencker put back the cigarette he was about to light and pulled out
his shield, displaying it to the woman. "Did you know the deceased?"
"Yeah, I was his supervisor."
Schencker blinked. It was more than anyone else had been willing to
admit so far. "You gave him his assignments, told him what to work on,
that sort of thing?"
"Yeah."
"Did you know him personally?"
The supervisor shrugged under her lab coat and sipped from the can.
"Not really. I mean, we all had lunch together every once in a while,
and we'd talk about stuff outside of work. He'd talk about the women he
was dating or the shows he'd seen, music he liked. You know, just
shooting the breeze waiting for the poppers to arrive."
"So you wouldn't have known anything was wrong with him, anything that
could drive him to suicide?"
"Well, other than when he was standing up on the roof screaming about
being doomed, no."
Schencker took in the mild sarcasm with patience. "Could you show me
where he worked?"
The woman drank from the can again and nodded. "Probably be more
interesting than the tour they told me to take you on," she said.
"Follow me."
Carlos turned to follow the "What's your name, by the way?"
She turned to look at Schencker, then said "Dr. Andrea Goodalgorithm."
Schencker barely flinched. Carlos blinked. "Sorry?" he asked.
"That's okay, it's just my name." Goodalgorithm led them out into the
hallways, not speaking another word to the two officers nor
acknowledging their presence until they'd ridden an elevator up six
floors and entered a rather large laboratory, empty except for a lot of
equipment and the three of them.
"He had the lab pretty much to himself," Goodalgorithm explained. "Not
that he was using the whole place, it just worked out that way. I think
about all he did most of the time was sit at his terminal."
"What was his assignment?"
Goodalgorithm pondered that, trying to decide how much to tell them.
"This company's been around in one form or another for several decades.
We've been bought, sold, merged, and re-organized so many times that
Bascome hardly resembles the entity that it was in the beginning.
Whatever it is now, it's dragged along a whole lot of history behind it.
Every time some change came about, it interrupted a number of research
projects that were being run at the time. Some of them would be started
again, most of them never came back on-line. But we kept all of the
notes and materials the technicians and scientists compiled. It was his
job to go through the old projects and figure out whether any of them
were worth resurrecting. I believe he threw out most of them."
"Why? What would've been the criteria for throwing them out?" asked
Schencker, intrigued by the whole thing. Carlos slowly looked around
the entire lab, recording it all.
"Mostly that they'd been done already. Other bioengineering firms have
their own R&D departments, they come up with basically the same
conclusions that we would, develop a lot of the same discoveries we'd
find. Some of it's just completely off the wall--things being
researched during a time when less was known about biotech. When
certain discoveries where made over the last fifty years, certain
projects became defunct."
"But not all of them?"
Goodalgorithm shrugged. "Bits and pieces are still useful. If someone
else has done the research, there's no reason other technicians have to
do it. I think we've even managed to save one or two. But like I said,
most of them get junked."
"Could you show us what he was working on at the time?" asked Schencker.
"'Fraid not," Goodalgorithm replied. "It's still confidential material.
I couldn't allow that without a warrant."
"Then could you take a look at it yourself and give us some kind of
idea? You don't have to be very specific, a general overview will be
fine."
"You think that he was driven to suicide because of a project he was
looking at?"
It was Schencker's turn to shrug. "Nothing else seems to point to a
motive. All the evidence suggests his decision to kill himself was
spur-of-the-moment, as if he decided within ten minutes of death that
life just wasn't worth the trouble. It's rare to see someone suddenly
decide to commit suicide--usually they spend weeks or months making the
decision and figuring out the details. Jumping off a building during
the middle of the day doesn't quite fit the profile. Something happened
to him that was so terrifying, he couldn't face it. The only thing we
have to go on is his work here in the lab. We need to know what it is
before we go any further."
Goodalgorithm walked over to the terminal and sat down. She typed in a
password that Carlos supposed was an administrative login. She mumbled
several times to the terminal until the interface brought up a series of
documents. She stared at those for a few minutes, then turned to Carlos
and Schencker and sighed.
"Pheromone research," she told them.
"You mean like perfumes and cologne, and such?"
Goodalgorithm shook her head. "Pheromones are a natural secretion
produced by many animals, particularly certain types of insects. It's a
procreative stimulant used to attract potential mates. It was thought
at one time that humans didn't produce it, but it's been proven that we
do, in copious amounts." She tapped the monitor screen and several more
documents appeared. "It's all part of the same cycle that produces
gonadotropins."
"Thanks for clearing that up," said Schencker.
Goodalgorithm smiled. "They're the hormones that affect our sex drives.
Testosterone, progesterone, estrogen. Follicle-stimulating hormones,
luteinizing hormones. Didn't you guys take Health class in junior
high?" She smirked and went on, not waiting for an answer. "During the
cycle, gonadotropin releasing hormone, or GnRH, gets released into your
system and enters your pituitary gland, in front of your brain. This
stimulates the release of other hormones, which in turn stimulates the
production of testosterone or estradiol or whatever you happen to have
in your body.
"When these chemicals react with steriods from your adrenal glands they
produce pheromones. Special sensors in your nose detect pheromones, and
this stimulates the production of more GnRH, which stimulates more sex
hormone production. It's basically a natural aphrodisiac, which is why
people were trying to duplicate them using perfumes and colognes, like
your friend here suggested." Goodalgorithm waved a hand towards Carlos
before going back to reading the documents.
"Is that what they were trying to do with this project?" asked
Schencker. "Figure out some way of producing pheromones artificially?"
"Maybe," Goodalgorithm replied. "It was all written up a long time ago,
back in the twentieth century it looks like. They were producing
artificial hormones back then--anabolic steroids, insulin, that kind of
crap. For some reason all this stuff is linked to DNA sequences. I
think they were trying to enhance the body's abilities to produce
pheromones, not duplicate them artificially."
"Wait a minute," said Schencker. "I thought they didn't know anything
about DNA sequencing until AFTER the twentieth century. That whole
human genome project thing was running for a god-awful long time."
"Ah, we have a history buff among us," said Goodalgorithm. "Well,
you're right, they didn't know dick about DNA for a while, but the guy
who wrote this up was working on it for a hell of a long time--he must
have assumed somebody would come up with a way for it to work."
"You know who wrote the project?"
"Yeah." Goodalgorithm tapped at the monitor a couple more times. "It
was stamped on all his files. His name was Lloyd Bruecker."
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Boy Mozart
Klondike 5 Reality Satellite http://www.klondike5.net