G is for Genome (A-Z of Horror Book 7)

  BOOK SUMMARY

  Dr Lester Solberg is an old man with ambition far behind him, but when a lucrative offer to work at a secret science facility is made to him, his curious nature will not allow him to refuse.

  He could never have known what he would find in rural Slovakia, but he soon understands that whenever man tries to imitate God, only disaster follows. Faced with the biggest ethical dilemma of his life, Lester must decide which side he is on: science or humanity.

  “Living in your genome is the history of our species.”

  – Barry Schuler

  “Hitler was good in the beginning, but he went too far.”

  –Marge Schott

  With thanks to Claire Hill

  -1 -

  “I hope you forgive us for the ordeal of getting here. Our research is rather delicate.”

  Lester Solberg M.D., Phd, FRCP and previous head of the Austrian School of Psychiatry stood in front of the chrome plated Jeep Wrangler that had delivered him to his destination and smiled at his chaperone. The other doctor, Dr Oliver, spoke with a quintessentially English accent, as opposed to the thickly accented one that the Austrian native Lester used.

  “It is quite alright,” Lester said. “I must admit that it is rare that this old man gets excited. However, I am eager to be informed on why you want me here, and at such an exorbitant price.”

  Dr Oliver smiled delicately. Everything about the middle-aged, balding doctor was gentle – reminiscent of the English actor, Ben Kingsley. “I am certain that whatever the foundation is paying you, Dr Solberg, is money well spent. You will be an asset to what we do here.”

  “And what do we do here?”

  Oliver waggled his finger and grinned. “Soon, Dr Solberg. I promise.”

  “Must I keep reminding you to call me Lester?”

  “Lester, of course. Right this way.”

  Lester took in a lungful of fresh, unpolluted air and set off after his colleague. Since leaving the airport in Bratislava, he had been driven through endless, beautiful countryside. He had visited Slovakia once before in his younger, traveling days but had not ventured outside the capitol then. His experience this time was far different. Scintillating to witness such untouched greenery after so many decades of watching Austria pave over itself.

  Ahead was a wide, four-story building, as unremarkable as any other office block in a city – all glass windows and smooth grey brick. But this was not the city. It was the middle of nowhere, woods and streams on all sides. The office building was hidden from civilization. It also looked as though the top floor – the fourth floor – had had all of its windows boarded up. Strange.

  “Do you all live on site,” Lester asked as he kept stride with the taller, younger Dr Oliver, “or is there a town nearby?”

  “The nearest town is twelve miles away, Lester, and all that lies between is a farmhouse or two. Yes, this is most definitely a live-in position, as explained to you before accepting the job.”

  Lester nodded. He had known the position entailed a live in residence, but was expecting something more homely than an office block, something more akin to the tree-lined college campuses he was used to. This was going to be a mighty adjustment. Maybe more of an adjustment then he was capable of.

  At sixty-two, Lester had been looking towards retirement, but then Dr Oliver had strode into his office one sunny Tuesday afternoon and offered him a salary three times what he was currently making and ominously spoke of ‘a chance to be involved in something world changing.’ Lester might have been old, but the young man inside of him had been too curious to decline the offer. So he had given six month’s notice to the University and now here he was: standing in the wilderness of Slovakia and heading into the only building for miles.

  There was a guard at the gate, but thankfully the man wore no firearm. Lester did not like guns and would not want to work at a place where they were needed.

  Dr Oliver waved at the guard and made the introductions. “James, this is Dr Lester Solberg, one of the world’s leading psychiatrists.”

  “Very pleased to meet you,” the guard replied in an English accent that was as skewed as Lester’s own.

  They shook hands.

  “Good to meet you too. You also are Austrian?”

  The guard, James, smiled. “Salzburg.”

  “Ah, myself, I am from Vienna. You speak very good English, my friend.”

  Oliver interjected. “We all try to speak in English as much as possible. As a multi-cultural team it is easiest to adopt a single language and most of the team speak English natively or as a second-language. Come, you will soon meet the rest of your colleagues.”

  “Speak again,” James said.

  Lester nodded, then allowed himself to be ushered past the gate and over to the front entrance of the office building. Dr Oliver unlocked and opened the left of the two double doors allowing them both to step inside. They entered a featureless corridor, barely lit.

  “Most of our work is done on the fourth floor,” Dr Oliver explained, “but we live on the lower floors. There’s a lift just this way.”

  They walked along the corridor until they reached a set of shiny lifts. Dr Oliver pressed the call button and the doors opened immediately, the carriage already on that floor.

  “Step inside, Dr Solberg. Great science awaits you.”

  Lester raised a wispy grey eyebrow at his colleague, considering the Englishman a little dramatic, but he stepped inside the lift without comment.

  Dr Oliver thumbed the button for the fourth floor.

  The lift was so smooth that Lester hardly felt it ascend. It was only the fluttery sensation in his tummy that told him he was moving at all.

  Once at the top, Dr Oliver removed a small keycard from his coat pocket and swiped it in front of a sensor above the lift’s command panel. There was an agreeable pinging sound and the doors began to open, revealing a small reception room outside.

  From the way the tangle of strangers were all bunched together, Lester thought they might yell ‘Surprise!’ at him, but instead they all grinned invitingly and waved their hands.

  A heavyset black man stepped forward eagerly and offered his hand. “An absolute pleasure to meet you, Dr Solberg. I am Dr Stacker.”

  Lester shook the man’s meaty hand and took in the sight of his jowly face with recognition. “The renowned Dr Grant Stacker? Winner of the Noble Prize for Chemistry?”

  “One and the same.” The renowned genius beamed.

  “But you went missing over two decades ago,” Lester said. “People still speak about your work in the field of genetics like an urban legend. It’s said that you disappeared right before a major breakthrough.”

  Stacker grinned widely. “Missing but not forgotten, aye? Nothing happened to me, Dr Solberg. I took a job here, retired from public life. My work never stopped and I made that breakthrough. And many others, I might add. I am in charge of the research here and I selected you myself to join this team.”

  Lester’s jaw was hanging open and he flinched to correct it. “It’s a huge honor to be chosen by a scientist as prestigious as yourself. Your work on the Human Genome Project was peerless.”

  “Thank you. Let me introduce you to your colleagues.”

  And so Lester met the team. Eight scientists (including Lester), three security guards (including James), and four assistants – seventeen people in total at a building big enough to house a thousand.

  “I can show you to your suite if you would like?” Dr Oliver asked Lester, but Lester declined.

  “I would much rather see why you have brought me here. You said you needed a resident psychiatrist, and now I would like to find out why.�
��

  Oliver and Stacker exchanged glances, then Stacker nodded. “Okay, Dr Solberg, let me show you why I brought you here. Brace yourself.”

  ***

  Only Dr Stacker accompanied Lester on the short trip down the corridor until they were stopped by a thick set of polished bars. Stacker pulled a set of keys from the breast pocket of his lab coat and unlocked the gate like a jailer. He must have noticed the confused expression on Lester’s face because he shrugged and said, “We like to feel secure.”

  “From what?”

  “From whatever may come. A careless scientist is a danger to the world, wouldn’t you agree, Lester?”

  “All science is careless.”

  Stacker replied with an amused smirk. He opened the gate and stood aside so that Lester could go in first. Up ahead was a less portentous set of double doors more befitting a modern office building. They, too, required unlocking by Stacker.

  “Are you ready?” he asked Lester.

  Lester nodded. “At my age, I can’t afford to waste time.”

  Stacker opened the doors.

  Lester took a step back, expecting a fright, but then took several steps forward. He entered the cavernous space before him, surprised by what he saw.

  A row of easels held half-painted canvasses next to an indoor rockery and a collection of beanbags. Plush chairs lay tucked up against several tables, all of which were stacked high with various board games and worn paperback books.

  The faint sound of violins piped in from somewhere, the symphonic perfection of Lester’s fellow countryman, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

  What brought the greatest confusion, however, was the fact that two-dozen men and women milled about the large room calmly, almost disinterestedly. There was something familiar about some of the strangers, but it was unclear exactly what. Perhaps it was that they all seemed so ordinary.

  Lester turned to Dr Stacker with a gormless expression he knew probably made him look like an ignoramus. “Is this some sort of care home?” he asked. “What kind of conditions are you studying here?”

  “History, Dr Solberg. We are studying historical conditions, in a way you will barely believe.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will in time. Allow me to introduce you to some of our guests here. Albert?”

  Lester glanced around, no less confused then when the doors had first opened. He now saw that the vast room was bordered by several dozen glass-fronted annexes. Inside each was a bed and a sink, making it clear that people lived there.

  Several orderlies lazed about, chatting amongst themselves. Their pale blue uniforms highlighted them amongst the other people in the room. They seemed under no stress.

  A young man appeared before Lester and Dr Stacker. The man possessed prematurely greying hair that stuck up like a clown’s and seemed at odds with his youthful complexion. His eyes were small and dark. A furry, black caterpillar lined his upper lip.

  “This is Albert,” Stacker announced. “He is a brilliant mathematician and physicist. He is currently working on a formula to reduce the half-life of plutonium. Purely theoretical of course.”

  Lester shook the man’s limp hand. “So you’re a scientist here, Albert?”

  “No, I just live here.” The man spoke in plain, unaccented English. “But I enjoy my experiments and Dr Stacker gives me mostly what I need. Although I would rather like to get my hands on some enriched plutonium. My theories would fare much better in practise than theory alone.”

  Stacker chuckled. “You’ll have to gain you knowledge from assumptions, I’m afraid, Albert. Plutonium is far too dangerous to have around.”

  Albert huffed. “The only source of knowledge is experience. You stifle me.”

  Stacker folded his arms and grinned. “Ah, but you also once told me that the true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination. Therefore I am doing you a service by restricting your experiments to the realms of theory.”

  Albert’s expression ruffled for a moment, but then he swore and stomped away.

  “Albert has quite the temper,” Stacker explained.

  “Who is he?” Lester asked. “Why is he here?”

  Just then, a young woman appeared before them. Her hair was plain and chestnutty, but her breasts and bum were rounded to almost cartoonish proportions. The dark dot of a mole sat on her cheek and somehow added to her subtle beauty. She had set her sights on Lester and reached out both hands to grab his. She held him tenderly and gazed warmly into his eyes.

  “It’s so good to see somebody new,” she gushed. “My name is Norma. What’s your name?”

  Lester was stalled by the intensity of the woman’s staring dark blue eyes. He struggled to reply and his shyness elicited a childlike giggle from this woman, who proceeded to pat him playfully on the shoulder like they were old friends.

  “This is Dr Solberg,” Stacker announced, rescuing Lester. “He is the newest member of the clinical team and is here to help us. You’ll be seeing a lot of him.”

  The young woman did a little twirl on the spot and then placed her open palms against each of her cheeks. “Oh, how wonderful. You’ll have to tell me all about yourself,” she said to Lester, “and all about the world.”

  Lester frowned. “All about the world?”

  Stacker cleared his throat and interrupted. “Could you give us a moment, please, Norma. Thank you.”

  Norma smiled, curtsied, then sauntered off like a fairy.

  “There’s something familiar about that woman,” Lester mentioned. He noticed Stacker was grinning at him. “What?” he asked. “What is it?”

  “The woman you just met was Norma Jeane Mortenson.”

  Lester took a moment, but then gasped. “Marilyn Monroe? Yes, that’s exactly who she looks like.”

  Stacker shook his head. “No, Dr Solberg. That is who she is.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That was the real Marilyn Monroe. At least, genetically it is.”

  “Genetically?”

  Stacker wrapped a thick arm around Lester and squeezed him affectionately while moving him into a quiet corner of the room. “That breakthrough you spoke about me having led to this. I found a way to recreate people from their DNA. I took specimens from some of the greatest people in history and I rebirthed them.”

  Lester was shaking his head, feeling equal parts excited and queasy, with a healthy dose of perplexity thrown in. “You rebirthed them?”

  “Yes,” Stacker spoke quietly, “I spliced their DNA into an embryo and grew them in a lab. They are exact replicas of their historical counterparts.”

  “You cloned them? But cloning is outlawed.”

  “Hence the secrecy of this facility. We are a private institute conducting mundane research, as far as anybody knows. The donations we make to the Slovakian government and local farmers ensure our privacy. We have been here for thirty years without the slightest incident.”

  Astonished, Lester peered around at the ‘guests’ but quickly felt revulsion. Cloning was not only illegal, but also unethical. To engineer a human being in such a way... What was going on here? What had Dr Stacker done?

  Lester spotted Albert and contemplated the fact that he had just been talking with a young Einstein – or at least the great man’s clone. “These people have been held here for thirty years?”

  “They are well looked after, I assure you. All their needs are met. We even take them out into the countryside for some fresh air. The more trusted guests even get to venture into town, chaperoned of course. No one here is unhappy.”

  “Then why have you brought me here?” Lester demanded. “You don’t need a psychiatrist to treat happy people.”

  “Dr Solberg, you are not here to treat these people. You are here to study them.”

  “Study them?”

  “Yes, we want you to ascertain whether the paths these people’s progenitors took was destined from their DNA or if it was the circumstances of their lives that led to
them to be who they were.”

  Lester rubbed at the loose skin of his sagging chin. “You mean nature versus nurture?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. If we were to breed a hundred Einsteins, would they all go on to make great scientific leaps for mankind, or was the original an inimitable coalescence of outside factors?”

  Lester glanced back at Albert, who was now sat with his feet up on one of the tables and scribbling feverously in a journal. His unfettered brows were furrowed and he looked deep in concentration. “Is that why you are doing this?” he asked. “You want to bring back all of the world’s geniuses? To harness their potential?”

  “In part, yes.”

  “Then why Marilyn Monroe? What do you expect from her?”

  “She may not have been a great thinker, but she was remarkable all the same. There is much to learn from any great figure from our past, whatever their skillset. They all share something that made them rise above their peers.”

  Lester sighed, let his head drop under its own weight. “This is wrong,” he muttered. “The future should be discovered by our own youth, not by the dead and buried. We must allow our own Einsteins to rise, not create them in a lab.”

  Stacker nodded solemnly. “Perhaps you are right, Lester. That is why you are here. We need you to tell us what these people are capable of, and if the risks in bringing them back were worth it.”

  Lester frowned. “The risks?”

  Stacker inhaled deeply then said, “Let me introduce you to the other guests. I’ll start with Adolf.”

  -2-

  In the two weeks since arriving at the facility, Lester had met twenty-six of some of the most famous people in History, going as far back as the bard, William Shakespeare, to the more recent Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, and Adolf Hitler. There were great thinkers like Charles Darwin and Thomas Edison as well as fierce statesmen like Napoleon and Disraeli. Charlie Chaplin was a close companion of Edgar Allan Poe; both were morose and unfriendly. Surprisingly, Lester most of all enjoyed the company of a man more reviled than any other in recent history. Adolf Hitler.