Enemy Chapter Two
Enemy Me
Author: J Carrell Jones
Table of Content
Chapter One
Forrest Taylor looked down at chaos. Even though he was 130 stories up the many vehicles on ground level could still be seen. Little people, little trucks, cars, and ambulances at work. A suicide bomber managed to enter the building and destroy a highly guarded secret part of the building. Heads would roll figuratively, if not literally. It had been twenty years since he and Pete founded Forever Life, Inc. This was his flagship project, which was now setback a few months at best. Absolutely a pity. A new class of drugs, Transgenetics, finished the FDA trials. The level 1 and level 2 drugs were slotted for phase two of clinical rollout. Tests had been going well and on schedule for phase three. The project was not in jeopardy, but the shareholders were nervous. Fuck’em, he thought. The Vultures. Waiting to make a killing. They hadn’t thought of the big picture, no. Just only the Bitcoin that would give them uber luxury. This was beyond simple gene therapy, this ultimately was immortality. This was transformation at the gene level. Every parents’ wildest dream come true. Smart babies, brave babies, strong babies, ultra-beautiful babies. A Transgenetic pill for any and everything. Cancer? Gone. Colds? Gone. Bad eyesight? Corrected. All with a set of pills. All engineered to work with the individual patient – for a price, of course. The New Affordable Care Act would cover level one and two of Transgenetic, but not beyond. Levels three and above would be the money makers. Take some pills before bed, go into a coma, wake up several days later different, but the same. Baldness, obesity, impotence, weak, frail, ugly, all of the above? No more. Cured. Brilliant!
Forrest turned and sat back down at his desk. The email message waiting light blinked in the upper right corner. He clicked the OPEN message icon on a small area of his desktop.
Photos of the bomber appeared. It was Pete. The man was very insistent. How many clones had he made? Seven? How many more would he throw at him?
The room chime sounded.
Forrest said, “Enter.”
Gordon Piper, his head Geneticist, walked through the door. Thank goodness the blast hadn’t harmed him. Gordon was smart, not brilliant, but had enough intuitive insight to make rather startling leaps in theory, which translated into good data, results, and money. It was probably his assistant, Sandra Spaulding, who ultimately cracked the code. But Levels 3 and 4 were most likely a direct result of his unorthodox way of solving puzzles.
“Yes, Gordon?”
“Mr. Taylor, worse news yet. The entire floor destroyed. All personnel lost.”
“Pity,” Forrest said. “We’ll have to send out condolence letters of course.”
Gordon nodded.
“And the data?”
“Saved off site. The equipment has been destroyed. That’ll take months to reconstruct.”
Equipment gone. Forrest thought a moment. “We’ll have to go off the map next time or bury the processing plants deep.”
Gordon nodded. “It was Pete, wasn’t it?”
Forrest nodded. “We’re going to have to get serious about dealing with him.”
Gordon nodded again. “Seven clones?”
“Yes.”
“He’ll have to modify the geno and phenotypes if he wants the clones to remain stable.”
Forrest nodded. He understood what Gordon was getting at. After nine iterations the subsequent clones would probably suffer major internal organ damage. Maybe his was the last or next to last clone. He could only hope so. “How long to startup?”
“Eight months.”
“That bad?”
Gordon nodded. “We’ll need to hire more talent. I’m not comfortable with the Chinese. Some of them seemed to be working for other interests. Maybe the Canadians this time. I’ve read some rather brilliant pieces coming out of that country.”
“I’ll leave hiring and retooling up to you. I’ll send an email to Accounting and request they give you access to maintenance funds. 100 million enough?”
Gordon thought a moment. “Half a bill would be better.”
Forrest blinked several times. “R&D funds then. The board green lighted two bills. If you can guarantee me a startup in three months I’ll okay the full amount.”
“Let me work on that. I rather be accurate in a timeframe than shooting in the dark.”
He liked that about Gordon. The man wasn’t much into swaging things. He’d rather be known for at least giving a problem some thought.
Forrest asked, “Tomorrow too soon?”
Gordon smiled, “About Noon. I’ll take the rest of the day off and work out the details. I’ll leave security to work with the locals on investigating and cleaning up the mess.” He turned and walked out.
Forrest watched the man as he disappeared behind the closing door. Cold and calloused. The nature of big business making billions. He was still in his glass house, so he refrained from casting stones, at least very large ones.