“Intellect distinguishes between the possible and the impossible; reason distinguishes between the sensible and the senseless. Even the possible can be senseless.”
Max Born
1954 Nobel Prize Winner in Physics for
Fundamental Research in Quantum Mechanics
AUGUST 30, 2057
Despite what the Royal Bahamas Police Force may tell you, my name is John Numen. I was born on September 15, 1990 in Boston, Massachusetts. I obtained my Ph.D. at Harvard University in 2015, with my core training in contemporary genetics, biochemistry, and molecular, cellular, and mechanistic biology. I am also a self-taught computer programmer, with a few night classes in computer science thrown in when I could. I am a scientist, medical researcher, doctor, billionaire investor, fugitive on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, and fledgling serial killer.
I don’t know how many people you have to murder to qualify as a serial killer, but if my plans go as I hope, I will meet that number sooner or later. I consider it collateral damage for the advancements in science I have made. Tonight, I hope to justify the sacrifices I have already made and reach the apex of all my work.
I have kept all technical discussion of my research from this accounting. The technical documentation of my accomplishments is very extensive, stretching back over the past thirty-seven years. Those writings, along with all my equipment (some I have bought, some I have made), computers, and supporting data (stored on optical drives labeled and indexed to match the technical volume they supplement) can be found in my lab. At the moment, they are packed in crates that I have prepared for shipping in anticipation of my impending departure.
The other thing of importance, I suppose, is my considerable financial wealth, most of it acquired through my investment company. I am as proud of that as I am of my research. I doubt that all my investments and holdings can be discovered through the labyrinth of shell corporations, shady accounting firms, and bribed government officials that I have collected in all the tax-haven countries around the world. The governmental powers-that-be will want to confiscate all that they find to further line their corrupt pockets. I have tolerated these parasites because I had no other choice. I feel no need to make the work any easier for the authorities. I will simply wish them good luck.
The most likely reason somebody besides myself would be reading these pages is because I have been found lying dead or in a vegetative state on a gurney in the lab next to my house. There are plenty of reasons for this to have happened; perhaps my theories are incorrect or simply don’t apply to a brain as complex as a human’s. Maybe the hardware isn’t up to the task, or there is an undiscovered flaw in the software I built that is running the whole thing or, since there is an ill-timed squall line approaching, a lightning strike disabled the power generator midway through the process. If a lightning strike is the reason, I would like to stand corrected. God does exist. But not the way an ex-colleague once insisted; God isn’t the only one that can create human life. It is evident, though, that his sense of humor is as black and his disdain for me as great as I had feared.
I have placed this last entry at the beginning because I wanted to save the reader from having to go through the pages that follow to answer the immediate questions you are surely asking about the circumstances of my death. As for my motivations, and the series of events that led to this last entry, on this afternoon, you’ll have to read further.
To be clear, the young man on the gurney next to me is a victim, lured here under false pretenses for the completion of my grand experiment. The young woman, who has been staying here for the last nine weeks, though unharmed, is likewise a victim. I invited her here because I was lonely and, unknown to her, had desires for her. She stayed here only because I gave her a task she considered honorable, for a salary she couldn’t refuse. We became good friends, but our relationship was strictly a professional one. She’s not responsible for any illegal activities and was unaware of mine.
I watched them sail away this morning to a small cay where I suggested they spend the day so I could run my final test. The test was a success. It’s getting late. Certainly, they know of the approaching weather by now and will be hastening their return. I can hear the wind picking up outside. The radar on the laptop shows the storm approaching. I’ll wait for them on the porch and, when they arrive, act as calmly as I am able. I’m nervous and excited. I hope I survive and can put this journal in its shipping crate. I am looking forward to my new life. I am looking forward to finally returning to Boston. If I am not too late, I have somebody I love very much there, and I have an old score to settle. After that last loose end is resolved, I am looking forward to the life I deserve.
ETHAN
The meeting day with Dr. Ethan Shinwell took three interminable weeks to arrive. John waited, dressed in his best power suit, in the outer office with the administrative assistant for a half hour. The smell of musty wood-paneled walls, the click of the secretary’s nails on the keyboard, and the hum of the printer down the short hallway behind her desk were all the same as when he last saw this part of the building. The afternoon coffee brewed on the small table, out of sight, by the printer. It was where he had gone to get a cup of coffee for his dad. Back then he was nine years old. Now he waited for an invitation to enter his father’s old office from a man he’d met only once.
Finally, the dark oak door to the office opened. A thin man, dark hair protruding from under a navy-blue kippah, a full beard sitting on a gaunt face, stepped out. He looked at John through black-framed glasses that made his eyes look bigger than normal. A white dress shirt hung loosely from square shoulders. Black dress slacks clung to his hips with the help of a worn, overly tightened belt. Had he been sick the last five years?
“Good to see you again, Dr. Numen. Please come in.”
John stood, shook hands. Ethan’s grip was firm, his pale hand extending out from the sleeve of the dress shirt. John did not yet know that standing before him was a façade. The stone-hard bark of a tree that was rotting from the inside.
He entered the office. The walls were dark and wooden, like the door. A window to the right was the light source. The rich oak flooring was now covered with carpeting, a pale gray. In the center of the far wall sat a large desk covered with papers and a computer screen set to the side. It had the feeling of an old man’s office, perhaps a high school principal about to retire. Not the office of a man in his thirties.
Ethan sat behind the desk. “Have a seat, please.” He pointed to a chair opposite him. “Dr. Jones has told me quite a lot about you.”
“He’s an old friend of the family. So I am sure he embellished.”
“He thought there may be some synergy with our current work and your research.”
John sat back in the leather chair and crossed his legs. “That’s the hope.”
“I did some research of my own. You have an impressive academic record at Harvard.” Ethan picked up an already opened folder on his desk. “I don’t quite understand the software you developed or the device you engineered that’s the subject matter of your dissertation.”
“It’s a computer-driven device that I developed to assist in somatic cell nuclear transfer to solve the replication of a key set of proteins during the cloning procedure for rhesus monkey embryos,” John said.
Ethan flipped a page in the folder in front of him.