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Dr. Greg Strickland hung up from one of the strangest calls he’d ever received. He pursed his lips, musing about the odd request. The whole thing was inexplicable. First, he’d been asked to sequence the DNA of an ancient bone fragment. The results were incomprehensible. Ever since, he’d been racking his brain, trying to come up with some sort of rational explanation, a hypothesis that was even a tiny bit plausible—and had failed. He had told Cash it was contamination, but in reviewing the results of the many test runs, he realized they were too consistent, too clean, to be contamination. And yet they were.… impossible.
And now she was telling him to destroy all evidence of having performed the analysis, including the data files, lab report, notes, and any emails he may have exchanged with Reno before the man’s death—everything. She’d been somewhat vague on thewhy, but it was clear she was very serious about it. It was also clear that whatever the true reason was, she was keeping it to herself.
The thing is, it wasn’t a simple thing, getting rid of everything. First, it was difficult, if not impossible, to completely erase data from a distributed computer network. Second, even if he managed to do so, he was pretty sure there would be a record of the erasure, and that, itself, went against CU School of Medicine policy. If a crime was involved—and it probably was, given that Cash was law enforcement, and the story behind the bone fragment was clearly phony—it might be considered suppression—or even destruction—of evidence. But most importantly, Strickland did not want to erase the data. He couldn’t stop thinking about the mystery ofwhat he’d discovered. He had lied to Cash on the call, agreeing to do what she asked with no intention of following through. Especially since she was so adamant on getting rid of it. There was a mystery there worth looking into, and he intended to probe it.
In fact, that’s what he was currently doing. He had laid out the files across his desk, going over the data yet another time. It still made no sense. If the DNA wasn’t actually contaminated, this meant that well before humans knew what DNAwas, someone—or something—had sequenced the entire human genome and then synthesized it, rebuilding it into something better and cleaner. Sophisticated technology that far surpassed present-day technology. Two thousand years ago.
There was no way he would be erasing his files. On the other hand, itdidmake sense to encrypt it. That could always be justified on the basis of security. Because someday, somehow, he was going to get to the bottom of that mystery.
