Chapter 4: Oct. 5

In which Worried sends another message and, by the way, mentions a couple of bodies in a bag.

By Alfred Alcorn

Jul 2, 2001 | I met this morning with Rupert Penrood, the Director of the Ponce Research Institute. He's British, with the long face of a royal, and appears just a bit too well-dressed for a research scientist. I mean in his attention to detail -- the silk-patterned tie matching the perfectly folded pocket square in his navy blazer. But then a lot of scientists are businessmen these days.

Dr. Penrood had, previous to the meeting, sent me a folder describing all of the research projects underway in the Lab. It's quite extraordinary what they get up to over there. Dr. Penrood assured me that the time wasn't long off when they would be able to take a cell from your body and alter a few genes to make you smarter or taller or sexier. You then pop the nucleus of that altered cell into an egg cell from which the nucleus has been removed and voila, you have an embryo that is a new and improved you. I told him I wasn't sure I liked the idea, whatever the improvements, though God knows, we could all use some.

I am able to recount in these pages our conversation because I have near perfect recall, at least in the short term. It's a knack I found useful during more than thirty years as Recording Secretary. Indeed, my memory is very nearly auditory, allowing me to rehear entire conversations in my mind, which is not always a pleasure.

Dr. Penrood spoke in the ripe, plumy intonations of a British aristocrat, saying, "You understand, Norman, we may be the last generation to die."

"Then we may be luckier than we think," I replied, not entirely as a witticism. But I didn't smile long. I looked up and said directly, "Dr. Penrood, I have it on good authority that you were present at a somewhat heated argument between Professor Ossmann and another party with what was described as a Minnesota accent not long before Professors Ossmann and Woodley were found dead in those strange circumstances."

He showed, perhaps feigned, puzzlement and then thoughtfulness. "Yes, I do recall it, now that you mention it. Yes, Ossmann and Tromstromer, Olof Tromstromer, he's Swedish. They have been working on the final stages of RL ... ReLease."

"The morning-after pill for tipplers," I said, dissembling that elusive sensation, spinal in its origin, that comes over me when I get a whiff of something amiss. What was Dr. Penrood hiding? I asked, "What was the bone of contention?"

"Well, you know, RL has advanced to human trials. It should prove quite lucrative. Pyramed, the pharmaceutical concern, has already started working on the ad campaign. As for Ossmann and Tromstromer, they had achieved a breakthrough in its development and there was the usual jostling for credit."

I nodded as though satisfied. For all his old-school self-possession -- Cambridge, I believe -- Dr. Penrood evinced an undeniable edge of arrihri pensee in his hesitations. But what, if anything, could he be hiding?

We reviewed the principal projects underway at the Institute. Dr. Penrood explained how a new version of NuSkalp, the biosynthetic scalp transplant, could be used to replace hair on other parts of the body. "It has enormous potential. There's sure to be a lot more real blonds around." He gave a curious little laugh, and again the double take.

He went on. Chicken without feet, MelSus, the clean transgenic swine; possible therapies for inherited disorders; and deciduous beef.

I raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, yes, very interesting. We're trying to get an Angus to grow an extra set of ribs, one that could be cleaved off with a minimum of blood and trauma, leaving the animal alive to grow another."

Next Page: I concluded that something, somehow, was going on in the Genetics Lab

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