Relic by Jonathan Brookes

Author:Jonathan Brookes [Brookes, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2016-03-28T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

Farnsworth swiped the keycard and punched in the PIN to open the door to Carmichael’s office. The two men entered.

“Huh,” Stark said.

“What?” Farnsworth looked at Stark.

“I’m trying to figure out if F&G has been here already. I’m not sure if this office has been tossed or not. It’s way too clean. And empty. Did Carmichael really use this room?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Pretty Spartan if you ask me.” Stark looked around at the nearly empty shelves and bare walls. “No personal effects. No photos or pictures on the wall. Not even a diploma. Was he a monk or something?”

“No. No, just …” Farnsworth shrugged, “… I don’t know. Just focused on his work, I guess.”

Stark walked slowly around the room. His fingers touched the professor’s laptop keyboard briefly. “Have you looked to see what’s on this?”

“No, I haven’t. Didn’t think it would be appropriate. However, now it might be a good idea.”

Stark pressed the power button. The laptop purred to life. The screen lit up and displayed the usual O.S. boot-up graphics. Then a password prompt appeared.

“Damn!” Stark said, attempting a few well-worn passwords. He looked over at Farnsworth, who was opening and closing the desk’s empty drawers. “I’m betting that there’s nothing of value on it. Otherwise, F&G would have scooped it up already. Another reason to make me think that it was Carmichael himself that F&G was interested in.”

Stark leaned back into the professor’s chair and glanced around the room again. Farnsworth had run out of empty drawers and was looking around, scratching his head. “There’s really not much here in the way of clues, is there,” Stark remarked. Suddenly he sat up. “Wait a minute. Didn’t you mention that Carmichael was a loner? Liked to keep to himself? Hated crowds?”

“Yeah, that about sums him up,” Farnsworth said. “He was very set with his routines, too. Lunch precisely at noon. Monday was always a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a banana. Tuesday, salami and swiss, with vinegar chips. Real creature of habit. Never varied. Even his suits looked all the same.”

“Reminds me of someone with Asperger’s Syndrome,” Stark said.

“What’s that?”

“A type of high functioning autism,” Stark replied. “Folks with Asperger’s tend to be very ritualistic, love routine, few social skills or need to socialize. They also tend to be more concrete thinkers and gravitate toward science and technology.”

“Yeah, that was Carmichael.”

Stark caressed his beard. “I was remembering a science journal article that proposed a correlation between Asperger’s and percent of Neanderthal genetic material. The article hypothesized that people with a higher percentage of residual Neanderthal DNA were also predisposed to having Asperger’s.”

“How does that help us here?” Farnsworth asked.

Stark stood up and began to pace the office. He talked into the air, as if he were teaching a class. “It’s another clue supporting my theory of why F&G might want Carmichael’s DNA, and why they would clone a Neanderthal. It also tells me that F&G has no idea what they’re really doing.”

Farnsworth stepped back to give Stark more room to pace.

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