Alpha Genomics Inc
By Rebecca Anne Renner
At 0530 Greenwich meantime, I hit the master switch, and the lab lit up: first numbers on dials, black screens, and knobs--blue, green, and white in the dark--then the lights around the baseboards, and finally the fluorescents.
The inside of my ear still buzzed from holding the receiver so close to it.
“They lifted it,” Black’d said.
“Lifted what?” I remembered talking into the pillow, eyes puffy, vision foggy, trying to remember why I wasn’t still asleep. “Who did?”
“The UN,” Black said, “The ban on reproductive cloning. They lifted it.” He continued in my silence. “Where are you? Near AG?”
“You called my land line.”
“Get in there and open up. Turn on all the lights. Customers with legal money are coming.”
In the lab, I pulled the blinds open, so the light flooded the traffic outside. A man in the back seat of a cab squinted toward the row of windows. He’d never seen them open, daytime or otherwise. Neither had I.
With the windows to my back, I went to the computer to compare the gel electrophoresis slides Black and I took yesterday of our own DNA. Before I could enter my password, the door buzzer sounded. I walked from the lab, through Black’s office (which contained only a desk, a computer, and a filing cabinet) to the security station behind the door. The screen showed an image of a woman waiting in the vestibule. She wore dark lipstick and a grey floral dress that reached just above her shoes. She clasped her hands in front of her, looking down at them as she paced.
I pressed the button on the call box next to the door. “Alpha Genomics Inc. State your business.” Those words came so automatically. Even I had to shrug off my tone.
“Dr. Ignatius Black told me someone would be here, a Dr. Valerie Schumacher?”
I relaxed at the sound of my name. “We’re the first door on the left.” I pressed the button below the call box to let her in. The buzzer sang as she opened the door and disappeared from the camera’s vision. I leaned against the wall until a knock came at the door next to me. “It’s open.”
She introduced herself as Helen Carlysle from where she sat opposite me across Black’s desk. She held her hands in her lap as she had while pacing, the muscles in her arms strained. I had to tell her to relax. This was all legal, now, (and through illegal means, we knew it worked). Then she showed me a picture of her son, Brandon. She handed me the picture across the desk. Five years old. Blond hair. No front incisors yet.
“He died seven years ago,” she said.
I handed it back. “We need more than just a picture, Mrs. Carlysle.”
“I know, dear.” She lifted herself from the chair with considerable effort. “Can you walk me to the parking lot?”
I grabbed the master keys from the front drawer of Black’s desk and followed her. I locked the door behind us and the bars in front of that.
From the vestibule, I could hear a car alarm and the sound of traffic. The sun had just started to rise.
Mrs. Carlysle led me to a battered Lincoln at the far side of the parking lot under a wall of graffiti.
She took the keys from her pocket and said, “Dr. Shumacher, I should have told you to get a swabbing kit. That’s what you use?”
While she spoke, an intense odor caught my nose: something rotten somewhere close.
I nodded, brushing my nose. “Just like forensics. But I’m sure we can take whatever sample you have back inside for processing.”
At those words, she popped the trunk and the overhead light flicked on, illuminating a bed of ice under the grey body of the little boy from the photo.
- - -
Rebecca Anne Renner was born and raised in the Sunshine State, where she currently lives and goes to school at Stetson University. While not writing questionable poetry or trying to finish her third novel, she volunteers at a wildlife rehabilitation center and complains about the weather. Her work has appeared or is upcoming in Pedestal Magazine, Underground Voices, and Mothering Magazine among others. She is also Editor-in-Chief of Barrier Islands Review.
By Rebecca Anne Renner
At 0530 Greenwich meantime, I hit the master switch, and the lab lit up: first numbers on dials, black screens, and knobs--blue, green, and white in the dark--then the lights around the baseboards, and finally the fluorescents.
The inside of my ear still buzzed from holding the receiver so close to it.
“They lifted it,” Black’d said.
“Lifted what?” I remembered talking into the pillow, eyes puffy, vision foggy, trying to remember why I wasn’t still asleep. “Who did?”
“The UN,” Black said, “The ban on reproductive cloning. They lifted it.” He continued in my silence. “Where are you? Near AG?”
“You called my land line.”
“Get in there and open up. Turn on all the lights. Customers with legal money are coming.”
In the lab, I pulled the blinds open, so the light flooded the traffic outside. A man in the back seat of a cab squinted toward the row of windows. He’d never seen them open, daytime or otherwise. Neither had I.
With the windows to my back, I went to the computer to compare the gel electrophoresis slides Black and I took yesterday of our own DNA. Before I could enter my password, the door buzzer sounded. I walked from the lab, through Black’s office (which contained only a desk, a computer, and a filing cabinet) to the security station behind the door. The screen showed an image of a woman waiting in the vestibule. She wore dark lipstick and a grey floral dress that reached just above her shoes. She clasped her hands in front of her, looking down at them as she paced.
I pressed the button on the call box next to the door. “Alpha Genomics Inc. State your business.” Those words came so automatically. Even I had to shrug off my tone.
“Dr. Ignatius Black told me someone would be here, a Dr. Valerie Schumacher?”
I relaxed at the sound of my name. “We’re the first door on the left.” I pressed the button below the call box to let her in. The buzzer sang as she opened the door and disappeared from the camera’s vision. I leaned against the wall until a knock came at the door next to me. “It’s open.”
She introduced herself as Helen Carlysle from where she sat opposite me across Black’s desk. She held her hands in her lap as she had while pacing, the muscles in her arms strained. I had to tell her to relax. This was all legal, now, (and through illegal means, we knew it worked). Then she showed me a picture of her son, Brandon. She handed me the picture across the desk. Five years old. Blond hair. No front incisors yet.
“He died seven years ago,” she said.
I handed it back. “We need more than just a picture, Mrs. Carlysle.”
“I know, dear.” She lifted herself from the chair with considerable effort. “Can you walk me to the parking lot?”
I grabbed the master keys from the front drawer of Black’s desk and followed her. I locked the door behind us and the bars in front of that.
From the vestibule, I could hear a car alarm and the sound of traffic. The sun had just started to rise.
Mrs. Carlysle led me to a battered Lincoln at the far side of the parking lot under a wall of graffiti.
She took the keys from her pocket and said, “Dr. Shumacher, I should have told you to get a swabbing kit. That’s what you use?”
While she spoke, an intense odor caught my nose: something rotten somewhere close.
I nodded, brushing my nose. “Just like forensics. But I’m sure we can take whatever sample you have back inside for processing.”
At those words, she popped the trunk and the overhead light flicked on, illuminating a bed of ice under the grey body of the little boy from the photo.
- - -
Rebecca Anne Renner was born and raised in the Sunshine State, where she currently lives and goes to school at Stetson University. While not writing questionable poetry or trying to finish her third novel, she volunteers at a wildlife rehabilitation center and complains about the weather. Her work has appeared or is upcoming in Pedestal Magazine, Underground Voices, and Mothering Magazine among others. She is also Editor-in-Chief of Barrier Islands Review.
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