Chapter 27

A quiet stillness filled the exam room after Kurt’s statement. No one wanted to speak, as if the slightest utterance would disturb some fragile peace between the reality everyone was used to—where humans were born naturally—and the new reality Kurt had suggested.

Kurt remained quiet because he’d said what he needed to say. He wasn’t a doctor, but he wasn’t oblivious to science, either. He knew the world was moving in this direction. But it was up to the medical experts to decide if someone had made the leap or if there was another explanation.

Joe remained quiet for a different reason. As they’d moved around India, avoiding the authorities and offering Five a crash course in reality, Joe had begun to think of him like a little brother. He made jokes and then patiently explained them until Five cracked a smile. When they stopped for gas or food, he made sure to pick up sugared treats, carbonated sodas, and all the other things he was certain Five had never tasted before. He knew Five and his brothers had been abused and mistreated, but it bothered him to focus on the scientific repercussions of his existence, as if he were an experiment gone wrong.

Dr. Pascal was far more clinical in her approach. She bit at the inner part of her lip as she considered the science that would be required for such a leap. The captain considered the effect this knowledge would have on the crew and was glad they were meeting in private. It was she who urged the discussion forward. “Dr. Pascal, is this possible?”

The doctor took a deep breath. “It’s complicated. I want to say yes, and no, and maybe. I’ll start with the yes. Cloning has been progressing for years. Everyone knows about Dolly the sheep, and the hundreds of other animals that have been cloned over the years. Most of us have heard of the Chinese doctors who were arrested and imprisoned for cloning humans. But all these clones were created in a fairly traditional way: DNA was inserted into an existing egg, essentially fertilizing it. That egg was implanted in a female of childbearing age, similar to how IVF works for couples trying to conceive. And after a normal pregnancy, the offspring was born. We call them clones because they have the exact same genetic code as the DNA donor. But aside from the age difference, it’s much more like having a twin.”

She took a breath and turned to Kurt. “What Kurt is suggesting is entirely different. For Five and his brothers to be grown in a lab somewhere and take their first breaths in the physical form of a teenager is a reality-altering concept. It’s the stuff of science fiction. It would suggest someone could grow millions of soldiers and send them into battle without waiting the decades it would normally take for them to grow up. To that I want to say no, but when I consider the huge leaps we’ve seen in growing organs and skin and functioning networks of brain cells in the lab, I have to modify that response to a maybe.”

“So these things are already being done?” the captain asked.

“Universities all over the world have been growing what they call ‘mini-brains’ in petri dishes for years,” Dr. Pascal said. “They’re basically networks of brain cells, neurons, dendrites, and glial cells that connect to each other and start to exchange information. But let me be clear: they’re not complex enough to be considered conscious. Though every year the technology advances, we get closer to a line where we’ll have to wonder. As for other organs, the progress has been rapid. We can now grow functioning, adult-sized versions of many human organs. Lungs, hearts, kidneys, livers, eyes, and others. The growth process involves a complex use of DNA and bioavailable materials. They grow layer by layer on a structural framework to make sure they develop like a natural organ. It’s very similar to 3D printing, except instead of using plastic you’re depositing layers of cells.”

The captain appeared dismayed. “Is there anything to prevent someone from taking the next step and growing a fully functioning human?”

“Only financial and ethical barriers,” Dr. Pascal said. “If the first barrier is overcome with funding and the ethical roadblock disregarded, then the learning curve flattens appreciably. With no constraints put on them, a research team would be able to perform an unlimited number of experiments, of any nature they desired.”

“How many experiments are we talking about?” Kurt asked.

“The process would be incremental.” Dr. Pascal now sounded pained as she thought about what it would take and what that might have meant to Five and others like him. “You’d see research combined with testing and ultimately trial runs, most of which would result in failure and death, at least early on. Under any circumstances, the more trials conducted, the more rapid the progress. But it’s not something you could do in the regular world. There are too many people who would ask too many questions.”

“But if you were well funded and hidden away on an island somewhere, out of the public eye…” Kurt said.

“All you’d need is time,” she said. “And a complete lack of morality.” As she finished her statement, Dr. Pascal looked over at Five. The more she thought about it, the less she doubted Kurt’s conclusion. It was like Frankenstein’s monster coming to life. And yet, like that monster, Five was the victim of things far beyond his control.

She moved to the bed and began to study him. The indentations on his sides were so symmetrical that they looked almost like injection molding gates found on the sides of plastic toys formed in a factory. The tattoo was deep and dark; it seemed to have a bit of luminosity to it, probably to make it easier for cameras to spot it in the dark. Lines in Five’s thick black hair that looked like parts turned out to be scars. She found four. They appeared to be in various stages of healing.

“Do you know anything about this?”

Kurt answered coldly. “He said they’re taken to see the surgeon from time to time. What happens there he can’t remember. But they come back with shaved heads and new scars.”

Dr. Pascal examined the incisions. “Based on the pattern of cuts and the healing of the scars, I would say he’s had four separate surgeries. Each about a month apart.”

“He claims others have more,” Kurt said. “Old heads, they call them, covered in scars. They go back to the surgeon repeatedly. Sometimes for no reason. Sometimes for punishment. Eventually they go to the surgeon and don’t return.”

The captain exhaled, her mood souring on this latest news. She’d seen plenty of suffering around the world, but this was something new. “Can you guess what the purpose of these surgeries might be?”

“Multiple surgeries on multiple patients suggests a testing protocol,” Dr. Pascal replied. “We can do an MRI to be certain, but I have to assume they’re testing some type of brain implant.”

“Brain implants?”

Dr. Pascal nodded. “That’s another technology that’s come a long way. Believe it or not, there are dozens of companies working to develop functional cognitive electronic implants. Tests are underway all over the globe. Some want to use implants to control epilepsy and stop seizures; others want to use the technology to heal traumatic brain injury or fight drug-resistant depression. Others want to enhance human thinking. I heard one pitch that suggested it would be the next wave in entertainment, suggesting people will be able to download information directly to their brains, making it possible to watch a movie solely in their own mind.”

“How far along is all this?” Joe asked.

“It’s an industry in its infancy,” Dr. Pascal said. “But we’ve already seen functionally mute individuals being given the ability to have conversations as an implant turns thoughts into words from a speaker. We’ve seen paralyzed individuals stand up and even take a short step. Most of the projections I’ve heard are from industry people who expect that progress to accelerate exponentially, similar to the way computer chips increase their power by a hundred thousand percent every decade, all while getting significantly smaller and cheaper. If that’s true, some of these grand plans might not be too far off.”

“Clearly we’re nowhere near that,” the captain suggested, sounding more hopeful than confident.

“ We’re not,” Dr. Pascal clarified. “But who knows what the surgeons working on Five and his brothers have accomplished. If you’d asked me yesterday if a human could be grown in a lab, I’d have laughed the idea off and suggested you ask me again in twenty years. Now I’m faced with the reality that not only has someone done it, but they’ve been doing it for some time, creating perhaps hundreds of clones this way. If whoever’s behind Five’s creation and existence can make that kind of progress in one field, we shouldn’t assume they haven’t been just as successful in another.”

Kurt saw the connection. “One thing leads to the other. With an endless supply of clones who no one cares about, you can do an endless number of brain-altering experiments, and your progress outstrips anything that might be possible in the ethical parts of the world. We look at Five and see someone who’s been treated awfully. Whoever made him sees him as a guinea pig, a means to an end. A way to conduct these experiments without anyone watching or regulating the process.”

“But why would anyone want to do that?” Joe asked. “What’s the benefit?”

“Money,” the captain suggested. “Assuming there’s some product to be developed from this.”

“Possibly,” Dr. Pascal said. “But the cost of developing even one new medical technology is astronomical, let alone two. I can’t imagine the funds that have been used to push these two technologies forward so quickly. And even if someone developed a marketable product from all of this, if the truth ever came out, they’d end up charged with mass murder. That’s a pretty bad risk-reward equation.”

“Unless they could convince a jury that these clones don’t qualify as full humans,” the captain said.

“You only have to talk to this kid for a minute and you’d lose that argument,” Joe said.

The silence returned. Kurt used it to clear his mind. Separating the emotion from the facts, he tried to look beyond the barbaric cruelty of what was happening for any shred of logic. Aside from the truly insane, most criminals had a rational purpose, but in this case he couldn’t see one.

“Continuing to guess will just take us down a rabbit hole,” he said. “And possibly blind us to the truth. We need more information. We need cold, hard facts. The only way to get them is to go directly to the source.”

“What source?” Dr. Pascal asked.

Kurt motioned toward Five. “The island where Five and his brothers were born and raised and where these experiments are being done.”

Joe liked that idea. He was ready for a fight. But there was an obvious problem. While making their way out of India, they’d asked Five about the island in every way they could imagine, but he had no real information to offer. He didn’t know the name of the place or anything about directions or maps or hemispheres. When asked to describe the angle of the sun, he pointed up at the sky.

Five and his brothers had spent their whole lives on the island, unaware that anything else even existed beyond its shoreline. Upon leaving, they had no way to get back. That made it difficult for Kurt and Joe to find it.

“We could backtrack the beacon,” Joe said, “but that only goes so far. Sounds like they didn’t turn it on for two or three days.”

“If we analyze the wind, weather, and currents in that area, we should be able to roll their starting point back to a reasonable spot.”

Joe understood the theory, but having searched for a number of lost ships and downed aircraft in his life, he knew the wind and currents were hard to model with accuracy. “That’s going to require a lot of information we don’t have and a substantial amount of computing power. We’d probably have to have Max and Hiram to help us.”

Dr. Pascal had an objection. “You said it was dangerous to contact NUMA. You said you thought they’d been hacked.”

Kurt nodded. Therein lay the dilemma. Standard forms of communication were unlikely to be secure. But they would be hard-pressed to do the work on the Akeso. He racked his brain for a solution. “I’ve got an idea,” he said finally. “I just hope Rudi’s hungry.”