Lu sat in her apartment, trembling as she saw the sparkling 3-D strand on her monitor. The implications of the gap in the double helix were haunting, to say the least.
As a biogenetic mercenary, Lu was the best. Hoping to finally break into the upper city, she had taken the job from Tolman, head of a powerful, if somewhat mysterious, think tank with a strong influence upon the government. Tolman wanted to find a serum to reverse the effects of aging, and with them, death. Eventually he hoped to code such an antidote into human DNA. The salary incentives Tolman offered had been lucrative. They were enough to offset any misgivings Lu might have held because of rumors about Tolman’s methods.
Lu knew that her work could be groundbreaking, but her recent tests had been turning up unexpected abnormalities. Her latest batch now confirmed the impossible: people with strange voids in their helices, rifts in their DNA.
Wouldn’t the Human Genome Project have uncovered this back in the early millennium? Lu thought. Perhaps it did.
This new information could be dangerous. Just last year a rebel named Falk was executed as part of the clone conspiracy for making claims about similar discoveries. Conspirators believed the government was covering for a failed clone project; they pointed to the illegalities of certain types of research as support for their theories. Lu’s research would be gold to such a subversive movement. The same gold, however, could mean death if Tolman found out what she was onto.
What do I do now? she thought.
Perhaps Eldon could provide assistance. Eldon was a powerful philanthropist from the upper city who had helped one of Lu’s friends out of a jam. Lu had heard rumors that he had funded a great deal of medical research before the government had outlawed all independent scientific inquiry. Eldon might be able to help her navigate this mess. Getting to him was the trick.
Search and Destroy
Lu turned off the computer and dropped her face in her hands. Then a desperate thought came: What if a spy was on the network? Tolman always had spies. He could be sending a security squad at this moment. A cold sweat broke out on the back of her neck.
The computer flicked back on, causing Lu to snap up in her chair. Words appeared on the screen, menacingly green: Destroy the results.
Frightened, Lu placed her finger on the delete button, but she couldn’t push it. Part of her wanted the freedom of ignorance, while another wanted answers. Why had people died on account of this sort of information? Why was it so powerful — and dangerous?
Not clones, Lu thought as she withdrew her hand from the keyboard. “Blanks” is more like it.
The idea was strange, and yet it rang true. The truth, though, quivered nervously in her stomach. She pressed “print” and hoped her lightning-fast holographic printer could do its job and leave her enough time.
On the Run
Lu was just removing the final pages of data from the tray when she heard footfalls thundering up the stairs outside her apartment door. She prayed they’d continue down the hall.
They stopped. A shadow blocked the light at the base of her door.
“Tolman,” Lu hissed.
She knew Tolman’s ways well enough to understand that dialogue on this topic was futile. She had disobeyed his command. Only one option remained. Lu ran to a secret door at the back of the apartment. A biogenetic mercenary’s hours didn’t always comply with the curfew imposed by martial law.
If Lu was going to get answers, Eldon was her only hope.
The dark streets blared with the sound of sirens. The search was on, and Lu knew she could kiss her small apartment and life as she knew it goodbye. She only hoped the information she had chosen to protect was worth it.
Long black hair swept across Lu’s eyes as she ran down an alley and headed for the park, the only place she knew that would provide cover from the micro-cameras and listening devices positioned throughout the city. Hopefully, the cameras in the alleys wouldn’t catch her face if she kept her head down and moved fast. Traveling through the park would also make a direct route to Eldon’s high-rise, which was located several miles farther.
An Unexpected Appearance
Lu’s small frame was exhausted by the time she reached the park’s large forested area, but she was relieved she’d made it this far. She pressed on through the dark cover of the trees. The lights of the city, like the satellite cameras, couldn’t penetrate the canopy. Lu’s foot caught on a root and she fell hard to the soft ground. Spitting dirt, she rose and kept running.
Suddenly, a hand clasped her arm. She jolted back and yelped. A dark figure gripped her firmly and threw her against a tree, clamping a hand over her mouth. Lu struggled to no avail.
“Don’t say a word,” the voice whispered in the darkness.
Lu didn’t. If this was an agent, anything she said could convict her.
The man stepped closer to reveal his face. It was Eldon. Lu relaxed, but her eyes showed her surprise.
“We can’t stay here,” Eldon said quietly in his imposing baritone. “They’ll be coming soon.”
He let go of Lu.
“How did you know?” she began.
“I saw the order to hit your apartment,” he said, rushing her off through the trees in a different direction than she’d been heading.
Answers or More Questions?
At the edge of the park, they climbed into a waiting car. The driver accelerated without speaking or looking back at them.
“What’s going on?” Lu demanded, suspicious of Eldon’s sudden appearance and his seemingly intimate knowledge of the unfolding events. “How did you see the order on my apartment?”
“I keep track of things,” he said. “I’ve seen your work, too.”
“It seems everyone has,” she said, feeling exposed and confused. “So, what now?”
“You have a choice to make.”
“What choice?” she said. “Destroy the data or die?” Lu felt betrayed, though she never had any guarantee that Eldon was on any particular side.
“Yes. That sums it up.”
Feeling drained, she sank in her seat.
Eldon continued. “You will either die accepting the truth, or live knowing the lie.”
“What truth?” She spat the words, disgusted with how quickly her life had been placed in the balance.
“Of the emptiness that everyone holds,” Eldon said.
Lu glared at Eldon. There was no disguising her confusion and frustration.
“Our world,” Eldon said, “is anti-truth. We hide from it; we disguise it. We consciously and subconsciously layer lies over our true needs until we believe things we know are false. Our first reaction to truth is hate, or mistrust.”
“Truth is what you make it,” Lu said, looking out the window as the high-rises of the city began to give way to suburban strip malls lining the highway.
“You prove my point,” Eldon said calmly. “Your very statement conflicts with the essence and definition of truth. Yet we believe it. No truth is true. Lies are ‘true’ if you believe them. Why do we accept this?”
“I don’t know,” Lu said, unsure whom to trust.
“The answer is in your research data,” Eldon said. “It’s in our DNA.”
“But my work doesn’t prove anything except an anomaly,” she protested.
“Why would Tolman care so much about a simple anomaly? Perhaps more important, why would you be willing to risk your life for a mere genetic aberration?” Eldon peered into Lu’s eyes. “Your discovery is medical evidence of a spiritual reality, and Tolman cannot have that.”
“But Tolman wanted a solution, right?” Lu asked.
“He wants any way other than the truth. He wants to take a pill and get rid of the death that awaits him.”
“What is the truth?”
“This book has the only way,” Eldon said, holding up a tattered volume. “The author fills our emptiness. There are no clones — only empty vessels.”
Lu sat in shocked silence. Eldon held a book that was both scarce and illegal: the Bible. Though in different words, he also had just voiced the exact conclusion she made back at the apartment.
“They’re blanks,” she said. “Is everyone born that way?”
“It appears that way. Your research is not the first — only the latest, though the suppression has been largely successful by Tolman and others,” Eldon said. “As for solutions, the only cure comes with faith. The serum that Tolman needs is Jesus, who enters and provides life to the spirit. Is that change manifested at the core physiological level for all believers? That much is unknown. But symbolically at least, it’s as if Jesus is filling a void on the deepest human level — regenerating the missing gaps in the DNA helices, if you will.”
Tares and High Tech
Lu’s mind was still reeling as she felt the car slow. “Why are we stopping?” she demanded.
“I want to show you something.”
They stepped from the car, and the high-tech mercenary found herself standing on an isolated road beside a field of grain. The glow of city lights was visible behind them, but they were far beyond the city limits. The moon lit the grain as a gentle breeze passed through the tassels. The peaceful setting seemed completely at odds with the circumstances Lu now found herself wrapped up in.
“Are you going to kill me?” Lu asked.
Eldon ignored her question. “See the wheat?”
“Yeah,” Lu said, still wondering about the answer to her last question.
“See the tares?”
“What do tares look like?” Lu asked, growing impatient with Eldon’s cagey behavior.
“They grow right alongside the wheat,” Eldon replied.
“It’s tough telling them apart,” Lu said, her irritation turning to anger.
“Look closer,” Eldon said. “The wheat has a grain inside; the tare is a worthless weed.”
Lu calmed as Eldon’s point sank in. After a moment, she said, “So the people with DNA gaps are like tares, and the ones with solid DNA are like wheat.”
“In a sense, yes,” Eldon said. “These tares are doomed, lacking any substance. They can’t speak truth because it isn’t in them. They cheat, slander and lie, never finding what they need. That is why it is important for us to reach people with the cure.”
“I thought you said they don’t want this cure.”
“They don’t. But the cure wants them,” Eldon said. “One day this entire field will be harvested. The wheat will be stored, and the tares will be burned. In the same way, a day will come for this world to be harvested, and those who are empty will be . . .”
“Burned,” Lu finished.
“This is the reason you found what you did,” Eldon said. “The truth found you. Now you must tell others so it can find them, too.” 
