Storm on the Horizon

When Godfrey Eilenstein started on the germline editing research being done at Kayline Research Laboratories, he never envisioned himself becoming a whistleblower. 

“What is it?” He asked his assistant Penning Walbee.  Penning had been his assistant for over twenty years and Godfrey placed his entire trust on Penning.

Putting his eye to the electronic microscope.  He raised his head and looked at Dr. Eilenstein and replied, “I have no idea.” 

“We cannot afford to put that into our prototype, now can we?” Godfrey crossed his arms across his chest and bowed his head. 

"So now what?" Penning leaned on the table.

"I'll report this to Dr. Doss." Godfrey cracked his knuckles which he did without thinking when faced with anxiety and uncertainty.  This would not be welcome news to the boys upstairs who were getting a lot of government money to fund their research.  Dr. Doss was not a man who liked glitches of any kind.

"Dr. Einstein." He waved Godfrey into his spacious office overlooking the ocean on the twentieth floor of Kayline Corporate Headquarters.   

 Dr. Kenneth Doss like referring to one of his most talented genetic researchers as Dr. Einstein even though Godfrey loathed it. It didn't matter, Dr. Does was in charge and whatever he said went as if it was carved in stone tablets.

"Got something I think you should be aware of." Godfrey started, but Dr. Doss put his hand up as he leaned against his one hundred grand desk provided to him by the GAO.

"" Dr. Einstein, we got five top notch teams working on this project.  The data is showing we are two years from producing our first child born without being pushed out of a woman's body.  Kayline will be remembered as the place where the  first successful genetically manufactured human being was born.  When that day comes we will put our stamp of approval on eugenics." He patted Godfrey on the shoulder.

"We have a renegade gene." Godfrey opened the folder.

"Another recessive gene that won't be expressed in the genotype." Dr. Doss smiled an evil grin as he poured two glasses of brandy and handed one to Godfrey.

"No thank you, sir" Godfrey shook his head.  Dr. Doss shrugged and tilted his glass all the way back, draining the snifter.

“You are one of the most brilliant men in this field of germline editing.” He paused to make sure Godfrey was listening, “And our government is willing to spend all kinds of money to make this happen.  Our target date is two years in the future when we will produce a genetically engineer infant with all of the potential to become the next Einstein or Mozart. We have shown in lower species that this clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats cas9 genome technology works thanks to your research paper published five years ago. You brought a living breathing goat into this world from your own laboratory.  The experiment was repeatable under the conditions you had specified. Brilliant.” He filled his glass and toasted Dr. Godfrey Eilenstein.

“Sir, that was a goat.” He coughed into his hand, “What we are dealing with are human genomes. I never intended to carry the research that far.”

Crooking his finger, Dr. Doss brought Godfrey to a surveillance monitor.  Godfrey obeyed and stood next to his boss watching people on the production floor dressed in special sanitary suits working diligently.

“Do you see that?” Dr. Doss asked Godfrey.

“Yes, sir.” He gulped.

“Those people are playing God for all intensive purposes.” Dr. Doss smiled.

“Is that wise?” Godfrey glanced over at Dr. Doss.

“You tell me.” He raised one of his bushy eyebrows.

He woke up screaming.  His wife Violet, awakened by his shrieks, asked, “Goddy, dear, are you okay?”

He sat up and looked at her with his face twisted in terror.

“Should I call a doctor?” She asked, holding his arm that had been flailing seconds before.

“No…no.” He shook his head, but his eyes were still wide with terror. “It was a bad dream.”

He let it go at that, because if he told her what he had seen in his dream, she would bring up his resignation from Kayline.  

Dr. Violet Krauss Eilenstein was well aware of the significance of what he was involved in with his research.  She had been given her doctorate from Stanford University during the nationwide campus Vietnam protests.  She met Godfrey as he was preparing to receive his doctorate in genetic research.  He was a brilliant student who showed a great deal of promise in the emerging field of genetic research.  She had no idea that his picture would be on the cover of several prestigious scientific journals when he produced a genetically engineered goat in his laboratory.  That year he was runner up to the Nobel Prize for Science.

No face.  The child had no face.  That gene we could not identify was responsible for her horrid deformity.  The infant would live for about an hour before the lack of oxygen shut her main organs down.  He had similar feelings in the hospital when the doctor told him that his son did not survive his birth.  It took Violet almost a year to be able to function again.  No face.  From forehead to chin, nothing but skin.  He never did see his own son since the medical staff decided he was better off not seeing…who the hell did they think they were?  Why did they get to decide that he would not have the chance to say goodbye to his own son.  The nurse asked him what his name would have been so she could fill out the certificate.  His mind was a jumble of emotions that interfered with any rational thought he could possibly have been capable of…Gunther…it was his grandfather’s name…no face…no face.

“Maybe dear, you should take some time off and go to Vancouver.” She suggested as she read the Sunday newspaper.

“No, I don’t need time off.” He snapped after sipping the bitter coffee.

“I hate seeing you like this.” She shook her head. 

“We have hit a snag.” He closed his eyes. The child had no face.  Is that a premonition?  Gunther.  It had been a long time since his father flashed in his mind.  Gunther Eilenstein had been dead for over twenty years.  He died young of Cystic Fibrosis, a genetic disorder the doctors had tested him for every checkup. He was a fisherman with his own boat The Sea Angel.  While he never made more than a pocketful of change, he was a well-known figure on the docks of San Francisco who was always there to help another fisherman.

“Snag?  What kind of snag?” She knew him well enough after twenty plus years of marriage that he was avoiding the conversation.  Something was eating at his soul.

“We’ll figure it out.” He faked a smile which she also readily caught. 

“Uh-huh.” She nodded, returning her attention to the newspaper. Suddenly her eyes fell on an article.  It seemed a research team in Sweden had produced a genetically engineered heart that could be used in a transplant.

It wasn’t that long ago, she remembered, when this type of research was banned by some worldwide committee in Europe, because “playing God” was not a good thing to be doing. 

“What do you think?” Godfrey asked Penning. 

“I’m just the lackey.” He shrugged.

“If I don’t have an idea, then I don’t want to splice that strand in.” Godfrey shook his head.

“Yeah, but that strand has a lot of important genes attached.” Penning sighed.

“But what if that gene displays psychotic behavior or Alzheimer's?” Godfrey looked through the lens of the electronic microscope. “Or cystic fibrosis?” 

“Jee-sus, Godfrey, how will we know unless we attach the strand?” Penning was frustrated. 

“Just leave it to chance, then?” Godfrey tilted his head away from the lens.

“Greater minds than ours have done it in the name of science.” Penning pointed out, “We put this strand in, we will beat the target date by a year.  I sense a Nobel Prize in our future.” 

“Gunther’s internal organs did not fully develop.” Violet sobbed into his shoulder.

“Godfrey?  Dr. Eilenstein, are you alright?” Penning was shaking his shoulder.

“Why what happened?” He seemed to be rising from the fog of a dream.

“You blacked out.” Penning was still pretty shaken. 

“What do you mean?” He shook his head free of the cobwebs.

“I don’t know how to explain it.” Penning stuck out his chin, “You sort of started talking gibberish and then you fell across the table.  Good thing, because if your head hit the floor, we’d be loading you into an ambulance.” 

“There’s a storm on the horizon.” Maude Eilenstein replied as she poured some more coffee into her husband’s cup. 

“I gotta pay the rent.” Gunther did not look up from the newspaper.  He was dressed in his hip waders and slicker which told his son Godfrey he was on his way out past the bay to do some fishing.  Godfrey knew he would be tagging along to watch him pull The Sea Angel away from the pier and out into the ocean. 

“Don’t you think you could stay home one day with that storm looming out there where you are headed?” She ran the spatula through his breakfast cooking in an iron skillet on the stove.

“Do you like to eat, Maude?” He asked with one of those sly smiles on his face.

“Go on then, be a fool.  Play with the devil on his playground.” She scooped his breakfast from the sizzling pan onto his plate.

“Me and the devil have had some riotous times together.” He laughed and ran his hands through his son’s thick black hair. 

That evening he and his crew were lost at sea as the storm capsized The Sea Angel. Men from the fishing community began a search.  They managed to find only one survivor, Gunther Eilenstein.  Godfrey was standing on the pier waiting for his father to return.  He would never forget the strong embrace when he came waddling up the wharf. 

“C’mon Godfrey, lemme get you some coffee.” Penning took his arm and led him to the cafeteria.

“What happened?” He asked as he walked on his wobbly legs. 

“Seems like you are having trouble with concentration.” Penning answered as they arrived in the cafeteria. 

Sitting down with two Styrofoam cups of coffee, Godfrey spoke after a moment of silence between them, “I had a dream.  An absolutely awful dream.” 

“Yeah, I get them two.  Spent some time in Iraq before becoming a lab assistant.” Penning did not talk a lot about his time in the Gulf War in 1990, because as he put it there wasn’t much to talk about.  After six months, the war was over and the mission was accomplished.  He always felt it was too bad the second Bush president never quite got the job done in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

“I dreamed the kid was born with no face.” Godfrey managed to blurt out.

“How cow, that’s pretty gnarly.” Penning chuckled as he sipped his toxic black coffee.  Not a whole lot of people favored the coffee they sold here, but Penning drank every drop.

“What if…” 

“What if the kid has no face?  I am not a strong believer in God, but I would have to say, He would take it from there.” Penning shrugged. 

“I don’t want to be a part of that.” Godfrey crossed his arm over his chest and looked away.

“C’mon doc, we gotta a job to do even if we don’t get the results we are after.” Penning slurped his coffee and they proceeded back to the lab. 

“I’ve got to work late.” Godfrey told Penning.

“What for?” Penning eyed Godfrey.

“I have some documentation to catch up on.” Godfrey said evenly as he shuffled some papers on his desk.  The hum and sounds of external machinery filled in the empty voids of sound.  In the laboratories, there was always some kind of external sound.  

“Well in that case, I’ll see ya.” Penning picked up his briefcase and turned to leave. “Don’t stay too late.  You are already at risk for passing out.” 

“Funny.” Godfrey watched him leave.  He would wait to make sure he was just about the only one left on the floor.  Usually an hour after normal business hours, the whole building was empty, just the sounds of the external machines could be heard, still on the job, still doing what they had been designed to do.

He had texted Violet that he was stopping off to get a bite to eat and would be home later than usual.

He peered into the dark place where the cells were beginning to grow according to the instructions of their DNA, their Deoxyribonucleic acid, their building blocks that would determine so many things in their lifetime.  Size, shape, condition, color, predisposition of certain physical properties, blood and oxygen capacities, brain function, all of it, determined by the structure of this complex molecule.

She had no face.

He could see it clearly as if his nightmare had gained substance and form.

The struggle would be brief, but painful in the minutes when the infant realized it would not be able to draw a breath or be able to suckle for nourishment.  

If he switched off the toggle, the machine would stop and the life sustaining substances would no longer reach the fetus.

It would feel no pain.  It would simply drift off into the vacuum from which it came as nothing more than a chemical reaction. He would lose the notoriety of being the scientist who brought human life through CRISPR cas9.  

He reached up for the toggle.  His urge to pull it down failed him for the moment.

Gunther did not draw his first breath.  

Violet told him he was lucky he did not have the experience to hold his dead child like she did. 

His father died peacefully in a hospice facility.  A phone call had awakened him to inform him of his father’s passing. When he got to the hospice, the staff had already removed his body.  He would not see him ever again.

There was a storm on the horizon, but this time he was the cause of it.  He was taking a chance on bringing life into the world and he had no guarantees of what would happen.  He was fifty-six-years old.  By the time the child would reach adulthood, chances are he would be quite old if he was still alive at all.  His prodigy would then be free to do whatever he wanted to do.  

Thinking about the child in the dark liquid, he brought his hand down, the toggle made a loud click as it was brought to “off” position.  The motor stopped.  In less than an hour, the water would be filled with the chemical remains of the experiment.  

The world wasn’t ready for what he was supposed to give them.  He would watch his name morph once again from Einstein to God short for Godfrey, but then the press could be cruel.  He had gone through it once before and even though it all had been forgotten, he could not help still feeling resentment over the whole affair.  If he allowed this thing to come to fruition, who knows what demons would be waiting for him, taunting him to use his discovery for evil purposes. How easy it was to be misled and misdirected when you don’t even know the ramifications of what you have wrought in the first place.  

As he walked the dark empty halls of Kayline, one of the sensor lights came on blinding him in a pool of bright light, like a spotlight on stage.  He blinked and put his hands to his eyes so he could see. 

He walked out of Kayline Research Laboratories without a single shred of remorse or regret.  He got into his car and drove away.