The longest conversation anyone ever had with Albright was poor Clemens Berkowitz, who guarded the parking lot to the Remcon facility.¹

“Dr. Dr. Master Albright, has anyone ever told you how much you look like the man from Message?” Berkowitz asked him one morning. Albright turned 180 degrees and walked away as fast as he could. Berkowitz later claimed that this had been an in depth conversation and became the resident expert in all things Albright.²

‘Message’ was the short 2-D video that had circulated the world media some six years prior to Traynor’s birth. It had been poorly received until the Russian and Chinese governments had announced that it was a hoax. This had led to worldwide panic as most governments of the world had less credibility than random chance. By denying the message, they gave it the golden stamp of truth. Shortly afterward, an international commission investigated the recording as well as the science behind observing the future and concluded that it was unlikely, supremely resource intensive, and would require a machine existing in each observed point in time. The analysis of the recording yielded near certain proof of a staged event. They concluded that the whole event was likely staged by a member of the original committee that conducted the experiment either in the past or in the far future. The world reaction to this denunciation was panic. Journalists discovered deep connections between each member of the commission and a major corporate interest and philosophers of science decried the claims as baseless and questioned the sources. A few years later, each member of the international commission was tried for crimes against humanity, tortured, and executed upon receipt of their confession. I wouldn’t have mentioned it here, but I think it’s really, really interesting.

Anyway, Remcon came under new management. The previous management had decided to sell because of ongoing violence in the area and the high cost of relocation, the new management had decided to buy because of divine providence. The buyers were from a particularly prolific strain of Mormonism that felt compelled to take over new areas and convert them by example, economic pressure and constant proselytizing. ³

The new management made it explicitly clear that unskilled employees would be fired in favor of employees that could do their job and others’ as well. The new management thought that if secretaries were knitting booties or working on the company newsletter and taking calls, they would be more productive than if they were simply taking calls.⁴ The only people who this crazy new policy could affect were the secretaries Aristus and Evaristus Bender (who were the first cousins to the new Vice President) and Berkowitz, who had no skills and was unloved. Justifiably, Berkowitz feared for his job.⁵

Berkowitz looked at the area around his post and saw the very memo that had kept him scared all day. “GOT A TALENT? THEN YOU’VE GOT A JOB: Remcon’s new policy requires workers to multi-task, which means old, ugly, unliked workers are out of luck. But their loss is your gain! Apply at Remcon now! We’re hiring for the following positions: Parking Lot Security Guard. Think you can handle it? Give us a buzz!”

The strange part for Berkowitz was that nobody else in the building seemed to have gotten one of these memos. It was as if they wanted only him to panic. And he did. But now he was fresh out of ideas and, nearing retirement, Berkowitz was unsure of what he could offer in useable talent. The only thing he had ever received attention for was his ‘extended’ conversation with the mysterious Albright.

Then he realized what he had to do. Berkowitz decided that the survival of his career depended on his (false) relationship with Albright. He would appeal to everyone’s curiosity over Albright by really becoming his friend and finding out just what he was doing. It seemed nobody— not even top management— knew how he was hired, what he did, or how much he was paid. Albright had always lived at Remcon headquarters and, as far as Berkowitz could tell, Albright had a secret arrangement with the ex-CEO of the company that made him untouchable. What it was nobody knew, but Berkowitz was going to find out.⁶

The day Remcon exploded, Berkowitz made his way to the far warehouse where Albright worked. The door was chained shut, so Berkowitz knocked loudly. He waited outside with baited breath, half of him hoping he had not been heard and the other half wishing he didn’t have such an extrovertic bladder.

~~~

Inside the warehouse, Traynor was taking his first steps as Albright observed. Of all his attempts to engineer a weaponized clone with great hair, Traynor was the most successful attempt. This was most likely because Traynor was also Albright’s least ambitious attempt. Previously he had attempted to create a child that could breathe under water,⁷ withstand fire,⁸ and spit out acid. ⁹

Somehow Traynor had survived two years with little to no attention on Albright’s part. In fact, he found himself growing more and more attached to the boy, to the point where he started calling him boy and stopped calling him ‘meatbag.’

Albright was even giving his toddler-clone an in-depth education. His lessons were progressing nicely: he was nearing Algebra now.

“I’m going to skip over dividing by percentages and go right on into factorials. Can you say factorials?” Albright asked.

“’Torios!” Traynor exclaimed, laughing as his hair did a little wave, which tickled and made him laugh more.

“No, actually, it’s ‘factorials.’ There’s an ‘F.’ Which, coincidentally, is what you get on today’s pop-quiz. No matter, we’ll just keep hurrying along until you finally start getting it. Okay, factorials are a mathematical game that coincidentally let us find out how many possible permutations there are of a—” but then Albright noticed that Traynor wasn’t paying attention. Instead, he was staring at the door. There seemed to be a pounding noise coming from it and Traynor wanted to investigate.

Albright sat in contemplation for a full moment before he realized that someone was knocking– and had been for a while. He hadn’t had any visitors in years and his last vistor, he distinctly remembered, was his ex-wife’s divorce lawyer… looking to sell some girl scout cookies. The experience was so traumatic, he was glad it had not repeated itself.

He stared at the door for a few moments before he decided he should answer it. He sat Traynor down and looked around the building. It was fairly obvious that there was genetic engineering going on: there was even a groaning, half-formed corpse on the floor that Albright had never gotten around to disposing of. He would just have to make sure that whomever it was wouldn’t go inside.

“Hello,” Albright rasped, shocked to see a complete stranger at the door.

~~~

Sweet holy moly! Berkowitz thought. He hadn’t actually expected to be at this point. Up until now, the thought of associating himself with Dr. Dr. Master Albright was purely an academic exercise. He thought quickly and carefully of what to say, then eloquently stated it:

“Uhh… yeah.”

“Very well. Good for you. Have a euro,” Albright said, not handing him anything.

“Doctor Doctor Master Albright, my name is—”

“Please, please, my friends call me Doctor Master Albright.” Albright interrupted.

“Doctor Master—”

“It’s actually Doctor Doctor Master.”

“But you just said—”

“I was making conversation. I was trying to be friendly, but, just so you’re sure, you’re not my friend.” Albright patiently explained, as if talking to a slow person.

“Well, my name is Clem. And I– I– I want to be your friend?” Berkowitz stammered, looking past Albright into the warehouse.

“Oh, that’s nice. I don’t want one, though, thanks.”

“Oh.” And Albright closed the door. Berkowitz stared momentarily, then walked away, sadly. He knew he would lose his job soon.

Berkowitz walked dejectedly back to his post, ready to search for a new job. He stared blankly in front of him, not watching the vehicles enter or exit the facility. He found it difficult to care, really. Albright, with his stupid patchy head had as good as cost Berkowitz his job.

Calling Albright a name, even if it was only in his own mind, made Berkowitz cheer up. He decided to amuse himself by mentally berating Albright further. Albright was a dunderhead. And he smelled like rotten, decaying flesh as of a warehouse in which illegal biological experiments were taking place under everyone’s noses. Also, his mother dressed him funny.

Then, a sudden burst of inspiration hit Berkowitz and he stood up. He realized that he had never actually seen the inside of the warehouse. He doubted if anyone had with how Albright had become so iconic in the minds of all the workers.

Even if Berkowitz didn’t have a relationship with Albright, all he needed to keep his job was to make himself indispensable by obtaining information that nobody had been able to obtain until now. He left his post for the second time that day and stormed over to Albright’s warehouse yet again, both hoping and dreading that he had not imagined the smell of decaying flesh.

~~~

Albright tried running a sample of Traynor’s blood through the simulator again. This simulator had been coded with both tRNA and the base Venter genome.¹⁰ He attempted to observe the particular sections of Traynor’s DNA that he had modified as he ran the simulation beyond age 5 and into the teenage years. He was shocked to see how high the rate of mutation was once Traynor passed puberty. Most of the mutations seemed to be mild transcriptions in outrons,¹¹ but increasingly, several insertions seemed to occur on the introns. This was terrible news. This meant was that as Traynor became an adult, his chances of developing cancer or dying doubled… every year! The probability of Traynor reaching age 40 became less than one in ten million. He looked at Traynor, now playing with a loaded rattrap and tried to assimilate this new information. His clone— his son— had less than a 0.000001% chance of outliving his father. He was more likely to be struck by lightning and win the lottery than retire.¹² Albright had created a child condemned to die horribly… and far too soon.

“Appa?” Traynor said, holding up his Algebra homework in which he had drawn a tall figure with glasses and patchy hair. The rattrap lay dismantled nearby.

For the first time, Albright looked at Traynor as something both distinct from himself and distinct from a mathematical problem. He looked at him as a human being. Traynor was a human being cursed to live a short life because of the errors of his predecessors— Albright’s errors no less.

Then, for the first time in ten years, Albright decided his project was over. His hope of recreating his past seemed so foolish now that he thought of Traynor as someone else, distinct from him. He had thought of it all as an academic exercise, but now an all too real complication had brought the previous six years into sharp relief.

Albright leaned back into his chair and stared at the ceiling, attempting to figure out what he could do about Traynor’s condition. There were over 1012 cells in the human body, if they could not replicate normally as in Traynor’s case, then the body would be as good as dead. Albright needed to consult with someone: someone who knew how to create super RNA or cure aging. And, if he wanted to save Traynor’s life, he might have to go to the ends of the earth itself.

There was another knock on the door. This time Albright heard it, but decided not to answer it. He did, after all, have to prepare for his journey. Unfortunately, because Albright didn’t answer the door, Berkowitz assumed the worst and called the police. This indirectly caused the death of everyone working at Remcon. ¹³

As Albright packed clothes and equipment, Traynor stumbled around behind him. Albright painstakingly carried everything from his warehouse to the next via the underground tunnels that connected every building in the facility. Albright’s long tenure had made him an expert in some random facts that had escaped the notice of most employees at the plant. ¹⁴

As Albright loaded everything into his vehicle in the next warehouse, Berkowitz told the police officers where the warehouse was and explained that he was certain Albright was up to no good with company resources.

Just as Albright knelt down to explain the situation to Traynor, the policeman knocked at the warehouse door. Albright, who was no longer in the warehouse, heard nothing and so did not answer the door. Berkowitz and the police officer looked at each other.

“Who’s warehouse is this?” The police officer asked.

“Mine. My name is Clem Remcon and I give you authority to break into the warehouse.” This was all the police officer needed. He turned around and charged at the door, kicking it with all his strength. It shuddered, but nothing more.
Albright and Traynor boarded the vehicle and opened the second warehouse’s doors. Albright engaged the motor, set the coordinates and steered as the vehicle exited the bay doors.

Had Berkowitz not been so dogmatic, he would have heard Albright leave and not been helping an innocent polic officer charge into a deserted warehouse. Had he not been so afraid for his job, he would have been guarding the parking lot actually doing his job. Had he actually been doing his job, he would have noticed Albright exit the premises, not bothering to lock the gate behind him. Had the gate been locked, or the alarm system engaged, the semi filled with nuclear material would not have been allowed nearby, much less within the compound. Had it not been allowed inside, the senseless deaths of hundreds of Remcon employees and a police officer would have been avoided.¹⁵

Unfortunately, Berkowitz was a foolishly consistent, hobgoblin of a man and the suicide nuclear bomber was able to destroy yet another company owned by a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The ongoing world war of religions had just suffered another nuclear attack.

Albright, of course, noticed nothing until Traynor called his attention to the giant mushroom cloud in their background and the bright Turquoise night sky.

“That’s just the Northern lights, Traynor, don’t worry about it. Go to sleep. We have a big task ahead of us and we might not relax for quite some time to come.”

And so they drove away as the only unwitting survivors of the Remcon disaster. Sadly, this would not be the last time they fled an atom bomb… not by a long shot……————

1. I would not get too attached to Berkowitz, he dies horribly in just a few short paragraphs
2. Just remember how readily he lied to everyone when you learn of his horrible, horrible demise. It’ll make it easier to accept.
3. Coincidentally, this was the cause of the increased violence as a prolific strain of Islam had had the same idea for the area.
4. Remcon went out of business shortly after the end of this chapter. Some people blame the fraudulent accounting, some blame the incompetent management, others blame the giant nuclear explosion that killed every member of the company and most nearby towns, but I blame the economy.
5. But not his life, sadly.
6. No he wasn’t.
7. He drowned
8. He burned
9. He was actually ran over by a bread truck.
10. “Now works with XX Chromosomes!”
11. and thus irrelevant
12. Of course, this was assuming the world wasn’t going to end soon, which it was, but Albright hardly believed this to really be the case.
13. With the exception of Aristus Bender who had called in sick that morning. Unfortunately, she passed out in the bathtub and drowned. It would be ironic if not for the fact that it was a premeditated suicide.
14. Remcon averaged a transfer of ownership once every four years. The fact that most employees stayed less than a decade made knowledge of the architecture a veritable waste of time.
15. Well, most of the deaths, the semi was going to blow sometime, after all.

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