Regression (21 page)

The next morning Babak met her at
the elevators. They walked together into a laboratory workroom and
closed the door.

Full of sympathy, his voice
softened the blow, “The results were positive.”

She nodded, and grasped his elbow.
“Please, Babak, I am not ready to share my condition yet with any
of the other regressees. I expect you will respect your position as
doctor and mine as patient, and maintain confidentiality. My
pregnancy is my business at the moment.”

“
I don’t agree with
your decision because anything affecting a regressee is not solely
their business. But for now I will hold this information
confidential. You have at least a couple more weeks to decide your
course of action.”

“
I will tell you right
now there will be no abortion. I’ve given birth to six children and
there is no way I could terminate a life, regardless of the
circumstances under which it began. Especially when every life is
going to be important in our plan to survive the disaster of
2011.”

“
I’ll remain silent,
for now.” He brusquely turned away, selecting a swab from the
counter. “I want a cheek sample, see this genetic abnormality
myself.” Perched on one of the wheeled laboratory stools, he
indicated she should do the same. As he leaned in to collect the
sample he overbalanced and the stool flew out from underneath him,
catapulting him toward her. His momentum took her from her seat as
well, both collapsing in a heap on the floor, Babak straddling
Adya’s thigh with his cheek resting on her left breast. They
blushed at the close contact.

“
Sorry.” “Oops.”
Apologizing at the same time, flustered, he clambered off
her.

“
You okay?” He gave
her a hand up before carefully approaching a second
time.

“
Yeah, thanks.” She
grimaced. “I bruise easily, though. They’ll think you beat
me.”

He chuckled. “Not if I tell them
you beat me. Who do you think they’ll believe?”

“
Hmmm…” She smiled
with sugary sweetness. “Who has the halo over her head?”

He reached out, pretending to
straighten the halo. “It’s crooked and tarnished, m’dear. I’m ahead
of you there, mine’s impeccable.”

She raised her hands, “You win.”
He collected the sample from her mouth. “You have to work quickly
because it begins to degrade right away.”

Mounting the slide immediately, he
looked into the eyepiece of the microscope and gasped. She leaned
in at his invitation, a wave of warmth flooding her face as her
thigh came in contact with his. His sharp intake of breath echoed
her own. He quickly returned to looking into the eyepiece when she
moved away.

“
I have never seen
anything like this in a eukaryote. Plasmids are common in bacteria,
but multi-cellular organisms just don’t have them. This has been
present since birth? So, it was present in the original
timeline?”

“
Yes. The plasmid was
discovered when my mother had an amnio done during pregnancy as
part of a study by Nadler and Gerbie. There were fourteen others
with it. I was the only one to survive. Unless…do any of the
regressees have it?”

“
No. I’ve done blood
work on them all.”

“
So, it likely has
nothing to do with the regressions.”

“
We can’t be too sure
of that. The other regressees were male. Did your children inherit
the abnormality?”

“
Yes, all of them.
None were old enough to have children to know if it passes on to
the next generation, but …” she glanced at her hands, “I’m actually
embarrassed to admit this…out of curiousity Daniel and I checked a
night time urine sample from our eldest son and found his sperm
carry the plasmid. This goes against what would be expected,
normally no extra-nuclear material makes it into the sperm.” Her
face heated as his gaze rested on it.

“
We might make a
scientist of you yet. What did you say your husband
did?”

“
Professor of
biological anthropology. His focus was on minimum viable
populations. How we could use his expertise right now.” She sighed.
“He’s only sixteen in this timeline, though, still in high school.”
Daniel’s face came to mind, open and expressive, at the gas station
as she had last seen him. Her voice wavered as she continued,
“Abraham has begun new modeling programs to produce projections
related to minimum viable populations, I mentioned my husband’s
studies yesterday and he realized they had neglected that aspect of
the disaster, just calculating the overall human loss of life
impact. It is so important not only to save humans, but also to
preserve the great variety within the genome.”

“
Diversity is crucial
to our genome.”

She completed more examinations
with him, including an IQ test. Stunned, he waved the results at
her. “Adya, have you ever done an IQ test before?”

“
Yes.” She smiled in
remembrance. “My husband used to challenge me to them regularly
because he never beat me and always argued the next time he would.
He was consistently within about three points of me, but never beat
me.” Laughing, she glanced at him. “He claimed I distracted
him.”

“
I can imagine. Your
score was always higher than Daniel’s?”

“
Yes, drove him nuts.
Babak, I don’t think you realize I’m no ditzy blonde who happened
to arrive in this timeline by accident.”

“
I’m beginning to
grasp that now. We complete IQ scoring for all regressees; just as
part of the process in an attempt to see similarities might explain
why we were selected. They have averaged one forty, the highest
being Abraham at one fifty six. What have your results normally
been?”

“
They did fall each
time I was pregnant, that was Daniel’s favourite time to challenge
me. But they ranged from one sixty six to one seventy two. Daniel
usually came in between one sixty five and one sixty nine, but
never at the point where his was higher than mine.” Daniel had
tried to coerce her into an IQ test when she got home from the
hospital after the birth of their fourth child, thinking she would
still be groggy from the pain killers and have a slower response
time. She took a rain check and beat him again a month
later.

“
I sometimes wonder if
I have had an unfair advantage, looking back.”

His eyes sparked with interest at
her statement. “What do you mean?”

“
Before entering ninth
grade, I was an average student. But it was like a switch turned on
inside my mind and knowledge became memory. I remember the moment
clearly, in Grade Nine math. The teacher put an equation on the
board and asked for solutions. I could see the answer in my head
but it didn’t use the same solution he put on the board. Later, on
the unit test, I used my process−I couldn’t remember his approach.
He took me aside and asked me how I came up with my answer. He had
never seen it before but was excited because I arrived at the
correct answer with fewer calculations. Learning has been like that
since, where the pieces just seem to fall into place. I have the
template in my mind, as if the bits of information handed to me
already have a spot waiting.” She held his gaze for a moment. “Do
you think there’s any chance we’ve been through this more than
once?”

His eyes were unfathomable as he
measured her question. A knock interrupted his musings. He opened
the door to Peter Merten, another regressee, his wide build and
pale colouring a stark contrast to Babak’s tall, slender physique
and swarthy skin.

“
Adya, I thought Peter
would like to see your genetic profile. He should find it very
interesting. Peter normally works at Sanctum, head of genetic
research, but I notified him of your interesting DNA and he made a
special trip down here to join us in seeing this
plasmid.”

“
Actually, Abraham
also contacted me about some new projections he needs to run based
upon your suggestions related to bottlenecks, Adya. You’ve been
busy, I see.” His eyes crinkled at the corners when he
smiled.

“
Peter, have you any
experience or documentation of such an occurrence as the plasmid?”
Babak waved him to another wheeled stool, sparing a fleeting glance
at Adya as he moved the wobbly unit out of range, motioning her
toward a stationary one. She stifled a giggle. Peter glanced
questioningly between the two of them, raising an eyebrow, before
seating himself.

“
No, this is entirely
unique. Adya, you said the plasmid disintegrates with sampling? So,
no one’s ever been able to mount a sample?”

“
No. Extensive
research was done from the time I was born until I was five, and
none of their methods preserved the plasmid. It’s recognizable for
perhaps one hour and disintegrates beyond use by three
hours.”

“
Do you have the names
of the doctors who worked on the study? I would really like to get
hold of the files and reports.” Peter’s face was eager,
open.

“
I can contact my
mother for the names. I don’t recall much. I know at one point I
was sent to the University of Western Ontario but they lost
interest after a while. They were never successful in mounting it
for viewing.”

“
Has there been any
investigation since puberty?”

Adya hesitated. She looked at
Babak, and he nodded to indicate she should make her own decision.
“I only just experienced menarche. Babak shared his theory about
gonadotropins being key to our regressions and I think he has
something there. My regression was also timed to the point of
puberty, nine weeks ago.” She was not yet ready to share with Peter
the news of her condition. “A couple of blood tests were run in the
hospital as I recovered from the head injury that …precipitated,
for lack of a better word…my regression. All results were normal.
Except serotonin.”

Babak nodded. “We’ve seen that
with all regresses, lowered serotonin when they first arrive. Then,
after getting involved with Three Eleven their levels return to
normal. I’m sure yours will too. You haven’t been experiencing any
side effects, have you? Depression? Anxiety?” He grimaced. “Aside
from what can be expected, finding yourself fourteen
again.”

She shook her head. “Takes a bit
of getting used to.”

They studied the sample, noting
the proportionate size of the plasmid in comparison to documented
plasmids from the resource binders Peter had brought with him and
from connecting to research laboratories at universities around the
world.

Peter commented, “It is unusually
large. Note it’s replicating in your cells even when they aren’t
going through mitosis, just as normal plasmids do. What do you
think the likelihood is the plasmid has been planted by whoever was
responsible for the regressions?” Three sets of eyes met,
disturbed. “I want to look at the sequencing. There would be some
clues there which might tell us if it was engineered. Babak, you
have the blood samples. Were there any abnormal
proteins?”

“
No, blood tests are
all normal. I asked the staff to run additional analyses after Adya
told me about the plasmid. I expected to either find unusual
proteins, or increased volume of proteins, but it appears the
plasmid is either dormant right now, or does not code for anything
we can detect with our equipment here.” He paused before adding,
“Well, there was one exception…”

Both Adya and Peter looked
expectantly at him.

“
I hesitate to think
it is relevant. There were elevated amounts of estratetraenol and
2-methylbut-2-enol.”

“
What the heck are
those?”

“
They
are…pheromones.”

“
Pheromones?” Peter
and Adya asked simultaneously and incredulously.

“
You know, chemicals
secreted−”

“
I know what they are.
What the heck are they doing in my blood stream?”

He shook his head. “I don’t
know.”

Journal of Doctor Nicholas Weaver

September 29, 98 P. I.

She remembered each
lifetime, the way I do too, until the most recent regression.
Losing Adya in that timeline reset her memories in the tenth. I
always found some trace, some indicator she knew, she was aware of
her previous lives. Behaviours, journals, even the book she once
published entitled “Regression – the Lives I’ve Lived.” But, in
losing her memories, I think my cause came out ahead. Hope was
reborn. I had to relive her loss as this time the accident claiming
Adya’s life also claimed Hope before I could meet her. I take
reassurance from the fact Adya seemed to feel her calling this past
lifetime. She was a mother for the first time in a long time, and a
mother she needs to be to ensure our survival.

“
Adya, I think it’s important to continue studying your
anomaly. I want you to come to Sanctum so I can collect samples
regularly. I would like to speak with Abraham and change your
schedule of orientation.” Peter walked her to the elevator outside
Babak’s office.

“
When would we leave?
I’ll have to do some packing and I did have plans tonight.” Peter
looked surprised, she defended herself. “Friends are coming for
supper.”