The Bar Code Prophecy (7 page)

“This is it … my baby … the swing-lo,” Jack said as Eric and Grace climbed into the craft. “Of course, Allyson has made a lot of improvements since I showed her the first prototype a while ago. What a piece of junk that was, compared to this one.”

“And this one is still not the end product, we hope,” Allyson added, joining them. “All these dials and switches have to go. I mean, it’s so old-fashioned.”

“Hey, I was working with scrap metal out in the desert,” Jack defended his design. “I was using car parts. Give me a break.”

Allyson smiled and pushed him playfully. “Just saying, we can get something a little slicker going here.”

“We’re going to have to hit our mysterious business backer for more money before that can happen,” Jack replied.

Grace kept her gaze on them and wouldn’t look at Eric, who sat beside her in the swing-lo’s driver’s seat. Her emotions about him were wavering between disappointment, anger, and feelings of betrayal; she’d been so sure he was paying attention to her solely because he returned her feelings. The idea that she was only his
assignment
— that otherwise he wouldn’t even have noticed her — was humiliating.

When she looked at him, she felt embarrassed and furious. She couldn’t bear to meet his eyes. But she’d been told to ride in the swing-lo with him and meet the others at GlobalHelix. She didn’t feel she was in a position to say no. If this is what it would take to get her family and her life back, she couldn’t say no.

Grace also held mixed emotions about traveling in the shiny metallic disc in front of her. It had no more than a twelve-foot diameter. At its center was a seat well where two people could sit side by side. In front was a very high-tech computer control panel.

“It works on magnetic repulsion, and it’s going to be the next big thing,” Jack told Grace. “Eric here is my test pilot.”

Jack gave her a quick history of the swing-lo. Although magnetic repulsion had been around for a while — high speed trains in Japan ran on it, as did the Bullit-Buses and Bullit-Trains in America and Europe — he had done something no one else had yet managed to do. He had amplified the force so that his swing-lo could actually fly.

“This idea of personal flying vehicles isn’t new,” Allyson added. “Guys like the physicist Nikola Tesla were working on it back in the early nineteen hundreds. He even had funding from John Jacob Astor and everything. They predicted it was how people would commute, but they never made it work. Now, over a hundred years later, we think we’ve got it.”

“It’s just a tiny bit unreliable,” Jack admitted with a quick grimace. “But we’re almost there.”

“In what way unreliable?” Grace asked nervously.

“You’ll be safe,” Allyson assured her. “We’re just playing around with the altitude.”

“Put this on and make sure you’re belted in,” Eric said when they sat side by side in the vehicle. He handed her the same helmet she’d worn on the motorcycle.

Kayla, Mfumbe, and Katie headed back to their own motorcycles, but Allyson and Jack remained, watching as Eric switched on a series of buttons and toggles. “This is prototype five,” Eric told Grace, speaking in a friendly tone, as though nothing was strained between them. “You should have seen the first one; it looked like a hunk of junk because Jack had only scrap metal to work with. Now with the funding, he can buy some decent lightweight materials.”

“I should be out looking for my family, not fooling around with some spaceship,” Grace fretted. She knew there was supposed to be an element of fun in all this. But what right did she have to be on an adventure like this when they were missing?

“We
are
searching for them,” Eric said. “We’re going to see what Jonathan Harriman can tell us. He said he would contact you, right? Well, there’s no way for him to do that now. So we have to do it for him. You’ll get around a lot faster with us than on your own. And if you relied on the Global-1 cops … believe me, you’d get nowhere.”

Eric pushed another button and the swing-lo elevated abruptly to about five feet off the ground. Jack and Allyson came alongside. “We’ve made some big innovations, Eric. You can put the roof bubble up now and she goes a lot higher. There’s a gauge to the right that will tell your elevation above sea level. If you get the chance, see how high she’ll go.”

“How high is too high?” Eric asked as he strapped on his helmet.

“We don’t know,” Allyson admitted. “But the craft will start to shake when you’re too high.”

“Oh, swell,” Eric quipped sarcastically.

“Just bring it back down and the shimmying will stop,” Jack assured him. “But don’t keep it shaking too long.”

“Why? What will happen?” Eric asked.

“Just don’t do it and everything will be fine,” Jack insisted.

With a nod to Jack and Allyson, Eric pushed the throttle forward and the swing-lo whirred forward, traveling toward the wide garage door from which they had entered. Grace gripped her seat anxiously. She found it strange to be traveling so close to the ground, and yet not be touching the earth.

The garage door had been opened, and now the craft entered. Immediately the doors shut and the elevator car began traveling upward. When it bumped to a stop, the door on the opposite side opened. Eric turned on headlights that illuminated the area around them. Instead of using the narrow alley the motorcycle had come down on the trip in, Eric steered to the left and came out into a gated children’s playground.

“Going up,” Eric warned as the swing-lo lifted above the fence and sailed over it. “Jack’s big invention is a mechanism that amplifies the magnetic repulsion coming from the earth many times over,” he explained. “It’s a totally clean fuel, and the thing can really fly.”

Grace nodded as she peered over the side. As long as they were talking about the machine, she could bear the sound of his voice. But that was about it. They were flying at about ten feet in the air, still needing to stay to the roadways rather than flying above buildings. “We’re heading down again,” Eric reported. “If I stay close to the road, people just think this a funky new car, some kind of experimental hybrid. They don’t even notice that the thing isn’t actually on the ground, especially now that it’s dark.”

They traveled toward GlobalHelix without talking any further. At one point Grace spied Mfumbe, Kayla, and Katie riding ahead of them. Eric flew up and buzzed them from above before speeding past.

After twenty minutes, they turned the corner toward GlobalHelix. Grace looked at Eric directly for the first time since learning the truth about their relationship.

“What?” he asked.

“I didn’t say anything,” she pointed out.

“That scowl on your face did, though,” Eric countered. “What’s wrong? Is my driving making you sick?”

“No,” Grace replied. “You lied to me. Why didn’t you tell me what was going on?”

“I wanted to, Grace, but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t have been doing my job if I had. You can understand that, can’t you?”

“Yes. You were just
doing your job
. How could I not understand that?” Grace replied. “Still … I thought we were friends.”

“We
are
friends,” Eric insisted as he slowed the swing-lo in front of the Global-1 headquarters. “I’m going over this gate so I can park the swing-lo inside, then your code will get us in the front door.”

“If it works,” Grace said.

“Yeah. If it works.”

Once more the swing-lo rose and easily sailed over the wall before descending on the lawn outside the headquarters. Low amber lights glowed from the lobby. There was no sign of activity inside. They left the craft stashed behind some forsythia bushes and headed for the front entrance.

Grace ran her new bar code tattoo across the front door scanner.

ACCESS DENIED.

“Maybe it’s too soon. I’ll try the eye scan.”

ACCESS DENIED.

“You’ve been wiped clean. They’re not admitting you anymore. Can you think of another way in?”

“There’s a door on the roof that isn’t scanner protected, but it’s usually locked.”

Eric’s eyes darted to the swing-lo and back to Grace. “Want to try it?”

“Can it go that high?”

“We’ll find out.”

Grace gazed up at the huge spiral sculpture on the roof. Looking up was vastly preferable to looking down. She had never been frightened of heights, but as the aircraft rose, it began to shimmy, first just slightly. But the higher they went, the more violent the shaking became.

“Don’t worry, Jack has landed on this roof before,” Eric said, though his expression was not confident. “And that was with the first swing-lo.”

Grace kept her eyes fixed on the twisting sculpture and remembered what she’d learned in biology: the double helix represented a spiral polymer of nucleic acids held together by nucleotides that base-paired together. It was how genetic information was stored and copied. Genetics was what Global-1 was all about. It had started as a company that made hybrid food and grew to one that made animal clones for meat production. Now it was trying to make hybrid people. And it was doing everything in its power to control the population, just as they had cornered the market on the world’s food supply.
We’re just a product to them, like cattle,
Grace had seen Ambrose Young quoted as saying in a recent article — the image had stuck with her, even though she’d thought at the time it was overblown. Now she considered it in a different light as the swing-lo rose ever higher.

What’s Genetics Got to Do with It?

Article by Allyson Minor

Reporting from the California Institute of Technology

Eric and Grace sped lightly down the dimly lit top floor of the GlobalHelix offices. The roof door had been locked, but luckily it was an old-fashioned lock, and among the few items Eric carried in a backpack was a lock-picking kit.

Once they were inside, they headed down a flight of stairs to an executive suite of offices. It was strange for Grace to think that just this morning, she worked here. She pointed at the line of light emanating from under the door of Dr. Harriman’s office. She’d never been inside it, but she knew where it was.

“He’s still here,” she whispered to Eric.

Or at least she hoped so. It could also be a trap.

There was only one way to find out.

“Dr. Harriman?” Grace inquired as she opened the door.

Dr. Harriman looked up sharply from the laptop on his desk.

He did not look happy to see her.

“Grace! What are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to you. You’re the inventor of the bar code tattoo. Do you know why there is a priority file on me?”

“Well, you’re certainly a direct young woman.”

“I have to be. My family is missing. I’m trying to find them and I can’t afford to wait.”

It was as if Grace could see his scientific mind weighing the options. “Maybe I do know something about it,” he hedged. “Who is your friend?”

Eric stepped forward. “My name is Eric Chaca.”

“You’re Native American?” Dr. Harriman inquired.

Grace thought this was a strange thing to say, but Eric seemed to know why Dr. Harriman was asking. “My father is half Hopi, half Irish,” he answered. “My mother is full Cherokee.”

“Have you come to talk to me about The Bar Code Prophecy?”

Grace turned toward Eric —
the prophecy, again
— but Eric wasn’t paying any attention to her. Instead he and Dr. Harriman were locked in a meaningful stare.

“I didn’t come for that,” Eric said. “I had no idea you knew anything about it.”

“But
you
know about it, don’t you?” Dr. Harriman said.

Nodding slowly, Eric approached Dr. Harriman. “First things first,” he told the older man. “Why is there a top priority file on Grace?”

Dr. Harriman’s ice blue eyes darted thoughtfully between Grace and Eric. Grace’s heartbeat quickened with anticipation.

“There is a special top priority file on Grace Morrow because she is the daughter of the inventor of the bar code tattoo.”

“Your daughter?” Grace spoke softly as the impact of his words struck her.

“My daughter,” Dr. Harriman confirmed.

Now it was she and Dr. Harriman who studied each other with keen eyes, each searching for physical features that might connect them. There was nothing Grace could see. Where his eyes were bright blue, hers were a deep brown, like her hair. But slowly she realized that the shape of her eyes and line of her eyebrows were the same. She owed the ridge of her cheekbone to him, too.

“The darker gene often dominates,” Dr. Harriman remarked, as if reading her thoughts. “But I see much of myself in you.”

“Why didn’t you want her to get the bar code tattoo?” Eric asked while Grace stayed almost frozen, finding it hard to absorb this shocking new piece of information.

“I’d like to explain all this to you someday, but there’s something you should look at right away.” Dr. Harriman beckoned for them to come around his desk and look at his monitor screen.

Global-1 police swarmed the bottom floor lobby.

“What’s going on?” Eric asked, alarmed.

“They arrived just minutes ago. They want me but I’m sure they’d be delighted to take you two, as well,” Dr. Harriman explained calmly. “So far I’ve locked off the executive elevators and the emergency stairways, but I’m sure they’ll figure some way up eventually.” He looked at them sharply as a new idea occurred to him. “By the way, how did you two manage it?”

The deafening flap of helicopter blades suddenly roared around them. It sounded like more than one. “Drone helicopters,” Dr. Harriman observed. “I once wanted to be a helicopter pilot. Now the profession doesn’t even exist. It’s all drones.”

“Why do they want you?” Grace asked. “You work for Global-1. Aren’t you on their side?”

“It seems I’ve turned renegade on them,” Dr. Harriman explained. “No longer cooperative.”

The chopper blades were growing louder.

“We should go,” Eric said.

“How are you proposing we leave?” Dr. Harriman asked.

“We’re in a flying craft that takes only two,” Eric said. “I’m afraid we have to leave without you.”

“I saw a photo of it online,” Dr. Harriman said. “I read that it was used when this building was attacked just six months ago. Can’t I squeeze in?”

“Come on, let’s go, Grace,” Eric urged, taking her hand and pulling her along. “Sorry, Dr. Harriman, there’s only room for two.”

But you should take him,
Grace thought. After all, Harriman was the prize. He was the one Decode would want. Grace was nobody.

Still, Eric had made his choice. And he wasn’t going back.

Together they ran back to the roof door. The moment they pulled it open, gale force winds assaulted them, stirred up by the two drone helicopters over their heads.

Staggering under the wind of the whirring blades, they ran under the blinding lights from above, crouching toward the swing-lo. A line of red appeared inches from Grace’s feet and she followed its line to its source — the helicopter nearest them. “Laser stun!” Eric shouted over the thunderous roar.

At the swing-lo, they dove inside. Eric activated the engine but didn’t turn on the lights. Immediately the craft began to rise. It was four feet in the air when a man’s hand grabbed the side. Dr. Harriman was trying to climb in.

Acting on an impulse not to leave him stranded, Grace seized Dr. Harriman’s arm and began to pull. Another line of red pinged off the side of the swing-lo, raising sparks.

“He’s too heavy for us to carry!” Eric shouted.

“We can’t leave him out here like this!” Grace countered, gripping Dr. Harriman. It took all her strength to pull him in, his legs still dangling over the edge.

The swing-lo weaved wildly. Grace clutched the scientist, terrified that he might fall.

Red laser lines crossed the dark night.

Eric regained control of the craft and flew horizontally to the right, staying below the helicopters. There was a moment’s respite in the laser attacks, and it seemed they had outrun the helicopters or at least eluded them in the dark.

Grace craned her neck around Dr. Harriman. Although she could not see the copters’ lights, Grace could still hear them. They sounded close.

Suddenly they rose on either side of the swing-lo, their lights nearly blinding. Eric pulled back on the throttle and the craft rose abruptly above the helicopters. The red lasers sparked on the sides. Pulling the throttle to the right, Eric sent the craft speeding horizontally, creating a distance between it and the copters. “We’re going dark,” Eric announced as he shut the swing-lo’s lights and flew out of the beams coming from the helicopters.

The shaking that Grace had noticed earlier was now very strong. Eric drove the craft toward the tops of some trees. Their speed increased tremendously and Grace looked to Eric for an explanation. “I’m riding an air current,” he explained. “It’s pushing us along like a wave.”

The swing-lo was suddenly flung upward with amazing force. “We just collided with one of the helicopters!” Eric explained. “I think they’re cloaked.”

“Do you mean invisible?” Grace asked.

Eric nodded. “Stealth technology.”

“They are cloaked,” Dr. Harriman confirmed. “I developed the technology for Global-1 myself.”

“Hang on!” Eric told them. “I want to go higher into this fog to get away from them.” When they had climbed steeply, the craft hung in the air a moment and then began to shake violently,

“What’s happening?” Dr. Harriman demanded.

“We’re too high!” Eric announced pointing to the gauge, which read
1000 feet
. He reached under his seat and pulled out a nylon bag the size of a backpack. “There’s one under your seat, Grace,” he said. “Give it to the doc. You and I will share.”

Rummaging under her feet, Grace withdrew a nylon bag identical to the one Eric held. “What is it?”

The sounds of cracking metal made them all turn toward the jagged tear at the side of the swing-lo.

“Parachutes,” Eric replied, pulling open his sack.

“But it’s pitch black out there!” Dr. Harriman cried.

“Just put it on, Doc,” Eric insisted.

The swing-lo rattled even more violently. “Put this on, Grace,” Eric said, handing Grace a harness. “You’re going to clip on to me.”

“Listen, Doc, we’re low to do a sky dive,” Eric instructed as he and Grace got into their halters. “Pull the rip cord right away, as soon as you jump.” He showed Dr. Harriman where to pull.

“Grace, as we exit, tuck your chin and try to arch your back,” Eric explained, speaking with rapid urgency. “Don’t be scared. You’ll be clipped to me.”

Eric attached Grace to his harness just as, with a horrific sound of tearing metal, the swing-lo ripped apart, its pieces disappearing into the night.

Suddenly there was nothing beneath Grace’s feet. She wanted to scream but the tremendous force of the wind blowing into her face snatched away her breath. They were falling through the night sky.

Grace was too amazed to be terrified.

How was this happening to her? She was high up in the black night, free-falling rapidly through the sky.

Then all, at once, with a tremendous whoosh, the chute opened over her head and she was floating, drifting toward the earth below.