Ancient of Genes: Prehistoric Resurrection... or Genetic Warfare?

By Dan Gallagher

Timely: THE fact-based genetics/metaphysical/cryptid novel, razor-close to real science that can manifest the ONLY prophecy that echoes eerily...whispers ubiquitously...among religions & myth traditions!

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• Language: English
• Publisher: StoriesAmazing
• Release date: Sep 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781737649403

Dan Gallagher

A Writing Style Shaped by Life-experiencesDan has trekked volcanoes, deserts, swamps; trudged Appalachian, Arizonan and Venezuelan heights & gorges. He has explored exotic locations like Macau, Hong Kong, the Everglades, Bayous, Mexico's Baja... even New Jersey! Attacked by a charging bear, Dan killed it at fourteen feet, evaded a northern Canada wolf-pack and an enraged moose. He's parachuted, been in a knife fight and numerous other life-threatening tangles. Though he's not seen combat, Dan held command of Mechanized Infantrymen in live-fire assaults, ambushes and defenses in Germany & the U.S.. He has lived in Rhode Island, Alexandria & Williamsburg, VA and North Carolina.Other personal experiences inform Dan's writing style. He knows what faith, race and age discrimination feel like. He helped reform court-marshalled soldiers, consoled the homeless and took charge in deadly accidents: a C-130 aircraft crash and a 110-mph motorcycle collision. In counseling clients (Dan's pre-retirement financial & business brokerage work), Dan handled hundreds of millions in transactions. He's seen what strengthens and dissolves relationships. Dan has experienced spiritual and miraculous phenomena and investigated those of others. Dan usually pursued simultaneous endeavors (studied Economics, Modern Languages, Finance Math, English, and was a published professional instructor). He's been a lifelong student of Natural Sciences, Comparative Religion and Cryptozoology. Dan and wife Laura have been in love for over three decades and treasured raising their four "snit-generating" kids. Several professional and personal tragedies have been profoundly humbling. Yet, through it all, Dan kept sane to help others. He says, "I give psychological counseling to my cat, Watson, who claims to be a sabre-tooth tiger. Watson must think I'm gullible: he never tries to convince others of his delusions."

Book preview

Prologue

Humankind struggled for millennia to survive and understand this world. We hunted fantastic animals, even cousin-races. We sought insight into life’s inception and meaning through superstition, religion and science. Has science shown that only we control our destiny?

Some say that there is a voice that calls our names before birth and as we mature, then pines to call us home at our deaths. Is this an archaic superstition, destructive of individual freedoms? Others believe that they have plenty of time before they will have to deal with the serious issues of life and death. Pontius Pilate, a man denigrated by history but esteemed by peers until refusal to worship Caesar cost his life, asked an enduring question: What is truth?

Why is regeneration of Eden after destruction the only prophecy that, in some form, is held in common among nearly all religions and myth traditions? Are socially erosive behaviors based in genetics and, hence, neither moral nor immoral? Were the Hebrews a people chosen by God or did they simply misinterpret natural phenomena? Who can discern meaning from the coincidences, personality changes and dreams that develop in the passing years of our lives?

Kevin Gamaliel Harrigan, driven by struggles deep within, pursued these questions. He sought the truth—or perhaps it sought him—about the human animal, destiny, and himself. A brilliant leader with vision, he was well equipped to capture the answers. Many accompanied him on his journey; among these, Manfred Freund who sought insight from both the seen and unseen. In a quest spanning two decades, the two men ultimately did find the answers.

Who could possibly have foreseen that such work would lead to the most ominous implications ever to confront humanity?

Science Journal

19 September 1991

Researchers at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, Bolzano, South Tyrol, Italy, have announced the finding of a naturally mummified man. The Iceman, or Otzi, as he has been nicknamed, is dated as having lived between 3400 and 3100 BCE. The body was found in the Alps, between Austria and Italy.

His body and belongings are on display at the South Tyrol Museum in Bolzano, South Tyrol, Italy, with one oddity: his genitals are missing.

Chapter One

Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts

1238 hours, 24 May 2020

––––––––

Kevin Harrigan picked the yellowing newspaper clipping up off the floor, along with a dozen others on non-mineralized human bodies found ranging in age from a few millennia to tens of thousands. He filed all of it in the bottom drawer of Dr. Wentz’s desk. Retrieving the pen he’d come for, he returned to the lab, pondering what it meant. Did someone purposely pull that file? Did they understand the magnitude of what it meant? Missing genitals. He often wondered how his professor got those missing genitals and other fossil meiotic material, but never asked. He needed pay as an assistant to recoup the Army its scholarship, be released to civilian status, and study genetics. Dr. Wentz had been initially skeptical of a short, redheaded Army medical student. But as studies progressed, he had recruited Harrigan into his secret work. After thirty years for Wentz—the last two assisted by Harrigan—they were finally close to seeing the results they sought.

Did Dr. Wentz leave the file out? He’s pretty absentminded. No matter. The lab assistant, nobody would see that clipping and suspect that Dr. Wentz had actually found—stolen?—the genitals. Just old articles stuffed in an old file.

He refocused his attention on the specimen under his scanning electron microscope, and then the color print-out of an RNA molecule, the mysterious translator of genetic instructions. He thought, with great pride, that everyone except he and Wentz believed RNA functioned only to maintain DNA after an organism is formed and to translate DNA’s instructions to the organism’s cells. Focus! No mysteries or cures uncovered without a doctorate.

Dr. Wentz’s clandestine genetics project consumed them both and demanded immense effort, in spite of Wentz’s advancing age.

Harrigan shivered. What if the unauthorized work were discovered, and the modern samples that donors hadn’t authorized for...? He focused again on the specimen. Nothing to worry about. This was Wentz’ life’s work, well hidden.

Three years before, in a thick Austrian accent, Wentz had pulled Harrigan in. "Shtudying dis specimen has to me given a renewed sense of purpose und deferred my retirement from...an unremarkable career. I haf confided in you because I cannot do all of this verk alone. Neider can I let it be lost if I should sterb– uh, English – die while the files und materials are intentionally mismarked. You are my brightest shtudent. Work with me." Wentz paused, then continued excitedly.

By comparing modern genes with the archaic ones, we can track disease resistance, longevity, changes in the human species, redeem atrophied traits daht are useful und hunt down genetic defects. What do you say, Kevin? Discovery is why you left the Army, yah? Explore human genetic evolution with me. Mankind will owe you a debt of gratitude.

Harrigan had leapt at the chance to make his mark. We’ll pioneer a new field, he had mused. I’d do anything to study genetic changes over time, even speciation within genus Homo. Most importantly, we can eradicate genetic diseases—help Pete—improve humankind in myriad ways, transform medicine itself!

Eventually, they used PCR to replicate some of the undestroyed segments of genetic material from the Ice Man sperm. PCR, the polymerase chain reaction, produced viable copies of fragile DNA segments. He had then inserted these copies into modern human eggs whose genetic strands were removed, manipulating a second set of male-contributed genes so as to produce a purely archaic clone of the Ice Man. The eggs were genetically coded so that they could not mature past nine or ten weeks. The resulting zygotic masses, embryos, helped Harrigan and Wentz isolate the effects of the archaic genes, and compare their nucleic composition and functions with modern genes. The embryos yielded clues to the production and chemistry of various kinds of RNA molecules. Harrigan found that the first of these to form existed only during the formation of new eggs in the female zygotes. It marked thousands of DNA sequences for dormancy. He called the molecule primary meiotic RNA. He suspected that this M1-RNA preserved as-yet unidentified traits, possibly inhibiting speciation.

Despite the danger to his career, Harrigan had become as addicted as Wentz, though for different reasons. For more than three years, he was consumed by the desire to unlock the secrets of what made humans human, and how the revealed secrets could cure genetic diseases.

Harrigan finally finished up the segment he was studying and headed home where he rapidly devoured two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, then sat down to study for the tests he had to face the next day.

Two hours later, sleep began to seem more valuable than reading over material he already knew. Still nervous over the interrogatories, he finally fell asleep an hour later.

At midnight, the sudden ringing of his phone jerked him awake. He glared at the clock and then saw Dr. Wentz’s name on the phone. Hello?

The Austrian’s voice came fast, shaky, and thick with accent. "Kevin, it is I, Dr. Wentz. Someone has accessed the computer files. The files. Und alle the specimen flasks—They are gone. I’m almost out of meine mind, for Gott’s sake. Come down, can you?"

After a moment, Dr. Wentz’s words sank in. I’ll be right there.

____________

The following night, Harrigan sat nervous and angry in the white marble anteroom to the chancellor’s conference hall.

Too late and too rude of the chancellor, Harrigan thought, flexing his jaw in suppressed fury, but I’ll hold my tongue for now. They had damn well better treat Dr. Wentz with respect.

Harrigan’s mind shifted into confrontation-ready mode—even violent fantasy—though his personal discipline held. Vivid memories of Ranger School flooded him.

____________

Dog-tired and too close together for proper tactical intervals, the Ranger students hesitated in crossing an icy stream. Harrigan’s ruck held blasting caps, used to detonate the otherwise inert plastic C-4 explosives carried by another Ranger candidate. His close friend Manfred Mannie Freund, a German exchange officer, waited just ahead in the formation.

Bunching up again! Harrigan mused. We’re gonna give Jenkins another excuse to explode.

To infamous instructor Sergeant Jenkins, this bunching up was an intolerable lack of tactical discipline. Jenkins brought up the rear of the formation and carried no weapon or ruck. With massive hands and a stern brow, he reminded Harrigan of a caveman. He wore three black chevrons on his sweaty camouflaged lapel and the coveted Ranger tab on his left shoulder.

Maintain your damn interval, came Buck Sergeant Jenkins’ angered shout. You scum-sucking officers... He flung the last man in the formation, a second lieutenant being tested in the role of platoon sergeant, backward several feet. ...think you can just have a preppy damn frat party... The next soldier became a blur hurtling to the ground. ...in my friggin' swamp and expect me to give you the tab. The volume and pitch of his abusive tirade continued to grow. I'm sick of you privileged, pansy dirtbags!

Harrigan was about to turn with a retort to stop the abuse of his fellows when he felt a slap on his ruck. He landed hard on his butt and was abruptly energized by fear of the blasting caps as they bounced out of his rucksack. When they did not explode, his fear became outrage.

Harrigan yanked a quick-release to shed his ruck and sprang to his feet. He lunged at Jenkins and, with his right hand, grabbed the instructor around the waist from behind. He jammed his left forearm up into Jenkins’ crotch and, on pure adrenaline, lifted the buck sergeant off his feet and slammed him head-first into a jagged stump.

Who the hell do you think you are? Harrigan screamed. You think you can shove us around ’cause the rank is off our shirts? With those words, the realization hit Harrigan: This guy is going to cream me!

Without a sound, the caveman-looking NCO ran his hand over his wound and slurped up a mitt-full of blood. He rose and spit it into Harrigan’s eyes. Momentarily advantaged, Jenkins snatched the rifle dangling from the ‘dummy cord’ that linked it to Harrigan and thrust it, muzzle first, at Harrigan’s teeth.

By trained reflex, Harrigan deflected the weapon just as it met his lips. He grabbed Jenkins’ shirt and slammed his forehead into the bridge of Jenkins’ nose. Harrigan dropped backwards to the ground, crunching his right boot in Jenkins’ solar plexus and the other in his crotch. He launched the windless instructor into the air behind him.

The fight was broken up by the Senior Ranger Instructor, Master Sergeant Gaines. What you need to learn, Ranger Harrigan, Gaines had said with almost evangelical fervor, is that we are here to prepare for war. Better learn to distinguish friends from enemies.

The admonition triggered a vision in Harrigan of himself diving into a cold river full of giant reptilian jaws. Distinguish friends from enemies, came the echo. He blinked hard, dismissed it, and continued this last patrol telling himself it was a stress-induced hallucination. But when Harrigan later pulled a coral snake from Freund’s arm, sucking away venom and spitting it into Jenkins’ face, Gaines had Harrigan and Jenkins disciplined by the Camp Commander...and Jenkins swore revenge.

The commander ordered Harrigan to assume the front-leaning rest, a stationary push-up. After the tongue-lashing with grudging praise for saving Freund and standing up for his platoon, the Captain admitted that Harrigan would receive the Ranger tab. Then he spat tobacco juice in a cup and scowled. He handed Harrigan newly faxed orders and growled, You must be special, just like you think you are. Hey, don’t medical programs start in the fall? You’re in for a major ass-kicking, starting in the middle like that. You may speak, you sawed-off little whelp.

Harrigan smiled broadly and strained to turn his head and shout his triumphantly sarcastic answer, "Yes, Camp Commander. Just like West Point, two academic majors, Officer Basic, Ranger School, and Jenkins all kicked my ass."

"Dismissed, Harrigan. One of these days somebody’s gonna kill you."

____________

Refocusing on his crisis at Harvard, Harrigan assured himself that courage and moxie would aid in facing it. He’d recover from the penalty.

He watched Wentz exit the conference room and sit, tearful and silent, next to him. Harrigan felt like hitting someone for this humbling of Dr. Wentz but told himself to cool. The massive oak door opened and the chancellor’s assistant’s face jutted out. It struck Harrigan as a pin-head and a pencil-neck.

You may come in now, Dr. Harrigan.

The assistant ducked from Harrigan’s glare and yielded the passage.

Harrigan stood rigid before the Board. Ethical-immaculates, he silently branded them.

The chancellor, visibly tired, addressed the accused. "It’s been a long thirty-some days, Dr. Harrigan, and it’s late, so I’ll come right to the point. The Board has determined that your unauthorized and unethical research was independent of that conducted to fulfill your doctoral requirements. As such, it has declined the Disciplinary Committee’s recommendation that your degree be rescinded. I concur. So, you will retain your degree.

"But it is a fact that you participated in the creation and destruction of fetuses, using University resources and donor eggs not authorized by the donors for such a purpose. The University will, tomorrow, release a press statement to that effect, announcing that all findings, data, and specimens involved have been destroyed. Those items will be destroyed after this meeting.

You and Dr. Wentz might be relieved to know that we will not disclose the origin of the specimen, since it could not be verified. But you are permanently barred from this institution and a summary of the case will be released. I doubt you’ll be able to make anything of yourself in genetics.

Your opinion, Chancellor, of my career prospects is as wrong as your ethics. You’re just trying to avoid lawsuits from me, the donors, and the Italian government. Dr. Wentz gave you years of loyal service and important discoveries, but now you kick him when he’s down. You’ve got a lot of nerve. This institution teaches abortion techniques, and its medical plan pays for RU-586. I suppose that’s appropriate. But you are hypocrites if you think my research on fetal material is any different. Hypocrites!

Harrigan fought the impulse to violence and left the room. In the anteroom, he grasped Dr. Wentz’s hand firmly.

"Should have taken my advice und gotten a lawyer. Vill you keep your Ph.D., Kevin?"

Yes. They decided to avoid a suit, but they’d better be careful how they publicize this. What will you do with your retirement, Dr. Wentz?

"Weis nicht—I just don’t know. But I want to stay away from the public for a very long time. Did you read the Science Journal article? They are saying we made hybrid fetuses und killed them. Lies. How can they view it that way? We discovered gene repair during the formation of eggs."

Wentz held Harrigan’s shoulder and resumed. "You discovered how to redeem archaic genetic material. This could be of monumental importance. Und they are destroying all the research. Imbeciles! Man was meant to study man. Wentz’s voice clogged in his throat. Now it’s all lost. Your brilliant research career ist vorbei before it’s begun." His voice turned melancholy and quiet. Wentz looked at the floor. "Und mine is ended in disgrace. I can never face friends und colleagues again. We’re beaten, finished."

"You’ve long needed a rest. Take a cruise. Maybe put your notes back together to defy these sanctimonious jerks. And don’t be so sure they’ve beaten me. As for the gene redemption process and ‘primary’ meiotic RNA discovery, they can’t take those out of my brain."

Vat vill you do now, Kevin?

I haven’t decided. My folks have been great through the controversy. I’ll visit them for a few days. Then maybe go on vacation to plan my next moves, career-wise; duck the press. If those bastards think they can wave a pen and stop me, they’re wrong.

Goot luck, Kevin. I hope you can build a life after this.

Thank you, Dr. Wentz, for everything. Don’t get despondent. It’s like Mannie Freund, my old college buddy used to say: ‘It’s how you view life.’ You do have at least one friend; I respect you and appreciate you. So, chin up, okay?

"Ja. ‘Chin up.’ That ist the way."

Harrigan smiled warmly, shook Wentz’s hand, and left.

____________

That evening Harrigan drove, stone-faced and steaming over the chancellor’s prediction, past the Cathedral of the Holy Cross toward his apartment on Union Park Street. He parked, eyeing the cathedral’s huge circular window above the arched entrance. He knew the red-stained glass depicted the figure of an English king, but it looked distinctly like a blooming rose to him now. He concluded that he was hallucinating due to stress and that it might also have been prompted by the scent of roses surrounding the Madonna statue on the cathedral lawn.

That’s odd, he mused, my windows are rolled up; no AC. Harrigan saw only dark mist. Infants weeping reverberated from a one-story, flat-roofed building below a cliff. His breath became shallow, halting. Then a glistening woman in a white gown and blue shawl appeared against a pitch-black sky. Ashes flew from a gash in the earth as dividing bubbles streamed from a jagged hole in the building’s roof. These soared behind her as a red-sashed rider on a white horse appeared in the distance. A dozen stars shone around her head, only to burst into countless suns, filling the firmament with light.

Much is at stake, son of Ephraim, she whispered in a comforting yet challenging voice, for you eternally, for all humanity. You who must choose between your prideful will and the source of redemption. Choose humbly.

He blinked, now gazing at the cross atop the cathedral. His eyes filled with tears as he considered going to confession and Mass. He let out an awkward, pitiful moan that surprised him, embarrassed momentarily for having yielded to what he thought of as superstition. He put the car in gear and proceeded to his apartment. He wrote a few to-do notes and slept. The next morning, he left for a four-day visit to his parents’ home in Connecticut.

____________

On his last morning at his parent’s Hartford home, just before light, Harrigan sat sipping coffee in the small but cozy kitchen. His father was not yet up. This morning he felt guilty that he had anticipated an I told you so attitude but encountered only moving support from both parents despite all the media criticism and debate of the last four weeks.

His mother stared at him from across the kitchen. The newspapers say all the work you were doing has been destroyed. Why?

The university said they destroyed everything because findings may only be added to the genetics body of knowledge if obtained ethically—by their self-serving definition of ethics. They didn’t want anyone to have any possible incentive for doing unauthorized research—any possibility that their work would be kept. The real reason is that they didn’t want an investigation that could enable the anonymous egg donors to sue them.

"The Time article said you were able to rejuvenate destroyed sperm. A Fossil Gene Redemption process, they called it. How could that be done?"

"It can’t, exactly. I wanted to study how sperm and eggs are produced; how the genes are assembled when they’re first created. That production process is called meiosis. For boys, meiosis occurs when they’re several years old and practically impossible to study. The sperm would have to be observed forming in living testicular filaments. But for girls, meiosis occurs while they’re still in the womb. We can study fetuses in a genetically modified pig uterus. So, fetuses are vastly easier to obtain and work with.

"For years, Wentz couldn’t get permission for an unrestricted study of meiosis. Finally, he and I just went ahead and did it, and we discovered an RNA molecule that occurs only during meiosis. We thought it may inhibit certain types of human mutation. It might also..."

Also what, dear?

Don’t talk about this, okay? I suspect it makes some traits dormant for generations. This could explain how saber teeth appear in one species of cat, skip another species that arose from the first, and then reappear in another that evolved directly from the second. Re-emergence is called atavism. It could be a key to reviving prehistoric traits of extinct animals, even human ancestors. We could only find traces of it in animals, but lots in the Ice Man. We suspect it’s even more prevalent in modern humans.

"Gawd between us and harm, Kevin!"

The Ice Man specimen offered us the chance to go further. When I discovered this new RNA, I wanted to find out whether it occurred only in humans and how far back in the development of sapiens this trait arose. I couldn’t implant any of the genes from the specimen into a modern egg, but I found a way to stretch out the convoluted genetic material without destroying it and enhance the way computer-controlled scanners could follow and read its segments. That enabled that PCR machine I showed you last year to reconstruct most of the genetic coding in the archaic sperm. It’s like this, Mom:

Harrigan grabbed a thin booklet that his father had left lying on the table. It was the instruction manual for assembling a cabinet.

Imagine you have instructions, say four pages typed, for making a cabinet. These printed pages represent the genetic blueprint of a possible baby the Ice Man might have fathered, less the egg’s half of course. Now imagine I tore each page into five or six pieces.

He ripped the booklet as his mother gasped but held her tongue.

That tearing represents the damage done to the sperm’s genetic instructions over ten thousand years. Got it so far?

I think so. You could put them back together if you could read the language. You could tell which words and sentences would make sense as you put the puzzle together. Right?

"Exactly. And we have a

Reviews for Ancient of Genes

[Dan Gallagher · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Everybody I run into, everyone who read AOG raves about it, even though it's like pulling teeth from a galloping horse to get folks who promised to get to rating it... to actually get that done. Anyway, a giant TY for all of ya!