Eden 2.1

By Steve Bancroft

Eden 2.1 is a modern-day story inspired by Mary Shelly's famous book, "Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus". It raises the questions of human efforts to understand the source of life and whether humans can have the technological ability to create life apart from

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReadersMagnet LLC
• Release date: Nov 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9798890913302

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EDEN 2.1

Steve Bancroft

Eden 2.1

Copyright © 2023 by Steve Bancroft

Published in the United States of America

ISBN Paperback: 979-8-89091-329-6

ISBN eBook: 979-8-89091-330-2

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any way by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the author except as provided by USA copyright law.

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PART I

Chapter 1

A nd that concludes class for today, says the tall, lanky professor.

Dr. Ethan Thomas steps away from the blackboard and heads to the desk at the side of the room. He is a physically attractive man in his mid-thirties. He is unusually athletic-looking for a man who spends most of his time hunched over a computer or dallying with test tubes. But he does have the practiced unkempt look of the typical professor, too absorbed to be concerned about combing his hair or matching the color and style of his clothing.

Dr. Thomas? queries a male student, walking up to the young professor.

Yes? replies the professor of genetics. He does not even look at the student, as he picks up his briefcase from the floor and sets it on the desk, while the rest of the class heads towards the door, talking with each other.

Thomas is a disinterested instructor. His passion is research, yet he is required by the college’s rules to teach at least one upper-level course. He does so with little enthusiasm. Dealing with students is an added headache. He begins placing his notes into the briefcase, barely acknowledging the presence of the student.

I am having trouble finding the resources I had planned to use for my term paper. I need an extension please.

Thomas continues to arrange the papers in his case, not even stopping or looking at the student.

Mr. Ayers, I appreciate your difficulties, but you still have three weeks before the paper is due. Don’t you think you are asking for relief a little prematurely?

I am just concerned I won’t be ready.

Thomas stops attending to his papers and looks at the student over the glasses perched precariously at the end of his nose.

I would suggest you be ready, Mr. Ayres. You know I can’t make an exception.

I...

The professor waves the student silent.

I have never relented before, he says as he turns back toward the desk, I don’t intend to begin now.

The student shakes his head in disgust and walks out, muttering to himself.

Dr. Thomas picks up the remaining papers on the desk and shoves them into the briefcase. He turns quickly and strides out of the room in seeming self-absorbed thought. As he exits into the hallway filled with students walking dedicatedly to their next class, he is approached by an older colleague.

Ethan...........Ethan.

Uh… oh, hi Chuck, he blurts, having seemed to be jerked from deep thoughts to the surprise of the presence of someone talking to him. He continues to walk. The older colleague struggles to keep up.

Are you going to that symposium by Willard this afternoon?

I’m not sure. I read his treatise last week and I don’t think he has anything worth hearing.

God! Ethan. You are tough. I realize you may be the most outstanding geneticist on campus, but a colleague at MIT doesn’t have anything to say? That’s just a little arrogant, don’t you think?

Look, Chuck, it’s enough that I have to teach wimpy students who take time away from my research. I shouldn’t have to waste more time listening to ideas I dealt with three years ago.

It might help the rest of us know you’re so far ahead if you would publish something every now and then. Or collaborate maybe?

Thomas stops and looks at the older man.

Chuck, it’s not that I feel superior. It’s that I work alone and I will publish when I have something significant to say. You’re the head of the department; are you trying to tell me something here?

No. I was just hoping the boy wonder would come out of his shell sometime. Luke has been gone 13 years now. And that is a long time to be an intellectual recluse.

It has nothing to do with Luke. But now that you mention him, he’s been the real recluse for 13 years. What’s the big deal?

He doesn’t work for MIT anymore. You do.

Again, are you saying something here?

No Ethan, I’m not. But you do understand I make great exceptions for you because you are probably going to figure all this stuff out before all the rest of us combined and working together.

If Luke doesn’t beat us all.

I thought it wasn’t about Luke.

It is when it comes to cracking the gene.

All right, all right. Get back to work.

Thank you, I will.

The two men part. Dr. Thomas walks down the hall to the elevator. He has entered his own mind world again and seems totally oblivious to everything around him as the mass of students swirl about him. He takes the elevator down to the basement of the building. He walks from the elevator, down the dimly lit hall with no natural light, to the door of his office. He unlocks the door and enters a huge lab that takes up half the bottom floor of the building. As he steps into the large room of lab tables and computers, the brightness of the modern lab contrasts sharply with the dark, ancient-looking hall. He stops and picks up the pieces of mail shoved under the door. He walks across the room to his large wooden desk which is cluttered with stacks of paper and drops the briefcase unceremoniously on the floor beside the desk. He falls into his large, leather executive swivel chair. He props his feet up on the desk, on top of all the papers, and begins looking at his mail.

One piece attracts his attention. His brow furrows in wonderment as he turns the envelope around, searching for a return address. He finds none. He rips the end of the envelope off, blows into the casement. He reaches in. A set of plane tickets fall out onto his lap. He then pulls out a letter. He opens it and reads. He lowers the letter to his lap and with the other hand, picks up the plane tickets, looking at them curiously.

Well, I’ll be damned.

Chapter 2

The door opens to the entrance of a semi-dark apartment of some elegance. An attractive woman in her middle thirties enters. She is dressed in a conservative, dark business suit. Her brunette hair is pulled back in a tight bun.

Ethan? she calls out.

Yeah, he calls back from the living room.

She closes the door and walks down a short hall into the living room, leaving her purse on a table in the hall. She starts taking off the suit coat as she crosses to where Ethan is sitting in a chair pulled up by a large window. He is looking out the window across the skyline of Boston from the 15th floor perch. As she extricates herself from the jacket and throws it casually across the back of a couch, she leans over and kisses him. As she stands back up, she looks at him quizzically, and asks, What’s the matter?

Here, read this.

She takes the letter from Ethan and begins reading out loud.

"Dear Ethan,

I suspect you will be somewhat surprised by this correspondence after so many years. I trust you are well. I knew you are still at MIT from the Internet.

I guess you have noticed the airline tickets. They are open-ended round trippers to Fiji. You have a year to use them. Once you have set a date for travel I will be informed by the airline and will meet you at the airport on Fiji.

I am asking you to come and be with me for about a month. I am at a critical juncture in my work. I am right at the point of really doing something historical, but I need one more head, thinking something out with me where I am stuck. And you’ve got the best brain I know of. Can you come and help?

If I don’t get word of you making travel reservations within the next year, well.... That’s all right.

Your friend,

Luke Carrol"

Well, the famous Luke Carrol has finally shown up? the woman says sarcastically, handing the letter back to Ethan.

Sort of, Ethan says, taking the letter and looking back out the window. It’s fairly typical of him to make himself mysterious.

I guess it’s nice to know he is alive after all these years.

I guess.

Look Ethan, Luke Carrol was your mentor, but the way he just left.... well, you don’t owe him anything.

Carla, says Ethan, standing up and walking back and forth across the room, you don’t understand. I came to MIT at age fifteen as one of those wonder kids. I was scared and snotty all at the same time. And this world-famous scientist, who didn’t even deal with undergraduates, took me under his wing and mentored me for the eight years it took me to get my PhD. I can’t explain what I owe him. He was more of a parent to me than my own parents, who have never been able to fathom me.

I know he meant a lot to you. You don’t talk about him much, but he is behind everything you do. I can tell. He has stood between you and me since we started dating two years ago. At least, I get to compete with a real person. I was beginning to think he was a made-up hero.

Ethan laughs and walks over and hugs Carla.

He’s not only real, he’s reached out and grabbed me again.

I know. You’re going, aren’t you?

Ethan lets go of Carla and looks out the window again.

He knew the way he set this up, I couldn’t resist going. He’s about to do it, and he’s teasing me into being there when he does.

He’s about to do what?

He’s found the key to understanding how genes work. He’s found the silver bullet.

How can you tell?

I can just tell. He sucked me dry intellectually before he left. I have nothing to give him and he knows it.

How can you say that? You’re close yourself.

Ethan turns back and looks at Carla with a stricken look.

When he left, I thought I was on the verge of finding the key. I thought I had it right there.

He holds up his hand, cupping it like he is holding an invisible apple. And here it is, thirteen years later and 50 dead ends later.

He squeezes his hand shut, turns it upside down, and opens it like he is dropping discarded trash. If I was going to do it, I would have by now. He knows that I am nowhere near making the breakthrough.

Ethan sits back down in the chair with an air of resignation.

He’s found something totally different from the rest of us. And now he wants to gloat a little.

He looks up at Carla with a wan look on his face.

He may have been my mentor, but we were also something like sibling rivals. We competed all the time. He’s won.

But the gene mapping has been completed. Hasn’t that opened things up?

What Luke and I work on is far deeper than mapping the genome. Their work hasn’t been of any great help.

I got to admit, Ethan, I have never really understood what you are working on. You haven’t talked to me about it much.

It’s hard to explain, so I don’t even try.

Ethan, I am a successful and sought-after lawyer. I bet I have the mental ability to understand, at least, what you are trying to do.

Ethan stands up and walks over to his briefcase. He lifts out some papers and walks back to Carla and shows her the papers with numerous mathematical equations scribbled over them.

Carla laughs, I am not a scientist, Ethan. Tell me in words.

Ethan drops the papers on the floor.

They’re useless anyway. Hundreds of dead-ends.

He drops back down into the chair.

What Luke and I do is based on the premise that there is a controlling genetic code for all genes. That somewhere, probably in the DNA, there is one......what? Something…. which is the key to understanding what makes.... uh…I can only call it… life? Look, Carla, continues Ethan, getting animated, geneticists can duplicate life. He has cloned things, but that’s just manipulation of biology. We didn’t really make anything; we just sort of short-circuited the process. We have actually produced test tube viruses. But they only emulate life. They are lifeless. They are human-made biological gadgets. What we haven’t done is actually produce life. There is a missing ingredient, or controlling agent or…….

He gestures with his hands open, shaking his head.

Whatever it is, we haven’t found that thing that controls all biological formation.

Ethan, you’re talking about the spark of life.

Exactly!

Ethan, that’s what separates us from God. We cross that boundary and.....

And we become gods?

That is a scary thought.

Maybe, but it will be done by somebody. And I think Luke has done it.

So he sends you first class round trip tickets to Fiji. My gosh, that’s $15,000 or something.

Money’s not a concern to Luke;; he’s rich as Midas. He was the only scion of some rich industrialist. Money is play stuff to him. In fact, much of what I have, he waves his hands indicating the apartment, he just gave to me. When he left, he just left it all with me.

So you are just going to go.

Yes, I’ll go as soon as the semester is over.

And what about us?

Carla, I’ll be back. He just wants to show me what he has done. You can stay here at the apartment. Who knows, now that Luke isn’t haunting me anymore, now that I have lost the race, I might even marry you.

He laughs.

I’ll believe that when it happens.

Chapter 3

Ethan Thomas looks younger than his 36 years, and has stayed trim and athletic through vigorous basketball games with students, his one social interaction with the students. His competitive nature undergirds most of his life. As he walks into the small, airy terminal of Fiji, after the long flight from the States, he hardly looks the worse for wear. He’s a seasoned traveler.

After going through customs, he walks into the main terminal carrying his bags and looking for Luke. He spots a figure standing in the middle of the terminal, just looking at him. It may have been 13 years but Luke hasn’t changed that much. He is less robust, and seems a little stooped, but it was Luke Carroll. Ethan walks over to him.

Thanks for coming, Ethan, says the older man, acting like he was meeting a friend for coffee.

Ethan stands facing the shorter man, but doesn’t put down his bags to shake his hand...which Luke isn’t offering anyway.

Luke, you knew I couldn’t stay away, if there was any chance to see if you are where I think you are.

Luke laughs.

I figured you would be interested.

But here on Fiji, Luke?

Actually, no. We have a little more traveling to do.

Where to?

An island I have, a couple of hundred miles from here. I have a float plane over in the harbor. I’ll fly us to Eve’s Island.

Luke turns and starts to walk. Ethan follows and pulls beside him.

Eve’s Island?

Yes. That’s what I’ve named the island.

As the two men are flying over the ocean, Ethan is looking out the window at the expanse of water speeding by below them.

You haven’t queried me even once, Ethan.

About what?

About why I asked you to come. Why I left. Anything.

Okay. Why did you leave?

I was stifled. The college situation wasn’t freeing at all. It was grooving me into thinking the same way over and over again. No new ideas. No creativity. You gave me nine years of possibilities, but when I saw you, the smartest student I ever had, becoming just like the rest of us, I knew I had to get away to do anything important. It was the only way to think out what I was doing wrong.

"Did you find out?’

Yes, I did.

I figured you would if you weren’t dead.

I’m sorry about just disappearing like that, but it was the only way I could just leave everything behind and start new. I needed to start totally new to think new.

Look, you didn’t owe me anything.

I know that. But it was a little callous. And for that I’m sincerely sorry.

Okay. That handles the past. Now are you going to tell me what you’ve done?

Actually, my boy, I’m not. I’ll let you see for yourself. We’re coming up on Eve’s Island now.

Ethan looks out where Luke is pointing. It is a dark green mountainous island about three miles round. It is beautiful, but not extraordinary for an island in this part of the world. In fact, it looks deserted.

Luke banks the plane over and approaches the island straight on. He lands the plane in a half-moon-shaped lagoon several hundred feet from a large beach and taxis the plane across the water, right up onto the beach. He stops the engine. Ethan wonders where the buildings are. To his right, he notices a person running toward them. At that distance he couldn’t make out much, but as the person nears, he is able to tell it is a young woman.

As she gets nearer, he is able to see that she is a beautiful, lithely athletic woman in her early twenties. She is running strongly and smiling broadly. But the most interesting thing about her is that she is stark naked, and her body is femininely provocative with womanly attractions. Her skin is deeply tanned with no tan lines, contrasting starkly with her wild, short blond tresses. But most stunning was that she was erotically clean shaven.

You can close your mouth now, Ethan, Luke laughs.

"My God, Luke, who is that?

That’s Eve. She’s my daughter.

What? cried Ethan, you were never married, and she is clearly older than 13 years of age.

"I’ll explain later. But for now try to be somewhat much cooler than you are being. She has not seen anyone else but me for thirteen years. As you can see, we are used to a rather pristine and Edenic existence here. Clothes