MAN FROM TOMORROW
CHAPTER 14: THROUGH THE KEYHOLE

There were sounds coming from the room. He quickly sneaked up beside the closed room. He knelt down and looked through the keyhole. Inside, he could see a man standing and threatening an elderly person seated on the chair. The man on the chair must be Norman Spencer. The room appeared quite spacious. Martin thought two more men to be present in that room. The fact that the door was not locked nor anyone was guarding it showed that the attackers were not expecting anybody. Martin studied the door. It was a thin plywood. He made a mental image of the room inside. He stood up and pointed the gun to the closed door at an angle.

He was taking aim through the closed door at the Man threatening Norman. He hoped that whoever else was in the room would be taken aback by the attack. That would be enough time for Martin to do his thing. Martin took a deep breath and fired. Immediately after firing at the doorknob, he burst into the room. The man threatening Norman had his brains already blown off. His body was in the process of hitting the ground. One guy was at the window opposite Martin and the other was behind the now dead man. Both had a look of surprise on their faces. They had never expected a door to fire a bullet and kill their accomplice. As soon as Martin entered, they realized what was happening. The guy in front of the window was already a dead man. He took three slugs in his chest before he hit the windowpane behind him. The other guy was swinging his gun towards Martin when Martin bent his wrist slightly to adjust aim and shot the guy in the eye. The guy was dead even before he knew it. It is said that a man’s muscles reflexively contract just before death. The same thing happened to the last guy. His gun was swinging into position when the muscles in his fingers wrapped around the trigger contracted microseconds after Martin’s bullet pulverized his brain. This let a bullet out towards Norman Spencer, who had jumped to his feet just as Martin had entered the room. By the time the third guy hit the floor, Norman felt a sharp jab on the Right side of his abdomen. He fell back into the chair.

But he was alive. Martin knew this because the old man coughed.

Martin rushed to his side, kneeling down to examine the bullet wound in his abdomen. It appeared that the bullet had pierced his liver. But one could not be sure. Not here.

“Norman?” he asked. The man didn’t open his eyes.

“Ma-Martin…,” he stuttered, hardly more than a whisper. “In- In the drawer.” He said.

Martin didn’t have much time to think. He needed to replace the information Norman wanted him to have.

Next to Norman, a drawer remained open, the papers were torn out, but it was the first place Martin looked. He pulled it all the way open and noticed that whoever came searching before him had not discovered the false bottom which lay undisturbed at the bottom of the drawer. As it was improperly set in place, Martin pulled it free with ease. The secret compartment was as messed up as the rest of the drawer, but there was a small silver box at the bottom. He opened it up to replace a blue flash drive, and on it written in black sharpie was one word: ‘ Key’.

Martin took it. He quickly searched the bodies of the dead men. He didn’t replace anything of significance. He did not take anything from their body, lest that be traced back to him later. Two of the dead appeared to be of Korean descent. The other, the one who died by the window appeared to be a Latino muscleman. Martin hauled up Norman over his shoulders. Norman was writhing in pain. Martin left the room with Norman on his back without another look. He needed to get back to Anita and figure out what it was that Norman wanted him to know. But first, he needed to save Norman. His thoughts were scattered when he ran from the house and toward the Jeep.

He opened the driver’s door to the Jeep and something felt wrong. He looked inside.

“Anita?” He called, but there was no response.

She was gone. And since he knew there was no way Anita would leave, he discerned she was taken. But by whom?

Martin wanted nothing more than to search for Anita then and there, but he knew it was futile. He had Norman with him and the key, whatever it was. And if it was truly ‘the key’, whoever had taken Anita might contact him. For now, he had to take advantage of this new resource.

Norman was writhing in pain.

‘This guy is wounded as shit’, Martin thought. He needs surgery.

“Come man lets go to a hospital!” Martin exclaimed. He laid Norman on the passenger seat, adjusted it to recline. He took the steering and hit the gas pedal as forcefully as he could. Within no time he was on the highway that would take him to a hospital.

His thoughts were disturbed by his cell ringing. He looked at the screen in hopes that it was Anita calling, but it was an unknown number. He picked it up, saying nothing.

“Martin Phillips, listen to me and listen very carefully.” Martin suddenly broke into a sweat hearing the authoritative voice.

“I have Anita in my possession, so it would be in your best interest to do as I ask,” he said.

The man didn’t threaten Martin or Anita, he didn’t need to. The authority and power in his voice were enough.

“What do you want?” Martin asked.

“I know you have ‘the key’ that I want regarding Joseph Cooper. If you are not present at my location by tonight, there will be dire consequences,” he said, now threatening.

The rest of their conversation was short and to the point. Martin retrieved the address he was expected to be at, and then listened to the man speak for several more minutes. Then the man hung up on his own. Martin released a breath when the line went dead.

“Don’t bother about me, go to Washington,” Norman said. Martin looked at him half-amazed. “How the hell do you know I have been called to Washington?” Norman gave a grin-in-pain indicating that he knew.

“But you need urgent medical attention!”

“Move to Washington first. You can drop me on the way somewhere into a hospital. This wound isn’t much, just a flesh wound; the bullet is stuck in the abdominal muscle”.

“You sure about that, old man?” Martin lifted Norman’s hand from over the wound. It was not bleeding. It appeared to have stopped. Martin wanted to take this man to the ER-Emergency Room. But this old man was insisting otherwise. Moreover, there was the problem of Anita and ‘The Key’. Martin pushed the throttle hard and took the I-95 S expressway to D.C.

Martin had so many questions to ask this man, he did not know where to begin with.

“So… what’s your story old man?” Martin wanted to know more about this man before he revealed anything about himself.

The city was now quite some distance behind them. The road was moving under them at a fast pace.

Professor Norman Spencer began to narrate his story “I am. Well, I was a Senior Scientist at NASA. Over the years I’ve participated in a variety of important research and projects with NASA. The quest for the colonization of Mars was the most difficult task I or my group ever faced. To cut things short, we started the process of creating Superhumans who could live on Mars in place of normal humans. It was known as Project 209. We manipulated human genes, created embryos and implanted them in human surrogates. These superhumans grow much faster than humans. Over a period of many years, we developed a near-perfect model of Superhumans for space exploration

“And the Government allowed for it?” Martin asked with raised eyebrows.

“Hell! It was a Government project, Martin! These Superhumans were adapted for possible life on Mars and would face no problems living there. Unlike normal humans, they hardly need any assistance. They could be exposed to extreme conditions and yet lead a normal life. Just think of it. Normal human being exposed to the atmosphere on Mars will not last five minutes. That is because the atmospheric pressure on Mars’ surface is the same as that found thirty-five kilometers above the earth. Mars’ atmosphere is too thin for humans to survive, let alone breathe. That means a human being will simply explode if he steps into Mars’ atmosphere without any protection. Whereas the Superhumans we created could survive up to an hour in the Martian atmosphere without protection. Provided they have oxygen to breathe. So, there is no need for any heavy and clumsy spacesuit. Just an oxygen mask will be enough.

“What would happen to them after an hour on Mars?” Martin queried

Norman gave a faint smile- “They would collapse because their blood pressure would then be too low to sustain body functions.” And continued.

“In addition to this, it was planned that these superhumans, if the experiment became a success, would be used to explore the depths of space that a human could not live to see. We could reach into the far frontiers of the Solar system and beyond. With the Superhumans, we could colonize in decades what we ourselves cannot think of doing for centuries.

Martin nodded his head in agreement. The advantages were fantastic indeed.

“Why Project 209? Any particular reason for that number 209?” Martin was in intrigued.

“If you examine closely, the number 209 is the product of two prime numbers”

“Yeah, 19 and 11,” Martin interjected. He may not be an ace in biology, but Mathematics was Martin’s forte.

“Correct. If you go through history, the concept of Eugenics took off in the USA before anywhere else. There was one institute called The Eugenics Record Office or the ERO to which every serious effort towards eugenics can be traced. The ERO located in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, was a center for eugenics and human heredity research. Now it so happened that The ERO was founded in 1911 by a group of biologists. It was one of the leading organizations in the American eugenics’ movement. ERO collected masses of family pedigree data, statistically analyzed them and formed committees to look into how we can better the human race. More specifically, American stock.

“I get it.” Said Martin. “ERO was established in 1911. You people took 19- the first two digits of 1911. Then you multiplied it by 11, the last two digits of 1911. And you get the number 209. Pretty clever”.

“What’s your story?” Norman asked.

Martin was thinking of what to tell Norman and what not to. But then he thought ‘what the hell!’

Martin started to narrate in detail what had happened from the time he was called in to handle Joseph or Kevin’s case at the FBI office until the moment he came to meet Norman.

After Martin had recounted his ordeal, there was an engulfing silence. Neither He nor Norman wanted to break it. None of them wanted to let go of the cozy comfort the Silence provided.

“So, Kevin was indeed created by you then?” Martin said rhetorically.

“Yes, Martin. We did. In fact, Superhumans were not the only ones we created for space exploration”.

“What do you mean?”

“We had even created Super plants- plants, giving a higher yield and capable of growing in Extraterrestrial conditions. And also, Super-animals.”

“Animals like what?”

“Super-dogs and Super-monkeys. To assist the Superhumans. There were plans to draw up a road map to create a super ecology in a super biosphere ultimately resulting in the Terraforming of Mars.”

“Terraforming?”

“Terraforming is the process of artificially transforming a planet’s temperature, atmosphere, surface features or ecology to be similar to the biosphere of Earth and make it habitable by Earth-like life.”

“What happened to that plan?”

“Existentialis Forsit ”

“Exist…Exist… What?”

“Existentialis Forsit- Latin For -the Existential Problem”

“What is that?”

“Some of the more brilliant ones among our colleagues came up with a theory. That theory is Existentialis Forsit. They said that if we build superhumans to explore deep space, we can’t expect them to terraform a planet for us normal humans to live there. That is because there will be no incentive for the Superhumans from an evolutionary standpoint. Why will they, who are adapted to conditions on Mars, Terraform it to our conditions? In fact, they may even alter Mars to suit their needs more than ours. Thus, there would be an inherent conflict of interest between us normal humans and those Superhumans. There was no answer we could come up with. That’s why the Grand Plan for a Super ecology was abandoned and we restricted ourselves to only Superhumans, and Super plants.

“I guess that brilliant colleague of yours was you yourself. What say? Am I right?”

Martin could see a faint smile on Norman in the dim light of the sparse Highway traffic.

“Tell me Doctor, your Existentialis Forsit or whatever, may have applied to Space research. Have you thought about Earth?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, you scientists are more intelligent than us common folk. Surely you must have thought about what would happen if Superhumans escaped or were let loose here on earth. They will end up extinguishing our species of normal humans, no?”

Norman looked out the window- “That’s why I created the Dioxin Lock”

“Dio… what?”

Man! It was getting difficult conversing with these Professor scientists. Even Antonio, god rest his soul, was like this.

‘Jesus, do all of you come from the same place or what?’ Martin thought to himself.

“A short while ago, when narrating your tale, you mentioned that this Kevin was suffering from some type of cancer in the terminal stage and Professor Antonio reported that no matter what, Kevin would die.”

“Yeah, right. It is in the medical report.”

“That cancer was by design. We caused it, albeit indirectly. Kevin could not have survived long outside the confines of a NASA lab. We did this by a process called Dioxin Lock.”

Martin’s eyes were on the road, but every other cell of his body was engrossed in what Norman was saying.

“See, Dioxins are a group of chemically related compounds that are commonly known as Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs). Dioxins mostly exist as by-products of accidental fires, wildfires and industrial processes such as pesticide, plastic manufacture and combustion processes such as waste incineration.

They are stubborn compounds that persist in our environment long after they have been emitted. They are primarily a result of Human activity.

Dioxins are environmental pollutants found throughout the world. They flow through our water and also persist in the air to some extent. In short, they are a symbol of advanced Human civilization. A fingerprint of our evolutionary sophistication. They accumulate in our food, mainly in the fat tissue of animals and also in plant food. Due to the all-pervading presence of dioxins, people world-wide have a background exposure. This background exposure does not affect normal human health. But it will have a devastating effect on Superhumans if they happen to be out of the NASA labs.”

“How is that?” Martin was feeling his body hair stand up on its ends.

“We genetically programmed the Superhumans to be afflicted with Cancer when exposed to Dioxin for some duration”.

Martin was stunned more than shocked. Some silence followed.

“How long a duration?”

“Well, a normal human being has to be exposed to around fifteen to twenty years to very high levels of dioxin to get any type of cancer. But if a Superhuman is exposed to even low levels of dioxin for around three months, then he will rapidly develop cancer and die because of it.”

Martin turned his head to Norman and gave an intense half-minute stare; a dawning realization was creeping upon him. “Mars, with no human activity at present and having no Dioxin, Superhumans can survive there.” Then he turned his head back to the road again.

Norman nodded in agreement. “Exactly. In short, the genes of Superhumans are locked by Dioxin and they cannot be propagated on earth. Should they even try to reproduce here on earth; their offspring will not survive this Dioxin laden environment of ours.”

“Basically, these superhumans were genetically engineered in two ways. One, so that they could regenerate in and resist extreme conditions; like space. Two, they could not survive typical Earth conditions. This means that in the case that a Superhuman was to be released or escape into our civilization by mistake; they could not reproduce and would die due to Dioxin exposure.

“Why only three months, why not say three weeks? “Martin queried.

“What if we wanted to conduct field experiments in a real human city with the Superhumans? Three months were thought to suffice for any short-term experiments in cities. Cancer isn’t an instant process, of course, and a shorter time like three weeks would render most of the superhumans useless by mistake. Moreover, the length of their survival wasn’t guaranteed. By no means were we scientists to allow any opportunity for these advanced humans to overthrow us, now or in a thousand years. And we made sure that would happen.”

Martin marveled at the ingenuity with which Norman and his ilk had manipulated and designed the genes of Superhumans.

“Why was all this done in secret?” Martin asked, knowing fully well that the answer would not surprise him. Still, he wanted to play the devil’s advocate.

“You do realize what hell will break loose if the Government went public with this. There are several issues involved. Eugenics, for starters. The project would be equated with Hitler’s racist ideologies. Then there would be the question of Human Rights, the legal status of Superhumans and so on and so forth. That is a Pandora’s box better not opened.”

“Now tell me, Professor, why are we here now? Why are we on the run? Why were, so many people killed, so much wanton destruction, why were you shot and why are goons chasing us?”

“War, Martin. It’s all because of War!”