The Day of the Double Helix... page 2
The media asked Storveld how he lived and how he felt about it. He told them about the changes in his career, and that he didn’t mind them much at all. They asked him if he was glad to be alive instead of Starvold, the real scientist, and Storveld said “no, not particularly. He’d probably have been a better scientist and enjoyed it much more.”
“That is very selfless of you,” a reporter told him, “most people in your situation would not have felt that way. And yet, you have the DNA of a criminal. It looks like you are the opposite of your DNA, it looks as if you have escaped your genetic destiny. How did you do it?”
If Storveld had given an answer—any answer—he would have become an instant celebrity. He would have become the new self-help sensation, writing books full of fictional people who said “I was genetically _________, but with Storveld’s teaching, I escaped my predestination and became the _________ I had always wanted to be. I am a real person, and you too can be like me.”
But Storveld, unlike Lucas’ robot, knew nothing of P.R. Storveld thought that if he told the media the truth, their curiosity would be satisfied, and they’d grow bored and leave him alone. He said “I don’t know. I still don’t believe it’s possible to be something other than what you are—what your DNA is. My ‘escape’ from destiny is still as much of a surprise to me as it is to you.”
This left the media with an unanswered question: how did Storveld escape his DNA? Since Storveld didn’t know, the media turned to people who knew the most about DNA and behavior: the experts.
In theory, the experts were on a never-ending quest for the truth about DNA. In reality, their jobs were based on the assumption that DNA completely dictated behavior. And so the large salaries that they got from their jobs depended on that assumption. Their salaries were large enough to enable their families to live off them, so their families depended on the job that depended on the assumption that DNA dictated behavior.
The experts liked truth about DNA. Truth about DNA got them money, fame, and Nobel Prizes. Truth was good, as long as it didn’t contradict the all-important assumption on which their jobs and families depended.
So when the media asked one of these experts how Storveld had escaped his DNA, the expert said, “DNA rules humans like the laws of physics rule the universe. A human can’t escape DNA any more than a rock can fall upwards. All claims of levitation and ‘spirit’ aside, it has never happened and never will. Storveld did not escape his DNA. Why, Storveld himself does not believe he had escaped.”
“But the truth is, he has criminal DNA but has not committed any crimes! In fact, he seems to be a gentle, simple person. How do you explain that.”
“First of all, he’s a complex human being. He isn’t entirely composed of criminal DNA. Simply because his criminal DNA hadn’t yet manifested itself in his actions doesn’t mean that it isn’t there, or that it would never come out.
“Are you saying Storveld’s existence is even now putting innocents at risk?”
“Yes, most definitely. The longer he lives the larger the risk. People should do something about that.”
“Are you saying Storveld should be killed?’
“Yes, that is what I’m saying.”
And so, the experts’ opinion became everyone’s opinion. The people Storveld passed on the street thought he should die. His employers thought he should die. His mother e-mailed him and told him that although she knew he should die, she loved him anyway. Storveld was sure that not all mothers were so loving and he felt lucky to have such a good one.
Storveld agreed with them. Storveld, the criminal, valued society’s more than he valued his own life. If he was hurting people by being alive, then by all means, they should kill him.
But no one could kill him. There was no one left alive who had the killer gene within them. Most could kill in self-defense, some could kill for revenge, but no one could kill for politics or law or religion, which was why there was no war.
In theory, Storveld should die. But there certainly wasn’t anyone alive who could kill for a theory!
But the longer Storveld lived the more people feared him. How could they know he wasn’t doing something evil? Maybe he was hiding his crimes from them? But if he was hiding crimes now, could it be that he has hid his crimes all along? Wasn’t the idea that Storveld committed crimes and hid them more believable than the idea that Storveld’s criminal DNA has not affected his actions at all?
The people with the most money and the most fear decided to find out. They hired private detectives, all of whom ached to solve a “real crime” like the kind described in history books. The called the police and demanded that they do their jobs.
They discovered Storveld’s entire life, but no crimes, so they called the media with their results and Storveld’s entire life became public knowledge.
Business and industry wanted to know if Newmat had really failed or if Storveld had sabotaged it.
If he sabotaged Newmat, what did he hope to gain by it? Maybe he did it for pure malice, because he can? Maybe he enjoyed watching the economic upset the Newmat disaster caused? This all seemed like the wild speculation until it was discovered that Storveld had taken a job with another plastics company and offered to “fix” whatever was wrong with Newmat for money.
The police and detectives admitted it was a distinct possibility that Storveld permitted the Newmat disaster to occur. Giving the secret to his company would only have earned him his regular pay. Withholding the secret and pretending to search for it would still earn him his salary, but by withholding the secret he could earn his salary, then sell the secret of functional Newmat to someone else, for additional money. The fact that he was turned down didn’t mean the motive wasn’t there.
The police and detectives insisted that this was just an unproven theory and they would be unprofessional if they jumped to conclusions. But the people who watched the news weren’t professional police or detectives. They believed they were just viewers and that their opinions didn’t matter. So they saw nothing wrong with watching the news and saying “I think he did it.”
Because of the concerns the corporations brought up, people called and e-mailed the sources of their news and brought up the death of Storveld’s wife. They wanted to know had she really fallen down those stairs or did he push her?
Because of the things the media was saying about Newmat and his dead wife, Lucas came out of hiding to e-mail Storveld. Lucas wanted to know if Storveld had considered all the ways graduate school could help his career, and would he consider MIT?
Storveld told the media to tell the corporations that he couldn’t save Newmat because he wasn’t the scientist Starvold. He told the media to tell the public that if he hadn’t wanted his wife he would have divorced, not killed her, and that his relationship with his wife was none of their business anyway. He e-mailed Lucas back and told him he didn’t need graduate school or a career because the media had paid him more than enough for the interview that he regretted agreeing to already.
The corporations insisted they will discover the truth. The public assumed he was a vile beast masquerading as a man. Lucas said his offer still stood in case Storveld ever got bored, in which case Lucas would give him “diverse and intriguing” things to do.
One day Storveld came back form a shopping trip to find a thin well-dressed man already in his room. Storveld was about to ask the man who he was and how he got in, but man interrupted: “I came here because of my faith. I appeal to that faith now, that states that only Lucifer is a creature with no good within him. I appeal to the best qualities within you! I realize that you may feel helpless, unable to do anything about the commotion that you have started, but I came to tell you that there is something you can do! It will be hard, it will be a sacrifice, and you will hate me for telling you, but if you do this one thing, you can change the world for the better. You can fix everything! I know you know you are a criminal. You know you are a criminal. We both believe criminals should die. You also know that no one can kill you. You are the only one who can kill you—the only one who could bring this world justice, the only one who could lift this weight off our shoulders. You know you can. I’m asking you to.”
Storveld was already angry at this intruder for intruding. Now he walked up to that intruder and punched him.
The man would have ducked if he had seen it coming, but he had really expected Storveld to kill himself.
He was a thin man, and his body didn’t have much inertia.
There was an open window behind him.
He fell through it.
The media reported the facts about this event as they saw them: Storveld pushed an intruder out the window.
Then the media killed time by discussing wether Storveld was driven by society to act according to his criminal genes, or if he had just done to the intruder what he had already done to his wife. But the basic assumption in either argument was the same: Storveld was an active criminal.
A human being hadn’t been deliberately killed by another human being for many, many years, and society had to rediscover how it was done. Storveld spared them the trouble and had a heart attack while was reading about the preparations for his assassination in an Internet newspaper.
No one would have cared, but both DNA analysis that had been attributed to Storveld had stated that he had a such a strong heart that he couldn’t have a heart attack.
People searched the computers for the answer to this paradox, and found none. Then someone had the idea of doing a DNA test on Storveld’s body rather than searching for the truth in the computers.
The post-mortem DNA analysis showed that Storveld was neither a scientist nor a criminal, but an artist. He had never developed his artistic side because he had been sheltered from things like art, things that scientists didn’t need, and then he had tried to hide from the rest of world entirely when he thought he was a criminal. He had a weak heart.
After all has been said and done, Storveld had escaped his genetic destiny, having been both a scientist and a killer, but never an artist.
The DNA experts lost their jobs.
The detectives were lynched by a mob composed of people who had overcome their genetic aversion to killing by spending several hours psyching themselves up to it. When they lynched the detectives, they were too far-gone to even remember what they did the next day.
The media no longer had a lack of interesting stories.
DNA testing continued, but people paid it as much heed as if it were Astrology.
The people turned over all their computers to Lucas’ robot.
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Last modification of this site: November 27, 1997
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