2084 The End of Days Read Free Page A

Wars movie that she watched as a wee girl back in Glasgow. What was it called? Oh, yes - ‘The Wrath of Khan’. A crooked little half-suppressed smile crossed her lips.
    “Geeson? Are you at this fucking meeting or what? Do you find something funny?”
    “No, Ed.”
    “Look, Jill, we need to have a talk sometime this week, yeah…?”
    Jill nodded lamely in agreement knowing she would face another bollocking from Buckley.
    “Now, everyone, can we get back to business?”
    *
    Earthdate: Wednesday 09:37 January 22, 2081 GMT
    Dr Marcie Bloom Venters stood impatiently in the corridor outside her genetics lab at London’s St Bartholemew’s Hospital, known as Bart’s to all and sundry, with her mobile pressed to her ear. She kept glancing at her watch and thinking to herself, I really don’t need this. On the other end of the line was her daughter Ruthie who was calling from her office phone at the London Times. Marcie could detect that Ruthie was near to tears.
    “She treats me like some sort of paid servant, Mom. I don’t think I can take much more of it.”
    “Who do you mean, Ruthie? Is it that Jill?”
    “Uh, huh - I’ve just finished mopping up coffee from all over her desk. Sometimes I feel that she never gives me a proper job to do.”
    Marcie, under pressure to get off the phone, reverted to the New York Jewish momma that she was and became singularly unhelpful to her daughter.
    “Well, Ruthie, you know papa and I wanted you to become a doctor like us and - grandpapa before you…”
    Ruthie cut her mother short.
    “Aw, momma – I don’t need this. You know I always wanted to be a journalist -”
    “I know Ruthie, but you had the brains to do better.”
    “Momma, you’re not helping me. Look, I’ll talk to you at home tonight, okay?”
    “Okay, baby, I’m sorry. I gotta go. I’m due at a presentation in five and I’ve gotta grab my notes. See you tonight?”
    Marcie hung up first. She felt a small pang of guilt clench her stomach and she told herself that she would make it up to Ruthie tonight. Marcie would cook her daughter a nice Yiddish meal and show a real interest in her new career in journalism. But Marcie’s father, Dr Ezra Bloom, the Nobel Prize winning geneticist, would be turning in his grave in Brooklyn’s B’nai Jeshurun Jewish Cemetery to know his only granddaughter Ruth Bloom Venters left as a straight-A student from high school and decided not to enter medicine. Marcie shot into her office. She grabbed her papers and the memory stick containing her presentation on the ‘Techniques and Advantages of Super-storage of Human Procreative DNA’. She went at a gallop down the corridor frantically checking her watch as she ran. Two minutes! Fortunately, the small auditorium that had been set aside for her talk was on the same floor as her lab. A little thought niggled at the back of her mind. Her administrative boss Dr Angela Mortimer had implored her to try and keep the presentation low key.
    “Please, Marcie, don’t give the gutter press a headline.”
    Marcie literally crashed through the swing doors. The small audience of doctors, clinicians and journalists, which had been lazily chatting together, had their attention drawn to her by the hasty entrance and swiftly fell silent.
    “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Just give me a moment to get set up and then we can get started…”
    Marcie tailed off the end of her sentence as she set out her papers and inserted the memory stick into the auditorium’s computer. As she loaded up the presentation on the large screen the small hum of chatter rose again from the audience and she looked up towards the auditorium. More journalists than medicine men, she thought, they’ll be looking for that controversial headline as usual. Don’t give them the headline, she warned herself. Marcie finally had her presentation ready to go and she dimmed the lights.
    “Okay, then! Good morning everyone again…”
    The audience fell silent and all