That Nietzsche Thing Read Free Page B

Not
technically. Sure, it got you high, but not in the usual way.
Geneing was a very targeted form of gene therapy that resequenced
DNA to naturally produce opiates, or at least the neurotransmitters
involved in opiate intoxication. One hit and you were high
forever.
    Okay, suppository it was tailored with verbal
and non-verbal triggers that allowed you to turn the intoxication
on or off – a smell, a sound, a safe word – but I sure as hell
never heard of any Genies really using them. Once someone took that
shit, they were perpetually stoned out of their minds. They never
ran out of dope, never had withdrawal symptoms, never woke up the
morning after.
    Most didn’t live long enough to have regrets.
The constant flood of endorphins inevitably fried their cerebral
cortex. But most simply died of thirst or starvation, lost in the
bliss of their perpetual high.
    But those that lived long enough to want to
clean up their act, quickly discovered that there was no sobering
up from Geneing. They’d willfully modified their most basic genetic
code. The damage with irrevocable. There was no way to turn it off,
even for the Genies who chose to willfully be sober. The trigger
was always there, ready to open the floodgates of Elysium with a
single thought. They had to live with the constant, torturing
temptation ready to reclaim them. It took them all, eventually.
Geneing wasn’t just a drug, it was a terminal condition.
    And all of this, it was rumored, was the work
of one man. Some genetic scientist who’d developed the gene therapy
and unleashed it on the world. Nobody knew who he was, or why he’d
created Geneing, but many Genies spoke of him like he was the
progenitor of a new race. A Moses-like character who’d finally
freed humanity from the shackles of living.
    In these circles, he came to be known as Q. I
don’t know if it was a “Star Trek” reference, or James Bond or
something, but the title Q was soon taken up by the mainstream
news. It entered the common consciousness.
    I know it’s all but forgotten now, but back
then, Q became the whipping boy for pretty much all of society’s
ills. Who was behind the Geneing epidemic? Q. Who was responsible
for the outbreak of rampant crime? Q. Who was causing instability
in the Middle East? Q. Who’d caused the downfall of Western
Civilization? Q. Why was the Government running a deficit? Q. Who
kicked the dog? Q.
    Calling him America’s Most Wanted would be a
major understatement. NeoCons, Progs, the Salvation Army, everyone
wanted this guy dead. No one since bin Laden had such a big target
pinned to his back.
    And Vivian Montavez liked to draw curly
Q’s...
    Of course, it didn’t mean anything. If she’d
liked to draw swastikas I wouldn’t have thought she was in league
with Hitler. But all those Q’s and the girl killed so
violently...and then for her body to turn up gone...
    That was the kind of business nobody wanted
to get mixed up in.
    Certainly not a beat cop working toward his
pension.

 
     
     
     
     

Chapter 4
     
    The FBI was not short on transportation.
    Where I, as befitting my position as a
Seattle Homicide Detective, rolled in my personal, 25-year-old
Honda Accord – for which the department paid me sixteen cents a
mile – Special Agent Constantine led me to shiny new, black Dodge
Charger, one of rank of perhaps two dozen identical cars parked
under the Interstate.
    He beeped the keyless entry and opened his
substantial driver-side door. I looked down at the tinted glass of
my door. It looked like a snapshot of billowing smoke.
    “Wipe your feet before you get into my car,”
Constantine ordered as he climbed in behind the wheel. I tugged at
the door handle and found it still locked. Constantine was yanking
my chain. I wanted to tell him what I’d wipe all over his Night
Rider muscle car, but I held my tongue. All I had to bargain with
was the girl’s address. Once we were there, I’d have to scramble to
find something that would continue to