The Miracle Strain Read Online Free PDF Page A

divide and die. Through them our genes make hair grow, make stomachs digest food, produce tears and saliva, even decree our natural "death day" as surely as our birthday.
    DAN, who was now rumbling so ominously at the end of the facility, was reading the genetic inheritance of the human's cell sample in its sterile chamber: identifying every physical characteristic from color of eyes to shape of nose; highlighting every strength, from intelligence to ath leticism; predicting every disease from cystic fibrosis to cancer. The Genescope was checking for any defects outside the normal tolerances. Making sure there were no spelling mistakes that could corrupt this human's sentence of life.
    Suddenly the tone of its rumbling changed and the cat's-eye lights on its neck went out one by one, until only the red standby light remained. The Genescope had completed its task. It had translated all three billion letters of this particular human's genome, checking each and every one of her 99,966 genes.
    In a matter of hours the Genescope had decoded the genetic sentence of life that defined the human organism known as Holly Carter, and in so doing had read her death sentence.
    Two hours and thirty-six minutes later the wake was over. Tom Carter had put Holly to bed and now found himself driving Jasmine Washington into the GENIUS campus. The guards in the gatehouse waved him through, just as the headlights of his vintage Mercedes SEL picked up the chrome letters on the black corporate sign:

GENIUS BIOTECH DIAGNOSTICS
    Your Genes. Your Future. Your Choice.
    Driving up the frosty drive, he passed the silhouettes of the protein shed to his right and the small fountain in the center of the lawns. Ahead of him the pyramid loomed large. Ignoring the underground parking lot, he pulled up by the main door.
    "You still want to go through with this, don't you?" said Jasmine beside him. "Jeez, Tom, for a smart guy, you can be really stupid."
    He turned off the ignition. "You still don't understand. This isn't something I want to do. Christ, it's the last thing I want to do, but I've got to do it. You don't have to come with me, Jazz."
    "Yeah, right." Jasmine gave a weary sigh, getting out of the car and slamming the heavy door behind her. "I still don't see--"
    "I've told you, Jazz. The glioblastoma multiforme they found in Olivia's brain wasn't that different from my mother's astrocytoma."
    "Okay, so Olivia had a brain tumor, but she's dead now, and nothing you can do will bring her back."
    Tom shook his head, too tired and numb to argue. Jasmine was brilliant but hated ambiguity. Everything was either black or white, right or wrong--like the binary code that formed the basis of most of her computer language. Even her illogical faith in God was an irrefutable fact as far as she was concerned. Walking to the main glass doors, Tom placed a hand on the DNA sensor and waited for the hiss as the doors identified him and opened.
    "At least what happened meant Olivia didn't suffer for long," Jasmine said behind him, her voice softer now.
    Tom nodded at the two guards and walked across the marble floor, past the IT Section to the bank of glass-fronted elevators. "But, Jazz, that's the whole point," he said. "I don't want to see Holly suffer in the same way my mother did, and Olivia would have done. Don't you see? We now know that those brain cancers have a complex genetic component. I ducked the bullets which killed Olivia. And I've ducked the genes that contributed to my mother's cancer, because of the healthy set I inherited from my father. But Holly might have inherited a defective set of genes from Olivia and a bad set from my mother---via me. If she has, then I need to know."
    Jasmine fell silent as Tom walked into the elevator and pressed button number 2. The doors closed and as the elevator soared silently past the mezzanine level to the next floor, he watched the atrium and the guards shrink below him. In the quiet he could hear Jasmine's