The Zen Gene Read Online Free PDF Page B

was not used to such blatant disrespect and there was a shaft of hatred in his steady gaze.
    “Here is my diagnosis. Before your warrior left for unknown foreign lands to kill unknown foreign people, he caught his wife heroically doing’ the neighbour and this, understandably, dampened his enthusiasm.”
    He leaned back in the chair and expelled a long breath of frustration. What a waste of time, he thought.
    “His wife has not cheated on him Doctor,” he said. He spoke with such absolute certainty he suspected Western had checked personally.
    “Colonel you are missing my point. It does not matter if his wife has or has not cheated on him. That’s not what I am trying to tell you. The point, Colonel Western, is that the human mind is not a perfect sphere of understanding there are dark recesses and sub-basements and all manner of experiential unknowns. My guess, and that is all it will ever be, is that your soldier has a debilitating case of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The point I am trying to make clear is that I understand this soldier is important to your ‘mission’ but, in this case, it is simply ‘ too bad you lost one.’
    With counseling and proper care people with PTSD can and do recover. I sincerely hope this man recovers but I find it hard to believe that an individual soldier is so important he can’t be replaced. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you. Please arrange my transportation back to Thunder Bay.”
    He stood up and looked down at the man seated before him and watched his face as it lost a bit more colour. Whatever is going on here, he thought, they are taking it very seriously. The Colonel looked like he was making a decision and he hoped he was deciding to either tell him what was going on here or let him get on a plane and go home.
    “Doctor Mann, if Sergeant Peters was the problem we could certainly replace him, but Peters is not the problem.”
    He waited.
    “Our problem is the sixteen soldiers with the same problem,” he said, “sixteen that we know about.”
     

Chapter 3
    High Lights
     
    September 20 2020
     
    Tyler rode into the backyard and dropped his bike on the grass and the rear wheel was spinning as he ran into the house. The door slam echoed behind him as he ran through the kitchen and into the living room where he shrugged his book-laden backpack onto the couch. Homework could wait. This was the second week of school and he was already sick of it.
    The house was a small post-war bungalow with two bedrooms on the main level and a full basement. It was the style of home contractors were encouraged to build by the thousands for soldiers returning from World War Two. Andrea chose it because the rent was reasonable and she liked the rural location. It looked out upon farm fields from two sides and it was at the end of the street so there was almost no traffic.
    His bedroom was in the basement and the first thing he needed to do was check his email. He unlocked his bedroom door and flipped on the light switch which turned on a low wattage bedside lamp and began the boot sequence for his computer. When it booted he typed in his password and checked his email, he was hoping for a reply from Tomo Labs in Seoul. He was sure that Han, the head of research, believed his story that he was a gene researcher at UBC looking for an industry partner for product development. It helped that he had a UBC email address; he got it by hacking the account of an elderly English Professor. When he checked the account he was disappointed that there was nothing from Han but then he remembered it was the middle of the night in Korea.
    Checking the time he estimated he had two hours before Andrea came back from her job. That was good because he needed to turn on the agitator and check temperatures. He wanted to be back before she got home, and two hours should be enough time to do what was needed.
    It made him anxious if he ran late because he would have to think up reasons why he was not at home when