Fingerprint, voice recognition, retinal scan. I had the whole security thing down and was first on our floor this fine, bright Saturday morning. Dropped into the post-doc office to log the week’s Crimsy observations, add some sources to my thesis bibliography, and squeak out another couple pages of scientific prose. Then down the hall to the conference room, where I clicked on the lights, turned on the projector, and watched the image aboard the space station resolve.
“Holy shit,” I said. I looked at the oxygen measurements. “Double holy shit.” I texted the team. “A very green Crimsy is producing oxygen!” The methane measurements were correspondingly way low, almost nil.
And doing all these great things in the second set of cultures, where we were gradually ratcheting carbon dioxide down and nitrogen up, originally in the hyperbaric chamber, but which we had since transferred into glove box three. Crimsy was growing beyond the agar again, too, making each Petri dish look like a St. Patrick’s Day cookie or a wee Leprechaun’s front lawn. I wouldn’t have predicted this result: both gases were off what we thought was a best match for Earth’s atmosphere billions of years ago. But science is as science does, and what I may have been witnessing was the first scientific evidence that everything we thought we knew about Earth’s atmosphere back then was wrong. The first set of cultures in the other glove box looked about the same, even a little pekid, producing methane with no measurable oxygen.
“Pix please!” Dr. Shonstein replied to my announcement.
“Absolutely,” Dr. Brando said.
Levitt, Marcum, and Cooper replied with variations and please-look-sees, as I sent images of Crimsy and the oxygen readings via forwarding links randomly generated for security reasons. The links allowed each cell phone to display its own 3D image on any decent projection app.
“This is fantastic,” Brando wrote, the first time he seemed truly enthused in months.
“For Mike’s a jolly good Fellow,
For Mike’s a jolly good Fellow,
For Mike’s a jolly good Feeelllow
No Academy can deny.”
That was Dr. Marcum from DC, referencing all the scientific academies that would doubtless line up to grant Mike Brando the honorable title “Fellow.”
“Brandy, you’re a shoo-in,” Levitt added.
“For what?” he asked.
“Anything you bloody well want,” Marcum texted.
“Congrats, Mike. This is huge!” Cooper.
“Yay Mike. Go Mike. Woot woot!” Shonstein.
I walked over and bent down, staring right at the green cultures in the glove box.
“Hey, Miss Jennifer,” Captain Gillory said. “Oh my god. Oh my god!” She moved toward the glove box. “When did this happen?”
“Hang on,” I said. “I need to get a pic for posterity.”
“Five two seven A B nine four,” I said, logging onto the faculty cloudcam. Then the image vanished.
“What? Captain Gillory?” I said. Texts from my team piled up.
“Link not working.”
“Image link no go.”
“???”
“*&^%$#!”
“Captain Hightower?” I said. “Commander Ryong, come in please. Deep Space Gateway. Come in please. Over.”
But they were gone, too.
Between Dr. Levitt calling everyone she could think of, Dr. Shonstein yelling “shit,” and Dr. Brando cursing the muckety-mucks and their lawyers, the office was chaos for the rest of the day. Only Dr. Cooper seemed calm, even after breaking the news to Dr. Hale. I expressed my admiration.
“I grew up in what you might call a chaotic environment,” Cooper told me, raising his eyebrow in a way he had that put the fine on a point. “Dad always said, ‘stay calm, stay alive.’” We ended up talking for an hour about our parents’ wisdom, and how long it had taken us to appreciate it.
Dr. Marcum’s science prize group was due at the White House tomorrow, and he assured us the President would get an earful about Crimsy’s vanishing acts.
“If the Secret Service lets you talk to him long enough,” Shonstein said.
Meanwhile, I became the girl who might have cried wolf. “You’re sure Crimsococcus was green?” Brando said.
“One hundred percent.”
“Not greenish?”
“Not greenish.”
“Hey.” Dr. Cooper leaned his head into the post-doc office. “My boss wanted me to convey a message.” I sat up. “He’s visiting your mom.”
“He is? I had...nobody’s said anything. He say when?”
“With all this excitement, that’s all I know.”
About “this excitement,” Dr. Levitt texted Nathaniel Hawthorn throughout the day. I went home unsure if he’d responded.
I thought I heard someone say “miss” as I walked through the Mallory lobby to my elevator. “Miss.” It was a man’s voice, twice. I turned. A man in a dark suit stood, with another man in another dark suit seated nearby. They looked right at me. I stopped.
“It’s Jennifer, right?” standing man said, approaching me. He showed me his ghost card. Paul Malone, Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation. “ID’s on your phone.” Two official-looking, government-stamped identification badges appeared on my cell. The second agent didn’t show me a business card and I was too nervous to pay attention to his name. Just Paul Malone.
“We’d like to talk to you, ma’am,” said the second agent.
“What about?” I asked.
“Maybe somewhere more private?”
“Shouldn’t you tell me what you want to talk to me about?”
“Rather not here,” Agent Malone said.
“Where, then?”
“How about your apartment?”
“I’m not in the habit of having strange guys up to my apartment,” I said.
“We’re not strange guys, ma’am,” the second agent said.
“Well, sometimes we are,” Agent Malone said. I wasn’t smiling. “Okay,” Malone said. “We understand. We’re here about the ISA. We’ll be visiting everyone on your team.”
“What’s the ISA?” I asked.
“The Invention Secrecy Act,” Malone said.
“Of 1951,” agent two said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Most people haven’t heard of it,” Malone said. He looked back at the lobby couches and chairs. “Can we sit?”
I had an idea. “Just a sec,” I said. I texted Nathaniel Hawthorn. “We meet? At my place? Half hour or so?”
We sat in the lobby and Malone opened a slender laptop.
“Tied up,” Nathaniel wrote back.
“Urgent,” I replied.
“See what I can do.”
I looked at the two agents, spreading out down here in the lobby. Some cramped quarters might mix things up a bit, especially when Nathaniel walked in.
“Can I see your ID’s again? Like, hard copies?” I asked. Both agents opened their wallets. I acted like I was looking at every detail. “I guess it’s okay.”
“What’s okay?” Malone said.
“If you guys come up. Might be better. More private.”
They looked oversized in my cramped apartment, I thought to good effect.
“What’s this Invention Secrecy Act have to do with me?” I asked.
“Look on your phone,” the second agent said. He sat on the couch. Malone stood near the window.
I saw the download alert and opened the document. “Office of Licensing and Review. US Patent and Trademark Office,” I read to myself. “SECRECY ORDER. 35 U.S.C. 181-188. NOTICE: To the applicant, legal representatives of the applicant—”
The patent applicant’s name was blacked out. But the “invention” was spelled out in detailed patent-ese: “A microbial life form returned from the planet Mars otherwise known as Crimsococcus halocryophilus—”
“The appropriate Government agency has notified the Commissioner for Patents that an affirmative determination has been made by the Government agency, identified below, that the national interest requires this Secrecy ORDER,” I continued reading, glancing at my guests, number two watching me from where he sat on my small couch, Malone standing and looking out the window like a real G-man. “Whoever shall...with knowledge of this ORDER and without due authorization, willfully publish or disclose or authorize or cause to be published or disclosed the INVENTION...shall, upon conviction, be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned for not more than two years, or both.”
“Consider yourself served,” agent two said.
“What’s this even supposed to mean?” I asked. “We haven’t been allowed to talk about Crimsy since she docked at Deep Space Gateway.”
“Who’s Crimsy?” Malone asked.
“The Invention,” I said.
“We don’t know anything about that,” agent two said. “All we know is that some person or business tried to patent whatever you guys found, and the government agency checked off on that secrecy order thinks a patent could adversely affect national security.”
“Which government agency?” I asked. Each one listed on the order—Army, Navy, Air Force, Department of Science, Department of Justice, Department of Defense, Homeland Security, NASA, and Other—had a checked box next to its name.
“Looks like all of ’em,” said Malone, looking at his phone. “Haven’t seen that before.”
“I still don’t understand,” I said. “Our lawyer said Crimsy was already classified. Top secret or something. Is this why?”
“Couldn’t be,” agent two said. “We just got that order.”
“Don’t know what your lawyer’s talking about,” Malone said, settling in next to his partner on my spring-challenged couch. “The Patent Commissioner doesn’t have authority to classify something unless someone tries to patent it first.”
“Then who...” My phone buzzed. Nathaniel Hawthorn’s bright face greeted me. I buzzed him onto the elevator. “525,” I texted. “Down hall to right.”
“You were asking,” Malone said.
“If Crimsy’s not classified, why does anyone care if someone patents her?”
“The patent’s the trigger,” the second agent said. “The ISA authorizes a secrecy order on any patent application deemed sensitive to national security.”
“Maybe Crimsy—is that what you call it— maybe Crimsy is a biohazard,” Malone said.
“How?”
“Could be used as a bioweapon.”
“How?” I asked. “Crimsy’s non-pathogenic.”
Door buzzer. Then a firm, old-fashioned knock.
“Ma’am, if that’s…”
I opened the door to Nathaniel. He stepped in, gallantly in my opinion. Nothing more dashing than a Seattle man in an Aquascutum trench coat, belt askew, hair mussed. The two men on my couch, their knees riding high, looked at him. He looked at them. They sat (sank was more like it); he stood. And while my place was cramped before, it was downright claustrophobic now.
“This is my—our lawyer,” I said. “Nathaniel Hawthorn.”
“Who—” Nathaniel asked, as Malone leaned forward with his ghost card again.
“Check your phone,” the second agent said.
“FBI?” Nathaniel said, looking at the IDs on his cell. “Let me guess. ISA.”
“Just a friendly visit,” agent two said. “We have to notify everyone.”
“So you knew about this?” I asked.
“Nobody’s applied for any patents,” Nathaniel said.
“In fact, someone has,” agent two said. “We just served your client a secrecy order which bars her from disclosing any information about the Invention.”
“Who applied for a patent?” Nathaniel said.
“We don’t have that information,” Malone said.
“Sparks? SpaceTek? Someone from the Consortium?”
“No idea.”
“We’ll challenge it,” Nathaniel said boldly. “First Amendment. Fourth Amendment. Unlawful seizure. Wrongful taking.”
“We just work here,” Malone said. The two agents pushed themselves up from my couch.
Then I remembered Molly Cukor. “It’s not gonna matter,” I said. “There’s a story coming out.”
“Not about this,” agent two said.
“They’ve already announced it,” I said. “Cosmic American.”
“There won’t be any stories,” Malone said. “You two have a good day.” They let themselves out.
“Did you lie to us?” I asked Nathaniel. He walked over and indicated one of my two dining room chairs. I nodded. He sat.
“No,” he said. “I predicted.” He stood up. “Mind if I take off my coat?”
I held out my hand and he gave it to me. I tossed it on the couch.
“We were trying to head this off,” he said. “We predicted, rightly it looks like, that if word got out about what you found, there’d be a patent stampede.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“My bosses. ERC. The Executive Research Committee.”
“A committee? Who’s on it?”
He looked at the wall.
“Who’s on it? Don’t we have a right to know?”
“Yeah. Okay. You wanna know?”
“You owe us that much.”
“Ask Dr. Levitt.”
“She knows? I’ve never heard her mention this committee.”
“Why would she?”
“If it’s so important that it can direct you to lie to us.”
“That’s where you and I see things differently. I’ve been trying to protect you. And since my efforts—ERC’s efforts [sounded like irk]—have apparently failed, you and your team are hopelessly screwed.”
“I thought you said you were going to challenge the order.”
“And I will. But it could take a year. Years. Meanwhile, you’re down here and the thing you’re researching is up there. And up there is where it’s gonna stay until this is resolved.”
I sat in the other dining room chair. “She turned green,” I said. “Full-on, photosynthetic, oxygen-making green.”
“Hmm?”
“Crimsy is probably the progenitor of all life on Earth.”
“What turned green?”
“The cultures. The colonies. Aboard DSG. They were green and we were detecting oxygen, until your Committee or whoever cut us off. Again.”
Nathaniel looked at me.
“Cut communication with the space station. Like flipping a switch.”
He kept looking.
“They cut us off.”
“Don’t know anything about that,” Nathaniel said. “ERC doesn’t control what goes on up there.” He stood and retrieved his rain coat. “You hungry?” he said.
I wasn’t, but we went to dinner anyway, at a cramped Thai place down the street in the rain.