Chromosome Quest Read online

  Chromosome Quest

  by

  Nathan Gregory

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used entirely fictitiously. If you suspect a character is based on some real person, however loosely, you are probably mistaken.

  Copyright © 2015, 2018 by Nathan Gregory

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without explicit and written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a review.

  Publisher:

  Nathan Gregory

  https://www.ChromosomeQuest.com

  Kindle ASIN: B00R8NXS56

  Paperback Edition: March 2018

  ISBN-13: 978-1521499771

  Cover Design: SelfPubBookCovers.com/RLSather

  eBook License Notes:

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  For Ruby, Atti and Eva Lee.

  ---

  In loving memory of Nipper, Timber, Brandy, Corky, Stony, Baby, Gray Boy, Little Gray, Panther, Fan Blade, Panda, Nixie, Daisy and all the other bundles of fur that have brought love and joy to our lives.

  ---

  Last but not least, for my dear friend and mentor, Petchy, who is alive and well, having recently celebrated his 89th birthday.

  ---

  Prologue

  Meet Fitz, an out-of-work cybersecurity engineer seeking opportunity in the City by the Bay. One sunny morning he has come from yet another disappointing interview and is sitting in the plaza licking his wounds and reading the local paper when he spots a mysterious employment ad that seems so ridiculous that it must be a scam. After some self-examination, he decides to apply just to see what happens.

  Travel, they promised! Adventure! Riches! They didn't mention the dinosaurs.

  That the job was on another planet where they must live and train among a dying, desperate alien civilization must have slipped their minds.

  Then he discovers the job involves saving all of humanity from a galaxy-wide threat.

  This 'Heroes Journey' tale has everything. Portals to other worlds, genetic manipulation, furry Cat-People, our hapless Hero, a buxom red-headed Goddess, the evil, runaway A.I., castles, powerful computers, great battles, and Dinosaurs. Can't leave out the dinosaurs!

  Our hero's quest-style story is a tongue-in-cheek and fun send-up of many Science Fiction staples. But, it also carries a warning about the threat we face from our hubris and arrogance, the risks inherent in trusting more and more of our lives to autonomous machinery. Chromosome Quest explores how things might go oh so horribly wrong, in a way we might not have considered.

  So cinch up your sack, suck in your gut and hang on for the ride of your life!

  And don't get caught outside after dark!!

  Whether you love my book, or merely like it a little, if you find it amusing or it entertains you even slightly, I would beg you to let others know. Reviews are incredibly important.

  Please, PLEASE take the time to write a review.

  We authors truly do appreciate the time and effort it takes readers to write and post reviews. We know your time is every bit as valuable as ours, so I would like to thank everyone who has ever taken the time to leave a review for one of my books.

  And if you leave one for any of my books in the future, I would be ever so grateful.

  White Rabbit

  I suppose I could say it was all HER fault. Adam blamed Eve, after all. SHE knew that, like Adam, I too have a particular weakness for beautiful women. Athletic with long crimson hair, as if SHE had been custom-built to my innermost fantasies, even perhaps as if I had designed her myself. I was powerless the moment I laid eyes on HER.

  Earlier this morning I met with an entrepreneurial gentleman in the throes of launching a new company. Gentleman! Ha! We shouted at each other over a thumping, monotonous Rap beat. The shitty music, reek of pot, the hoody, and bare feet in the office did not bode well, but it still hurt when he dismissed me as a neek! So much for the value of experience. Or even just values!

  I was licking my wounds in the Plaza at 17th and Market, sipping my Arabian Mocha-Java and browsing the Guardian, ostensibly searching for opportunity. In truth, I was merely enjoying a bit of people-watching, languidly cycling between skimming the garish pages of the urban rag for ideas, scanning the crowd for interesting characters, and luxuriating in the aroma of the flavorful brew.

  I was in no hurry to return to my cramped sleeping room a few blocks away. The cramped quarters, adequate for sleeping, offers little conducive to creative work. Not even a desk. Just a place to sleep between searching the classifieds for opportunities, and in my current state – one of rejection, feeling down and pitying myself following yet another failed job interview – not someplace I needed to be just now.

  Often when I wish to pursue creative work, writing, or emails, rather than trying to work while cuddling a laptop on my tiny bed, I do so right here, relaxing at a cafe table in the Plaza, people-watching and sipping a pleasant brew.

  Not today. I declared the remains of the day a 'mental-health' break, an attempt to find a more buoyant mood, a time for relaxing and restoration.

  I reflected that just as my professional fortune is in a tailspin of late, my personal life is not soaring either. Not that I have problems attracting companionship, but relationships are fragile and take a degree of nurturing I have been ill-equipped to provide of late. Between money problems and searching for work, I guess I have pretty well sabotaged my last serious relationship. It is hard to be a sparkling companion when one is feeling on the rocks.

  Perhaps, I thought, I just need to suck it up, and call one of my distaff buddies and promote a casual, no-expectations outing. Kurzweil has a book-signing this afternoon. I know he is popular with several of my friends, and then perhaps we might take in a movie, or even just a simple, low-budget dinner. No expectations, that's the ticket. No plans, no expectations, just a friendly face, and a few smiles for the afternoon. Let her make the rules, let her call the shots this time. How hard could that be?

  Before I do so, I need to screw my head on straight and perk up. My present dark mood is uncharacteristic of my ordinarily buoyant nature, and I need to stop this navel-gazing and get my head in the game.

  Opportunity seldom knocks when the door is locked, and the welcome light is dark!

  The morning's meeting had been the latest in a long string of frustrations and disappointments, personal and professional, and I was not in a state of mind right at the moment to email resumes or craft cover letters. I needed an afternoon's break to regroup and rethink my plans. Despite having held fascinating jobs, even started and ran companies and at times made good money, today my bank account is anemic.

  Whipsawed by the ebb and flow of the economy and the fickle nature of investors, I need a real job in my chosen field, and soon.

  The morning was unusually warm in the City by the Bay, perfect weather to bring out the colorfully disaffected the way sunshine following rain brings out the dandelions. When the sun shines, diverse characters appear in all their glory. Sometimes literally.

  I had noticed a few curious characters gathering at one end of the Plaza, though at first, I paid them little mind. Soon it became clear so
mething was up. Several of the guys, and as I soon noticed, a couple of gals, were shirtless and someone had brought out the body paint and was artlessly painting on a canvas of skin. Nothing imaginative, just the usual assortment of counter-cultural symbols, peace signs and anti-capitalist slogans. I wondered what social injustice they sought to redress this day. So far it appeared they were protesting merely for the practice.

  Nudity in protests is routine enough, though often those getting their kit off are not those one might be most eager to see unclad. I often wondered why so many counter-culture types stray so far from physical ideals. Is being disaffected a cause, effect, or just an unrelated correlation of an untidy physical appearance? It seems as if there should be a PhD thesis in there somewhere.

  Nudity is not limited to protests. There is a vocal Urban Nudist movement in the city, although with our ordinarily cool climate it takes a hardy soul to lounge about in bare skin out-of-doors with abandon. Warm sunny days such as today tend to bring out the body-freedom crowd.

  Urban nudists not only eschew the nudity taboo but also reject the traditional nudist convention of congregating with like-minded souls behind tall fences. They insist bare skin is normal and acceptable in everyday life. Who am I to disagree? Live and let live, I say. I have no objections to skin.

  A lack of protest paraphernalia hallmarks these hardy souls. No sign-waving, chanting or body painting, not using the trappings of the First Amendment as an excuse to get naked. They just calmly go about more-or-less normal activities, reading a book, having a java, sometimes writing or emailing on a laptop in the plaza.

  One could argue they are protesting too, just somewhat less boisterously, I suppose. It is a growing movement and one to which several cities are more or less turning a blind eye.

  People in the city are laid-back, and most citizens pay no mind, though on occasion the cops do show up, mainly when some less broad-minded tourist gets their undies in a bunch. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen.

  Shifting my chair so I could keep the gathering activists in one corner of my eye, I savored another sip and returned to my paper, idly wondering if today were a day the police would choose to appear and go through the motions of enforcing the ostensible nudity laws.

  In the City, public nudity is an offense roughly akin to a parking ticket, unless it takes place within a sanctioned event. Many of the City’s marches, footraces, and similar spectacles have a well-accepted and popular nude contingent. Spectators can be heard cheering and shouting “Go naked People.”

  When they do appear, the cops have sometimes ticketed unsanctioned activists, though as a rule they merely tell everyone to put their clothes back on, and duty discharged, warning delivered, retreat to the nearest doughnut shop.

  An advertisement caught my eye:

  Are you a Boob?

  This is not for you!

  We badly need a man, highly intelligent, an engineer deeply conversant with technology and yet politically astute.

  A competent man fully at home with culture and politics as well as with engineering and mathematics.

  He must be well versed in the methodology of the sciences.

  He must be tall, perfectly healthy and physically fit, handsome of face and figure, comfortable with his body, fluent in English, with some grounding in the Romance languages.

  Must be willing to travel, no family or emotional ties.

  Permanent employment, high pay, adventure, and danger.

  You must apply in person.

  The address given was mere blocks from where I sat. I was intrigued, but suspicious. It must be some con, or a joke, not worth the time to investigate. I was mulling the questions in my mind when I saw, HER!

  I almost missed her arrival. The gathering crowd of colorful characters had begun stripping, some retaining a modicum of modesty, others flamboyantly clad in bare skin and garish body paint, modesty protected by nothing more than counter-culture symbology.

  Then SHE stepped from the crowd; time slowed, and the sun shone brighter. The entire Plaza fell silent.

  She was very tall and well-muscled, lean, taut, rather buxom, a fit, broad-shouldered, and muscular mesomorph with flaming red hair that extended to her waist, falling free and unrestrained. She would be the center of attention in any setting, here in the Plaza she was well beyond merely attention-getting. She appeared as though she had stepped from a Boris Vallejo fantasy, but with less clothing. Not only was she stunning in form and figure; she was profoundly unclothed!

  Skyclad!

  Clothed with the Sun!

  Barefoot to the chin!

  Unlike the rag-tag collection of characters gathering for their colorful protest, she wore no paint, displayed no slogans, no counter-culture symbology. Nothing, not so much as a freckle marred her exquisitely deep-bronzed skin. Simply fully, totally, completely nude, she emerged from the gathering crowd, confident, poised, as if she had stepped from the pages of a carefully sculpted fantasy layout. Unlike the protesters who the passersby had ignored, she magnetically drew every eye in the plaza.

  Ignoring the silence, ignoring the eyes, she strolled calmly abreast of my table, paused a bare half-heartbeat to look me squarely in the eye and faintly smile, and then joined the colorful collection of semi-undressed protesters and vanished within their ranks. I followed her with my eyes as long as I could, magnetically drawn to her magical form. Despite my rapt attention, she strolled into that chromatic congress and vanished.

  I scrambled to my feet, paper in hand, brew forgotten, and no longer able to track with my eyes, followed with my feet.

  Futilely so, it turned out.

  With her height and crimson woody-woodpecker crest, not to mention that blinding expanse of sun-bronzed skin, she should have been easily visible from blocks away. I traveled a full half-block in the direction she had gone before I could admit she was nowhere in sight. How someone so spectacular, so stunningly unclad could vanish so quickly defies logic.

  Logic can be a feeble reed sometimes.

  Recognizing my buffoonery, I slowed my pace and abandoned the quest. Aimless now, I continued to drift in the same general direction, propelled only by inertia. I glanced at the store windows, read signs and hand-bills and wandered along in an introspective fog.

  Then on a plywood-covered window, I saw a familiar phrase. “Are You A Boob?” stared at me, scrawled in red. This time it was not a handbill, not an ad, simple graffiti. I glanced at the paper in my hand, and there it was, still open to the advertisement I had first noticed.

  Checking the address, I realized I was not looking at just graffiti; it was instead a makeshift sign. I was now standing in front of the advertised address, and applicants, or suckers, were queued in front. Like Alice, I had followed my “White Rabbit” and found myself staring at the open rabbit hole.

  This Alice was not about to tumble! No red pill for this cyber nerd, I am strictly the blue-pill type!

  At least I knew the answer to the question! Only a total boob would become so entranced as to mindlessly trail a strange woman, no matter how she was dressed; or not.

  What on Earth had I been thinking? I knew the answer to that too.

  Cursing, I turned toward home. I could salvage the day if I returned to my room, curled up with the laptop and pounded out a few job applications. Adding more to the thousands I had already sent into the ether might seem pointless, but sooner or later one must score.

  Perseverance, and all that!

  I sauntered along hands in pockets, drifting up the hill toward my rented berth, pondering the morning's events, wishing I had stayed in the plaza and finished my Java. Why was I so drawn to a mysterious character like that? I guess I knew one answer, but the city did not lack for unusual and quirky characters, including nudes. Why had this one exerted such an influence, such an unreasoning attraction?

  I wished I had taken my laptop this morning instead of leaving it locked safely in my bedroom, and had stayed at my table in the plaza working on resumes
instead of chasing a mirage. I kicked myself again for reacting so childishly to that flaming-haired woman!

  It's not as if I have lacked for females willing to share their charms, yet something about her presence grabbed me in a way I’ve never before experienced, as though there were some shared bond of which I remained unaware. Just seeing her strolling nude through the plaza left me shaken, unnerved, feeling almost sexually assaulted.

  Who was she, anyway? She was, no doubt, a female body-builder. Women do not develop a physique like that without seriously working at it. Well, neither do men. I tried it for a while, trust me it is hard work. She didn't seem to be with the protesters. Where did she come from, and where did she disappear to, and most of all, why was she nonchalantly walking nude in the city? If it was to get my attention, she succeeded.

  She got everyone’s attention!

  Rabbit Hole

  I entered my room and extracted my laptop from its security housing, unlocking the redundant security cable. My little computer is old and obsolete, not particularly valuable, but any tech has an annoying tendency to wander off in this neighborhood. Losing it would not be a total disaster, but it would be darned inconvenient. If I could afford to replace it, I would. I cannot afford to lose it. Hence I take serious precautions. I opened the laptop and checked my email. The usual spam, ads for male enhancement and sure-fire money-making offers that had managed to squeeze through the spam filter littered the inbox.

  Ignoring the click-bait and time-wasters, I skimmed the jobs boards to see if there were any new listings. Five new job possibilities were in evidence. I scanned the first three and discarded them as unsuitable without a second glance. The next one seemed interesting, so I took a moment to pull a form letter from a folder, edit the date and other minor details to match the job description, attach my resume and hit send. One more application cast to the ether, never to return, I mused. Then I opened the last posting. “Are You A Boob?” stared at me from the screen. The same ad I had seen in the urban paper, now on the jobs board. A soft Anglo-Saxon monosyllable escaped my lips as I hit the delete key.