Read Online The Messiah Code by Michael Cordy - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Michael Cordy
Tags: Fiction, General, thriller, Fiction - General, Thrillers, Suspense fiction, Genetic engineering, Christian fiction, Technological, Adventure stories, Fiction - Espionage, Medical novels, English Mystery & Suspense Fiction, Brotherhoods, Jesus Christ - Miracles
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was virtually empty. He smiled when he saw the lone bright green BMW convertible parked in the first available spot. He had a running joke with Jazz to see who could be in earliest and whoever won invariably took the prime spot to prove the point. Occasionally Jack Nichols would get in at some stupid time and park his car there, just to tell them he could be up with the best of them, but most days it was between them. Usually he won. But not today.
He got out of the car and walked to the stairs that led to the atrium. Before the shooting he would have run up them, but now he only walked. He refused to take the elevator out of principle.
It was quiet save for the hollow click-clack of his heels on marble. To his left, through tinted glass walls he could see Jasmine wandering around the main computer room. Leading to her from the atrium was a door of black opaque glass marked: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SECTION--AUTHORIZED ENTRY ONLY. The IT Section, along with the central atrium and the Hospital Suite, occupied the ground floor of the GENIUS pyramid.
He returned her wave and walked to the middle of the atrium. Here, reaching up to the apex of the pyramid, was
a thirty-foot-tall multicolored hologram of the DNA spiral, rotating on a circular holo-pad. As he often did, Tom disobeyed the sign beside it and stepped directly into the three-dimensional image. He looked up through the spiral staircase rotating around him and marveled at the multi-colored rungs of nitrogen bases. Standing inside the double helix that carried the code of all life never failed to inspire him. This to him was the real information superhighway, along whose route most secrets that mattered could be unraveled. Shaking his head in fresh wonder, he stepped off the holo-pad and headed for the Hospital Suite to the west of the atrium.
Pushing open the door, he found himself in the small, cheerfully decorated waiting room with its adjoining rest rooms. Ahead were a pair of swinging doors that led to the experimental gene therapy ward and the fully equipped operating room beyond. Approved by the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, the ward had ten beds. Fully funded by GENIUS, it was staffed with four doctors and ten nurses, one for each bed. Two of the doctors were on paid sabbatical from the NIH. Both of them were charged with ensuring the cross-fertilization of ideas and best practice--plus of course checking that GENIUS obtained the necessary Federal Drug Administration and NIH approvals for all experimental treatments on their human guinea pigs. He valued the NIH doctors' presence and hid nothing from them. Well, almost nothing. He hadn't shown them the IGOR DNA database yet. He was sure that despite his motives, the National Institutes of Health wouldn't approve of that.
Tom opened the door and smiled at the sunny room that greeted him: yellow walls, curtains of cornflower blue, houseplants, pine beds in semiprivate cubicles. All added to the impression that this wasn't a ward at all, but a large bedroom. However, that wasn't what made the place so special, and Tom so proud.
The ward was unusual because patients could qualify for a bed here only if they met one stringent criterion: They had to have less than three months to live. People came here when chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and all other treat
ments had failed. This was literally their last resort. It was where they came to have their genes reprogrammed.
Tom had initiated the ward to ensure that his scientists in the labs upstairs saw the direct application of their work, and never forgot that medical research was meaningless if it didn't help save human lives. Many of the terminally ill patients still died, but a significant few had missed their stop and kept on living. Back in early 1999 the first accredited cystic fibrosis cure through gene therapy had happened in this room. As had the first recorded successful gene therapy trial for Huntington's
He got out of the car and walked to the stairs that led to the atrium. Before the shooting he would have run up them, but now he only walked. He refused to take the elevator out of principle.
It was quiet save for the hollow click-clack of his heels on marble. To his left, through tinted glass walls he could see Jasmine wandering around the main computer room. Leading to her from the atrium was a door of black opaque glass marked: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SECTION--AUTHORIZED ENTRY ONLY. The IT Section, along with the central atrium and the Hospital Suite, occupied the ground floor of the GENIUS pyramid.
He returned her wave and walked to the middle of the atrium. Here, reaching up to the apex of the pyramid, was
a thirty-foot-tall multicolored hologram of the DNA spiral, rotating on a circular holo-pad. As he often did, Tom disobeyed the sign beside it and stepped directly into the three-dimensional image. He looked up through the spiral staircase rotating around him and marveled at the multi-colored rungs of nitrogen bases. Standing inside the double helix that carried the code of all life never failed to inspire him. This to him was the real information superhighway, along whose route most secrets that mattered could be unraveled. Shaking his head in fresh wonder, he stepped off the holo-pad and headed for the Hospital Suite to the west of the atrium.
Pushing open the door, he found himself in the small, cheerfully decorated waiting room with its adjoining rest rooms. Ahead were a pair of swinging doors that led to the experimental gene therapy ward and the fully equipped operating room beyond. Approved by the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, the ward had ten beds. Fully funded by GENIUS, it was staffed with four doctors and ten nurses, one for each bed. Two of the doctors were on paid sabbatical from the NIH. Both of them were charged with ensuring the cross-fertilization of ideas and best practice--plus of course checking that GENIUS obtained the necessary Federal Drug Administration and NIH approvals for all experimental treatments on their human guinea pigs. He valued the NIH doctors' presence and hid nothing from them. Well, almost nothing. He hadn't shown them the IGOR DNA database yet. He was sure that despite his motives, the National Institutes of Health wouldn't approve of that.
Tom opened the door and smiled at the sunny room that greeted him: yellow walls, curtains of cornflower blue, houseplants, pine beds in semiprivate cubicles. All added to the impression that this wasn't a ward at all, but a large bedroom. However, that wasn't what made the place so special, and Tom so proud.
The ward was unusual because patients could qualify for a bed here only if they met one stringent criterion: They had to have less than three months to live. People came here when chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and all other treat
ments had failed. This was literally their last resort. It was where they came to have their genes reprogrammed.
Tom had initiated the ward to ensure that his scientists in the labs upstairs saw the direct application of their work, and never forgot that medical research was meaningless if it didn't help save human lives. Many of the terminally ill patients still died, but a significant few had missed their stop and kept on living. Back in early 1999 the first accredited cystic fibrosis cure through gene therapy had happened in this room. As had the first recorded successful gene therapy trial for Huntington's
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