Doxy, short story from the book "The cabin lift"

 

Deoxyribonucleic acid or briefly as we call it Doxy. A project that I gave most of my life to in an amazing and dedicated adventure. And as I am waiting for the rest of my food I don’t believe what I’m seeing:

- Lucy, take your fork out of my plate! – He continues to dig in it and keeps looking at me meaningfully.

- You will never marry – mocks me - You are the oldest spinster that I know.

- I don’t care what you think and I want my food back. Sara, please. – I turn to the waitress – Bring me one more of that. What was it…

-This is spinach with three types of cheese on top of potato mash with…

I wave my hand at her. If my genetic material has to record every word of this long titled meal I will turn into a cooking book. Lucy looks at me with this mock look. There is nothing to look at, he is far behind with the data I asked for and on top of that he is picking in my plate. I push his hand while he’s trying to write on my notebook but he is very pushy.

- Old… Very old…

I don’t care what he thinks. Doxy is enough for me and I know why he is so playful today. He knows we cracked the code good and right now we are copying the key to send it to everyone. This morning we had a successful experiment and while the data is uploaded on the server we are taking a quick meal. Paul and Valery already know and gave us their part. Today we are sending them the successful data from this morning and this quest is taking in an absolutely new direction. But just one more…

- Oh! – Screams Lucy as I take the needle out of his arm – Have you gone mad?!

- Don’t you want to see what you recorded while we ate?

We enter the lab and I place needle in the probe, it places the probe in the reader, the reader in the device – it all goes as slow as a caterpillar. I take the probe out and push it to the next step.

- Who programed that?! – Lucy is waving his head – Don’t make me look like some Waco, just run the backup. 100 impulses. Wait a bit…

Just for a moment the computer is busted, the screen is totally dead. But just a moment, one more and… The screen starts rolling with data.

- I’m getting it! Come on monkey, show me what you’ve got downloaded! Lucy, I am activating Doxy, it is working…

We are looking at the heavily scratched image of my face. Flipped of Corse. Why flipped I still don’t know and you can hear the voice of Lucy like in a slow motion sound “o-o-old, very-y old..”

- We did it! We did it! – He is screaming in joy. We extracted a memory directly from his DNA, directly from his body, from one cell. I am crying and I just can’t stop the tears from falling.

- Come on Doxy, let’s see what he did in the morning, you monkey… - the decoder is scrolling in a very strange way jumping through, skipping moments but showing images. Slightly damaged but visible. The column with the data flow keeps writing down everything – numbers, signs. – Lucy, I can tell you what you had for breakfast, man…

                He looks at the screen with his eyes full of tears.

- Should I send the data to Paul?

- Send it to everyone!

This is a celebration day! It is so good that we went to eat spinach with, I just can’t forget it, with three types of cheese on top of potato mash. This is what I am talking about. If I can remember actively so many things I can imagine what I have recorded in my DNA. Doxy can tell me what dream I had while I was sleeping, it can tell me what I had for breakfast 22 years ago on 6th of May. Dixy can tell me what my grandfather told my grandmother while he was hitting on her. It is an unusual treasure, isn’t it?  Doxy can go back so far in time that in just a few months we can download the whole history of our kind not only back to Mesopotamia but probably to the beginning. Who knows, I might see the memories of Lucy 80 000 years ago. This unique chain carries such an immense amount of information that even we don’t know what we will find there. But this is not the biggest find we discovered. Valery has a probe of a chain which is from out of space. It is as if they have given you a flash memory, on which you know you may find the history of the whole universe. And all that stands between you and this treasure is Doxy. The decoder I gave my life to.  

- Lucy, grab a copy of the successful probe and deposit it in the archive upstairs.

- Yes, boss. – He goes out as I am filling my bag with stacks of paper sheets with useful data. The information is being sent to Valery and Paul. I can even see that I have a message that Valery will be waiting for us at the airport.

I go down the stairs and I tell Lucy I will be waiting for him at the parking. I reach the car and suddenly a burst of pain cuts through my body. It burns me. I fall under the weight of the stupid bag. Did someone just kill me? Am I dying? Who is this?

- The world is 6000 years old! The earth is flat! This is the only truth.

He pulls the bag with the folders from my hands and I am starting to laugh. It is so hard for me because my body is fighting it.

- This is your problem. You are so far behind. Each cell in my body stores the image of your face. Each cell in your body keeps the history of your ancestors. How far do you think you will get?

He is looking at me. It is time to go. At least I lived. Lucy tells me I’m old. Valery, I don’t feel that old…