Project Einstein

Chapter One

Quinn Cooper

His hands shook as he held the folder. It was hard to believe that twenty minutes ago he was confounded by being handed a hard copy of a file tucked into a manilla folder in this digital age. Twenty minutes ago, he was tired and pissed off at having been dragged across town by four suits who refused to tell him what the hell was going on. But twenty minutes ago was now a different lifetime. The rest of Quinn Cooper’s life would be forever separated into “before” the folder, and the “after.”

Suddenly the agent was very aware of his own fragile humanity. He could feel his heartbeat shaking at the fingertips above his sweaty palms. His mouth felt dry and his tongue was a foreign object. He became acutely aware of how it pressed against the roof of his mouth and moved when he swallowed. Clearing his throat, Quinn tried to focus on his feet planted squarely on the ground. He ran through a variety of techniques that his therapist had gone over with him, half of which he’d forgotten.

As a former Navy Seal, he didn’t often need techniques for overcoming fear. He’d made fear his bitch a long time ago. Only now…it was back, swelling and snarling and deadlier than ever. It threatened to masticate him with pearly doomsday incisors and swallow him down a bottomless throat of chaos and despair.

After rediscovering the English language, the curly haired brunette of 33 cleared his throat and looked up at an agent standing across from him.

“Einstein?” he asked, the word falling hard in the Faraday cage that doubled as an interrogation room. It seemed so bizarre to say that name in this cloud gray room with its cloud gray walls and lightning bright overhead lights.

The bald agent with a steel glare said nothing but only nodded his head.

“Fucking Albert Einstein?”

Again, the man nodded.

“This is insane,” Quinn put the folder down with a smack and rested his elbows on the metal table that was bolted to the floor. It’s cold surface seeped into his skin and turned his blood to ice. He worried his lip between his teeth and felt like shitting his pants.

“Why?” he asked with an edge of newfound bitterness. “What the fuck were you thinking?”

An agent behind the agent stepped forward and spoke. “We’re not in charge of project Ulm,” said the stranger. “It wasn’t our decision to…do what was done. But we have been tasked with rectifying the situation.”

Quinn sat back in the metal chair that was also bolted to the ground. He crossed his arms and rubbed his cold elbows. It took twenty minutes to read the file and come to grips with the information within.

He understood why it wasn’t digital. It was so top secret that were probably only a handful of people on Earth who knew the truths it contained.

“He couldn’t be the only one.”

“Excuse me?” the agent who wasn’t mute said.

“You’re telling me that they…cloned…Albert Einstein. That this clone is devoid of a conscious and perhaps a soul but is the most brilliant human being on the planet – a recipe for total disaster.”

“And?”

“And he can’t be the only human brought back from antiquity. If the government has this ability to clone a person from the tiniest amount of DNA then I’m sure that Albert…Einstein…isn’t the only one.”

“It wasn’t the government.”

Quinn’s face twisted in deep confusion and concern. “Excuse me?”

“It wasn’t the government. It was a private entity.”

“Who?”

“He’s dead.”

“How reassuring,” Quinn ran a nervous hand through his hair.

“Are you going to rise to this task?” the agent who had never spoken asked menacingly. There was a tilt in the way that he asked the question that told Quinn Cooper if he didn’t accept, he would likely never leave this facility alive.

“Yes,” he said stolidly, not about to be pushed down a chute that goes straight to a furnace.

The features of the agent’s face softened. “Good. We’ve reviewed many candidates for this assignment, and it came down to you and another man.”

“And what of the other man?”

“He turned down the task.”

“May he rest in peace,” Quinn said dourly. The agent glared at him with disdain at having voiced the unmentionable, and yet, behind him, his colleague made the sign of the cross on his chest.

“So this clone is what? In his twenties?”

“Twenty-one.”

“And how do you know he’s evil incarnate?”

“We have a wealth of information we can now share with you since you’ve agreed to take on the task.”

“Wonderful,” Quinn responded with the least amount of enthusiasm he could possibly offer. “And you’re sure that there aren’t other clones out there running around? Of different people? Another MLK? A Kennedy? An Oppenheimer?”

“Not that we’re aware of.”

“How reassuring.”

Quinn thought how fortunate it was that he hadn’t eaten before this because he felt positively ill. Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, he decided to ask some of the questions he dreaded.

“Is he exactly the same as Einstein? He can’t be a perfect clone right? Cloning isn’t seamless like that.”

“He’s not exactly the same. As we’ve stated, he appears to have no conscious. And there is one other major difference.”

It was like being at the top of the rollercoaster from hell. Quinn braced for the drop, especially when he noted the shake in the agent’s voice.

“He’s smarter.”

Quinn Cooper’s eyes snapped open as time slowed to a crawl. He leaned forward, teeth grit and nostrils flared. “How much smarter?”

“His IQ is in the high 200s. Stephen Hawking’s was 160 for reference.”

“HIGH 200s?” his mouth was agape. “So what…like 280? 290?”

“Maybe 300. It’s not really testable at this point.”

“Of course,” he cursed under his breath. “And you’re sure this is a clone of Einstein?”

The mostly quiet agent disappeared from the room and returned with a different folder – this one was red. He opened it and pulled out a picture and dropped it on the table.

Quinn snatched it up and prayed it wouldn’t look like the well-known and much-loved theoretical physicist.

No such luck.

The man looked like Einstein only thinner. Younger. His hair wasn’t the wild mop of white, he had no mustache, and he wasn’t dressed like it was the 1940s.

It seemed so remarkably wrong – as if humanity had grabbed this man who hadn’t asked to be here and dragged him through time and space, not knowing or not caring that it would cost this clone it’s humanity and cost humanity it’s existence.

“This is…”

“Insane. You’ve already said.”

“Is now really the time to be snarky?”

“No. Now is the time for you to get your shit together and fast. This man is dangerous. He is not Albert Einstein, he’s some unholy creation of science capable of mass destruction. This man could destroy the planet. He’s not thrilled that he exists, and he took that vengeance out upon his creator, but there’s no reason for him to stop there.”

“The military knows about this?”

“Of course, they’re the ones who recommended you. You not only have the military expertise, but an impressive IQ yourself.”

“Wonderful.”

Quinn rubbed a hand over his tired face.

“You’ll be in the tubes in minutes,” the agent motioned for him to stand up.

“The tube?” he stood.

“Underground network of bullet trains crisscrossing the country. You’ll be in Colorado in 40 minutes.”

Forty minutes? From DC to Denver? Damn.

“Why Colorado?” he walked towards the door.

“He’s in the mountains somewhere.”

“Wonderful,” Quinn stood. “But I don’t have…”

“We have everything you need. You can’t go home now.”

“Can I go home ever?”

“Probably not,” the agent opened the Faraday cage and let all three of them out into the nondescript hallway.

Before Quinn could turn to ask any additional questions, the other agent hit him with something to the neck. It felt like a sharp bee sting and the room began to spin.

“Not fucking cool,” he said, as he fell and a blanket of blackness wrapped around his senses.