Origin by J.A. Konrath, Jack Kilborn Page A

Plexiglas.”
    Race entered the Mess Hall with Dr. Harker. They were in mid-conversation and Sun caught the end of it.
    “…for what you’ve done with her. I still can’t accept why you’re here, but—”
    “No thanks needed, General.” A frowning Harker cut him off. “It’s my job.”
    Just visited Helen,
Sun guessed. Both looked grim. Harker retained the look; she probably scowled in her sleep as well.
    Race, with the poise of any good leader, quickly hid his feelings with a good ole boy smile. “Good, we’re all here. Before we get started with the intros I’d like to announce that the Jacuzzi should be operational again by tomorrow. The same rules apply as with the pool, swimming suits are mandatory. You got that, Frank? We have ladies present.”
    Dr. Belgium gave Race a nod without turning his attention from the brewing coffee.
    “Good. Now I think all of you have met Andy Dennison by now, except for Julie. So let’s start with you.”
    Harker had a long, hound-doggish face and a droning voice which left no doubt that she didn’t kindly suffer fools. Sun learned after only a few meetings with her that Harker considered everyone a fool.
    “I’m Dr. Julie Harker. I came on in 1980 to oversee the medical well-being of the Samhain team, including the dispensing of medication and monthly physicals. I’ve also been monitoring Bub’s vitals since my arrival, and have been attending to the treatment of General Race’s wife Helen.”
    It didn’t surprise Sun that it was the exact same speech she’d given to her a week prior, right down to the nasally inflection.
    “Thank you, Julie,” Race said, and Dr. Harker took a seat and removed a nail clipper from the chest pocket of her lab coat. She began to snip away at a hangnail. “How about you, Frank?”
    “Hmm? Oh, sure.”
    Dr. Frank Belgium touched the fresh cup of coffee to his lips and took a large slurp.
    “Frank Belgium, molecular biologist. I’m the gene guy. I’ve been mapping Bub’s genes. Hard, very hard. As you may know, or, well, maybe you don’t, it took ten years for the human genome to get sequenced, and we’ve only got 23 pairs of chromosomes, and less than 25,000 genes. We’ve isolated 44 pairs of chromosomes in Bub. Hard work. Hard hard hard.”
    Belgium took another loud slurp of coffee.
    “But he’s from earth. I’m sure. Bub has the same twenty amino acids as all life on this planet. Why is this important? Well there are about 80 different types of amino acids, and all can create proteins, but nothing on earth uses those extra sixty. All life—plant, animal, bacteria—uses different combinations of those same twenty, and the reason is because we all evolved from one common ancestor. That’s why all living organisms share genes. Everyone in this room, on this planet, shares 99.9 percent of the same DNA. We share 98.4 with chimpanzees, 98.3 with gorillas, all the way on down to blue-green algae.”
    Sun glanced at Andy. He was being drawn in by Frank’s words, the same way Sun had been upon first hearing them.
    “Now,” Belgium continued, “if life started several times, rather than just once, we’d probably find different amino acids in different things on earth. But we don’t, we all have the same genetic code, and Bub shares it as well.
    “What I’m doing, is mapping sequences in Bub’s genome to find out what on earth he shares the most genes with. Very hit or miss when we’re not sure where to look. It’s kind of like searching for a single sentence in a single book in the Library of Congress.”
    Frank shrugged and drank more coffee.
    “What do you believe Bub is, Doctor?” Race asked, glancing at Andy while he spoke.
    “I think, well, I guess I think he’s a little bit of everything. A mutation. Maybe he’s a member of a prehistoric race that became extinct… since he’s intelligent it would reason that we’ve never found fossils of his kind, perhaps they cremated their dead, or buried them at sea.