The Empathy Gene: A Sci-Fi Thriller Read online

  The Empathy Gene

  by

  Boyd Brent

  Author contact: [email protected]

  Originally published as 'The Humanity Project.' This novel has since undergone an extensive edit. Hence this up to date publication and new title.

  The Empathy Gene

  Copyright: Boyd Brent

  The right of Boyd Brent to be identified as the Author of the work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be produced, stored in retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or any means, without the prior written permission of the Author.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be circulated without the Author's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This novel is a work of fiction. The characters and their names are the creation of the Author's imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue 7

  One 17

  Two 27

  Three 36

  Four 39

  Five 46

  Six 52

  Seven 57

  Eight 65

  Nine 70

  Part Two 94

  Chapter eleven 95

  Twelve 104

  Thirteen 109

  Fourteen 113

  Fifteen 119

  Sixteen 126

  Seventeen 132

  Eighteen 133

  Nineteen 140

  Twenty 147

  Twenty one 152

  Twenty two 157

  Twenty three 162

  Twenty four 166

  Twenty five 170

  Twenty six 174

  Part 3 176

  Twenty seven 177

  Twenty eight 181

  Twenty nine 184

  Thirty 191

  Thirty one 200

  Thirty two 212

  Thirty three 219

  Thirty four 226

  Thirty five 238

  Thirty six 243

  Thirty seven 252

  Thirty eight 259

  Thirty nine 271

  Forty 275

  Forty one 277

  Forty two 279

  Forty three 285

  Forty four 296

  Forty five 306

  Forty six 314

  Forty seven 319

  Forty eight 320

  Forty nine 328

  Fifty 341

  Fifty one 349

  Fifty two 356

  Fifty three 373

  Fifty four 377

  Fifty five 387

  Fifty six 395

  Fifty seven 401

  Fifty eight 408

  Fifty nine 418

  Sixty 422

  Sixty one 430

  Epilogue 436

  Prologue

  My name is Clare Stone. I'm a journalist and author. Two weeks ago, I received an anonymous email. It provided detailed information about a man who was present at two key events separated by two thousand years of history. A man whose impact on humanity, it claimed, had been greater than anyone who came before or after him. I cross referenced the leads provided at the British Library, and confirmed several eyewitness accounts of this man, known simply as David, in Jerusalem in AD 33 and Nazi occupied Poland in 1944. I suspected that either my colleagues were playing a practical joke on me, or else I was losing my mind. So when invited to meet my anonymous source at a private function in the viewing gallery of The Shard in Central London, I reasoned I was about to find out one way or another.

  A hailed a black cab outside my office at News International, and told the driver to take me to The Shard, a skyscraper that dominates the London skyline. The viewing gallery is officially closed to the public at 8.30pm, but a call to reception had confirmed that it had been hired for a private function and that my name was on the guest list. I leaned against the cab door and looked up at the building I had come to think of as the most beautiful in the City at night. The cab driver startled me when he said, “I hear the restaurant they've got up there is first-rate.”

  “I ... I wouldn't know.”

  “Aren't you about to find out?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Not much else to visit The Shard for at this time of night.” I looked up to the top of the elegant tower of light. “I'm going to a private function … up in the viewing gallery.”

  “Anyone going I might of heard of?”

  “I think it unlikely.” The driver pulled up at a red light and looked out of his window. “My wife keeps trying to get me to take her up there to see the view. Twenty-five quid to confirm the vertigo I already know I have. No, thanks.”

  The lobby of the Shard was expansive, and only two of the dozen reception desks were occupied by security guards. When I entered the lobby, one of these men glanced at me over the top of a computer screen. My high heels made an ungainly clunking sound on the stone floor, and when the sound was upon him he rose from his seat and pulled a pen from his breast pocket. He placed it on the signing-in book and spun the book around to face me. “Good evening, madam.”

  “Good evening. I'm Clare Stone. I'm here to attend the private function in the viewing gallery.”

  “You just need to sign in, Miss Stone.”

  I picked up the pen. “Big function, is it?” The second security guard chuckled quietly to himself, licked his thumb, and turned the page of the newspaper in front of him. I scratched my name into the logbook. “Did I say something funny?” The first man picked up his pen. “You're the only guest, Ms Stone.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “This your first meeting with Mr Gull?” said the second man turning another page of his newspaper.

  “That's right. Is there anything I should know?”

  The man looked up from his newspaper, and produced a smile of sorts. “From what I've seen of Mr Gull, he's a nice fella. Books the viewing gallery several times a month. He's an artist … paints views of the city.”

  “When it's dark?” I looked back and forth between the men. The second man shoved his newspaper into a cubby-hole, stood up and came around the desk. “I'll show you to the lift. It's a proper light show up there at night … a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree light show.”

  We made our way to the central lift in a bank of five. “How long does he stay up there?” I asked.

  “Till sun-up. That's when the cleaners need to get in and get the place ready for the public.” The lift opened, and the man reached in and punched floor 72. “It will take you right up into the viewing gallery,” he said. When I failed to move, he prevented the door from closing with his foot. He looked at me. “Would you like me to ride up with you?”

  “Would you?”

  “Not a problem, Miss Stone.”

  The lift's doors opened onto a large rectangular gallery, its walls and impossibly high ceiling made from glass. The gallery's spotlights were dimmed to enhance the light show far below, and they bathed the expanse in a faint blue sheen. In the far left-hand corner of the gallery, a man stood before an easel. He held a paint brush and dabbed at the right side of the canvas. The man was medium height, slim, with wavy, shoulder-length hair. He wore a black polar neck sweater and jeans and, from his right sided profile, he reminded me of a modern day Christ. Without looking up from his canvas he said, “Thank you, Harry. You have gone beyond the call of duty.” The man's voice was relaxed and curiously monotone.

  “Any time, Mr Gul
l.” Harry stepped back inside the lift and smiled as the lift door's closed. My legs felt leaden as I made my way across the gallery. To the man's left, a table and two chairs were nestled in a glass corner. On the table was an open laptop, a jug of water, and two glasses. I cleared my throat. “Mr Gull?”

  The man turned to face me, and although the right side of his face appeared normal – handsome, even – the left side was concealed by a mask commonly associated with recovering burns patients. My gaze was drawn back to the right side of his face when it smiled. “Please,” he said softly, “Call me Gull.”

  “Gull what?”

  “I have no other names. If you don't mind my saying, you look a little unsteady on your feet.” He indicated the chair that faced the open laptop. I placed a hand on the table and lowered myself into the seat. I looked at the computer's screen, upon which a title was written: The Empathy Gene. A glance at the bottom of the screen indicated that it was page 1 of 1. I put my bag on the table beside the laptop. “Short book,” I said.

  Gull laid his brush on the easel and sat down in the chair opposite. He placed his hands on the table and interlinked his fingers. “That is because it hasn't been written yet.”

  “Writer's block?” I replied, drumming my fingers nervously on the table.

  “More a lack of imagination.”

  “Lack of imagination? You surprise me. The things I read in those manuscripts you've had me researching all week – the references to and descriptions of David – they aren't possible. So why go to all this trouble? Why the elaborate hoax?”

  “David was real. A great man. The last of his kind.”

  I reached for the bottle of water. “May I?”

  “Please. Allow me.” Gull leaned across the table, picked up the bottle, and filled my glass. “The last of what kind?”

  “The last human being to possess empathy, compassion, a conscience.”

  I smiled and shook my head. “While I appreciate that the world is fucked-up, it's not that fucked up. Not yet.”

  “You are right. Not yet.”

  “I see. So you're telling me that David is from the future?”

  “Precisely.”

  I stood and picked my bag up off the table. “I've had quite enough of this.” As I walked back towards the lift, I heard Gull's chair scrape on the ground as he rose slowly out of it. “You have decided to leave your job at News International in November,” he said with absolute certainty. “And then it is your intention to go and stay with your sister in New Zealand for three months. She is having marital difficulties and is planning on leaving her husband.”

  I stopped dead in my tracks.

  “You haven't mentioned these plans to another soul. Not even to your sister.”

  My journalistic curiosity kicked in. I turned, walked unsteadily back to my seat, and sat down. “How did you know that?”

  “I'm sorry if I upset you. It is my intention to make this experience as painless as possible.”

  “Why?”

  “David would have demanded it.”

  “Of course. David. Mr Empathy. The reason I'm here. What is it you want from me?”

  “Your imagination.”

  “My imagination?”

  “Yes. With it we are going to bring David's extraordinary gift to mankind to the world.” I glanced at the computer screen. “So you expect me to write this book?” Gull stood up and turned his back to me. He placed a hand on the glass wall and gazed at the lights far below. “I thought we would write it together.”

  “Did you now? So why pick me?”

  “I have read your novel Harley's Strongroom.”

  “And?”

  “And your instincts as to how the human mind works impressed me.”

  I took a sip of water. “Alright. Gull. Curious name. What does it mean?”

  “It is short for Guillotine.”

  “No it isn't.”

  “I thought it a close enough approximation.”

  “As in the French method of execution?”

  “Quite so.”

  “Why that name?”

  “It was apt once.”

  “Why? You used to decapitate people?”

  Gull nodded. “It was – will be – my job. A job at which, I regret to say, I excelled.”

  “… In the future?”

  “Yes. There is no need for concern. You are quite safe.”

  “And David knew about your job? Severing heads, it isn’t the most empathic of pastimes.”

  “And for that reason we made quite a pair.” Gull removed the mask from the left side of his face and turned to face me. I recoiled in my seat.

  “As you can see, I am not so much lacking imagination, as I have never had one.”

  “What are you? A robot?”

  “Nothing so grand. I am merely an implant. A computer program. I was placed inside the left hemisphere of David's brain.” I opened my mouth to speak, but had so many competing questions that I closed it again. Gull smiled. “By sun-up, The Empathy Gene will be written, and you and all of human kind will know the debt of gratitude you owe him.” Gull sat down at the table, and from within his right eye socket a light shone – a multi-coloured prism that moved slowly across the table. It climbed my red silk shirt, my breasts, my neck and face, and narrowed into a letterbox when it reached my eyes. I gasped and gazed around wide-eyed like a blind person suddenly gifted with sight. “Where is this place?”

  “It is the beginning. The medical facility where I was implanted into David's brain.”

  “When?”

  “Six thousand years from now.” The light from Gull's eye went out and I reached for the table's edge. “I apologise,” said Gull. “The return to the present can be disorientating. Fortunately, we shall complete The Empathy Gene in one sitting.”

  “I'm not that fast a typist,” I murmured, blinking, trying to re-focus my eyes on the present.

  “You will be.” Gull sat back in his chair. “It's only fair to warn you that if you agree to what I ask, then the places you will visit, the things you will see … they are not for the faint hearted.” I opened my mouth to speak but closed it again when Gull said, “David stands alone on the shoulders of giants.”

  “Giants?”

  “Yes. All those men and women who throughout history have fought tyranny and oppression in pursuit of freedom. As the last of their kind, David's burden will be to ensure that their sacrifices have not been in vain.” Gull fell silent and gazed at the painting he'd just begun.

  “What is it,” I asked quietly.

  “It is to be a copy of a painting you will see if …”

  “No, that's not what I meant. What's bothering you?”

  “As with all good men who are faced with those who would impose dark ideologies upon humanity, David must do whatever necessary to be the last man standing when the smoke clears.”

  “And?”

  “And, if you agree to assist me in the writing of this book, you will be unable to close your eyes, or look away from the things you see.”

  “Will I be in any danger from these things?”

  Gull shook head slowly. “Tomorrow morning you will see the sunrise, and be free to return to your life in the present.” I picked my glass up with a shaky hand, drank its contents, and placed it firmly back on the table. Against my better judgement I said, “Let's get on with it. Before I lose my nerve.”

  “You agree then?”

  “Yes.” Once again the light shone from Gull's left eye, he leaned across the table, took hold of my hands and placed them gently upon the keyboard. He sat back in his seat, smiled and said, “And now we will engage your imagination, and together we will reveal the unquantifiable debt of gratitude that Mankind owes to David …”

  The Empathy Gene

  One

  David lay paralysed in darkness, listening to the voices in his room. They're not real, he told himself. It's a nightmare. Stay calm. You'll wake soon …

  “Is the subject fully preppe
d?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the status of the implant?”

  “Primed and ready for insertion.”

  “Then let's begin. Bone drill. And someone alert the sterilisation unit… looks like we're going to need a mop in here.”

  A woman's voice, faintly amused, “You think the subject can hear you?”

  “His brain activity suggests so.”

  “Will he remember anything of the procedure?”

  “What he remembers is no longer relevant …”

  David opened his eyes and sat up in bed, panting. His breath a fine white mist. He glanced at the door. Still closed and bolted. The sparse room and his meagre belongings lay undisturbed. He swung his legs out of bed and buried his head in his hands.

  Clothes of rough-spun wool lay slung across a table. He stood uneasily and reached for them.

  David rubbed his hands for warmth and approached a window that spanned the width of his room, beyond which lay Man's last sanctuary on Earth: Goliath.

  Goliath was circular in structure. Seventy kilometres across. At its centre a vast dome rose up and breached its outer defences, its top resembling a milky eye that peeped towards a universe long since veiled by clouds of volcanic ash. A controlled amount of ash was allowed to pass through Goliath's outer webbing. Electronically charged to create light, it drifted across the vast enclosure like fairy dust on its final descent into hell. From his apartment building on the southern-most outskirts of Goliath, David watched it fall.