Sapient is a new techno thriller by Jerry Kaczmarowski. It was published in April 2015 and is available for sale on Amazon in eBook and paperback.
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Synopsis:
Abandoned by her husband after
the birth of their child, Jane Dixon’s world is defined by her autistic son and
the research she does to find a cure for his condition. She knows her work on
animal intelligence may hold the key. She also knows that the research will
take decades to complete. None of it will ultimately benefit her son.
All that changes when a lab rat
named Einstein demonstrates that he can read and write. Just as her research
yields results, the U.S. government discovers her program. The army wants to
harness her research for its military potential. The CDC wants to shut
her down completely. The implications of animal intelligence are too dangerous,
particularly when the previously inert virus proves to be highly contagious.
She steals the virus to cure
her son, but the government discovers the theft. She must now escape to Canada
before the authorities can replace her son’s mental prison with a physical one.
Chapter 1
A young research assistant poked his
head through the laboratory door and said, “We’re heading out to grab some
beers. Want to join us?”
Dr. Jane Dixon brushed aside a strand of
dark hair that had fallen from her ponytail. She waved the offer off without
turning to face him and gave a curt, “Too much work.” I need to get out of here
at a decent time to see Robbie, or I’m going to need to find a new nanny.
“Come on, Dr. Dixon. One quick drink.
It’s Friday.”
She sighed and faced him, removing her
dark-rimmed glasses. “How about a rain check?” She gave the younger man her
best smile, but Jane knew she sounded insincere.
“Sure, a rain check.” The research
assistant gave a perfunctory nod and let the door swing shut. Jane wouldn’t
receive another invitation anytime soon, which was fine with her.
She put her hands in the small of her
back and stretched, yielding a satisfying pop. Not for the first time, she
congratulated herself on the regularity of her yoga workouts. They were one of
the few distractions she permitted herself. With forty in the not-too- distant
future, it was one distraction she couldn’t afford to forgo. She pulled her
stool closer to her computer and checked her maze for the final time. She
chuckled to herself. After all her years of education, she was reduced to
playing video games with rodents. Using a virtual maze allowed her to create a
level of complexity unrealistic with traditional animal intelligence testing.
Jane walked into an adjoining room with
rows of cages where her subjects spent most of their day. She approached a cage
adorned with a garish blue first-place ribbon. Her assistant had put it on the
door as a joke. At first, it migrated back and forth as different rats
outperformed others. For the past two months, it hadn’t moved.
She opened the cage and made a coaxing
motion. “Come here, Einstein.” A fat, white rat dashed out the door onto her
hand and scrambled up her right shoulder. His neon-blue eyes gave off an icy
intelligence. The change in eye color was one of many side effects of her tests
Jane still couldn’t explain. The rat whipped its tail into her hair for
balance, hopping from paw to paw.
“Settle down, boy,” she said. She
carried Einstein back into the lab with its virtual maze and extended her hand.
He raced down her arm to the large trackball and made little jumps in
anticipation of the race. As Jane clamped him gently into the metal rig that
held him in place, he stopped jumping. Einstein differed from the other rats—he
never struggled when Jane locked him in place. The other rats fought against
the harness, making it difficult to complete the test preparations.
A two-dimensional overview of a simple
maze flashed on the screen. Without hesitating, Einstein rolled through the
maze on his trackball, completing the challenge in seconds.
“Too easy,” Jane said. “You don’t even
deserve a prize.” Despite this, she stroked the rat’s head and gave him a small
piece of cheese. Einstein snapped it up in his front paws. As soon as he
devoured it, he pulled against his harness and chattered at Jane.
“Relax, big fella.” She tapped on her
keyboard to reconfigure the course before bending down to eye level with
Einstein. “Now the real challenge begins.” He stared into her sea- green eyes.
The small rodent had the intense focus of a fighter about to get in the ring.
A second maze flashed on the screen.
There was a straightforward solution that was long and twisting. A second
solution existed, but so far, none of the rats had figured it out. The second
path had two tiny virtual teleportation pads. If the rats stepped onto one of
the pads, they were transported to a corresponding location in a different part
of the maze. For this test, the pads would save precious seconds.
“Go,” Jane shouted, starting the timer.
Einstein didn’t budge. Instead, he looked back and forth between the obvious
path and the first teleportation pad.
“Clock’s ticking,” Jane said to herself
in frustration.
Einstein shrieked as he noticed the
decreasing progress bar. A tentative paw step forward cleared the maze overview
and put him in a six-inch-high virtual hallway. He waddled straight to the
teleportation pad but stopped short. He turned his gaze to Jane as his whiskers
moved back and forth, up and down. Jane stared back, willing him to make the
right move.
The rat rolled forward on his trackball
across the pad. The screen flashed, and he teleported to within a few steps of
the exit. With a final glance at Jane, he spun through the gate with twenty
seconds left on the clock.
Jane clapped her hands. “You did it.”
She reached toward him. He clambered up her arm, slower now that he was out of
the virtual world. She gave him a piece of cheese and returned him to the steel
table.
“Impressive,” she said to the empty
room. At times like this she wished someone could appreciate her triumphs. Her
coworkers were at the bar. And Robbie? Robbie is Robbie. The warm smile of a
mother flitted across her face as she thought about her son.
Einstein broke her reverie as he
scratched and clawed at an iPad on the table. “It’s like having a second
child,” Jane sighed to herself. She obliged Einstein’s pestering by starting an
old episode of Sesame Street. The classic show was his favorite. Most other
children’s programming bored him. His second-favorite genre was as far from the
Children’s Television Workshop gang as you could get. One of Jane’s more
unsavory assistants had decided to play Rated R comedies on the screen in the
evening when the animals were alone in their cages. The crass movies
entertained Einstein for hours despite the fact he couldn’t understand any of
them.
Jane’s mobile phone vibrated. A message
from her nanny read, “WHERE R U!!!” She glanced at the time in the lower right
of her screen and gave a sharp intake of breath. I did it again, she chided
herself.
“Leaving now. Sorry.” She almost typed a
sad face emoticon but caught herself. It wouldn’t be well received. She pushed
Send and dropped the phone on the lab table. She pounded the results of today’s
tests into her computer, not bothering to correct spelling errors as she raced
to enter her observations while they were still fresh.
The phone buzzed again. Jane gritted her
teeth at the unnecessary back-and-forth. These nastygrams would only delay her
departure. She reached for the phone in frustration, but Einstein was perched
over it, staring at the screen. She nudged the little rodent back and set her
jaw as she read the text.
The screen read, “Who is Einstein?” As
she struggled to make sense of the nanny’s text, her eyes scanned back to the
previous outbound message. She juggled her phone, almost dropping it on the
floor.
The screen read, “I am Einstein.”
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Praise for Sapient:
“The plot
is fast-paced, thought provoking, funny at times, and kept me reading to find
out what would happen next. I think that the YA audience will love it.” - Dana Bjornstad
“I loved
this story and I especially liked its animal characters - Einstein the lab rat
with the keen sense of humor and Bear, the one-eyed German Shepherd dog who
seems to always be the butt of Einstein's jokes. And the human characters
aren't half bad either.” - Cheryl Stout
“A timeless, engrossing and
perfectly-paced techno thriller about the promise – and fear – of modern
medical science.” - Best Thrillers
About Jerry Kaczmarowski:
Jerry
Kaczmarowski lives in Seattle with his family. He writes techno-thrillers
that explore the benefits and dangers of mankind's scientific advancement. His
first book, Moon Rising, was released in June 2014. His
second book, Sapient, was
published in April 2015.
Jerry
spent the first twenty years of his professional life in the consulting industry
on the West Coast. His fascination with technology is matched
only by his love of stories. His books intertwine action with a keen insight
into how technology will shape our lives in the coming years.
