Chapter Forty-Two
THE BEAST
1
A young farmer stood sweating in the wide, featureless, harvested wheat field, located not far from Narromine, out in the flatlands of outback New South Wales. He gazed west, towards the afternoon sun, and soaked up the satisfaction of a successful harvest. Just as he took his hat off to wipe his brow with the back of his shirtsleeve, he observed the sun shift in the sky, towards the horizon, in basically zero time. ‘Stone the crows!’ he uttered. Then he looked all around. Everything was the same, except it was about an hour later in the day. He looked at his Rolex and observed that the time no longer matched the time of day, which he could always tell to within five minutes by the angle of the sun.
2
A fourth generation, Australian-Chinese father of three, who, through a few very lucky wagers, managed to procure three suburban blocks of land right next to Sydney airport and convert them into one, thriving market garden, froze in his spot as he observed the shadow of a stone sundial, which stood in the centre of his garden, lengthen in an instant. The sundial suddenly showed the time to be 4.30pm. He looked at his watch. It said 3.30pm. He scratched his head then turned and walked into his house and noticed that all the clocks in the house were one hour fast. He mystified his family, that night, attempting to describe his time jump to them.
3
Jacko always said, ‘If you can draw it, I can build it.’ He was a master of everything. He liked his beer at the end of his workday, but he had to be careful to not overdo it because there was a price to pay. If he misbehaved, the wrath of Henrietta ‘the Hun’, his once-lovely German wife who loved strudel too much and was now built like a Tiger tank, would come crashing down on his head like a ton of bratwurst.
Jacko’s first shock came as, after only two beers, he stepped out of the pub toilet and noticed that it had gotten mighty dark outside all of a sudden. He looked at his watch. It said 5.30pm. He looked at the clock behind the bar and it said 6.30pm. All of a sudden it seemed like he was an hour late. Mystified, he looked around the pub. No one was looking strange. Everybody was just sitting around as usual, drinking their beer and talking like nothing had happened. He didn’t know what to make of it all and he spent the whole way home trying to work out how he was going to evade the ‘wrath of the Hun’. He didn’t have much luck as he tried to explain to her that the whole universe had just jumped forward an hour.
‘It’s true, liebschen, see my watch?’
4
Deep in the bowels of a Sydney University biology lab, Alexander laboriously worked through his self-imposed excruciation. He chose a dozen, numbered, DNA samples from the lab’s store of about three thousand and was in the process of analysing the junk-DNA part of the strands. He was looking for the repeats sequence in each of them. Now that he knew what he was looking for, it was a little easier to find them, although it took up to a week to find some of them. The strands were so long and the repeats sequences so short, that luck still had a big part to play in how quickly he zeroed in on the target.
He marked the sequence when he found it then counted the repeats, the sub-repeats and the sub-sub-repeats. He then noted the birth date of the sample and calculated what he postulated was the exact date of death of the owner of that sample. He then compared it to the recorded death date of the sample.
When the DNA samples were taken, anonymity was assured by the sample only being given a number. The only other information recorded was race, sex, birth date and age. The death date was recorded if the sample was taken from a deceased person. About ten percent of the samples had a death date. These were usually acquired with the help of authorities, like the police, from fatal car accidents and such.
At this stage of his research Alex only used deceased samples. He used them to confirm his theory. And confirm it they did. The repeats, sub-repeats and sub-sub-repeats in the junk DNA recorded the exact number of years, months and days of the owner of the sample’s lifespan. It took him just over three months to finish analysing the twelve samples. He gathered his notes, scribbled up a summary and decided to take a few weeks off during the winter break. The rest of the DNA samples were from people who were still alive when the samples were taken and it was Alex’s intention to begin analysing some of them when he returned to his task. He wanted to get a larger variety of samples so that he could gain a better statistical perspective.
5
It was a crisp Sunday morning, early June, 2008. The cool south-wester made it chilly to be outside, especially out of the sun and exposed to the wind. The sky was wispy cirrus in a deep blue. Rose Bay shimmered with a million crystalline reflections and the main sounds that could be heard were those made by the gulls, the tinkling halyards around the bay and the subtle white noise of traffic in the distance.
Lloyd had Mecca in the water, tied up alongside his jetty. He was charging up the battery. Alex and Sophia were over for a visit. While he sat with Lloyd, chatting about his thesis, the girls, who were best friends by now, prepared coffees and morning snacks for them all.
‘I’ve done twelve of them, all deceased, and they all confirm the postulate. Their life spans are all recorded in the junk DNA, to the day.’
‘That’s incredible, Alex, especially as most of them died in car accidents. How could that be recorded in the DNA?’
‘I know, I can’t work it out either. It’s like something out there knew that those people were going to die in car accidents, even before they were born, and programmed it into the DNA. I mean car accidents, give me a break, there can’t be anything more random than car accidents.’
‘So, your results suggest that nothing is ever random. They suggest that all car accidents, actually all phenomena, are totally predetermined, like watching a movie. It’s all happening in front of you, and you are reacting to everything, but you know that it’s all predetermined because it’s all on film.’
Eva and Sophia joined the boys in the boat.
‘Coffee everyone?’
‘Thank you, Eva. A hot coffee will really hit the spot,’ replied Alex.
Lloyd held up his cup of coffee and quipped,
‘I wonder if this cup of coffee is programmed in my DNA?’ Everyone laughed.
‘DNA sounds a lot like DVD, doesn’t it?’
The boys both looked at Sophia with a look of surprise. Even though she was not the academic, her main interests being shoes and jewellery, she often uttered something that hinted at a far deeper understanding than anyone gave her credit for.
‘Maybe the nature of death is not pre-determined, just the day of death,’ suggested Lloyd.
‘Yes, you must have read my mind, Lloyd,’ replied Alex, ‘because I was just thinking that. I was thinking that only the date can be recorded, nothing else. The method of death could still be anything.’
‘So, the old saying, when your time’s up, it’s up, isn’t far off the mark,’ said Lloyd.
‘You know,’ blurted Alex, ‘I just got a Fibonacci flash about DVD and DNA being fractals of one another.’
‘Fibonacci flash, eh?’ said Lloyd.
‘Sophia is the whizz,’ replied Alex.
They relaxed sitting in the boat around the cockpit and enjoyed some sandwiches. They chatted about all sorts of things with everyone making an occasional comment about Alex’s thesis. Then Lloyd remembered,
‘I’ve got to take a run out to the cotton farm next week. I’ve got to see Leon and Russel and sort a few things out with them. Eva doesn’t want to come …’
Eva interjected, ‘It’s not that I don’t want to come, sweetie, I do, but I have prior commitments, you know that.’
‘Ahh, that’s right, your tennis tournament. You know, darling, you ought to show those poor ladies some mercy and sit one out.’
‘Not a chance. I’m so fired up I want to kill them all.’
‘You know, she beat me at tennis when she was seven months pregnant with the twins.’ Everyone laughed. Lloyd turned to Alex. ‘What about you, Alex? How would you like to come for a ride out to the farm with me?’
‘Who me? Hmm, I’ve never been as far west as Warren. Narromine is as far as I’ve ever been … gliding.’
‘Well, how about it? I could use the company and I’d love to show you around the property. It’s awesome country. We can take the Aston …’
‘No darling,’ Eva cut in, ‘I’m sorry, but I need the Aston next week.’
‘We could go in the Pantera,’ suggested Alex. ‘I’d love to open her up on a bit of outback road.’
‘It’s settled then; we’ll go in Alex’s Pantera. I was thinking of leaving on Tuesday morning. How is that for you, Alex?’
‘Tuesday is fine, Lloyd. It’ll give me a day to get ready.’
6
The sky-blue De Tomaso Pantera was one of the finest examples of its marque. Alex purchased it off a slightly shady character, a Swiss guy he met while having a coffee at the Cruising Yacht Club.
Alex had been noticing two Panteras, one blue and one red, occasionally parked just up the street from his building. When he saw them, he always had a closer look from his balcony through his binoculars. A couple of times he even stepped out of his apartment and walked up the street and had a proper ogle. He was completely mesmerised by the perfect proportions of the sleek, low-slung, muscular, rear-engined, ground-hugging missiles.
One morning, while spying through his binoculars, he spotted the owner as he walked out to his car. He spotted him again at an adjacent table at the sailing club while he was having a coffee. He leaned over and asked him,
‘Are you the owner of those beautiful machines up the road?’ ‘My wife owns one of them,’ came the reply.
‘How do they go? … I’m sorry … do you mind me asking you?’
The man broke into a smile, picked up his cappuccino, rose from his table and walked over.
‘May I sit at your table?’ he asked in a subtle French accent.
Alex lit up, ‘Please, be my guest.’ He beckoned the man to sit down. ‘My name is Alex.’ They shook hands.
‘I’m Manfred,’ said the man.
‘Do I detect an accent?’ asked Alex.
‘I’m Swiss,’ he explained.
‘I just love your cars.’
‘My wife owns the blue one. That one is 300 horsepower. Mine is 500.’
‘Wow!’
‘My wife, the bitch, she has pissed off. I am in contemplation thinking about selling her car. I don’t need two of them.’
‘You’re kidding?’ Alex’s eyeballs popped out of their sockets. ‘You want to sell your wife’s car?’
‘Thirteen and a half … cash!’
‘The blue one is my favourite … it’s … er … more pure.’
‘It is the original body shape from before they introduced spoilers and big guards like on mine.’
‘I prefer the original shape … although I love your car as well.’
‘Well, you bring me the cash and I give you the car.’
‘Thirteen and a half you say?’
‘Yes, bring it up to my place and I give you the keys.’
‘What a bargain,’ Alex thought, ‘it must be worth three times as much.’ He shook Manfred’s hand, saying, ‘I’ll take it. I can come over tomorrow, with the money, and pick it up.’
‘Fantastico obbligato! Two o’clock?’
‘I’ll be there.’
7
As he walked up to the front door, Alex was confronted by a pandemonium of thumping disco music emanating from within the apartment. He rang the bell. The thumping stopped and the door opened.
Manfred stood in front of Alex dressed in baggy, Moroccan harem pants and a Balinese, tie-dyed, rainbow-coloured singlet. Hanging around his neck were about half a dozen bead necklaces. Alex stepped into the spacious, luxuriously-appointed apartment. It was situated on the first floor and had large windows with views of the city across Rushcutters Bay. In one corner was a white grand piano. In fact, the whole place was white, including the furniture. The only things that were not white were a pair of conga drums in the middle of the room and a gargantuan sound system wailing disco music up against one wall.
‘Welcome, Alex.’
‘Wow, this is some pad you’ve got here.’
‘Let me turn the music down.’
Manfred turned the music down and beckoned Alex towards a small, all white, bar. They sat on two stools.
‘Beer?’ Manfred asked.
‘Ooh yeah … beer … sure, why not … to celebrate … I’m a bit excited, you know, Manfred …’
‘And so you should be. It is a fantastic automobile. In many ways it is better than mine.’
‘I’m already sold, Manfred.’
Alex placed an envelope on the bar. Manfred handed him his beer, opened the envelope and counted the money. He picked up a set of keys lying on the bar and handed them over, saying,
‘It’s a pleasure doing business with you, Alex. Now, why don’t we celebrate your purchase of my De Tomaso. I insist.’
Alex thought that he detected a subtly intimidating tone in the invitation, like the type one gets from a criminal.
They sat on white, Italian lounges upholstered in soft, nappa leather. It was beginning to become obvious to Alex that Manfred had been partying for some time. He wondered about the potential cocktail of stimulants he might have been on. He looked around, as if searching for something, and commented,
‘This is an exquisite place.’
‘It’s a rental. I don’t stay anywhere too long.’
Alex had a sip of his beer as Manfred suddenly rose to his feet, stepped over to the sound system and cranked it up full volume. He then danced across the floor to his congas and began pounding to the approximate beat of the disco music. Alex noticed that the thumping noise was violently shaking the windows. He could feel the bass passing right through his body. Manfred danced like a Woodstock hippie and banged his congas, seemingly lost in some kind of tribal ritual. He yelled out at the top of his voice,
‘This is how I relax.’
Then Stayin’ Alive came on. Alex’s jaw began to hang limp as Manfred kicked into overdrive and began disco dancing around the floor imitating John Travolta. Alex noticed that he was actually a very fit man. He was about six feet tall. His thick, sun-bleachedblond mane hung past his broad shoulders. His deeply-tanned body was toned and muscular. When Stayin’ Alive finished, he turned the sound system back down and sprawled out on the lounge. He took a big swig of his beer and declared,
‘I killed somebody once.’
The expression that appeared on Alex’s face could best be described as a cleanlywashed, white potato. He suddenly became concerned about the control of all the muscles in his face. He could feel a wave of panic surge through him.
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. I got into a fight once, in Bangkok. I hit a guy in the face and he fell backwards down a flight of stairs. It was the fall that killed him.’
‘Ohhh … absolutely!’
‘They are chasing me, you know, all of them, the fucking pigs and the fucking mafia.’ ‘Are they?’
‘Yeah. I done some good import deals and the fucking bastards bullshit that they didn’t get paid. I paid, baby. And then a few whispers got around and the next thing I got is narcs all over me, like bird shit on a statue, cause they didn’t get paid. The stinking pigs. They never did anything, why should they get paid?’ He screamed at the ceiling, ‘You get nothing!’ He turned to Alex and revealed, ‘Anyway, they all just want me dead now.’
Alex looked at his beer as he felt the room begin to spin. Manfred rose to his feet in a rage of anger and grabbed a baseball bat leaning against the piano and swung at the air a couple of times. Glaring out through the window, he raged,
‘Come and get me, cunts!’
He then performed some type of martial arts routine with his bat, and when he was finished and completely calmed down, he put the bat back and asked Alex,
‘Another beer?’
‘Another beer sounds good, Manfred.’
Manfred opened two more beers, cranked up the volume and returned to the congas. He played and danced like he was in his own world, like Alex wasn’t even there, for about an hour. Then he suddenly stopped, quietened the music, sat back down and declared,
‘An appropriate celebration for such a magnifique machine, no?’
‘Thanks, Manfred, I’ll never forget it, trust me.’
Later, as Alex sat in the jet-like interior of the Pantera, all the latent static of his recent experience dissolved into the ether as the symphony orchestra of the throaty, 351 Ford Cleveland V8 played behind his head.
8
It was well before dawn on Tuesday, June 10, 2008 as they rolled out of Point Piper. They made quick progress though the sparse city traffic. They snaked through the foothills of the Blue Mountains on the way up to Katoomba as the sun crested the easterly horizon behind them. They drove through some shaded valleys and along twisting roads that were often damp in places. The Pantera hugged the road with the agility of a big cat, its fully-independent suspension absorbing the bumps with consummate, Italian poise. Both men commented on the brilliant suspension and how the Pantera’s axis of rotation was located right where they were sitting, meaning that they remained still while the car moved around them. As it was the middle of winter they drove through some sub-zero areas, but the two scientists remained warm as toast, comfortably ensconced within the air-conditioned, fully leather-trimmed opulence of the snug cockpit.
‘What kind of rubber are you running?’ asked Lloyd.
‘Pirelli P Zeros. 245s in the front and 285s in the back,’ replied Alex. ‘I’ve done a lot of work on it since I bought it. I had new back axles machined because the splines were gone in the old ones. They vibrated the back of the car at 110mph. I also invested in a new, stainless exhaust system. All the headers, everything, is custom made.’
They stopped in Bathurst to top up the fuel. Lloyd mentioned that he had always wanted to drive around the Bathurst track. He told Alex how he had never missed a Bathurst race since they began back in the sixties.
‘No matter how pressing things were, I always took the weekend off to watch Bathurst on TV. I love the thrill of victory and agony of defeat, which are so prominent in that race. There is always drama. Why don’t we take a spin around the track, Alex? We’ve got time.’
‘Sure. I love that race too, but I haven’t seen as many as you have, Lloyd. I’m not ancient enough.’
‘That’s right, rub it in, but at least I’ve gotten this far. Let’s see how far you get.’
They both laughed. Alex drove out to Mt. Panorama, which was located just south of the town. The first lap around the iconic, motor-racing track was taken in ‘reconnaissance mode’. The second and third were fast, but not reckless. Both men were surprised by the steepness of the dipper and the esses. As they flew down Conrod Straight at 140mph, the resounding ‘De Tomaso Orchestra’ entertained everyone for miles around. After the third lap they drove back to town, turned left onto the Mitchell Highway and headed westwards.
They rolled into Narromine around the middle of the day. They decided that they would have lunch there because Alex had flown gliders there before and he reckoned that he knew his way around town ‘pretty good’. They ended up having a delicious counter lunch at the local club.
Narromine was located right at the eastern edge of the wheat belt. The land to the west of there was like flat infinity, and the road was like some kind of time tunnel that pulled everything from the distant future closer to the present. For example, towns that were supposed to be fifteen minutes up the road grew out of the singularity in five.
They cruised down an endless, ruler-straight, anvil-flat road, towards the western horizon, sitting on 110mph. It was noticeable how much the conversation grew silent during those extended periods of above 100mph driving. Alex looked in the rear vision mirror and observed,
‘Look, Lloyd, no cars.’ He looked ahead up the road, all the way to the horizon and he looked all the way back as far as he could see in the rear vision mirror. ‘No cars, horizon to horizon. We’ve got the whole road to ourselves.’ He depressed the accelerator further and accelerated the Pantera to 130mph. ‘This is its true cruising speed. Look, it’s so stable I can drive it with two fingers.’ He demonstrated his two-fingered technique. The stable ‘Beast’, which was what the boys named it on that trip, shot down the highway like a cruise missile on rails.
‘This road was made for us, Lloyd. 130 is effortless.’
They flew into Trangie in what seemed like minutes. 35mph felt like going backwards as they crawled through town. They crossed the railway line west of Trangie and rapidly disappeared into the distance accompanied by the ‘Cleveland Concerto’.
Alex turned the volume up on the ‘Orchestra’, and warped them through 100, 130, 140 and still accelerating to a top speed of 152mph. Although ‘The Beast’ had more to give, Alex lost his nerve and finally settled into a 150mph cruise. He encountered the first bend, an open, left-hand kink, at the end of a twenty-mile straight. They approached it at unexpected velocity, making it look like a fast zoom. Alex lifted off the throttle and took the sweeping lefthander doing 110. He powered out of the bend and accelerated back to 150 again.
‘Nevertire is just up ahead, Alex. We have to turn right there.’
No sooner did Lloyd say that, and they were careening into the next town. They passed an 80km/h speed sign doing 130mph. Alex applied the discs and slowed to 50mph in as many yards.
‘Ruddy good brakes,’ commented Lloyd.
They turned right onto the Oxley Highway and headed north. The straights were shorter and there were many bends that Alex had to slow down for, but it still only took him five minutes to get to Warren.
They rolled into the front yard of Lloyd’s old farmhouse. It was perfectly maintained and, when they eventually entered it, very spacious and comfortable. It was the middle of the afternoon.
‘There are the twins.’ Lloyd pointed out through a back window, across a flat field, at two young men on horseback riding towards the house. Alex was immediately struck by the horses’ spirited nature and elegant poise. ‘I haven’t seen Leon and Russel in months. It will be so good to see them again. Come, Alex, let’s step outside.’
The twins rode up and dismounted. They both fell into their father’s arms and hugged and patted him on the back. After the emotional greeting, they all sat down on the back veranda, cracked a few stubbies and waited for the magic hour of twilight. They spoke about many things until Lloyd eventually broached the subject both Alex and he had been thinking about since they left Sydney.
‘So, what do you think about knowing your own death day?’
Alex sighed, ‘Ohhhh … I don’t know, Lloyd … it scares the shit out of me.’
‘Yes, I know what you mean. I can’t bear even thinking about it. So, what’s next?’
‘With my work, you mean?’
‘Yes. What’s next?’
‘Thirty more cases, not deceased.’
‘No death date, just a birth date?’
‘That’s right.’
‘So, you’ll know when they are going to die in the future?’
‘That’s right. I want to get some statistics. This’ll just be the first, small sample.’
‘So, you can’t see yourself testing yourself?’
‘Not at the moment, but give me time to wrap my brain around it and I might change my mind. What about you?’
‘Not a chance! I’m closer to the big D than you are and I do not need to know my death date. Just saying it sends chills down my spine.’
They sat on the back veranda, beers in hand, and admired the cosmic lightshow of the sunset. They leaned back against the chairs and put their feet up on the veranda rail. The twins’ girlfriends were preparing dinner in the kitchen. There was tranquillity everywhere. Alex speculated,
‘It’s like the DNA is a fractal representation of time in 3D space. It’s the DNA that links time with three-dimensional space. It actually makes time. The DNA is the link and it’s the same in every cell of the body, and the body is all cells.’
‘Wouldn’t each cell’s DNA need to be slightly different to provide differentiation to that cell?’
‘I hold to that assertion, Lloyd, however I doubt we will ever find that code. I don’t know what we’ll find.’
More silence, then,
‘Knowledge always comes at a price, doesn’t it?’
‘It would seem so, Alex, it would seem so.’
…….