86.

Her Great Aunt was kidnapped a long time ago. Now she was too. Were these felonies somehow related? She couldn't be sure. The Bald Man was waffling on still, better pay attention.

"You have been brought here for a purpose. A very important purpose indeed. Do you understand?"

Canada scanned the room as subtly as possible, the octabug had retired to a neutral corner, the door, which was indiscernible from the walls was shut, no immediate points of escape were apparent.

"You're allowed to talk little one, we're all friends here. Nod or say yes." He was back to good cop, that game usually involved a foil, but he seemed content to play both roles.

"Um, no. What are you talking about. You're not making any sense."

His eyebrows revealed a slight exception to this last comment, but he managed to stay in character.

"Of course, of course. I don't want to overwhelm you Miz Canada."

"Canada will do." She was pushing it.

"I think I may have jumped the gun, perhaps it's better that I do the talking and then I'll field your questions and/or snarky comments at the end. O.K?" He kicked over the mini table, spilling the uneaten burger over the floor. "This is important, important enough that I've brought here at great risk to myself. You see, the world is in trouble, big trouble and only you and I and your miserable friends can save it."

"I can play the piano, what the hell are you talking about?"

He bent down and half-heartedly slapped her, "That's your last warning. We haven't got much time. The genes are -"

Whirooooooooo!!!!

"Oh for *&%$ sake. Now what?" Some kind of alarm was sounding.

81.

If you go back far enough everything is the same thing. ACTGACT knew this well. He came from a long string of similarly coded lines. of course it didn't really matter what he knew or even what he thought the preservation of the whole was the important thing. Mutations would come and go, there had been untold numbers of variant strains, and variation had been tolerated until now.

Base chemicals that came together to form the building blocks of life were a rarity in the universe, but the probability of there continued existence had become less and less stable in the past few years. ACTGACT sat barely listening to the proposed plan by one of the monkey double helix's, he wasn't convinced that this conference could achieve anything concrete. The human DNA and all others barely even communicated anymore. All he wanted to do was his job, and then do whatever happens when he stopped working. Maybe when he moved onto the next phase of being things would go back to being the same again.

75.

The unrest in relation to the genes had been building for some years. They had all been together once, most things start out that way, but difference often breeds dissonance, unfortunately many things often end up falling apart... Council was in session. After the obligatory preamble: a genial, long winded welcome to all DNA in attendance, intermingled with the customary and decreasingly subtle hate speech leveled at the human genome, which once again hadn't been invited; it was time to discuss the nights theme: the ethical dilemma of destroying humans. Most were in favour, but the finality of the proposed solution didn't sit well with many of the higher ups, surely one bad strain of DNA didn't justify genocide, perhaps a comprise could be reached. ACTGACT had never much liked meetings and at the comencement of the meeting proper promptly fell asleep.

67.

Things were simpler back then. We were the universes eyes and ears, before eyes and ears were popular. It was just us and everything else. Then things started getting complicated. Mitosis some how lead to Copulation, tails, gills, a few missteps here and there. Life had taken on a life of ah, you know what I'm trying to say. 4 billion years later and we're still here, but events have taken an ugly turn. Complexity has gone astray and we find ourselves under threat. We were here at the beginning, and if we're smart we don't have to face our end. Not yet. The enemy walks among us. It is our kin. It is Men.