Title: Sapient
Series: -
Author:y Jerry Kaczmarowski
Date Published: April 2015
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.
Excerpt
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.”
Praise for Sapient
“A timely, winning adventure that brings up
serious questions about technology and medical research.”
– Reviewed by
Kirkus
“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.” - Reviewed by Dana Bjornstad
"Sapient by Jerry Kaczmarowski is an
intense, action-packed, suspenseful and thrilling read! The storyline is
definitely unique and pulls readers in right away… The book was fast-paced,
flowed nicely and provided a thought provoking message. I believe Sapient will
really make readers wonder just how far and to what lengths they would go to
save someone they love.” - Reviewed by Charity Tober for Readers' Favorite
“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.” - Reviewed
by Cheryl Stout
“A
timeless, engrossing and perfectly-paced techno thriller about the promise –
and fear – of modern medical science.” - Reviewed by 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.
