The nuance was beyond Matt at the best of times. In his current state, it just streaked past him. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know, man,” Jabba said with visible discomfort. “These biomolecular guys, they’re into rearranging DNA, playing around with the building blocks of life. Pulling apart and rearranging atoms and molecules like they were Lego bricks. And this sign in the sky, the way it looks organic, alive even . . . the gray area between biology and chemistry, between life and non-life, you know? It’s giving me a creepy feeling. Like maybe what they’re doing has more to do with some kind of designed life-form than a projected image.”
Matt frowned, trying to wrap his head around what Jabba was saying. “You’ve spent too much time watching The X-Files.”
Jabba shrugged, like it wasn’t a bad thing. “These biotech guys, they’re always getting flak for messing around in God’s closet. God’s closet, man. Who knows what they found in there.”
He let it drift and ran the cold tap. He drank from it, then splattered water across his face before filling up a glass and handing it to Matt. He didn’t have much more to tell him. He hadn’t been able to find any mention of who was backing Reece’s project, let alone what it involved.
Darkness was closing in fast outside their room, which suited Matt just fine. He wasn’t going anywhere tonight. He needed to rest. Jabba went back out and picked up some blood-free clothes for Matt and brought back some food and some Coke cans. They wolfed it all down greedily while watching the news. The footage from the cave in Egypt was hogging the airwaves, and the warm pizzas, though welcome, weren’t doing much to quell the cold, dismal feeling inside them.
“This is getting bigger,” Jabba noted glumly. “More elaborate.”
Matt nodded. “They know what they’re doing.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“What then?”
“These people. They’ve got serious resources at their disposal. Think about what they’re doing. First, they rustle up some major brain power, put them to work somewhere for, what, a couple of years? Then they kill them all off.” He noticed a hint of resistance on Matt’s face and quickly amended his words. “Or, whatever, maybe lock them up somewhere and fake their deaths—even more complicated to pull off. But no one seems to know anything about what this scientific dream team was working on, and there’s no record of who they were all working for. The one thing that’s sure is that there’s some serious moolah involved. Danny, Reece, and the others, they wouldn’t have gotten involved if they didn’t know they had all the backup they needed. And the kind of research they do, it ain’t cheap. Plus the rest of it, all this,” he said as he waved at the screen. “Seriously deep pockets, dude.”
“Okay, so where’d the money come from?”
Jabba thought about it for a second. “Two possibilities. Reece could’ve raised the money privately,” he speculated, “though not from a VC or a public company. There’d be a trace of it, especially after the deaths. No, it would have to be private money. Not easy, given the scale of it. And practically untraceable, given that the entire creative team was supposedly wiped out.”
“What’s the other possibility?”
“Reece was doing this for a government agency. A highly classified project. Which sounds about right to me.”
Matt’s face darkened with uncertainty. He’d been wondering about the same thing. “Any particular candidates?”
Jabba shrugged. “DARPA. In-Q-Tel.”
Matt looked a question at him.
“DARPA. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. It’s part of the DoD. They fund a ton of research. Everything from micro bots to virtual battlefields. Any technology that can help us win these wars and defeat those who hate our freedom,” he added mockingly.
“And the other one?”
“In-Q-Tel. It’s the CIA’s venture capital arm. They’re early stage investors, which is actually very savvy of them when you think about it. Get in on the ground floor. Find out about any useful technology while it’s still being dreamed up. They’ve got their fingers in a lot of tech companies—and that includes a few of the big, household-name Internet sites you and I use on a daily basis.” He gave him a pointed, big-brother-is-watching-you look.
Matt absorbed what Jabba was trying to say. “A government op.”
“It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? I mean, if what we’re saying is true, if they’ve really faked this thing, they’re on their way to convincing everyone out there that God’s talking to us.