The Henhouse

Binary

Lucas looked different, in a way Justin couldn't pin down. His hair lie askew over a face smeared with dirt, flecked with scratches that hadn't quite broken skin. The dirt spread to his jeans and concentrated at the knees, a few blades of grass still stuck in the stains like in a spider's web.

Outside.

The thought sparked something in Justin- something like hope, or joy. But the feeling left as quick as it'd come when he found Lucas's eyes - narrowed, twitching, they looked wild, deranged. Hungry.

Justin was still staring at them when Lucas pulled the trigger.

He jumped at the noise, but didn't turn. He knew what he'd see. Still the shock rippled through him, slapping him face-first.

Dr. Dreschler's sniveling stopped. But now, he would have given anything to bring it back.

Ella shuttered. The room ignored it.

Lucas held the gun in place, but his face hadn't changed. No regret, no hesistation. In fact, it looked like the shot had calmed him.

He took a wobbly breath.

"I'd feel bad. You know, doing that," he sighed. His voice was lower than Justin remembered.

"But- well. You've all already seen someone take a bullet, huh?"

Justin looked to Gabe, whose eyes narrowed, confused.

"She could've been a big help," Lucas said. "Much better than any of my scientists. But clearly, she was getting too emotional about the whole thing." He forced a chuckle. "Women, huh?"

Jonah stepped forward, but then stopped herself.

"You know," Lucas continued, "they consider all of that genetic. I mean, the whole women-are-more-emotional thing. It's all in our genes. Biology. As and Ts and Gs and Cs. That's all DNA is made of, right? It's almost- almost like binary." He smiled faintly, as though he was having a pleasant dream. "That's just 0s and 1s. And then there's ASCII, which uses all the numbers, 1 through 9."

He cocked his head to one side.

"You know," he rambled, "I heard somewhere that since pi is an irrational number, and it just goes on forever... if you converted all its digits into characters, like letters of the alphabet, then you'd find everything there. I mean, everything." His eyes grew wide. "Everything. Could you imagine? Your past, and your future. A full description of how and when you die, and what happens after. Every book you ever read, everything anyone's ever said, ever done, ever thought in the entire history of the world. The answer to every question you could possibly ask, in the whole universe. It'd all be in there, somewhere. It'd have to be. It's just logic. Math. Isn't that amazing?"

His eyes looked so distant that Justin wondered if he could slap the gun out of his hand. But he couldn't move. Freeze, freeze, freeze.

"It's the same," he resumed. "For us. Our DNA. Everything humanity could possibly be, every lifeform that could ever exist. The right mix of As, and Gs and Ts and Cs... and- and tada!" he giggled wildly. "There it is. ...And it's all a matter of luck. A lottery. One that you all won."

He looked around at the laboratory. Then he laughed, this time full. Booming. Mad.

"And imagine-" he added louder, "just imagine what I could be like, winning 8 lotteries at the same time." He strained to talk through his laughter. "Oh, ah– well, I mean 7, of course."