Spit in a Tube
“This is my brother, my blood, the only thing in this world created from that which I was created from, the person in this world who knows me best, the person who would miss me most if I was gone.”—James Frey, A Million Little Pieces
Another pleasant night had passed at Joe’s, but sometime past midnight the easy conversation between the bar's owner and his two companions had faltered. Now Joe watched as Macleod stifle a yawn, pressing a hand to his mouth before he looked up at the television screen above the bar. A sportscaster replayed a few shots from the day’s football game, then went to commercials, starting with an ad for 23 & Me. The commercial reenacted people taking a DNA test, then skipped to long-lost family members embracing joyously, exclaiming how pleased they were to have found one another.
“Ridiculous,” Macleod muttered.
“What’s that?” Methos asked. He had his phone in his hand and was scrolling through his messages, barely paying attention.
“I said ridiculous. All this DNA nonsense. It’s an invasion of privacy and one step away from being a pyramid scheme.”
Methos flicked his thumb, closing the phone screen. “Did I ever tell you about the time I was an advisor to Pharoah Khufu? Now that was a real pyramid scheme—”
“Not now, Methos,” Macleod huffed.
“So,” Joe announced, raising his voice before the two Immortals could really dig into their bickering, “I was thinking about sending in my DNA to one of those companies. See where I came from.”
He sneaked a glance at Macleod, anticipating his reaction. Predictably, a great scowl crossed the man’s never-changing face.
“Oh, come on, Joe. You don’t need a bunch of con artists in Utah to tell you where you come from. You know who you are.”
Next to Duncan, Methos rolled his eyes. “Don’t be so tone-deaf, MacLeod. Of course he knows who he is, and we know who he is, and he knows who we are. We’re all one big, happy family.”
“Exactly!” Macleod insisted.
“Ignoring my meaning, as usual. I'm not denying that the connections we forge outside of blood have meaning. But most people want to know more about where they came from. I don’t know if it’s somehow escaped you, Highlander, but Americans aren’t in the habit of keeping extensive family histories. Most people here have trouble naming their great-grandparents. Don’t act like it’s some kind of crime to want to know more.”
“Yeah, I thought that you of all people would know the value of family,” Dawson lobbed back at Macleod. It felt good to be on the winning side of the argument for once. Usually, it was Methos taking pot-shots at both of them.
Macleod shook his head like an offended dog. “In my day, we memorized our family going back at least six generations. But it meant something! We knew who those people were. They weren’t just names on a list.”
Methos lifted his eyebrows, and Joe tensed for a real hit. “Sure, they meant something to your clan, but did they mean something to you?”
“What do you mean by that?” Macleod demanded, a hint of offended Scottish accent making an appearance.
“What do you think, Highlander? They were your people, but they weren’t your ancestors. Are you telling me that you wouldn’t do the test if you could? Wouldn’t you want to know where you really came from?”
The black-haired chieftain’s son dropped his gaze, and when he spoke there was a wounded note in his voice that Dawson never liked to hear.
He entirely regretted bringing up the subject of DNA.
“Oh, there’s a bright idea, Methos. Just hand over our genetic material, see if anyone notices anything new and interesting.”
“I said if you could. Besides which, do you think that every teacher is warning their students against swabbing their cheeks or spitting in a tube? It’s all the rage now, and it’s just a matter of time before some young idiot does it.”
“Or some old idiot,” Macleod retorted, glowering.
Methos abruptly switched tracks.
“It is an unprecedented opportunity to investigate our origins, isn’t it?”
Joe watched as Macleod’s face turned an interesting shade of puce.
“Oh, no. He’s gonna blow,” Joe muttered, hoping to lessen the tension that he had precipitated.
Macleod ignored him, too incensed by Methos to pay any mind to the mortal.
“You can’t be serious.”
Methos shrugged. “If we kept the project amongst ourselves, recruited Immortals with backgrounds in biology and chemistry. I could go back to medical school, see what's new... Aren’t you curious at all, Macleod?”
Macleod grimaced. “Maybe I am. But it doesn’t matter. There’s no guarantee that our DNA works the same as human DNA anyway.”
“No guarantee, but a good probability. We’re not entirely alien, after all. In almost every way, our bodies function the same. Everything except for this mutation.”
“So you think it’s a mutation?” Joe asked.
Methos took a sip from his beer. “I’ve never seen anything to suggest that we’re other than human. Of course, taking a noisy public Quickening used to be a good way to convince the locals that you were a god. But I assume you weren’t thinking of that.”
“Perish the thought,” Joe muttered.
“I’ll have you know I made an excellent god.”
“I’ll bet,” he retorted, his sarcasm thick enough to cut with a knife. “Did they pay tribute in beer?
“As a matter of fact…”
“Nevermind,” Macleod interrupted the banter. “Look, if we’re human, where do we even come from?” His ire appeared to have cooled, for he settled back into his seat in a way that suggested he was no longer spoiling for a fight.
“What does one have to do with the other? Where exactly did you think we came from before? The alien mothership? Or did you think we were faerie changelings?”
Methos was scoffing with almost palpable contempt, and Joe had to wonder if he were deliberately provoking Macleod. Although you could hardly blame him, really. Macleod made it so easy.
The Scot flushed. “Of course not. It’s been three hundred years since I believed in the Fair Folk.”
“But you did believe in them. No, wait—” Methos held up a placating hand when Macleod looked ready to foam at the mouth, “We all believed in something like that at one point. That was how the world worked. But that’s just what I’m saying. If there were some manner of supernatural intervention, I would know. Even you would be old enough to know. But I have never seen any kind of proof that we come from another world or form part of another species.”
“Nothing except that we’re here at all. We are all foundlings, just like the changeling legends say.”
“Those legends were used too often as justification for shunting away the strange and the mentally ill; children with Downs Syndrome or autism; even women who didn’t obey their husbands. People have always been tribal, wary of anything different. Something you should know better than most. Didn’t your own father accuse you of being a demon when you returned?”
Macleod grimaced and, with palpable restraint, placed his glass on the table.
“I’m for bed, Methos. This is too much excitement for me.”
“Beannachd leibh, chieftain,” Methos said, offering a salute with his own glass.
A hint of levity crossed Macleod’s brow.
“Always after trouble, old man. Remember how well your experiment with the Immortal database went.”
“That was early days. Everything’s been digitized now, and it works just fine.”
“Save me from ancient menaces with the self-restraint of teenagers,” Macleod muttered as he unceremoniously pushed out the door, leaving Methos alone with Joe.
“Well,” Methos exclaimed, “I suppose I should be heading home—”
“Sit your perky little ass down."
“Why, Joseph. I’m flattered.”
Joe blushed but pointed a firm finger at the chair opposite himself. “What I meant to say is that you seem to have thought about this quite a bit.”
With rare obedience, Methos sat. “Joe, I didn’t want to say it in front of Macleod, but you know as well as I do that Headquarters is already trying to set up an Immortal DNA project.”
Joe felt his jaw sag. “Excuse me?”
Methos narrowed his eyes at the old Watcher. “Or perhaps you don’t know.”
“No, I do not know any such thing. What exactly are you talking about?”
Methos leaned back in his chair, and there was a look of cool interest in his eye that Joe did not like.
“It seems like you’re out of the loop, Dawson.”
“And I thought that you were too, Adam. Headquarters have known for twenty years that you’re Immortal.”
“A new Immortal, sure. I still know people who think I got a raw deal. Or a good one, depending on how you look at it. They keep me informed. The question is, why isn’t anyone keeping you informed?”
Joe grunted and traced a pattern on the table. “You know I was put out to pasture years ago.”
“Sure, but I thought that you kept an ear to the ground.”
“Half an ear, maybe. Amy lets me know about anything interesting going on, but Amy took a backseat too after her kids were born. Officially she’s in research, but they never gave her a major project. So she hears things from old friends from time to time, but that’s it.”
“Hmm. Well, I keep a bit more abreast of the Watchers than that. With the kind of technology they have access to these days, there’s been a fair amount of interest in establishing scientific projects. Investigating how Quickenings work, how healing works. That sort of thing. The only reason they haven’t set up a DNA database is that it’s hard to get close enough to an Immortal to collect samples without losing your head.”
“So, they haven’t tried.”
“No, but it’s on the table. And it’s funny you should bring it up, because I’ve been thinking about it, Joe. Shouldn't Immortals be the ones to do it? Because someone will do it sooner or later.”
“That’s exactly what you said about the database. Macleod is right, Methos. You’re going to get yourself in hot water again.”
Yet wasn’t it just like Methos to take on a subject that his younger compatriots wilfully ignored? Perhaps, Joe thought, that was why Methos was the oldest. He was unendingly curious and seemed to thrill at being in the thick of progress and innovation.
“It’s the eternal question, Joseph. You asked it yourself. Who am I? Where do I come from? Who are my ancestors?”
“You’re unlikely to find that one out.”
“Not the point. If we are human, then someone gave birth to each other of us. Someone sired us. We have parents, siblings, children, like anyone else.”
“How, though? Why are all Immortals foundlings if you have parents?”
“There are certain animals that abandon their offspring at birth. It could be that we’re wired the same way, driven to it by instinct. Or maybe the women hide their children because their fathers are all such violent bastards,” Methos said, grinning.
Joe huffed a laugh. “Maybe. But even if you’re right, what are you hoping to find? Any parents you had would be long dead.”
“Yes. But I might have children. Grandchildren. And there are still Immortals old enough to be my sisters—or brothers.” He said this with such an emphasis that Joe lifted an eyebrow.
“Are you thinking of your old “friends”? He braced himself for another surprise, already worn out by the notion that he no longer knew what was going on inside the Watchers. Methos was always ready to put another load on his shoulders.
The ancient Immortal rubbed his lips with the pads of his fingers. “Maybe. Not Caspian and Silas. I was already old when we met, and I never felt any sense of real kinship with them beyond the bonds forged in battle. But Kronos…perhaps. He was not much younger than myself, as far as I can recall, and I found him in a place not far from the land of my oldest memories. We first called one another brother because there was such a connection between us that we sensed it from the first moment. Our similarities seemed more than could be accounted for by friendship. And there was something of a physical resemblance as well. We would be half-siblings if anything, of course…”
The bewildered expression on Methos' face should have made him look young, but instead he seemed older than usual, lost and burdened by unhealed wounds.
Joe tried to keep a cool demeanour even though his heart was racing.
“You really believe that?”
“I don’t know, but I want to know. Perhaps I need to know, and I can’t ignore that the means exist to answer my question."
"Even if that's true, how do you intend to go about it? He's dead," Dawson stated, brutally direct. "You planning to dig him up?"
Methos didn't give him the satisfaction of a flinch. "I guess I'll have to, whenever I get started. Of course, if Kronos were still here, he would have the modern research skills to start the project immediately.”
Dawson stared. “Do you mean he designed that virus himself? I always thought he must have stolen it from a lab somewhere.”
“Do you actually think a virus designed to kill every human on the planet would be so accessible?”
“Well,” Joe coughed, feeling oddly as if he really had just insulted the man’s brother. “I just didn’t know he made it. There’s nothing like that in Melvin Koren’s file.”
“There wouldn’t be much. Kronos knew about the Watchers, and he was good at maintaining multiple identities. His interest in scientific research was by no means new.”
“So, he was a clever bastard. Still a bastard who was planning to systematically wipe out the population of Europe, at a minimum. Wouldn’t you rather not know if he really was your brother?”
Methos stood slowly, collecting his coat from the back of his chair.
“Whether or not we shared blood, he was my brother, Dawson. Macleod was right about that much. Although I failed Kronos, let him fall when he never believed I would- still some ties are not so easily severed. So, yes, I want to know the truth, even if the truth cuts me. And some day…”
He shrugged on his coat and headed for the door.
“Some day?” Joe repeated.
“Spit in your tube, Joe. Life is short, and sometimes family is all we have.”
The door swung shut behind Methos, leaving Joe alone in the bar's half-light.