The Step Forward

[fast_thrower]

(Three days after this)

Owen returned to the meeting place. He'd dug up a few personal effects from his old man's caches. A hair-brush with strands that didn't match Digger's, a piece of ribbon, a greeting card written in some weird language he couldn't place. Everything else had been the normal stuff. Cash, ID packets, weapons, clothes, and the

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[flash_fact]

Something glinted on the monkey bars, a wristwatch, old style with hands and a ticking second hand that could faintly be heard beneath the crystal dial. It had been wrapped around one of the thicker bars like a wrist. Closer examination revealed a gear on the side for winding, and another button, marked 'radio'. The back had etched upon it a small lightening bolt.

[fast_thrower]

Owen examined the watch, blinking at it.

"Seriously?" He looked around, winding the first gear as he muttered to himself. "Wonder how many proofs of purchase he had to send in for this..."

He switched on the radio.

"Good afternoon, avid listeners. This is your prince of all media, Owen Mercer, taking your calls and playing the greatest hits of yesteryear. Let's go to the lines. First caller?"

[flash_fact]

"Ah good," came the sligthly crackling response. "You found the watch. Keep it. Call it a good will gift. I guess you've found some of what we need for the testing?"

Barry could have been at the location before the radio waves could carry the response, yet he used it anyway.

"No doubt you're wondering why I haven't just run over there," he said, "And the answer is simple. I need time to clear and set up the lab. I figured that the police station isn't where you'd like me to test for this," he said, "So I've asked a friend for some time at the university laboratory. He's agreed. I'll make the call and meet you at the campus. Central City U, my old alma mater. Science building. You know it?"

[fast_thrower]

"Um, yeah. some things that don't quite fit with the rest of the old man's stuff. Chance there might be something on it you could use."

He gives an affirmative grunt. "I'll be there." Owen gets the next cab across town. He gives the cabbie a nice tip, although not nice enough to be remembered, then moves quickly across the campus, waiting at the door to the science building when a door requiring a card swipe stops him.

[flash_fact]

The door opened. Barry was present, labcoated and had a twinkle in his eye. He was dealing with his first love after all. Science!

"Owen," he said cordially. "Please come in."

Barry paused, considering. "Or do you prefer Mr..." he stopped short of saying the last name. "...Something else?"

[fast_thrower]

"Owen's fine." He almost cringes.

"Part of why I'm here is because a whole 'nother family name might get tossed into the mix, after all." He hands over a paper bag, the individual items zip-locked within it.

[flash_fact]

"Well," he said, donning rubber gloves and accepting the ziplock, "We're all more than the sum of our parts Owen," he said.

He set the bag inside of a small open tray and using a pair of tongs, began extracting each item in turn.

"While genetically we may be predisposed to certain things, the color of our eyes, the likleyhood of succeptability to certain diseases, and the proclivity to go deaf in old age and what-not, we are one of the few species capable of changing our lot in life through thought and consideration."

He plucked a hair from a brush and placed it on a petrie dish.

"Sometimes."

[fast_thrower]

Owen puts his hands in his pockets and makes himself comfortable against a wall. "I'm predisposed to bad decisions, I can tell that much." He snorts, watching the old man work.

So what are you testing against? You think my mom's got a record?"

[flash_fact]

Barry chuckled, "I suppose that's possible, but right now that's not my focus. The focus is to establish a set of common genetic markers that you and your mother share, and that you and your father share. Then we'll have a baseline for running a comparison against most databases. Obviously we'll need a control, an unrelated strand of DNA, which I've taken from the lab's resources to assure they are wholly different, and will help weed out any false positives."

Barry picked up the dish with the hair on it and indicated an unfilled one. "A strand of your hair please, just place it right there in the dish, and avoid touching the full length of the strand if you would. Oils from your skin might corrupt the sample somewhat."

[fast_thrower]

Owen smiles and nods to the science stuff, then pulls a small tool kit from his jacket. He uses a pair of tweezers to pull a few hairs out for the old man.

[flash_fact]

"Good," said Barry, taking the trays over to a microscope and setting them down each in turn. He took a scalpel and incised the hairs, while looking into the mocroscope then rmoved only a segment of each with tweezers, placing them onto two small trays full of a kind of clear gel, where they stayed in the sticky stuff.

"I don't suppose you have anything from your father do you? A complete genetic profile is easier with both sets of agregating genes."

[fast_thrower]

Owen frowns, thinking. "It's not fresh, but here." He reaches into his wallet and takes out a Roger Maris baseball card "Dad had a thing for people beating expectations. Should be a fingerprint or something on it. All the other gear I inherited has been washed a dozen times."

[flash_fact]

"Hmm..." Barry took the card in a pair of tweezers and placed it on a kind of photoelectric plate. "Tough to tell. Fingerprint evidence would give us a match in the fingerprint database, but getting any actual genetic material might be a toughy. I'll run it through the mass spec and see if there are any significant biological traces first, and then incise a portion of the card with the most promising resource

[fast_thrower]

"A lot of Dad's stuff is worth something. Just happens to be worth more to me for now." Owen says, almost as an aside.

He shakes his head at Barry. "I was more metal shop than chemistry, before I dropped out."

[flash_fact]

"Well you should decide if you want us to use any samples we find on the card, because I'll have to lance out a small portion of it and it will damage it... though realistically no more than it is being kept in your wallet

[fast_thrower]

"Just do what you need to. I don't want to have to check his stashes in search of his used underwear or anything like it," Owen mutters. He tries to follow the explanation, and understands most of it, but doesn't really see how A leads to B.

"So, realistically, what are the odds that we'll be able to ID my mom?"