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

Comments

[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."

Barry directed Owen to the two plates with the gel in them with the bits of hair.

"So electrophoreisis is very interesting. Basically we are doing two things by electrifying the gel and the DNA traces just so," he slid each tray into yet another large machine, that looked like a large circular microwave oven.

"The cut fragments are put into that gel there and a positive charge at one end attracts the DNA segments out of the nuclei of the cells they're in, like getting at the yoke of the egg and seperating it from the whites."

He keyed in another sequence of numbers.

"The strands sort themselves by length. Short ones are more attracted toward the charge and long ones seperate more slowly. That's the first objective." Barry peered into a viewfinder which revealed black lines spreading apart against a purple, electrified field.

"As a side effect, the strands become positively charged themselves, which makes them more or less magnitized, meaning they can be easily transferred onto another medium for comparison, side by side, once the DNA strands are denatured, that is, split in half. DNA is a double helix, a double strand, so we will use a chemical to treat the strands and split them in half so they line up into nice neat rows."

Barry took an eye dropper and carefully withdrew two drops of a chemical from a small vial he'd pre-prepared, then put each drop into a receptacle, where the liquid slid down onto the gel plates.

Before Owen's very eyes, the black lines seperated lengthwise in the viewfinder, leaving clear black lines, some of which appeared to match identically!

"Neat huh?"

[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?"

[flash_fact]

"Well, DNA evidence is generally used to compare evidence at a crime scene with a suspect, that's where it is useful. By itself, a random search for matching DNA for a woman who has not previously submitted her DNA to law enforcement would not provide a match. There are other agencies that collect DNA though, FBI, CIA, JLA, and some private firms and even scientific trusts - the Human Genome Project for example. But it could take time to access those and perform a thorough search. If you have a suspect however, we could quickly verify who it is and who it is not with a comparison."

Barry folded his arms and looked through the viewfinder once more.

"Owen I'm curious," he said, "Do you have any memories of your mother?"

[fast_thrower]

He shakes his head. "Nothing. Nothing at all. Just the people who adopted me."

[flash_fact]

"That's too bad," he said. "There's a chance we could have taken some general traits such as hair and eye color into account to check against the fibers you've provided."

There was a beeping noise on the giant oval microwave and Barry left the viewfinder and went over to the door and removed the tray with the baseball card on it. A report printed out that looked like a graph of oscillating lines.

"Ah, good news. It looks like there is some usable DNA on the card, you see?"

Barry circled several high points on the graph.

"That indicates biological matter most likely within the human spectrum. All we need to do is cross reference the grid numbers on the report with the location on the card and..."

He gently incised a very thin layer of the card near the jersey number and placed it on a gel tray.

"There. If there's any usable DNA there, we should be able to get it. Your... your father will definitely show up in the DNA archives," he said, a little uncomfortably. "I'll be able to confirm if it's a match.

[fast_thrower]

"Yeah well, I'm kind of proof already that Dad left his DNA all over the place." Owen manages a laugh.

"So..." He looks around. "This is what you do when you're not in spandex, huh?"

[flash_fact]

Barry kept his opinions to himself about Digger Harkness' proclivities, but chuckled when Owen mentioned running around in Spandex.

"390 degrees Farenheit is the melting point of Spandex Owen. From the friction I generate when I run, if I ran around in that, I'd be a bit unpresentable for public appearance you might say. Now do us both a favor and don't ask me how I know that precise number," he quipped.

"But I understand what you mean. Yes, this is part of what I do when I'm not in costume, and I ask that you leave that between us. I don't wish to endanger those that I care about."

[fast_thrower]

"I'm just going to assume trial and error with costume design." Owen shrugs, and gives a polite nod to the request.

"If it makes you feel things are any more even..." He looks over his shoulders and approaches, whispering.

"I build model airplanes. Don't tell anyone."

[flash_fact]

Bsrry looked for a moment as if he wasn't sure if Owen was making fun of him or not with the quip about building model airplanes, though he immediately decided that the study of wing motion would probably be a very useful hobby for a first class bomarang thrower and nodded appreciatively.

"OK, so we've got the results back from the DNA of your father - or what we think is your father. Let's compare it to yours. It should match some, but not all of your genetic markers. If it matches all, the biomaterial on the card will likely end up being yours alone."

He compared the threee slides side by side in the veiw finder.

"Ah, there we are. A partial, but not complete match. We may guess that this is a close relative's DNA, and with what we know about the origin of the card, we can guess it is indeed your father."

[fast_thrower]

"So now you look at what's left of mine and try to see if it's a match to the girly stuff I found?"

[flash_fact]

"In the fire," Barry said, and powered up another machine.

"For these purposes I'm going to transfer these microscopic images to an exposure. The denatured DNA strands have been polarized, as I've mentioned, so they'll adhere to this nylon plate."

He placed yet another, larger tray beneath the other smaller trays that had contained the raw DNA evidence and then pressed another button sequence, which 'stamped' the smaller plates onto the nylon.

"Then we'll process it like a photo, only using radiation."

Barry took the large nylon plate over to the new machine, one with a large radiation symbol on it, and inserted the nylon plate.

"Here, put these on." Barry handed Owen a heavy lead vest and a pair of goggles. He put the vest on himself and readied the machine for activation. It whirred and ticked ominously.

"This will produce those black banded stripes you're used to seeing in the movies," he explained. "Easy to read. Ready?" he asked, putting his goggles in place.

[fast_thrower]

"I'm guessing how streamlined they make all this look on SVU really bugs you and your buddies." Owen quips, putting on the protective gear.

"Fire it up, doc, or whatever your title is."

[flash_fact]

Barry smiled a knowing half-smile.

"You have no idea," he said.

He placed his hand on a coiled switch that hung from the side of the machine and stepped back, the switch in hand, his finger on the button that said ACTIVATE in red against a yellow radiation symbol.

"Initiating radiation probe to VNTR bond exposure in 3... 2... 1... Activate."

There was a loud whir, a cycling spin and a very loud buzz. The air was suddenly scented with a slightly sterile, yet musty scent. A bright flash of light shot out in small pinhole segments from the machine, and the temperature in the room went up a degree.

"Exposure complete, purging heat. Cooldown in process. Cooldown complete. Lights are green. Printing exposure."

A large industrial sized printer whirred to life on the opposite side of the room, and begin to print a sequence of black bands, side by side, six in all. Each band was made up of varying widths and thicknesses of black bars or dashes. As the paper completed printing, it looked almost as if it had been run over by a very lumpy pair of tires.

Two lines were marked Owen H. Two were marked F. Rel, and two were marked M. Rel.

Barry puzzled over the results.

[fast_thrower]

Owen looked over his shoulder, trying to take a look as well.

"So... do I have some long lost millionaire mom or something?" He furrows his brow.

[flash_fact]

"Well, the good news is, we have a definite genetic match on the major VNTR protiens for both the male and the female chromasonal bonds. Look here," he said, pulling the paper off of the printer and settig it down on one of the long classroom bench counters.

He took out a red sharpie.

"So here you are," he said, indicating the middle bar of dashes. "Note these key long indicators here, here and here." He circled several with the red pen.

"Now to make things easier to compare, during the denaturing process I cut repeating patterns from your DNA strands. Basically cleared out the redundant genetic code - code that says over and over again that you're human, you are a mammal, the things common to all primates. What is left on these then is the unique traits the things that make you, you. Things like hair color, eye color, etcetera."

He grinned. He really got a kick out of this science stuff.

"We can do that now. Since mapping the genome. It's quite amazing."

He cleared his throat.

"Anyway, now we cross reference these traits, having done the same thing to the other denatured pairs, and look."

Barry circled other traits, some identical on the female side, some identical on the male side.

"These are your parents Owen. This is the man and the woman that brought you into the world."

The lines of genetic code seemed to clasp his own from either side, as if suspending them. Some 'fingers' coming from one side, and some coming from the other.

[fast_thrower]

Owen quietly looks over the results. "This is about the closest to a family portrait I've ever had.

Hey, look." He points to a random spot. "My mom's a babe." He manages a chuckle.