61 :

Deep inside a building in Vauxhall, a few flecks of paint lay, sandwiched between two parts of a glass slide. A microscope trained upon it, the results fed straight into a computer, a centralised database of information, checking DNA against DNA, checking strands of x and y chromosomes and strings of data for matches against convicted criminals, and soon, one day, the time will come, when all of the DNA in the world is on one computer disc, one network, one series, and all of us will be there, frozen as zeroes and one in perpetuity.

On a 24” monitor, she looks up to see an analysis of the flecks of paint found on the body. The details. The small masterpiece of creation that mankind made, each of these moments, each of these things that we make, the infinite beauty in things as simple as a pen, a piece of paper, the things we take for granted, and a forensic scientist can see the beauty in these things, each molecule of being, each neutron, the Lord God made not these things, nor mankind, noir nature, but all of these things are beautiful. Each lifeform, even something like the bacterial mould growing on bread, is a rare beautiful thing.

And the miracle is spreading like wildfire.

She looked down the microscope, compared the trace element to the image on the screen. Somewhere deep inside the network hard drives rotated, lasers transformed data, sent impulses down cables, identified information, sent it back and projected it to the screen.

The Paint matched a Duracolour Industrial Paint – Red 534, manufactured between 1991 and 1996. An exact match of the paint, including the dye levels, would take several days. Even by computer. But this type of paint was something different, something special. Careful analysis of flakes of paint would mean that it would be fairly easy to narrow down the type of car the flakes came from, the year of manufacture, the factory it was made in.

With luck the footprint lifters, the gentle residue of ink powder and glue would be able to lift an exact impression of the footprints, the tyre tracks, every last trace of the past, every memory. True love leaves no traces. None but the memory.
The worst thing about working in a forensic science lab is that you can’t scratch your nose. The powered, small latex gloves have reinforced tips to prevent fingernails tearing them, so to scratch your nose you have to have a pen, a pencil, something you can use to scratch yourself like a dog rubbing itself up against the wall.

Most of the scientists here are young. Women. Graduates eager to crawl out of debt, taking the job that they have worked for years in student-loan hell to fulfil their dreams. Live your dream, be in debt. Education is a privilege, and everything must be repaid.

They’re breeding a nation of slaves. Soon we will be writing our parents cheques for our childhood toys, interest deferred until the day we start earning, working behind the counter of a Woolworths or a Supermarket, not old enough to sell alcohol to our Grandparents without a managers supervision. And so, it happens like this.

These scientists, their sterile white coats, cubicle slaves one and all, analysing under microscope the cross-sections of life, mostly young women, their hair in buns, having to pass through sterile airlocks just to go to the toilet, walking around with access-controlled passes that automatically open and close doors, that show up as small dots in a central control room, each ID card individually numbered, so that security can find out where exactly Helen Ralley is at any given moment on any given day. If she is late for work, if she is smoking a cigarette outside in the wind shelter, on her tea break, or actually hard at work scrutinising DNA for matches on coloured slides and comparing them on monitors. Running Bayesian analysis tests for probability factors.

In an environment like this, women packed close together for eight, nine hours a day, the rise and fall of the tides, their menstrual cycles align, they become a united army of PMS Avengers.

A multitude of small powdered gloves, for delicate fingers, lay discarded in a sterile wastebin just outside the small room.

I had become a DNA strand, matched against a databse. I had become a positive match, at odds of 37 million to one. Not that it was. But that it wasn’t.

I had become vital evidence.