Sequence Read Online Free Page A

casinos
want
me to keep winning. The believers bet with me. The skeptics bet against me. But everybody has their theory and now the entire planet bets on the coin flip. Seniors. Soccer moms. Even Canadians.
    CYNTHIA
    What about this year? What’s it going to be? Heads or tails?
    THEO
    I don’t know yet. But Vegas is waiting for my call. And my phone is in my briefcase. And my briefcase is still, by strange
coincidence
, in your hand.
    CYNTHIA
    Aren’t you worried your streak is going to end?
    THEO
    Do I seem worried?
    CYNTHIA
    It will end. Sooner or later. It has to.
    THEO
    No, it doesn’t.
    Pause.
    But it will.
    Pause.
    Today.
    Laboratory
    DR. GUZMAN
    Now. Did you even read the textbook?
    DR. GUZMAN renews her efforts to open the briefcase.
    MR. ADAMSON
    No.
    DR. GUZMAN
    Why not?
    MR. ADAMSON
    Because I don’t care.
    DR. GUZMAN
    About your grade? About your future? What exactly don’t you care about?
    MR. ADAMSON quietly pulls out his cellphone. There is no signal.
    MR. ADAMSON
    Genetics. I don’t believe in genetics.
    MR. ADAMSON moves around the room, inconspicuously holding up his cellphone, searching for reception.
    DR. GUZMAN
    That’s preposterous. Our genes are the very building blocks of life. The order of the four base pairs in your DNA has programmed everything about you. That sequence created you.
    MR. ADAMSON
    I don’t know. It seems kind of arbitrary.
    DR. GUZMAN
    Arbitrary? Without order there is chaos.
    MR. ADAMSON
    Without God there is chaos. The DNA is just… calligraphy.
    DR. GUZMAN
    There is order to DNA. Just like there is order to everything. What if Beethoven played every note in his fifth symphony simultaneously? How would that sound? Without order it’s not a symphony, it’s a cacophony.
    MR. ADAMSON
    Maybe it’s just a different piece of music.
    DR. GUZMAN
    No, I’m pretty sure it’s a cacophony.
    MR. ADAMSON
    Order is subjective. It doesn’t matter what order the ten commandments are written in.
    DR. GUZMAN
    Really? They’re not prioritized? How sloppy! I would have used a logarithmic scale to compensate for the relative value discrepancy of killing versus merely coveting.
    MR. ADAMSON
    Wouldn’t change their meaning. The sequence was not part of the design.
    DR. GUZMAN
    But a gene, like any text, is not a palindrome. If you read
Hamlet
backwards, what do you have?
    MR. ADAMSON
    Tel… mah?
    DR. GUZMAN
    You’d have gibberish. There is order in everything. Just ask Watson and Crick.
    MR. ADAMSON
    Why not Crick and Watson? The order is meaningless. It’s the chicken and the egg.
    DR. GUZMAN draws a B on the board.
    DR. GUZMAN
    Actually, it’s the egg and chicken. The correct answer was B.
    The egg came first.
    Pause.
    Mr. Adamson, how much more research will you require to establish, with a p-value of less than 0.05, that there is no cellphone signal down here?
    MR. ADAMSON
    Dr. Guzman, what did you mean when you said you might be able to help me?
    DR. GUZMAN
    How badly do you want to walk?
    MR. ADAMSON
    What do you mean, on a scale of one to ten?
    DR. GUZMAN
    If I gave you two new legs right now, what’s the first thing you’d do?
    MR. ADAMSON
    I’d probably take the door key from your pocket.
    DR. GUZMAN
    You don’t want my help.
    MR. ADAMSON
    I guess I’d try to meet a girl.
    DR. GUZMAN
    Right. You’ve never had sex.
    MR. ADAMSON
    It’s not about sex.
    DR. GUZMAN
    Everything’s about sex. Ask Darwin.
    MR. ADAMSON
    Sure, I want to experience… that. After I get married, of course. And fall in love.
    DR. GUZMAN
    Of course.
    MR. ADAMSON
    I want to be a dad.
    DR. GUZMAN
    You don’t need new legs for that. If your reproductive organs are still intact they can extract the sperm.
    MR. ADAMSON
    Sounds romantic.
    DR. GUZMAN
    There could be scented candles. Vivaldi. Perhaps a moonlight extraction.
    MR. ADAMSON
    If God wants me to have kids, He will make it happen naturally.
    DR.