I waved my hand in the air. No, I did not want to know. Merle bobbed his head and continued. “Anyway, I’ve done it. I cracked the coding on it and now. . . it’s finished. I mean, I can now identify covert genes after just a day or two of work. Faster if the DNA is already sequenced.”

I must have looked unimpressed. Gene sequencing wasn’t that new. Since the late 1990’s, biotech companies have been producing and utilizing gene sequencers routinely.

“There’s more . . .”

“I sincerely hope so.”

“Well, the first one I discovered has turned out to be a major one. It codes for empathetic hormone activation.”

I did sit up straight for that. “I beg your pardon.” This sounded like it could be, if my guess at what Merle actually meant was accurate, something very, very important. Perhaps not from a monetary point of view, at least not initially, but from a hard science one—real true progress in figuring out important questions.

“Empathy. You don’t read Natural Sciences, do you?”

“Not that I know of. Unless it’s gone covert as well.”

“Well, about a year and a half ago, three guys in New Jersey had an article on their discovery. It concerned two hormones that seem to control the feeling of empathy that people experience.”

“How the hell—never mind. I assume they had some actual way of measuring it.”

“Yeah, it was easy. Anyway, Smith-Klein and a couple of other drug companies are test marketing the drugs now.”

I nodded. “Make it march, Merle.”

“Well,” and now he sounded just a tad bit huffy. I was going to have to watch that. He gets his feelings hurt so easily. “I’ve discovered the gene sites that control the production of the hormones. It turns out that there are five different ones. I’ve named them EMot1 through EMot5.”

I nodded thoughtfully. He continued. “But that’s not the good part. The good part is that I Google-scanned the FBI and the Census files for characteristics –” Jeez, the expense.

“—and there’s one hell of a correlation between the third and fourth covert genes and occupation. Guess what it is?” So, that’s what the kicker was. Merle managed to come up with something totally new in the Nature vs. Nurture controversy.

“Oh, hell, I don’t know. Mimes all have defective, what, EMot2 genes.” It was a shot in the dark though it would explain a couple of things.

He beamed. “Not a bad guess, but not that close. Nope. Get this, little league coaches don’t have either gene! And those that have a functional EMot5 gene never have winning seasons. Can you believe it?”

I must have blinked at least a couple of times before the ramifications hit me. “Oh my, you mean we can test to see if someone is going to have a winning season? People could count on a winning season if they gene test for the right coach?”

Merle began nodding happily before I even finished. “But that’s not the best. I had a thought and started another Google-scan a couple of hours ago.”