The Anomaly

by Hervé Le Tellier

He’d already escaped. We know that he boarded the flight in Paris under the name Michaël Weber. It’s a cloned identity, he was traveling with an Australian passport, but that Michaël Weber lives on the Gold Coast, he’s a school bus driver and he’s never left his town. We wanted to take fingerprints from his seat on the Boeing, but it’s made of fabric. If we eliminate the DNA of all the other passengers, we still have to consider the DNA of staff who prepared the meal trays. Imagine, in spite of all this, that we succeed in identifying his: at best we would know the color of his skin, eyes, and hair, and in a pinch whether he’s susceptible to various diseases, but we couldn’t exactly create a profile and go looking for him on social media. We shouldn’t wait for a miracle.” “And images from the plane?”