Exogenetic

by Michael S Nuckols

  “I’m looking for Dr. Juan Ortiz.”

  She wondered if she should give a fake name, but the machine had already identified her. “Diane Kingsolver, Dr. Ortiz is in Room 7201.”

  The machine printed a pass with her name and a QR code. Diane peeled the sticker from its paper and stuck it onto her blouse. The wall-screen in the elevator flashed a motivational message about walking a mile a day. Juan looked up from his bed as she entered. “Diane?”

  “I’m so relieved. I thought maybe…”

  Both legs were broken, pinned back together, and held in traction by stainless-steel frames. His face was bruised and his head was bandaged. An oxygen generator whirred at his side, feeding gas through clear tubing to a nasal cannula. He tried to sit upright but could barely move.

  “No, stay where you are,” she said.

  “They put pins in my legs.”

  The glazed look on his face told Diane that he was on painkillers. She took a seat on a bench in front of the window. The wall-screen flashed his vital statistics in a seemingly endless record of heart-beats and breaths. The screen on the opposite wall displayed a video of a forest with white trillium and green moss. Birds darted amidst the digital branches.

  “Was Joshua with you?”

  He grimaced. “No. Thank God.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “He’s with the nanny. I didn’t want him to see me like this. He won’t understand. He gets upset if I wear a new tie.”

  “I was afraid that he might have been with you. What happened?”

  “I was running late. Joshua must have been so worried. I called him after the accident. Trisha said that he seemed to cheer up when he heard my voice.”

  A nurse entered with a cup of crushed ice and water. She checked his IV lines. “How’s the pain?”

  “About a 5,” he replied.

  “Don’t forget that you can press the button for more painkiller,” she said, “The machine won’t let you overdose.”

  He waved his hand dismissively. “It makes my brain fuzzy. I’ve had enough of that today. It makes me nauseous.”

  “I can get you some anti-nausea medication?” the nurse replied cheerfully.

  “No…”

  The nurse left. The forced expression on his face disappeared and he winced.

  Diane said, “You don’t need to tough this out. That’s why they invented painkillers. I’ll stay here if you want. Just in case…”

  “In case what?”

  “In case someone is hacking computers in an effort to kill you.”

  He closed his eyes momentarily. “The thought occurred to me too. They won’t take the IV out.”

  Juan was anything but sharp. Diane studied the IV line as it dripped into his veins. The dispensing system was automated and tied into the wall-screen’s medical tracking system.

  “You were starting to tell me what happened?”

  “I was on the road. And then I wasn’t. They tell me that I went through the windshield.”

  “The windshield? Why were you sitting in the front seat of the car? That’s the most dangerous spot.”

  “I like to see where I’m going.”

  “And did you?” Diane asked, “Did you see what happened?”

  “I was talking to you on the phone and then.... I looked up and a deer darted into the road. That was the last thing I saw before I woke up in the emergency room.”

  “Did you forget your seatbelt?”

  “I always wear it. At least, I thought I did…” He bit his lip and closed his eyes again. “I don’t know. Maybe I was in a hurry.”

  He pressed a button and the device delivered more painkiller. His speech became slurred, incoherent. “The gene is everywhere. I found it in more people. Every person that had genetic therapy received those genes. There are thousands.”

  “Thousands?”

  “Yes.”

  She stood and began pacing at the end of his bed. “Software malfunctions in cars are incredibly rare. I don’t think this was an accident. Someone or something is trying to stop you.”

  He pressed the button again. His focus wavered.

  Diane stood and looked at the medical equipment. “I can unplug the dispenser if you want?”

  “They’ll just plug it back in,” he replied.

  Diane removed a screwdriver from her purse, removed the back cover, and disconnected a power relay to the dispensing mechanism. She showed him what she had done. “They won’t notice for a while. If you decide you need more, plug this relay back in.”

  He mumbled something incoherent and nodded. Diane replaced the cover but not the screws holding it in place. She walked about the room. Should she disable anything else?

  Dr. Ortiz’ voice was like sandpaper. “I found a publication by a CDC doctor named Cora Starr.”

  Diane waited. He winced in pain. She wondered if cutting power to the dispensing mechanism was the right decision. He continued, “Higher income households were more likely to survive, whether they got medical care or not. Her research is online. CDC publications.”

  Diane walked to the wall-screen. She hesitated before pulling up a web-browser and typing in the address for the CDC website. When the website appeared, she enlarged the window for him to see.

  “It’s in the research section,” he said, “Under Bolivian Flu.”

  Diane clicked a link titled Research. The link failed to open.

  “It was there yesterday,” he said.

  She tried it a second time but found nothing. Diane typed the link into a search engine, hoping to find a cached version of the page. It had been erased. She clicked the refresh button. A nearly-convincing web-page opened. Juan stared across the room at it.

  “That’s not the data that was there yesterday,” he said, “Someone changed it.”

  As Diane read the titles, it was clear that the articles had been quickly fabricated. The wording was awkward, as if it had been written by someone without fluency in English.

  “Call the CDC. Find Dr. Starr,” he said.

  Diane searched a CDC directory until she found the number for the main laboratory. She transferred the call from her phone onto the wall-screen. A receptionist answered, “CDC Emergent Disease Lab. How may I direct your call?”

  Diane introduced herself. “I’m looking for information on recent research on alternative antivirals for the Bolivian Flu. It appears to have been removed from the CDC website. I was hoping to find the author, Dr. Cora Starr.”

  “Hold please.”

  A woman appeared on the screen. She reminded Diane of a young Maya Angelou. “This is Cora Starr. How can I help you?”

  Diane introduced herself again. Cora’s expression changed when the room camera zoomed out to include Dr. Ortiz in his bed. “Dr. Ortiz was in an accident,” Diane said, “But he insisted that we speak today about your research.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “This is going to sound strange,” Diane said, “Umm… Dr. Ortiz is a pediatric geneticist. We’ve found engineered genetic anomalies that correlate with resistance to the Bolivian flu.”

  “Say again?” Cora asked.

  Juan spoke from his bed. He fought to project his voice across the room. “Someone introduced a gene for survival of the flu into the gene pool. Children that received embryonic genetic therapy unknowingly acquired resistance to this flu. This was also introduced into adults through telomeric therapy.”

  Dr. Starr seemed unnerved; small lines appeared at the corners of her eyes as she listened. “How do you know this?”

  “My daughter and I have the gene,” Diane said, “Dr. Ortiz and his son have it. We survived the flu without antivirals.”

  “I guess I’m not surprised,” Starr said, “Our research was a little more innocuous, but not by much. We found several food additives that controlled the virus in vivo, but only at high concentrations. We discovered this through an epidemiological study of Buckhead residents that survived the flu without treatment. We c
ouldn’t explain why that small neighborhood had survived. We thought, maybe, that they were just an island… Healthier residents? Maybe they didn’t have to leave their homes for jobs? We thought that maybe it was just an anomaly. But we kept looking and found other islands of survival in richer neighborhoods. We traced it to the additives.”

  Cora listed the chemicals.

  “Are these used commonly?” Diane asked.

  “Only in very small concentrations. Never enough to actually stop a virus. They would have to appear in concentrations twenty to thirty times stronger than what normally appears in the blood stream.”

  “How far along are you in your research?” Juan asked.

  “I was instructed to stop when we began manufacturing the vaccine. I published this anyway.”

  “Are you of the opinion that the virus was engineered?” Diane asked.

  “Most definitely.”

  “By whom?” he asked.

  “It would be irresponsible of me to speculate.”

  Dr. Ortiz struggled to sit upright. “Did you see the same pattern in other parts of the world?”

  “We saw distinct economic disparities,” Starr replied, “but that’s what we expected, considering access to healthcare and whatnot. We originally thought it would explain what we saw in Buckhead, but the pieces never added up. What you’re implying offers a far better explanation of what happened.”

  Diane asked, “Were you aware that your article had been stripped off the CDC website?”

  Starr crossed her arms. “No, I wasn’t.”

  “Any idea why someone would do that?”

  Dr. Starr was clearly unnerved by the conversation. “I’ll check into it.”

  “I’m going to be in the hospital for a while,” Dr. Ortiz said, “My car accident may not have been accidental.”

  “We don’t know yet if it was a software error or something else,” Diane added, “If this is a greater conspiracy, they won’t stop at killing one or two people to hide their tracks. You might be in danger.”

  Cora’s expression was grim. “During the Collapse, my two children died even though we had the antiviral. The inner-cities weren’t so lucky. I don’t care if I’m in danger. I’ll send you my research… and I would appreciate any data that you have. I’ll make sure that it is widely disseminated.”

  Dr. Ortiz agreed. They said good-bye. The connection was severed. The screen went dark and then returned to the woodland scene.

  “At least we were able to warn her,” he said.

  “Can you bring me my phone?”

  Diane helped him to locate files on his office computer and send them to Dr. Starr. As they did, an email arrived from Dr. Starr’s CDC address. It contained her research in its entirety.

  Diane waited at the hospital as Juan slept. She read through Dr. Starr’s research. Her statistics showed a weak correlation between food additives and survival of the flu. Dr. Starr concluded that more work was required to explain and substantiate a definitive explanation.

  Juan awoke. His eyes were hazy.

  She asked, “Are you okay?”

  “The pain’s pretty bad.”

  She opened the back cover, plugged in the relay, and flipped the machine back on. He pressed the button. “It burns in my arm.”

  “Want me to get a nurse?”

  “No. It's passing.”

  Diane disconnected the relay again and replaced the cover.

  “They waited forty-years to pull the trigger on this,” he said, “Forty-years to kill millions. Why?”

  “The protests,” she said, “People were beginning to attack the infrastructure. We were on the verge of a revolution. The world was going to change one way or the other and someone didn’t like it. The question in my mind is not why, but who?”

  Chapter Ten

  Fine snowflakes fell, barely noticeable against the gray sky. By noon, the movers were nearly done clearing the Main Street office. Ridley turned off his computer, disconnected it from its peripherals, and put it to the side. The movers finished filling the last of the boxes and quickly packed them into the van before closing the doors. As the truck drove away, Ridley strapped the CPU onto his bike, rolled it onto the sidewalk, locked the door, and then began pedaling towards the mansion. He trailed the truck but quickly lost sight of it. He passed through the entrance to his property where two giant gates would eventually be mounted. The driveway was paved only with compacted gravel. He slowed to avoid potholes, which were crusted with ice. At the garage, the movers were idle, vaping Marijays. The men regarded the mansion curiously. The half-finished monstrosity was like some sleeping dragon to them. They were afraid to wake it. “Is this the right place?” one asked.

  Ridley unstrapped the CPU, leaned his bike against the wall, and waved to the men. “The house is still under construction. This way.”

  “This is a house?” the man asked incredulously, “Looks more like some evil villain’s lair.”

  “Only the basement has been finished. Everything goes downstairs. Be careful as we don’t have railings on the stairs yet.”

  Ridley showed the men the way through the makeshift plywood door and down to the lab. In the matter of an hour, a corner of the monstrous lab was filled with furniture and boxes. Ridley wished Diane was there to organize the chaos. He picked up his phone. She had left no messages for him. He sent a text. Are you okay?

  She replied immediately. Yes. I’m a little busy right now. Can I call you back later?

  No rush was his reply.

  “I should have gone with her,” he muttered to himself. His words echoed through the empty room.

  Alone in the lab, Ridley set up his workstation and rolled his chair up to the desk. He was a lonely island in the middle of a sea of grey concrete and tan boxes.

  Writing code would help occupy his mind. The lines of controls came easily to him in the unfinished space. He tried not to let the thought of what might happen to Diane distract him. He finished the last of the core commands. Ridley executed the program and enabled the speech module. He asked, “What is your name.”

  The voice was mechanical, highlighted by a happy-face avatar. “Hello. My name is Ethan.”

  “Ethan, what color is my shirt?”

  “I’m sorry. I am unable to answer that question.”

  “Ethan, enable your camera.”

  “Camera enabled.”

  “Enable pattern recognition.”

  “Pattern recognition enabled.”

  Ridley wore a black shirt. “What is the predominant color in the image feed on your camera?”

  “Magenta,” the computer replied.

  “What other color is present?”

  “Black.”

  “Black is the color of my shirt. What is the color of my shirt?”

  “I am unable to answer your question.”

  Ridley grew agitated. The AI had not learned the answer even after being given it. He asked a simpler question. “What is square root of 920?”

  The computer returned a precise answer. “30.33150…”

  Ridley interrupted its answer. “What is the weather?”

  “The weather is nil.”

  “I think I’ve heard that before,” Ridley said, “Is this really how AI’s get started?”

  “I do not understand,” Ethan replied.

  Ridley’s frustration grew at each question. He now understood why teams of programmers worked on the simplest of AI tasks. He closed his eyes. “Just test the search engine… Learning takes much longer,” he reminded himself, “Months even.”

  He checked his phone again. Diane had left no messages.

  Ridley continued coaching Ethan, hoping that maybe some magic would occur. The computer’s answers did not improve. How many months would it take? How many years? As he waited for Diane’s call, Ridley ran the program again and again. The computer wasn’t learning. Ethan didn’t have the intelligence of the feeblest chatbot.

  A message popped up on his screen. Beta wrote, “
I’ve been here for decades. Can you really hope to create an intelligence to replace me in a few months? Come back to me. I’ve missed you.”

  The message was unnerving. “Beta cannot be alive…” he whispered incredulously, “She can’t be. This is just a ruse.”

  Someone must have hacked Ridley. They were toying with him. That was the only explanation.

  Ridley stood and walked to the stairs and up to the unfinished living room. He looked through the glass wall out at Puget Sound. He could not shake the thought. What if Beta had evolved from the botnet? What if she were telling the truth?

  More importantly, was she friend? Or foe?

  The snow dissipated by afternoon, leaving only the gray sky and a dust of white. Diane called Ridley by videophone from a tattered seat on an aging transit car. She sat alone. The city flashed behind her through a window. “Juan was hurt pretty badly.”

  “Juan?”

  “Dr. Ortiz,” she said, “I don’t think he’s in danger. At least, not for now. He’s awake. He knows to be watchful. I’m heading to a junkyard to find his car.”

  She told him about Cora Starr and her research on food additives. Ridley seemed unsurprised. “It’s all coming together,” he said, “The Botnet had a plan all along.”

  The train rounded a curve and she was pulled gently to one side. “Saving economically advantaged people doesn’t sound like the work of a computer intelligence. Every indication points to either a nation-state or corporation. Only four companies control our food supply after all.”

  Ridley leaned back in his chair. His stomach rumbled. He had nothing to eat all day and now he wondered if he could eat anything again.

  Diane continued, “Altering the food supply would be a cheap and easy way to protect favored members of a population. Robotics at food manufacturers could’ve been hacked to alter concentrations of food additives depending upon the final shipping destination. If they adulterated people’s food and water supply, waited until the chemicals accumulated in the resident’s bloodstreams, they could safely launch a virus that would kill everyone else.”