by M. C. Miller
“I get it,” snapped Colin. “I’m disappointed too, but we can’t spinoff rehashing what doesn’t work. We don’t have time.”
“What delayed them getting back to us?” asked Faye.
“Sequencing the animals against their control group took longer than planned.”
Colin had hit on a sore point with Janis. She folded arms and sat back. “Are these conclusions based on the animal tests?”
“Primarily.”
Janis tried to keep calm. “What about the computer models I recommended?”
Colin paused, knowing full well his answer would not be liked.
“Project management decided models would take much longer to develop than conducting animal trials. Even if they found a model that worked, they’d still have to conduct real world testing on what the model suggested.”
“But in this case, I think a model would be more precise.”
Colin’s face twisted, bewildered. “I’m not a scientist; so explain that – what’s more precise than a test on a live animal? It’s not theoretical; it’s a live subject.”
“And what about the 2% variation in DNA between chimpanzees and us? The Project can’t be certain with these results; there is a distinct margin of error.”
“They know that but in this case they believe it’s negligible.”
Janis was confrontational. “You don’t understand. We’re dealing with a level of precision where if just one base pair is off the whole thing might not work. How can they simply write off a 2% variation across the whole genome?”
Colin’s patience was short. He responded in kind. “They didn’t. That’s why they did other tests. Like I said, they came up with a few of their own.”
“What kind of tests?” The concern on Janis’ face drew Faye’s attention.
Faye turned back to Colin. “You don’t mean human trials…”
“Yes…” Colin was firm. “It was always the last option if animal tests failed.”
“Who would volunteer for such a thing? What about maintaining secrecy?”
Faye’s question was intentionally naïve. But the implied answer wasn’t the worst of it. Janis rocked forward and leaned on the table.
“A valid human test could only be done on someone sterile. Are you telling me they experimented on children?”
Colin nodded. “It was the last resort…”
“Last resort?” shouted Janis. “This was our first trial…”
“What children did they use?” demanded Faye.
Colin was subdued in manner but his posture held firm and defiant.
“There was one criterion; they had to be terminally ill.”
“Did the families know?”
Colin looked Faye in the eye. “What difference would it have made?”
Janis bolted from her chair and paced to the whiteboard and back.
“What else is this Project doing and not telling us about?”
“It’s no secret. I just told you,” asserted Colin.
“After the fact!” yelled Janis.
“Did any of them die?” asked Faye.
Colin watched as Janis stopped her pacing to turn and watch him answer.
“There was one. An inoperable brain cancer patient.”
Janis steamed. “As if that makes it any better.”
Colin shifted forward, his patience at an end. “What do you think is going on here, huh? Realistically, how much time do you think we have? You know what’s happening; the situation is deteriorating by the hour. We have to do some difficult things but it’s gotten to that point – we have no choice.”
Janis stood her ground. “There are other ways…”
“That take more time!” Colin interrupted. “If Mass’ virus keeps spreading like it has without any way to fight it, most of the world’s population will die this year.”
Colin’s statement filled the room. The terror of hearing such words said in earnest gave all of them reason to pause. Faye was the first to seek some hope.
“There’s still a chance the vaccine will be found…”
“Will it matter?” asked Colin. “People are afraid to take vaccines – Mass made sure of that. His MIOVAC vaccines are on every continent. Everywhere they’ve been tried, the spread of disease gets worse – not just his disease, every disease. As best as we can tell, the latest batch of MIOVAC turns off the immune system. Healthcare workers are facing impossible triage situations. It’s hard to know how to treat when multiple symptoms overlap and look the same. If The Project had a 3P vaccine right now, I doubt we could get people in many parts of the world to take it. They’ve seen too much; they’ve lost trust.”
“So what are you saying?” asked Faye. “It’s too late?”
Colin had to choose; answer with his head or his heart. Unwilling to give up but unable to rally much enthusiasm, he dodged the question.
“No one can answer that. But we know the game has changed.”
Faye looked to Janis. “It’s strange; before Mass died, all we had to worry about was sterility. Who would have thought we’d ever see that as the better alternative?”
“At least sterility gives us one generation to find an answer.”
Faye answered her, “And we thought that was pressure.”
Colin added, “That schedule doesn’t work any more. At best we have twelve to fifteen months. After that, chances are, it will be impossible to continue our work. Supplies, utilities, infrastructure, personnel…it’s all about to change. After the collapse, none of it will be reliable – if it exists at all.”
“So what do we work on now?” asked Janis.
Faye leaned on the table and bowed her head. “If 3rd Protocol isn’t stopped, what good will it do?”
“Then we have to work on that.”
Colin pressed Janis, “You’d want governments to mandate vaccination?”
“If the vaccine worked. The success rate using it would develop its own momentum. At least with 3P under control, we’d have a whole generation to complete our work on sterility. We’d have a chance.”
Colin took the tablet computer in hand and stood, preparing to leave.
“Labs around the world are studying 3P – there are enough people on it. You two need to stay focused. No one but The Project is working on the sterility problem; no one else even knows about it.”
Faye sighed. “But we need a fix before the population collapses – a solution to give the survivors.”
“That’s for damned sure,” remarked Colin. “It’s a reasonable bet that survivors won’t be able to develop one themselves. They’ll have more immediate problems. Besides, they won’t even know about the problem until it’s too late.”
“We need to get more researchers involved…” suggested Faye.
“Things are too far along; that’s not going to happen.”
Janis stood at the opposite end of the table. Her eyes filled with tears.
“If you’re right…if our first trials have failed, that puts us back at the beginning. We won’t have time. There’s no way we can devise, analyze, test, and deploy a sterility treatment in time. Even if we did, if people are afraid of vaccines, do we really think they’re going to hand over their children for some mysterious treatment we can’t explain just because Project secrets need to stay secret?”
Colin headed for the door. “With some things it’s better people don’t know…”
“What do you mean?” asked Janis.
Faye answered for him. “The Project never intended on telling people they were getting the treatment for sterility. Deploying the fix means coming up with a way to release it into the wild – the same way Ghyvir-C infected them in the first place.”
Janis nodded. “Of course…I forgot. Solve the problem in the riskiest way.”
Colin paused in the doorway. “The greatest risk at this point is in believing an answer is going to be conventional or without sacrifice.”
“Maybe I’d feel better if a secret Project wasn’t the arbi
ter of sacrifice.”
Colin threw up his hands. “None of that matters. You don’t have a solution anyway. And now you say there won’t be time for one. What’s riskier than that? You two have a name for that don’t you? What’s it called? BIOPONORE?”
Colin turned and was gone but his last word resonated between the women left behind. They looked to each other in recognition and dismay.
…BIOlogical POint of NO REturn…
For Faye, hearing Colin choose that word in context was even more unsettling. She and Colin had talked about it briefly at Granite Peak, but Faye had never explained its meaning. The fact that he now knew it gave implicit proof that Project managers were using all covert means possible to find out whatever they wanted.
For Janis, despite all efforts, the worst case scenario suddenly seemed more probable. Overcome with emotion, she rushed from the room.
“Janis…” Faye stood and called after her but she was gone.
Faye found her minutes later, in the lab, standing at the glass that looked in on the BSL3 containment box. She was silent and still, dazed and preoccupied.
Janis ached to turn her thousand-yard stare into a thousand-year gaze.
Faye stepped up alongside her but said nothing.
“It’s incredible,” started Janis. “Human history stretches so far back. It’s so easy to assume it’ll go on forever. We might be able to deal with sterility or the plague, one or the other, but not both of them, not at the same time.”
“I thought for sure the test trial would work,” whispered Faye.
Janis turned her back to the glass and leaned against cold stainless steel.
“What did we miss? We had everything at our disposal to look at – Ghyvir-C, the RIDIS data, 2nd Protocol, the gene mapping from Alyssa…”
“We didn’t miss it,” asserted Faye. “We simply haven’t found it yet. If we had more time, we’d find it.”
“Huh!” Janis pushed away from the wall and paced. “Mass took care of that. Now we don’t know what to do.”
“There’s nothing else to do. We have to push on. If we discover something, even if we don’t get to deploy it in time, at least we’ll be able to give the survivors something to go on.”
Janis lingered on the thought, unable to agree. “But what if we spend the little time we have left trying to find a fix and we don’t succeed? That’s highly likely given the time we have. In that case we leave the survivors nothing.”
“Yeah…” Faye shrugged. “But what else can we do?”
Janis picked up a mug of tea, sat down, and thought. Sipping at the edge of the mug, she let her eyes roam the room as her mind explored the possibilities.
“What are we saying?” she started. “Given enough time, we believe we’d find an answer. That’s what you said; we didn’t miss it, we just haven’t found it yet.”
“That’s right. I believe that wholeheartedly. If we didn’t think it was a solvable problem, we couldn’t go at it like we do.”
Janis stood and paced with the mug in her hand. “Then time is the key.”
“It has to be,” agreed Faye. “If Colin had said we had 24 or 36 months, something, anything more would make finding a fix much more certain.”
Janis turned, the light of an idea on her face.
“So why don’t we give the survivors more time?”
The idea hung between them crystalline and expanding as Faye took it in.
Janis hurried to add, “Let’s give the survivors GenLET.”
“GenLET…?” gasped Faye. She sat down and followed Janis’ movements.
“If there’s only one generation left, then they’ll need as much time as possible.”
Faye thought it through. “…but, life extension for everyone?”
“Why not? What other way can survivors have the time and continuity of experience to find an answer? They’d have 200 to 300 years instead of 70 or 80.”
“You’re talking about changing the entire species…”
“Only for a generation,” countered Janis. “The trait wouldn’t be inheritable.”
“I don’t know…how would that work?”
“Colin said the greatest risk is in believing an answer is going to be conventional. Let’s take him at his word.”
“I know, but even if we decided to do it, wouldn’t time still be a problem?”
Janis waved it off. “It’s a whole different issue. There’s nothing to find or create. GenLET already exists. It simply needs to be packaged and deployed.”
“But we don’t have it.”
“The Project does. They can get it for us.”
“And what do we do with it? How do you make sure the survivors get the treatment before the population collapses?”
Janis halted her pacing then raced through the possibilities for an answer.
“Why not do it the same way they planned on releasing the sterility fix?”
“A virus in the wild, released secretly? In the conference room, you called that the riskiest way.”
“It is, but they’ll do it anyway. Why not use it for something like this?”
“I didn’t think GenLET could be administered so easily.”
“Yes and no. Riya Basu got a Nobel Prize for GenLET. In her acceptance speech she mentioned me. She said when the full story was told, I’d be standing where she was. She knew my contribution on delivery modalities. NovoSenectus was keeping that development secret.”
“So what’s possible with it?” asked Faye.
“It all depends on which generation of GenLET you’re talking about – 1GenGEN or 2GenGEN. 1GenGEN requires a treatment schedule over several visits. They’re long and arduous. The breakthrough I worked on was 2GenGEN – GenLET administered in a single dose.”
“Is that complete?”
“All the pieces are. I just never got a chance to synthesize them. I was about to do that when all of this started.”
“I don’t know…” wavered Faye. “You’re going to a whole different place. Talk about making global changes! That would be huge.”
Janis was adamant. “But it’s going to take something huge. We’re out of time. After the collapse, the world won’t be able to rely on one project, one group, one government to be stable enough to do what’s necessary. All survivors will need a chance to do what’s necessary. Somebody among them will have to step up and carry this forward. There’s no way of telling who’s going to survive…”
Faye continued the thought. “…but whoever does will need as much time as possible before the last generation dies out.”
Janis drew nearer. “What’s Colin’s attitude? He says we have to accept the facts. All right, we’re out of time, the population’s collapsing, and child survivors are going to be sterile. It’s no time for Plan B. Let’s go to Plan A-Plus. Let’s at least give the survivors time; that has to give them more of a chance.”
“Yeah, it would…but…”
“But what? There’s no coming back from extinction. Colin said survivors are going to be too busy adjusting to fundamental change after the collapse. It’s going to be a new world. This will give them plenty of time beyond that critical adjustment period, time to regroup and do the work that’s needed.”
Faye wasn’t convinced. “I’m not sure. It’s too bad we can’t just give ourselves GenLET? Then we’d have all the time we need to work on sterility.”
“We could but there’s no guarantee we’re going to survive the plague. Even if we beat the odds and live, we might not be able to work. You heard what Colin said – supplies, utilities, infrastructure, they all rely on people. With six billion gone, running a lab might be impossible for a while. But how long is a while? A lifetime? Humanity only has one of those left. Why not make it as long as possible?”
“I see your point,” relented Faye.
“So what do you think? You want to ask Colin to get us GenLET?”
Faye hesitated before committing. “I guess I can do that.”
“Great
. While you’re at it, maybe he can get his Project friends to snag some of my work files from NovoSenectus. It would help if I didn’t have to work completely from memory.”
“Sure thing,” agreed Faye.
Janis paused to dwell on a thought before pulling up a chair and sitting close. “There’s one other thing we need to talk about.”
Faye saw the concern on Janis’ face. “What is it?”
Janis held a comforting hand over Faye’s stomach. “…it’s about bed rest for the baby.”
Faye drew tense. “What about that?”
Janis’ other hand took hold of Faye’s hand. “Last week, in the apartment…I overheard your conversation with the doctor.”
Faye shuddered. “I thought you were in the other room…”
“Why haven’t you been staying in bed?”
Faye was on edge. “There’s been so much going on…”
“So?”
“There’s work to do.”
“Never mind that.” Janis squeezed Faye’s hand. “What about what the doctor said?”
“I’ll be all right…”
Janis toughened. “And what about the baby?”
Faye lowered her gaze. “The baby will be all right too. I’m taking it easy where I can.”
“That’s not good enough and you know it. You’ve worked the same as always, right alongside me ever since that call. You can’t keep doing that.”
“I’ll manage…it’ll work out.”
“No it won’t! You have to do what the doctor said.”
“But the baby will be sterile, just like millions of others. I don’t want to stop work on finding the fix. It’s not just me but everything that’s at stake, don’t you understand?”
“I understand you have to do what’s right for you. You know what you want.”
“I want both!” wept Faye.
“So let’s find a way to have both.”
“Why did this have to happen now? I don’t want to be selfish…”
“Selfish? Who said anything like that?”
Faye held silent.
For Janis, the implication was clear. “Does Colin know about this? Did he say anything?”
Faye avoided a direct answer. “It’s an impossible choice; keep the baby or keep working on something that means so much.”