TIME SHIP (Book Two) - A Time Travel Romantic Adventure

by Ian C. P. Irvine

  "Mr Tyler is gone?" one of the men asked, surprised and shocked.

  "Yes, and sadly I fear he will be but one of many to come. Keep yourselves apart from one another, wear yer masks, and ye will likely survive, if ye are not infected already. Now go!"

  The men turned and hurried away.

  Captain McGregor hoisted Silver to his feet, lifted an arm over his shoulder and carried him through the resort complex to the field of green tents on the tennis courts.

  Dumping him on one of the free bunk-beds he briefly explained to one of the medical team in the biological suits that the man should be restrained, was possibly violent, and requested that he should be notified when he woke up.

  Captain McGregor and James Silver needed to talk.

  Chapter 35

  High Security Field Laboratory

  World Health Organisation (W.H.O.)

  San Juan

  Puerto Rico

  Tuesday 8.15 p.m.

  Moira Cerny adjusted the sights on her new super-resolution microscope, and swore loudly at what she saw. Since she had started to use the latest STORM microscopy techniques - or Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy, to give it its full but unusable name - her work had been transformed. By using the novel, simultaneous dual-color imaging system based on the STORM technique, and an objective-based TIRF microscope and filter-based image splitter, she was now able to easily observe molecular interactions at or below 40 nanometers, which was about 10 times finer than the highest resolution images that could be obtained with light microscopes!

  Using conventional imaging methods it had, until recently, not been possible for her to see and detect the molecular changes caused by diseases such as the plague in sufficient detail for her to carry out her research.

  But with her new microscope, which she had nicknamed 'Hugo' after her blind piano tuner, she was able to see details which previously would have been invisible to her expert eye.

  What Hugo was showing her now, however, was both exciting and terrifying, both at the same time.

  Moira was the W.H.O.'s foremost expert on diseases caused by Enterobacteriaceae, a large family of Gram-negative bacteria that included many of the most familiar pathogens, such as Salmonella, Escherichia coli, Yersinia pestis, Shigella and Klebsiella.

  Her speciality was Yersinia pestis, which caused three main types of infection: pneumonic, septicemic, and bubonic plagues. To the average person on the street, Yersinia pestis was just a strange name and an unknown enemy. However, under a different name, this tiny Gram-negative rod-shaped bacterium was probably the cause of the most famous outbreak of disease in human history: the Black Death.

  Between the years of 1347 and 1353, The Black Death - or Plague - caused the deaths of at least one-third of the entire European population. Similar plagues swept through Europe regularly for the next few hundred years, each time with large, but diminishing death tolls. Today, plague still infected many, but killed now only in small numbers. The disease was still deadly, but if it was caught early enough and medicines and antibiotics were available, then the survival rate was very good. Until recently the plague was a notifiable disease, and efforts would always immediately be put in place to contain it once it had been reported and identified.

  Moira Cerny had been studying Yersinia pestis for years. She often dreamt about it. She could close her eyes and recall images of it in her mind at will: a rod-shaped facultative anaerobe with bipolar staining that helped it look a little like a safety pin.

  Years ago, she had once been approached by a member of the government who had enquired, politely and carefully, about the possibility of her working for the U.S. government and helping to investigate the potential effects of deliberately creating a more lethal mutation of the normal Yersinia pestis bacteria. Moira Cerny had no interest in helping develop a biological weapon of mass destruction, and had ignored all attempts to recruit her. Yet, since then, she had always wondered how difficult it would be to mutate the bacterium, and indeed, what the effect of such a mutation would be, particularly on the human species. In her worst nightmares she would dream that a biovar - a variant prokaryotic strain that differed physiologically and/or biochemically from other strains in a particular species - had been created and released into society. In these graphic nightmares, her mind had shown her what the result would be: a near annihilation of the human species.

  Staring at the images of the Yesrinia pestis bacteria that she now saw, she realised that the waiting and the dreaming were over.

  Someone somewhere had created a perfect biovar of Yersinia pestis.

  For some unthinkable reason, this biovar had been released.

  And its effect was now clearly evident.

  Death.

  And she had just dissected and examined one of its first victims.

  In this single moment of time, all of her twenty years of experience, study and research came together.

  She recoiled from the image she saw in the microscope of the new biovar, scared and frightened.

  Human kind today would have no resistance to this biovar. There would be no natural immunity to the mutated organism which she now saw, no defenses in the human blood, and only a very few medicines which would be able to treat it and prevent its rapid spread, and these were in short supply and would take months to manufacture in bulk.

  Her mind began to churn numbers, calculating potential percentages and death rates.

  Seventy, eighty, maybe eighty-five percent of all humans that came in contact with this airborne disease and were infected would die.

  In other words, if a single infected person managed to escape the Blue Emerald Bay Resort and make contact with a population center, the effect would be unimaginable.

  Moira Cerny had often wondered what the end of the world would look like.

  Now she was looking at it.

  Moira took some time to calm down, collect her thoughts and then to recheck her findings.

  An hour later, convinced that she had not made a mistake, she picked up the phone and dialed her boss in Geneva, Switzerland. It was the middle of the night there, but the emergency number she dialed would be answered at any time.

  "Hello?" a rather sleepy voice replied. "This is Anton."

  "Anton, it's Moira here. I've just finished my initial observations and examinations of the cadaver from the Blue Emerald Bay Resort here in Puerto Rico."

  "And, obviously the news is not good. Hence the call at this time of the morning...what time is it?"

  "About 3 a.m. your time. In short, Anton, you are correct. The news is not good. I'm looking at one of the most lethal pathogens that I have ever seen. It's a biovar of Yersinia pestis, possibly engineered in a lab somewhere, or maybe natural. But it's new, and we've never seen it before. I've run some numbers and estimate between seventy and eighty-five percent mortality rate."

  Anton was now wide awake.

  "How far advanced is it?"

  "I think that it has only just begun to spread within an initial contact group. There are thirty-five confirmed cases, and I've just spoken to the field hospital and there are now twenty deaths, four within the past hour. I think we've been lucky so far, in that some fast thinking on behalf of the resort manager at the Blue Emerald has potentially confined the outbreak to those quarantined in the resort, but if anyone has already left the resort since the infection began, or does leave in the future, then we are looking at a potential nightmare..."

  "I understand. Do we know if anyone could have left the resort who may have been exposed to the disease."

  "The resort manager believes the answer to that question is no. For now, let's just hope she is correct. But I suggest you have to ensure that the airports and harbors remain closed until further notice. And I think you must consider the implementation of the Piras Plan. At least, prepare for it...just in case."

  "How many people are in the resort?"

  "In total, including the terrorists, the W.H.O, employees and the army, - just over
six hundred and eighty."

  "Six hundred and eighty souls?"

  "It's a lot, but nothing in comparison to what would happen if this gets out."

  "How do we know that it has not already got out and spread somewhere else, or is just about to?"

  "We don't, but there is something else that I wanted to discuss with you. Have you heard anything about the claims from the terrorists who besieged the resort, who are insisting that they are pirates from the year 1699?"

  "Yes. It made me laugh."

  "Perhaps it shouldn't. I've been doing a lot of blood work on the cadaver, and the results of the autopsy that my colleague Andrea conducted have just got back to me. I've had a chance to review them and they back up my findings from the blood work."

  "Which is what?"

  "Which is that the cadaver shows no signs of having lived in the twentieth or twenty-first centuries. There are no inoculations on the body, no dental fillings, no signs of modern medical procedures being applied. The body is covered in scars which have simply been left to heal very badly, or have been stitched together with materials last referred to in history books! The bone density, the organs, the blood makeup...everything about this body is weird. It's hard to say this without you wondering if I have gone mad or have been drinking, but I can assure you that I haven't...but it's almost as if this person has been living without any contact with the world as we know it, or, as if he had been transported from sometime in the past to the future. What I am getting at is that their claim to be pirates from the year 1699 may not be so far-fetched after all. Medically it pans out. And, also, it would potentially explain the sudden appearance of this biovar. Imagine, please just imagine for a second, that they are telling the truth. What we could be looking at here is a new deadly pathogen that has been transported from the past to the future, carried by pirates from the year 1699 to 2014. A deadly pathogen for which there is no natural immunity, and which would sweep through the population faster than any of the models that we have ever looked at or imagined in our disaster planning."

  "And you still think that this is possibly entirely contained and localized to within the complex?"

  "I think so. But we won't know for a couple of days. We need to put everyone on alert for any other possible reports of anything similar that might show up anywhere else."

  "Are you serious about the Piras Plan?"

  "Come on Anton, I just mentioned it, because I'm duty bound to do so. You know my feelings on that one. I've dedicated my life to saving lives, not to killing people."

  "Moira, I know. But we both know, we all know that the Piras Plan was created for a scenario exactly like this: when a lethal pathogen is identified that has the ability to spread rapidly and infect millions or billions, - and which has a projected mortality rate of greater than thirty-three percent - , and when that pathogen is localized and contained within a small, geographical area, then Piras gives us the ability to save millions or even billions of lives simply by killing and incinerating everyone within the infected area, before the pathogen can escape. And by incinerating everything in the area, we destroy the pathogen and its hosts, thereby stopping the infection in its path. We kill hundreds, maybe even thousands, but we save millions!"

  "Bloody hell Anton, I KNOW the plan. I helped develop the bloody thing. But I never expected to be the person to suggest its use."

  "Don't worry. That job will be mine. If it comes to it."

  "Which it could, Anton, so I believe you have to start to make preparatory plans to put it in place. Although I sincerely hope and pray it doesn't come to that...Anton, apart from not wanting to be responsible for sentencing hundreds of people to die, there is another reason why, ideally, we should not enact the Piras Plan: basically, I think that these guys could really be pirates from the seventeenth century. I've seen the videos on the news, the photographs and the ship in the harbor. It all looks so convincing. Do you realise what an opportunity we have been given to study the physiology of humans from over three hundred years ago? We can learn so much by examining them. It's an incredible opportunity to observe the effect of three hundred years of evolution by comparing them with us. There will never be another chance like this!"

  "I understand, Moira. I do. But if you are right in your prognosis on this pathogen, it wouldn't matter if they were over a thousand years old. If they pose such a threat to us and the rest of mankind, we will have to incinerate them all! Along with all the residents of the hotel. And we will have to do it by this time tomorrow night."

  Moira was silent.

  Eventually she spoke.

  "So, what happens next?"

  "Immediately I get off the phone with you I will initiate Piras Stage One. I will call the President of the United States of America. And together we will call the Governor of Puerto Rico. If the President agrees, which I know he will, the U.S. Air Force will start to fly the N-648 Nuclear Incendiary Devices down to Puerto Rico. By this time tomorrow the pathogen will no longer exist," Anton replied.

  "And neither will the Blue Emerald Bay resort, or any of its guests." Moira added, then hung up.

  In Switzerland, Anton went to the restroom, took a cold shower, got dressed, and then called the President of the United States of America.

  'Piras Stage One' had just been enacted.

  Chapter 36

  Blue Emerald Bay Resort

  Puerto Rico

  Tuesday 10.15 p.m.

  Sandy Weiss was starving. The food they had been promised had not yet been delivered, and for the past few hours they had been stressed to the max, lying in wait for the hotel employees to knock on their door so that they could rush out, mug them, and steal their biological suits or uniforms.

  At 9 p.m. Sandy had changed the plan slightly. He and Jake slipped out of their suites and hid in the Service Room just opposite their rooms. There they waited for the food to be delivered to their doors: the last thing the hotel employees would be expecting would be two hungry guests to jump out of the Service Room and knock them out from behind.

  Sandy knew exactly what to do. He was a very confident kid who had spent most of his privileged youth getting into trouble with the wrong sort of people, and finding excitement wherever he could.

  Nowadays he was calmer, mostly because of the special counseling he had received as part of the program for relatives of the President of the United States: a new program set up in 2011 that aimed to minimize any possible negative PR for the world's Number One Politician. The last thing the President of the U.S. needed was for Sandy Weiss to be caught selling drugs again!

  Not so long ago, street fighting had been a specialty of Sandy's. He could handle himself well.

  It was 10.30 p.m. when the three hotel employees walked down the corridor, stopping outside of each door, bending down and putting a tray of food on the floor, and ringing the bell of each room, before they moved on.

  They waited for the hotel employees to get to Sandy's room, having already delivered to Jake's next door. There were three of them, and they all wore puffy, oversized, blue biological suits, which made their movements difficult and hindered their awareness of what was going on around them.

  Their plan worked perfectly.

  One of the people in front of them took a tray from the cart they were pushing, and bent down to put the food on the floor outside the door.

  Seizing the moment, Sandy and Jake opened their door and stepped out. Sandy quickly hit two of them over the head with the small hand held fire-extinguisher from his suite, and Jake pushed the head of the third person forcibly against the wall: there was a sickening 'thud' and the person went down.

  They immediately stepped over their bodies, Sandy opened his door and they dragged the bodies inside. Jake fetched his wife and they stripped the suits off the people: two men and a woman. With a towel, they cleaned some blood out of the hoods from inside the face visors, and then quickly put the suits on themselves.

  They hurried along the corridor, pushing the cart ahead o
f them.

  At the end of the corridor, they turned right instead of left, and hurried to the elevator ten yards further on. They rode the elevator to the ground floor, and then still maintaining their disguise, they left the building and pushed the food cart through the complex, walking quickly but without rushing, to the back of the resort. At the base of the wall, they climbed out of their biological suits.

  At 11.04 p.m. exactly, they pushed the food cart against the rear wall of the complex, and jumped up on top of it. The wall at the back of the complex was about thirteen foot tall. Jake and Sandy crossed their arms and gripped each other's hands, forming a cradle, into which Paula put one of her feet and then stepped up, pushing down on their shoulders just as Sandy and Jake hoisted her up into the air. Paula grabbed the top of the wall and pulled herself on top of it. Jake was next, climbing up onto Sandy's back, and then standing on his shoulders until he climbed up easily and joined his wife.

  He uncoiled the rope he had cut down from the curtains in his suite, which he had wound around his waist, and lowered it down to Sandy. Sandy grasped the other end and pulled himself up.

  By 11.10 p.m. they were all sitting at the top of the resort wall, dangling their legs over the far side.

  "Hurry!" Sandy urged, "Jake, you climb down the curtain rope first, then get ready to help or catch Paula when she comes down after you. I'll try my best to hold her on the rope, but I might not be able to do it by myself. Then I'll come last. I'll drop down, but you will both have to try and catch me as I jump the last bit. Okay? Then let's go...!"

  Jake managed down easily, then reached back up to help Paula, but she managed it by herself, after letting herself down the first bit by hanging on to the rope which Sandy held. Sandy tried to lower himself down as far as possible, but hesitated to let go when he realised how far he would have to jump down by himself.

  "Come on! Jump!" the muffled voice of Jake shouted up.