Effected Intent

by Alan Ross

  Chapter 19

  Testing Begins

  The ride home gave Steve plenty of time to think about what he was embarking on, his bravery level going down the further he got from Washington. The one thing that seemed certain is there were still a lot of hurdles in terms of getting the real virus out of the Center for Disease Control and also making sure they had the right vaccine for themselves so they didn’t face the same fate that millions of others would. He wondered if he could find a way to walk away, maybe stash away as much evidence as possible with a lawyer and let Robert know that he was walking away and if something happened to him the information would get out. That’s what they did in the movies but Steve doubted this would work in real life, especially in this case.

  He forgot to stop for lunch and barely found a place to fill up the car. He called Claire from the road, forgetting that she was at school, and left a message on the home recorder telling her he’d be home around dinner time but needed to stop at the lab first to drop a few things off. Back in the car, he remembered the book on tape and put in on, letting it melt the stress away. The next section talked about being assertive and standing up for what you believe in. This had two meanings for Steve, it could be interpreted as sticking with the project, believing that the government was a terrible fraud and needed to be broken up or it could also mean that he needed to stand up for not killing innocent civilians the way he had in Vietnam.

  If they made progress Steve was determined to talk to Robert about changing the plan away from the world’s population and focusing on the government. There had to be a way to leverage the intel to get the government leaders clamoring for the first vaccines, they wouldn’t want to wait with the rest of the population. Greed would lead them right to the fate Steve, Robert and all the others wanted for them. The collateral damage would be great but possibly containable in a shorter time period. It didn’t make sense that Robert would want to hurt civilians, especially after the rap that Vietnam veterans had taken. Maybe they could even make a single bad batch for the government leaders and then vaccinate the rest of the country with the real vaccine, which would leave a huge hole in leadership and a very clear message. Steve’s logic made perfect sense to him and he knew that he could convince Robert to follow a more pragmatic approach to the attack. The others should understand and Steve will be able to persuade them.

  Feeling better about the situation Steve called Claire from the cell phone and told her to get dressed to go out again. She protested, saying that she was tired and tomorrow was the last day of work so he relented, agreeing to go out the next night instead. He could use the time tonight to catch up on the boards, he’d been so busy while in D.C. that he hadn’t had a lot of time to be active. So much to say now, especially after visiting the wall and Arlington national cemetery. He remembered how haunting it was to stand on the edge of the hills, seeing nothing but the haunting white headstones against the lush green grass of the cemetery. He couldn’t imagine what it must look like in the fall, the crimson leaves on the ground the bloodshed from the bodies of our young men.

  The lab had a bunch of UPS stickers on the door, indicating that there were a bunch of deliveries waiting. Steve would call tomorrow and request a big delivery, he could roll the overhead door in the area adjacent to the lab and make it easy. Wasn’t much to do until the equipment arrived. He went to the kitchen, made coffee and waited, then sat in his office and logged in to Foundation, best to get the work out of the way first. There wasn’t much of consequence and he thought about the grind of corporate life; how much time was spent moving das machinery from point A to point B one click at a time, caught in the mire. By the time he’d finished his first cup of coffee he was closing the connection to Foundation.

  The boards were another story, lots of activity in the past few days, especially since the presidential election was coming this fall. The anti-war contingency had found its way back to the forums and were spewing their bullshit. Steve thought about that tape he’d listened to and decided not to let the actions of other people bring him down, at least for the next few minutes. He looked for new posts from quietstorm but didn’t see anything. Steve created new discussions that talked about his experience in the capital city, especially the wall. Before he was done posting about Arlington there were already responses to his wall post, talking about their first times. He’d returned to the wall two other times, once during the day and another time at night and had gone through the book and found many of his friends. By then his heart was heavy and his brain taxed from the conversation with Robert and seeing the wall reinforced his thought that the plan must be rethought.

  There were a few new emails from Robert, one telling Steve that the bird man was going to Atlanta, which he already knew, and another to order the material, which was done. One other message talked about a website and simply had an I.P. address, username and password. Steve logged on to the site and was shocked by what he saw, the background of the home page looked like bloody skulls and it sickened him to think of what was planned. The plot information was contained on these pages, as well as some of the key members and the role they had. There were no nicknames or code words, simply the first names of everyone involved.

  He closed the site after a couple of minutes, afraid that if he kept looking he’d want to run away. Needed to stick with the plan of going after the government, it was the most practical in this situation. He spent the afternoon cleaning up the lab in preparation for the work ahead, didn’t want to be stuck doing it once all the new equipment arrived. It was Steve in his element, making sure everything was perfect and by the time he went home that night, the lab was spotless.

  Friday brought a bunch of deliveries, even a couple of the things he’d sent to Robert had arrived. It took most of the day for him to sort through everything, find a place for it in their production line and test the equipment to make sure it was working. He left work early and stopped for flowers to bring home, hoping that Claire would be ready to go out before the Friday rush, better if they could get a table and enjoy a leisurely dinner without having to wait an hour to do so.

  “Flowers again? What’s the occasion?”

  “Celebrating the end of the school year for you and my return home from Disneyland on the Potomac.”

  She shook her head, not wanting to get into a government conversation tonight. “Where are we going for dinner?”

  “Surprise though my guess is you’ll have figured it out on the way.” Steve was hiding something, Claire could tell. He was trying to shine through a sullen undertone. The trip must have taken its toll on him but it was something he needed to do for a long time. She wished she could have been there to hold his hand the first time he approached the wall, knew that must have knocked him down pretty hard. Fighting back the urge to help, she simply held his hand gently as he drove. They were headed north, toward downtown, which didn’t give her any indication of where they were going. Once he picked up highway 90 westbound she knew.

  “Pier W? We haven’t been there in so long!”

  “One of these days I’m going to surprise you Claire, guess I’m too predictable.”

  “Nothing wrong with that, I can’t wait to get there now and all of a sudden I’m really hungry for some seafood.” She grinned at him and he caught it out of the corner of his eye, pleased that they were going to get this time together. The dinner was pleasant but there was an undertone of stress, Steve wanting to tell Claire about the plan and Claire wishing he’d unburden to her. They talked about the upcoming trip next weekend, both really looking forward to it. Steve never gave her details of his wall visits or the trip to Arlington, the way he felt when he knelt at the Kennedy grave as the sun went down, the flame and the single long stem red roses someone had put there burning a lasting image in his mind.

  When Steve arrived at the project site Monday he was shocked to see three other cars parked out front. He was used to this place being his and wasn’t sure what it would be like with other pe
ople there. It was necessary but another short era was about to end, one with a disaster on the other side. Walking in, he heard noise coming from the lab and wasn’t happy about that. He went into the lab and saw a man in his late thirties, short and skinny with straight blonde hair looking through the cabinets. “Lots of stuff here, shouldn’t be hard to get things rolling with The Cause. I’m Jay.”

  “Hi Jay, I’m Steve Pfister.”

  “Oh, the chemist. Cool, been wanting to meet you. I’ve done lab work for the past ten years but haven’t seen anything as cool as what you’ve got with the polymer spheres, that was genius.”

  Steve paused, not used to such unabashed praise. “Thank you, look forward to working with you too. What has your lab experience been?”

  “General chemical lab stuff, gas chromatograph, mass spectrometer, the like. I’m a quick learner and hope to be helping with synthesis of the polymer and formation of the spheres.”

  “No problem, I can use the help. We’re on a short timeline and don’t have time for a lot of nicety. I run a tight ship and appreciate personal space. See that bench over by the hood? That’s my bench. Please keep your work off that bench and whatever area you take down here I need you to keep it clean.”

  Jay didn’t expect this but had dealt with chemists for a long time and knew that most of them were extremely conscious of cleanliness, didn’t want to end up contaminating their work and end up with something they couldn’t repeat. “Loud and clear, sir.”

  “You a veteran?”

  “Desert Shield and Storm, been out for about ten years, I stayed on after the war and picked up some lab skills. You serve?”

  “We all did, as far as I know. I was in Vietnam in the late sixties, did a couple of tours.”

  “What did you do in ‘Nam?”

  Steve hated when people who weren’t there called in that but didn’t get a chance to correct him because the UPS truck was beeping outside. They walked through the connecting door between the lab and the production part of the facility and rolled open the big overhead door. There were three big packages and Steve and Jay struggled to get them into place and uncrate them. The large centrifuge, autoclave, mixer and mill had arrived. “Hope there’s enough power in this place to manage all of the equipment we’re bringing in.” Jay said.

  “There should be, this used to be a machine shop and they had a lot of big lathes, grinders and a bunch of electric welders so it should be ok. Forgot to ask something, I saw a couple of other cars in the lot, is anyone else here?”

  “Two old guys. Sorry about that, two other guys were here when I arrived this morning but Robert picked them up and they took off in a hurry, not sure where they were going. Think their names were Mickey and Rudy but I’m not positive. Said they’d be back later but didn’t give me any idea where they were going.”

  Steve half nodded in acknowledgement. “Let’s break for lunch, we can get back to the setup after.” He wanted to sit down for a while and also needed to check in with Foundation, might be something going on there he needed to be aware of. Doubtful but his corporate brainwashing made him believe he needed to check in all the time. Jay took off for lunch, probably just wanted some time alone. There was an urgent request from Rob to come in and meet with the patent attorneys, there were a few new patent applications and they wanted to make sure they had the claims right. The applications were attached to the message and Steve printed them off, along with an acknowledgement that he’d contact the attorneys as soon as he’d had a chance to review the claims. Steve had been through the process enough times that he could probably write his own patent applications. He thought about that as a futile exercise given the current plans but needed to do it in case things didn’t work out with The Cause.

  He was responding to another request when the door chimed, indicating that someone had come in and there was commotion in the main area outside his office. He went out and saw the bird man and two others, both grizzly looking veterans. Introductions were made and Robert led them to the conference room. “Where’s Jay?”

  “He went to get some lunch, should be back in a while.”

  “We need to get going on this, we’ve got an urgent situation we need to brainstorm on. The fucking CDC guy wouldn’t give up the virus and the vaccine when I went to see him Friday, decided to call my bluff on blowing the lid off his cleanup, which was quite a bad situation. This is the hinge for the project, without the virus we might as well be a bunch of fucking dicks doing a circle jerk.” Robert was spitting as he spoke, obviously not used to rejection.

  “Let’s blow his cover.” Rudy offered, a shake in his voice and his left hand, probably a stroke victim. “Maybe if we blow the lid off it there will be enough confusion that we can get the samples out.”

  “More likely they’ll lock the place like Fort Knox, we can’t risk that now. What else can we do?”

  “What if you produced the evidence and went to see him again? Seeing pictures might change his attitude. Offer to leave the CDC and go show them to his wife, if he has one.”

  “He has one alright, they are socialite elites in Atlanta and he is a pillar of the black community there. He’s a staunch Obama supporter, which I don’t understand. How could a veteran support that guy over a war hero?” It was a rhetorical question and nobody tried to answer. “That’s actually not a bad idea, if he wants to see his brother elected president he’ll need to play ball with us. Either that or it will be on the front page of the Atlanta Journal Constitution and all that he’s worked for to build that socialite reputation will be in the ground. Good idea Steve, I better get moving on that. I want to bring you with me Myron, you can help me get the message across to our brother.”

  “What about the testing? Do you want us to start without you? We didn’t take the injections last week, slipped my mind.”

  “Oh yeah, let’s get the doc over here and then we can take off.” Steve was impressed, didn’t think they’d have a medical doctor on the team. Robert made a call from his cell, told the man it was urgent and said “I guess an hour will be ok.”

  “He’ll be here in a bit, has a couple of patients to see first. Are you ready? He won’t be happy if he gets here and we’re still getting set up.”

  “I’ll get on that now, want to give me a hand?”

  “Sure, just let me hit the head.” Rudy said, limping out of the conference room. Steve didn’t wait for Robert to remind him this was urgent and went down to the lab to get things unboxed and double checked. He’d need a couple more samples in order to cover everyone, had just made a few last week. Jay came back around the same time Rudy got down to the lab and they watched as Steve put together the extra samples, making sure there’d be enough and a couple extras in case something went wrong.

  Jay was taking notes as Steve went through the process. “We start with saline solution, which is used to carry the spheres into the body. The injection is given intra muscularly, meaning that it’s put into a large muscle instead of under the skin or in the vein, which is the way that a lot of other injections are delivered to humans. The saline is inert to the human body, the same way this surfactant is. I found a good surfactant that is silicone based, so it will also pass through the body without harm.” He added a few drops of the liquid to the saline solution and stirred it in. “The next step is to add the spheres, which are more durable than you’d think, given their job in the body and the process. We can dissect some spheres later so you know see what I mean. Each twenty milliliters of solution can support thousands of spheres but for this experiment we’ll only need about fifty spheres. Each one is nominally one tenth of a millimeter in diameter they pass through a common needle easily. The trick is to have the surfactant to keep them from becoming a glob, which wouldn’t work so well.”

  “What’s in the spheres?” Jay asked, head cocked wondering what he was in for.

  “Good question since you’re going to be injected with them. These are simply four colored dyes that will be released over a
period of days. We’ll measure success by noting the color of our urine, it should go from bright yellow to green and then blue and finally black.”

  “Cool.” Rudy was obviously not the deep thinker of the team.

  “Have you tested this before? I don’t want to turn into a werewolf or something.”

  “Nope, hasn’t been tested yet but I’m confident enough that if you all want to skip it I’ll take the injection and show you the results.”

  “I’ll take it, guess if we go down we’ll all go down together. Wouldn’t be much of a team without our chemist.”

  Steve nodded, counted off twenty and made eight batches of the injection, getting the job done and getting the bench cleaned up just as the doctor arrived. Robert and Mickey met him in the lobby and everyone congregated in the lab. There was a brief discussion about what they were injecting today and what to expect from it. Everyone was comfortable participating, even the doctor, Rob Ravich.

  “Before we begin let me tell you that this invention is incredible Steve. I can’t tell you how many sick people I’ve dealt with over the years because they didn’t come back for boosters once they’ve had initial immunizations. Add the side effects that come with bundling multiple vaccines together and this could revolutionize the way medicine is done. It’s also the perfect way to execute The Cause.”

  Steve was proud that the doctor believed in his invention, thought that it would have been better if it was going to be used for good first but once the dust settled maybe it would end up getting used for a better purpose. The doctor gave the injections and then took one himself before excusing himself to go see some patients. Robert and Mickey left the building for their Atlanta visit, saying they’d be back in a few days. The plan was afoot.