Conception: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (Perfectible Animals Book 1)

by Thomas Norwood

“I don’t know. They might.”

  “Can you convince them to accept the cooperative side effects?”

  “Who said I’m going to mention them?”

  “Okay. I’ll put it to the board.”

  When I got back to the military base I was informed that the official story about the attack on the de-reg zone was that it had been carried out by the Indonesians. Our own planes had dropped the napalm, as by then everybody was dead anyway and we had to get rid of the bodies, but that was apparently as far as our government’s involvement had gone.

  The Indonesian government presumably knew that it was us who had released the virus, just like we did in Darwin, and realized that if they weren’t careful we’d release something very similar in their country. It was the perfect story, and as General Savage put it to me, drunk and slobbering one night, “That’ll keep the bastards at bay for a while!”

  The morning after this Savage called me into his office.

  “Sit down, Michael.”

  “How can I help you?”

  “I’ve been sent a memo, and it says that just before the napalm drop on the de-reg zone you and your wife were caught leaving there.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Would you care to explain that?”

  “We were saying goodbye to friends.” I looked at him without turning away.

  The General stared at me for a few moments and then nodded and lit a cigar.

  “Would you like one?” He held the box out to me.

  “No thanks. I don’t smoke. There’s something we need to discuss, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s only a matter of time before Indonesia or some other country comes up with a virus just as nasty as the one that was deployed in this country.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I would like you to organize a meeting with the PM for me.”

  “What for?”

  “I think we need a broader protection for our population. We need to convince the PM to provide us with the resources to come up with not only a somatic but a germline modification that will ensure the safety of our newborn children, that will make them stronger and fitter and more resistant to future attacks.”

  The General looked at me for a while, then stubbed out his cigar.

  “I’ll see what I can organize.”

  How could he be so calm? Did he really believe that they’d done the right thing? It was like staring into the face of a serial killer and getting absolutely no reaction.

  As I left the office, I took deep breaths and walked down the corridor as fast as I could. I started shaking and went into my own office and shut the door behind me. I could only imagine what would have happened if the General had decided to investigate my trip to the de-reg zone further. Maybe I had become so useful to them they were prepared to ignore this one little indiscretion. Everyone had died after all. Wasn’t that what they wanted?

  “Mr Khan, nice to see you again.” The Prime Minister came over and shook my hand in v-space, and I put my avatar on autopilot, shaking her hand confidently.

  “Thank you for seeing me,” I said.

  “Please, sit.” She motioned to a chair and sat down opposite me. “The General explained a little bit of your idea to me, but I would like to hear more about it from you.”

  “As you know, Geneus’s main project, before we started this job with the military, was to develop both a germline and a somatic gene modification that would greatly improve our overall immune system. I would like to propose that we are allowed to continue with that research and that the government helps us to fund it.”

  “I don’t know if we’ve got the resources, Michael.”

  “Just think about the consequences if we’re attacked with a biological weapon. Look, I don’t want to frighten you, but the viruses we’ve been working on are only the beginning. A can of worms has been opened and there are some pretty nasty worms in there. We can’t just react to each one, trying to find a somatic modification that will protect against it. What we need is a broad spectrum modification that will protect ourselves and our children far into the future.”

  “Won’t our enemies be able to find a way around that?”

  “I don’t think so. We can enhance the ability of the body to respond to new viruses by improving the innate immune response. We can also make the response more vigorous so that it is more easily able to tackle new viruses.”

  “That sounds incredibly impressive, but it’s a very long term strategy.”

  “Wouldn’t you like your grand children and your great-grand children to be able to survive, whatever happens to this world?”

  “Of course I would. Everybody would.”

  “What if Geneus invested half the funds?”

  “It was my understanding that Geneus was running low on cash reserves of its own.”

  “I think we might be able to get some more investment on board. Especially if we have the government behind us on this.”

  “Let me run it by the health department and see where we’re at with the budget. If there’s a chance we can move forward with this I’ll be in touch.”

  We both stood up and shook hands as if we were really there.

  “Thank you for an interesting proposal, Mr Khan. I’ll have my staff be in touch with you.”

  “Just one question,” I said to Susan before logging out.

  “Yes?” she replied.

  “Why keep up the pretence of democracy? Surely you could keep people under control without it?”

  “This keeps them happy as well,” Susan said, with a completely deadpan look.

  If we hadn’t been in v-space, I might have tried right then and there to strangle her. I needed to keep my cool, though. I needed their resources. For the problem wouldn’t end here. Susan Green was not the first leader to order millions killed, and she would not be the last.

  Then I realized it probably wasn’t her anyway. She was just a puppet for whoever was really calling the shots. Some military dictator. Some weapons manufacturer. Some group of incredibly rich and powerful people who didn’t really give a fuck about anybody. Then again — who knew? Maybe it really was the only way to continue feeding people.

  Three days later, I got a message from the Prime Minister’s office saying Susan wanted another meeting with me along with a number of other members of her cabinet and staff.

  The following morning, I ran through the whole proposal again for everybody’s benefit. There were a lot of questions and a number of objections, but by the end of the meeting they had agreed that if Geneus was willing to fund half of the project, the government might be able to fund the rest.

  That afternoon, I had a v-space meeting with the directors back at Geneus. Anthony in particular was not looking very happy. I’d managed to turn around what had been his triumph and use it to get my germline modification project back on track.

  “I don’t think we should be investing any more money in this,” Anthony said. “I thought we’d finished with this project once and for all.”

  “With the government helping to fund it, and HGM industries putting in some money as well, the amount of money needed to get it finished is far lower than it was,” I said.

  I’d spoken to Bruno before the meeting and gotten the go ahead from Gendigm, on the proviso I would help them take over Geneus given the right opportunity.

  “I like it,” John said. “Government funding is always fickle. If there’s a change of leadership, we could just as easily lose our military contract. This will give us some long term stability, providing we can get it to work.”

  “We can,” I said. “We’ve already been successful using the bio-vectors, and if we integrate that technology then I don’t think it’ll be long before we have a viable human baby with an extremely resilient immune system.”

  “I like it,” Klaus said. “We’ve spent so long on this project, I admire your tenacity, Michael. And it seems like all the pieces have fallen into place.
How much money’s required?”

  “Without doing the exact figures, I’d imagine somewhere in the ballpark of a eight hundred million, a third of which will come from the government and a third from HGM.”

  “How are we looking, Zhao?” Klaus turned to him.

  “It’s pretty much all we’ve got,” Zhao said.

  “Tell me honestly, Michael, how sure about this are you?” Klaus said.

  “About ninety-five percent,” I said.

  Klaus sat there thinking for a little while.

  “What if it fails?” Anthony said. “What then? The company will be left with nothing.”

  “We’ll still have our military contract,” I said.

  A week later, Klaus and I met with both Jan from HGM and a woman named Sarah from a government funding body assigned to us by the Prime Minister. After a six hour meeting we organized the creation of an entirely new entity that would be controlled fifty-one percent by Geneus, but that would be funded by both HGM and the government. All the necessary patents relating to the project would either be transferred or licensed to the new company, but if anything went wrong, or the company went bankrupt, or could no longer continue to operate, then Geneus would be protected.

  The only caveat, Jan insisted, before agreeing to everything, was that HGM had first rights to purchase the company if Geneus was no longer able to continue to run it. Klaus wasn’t happy about establishing a pre-set price for this, but he finally conceded.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  SIX MONTHS LATER, I sat in the boardroom of our new company, EidoGenesis.

  “So, do you think we’re ready?” Klaus said.

  “Yes I do,” I replied.

  Over the last six months we had modified hundreds of batches of SCID-hu mice. The first few batches hadn’t produced the desired results, but then slowly, using everything we’d learned during our military trials, we managed to create mice that were resistant to first one disease and then another, and eventually we created one that was resistant to absolutely everything we threw at it.

  From there we moved on to trials with macaques, and our success was replicated. We decided to call the first one Lucy, in homage to the Australopithecus afarensis who was once thought to be the oldest living relative of the Homo sapiens lineage. Not only was Lucy’s immune system excellent, but she was extremely friendly and cooperative as well.

  Lucy had been born just in time. Ever since the annihilation of the inhabitants of the de-reg zone, Annie’s health had been rapidly deteriorating. First it was pneumonia and then bronchitis and lately it was simply exhaustion and depression. After the failure of our somatic modifications to cure her, my only hope now was that a germline modified child might be able to provide us with the antibodies and the natural killer cells that were required to treat her.

  Three months later, Masanori and I drove through the area where, just a year before, tens of thousands of people had lived. After the napalming, I had assumed that the fence would be taken down, but all that had happened was that more people in the regulated zone had been made redundant and had been forced to move out there. New shacks and shanty towns were going up in place of the old and it was as bad as ever. The government had sectioned off any arable land, though, and food shortages in the regulated zone, which had been getting worse before the release of Rebola, were no longer a problem.

  Annie and I had been in contact with Gilda on a number of occasions and had provided her and Sam with the necessary means to move out to one of the New Church havens, and they’d been living there for the last few months. I wasn’t sure what had happened to Boon, but Gilda said the survivors were all lying low. All up there’d been nearly five hundred of them.

  Because we required a lot of space for our new clinic and wanted to avoid any potential viral contamination to the general population, we chose an old hospital in a deserted rural town about three hours drive from the city. We’d had it completely remodeled and fully fenced off, and that afternoon, Masanori and I walked into the foyer. With over thirty rooms, there would be plenty of space for the new mothers to be comfortable for the duration of their pregnancies, and once the children were born, there would be enough space to house them as well. When the children reached the age of five, we had plans to reintegrate them back into normal society, but until that age they would be carefully monitored and tested to judge the exact extent of our modifications.

  Today, though, we were here to interview and run physical exams on potential mothers. It wasn’t just enough for these women to be fit. For the next five years they would be required to live in this facility and raise their children here, almost totally isolated from the rest of society. They needed to be sound of mind as well as of body.

  Beatrice, the head doctor on the project, met Masanori and I, and we headed down to a meeting room together to interview the short-listed applicants who had just finished taking a tour of the facility.

  First on the list was a woman called Mabel, and once we were all seated she was shown into the room.

  “So, who’s the father?” Mabel said as she sat down, her curly hair bobbing around her wide, smiling face.

  “The father’s genes will come from a random selection of men with IQ’s over one hundred and twenty,” Beatrice said, obviously not getting Mabel’s joke.

  “Well, I’m not the brightest cookie on the planet, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to give them a good education, however smart they are.”

  “Can you tell us a little bit about why it is you want this job?” Beatrice said.

  “My parents are getting old, and neither of my two brothers is any use for anything. We’ve managed to survive, but it’s getting harder and harder to find work these days, and the last thing we want is to move to the de-reg zone.”

  “And who will look after your parents while you’re here?”

  “I’ll send the money back. Food and board are included here, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, they are,” Beatrice said. “Have you ever had any children of your own?”

  “I’ve always wanted to. I guess I just haven’t found the right man yet.” Mabel smiled, dimples creasing inwards.

  “No medical problems that you know of preventing it?”

  “None that I know of. But I guess you never know until you try, do you? Although maybe I shouldn’t say that.” Mabel covered her mouth.

  Beatrice smiled. “It’s okay. That’s fine.”

  Beatrice continued through the long list of questions and then Mabel was shown out.

  “What do you think?” Beatrice said.

  “I liked her,” I said, thinking she’d be a lot easier to get along with than Beatrice would be.

  “Me too,” Masanori said.

  “Okay, next,” Beatrice called to her assistant.

  All together one hundred women were interviewed over the next five days. I didn’t sit in on all of the interviews but took turns with Masanori. When I wasn’t there, I made myself familiar with the labs and took long walks in the surrounding desert. A forest had once grown around here, but now only dry shrubs grew in the eroded soil.

  A month later, twenty women had been chosen and were living on-site at the clinic, and we were ready to impregnate them with modified embryos.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come with me?” I said to Annie as I was packing my bags.

  “Yes. I’ll meet you there in a few weeks.”

  Annie had decided she wanted to stay and spend some time with friends and family before moving out to the clinic. It might be the last chance she got to see them. I didn’t want to leave her behind, but I knew I was going to have no time for anything but work over the next few weeks anyway.

  “I’m going to miss you.” I wrapped my arms around her neck.

  “I’m going to miss you, too.”

  That evening, I ran across from my room at the clinic to the main concrete building which housed the labs and the offices. An afternoon storm had broken around six and everything smelled sweet and fr
esh. A breeze sent tingles of cold through me as it evaporated the water on my skin, but it wasn’t really cold, and I knew as soon as the rain stopped it would be a warm, humid night.

  I walked down an empty corridor past some offices and took a seat in the small conference room next to Yolanda. Justin, Masanori and Beatrice were also there. Richard came in a moment later and sat down on the other side of Yolanda, looking at her in a way which made me think his feelings for her ran deeper than just collegial affection.

  “Well, all the bio-vectors are ready,” Richard said, rubbing his hands together, referring to the vectors into which we had inserted the DNA to make the required changes to the embryos.

  “What about the surrogates?” Masanori said.

  “All ready,” Beatrice said.

  “We need them in top physical condition,” Masanori said. “We’ll need daily monitoring as well, rather than bi-weekly.”

  “That will be fine,” Beatrice said. “It’s already been taken care of.”

  Over the next few days we began the process of harvesting eggs from the women who were ovulating. Before I had arrived they had all been on a treatment of reproductive hormones to encourage several eggs to develop in their ovaries at the same time. We gave them trigger shots of chorionic gonadotropin to induce final maturation before Beatrice punctured their abdominal walls and sucked the eggs out of their ovaries.

  The sperm we had chosen were from a variety of donors and the first step was to thaw it and mix it with the eggs. The newly fertilized eggs were then transferred to a growth medium at the right temperature until, forty eight hours later, each blastocyst consisted of six to eight cells.

  Once they’d reached the right size, the developing embryonic stem cells were then separated into two groups: one to be modified and the other to be used as the control group. The cells of the group to be modified were exposed to our bio-vectors, which added the new DNA to the genome. The other group were put aside to be introduced as they were.