“How’s her temperature?” I said to Beatrice. We had Annie in one of the beds in the clinic.
“It’s thirty-nine,” Beatrice said.
I kissed Annie on the forehead. “I’ll be back straight after my talk. Are you going to be alright?”
Today we were hosting a small conference. Politicians, NGO reps, doctors and medical company executives had flown in from all over the world to hear first-hand about our success.
“I’ll be fine.” Annie smiled up at me out of serene eyes. The news that we might finally have a treatment for her had lifted her spirits in a way I hadn’t seen for years.
I walked over to the cafeteria and made my way through the groups of people milling around, talking, drinking and eating. A number of them approached me and tried to ask questions, but I excused myself and headed for the podium where Rebecca, our PR officer, was setting up a microphone.
“There you are,” she said.
“Sorry I’m late.”
“All ready?”
“I hope so.”
Just then I got a call from Beatrice.
“Excuse me,” I said to Rebecca, holding up a finger.
I answered Beatrice.
“We’ve just gotten the results on Annie. It’s the flu.”
“Any idea what type?”
“No. It’s not one we’ve seen before.”
“You don’t think it’s come from the kids, do you?” There were now over a hundred genetically modified children and a hundred unmodified children living at the compound. Annie loved the kids and spent a lot of her time with them despite her illness. Two of them, Harvey and Shy, whose mother had disappeared one night, were her particular favorites.
“We’re hoping not. We’re running more tests at the moment.”
“Has anyone else got it?”
“Not so far. Not that we know of.”
“Okay. Keep me informed.”
“I will.”
I called Justin. “Annie’s got the flu. One they haven’t seen before. It might be from the kids.”
“I’ll get over there right away,” he replied.
“Cross check it with the most recent flu strains that we’ve been using in our testing. I’ll be over as soon as I’ve finished here.”
“Will do.”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Rebecca was saying, “if I could have your attention please. Welcome to EidoGenesis!” There was a round of applause from the audience. I hardly even saw them, my eyes focussed on my message overlay, waiting for a message from Beatrice or Justin. Then I thought it best to turn the overlay off. There was no way I’d be able to give a coherent speech otherwise.
“Today is a momentous day for us all,” Rebecca continued. “After nearly ten years of research, we here at EidoGenesis have finally reached our dream of creating children that are able to withstand diseases that up until now have been deadly to humans. Let me introduce you to Dr Michael Khan, one of the leading forces behind this project.”
There was another round of applause, and I looked out across the sea of people in front of me. I went up and tried to smile. “Welcome,” I said. “This has indeed been a long road. Much longer than we ever anticipated. But then, given the millions of years it took evolution to come up with its fairly average immune system, I think we’ve actually managed to do it fairly quickly.” I was speaking from a speech I’d prepared on my com and people laughed.
I went on to describe all the recorded benefits of our modifications and many of the suspected future benefits that we hadn’t been able to test for, such as protection against cancer.
Then Rebecca got up and spoke again, and after a long round of applause everyone went back to the food and wine.
I jogged quickly back over to the lab. Justin was running the data that Beatrice had sent him, searching for matches between the DNA of the last flu virus we’d used in our testing and the one Annie was now suffering from.
“Just as we suspected,” Justin said.
“Really?”
“Yes. A mutation of one of our flu viruses. The question is, what to do about it?”
“We need to modify our somatic processes, see if we can develop an appropriate response from the immune system.”
“I don’t know if we’ve got time to do that. Maybe we should inject her with the antibodies and natural killer cells you’ve been working on, and see if that works.”
“They’re not quite ready,” I said. “And they’re only really tailored to HIV-4.”
“If we can fix her immune system, it might be strong enough to fight this. Either way, we have to put her in isolation. If this thing spreads who knows what it’ll do.”
I put a call through to Beatrice and told her we were going to need one of the isolation bubbles, then I went back to Annie’s room and told her what had happened and what we were going to have to do.
“Don’t come too close,” Annie said.
I wanted to go over to her and hold her but stopped myself.
Nurses came in with masks on and wheeled Annie out. I followed them down the hall. They put the bed inside the plastic bubble that had just been prepared and sealed it off.
I went over to Annie, slipped my hands inside the thin plastic gloves and took her hand. “My love. You’re going to be alright.”
She opened her eyes under a sweaty forehead and looked out at me through the plastic.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I said.
“Don’t blame yourself, Michael. Even if I do die, which I don’t plan on doing, being with you has been the most amazing thing in my life. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.” She smiled again, and my heart felt like it was being constricted into a tiny ball and I wanted to wrap my arms around her and protect her. I felt tears coming to my eyes.
“Why are you crying?” she said.
“I love you, you know that, don’t you?”
“Yes. Of course I do.”
My body was exhausted and lethargic, but adrenaline was flowing into me like the saline in Annie’s drip. “I’m going to go and help Beatrice and Justin. We’re going to have to inject you with the antibodies and natural killer cells that we’ve prepared and see if that helps.”
“You need to develop a vaccine first, to protect others.”
“We’ll work on that, too.”
“It’s a pity I haven’t been modified like the children,” she said sleepily. “Imagine how strong they’re going to be.”
“Yes.” I gripped her hand. “But you’re strong, too. And you’re not going to die. Promise me that, Annie. You’re not going to die.”
She smiled, almost blissfully. “Okay,” she said.
When I got to the lab, Justin and Richard were examining blood cells under a microscope. On the public overlay was a genetic and molecular representation of the cells.
“It’s in here,” Richard said, pointing to a place on the overlay. “This is the virus. You can see how it’s mutated from the original. These are the genes here.”
“Why is it so much stronger?”
“The immunogenic epitopes have varied dramatically relative to the last several flu strains,” he said, referring to the parts of the virus which elicit immune reactions.
“How is it replicating? Like a normal flu?”
“Yes.”
“Annie’s already been given the somatic modification, though.”
“Yes.”
“And it’s not working?”
“Doesn’t seem to be. At least not well enough. Maybe it’s because of her already compromised immune system.”
I lost myself in the work. It was all I could do to stop my mind from tearing itself to pieces, but I had to focus.
In the afternoon, I went over the hospital again and sat by Annie’s side.
“Tell me a story,” she said.
“What kind of story?”
“I don’t know. Tell me about the future. About what earth is going to be like when finally all of this is over.”
&
nbsp; “Well, to start with, there won’t be so many humans on it. Maybe a billion at the most. I mean, do we really need so many people?”
She struggled to laugh.
“There’ll be more room for other species. Maybe we’ll even invent some. Not too smart of course, we don’t want them threatening us. How about an animal with a habit of collecting garbage and piling it up in plastic rubbish bins? It could be their mating ritual — the fuller the garbage bin the better chances of finding a mate.”
She smiled at me and I squeezed her hand.
“And trees and plants of course will be everywhere again. The whole world will be like one big garden.”
“But without spiders?” Annie had never liked spiders.
“Definitely without spiders. Well, maybe a few, to keep the insect populations down. But they’ll never go anywhere near houses.”
“Great.”
“And of course, people will never get sick. They’ll live until they’re about a hundred and fifty and then, when they’re ready, they’ll go to their local doctor and ask to be put down in a civilized fashion. They’ll have their friends and family around them. Many will even choose to die together, with their loved ones, so that nobody gets left behind.”
“I like that idea,” she said.
“And everyone will cooperate. Helping others will hold a higher value for them than helping themselves. Everyone will have everything they need: food, education, accommodation, healthcare if they need it, which of course they won’t, thanks to us.”
She smiled again, but her eyes were starting to close and I could see she needed rest. I stopped talking and just held her hand until I could see her pupils racing back and forth behind her eyelids.
All the modified children in the compound had been sealed away in the accommodation wing. In order to access them, to draw blood and isolate the antibodies, we had to wear hazmat suits, as did the parents and staff who were looking after them. The children ranged between two months and three years old, and many of them were scared by this new scenario.
We decided to divide the children up into groups. The youngest, who hadn’t as yet been infected with the flu virus, were sent off-site with their mothers to an old office building close to the clinic. The older ones, who posed the greatest risk, were also split up. We put them into groups based on their exposure to various pathogens and then divided up the higher risk subjects and separated them from one another. The problem was that our modified children had an incredibly high tolerance to disease. Even at a high pathogen titer, they showed no symptoms. And then, in the time it took their immune system to eradicate it, the virus had already moved on, and possibly mutated, thus staying alive. Separating them all and quarantining them would stop that from happening.
Richard had the idea of sending everyone out into the desert. We hired portable toilets and some large mobile homes from a place in the regulated zone and set up a number of campsites a couple of kilometers from the clinic.
This obviously wasn’t going to be a long term solution, and I thought about how we could separate the children and put them somewhere they were going to be safe. Permanent adoption was an option, but with people’s resources stretched, I doubted there was much market for it. Then I thought about Dylan and wondered if there was any chance he’d accept the children on the New Church havens.
That afternoon, I went across to visit Annie.
“How are you feeling?” I said.
“I wish you’d let me out of this bubble. Or that you would come in here with me. It’s very boring.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. How is the vaccine coming along?”
“Justin’s re-visiting our old somatic modification codes, and seeing how we can adapt them for this new virus. It’s going to take a while, though. In the meantime, we’re separating and quarantining everyone.”
“How are the kids taking it?”
“A bit scared I think.”
“All this trouble just for one stupid flu virus. I’m sure I’ll get over it anyway.”
“We can’t be too careful.”
“We haven’t been that worried up until now.”
“We never expected it would mutate so quickly in such a low population density.”
“Maybe all your work will be in vain. As soon as the modified children become resistant to one thing, another will evolve to take its place. You can’t beat nature.”
Her head flopped back onto the pillow and her eyes rolled up towards the ceiling before she closed them.
“Are you alright, Annie?”
“Yes, I’m fine. Just fine. It’s so nice out here.”
“Out where?”
“Out here.”
“Annie. Wake up.” I shook her arm.
“I’m okay.” She opened her eyes and came back to me.
My heart pounded painfully in my chest.
“Don’t do that to me,” I said.
“Do what?”
“Go off like that.”
“I’m sorry.” She smiled. “But Michael, I want you to promise me something?”
“What’s that?”
“That you’ll take care of the children.”
“Of course I’ll take care of the children. We’ll both take care of them. Together.”
“Especially Harvey and Shy. I know I shouldn’t pick favorites, but they are my favorites; even Harvey who hasn’t been modified. I want you to adopt them.”
“Why don’t we talk about this when you’re better, and we can adopt them together?”
“I want to talk about it now. In case I don’t make it. I want you to promise me that you’ll adopt them, and that you’ll make sure nothing happens to them.”
“Okay, I promise.”
The antibodies and natural killer cells I’d been working on were finally ready and we had nobody but Annie to test them on. Her defenses were so weak that I feared her body wouldn’t be able to handle them.
“What do you want to do?” I asked her.
“Give them to me,” she said. “If I die, I die. I’m ready.”
Beatrice and I looked at each other.
“Let’s do it,” I said to Beatrice. “She’s not going to survive otherwise.”
We injected her with the mixture and then I sat down in the chair nearby to wait, my heart on edge. For a few hours nothing seemed to happen, and then slowly, one decimal point at a time, her temperature started dropping.
For the next four hours this continued, and by 1am the next morning her temperature was almost back to normal. I was so happy I wanted to wake her, but she looked so peaceful, a tiny smile in the side of her mouth as if she were having the most wonderful dream she’d ever had in her life.
I fell asleep in my chair, but a short time later I was woken by the screaming of her heart rate monitor.
Beatrice, Richard, Tania and a couple of other nurses came running in dressed in hazmat suits, and I was ushered quickly out of the room. I stood behind the second door of the airlock, just able to see through the two small windows to where they were tearing open the quarantine bubble and giving Annie CPR.
I remembered the time we’d ridden out to that lake together and she’d gone off with those boys and I thought I’d lost her forever. And then I thought about all the times we’d spent together since then. Her desire, like mine, to do something good with her life, something worthwhile, something which she would be remembered for, stronger than the fear of death.
After nearly five minutes of CPR, Annie’s heart finally started responding. I wanted to rush into the room, but I didn’t have a suit on and I didn’t want to leave the window to find one. After a few more minutes, Beatrice and Richard came out and closed up her quarantine bubble. They went out through a side door into the rinsing off area, leaving the nurses to monitor her. I knew I should go and find a suit in case there was any residue virus in the room, but I rushed in anyway, going over to Annie and putting my hands through the plastic gloves to touch her.
/> “You shouldn’t be in here,” Tania said.
“Michael, is that you?” Annie opened her eyes and blinked.
“Yes. It’s me. I’m here for you.”
“My chest hurts. I feel like I’ve just been run over by a bus.”
She drifted off again, a smile on her face, but her heart stayed strong.
The next morning Annie woke up and her temperature had nearly returned to normal. Not only was she over the flu but it seemed her viral load was dropping faster than it ever had before and her platelet and white blood cell count was on the rise.
“How am I looking?” she said to me when she woke.
“More beautiful than ever,” I told her, and then without even caring I opened up the bubble and went inside to hold her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
A WEEK LATER, Sophie and Dylan met Annie and me on the landing strip of the island we’d visited nearly three years earlier, and they drove us back to their house. It was very similar to the one we’d stayed in last time: earthen walls and wooden roof, brightly colored rugs on the floor and rough-hewn furniture made on the island itself. On the verandah a few hammocks swung in the sea breeze.
That night, Dylan prepared us a dinner of roast chicken and home-grown vegetables, and after dinner we retired to the lounge room where he opened a bottle of wine.
“Where’d you drag that up from?” I said.
“It’s probably the only bottle left in the whole world,” Dylan said, and we laughed.
We chatted for a while, and then I came to the purpose of our visit. I explained to them everything that had happened at the clinic.
“We need to quarantine the children,” I said. “If the government finds out what happened they’ll either destroy the children or they’ll want to keep them for their own purposes.”
“What are you asking me? If you can put them on the New Church havens?”
“Yes.”
“What makes you think this won’t happen again? That they won’t keep breeding viruses?”
“If we separate them, it won’t happen. It is only because of the close proximity of so many kids that it happened like that. With a few children on each haven, that wouldn’t be a risk.”
Conception: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (Perfectible Animals Book 1) Page 19