From Filth & Mud

by J. Manuel

  But this morning, Sarah could not get her mind off of home. Jacob was getting worse. He was deteriorating daily, and she feared that he would one day lose his battle with depression. She’d never mentioned the “d” word around him because he was a proud man, or at least he used to be… it seemed like a lifetime ago. Now he was just a shell. He had kept cocooning, a term she’d learned from him in his Marine Corps days. Cocooning, in Marine Corps jargon, meant stopping all action in hopes of preserving energy in a cold-weather environment. In cold weather, it was imperative to keep moving, expending energy, converting it into life-giving heat. Cocooning meant certain death.

  Jacob agreed with her observation and seemed determined to break the cycle of doing less each day. However, she observed less and less activity from him as the days turned into weeks and the weeks subsequently gave way to months, and now the downward spiral had lasted a year and a half. She had stopped coming home early for mid-day lunches or early-afternoon surprises. She had attempted those in the past, but they had not gone well. She would habitually find Jacob despondent. The lunches were quiet affairs, and the afternoon visitations had the air of a conjugal visit at a correctional institution, minus the intimacy. Sarah had stopped dropping by altogether a year ago when she came home unannounced and had not found him. She waited the entire afternoon until Jacob showed up with the boys in tow as if he had spent the day sitting around the house. She began to worry when he started taking his trophy colt pistol with him.

  And now John had him hooked on this security idea. She was not naïve. Jacob would do as John asked. He was chomping at the bit to feel relevant, to recapture a certain something he’d lost in Iraq ten years ago. She longed for the cocky Marine who she’d fallen madly in love with. Sarah had reached out to John in a fit of desperation about six months ago. Maybe she’d been too honest, but she was truly worried for her husband. She asked John for help, asked him to talk to Jacob, but she wasn’t sure that this was the answer. She worried about Jacob carrying a weapon again especially in his present condition. But she was hopeful that any action might stir some positive energy in him and break him out of his cocoon. She was prepared for whatever moth emerged. Maybe she’d lose him… she didn’t know. She was prepared for that, but she didn’t want her boys to lose their hero, the guy who would carry them up and down the stairs, one under each arm as the trio yelled “SUPERMAN!!!” at the top of their lungs.

  She glanced up at the colonial era grandfather clock that stood vigilant against the far wall of her handsomely appointed office. Chronos observed every billable second that slipped steadily by. The inscription on the gold embossed plaque beneath the clock face, illegible from this distance yet omnipresent in her mind, had always inspired her work ethic. Yet now as she sat morose at her desk, the Shakespearean passage from Richard II felt like a portent of a coming maelstrom. Sarah uttered the words. “I wasted time, and now doth time waste me”.

  - - - - - - -

  A week later, Jacob arrived at XPS headquarters in D.C., fifteen minutes early, an old habit born on Parris Island. He admired the luxurious interior of the office suite, which spanned across the uppermost floor of one of the multitude of similar K-Street edifices. From here, they imposed their long shadows down over Capitol Hill, like indomitable, monied hedgerows. Jacob became instantly aware that his meticulously tailored, ironed, and starched, department-store suit wasn’t up to par, but he did not betray his realization. He’d just do what he had always done: look whoever in the eye and project total confidence.

  Jacob sat by a crystalline water feature in the lobby of the suite, until exactly 10 a.m., when he was approached by a young man adorned in an impeccable suit that was not off-the-rack. He introduced himself as James Tepper, a talent agent for Executive Protection Services, Incorporated. Tepper, who looked barely out of his teens, puffed instinctively, something most men did around Jacob. Well most men, who weren’t of Jacob’s ilk.

  Relax, kid. I’m not interested in how big your dick is! The Marine in him almost blurted out.

  Tepper revealed himself to be the twitchy sort throughout the introduction. He blinked incessantly and shifted his weight from foot to foot as if he was standing on the deck of a tempest-tossed toy boat. Tepper abruptly about-faced, mid-sentence, causing his lifted penny-loafer heels to click awkwardly. He broke toward the double doors of an adjacent conference room with an over-reaching stride that betrayed his feigned bravado more than his balance. Jacob surmised that Tepper had been an ROTC, college, frat boy who had managed to weasel his way out of any difficult military training or any actual service time. To the uninitiated, Tepper was bedazzled with all of the hallmarks of a steadfast military man, but in reality, he was a parade-ground pony, not a battle steed.

  Jacob trailed his escort into the conference room, which was adorned in rich mahogany. A large, immaculately-polished table dominated the center of the room. Tepper offered that the table was an original Duncan Phyfe with rosewood, satinwood, and kingwood inlays. Jacob studied the oil paintings that hung like museum pieces on intricately detailed gallery panels that were faintly lit by the soft light of recessed bulbs. Tepper extended his arm in a pantomimed gesture and took the seat opposite of him.

  “Please, Mr. Harrington, can I call you Jacob? Or do you go by Jake…?”

  “Jacob is fine,” though Mr. Harrington would have been more appropriate for Tepper.

  Like his shoes, Mr. Tepper’s seat was noticeably raised a few inches higher than was appropriate. Now that he was off of his feet, the power dynamic was back in Tepper’s favor. He relaxed and began his pitch. He talked to Jacob about the type of talent that XPS was seeking. A solid resume was apparently a good start. That was important. Military background? Check. Nice suit, a bit retro though, okay check. Clean-cut, Abercrombie look, a euphemism for Caucasian, check! Jacob fit the part. After twenty or so minutes of Tepper’s approvals, Jacob was informed that he was XPS’ perfect candidate. He could start immediately if he so chose.

  “We don’t always do this, Jacob, but you came highly recommended by John. I think that you will be a great addition to our little operation.”

  “And what is the operation exactly? To be honest I did some research and found very little about the company.”

  “Well, Jacob, that’s because we like to keep it that way. Our clients know the quality and importance of our services, and they pay us rather handsomely for them. Our business grows by word-of-mouth testimonials that are shared by our elite level clients with other well-heeled individuals.” Mr. Tepper’s tone grew vastly more contrived with every word.

  “And what will my part be in this operation exactly?”

  “Well, Jacob, we like to start our contractors in the Client Protection Division. There you will have a chance to interact on a personal basis with our clients and provide them a mobile security concierge service. You will of course receive some training for your position, but a man of your experience should find most of this to be a tad elementary. So when can you start?”

  “Thank you. Can you give me a day to talk it over with my better half?”

  “Of course, please don’t feel like we need an answer immediately. We are patient and understand that family life is important. We consider ourselves a family as well.” Tepper struggled to deliver that last line.

  Jacob smiled courteously, rose from his chair, and exchanged a polite handshake as they walked toward the conference room door.

  “There is no expiration period to our offer, Jacob. If you’d like to stick around for a bit, you can talk to Beth, our human resources representative. She can give you a package with salary and benefits information. You can also watch some quick tutorial videos our recruiting department put together. It’s pretty good stuff. Real classy. High production values.” Mr. Tepper’s nervousness was back. Jacob deduced that it came from standing. He wasn’t very good on his feet, his knees wobbled from being locked out, his breath was cut short from the clenching of his glutes and sucking in of his sof
t midsection, his torso visibly strained against his spine’s hunching tendency.

  CHAPTER 6

  November 2013:

  Dr. Emmanuel “Manny” Monte-Alban recalled the moment he realized that he was alone in the universe. It was the morning of November 11, 2011, almost two years ago to the day. It was the day of his most wonderful achievement, but it was also the dawning of his greatest fear. As he had stood in front of the display, staring at his creation, he took stock of his life’s work. A horrifying thought overcame him. He was God. Not even Lucifer himself had done what he had done. Until that day, God had been the only creator. Until now, humanity had only attempted to understand His universe. Now he had rewritten it. If he was God, then how would he control his creation? Eden had not survived. How was he to manage?

  He had yet to answer that question two years later. It was 4 a.m. on Sunday morning, which gave him three hours before Catholic Mass. He didn’t leave much room for anything else. Today he stared at the display with bleary, sleepless eyes. His current iteration of Lilith, well her hundreds of offspring that he’d named Lilicytes, appeared in ghostly contrast on the electron-microscope’s display. The initial experiments had produced wonderful, if not concerning, results. They had exposed a single Lilicyte to a bacterium to see if it could successfully infect it. The Lilicyte did so with ease. This was expected, since Manny had dedicated several years to the development of her unique, biosynthetic, protein coat. He had designed it to have the ability to create specific protein “keys” which would attach to specific receptors of the target cell’s membrane.

  The process was difficult because God was an ingenious architect. Cells are generally good at dealing with infecting agents because of the protection offered by their membranes, which have unique chemical receptor sites that act as locks to the membrane door. Creating a protein coat for an infectious agent to target one specific type of cell membrane was relatively straightforward. It required finding the right key for the right lock. Creating a pan-infectious protein coat was exponentially more difficult, bordering on impossible. Creating a pan-infectious protein coat that would only express the specific protein key needed to access the receptors it encountered, at the specific time it encountered them, and only then, that was impossible… At least it had been for God, and billions of years of evolution, trial, and error since Creation had not yielded the desired result, but Manny had managed to figure it out.

  His first step was to borrow from God’s blueprint and work with the most contagious virus known to medicine: measles. A single infected host of the virus can infect 12 to 18 additional people. For comparison, a host with influenza, can infect 2 to 3, HIV/AIDS 2 to 5, smallpox 5 to 7, pertussis 12 to 17, and the most panic-inducing, killer of them all, Ebola, 1.5 to 2.5.

  His mentor, Dr. LaPierre, had hesitated when he’d first posited the idea of using measles. LaPierre was hesitant of combining any biological design with their synthetic design. He’d been on the forefront of oncological research, specifically tumorigenesis, for more than thirty years. LaPierre had been a pioneer of pharmacological cancer treatments, and as such, he remained skeptical of other methods, let alone one so novel as the one Manny had proposed. But Manny persisted and convinced LaPierre that his idea of hijacking the measles virus to act as a conduit to deliver targeted cancer treatment directly to tumors was hypothetically possible.

  Manny had always had an affinity for problem solving, a skill he’d learned on the farms his parents had worked as day laborers picking produce in California’s Central Valley. As a young boy, he would accompany them to the fields to help them pick. After a while, he began tinkering with some of the old equipment that lay unused in fallow fields. He became consumed by their inner workings and attempted to fix a few with some success. Soon he was given the unofficial title of field mechanic and paid under the table for his services. The experience taught him to search for the source of the problem by starting with the key mechanism.

  Manny’s idea was to use cancer cells as the tool of their own destruction. Cancer cells release certain proteins called cytokines and growth factors into the surrounding area when they begin to form. These cytokines and growth factors create a fertile environment for the cancer to grow unregulated. They also help to create an immune suppressed environment, so that the host body’s immune system is unable to detect or attack the cancer cell. The cancer cells simultaneously release other specific growth factors that poison surrounding cells, turning them into zombies. These newly animated zombie cells begin to produce cytokines that favor the cancer cell’s tumorigenesis. Once enough of the surrounding environment becomes hospitable, the cancer cells are free to grow into uncontrollable tumors and metastasize.

  It was in this process that Manny saw the Achilles heel. He would use the very cytokines and growth factors against the cancer. He devoured volume upon volume of oncology research and found that each cancer cell expresses specific release sites for the cytokines and growth factors. If he could repurpose the measles virus’ protein coat to mirror these sites, Lilith would be able to bind directly to the cancer cell and attack it without causing collateral damage upon healthy cells. Manny quickly went on the hunt to uncover the genetic mechanism for the expression of these binding sites within the DNA of the cancer cell, or oncogenes. With the help of LaPierre and a team of lab assistants, he was able to identify several sections of various oncogenes that appeared as the primary candidates for coding the specific binding sites. The sections of genetic code, however, included multiple gene expressions for the same binding site, akin to having a combination lock with scores of possible, number sequences but only one being the correct sequence.

  After several months of harrowing work using the latest CRISPR gene-splicing techniques, Manny was able to identify and extract the correct series of oncogene DNA segments that coded for the specific binding sites. He then spliced these segments into the measles DNA architecture. What resulted, much to LaPierre’s surprise, was what Manny had predicted: a virulent transport mechanism capable of identifying, binding to, and destroying cancer cells that they named, Lilith. The real problems were soon to come.

  CHAPTER 7

  Jacob was resurrecting. He’d made the phone call six months ago. Since then, he’d spent most of his time shuttling between D.C., New York, and occasionally, Boston. Sarah was happy to have him out of the house, more for him, than her. She enjoyed having a husband who put on a suit every morning. He did that for her. Dress-casual was the standard dress code for XPS contractors; suits were assignment dependent. The clients wanted to feel protected, but did not want to project paranoia, so fatigues and combat boots were out of the question. The clients were people who valued their privacy above all. They were mostly old-money types, shipping, energy, industrials, and some Wall-Streeters. They were people who’d rather not be identified in this new era where the rich were so reviled. They enjoyed their time away from their businesses, spending weeks at a time gardening in the northwest corner of Connecticut, sipping sweet tea on estates in the Shenandoah Valley, or riding horses on ranches in Montana. They desired the calming sternness of men who spoke clearly, men who were good-looking with non-distinct features, clean-cut, shaven of course, and whose courteousness rang of years of military service. Jacob was the mold. This was not lost on his employer, or the clients, and he quickly became a desired contractor.

  John had advised him that the clients were the driving force for assignments. If they liked you, they demanded you. If they could not have you for that assignment they paid more, and your schedule was immediately shuffled to fit their needs. Once you became a highly sought-after contractor, your services were billed at a higher rate. XPS staff always ensured that their best contractors were in high demand and that their schedules were always overbooked. Clients wanted whom they wanted, and they would not be caught dead arriving at a meeting of industry titans only to find that their preferred escort had accompanied a competitor or worse yet, a friend! They paid XPS’ ransom price to av
oid embarrassment.

  Jacob tolerated the business meetings, dinners, fundraisers, and galas. He understood his clients innately, fading into the background when he was not needed. The older, female clients―the Miss Daisies as the contractors called them―took well to him. They appreciated his charm and his company. Though the babysitting paid well, it was infuriatingly mundane, and so many of the contractors found alternative means of entertainment.

  The others often battled to score the jobs escorting the Kittens. The Kittens were the forty and fifty-something socialites and were by far the most dangerous clients. They rather enjoyed toying with their escorts. These were women of power, status, and wealth, in the waning twilight of their virile years, who had been abandoned by their otherwise occupied or long-dead husbands. What were they to do now when suddenly surrounded by young, strong, good-looking, testosterone-engorged men who would surely savage them if given a chance? To the delight of both parties, the Kittens were eager to grant them their opportunities. Jacob enjoyed the salacious stories, but he would demur at the tempting offers.