that was not something radically new, as others had been doing this in various ways for several years. They had managed to streamline the process tremendously though. The astounding breakthrough that they had made was in reversing the process. They had discovered a way to take that digitized coding and reassemble the DNA or RNA in vitro. They could also manipulate any portion of that molecular code to express, or in this circumstance, repress certain characteristics of the original makeup. That was the key to the success they were so excited about.
They had taken the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, broken it down, mapped it, saved its format, and then rebuilt it with one small change to its structure. The altered virus was no longer able to invade a host’s immune system cells. By injecting copies of this modified whole virus as a vaccine into test subjects, monkeys in the present study, they had given the test subjects one hundred percent immunity to all forms of the virus. As a secondary benefit, immunoglobulin derived from the immune monkeys had been used to successfully eradicate the virus from all of the other previously infected subjects that were still healthy enough to have an immune system. This was quite different from previous attempts to develop a vaccine by injecting pieces of the virus protein shell and trying to get the immune system to develop antibodies to help destroy the virus. It was a radical new method of vaccine development. If human trials were as successful as the primate trials, they could basically eradicate one of the most costly and debilitating diseases known to man.
Arriving back in their apartment, Brett plopped down on the sofa while Jessica grabbed a note pad and started making notes. “Per our grant stipulations,” she started, “We have to notify both Harold Berkshire at the National Institute of Health and Alec Souse at Merck before we can publish any of our results. Maybe with the backing of both of them, we can get a fast track to start human trials. Who knows, if the human trials work out as we predict in the next five to six years we may,” Jessica paused as she noticed another face splitting grin on Brett’s face. “Now what are you grinning about?” she asked.
“It works on humans,” he said.
“Brett,” she counseled, “You know as well as I do that there are many drugs that have promise in animal studies that do not correlate to the same results in humans. Until it is actually tested on humans we just do not know for sure if it will work.”
“It works on humans, Jessica,” Brett repeated with the same wide grin.
Jessica frowned and studied him. “Brett quit kidding around you clown.” Brett still had that grin, and doubt and suspicion washed over her like a cold wave at the beach. “Brett, why are you so sure it will work in humans?” Suddenly, realization struck her. “Oh Brett, what did you do? Brett, please tell me you didn’t….” Crumpling to a sitting position on the floor, she shook her head in doubt and tried to organize her thoughts. “Are you crazy Brett? Do you have any idea how dangerous that could be?”
The grin vanished from Brett’s face and he became serious. “Jessica, how could we ask other people to let us experiment on them if we are not willing to take that risk ourselves? I just could not allow someone to do that.”
Jessica looked up and spoke, “Which one Brett, which one did you use?” Brett looked her in the eyes and spoke with conviction. “Varicella, HIV, and then Ebola, I synthesized and tested all three.”
Jessica felt faint and sick to her stomach as the room spun around her. “Brett, no…”
Brett excitedly interjected, “We had already stored the viral structure for those three and it was easy to make the vaccines in sufficient quantify for one person.”
“You didn’t do all of them, please tell me you didn’t?” she pleaded.
He nodded his head in affirmation. “Ten weeks ago, when it was apparent that we had a complete success with the HIV primate trial, I synthesized and vaccinated myself for all three viruses over a period of four consecutive days. I gave myself four weeks to build up an immune response. I checked my blood titers and I knew that I had a large antibody load for all three agents. So I talked Schmidt over at the lab into letting me inoculate myself first with live Varicella. I showed no signs of infection after a week. Then, I repeated the procedure with HIV. After two weeks, there was not a trace of the virus in my body.
Since it worked so well for the first two, I went for the big guns and inoculated myself with Ebola. Poor Schmidt over at the lab about had a coronary when I told him what I had done. That was why I told you that I was gone to a conference in Hong Kong last month. I actually had Schmidt keep me isolated in a containment room just in case. Other than a very mild fever the first night, which really scared the crap out of me, I had no symptoms. I checked my blood after one week and again at two weeks and there was not a trace of Ebola virus in my system.” He grinned again at her and dropped down on his knees to hug her. “It works baby, it works.”
She lifted her head to look at her husband and sighed. “Brett, you are such an ass, but God I love you so much.” He leaned over, gave her a deep kiss and laid her back on the carpet.
A short while later, they were lying on their backs letting the ceiling fan evaporate the sweat of their recent passion. Brett was the first to speak. “I will call Alec and Harold and arrange meetings with both of them. Maybe we can meet both of them at the same time and work them together to get us approved for a real human trial.” It is just not real ideal scientific methodology, just experimenting on me.”
Jessica rolled over to face him. “Brett testing the vaccines on yourself, that was a really stupid thing to do. You and I both know that Ebola is almost always fatal if you contract it, and hemorrhagic fever is not a pleasant death. What if you had died, where would you be now, where would I be?”
Brett thought a moment then answered “Well, I guess I would be in a red bag somewhere awaiting cremation and you would be on the dating scene again.”
Jessica popped him on the head with her hand and stood up. “Well, I can promise you that the next guy I would have dated would have a little more common sense than you, that’s for sure. Come on, let’s get a shower and go down to the lab. I want to look at your blood assays for myself before we call them. For all I know, when we made love you could have given me some combination of diseases that there is no possible cure for.” She grabbed his arm, pulled him up, and ran to the bathroom with him trying to goose her all the way down the hall.
Chapter 3
March 11th, 2016
Pasadena California
Dr. Eric Casselman arrived at O’Malley’s right on time at one o’clock pm. He found his old friend Doctor Mike Banscott already perusing the menu and sipping a Martini. He announced his arrival. “Mike ole buddy, good of you to join me, it has been a while since we have had lunch together.”
Mike stood up and grasped his old friend’s hand. “Yes Eric, it has been awhile hasn’t it? It is a shame that we both are so tied up in our work. I have missed you, old friend. Between your teaching over on campus and me fighting with the pencil pushers over at NASA and in Washington over funding, it seems like we never are able to socialize anymore.”
Eric glanced at his friends drink and inquired, “Dirty Martini? I think I could use one of those myself.” He motioned at the waiter and indicated for him to bring them both another drink.
They both sat down and Mike spoke. “So, why are you carrying a laptop and satchel on a Friday afternoon instead of a golf bag, it is Friday isn’t it? And, by the way, I want to thank you for that urgent call,” he chuckled. It gave me an excuse to slip away from the office for a few hours.”
“Well Mike,” Eric replied, “This is not really a social meeting. Let’s call it a working lunch.”
Mike raised an eyebrow. It was very unusual for his friend to be doing anything that could be considered “work” on a Friday afternoon. He had known Eric since college and they had actually shared an apartment during grad school. While he had taken a position with JPL, his friend had decided to stay in the academic field and had stayed on at Cal
Tech as a professor. He had been granted tenure and eventually moved up to where he was now the department head of the astrophysics program. Along the way, he had earned the nickname of “The Bear” from his students. It was sort of a takeoff on the gruff stern professor image he maintained and the constellation of the Ursa Major (The Great Bear).
Mike, at the same time, had moved up the ladder at JPL. He served on several mission teams and then as associate director of the Spitzer Space Telescope program. After the Spitzer had been mothballed, he had been delegated to the administrative side of the organization, trying to create and justify a budget for a successor to the Saturn Cassini project. He had discovered that counting beans and trying to convince politicians to give up taxpayer money for applied science was not very fun.
Sipping on his Martini, Mike spoke. “So Eric, what is so important that you canceled your Friday afternoon golf game to have lunch with an old fart like me?”
“Well Mike,” Eric began, “It is about a little issue that one of my grad students is having with his research paper.”
Mike burst out laughing. “Since when does The Bear take an interest in one of his grad student’s post grad papers? You are going to hurt your reputation if you start doing that you know.”
Eric grunted. “Mike, you know as well as I do that the whole stern ogre professor thing is just an act I put on to keep the under grads out my hair and to make these kids think for themselves. I really do care you know. Besides, this particular boy is my lead grad assistant and is extremely bright. The young man probably has the sharpest mind that I have seen come through my department in a long time. On top of that, he is dating Susan,” he grinned.
“Ah, now I see why you have such a keen interest in this young man. The Bear is protecting its cub sort of thing,” joked Mike. “So, what have you got to show me that is so perplexing?”
“Well,” began Eric, “Young Peter has been using a set of studies from your Spitzer telescope in his paper. Actually, there are twenty three separate narrow field studies of the same area that he is using, and at the moment he is thinking something was wrong with your telescope.” Eric pulled out his laptop, booted it up and plugged in the USB drive that he had copied Peter’s data and images on too. “On all of these images there is a thermal source right about here.” He pointed at the area on the screen, “that is consistent in each study except for the fact that the source gets stronger as time went by and there is actually a Doppler Shift toward the scope. There is no appreciable bearing deviation so he has ruled out any near Earth objects. Using Hubble and other optical telescope data, he has ruled out anything closer than the Oort cloud that could be a thermal source. He presently thinks that the infrared imager on the Spitzer may have been compromised by an artifact or defect in the thermal imager of the scope itself.”
“Hmmm, where is the spectroscopic data?” asked Mike as he clicked through the files. “Ah, here we go.” He studied the data and then leaned back and took a sip of his drink. “I think that your prize student may have stumbled onto something no one else has found.”
Eric nodded his head. “Exactly what I am thinking. That is why I wanted to show these to you since you were so involved in the Spitzer project. Am I correct in guessing that you do not think there was anything wrong with the Spitzer studies, or with the data he has here?”
The server arrived to take their order, so Mike held off answering Eric until the young man had turned and went back toward the kitchen.
“There is nothing wrong with these studies Eric. Actually these are pretty good images, and the Spitzer was doing exactly what it was designed to do. What is wrong my friend, is that none of my guys that were on the project or anyone else who has been using this data since then has found what your young man has discovered. I guess congratulations will be in order for him, provided of course the finding can be confirmed.”
Eric sat up straight and spoke softly. “So, do you think he has found the same thing that I do?”
Mike nodded and said, “With this data, if it can be confirmed, then I think that he has actually discovered a previously unknown Brown Dwarf.”
Eric sat back and gulped down the rest of his martini and frowned, deep in thought.
Mike looked at him inquisitively and said, “You do not look happy. I would think that you would be proud of his efforts and this discovery. This finding should not affect his use of the data or his research paper. It may actually make him better known in his field of study. This could be a good thing for his career.”
Eric shook his head and the frown increased and darkened his expression. He spoke slowly. “Mike, if this is a Brown Dwarf, then it is relatively close by astronomical standards. There are no gas clouds in this region that it could have formed in. In addition, Brown Dwarf stars do not get hotter as time goes by. They slowly cool. During the four years or so that these studies were done, a Brown Dwarf should not be getting hotter, nor would it cool so appreciably that we would be able to notice. But, according to the data the infrared signal is actually getting stronger. In addition, there is a positive Doppler shift and no measurable bearing shift at all.”
At that moment, the server reappeared with their lunch. Eric spoke to him. “Bring us another round of Martini’s, would you please?”
Both sat in silence, not touching their food. The server returned with their drinks and inquired if something was wrong with their order, but Mike motioned him away. Mike took a sip of his drink and slowly stirred it with a finger, and then he spoke. “Who, besides you, and I have seen this data?”
Eric thought a moment. “Probably no one else but maybe Susan, and she would not understand the implications. I have tried all my connections, but I do not have a way to obtain a more recent survey in this area of the sky,” he said as he pointed toward the laptop screen. “Since we are in the early days of spring here in the northern hemisphere, only the southern scopes would have a chance of looking at this area. The VISTA scope is down for some major repairs and the new ESA scope is still at least a year from completion. They both can only do near-infrared so it would be doubtful that they could detect anything from inside the atmosphere anyway. What we need is some current infrared data from above the atmosphere, from Earth orbit.”
Mike shook his head. “We have no instruments that could do that at the moment. There is just very little funding available for any project of that size. Neither the ESA nor the Russian space agency has anything with that capability at the moment either.”
Eric glanced around and leaned close to Mike. “What about the RLARIRS?”
Mike gave Eric a hard look. “How do you know about that? It isn’t exactly public knowledge.”
“Come on Mike,” the number of people in our field is not that large, and there have been rumors.”
Mike stood and pulled a twenty dollar bill out of his wallet and dropped it on the table. “You invited me to lunch so I will cover the tip, you get the bill. As advice to an old friend, I think you and your star student, Peter, should keep this information close and quiet for a few days. I will see if I can pull some strings to try and confirm his data. If this all pans out, our field of study just got a lot more interesting. I will call you as soon as I know anything.”
Eric nodded, “Thanks Mike, I will speak to Peter.”
Mike gestured toward the USB drive sticking in the side of the laptop. “I assume you have all this data on the thumb drive, can I borrow it?”
“Sure,” said Eric, “Peter and I both have other copies.”
“I will be in contact as soon as I know something, Eric.” Mike turned and quickly walked out to his car, pulling up contacts on his cell phone as he went.
Mike made his way to his blue government issued sedan and started back to his office at the JPL complex. Fumbling with his cell phone while driving was not something he was very good at but he gave it his best attempt as he had several phone calls to make. He dialed his first number and reached Mattie, the secretary he shared with several o
ther researchers at JPL. “Mattie, this is Dr. Banscott, I need you to do two things for me ASAP. Get hold of Dr. David Honstein’s secretary in Washington, find out his itinerary for the next couple of days, then get me a plane flight to wherever that is and reserve me a car and lodging nearby. Tell his secretary to inform Dr. Honstein that I am coming and need to meet with him urgently. Damn it.” Mike dropped his phone as he had to take the steering wheel with both hands to dodge some crazy old granny driving about twenty five mph on the highway in a fifty five mph zone. He grabbed the phone again after getting back in his own lane. “Mattie, you still there, did you get all of that? Yes, I know it is Friday afternoon Mattie, and you have plans this weekend. Yes, Mattie, this is very urgent. Please do this for me and I will arrange for you to have enough comp time to take all of next Friday off, is that fair enough? Ok, thanks Mattie, you’re an angel! I should be back at the office within fifteen minutes or so.”
Having set that wheel in motion, Mike dialed the next contact he needed, his wife Patricia. “Hey honey, I am on my way back to the office on some urgent business. I wanted to let you know not to make any dinner plans for us tonight. I just found out I have to go out of town on urgent business to meet with Dr. Honstein from NASA. I hope to be back home in a couple of days. Yes, I know this is sort of short notice, but it cannot be helped. We have had a problem come up and I have to go talk to some people to get it resolved quickly. I need you to do me a favor honey. Will you please throw me some clothes together for say, three days, and put them in my travel bag? I will swing by to pick them up before I go to the airport. I am sorry honey, I love you too.” Mike broke the connection just as he was pulling into the parking lot at JPL.
Dark Star Rising Second Edition (Pebbles in The Sky) Page 3