Bioterror! (an Ell Donsaii story #14)

by Laurence Dahners

  “As Zage Kinrais?”

  “No! Um, as Gordito. But first assemble everything you can find about Dr. Kelso so I can read about her before I wind up talking to her.”

  LaQua’s AI said, “You have a call from a ‘Gordito.’”

  “I’ll take it! But before you connect me are you able to identify the caller?”

  “No, the origination point’s disguised.”

  “Okay, connect me… Gordito?”

  “Yes,” she heard someone say in a synthetic voice, “I’m sorry to be using this vocal disguise but my privacy’s very important to me.”

  “Oh, okay…”

  “I’m calling about the viral genome you submitted for identification of antigens?”

  “Yesss?” LaQua said drawing the word out because she was afraid Gordito was about to give her bad news.

  “I assume you know that it’s a synthetic virus and much of it’s based on vaccinia?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And that the code for much of the material on the exterior of the virus is a modification of external components of the camelpox virus?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Um, and you’ve considered that a virus based on vaccinia shouldn’t be particularly lethal, but might’ve been created to serve as a vaccine against a lethal bio-weapon, perhaps based on the smallpox virus?”

  “Yes,” LaQua said. On the one hand she wanted to tell this Gordito person not to teach his grandmother to suck eggs. She found it irritating being lectured about the virus when she’d sent him the genome for it. As if she knew nothing about it. On the other hand, I only sent Gordito the genome a few hours ago! How in all the Hells has he figured all this out already! However, LaQua swallowed those thoughts before they became comments. Instead she said, “Then you can understand why we’re very concerned.”

  “Yes ma’am. I’m trying to help, really. I’m just trying to figure out what you already know.”

  “Ma’am?!” LaQua thought, having expected a pompous, arrogant, condescending attitude from this Gordito character. Someone who seemed to already know so much about a virus she’d just sent him. She suddenly realized that she’d gone into this conversation thinking of Gordito as a woman, but then quickly decided he was a man when he’d been asking her questions as if he thought she wouldn’t know even the basics about the virus. Maybe I have my own biases and preconceived notions? She said, “Do you think you’ll be able to identify likely antigens?”

  “Oh, yes ma’am. But, if you’re thinking, like I am, that this represents some terrorists’ live vaccine that they’ve prepared to protect their own people against a bioweapon they’re planning to release, why aren’t you just growing it up and using it as a vaccine?”

  “Two problems,” LaQua said. “First, it kills about one in 10,000 people, so it’ll be hard to get people to accept vaccination with it. As you know, at least here in the United States there’re large segments of the population who think even vaccines much safer than this one are too risky. Second…”

  Gordito broke in, “Surely they’d realize it’s much safer than an encounter with a smallpox based bio-weapon!”

  LaQua chuckled morbidly, “Surely they will… after millions of people’ve already died from the bioweapon. A lot of people would conclude that the horse was already well out of the barn at that point. Besides, we can’t get it to replicate except in very small quantities. I have a basic reluctance to going back to the old strategy of using pustules on one person to vaccinate the next person.”

  “Oh. You know the author inserted a genetic switch into the viral genome?”

  “Um…” LaQua squinched her eyes shut in frustration, wondering why she hadn’t considered the possibility. “No. What kind of switch?”

  “It should shut down viral replication in the presence of bovine thyroid hormone. That’d make it difficult to replicate the virus in media containing bovine serum. Have you tried growing the supporting cell line for replication of the virus in porcine serum, or in serum free media?”

  “No,” LaQua said dryly, feeling thoroughly schooled, “we’ll have to try that.”

  “If you’ll log back onto the Gordito website, you’ll find it has the gene sequences for a number of peptide antigens I think’ll work for vaccination. There’ll also be a sequence for a protein that should fold to expose all those antigens on a single molecule.”

  “Oh…!” LaQua said, stunned, “That’ll… that’ll be great. Thanks, I hope they work.”

  “Me too. Please let me know if they don’t and I’ll try again. That’s what this site was established for.”

  ***

  Abe looked up. LaQua Kelso was standing in his doorway shaking her head. “You were only half right about Gordito,” she said.

  “He wasn’t able to identify antigens for a vaccine?”

  “Well, admittedly I’m not sure yet. She’s identified sequences she says’ll produce a vaccine. We’re starting to fabricate them, but haven’t tested them to see if they’ll actually induce protective antibodies.”

  “Oh,” he frowned, “so what part did I get half right?”

  “It didn’t take a day, it took less than half a day. Then, she didn’t just post possible antigens, she figured out what it was, and who I was, then called me. She wanted to make sure I recognized that it was probably a synthetically created virus, intended to vaccinate people against an impending bio-weapon.”

  “She didn’t think we’d have figured that out?” Abe said indignantly, using the feminine pronoun LaQua’d been using without even realizing it.

  “Yeah, I found that a little irritating too, but I managed to restrain my hubris by focusing on the fact that she’d figured all that out in a few hours, not weeks like it took us. And, when I mentioned we were having trouble growing the virus, she told me that it had a genetic switch that kept the virus from replicating in the presence of bovine serum. Then she asked me if we’d tried growing it in serum free growth media, thus forcing me to admit to my embarrassment that we hadn’t.” She turned to look out Abe’s window, “And, of course, it does replicate in serum free media, and in media with porcine serum.” Distantly, she said, “The girl’s a genius and someone I really want to meet.” She turned back to Abe, “You should be trying to hire her.”

  Abe sighed, “Maybe after we’ve got this potential bioweapon issue under control. Homeland security’s sending in a hired gun to take overall charge of dealing with this crisis. You and I’ll both be reporting to him, which’ll be irritating, but I’m hoping he can take over all the nonscientific grunt work and leave us to work on the best vaccination strategies. I’m raiding a bunch of other teams to increase the size of your team. We desperately need to be helping you deal with the medical issues. I’m bringing in a bunch of academic consultants Tuesday for a little mini conference in hopes of getting some genius ideas on how to vaccinate a reluctant population against a disease that we’re not a hundred percent sure is actually out there. Hopefully, by then you’ll have some numbers for me on how much of the vaccinia version of the virus you think you’ll be able to have at what time points. I’m thinking we’ll need to start a strategy of vaccinating critical personnel and first responders with the live virus pretty soon, even if eventually we use a safer, antigen-based vaccination for the remainder of the population. On Thursday I’m flying up to brief President Stockton on this threat and I’m hoping to have a good plan for dealing with it.”

  Kelso said, “Wow, so I’m not the only person worrying about and working on this problem after all?”

  Abe shook his head, “Pretty soon you’ll only be one of thousands.”

  “A bit of good news. I talked to somebody over at Portal Technologies and she says they’re going to shut down all the one centimeter ports sold in large lots from now back to three months before Little Diomede.”

  “Wow! How’d you talk them into doing that? Usually we have to threaten big corporations before they’ll do anything that might cut into their profits.�
��

  LaQua shrugged, “The woman said that Donsaii believes in ‘doing the right thing.’”

  “I guess there’s plenty of evidence her attitude on those issues…” Abe said, thinking of the comet and an infamous terrorist episode.

  LaQua shook her head tiredly, “Closing the ports might slow them down a little bit, but there’re plenty of other ways for them to spread a biowarfare virus.”

  “Yeah,” Abe said, somewhat despondently. Then he firmed up his expression, “We’ll just need to figure out how to get ahead of them with vaccination programs then.”

  ***

  Research Triangle Park, North Carolina—Portal Technologies announced today that they’ve shut down large numbers of one centimeter ports around the world because of concerns that they’re about to be used for a bioterrorism event. Owners of ports that have become nonfunctional may contact Portal Technologies at its main website to request restoration of services. The company assures us that they will try to get those ports back in service as soon as safely possible…

  “Vivian! You guys made an announcement that you’re shutting down the ports for fear of impending bioterrorism?!”

  “Ell, I’m so sorry. One of our bright young boys down in marketing decided that this was going to become a PR debacle and therefore a financial disaster. He thought he could mitigate the problem if he got out in front of it ASAP. By “ASAP,” he meant ‘even before vetting the idea with his superiors.’”

  “Oh cripes! Homeland security’s already having conniptions and John Q Public’s going to go berserk!”

  “Can you think of anything we can do to mitigate?”

  “No, the genie’s already out of the bottle. I’m offering all of our resources to Homeland Security, but to be honest, I haven’t thought of anything we can do.” After a brief pause, Ell continued, “Get your people together and have them brainstorm. See if anyone can think of something we can do to shut this down.”

  “We’ve already shut down the ports we expect to be involved… Surely shutting down more ports won’t help?”

  “No, I don’t think so either. I don’t know of anything, but sometimes when you get a bunch of bright people together, someone comes up with a genius idea.”

  Usually you, Vivian thought, but said, “Will do.”

  Five minutes later, Vivian got another call from Ell, “I’ve thought of something else. Go through the GPS coordinates on those large lots of one-centimeter ports you’ve shut down. One end of the bioterrorists’ ports are going to be scattered all around the world which doesn’t do us much good, but the other ends should all be in one location. That’ll be the location where they were manufacturing the virus and holding the ports so that they’d be ready to have the weapon blown through them. Get that location to Homeland Security and maybe they can stop this before it even gets started.”

  ***

  The man from Islam Akbar stormed into Adin’s office. “Portal Technologies says they’re shutting down the ports we were going to use for distribution!”

  Frustration threatened to rise up in Adin’s soul, but then he thought about all the things that had gone right so far with this project. It was about time for a stumble and this one wouldn’t be too bad. “Have you tested a sample of our ports to make sure they’ve actually turned ours off?”

  “Yes! They aren’t working!”

  Adin shrugged, “Be sure we test them all. If even a few work it’ll make distribution of the virus easier. But, my friend, don’t worry. There’re many other ways to distribute the virus.”

  “How?!”

  “In 1971 The Soviets exploded a small bomb with a little less than a pound of smallpox virus on a deserted island in the Aral Sea. Someone on a research ship that came within fifteen kilometers of the island caught the disease. She spread it to the city of Aralsk where only a highly aggressive vaccination program was able to stop its spread. And this was at a time when most of the population were already vaccinated. There’s a good chance that if I sprayed a little of the virus out on the street today it’d soon spread itself all over the world.” Adin leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling. “Here’s some ideas. We could put the virus in firecrackers, or AK-47 shells, or hacky-sacks, or all three. You distribute them around the world, getting people to fire the firecrackers, shoot the weapons, and play with the hacky-sacks. The epidemic won’t spread as fast as it would’ve using the ports, but, it’ll get around nonetheless.”

  “Sending such devices around the world will be expensive!”

  Adin shrugged, “Changing the world costs money.”

  ***

  Homeland Security, Washington DC—Yesterday’s announcement by Portal Technologies that it was shutting down thousands of one centimeter ports they believe might be used for bioterrorism has produced an absolute firestorm of panic. Demands for more information are coming from every quarter. Portal Technologies is referring all questions to Homeland Security and PR individuals at Homeland Security have not been forthcoming, claiming that providing more information will put the public at even higher risk. Experts polled by a number of news agencies have forwarded the possibilities that the purported bioweapon might involve dissemination of botulism, anthrax, smallpox, plague and various others. There is of course concern that these organisms, while dangerous enough in their own right, may have been modified with some of the new DNA techniques to make them even more dangerous or resistant to treatment.

  If such agents were due to be delivered through ports all around the world as Portal Technologies’ announcement suggested, this reporter, for one, thanks them for shutting down the ports—no matter the inconvenience to innocent owners and users of such one centimeter ports. However, it is obvious to even the most casual student of bioweapons that, while ports might make distribution convenient, terrorists could still distribute the weapon by other means.

  Whether or not a bioweapon is ever released, the mere announcement has shaken the world’s confidence. Injuries have already occurred as runs on surgical masks and HEPA filters have begun and fighting has been reported over the dwindling supplies…

  Abe stepped into LaQua Kelso’s section, finding the young woman looking harried but in control. When she spotted him, she stepped his way. Quietly, she asked “How’re things going?”

  “Well, that Portal Technologies announcement was a real cluster. I’ve never been so glad to have Homeland Security in overall charge of anything in my life. If all those reporters had descended on us we wouldn’t even be able to get into our own parking lot!” He took a breath preparatory to continuing his rant, but then decided to get to business instead. “How’re things here?”

  “We’ve had some bumps adjusting to all the extra people you’ve given us, but they’re really starting to make a difference. We’ve got a protocol set up that one of the commercial vendors will be able to use to churn out large quantities of the live vaccine using porcine serum culture techniques. Stupid me, I didn’t realize we wouldn’t be able to use that vaccine for Muslims. For that matter, a lot of the more kosher members of your own tribe wouldn’t accept it either. We’re having to set up to make some using goat serum and/or serum free media, but we won’t be able to make sufficient volumes for everyone using those techniques.”

  “And,” Abe said, “I assume by ‘everyone’ you’re only referring to our list of critical personnel and first responders? Not everyone in the US?”

  “Right. We’re hoping to vaccinate the general populace with the Gordito antigen, assuming it works. Early testing in animals shows it generating strong antibody reactions. We’re just now infecting some of the vaccinated animals with the vaccinia version to see if it protects them from it. Of course, we won’t be able to be sure it’ll protect them against the smallpox version since we haven’t encountered it yet.”

  “Yeah…” Abe said, making the word into a long sigh. “Will you be able to produce the antigen in quantity?”

  Kelso gave a little laugh, “Yes we will. Th
at damned Gordito not only gave us the amino acid sequence for generating her ‘protein folded to expose all of the relevant antigens,’ but also gave us a suggested DNA sequence with tags attached for cell-free protein synthesis and subsequent purification of the output.” Shaking her head, she looked Abe in the eye, “She did all that in just a few hours. Have you tried to hire her yet?”

  Abe snorted, “I’ll make the offer, just as soon as we know enough people have survived this bioweapon to make it worth having a CDC when it’s all over.” He smirked at her and said, “You know, I’ve been thinking. ‘Gordito’ is Spanish for little fat boy. If it was little fat girl, it’d be Gordita.”

  Kelso waved dismissively, “It’s all just part of her plan to keep her anonymity.” Then she frowned, “You think it’s going to be that bad? That CDC might not survive?”

  “It could be… I don’t want to think it, but it could be. Getting Portal Technologies to shut down the ports we believe they were planning to use is going to give us a little breather, but we really don’t have anybody immunized yet. If, this afternoon, someone shook a bag of lyophilized smallpox virus out the window of one of the skyscrapers here in downtown Atlanta, it’d fall on a completely unprepared population. Even if this engineered version wasn’t more lethal than the original smallpox, hundreds of thousands of people would die.” He looked around the room with hollow eyes, “If the people in this facility got sick and started dying before they could generate a response, millions more would die. We’ve got to start vaccinating each other.”

  LaQua put a hand on his shoulder, “You’re right. We’ll get started. Every day they give us, we’re going to be more ready, but we also can’t afford to have all of Earth’s eggs in this one basket. We need to get this information out to other centers, not just here in the United States, but all over the world.”