Virus: The Day of Resurrection

by Sakyo Komatsu

  “Ah, poor Karlsky! I hated to lose that man!” Dr. Landon said suddenly, his voice a moan. “He was the top man when it came to this sort of thing.”

  “Professor Karlsky had conducted research into this sort of thing?” Major Grey asked with a dull glint in his eyes.

  “Yes, yes he had. When he was at the Max Planck Laboratory, he was a research assistant to the famous molecular geneticist Ludwig Leisener, who went missing in Vienna about four years ago. Anyway, since that time, Karlsky has been praised as a great genius. If he’d continued doing peaceful work, he would have surely won the Nobel Prize.”

  “So what exactly was Professor Karlsky working on?”

  “With Leisener, he was studying the chromosomes of cancer cells and applying that work to nucleic acid weaponry.” Dr. Landon glanced briefly in Director Lindner’s direction once more. Sir Lindner frowned and remained still. It should be all right for him to talk a little more, Sir Lindner thought. In front of the war minister.

  “A nucleic acid weapon has only one weakness. Though it’s true that it’s ultimately just an unidentifiable acid when dissolved in water, once it infects the human body it begins to produce the original virus,” said Dr. Landon. To make sure his meaning was fully understood, he added, “Once it becomes a living virus, the nature of the weapon will in most cases be well understood by any well-equipped physicians who encounter it. Once they make a culture of it in a tissue sample, they can see it with an electron microscope. Once they’ve observed the condition of the patients and the shape of the virus by way of electron microscope, they will be able to determine what kind of virus they’re up against, and—well, virology is very much advanced nowadays, with stocks of vaccines for many kinds of contagious viruses being kept regularly on hand.

  “The degree to which the symptoms will progress is also known somewhat, and it’s not as if there are no treatments available. The replication rates and the routes of infection are also mostly known, so even when patients start turning up, you can still stop the spread of the disease by quarantining them. However! What about cancer? In cases where cancer is caused by a virus, there are situations in which the virus itself disappears as soon as the healthy cells become cancerous. Moreover, a cancer caused by a virus will persist, as the virus itself dies off. However, in some cases, irradiating the cancerous cells with X-rays causes the original virus to be produced. I’m talking about Rubin and Temin’s famous experiment with the Rous sarcoma virus in 1963. Based on that, Professors Nishi from Kyoto University and Freeman from the University of California’s Viral Research Laboratory have used statistical methods to just recently put forth the theory that cancer is caused by a nucleic acid infection—an infection that doesn’t produce live viruses. This is now being pretty much borne out. What do you think this means for nucleic acid weapons?”

  Though the other three men looked back at him gravely, their expressions revealed that they really had no idea.

  “It was Professor Karlsky who first thought it might be possible to bypass the form of a contagion—that is to say, the live viruses—and produce replicating weapons of pure nucleic acid. And by coincidence, he was able to make exactly such a thing from a new contagion he had been ordered to study.”

  “Which was that MM line of germs?” Major Grey asked.

  “That’s right. I don’t know much about it, but they say it was sold to us after being stolen from some other country. Was it the Soviet Union? Or America?”

  “That’s immaterial,” Major Grey replied.

  “Well, whichever one it was, they say it was a germ collected in outer space, don’t they? Even the name our people gave the MM series reflects such an origin. The ‘MM’ does, after all, stand for ‘Martian Murderer.’ ”

  Dr. Landon suddenly began to chuckle, but no matter how amusing the wordplay might have been, the sound of his laughter only made the mood of the place grow darker.

  “That was quite an item, wasn’t it?” he continued. “Something bloody incredible that had been discovered in space! On the surface, they looked like nothing more than some ordinary kind of coccus—a lot like those golden staph bacteria that cause suppurative disease. However, in an earthlike environment, these things have a tremendous rate of replication, equivalent to hundreds of times that of a regular staphylococcus. And they have two very strange properties. In mammals—we tested them on marmots, hamsters, dogs, cats, and even monkeys and horses and cows—once they got into the respiratory system, the germs themselves dissolved in an incredibly short time, leaving nothing behind. Also, there’s the fact that when regular staphylococci are put together with MM series microbes, the regular germs acquire almost the same explosive rate of replication as the extraterrestrial ones.”

  Dr. Landon paused briefly to catch his breath. Now he was beginning to whisper; it was the voice of a man unveiling terrible secrets. “Because of this latter phenomenon, Professor Karlsky first theorized that the MM series might be a sort of prophage. Do you know about prophages?”

  The minister and Major Grey both shook their heads slightly.

  “Well then, what about bacteriophages? Viruses range in size from twenty-one to three hundred millimicrons, and on average, they’re no larger than one hundredth the size of an ordinary bacterium. Yet among these tiny little viruses, there are some that will attach to regular germs and consume them. The most famous ones are the T1 and T2 viruses that consume bacteria in the large intestine. That’s why this kind of virus is called a ‘bacteriophage.’ However, among the germs, there are also those that are not consumed when infected by a bacteriophage, but instead just keep on replicating. Bacteriophages resemble syringes with big heads like rubber knobs on top. That’s where their nucleic acid—their genetic material—is held. There’s a tube attached like a tail, and the tip of that tube has a projection and a long thread like a tentacle. Using the thread, it feels its way around looking for prey—a germ—and then attaches to it. Then, using the projection at the tip of the tube, it makes a hole in the cell wall and injects the nucleic acid that’s inside its head. A rather unpleasant construction, much like the stinging cnidoblasts on a jellyfish’s tentacle.

  “Anyway, the germ that has been injected with the phage’s nucleic acid suddenly begins acting strangely, sucking up all the nutrients it can from the surrounding environment. The chromosomes of the bacteria itself are mutated, and the bacteria begins to produce the phage’s nucleic acids all by itself. The metabolic processes that should have normally been used for the bacteria’s replication are diverted away from the production of new offspring and are instead spent on producing the nucleic acids of a completely separate invader, the phage. Then, after mass-producing the phage’s nucleic acids, the nucleic acids then start using the cell’s proteins to surround themselves with syringe-shaped sheaths just like those on the original phage. A single phage’s nucleic acid can create hundreds of new phages inside a bacteria, and the host bacteria from which the energy and material for maintaining itself has been stolen finally comes apart at the seams and dies. In the case of the T2 phage, the time from nucleic acid injection until the bacteria bursts open releasing hundreds of new phages is only a mere fifteen minutes.”

  Just once during this, Sir Lindner cleared his throat softly. Dr. Landon continued speaking, however, like a man possessed.

  “Furthermore,” he said, “there are also cases in which a bacteria infected by the very same phage doesn’t replicate the phage nucleic acids and doesn’t burst open either. Instead, it just keeps on replicating as it normally would. When this happens, the phage nucleic acids don’t take apart the bacteria’s chromosomes, but instead insert themselves into the bacteria’s chromosomes, allowing the virus to hide there. Then, as the bacteria undergo many generations of replication, they transmit the phage nucleic acids to their children and grandchildren and so on. Then, if you expose the infected bacteria to some sort of stimulus—say X-rays or ultraviolet light, or to carcinogenic chemicals such as nitrogen mustard—the bacteri
a that had until that very moment been no different from healthy bacteria will suddenly burst open, and hundreds of phages will come pouring out. In other words, due to genetic contamination, these bacteria carry within themselves a factor for reproducing phages. Bacteria in such a condition are called lysogenic phages, or prophages.”

  “So the MM series turned out to be one of these prophages, or whatever you call them?” asked the minister.

  “Actually, they did not,” Dr. Landon said, eyes glistening. “The original culture base of the MM line was investigated again and again by electron microscope, but no virus was ever detected. Even so, when we filtered germ-free fluid from that culture base and transferred it to culture fluid with regular, terrestrial staphylococci, the cocci would suddenly show symptoms of MM type infection, and their rates of replication would begin to skyrocket. Karlsky, who had been doing cancer research under Dr. Leisener, realized what was happening the instant he saw it. You see, among cancers that are caused by viruses, there are cases where—even though the infectious virus completely disappeared once the cancer began—the germless filtered fluid extracted from the cancer cells can cause healthy cells to develop cancer. Because of this phenomenon, which he had observed in the carcinogenic LR12 virus discovered by Leisener, Karlsky dubbed this phenomenon ‘replicating nucleic acid infection.’ ” Dr. Landon paused for a moment to take another quick breath. “There are two ways to interpret the theory that cancer is caused by viruses. The first is that a life-form such as a virus—which can neither sustain nor reproduce itself alone, which lives as a parasite on living cells—must first come into existence by hijacking cellular replication mechanisms, and therefore cannot have come to exist unless living cells existed first. This is the Cellular Origin Hypothesis, which says it was only after the most primitive forms of life came into being that viruses were born out of chromosomal irregularities in the nuclei of ancient bacteria. The other theory is that when early, primordial life-forms—primitive, single-celled organisms—came into being, a kind of genetic devil-child developed in parallel. This is the Independent Entities Hypothesis.

  “Both of them have been around, but Leisener proposed a new hypothesis based on the former that he called the Evolving Virus Hypothesis. Put simply, it suggests that as viruses continue to have very close relationships with living things, the most evolved of them might become able to replicate themselves without needing the form of a mature virus, using only the genetic material of their nucleic acids. According to Leisener’s Evolving Virus Hypothesis, the viruses spring from cells in a secondary manner. So, isn’t it possible that as the next step, viruses would take on a tertiary form that reproduces by processes using nucleic acids alone, and no longer go through the process of maturing as an individual? He published this hypothesis in Science five years ago in an article titled ‘Reproducing Chemical Substances.’ Academia felt it was a little too bold though, so it was ignored.”

  Outside the room, the sun dimmed. It was the brightest time of year—early summer in England—but just that day the winds were blowing and there were many clouds. It looked like the weather might turn bad. Already, the sunlight was slanting in from fairly low in the sky. As soon as it went behind the clouds, that worn-out, rugged room at the Department of the Army was suffused with a twilight gloom, and a feeling of sticky, humid air softly exhaled from the corners of the room and from the shadows of furniture—shadows that had been concealed until that moment. The tedious scientific monologue that Dr. Landon was delivering only made the oppressive atmosphere that much heavier.

  As if to ward off the humidity, the minister picked up a gold foil cigarette and lit it. The purple smoke of Turkish leaves lent the room a slightly dry, warm aroma.

  “Before Karlsky came here, he had been doing joint research with Leisener, so as soon as he saw the strange phenomenon of the MM series’ infection, he remembered Leisener’s theory. He hypothesized that the MM series germs were not just simple bacteria, but also contained the nucleic acids of some kind of prophagic virus hiding in their chromosomes. Or that maybe the MM series had a sort of cellular cancer. A cell that has become cancerous has a much greater rate of replication than a regular, healthy cell does. So could the carcinogen that causes this cellular cancer exist even in the germ-free fluid filtered from the culture base of the MM bacteria and be causing ‘cancer’ in the regular staphylococci that so resemble the MM strains? This replication itself can be malignant or benign, but in this case, it’s probably benign—it makes the cells divide like crazy; it doesn’t make them self-destruct.

  “Karlsky and I started poking and prodding at the MM series, trying various things—hitting them with radiation, using chemicals on them—to try to expose the viruses. But in the end, we found nothing. If these bacteria were collected in space several hundred kilometers above the earth’s surface, they would have been floating in a veritable firestorm of radiation up there; the radiation they get on the earth’s surface wouldn’t even be enough to make them twitch, but well, anyway, no viruses came out of the MM series.”

  Major Grey had been listening patiently. As his only clinical experience came from working for a while in a field hospital in Normandy, this monologue was difficult to follow, but still it was not entirely incapable of holding his interest. The hidden seed of a sinister virus, quietly hiding in the chromosomes of a bacterium, replicating along with the host by cellular division, waiting for its chance. Stimulate it, and suddenly that seed would germinate into new viruses that would destroy the host bacterium, bursting out of it from within.

  I see now. Very interesting. And if what he’s describing could be used as a weapon …

  “By the way, one more odd property of these things ended up providing new evidence in favor of Leisener’s theory. If you injected a bird or mammal with either the MM cocci or with staphylococci that had been infected by secretions from the MM series, the germs would first begin to reproduce wildly, just like when animals come down with asuppurative disease, but then they would quickly disappear without a trace. Isn’t that weird? Put them in a human body, and the MM bacteria would self-destruct and then dissolve.”

  “Are you saying that humans would develop antibodies right away?”

  “Nothing so simple as that. Naturally, an animal that we infect can develop quite a few antibodies in its lymph, but the strange thing is that when the MM bacteria disappear, the antibodies disappear too. Incidentally, you probably think that if the MM bacteria dissolves inside a living body, it must be utterly harmless to the animal. It turns out, though, that when we injected MM bacteria into an animal—even though the bacteria will completely disappear in about two hours—sixty percent of our test marmots were dead within twenty-four hours. Acute myocardial infarctions. The same happened to dogs within forty-eight to sixty hours. Monkeys, seventy hours. Our other test animals showed acute symptoms of general paralysis not long after injection and then presently died of metabolic damage. That is to say, extensive, acute damage occurs to the autonomic and sympathetic nerves. In rare cases, G-gas causes the symptoms of muscarine poisoning—as when someone comes into contact with an organophosphorus compound—but in most cases just the opposite occurs, and the impulse-conducting nerves are damaged instead.

  “When we looked into the matter we learned that the generation of the impulse conductor oxyacetylcholine was being completely blocked, and in short, the nervous system’s conduction mechanism had gone haywire. Furthermore, we used a technique called the ferritin antibody method, and when we looked closely at the results, we learned that it was the nerve cells themselves committing these murderous acts. Karlsky put it marvelously. ‘Cellular suicide,’ he called it …”

  At the sound of the word “suicide,” Major Grey’s eyes, which had shown him to be deep in thought, suddenly twitched. However, the major still said nothing as he listened intently to Dr. Landon’s loquacious speech.

  “However, there is another case in which the cells of a living body commit a kind of suicide by way o
f their own reproductive mechanism. That would be cancer. In the case of virally induced cancer, as is caused by Shope papilloma virus, Rous sarcoma virus, Bittner virus, and others, the nucleic acids of the virus work themselves into the chromosomes of infected cells and make a royal mess of their genetic information, transforming healthy cells into suicidally malformed variants—virulently aggressive cancer cells. Viral cancer is caused by the nucleic acids of those viruses only. Do you understand basically what it is that I want to say? As soon as the ‘Martian Murderer’—the MM bacteria—gets into a body, nucleic acids that drive nerve cells fatally mad and turn them into suicide cells are created within the organism’s own cells.”

  Dr. Landon was looking a little pale now and had broken out in a sweat on his forehead, as though overwhelmed by the dreadfulness of what he had just said.

  “With this infectious disease caused by the MM bacteria, Karlsky had simultaneously ended up corroborating Leisener’s theory of nucleic acid replication. He took spinal fluid from hamsters that died of MM disease, filtered it, and after a great effort to make completely sure that it contained no virus of any sort, injected it into hamsters that had been raised in a sterile environment. After he did so, the hamsters showed signs of infection, and aside from the time period between infection and the dissolution of the bacteria, the disease progressed exactly as before. After this, he put this fluid into a regular staphylococcus culture base, and exactly the same unusual replication phenomenon took place as takes place in an MM infection. When he infected healthy hamsters with these cocci again, just like the MM bacteria, dissolution and acute symptoms of infection took place. Throughout all of this, no virus was ever detected. Only one thing can explain this: that there is a process of infection by nucleic acids alone, followed by replication, and then illness …”