by DB Carpenter
"It was a small plane," Chris said. "I bet the chopper that flew us in here could have lifted it out."
The helicopter pilot joined them. He looked at the prop and said, "That came from a real small plane. With a few good men, you could probably hump it out of here." He surveyed the crash site thoughtfully. "No doubt there's been a crash here in the last few days. This is all fresh."
"Could your chopper lift a plane this size?" Chris asked.
"If you chopped it in a few pieces it would easy. Fly it into the woods in any direction, dump it, and we'd probably never find it. So who would go through this kind of trouble?" The pilot asked.
"Look at this," Chris pointed to bullet holes in a nearby tree trunk. "They must have been when they strafed the plane, look there's more over there."
Pell looked where Chris was pointing then said, "Let's gather what evidence we can, take some photos and get back. I'm starting to believe this crazy story of yours."
11:41 am PDT Malibu, California
Sarah's thought train had been derailed by the previous discussion and she collected herself for a moment before beginning. She wanted to speak slowly, but the words rushed uncontrollably out of her mouth. "The final test started just under a year ago in a remote part of sub-Saharan Africa called Ngamiland in Botswana. The word from the field last week confirmed it – there has been a dramatic drop in the number of births in the past couple of months."
"How many –" Phillip began.
"I think that the best thing is for you to hold your questions until I finish. I've got a lot to say, and I'll cover most of your questions in the process," she said.
"We chose Ngamiland because of its remoteness. It has an under-developed infrastructure and sporadic medical resources. We needed to find somewhere that had primary healthcare services with a majority of the population accessing them so that we could accurately monitor the birthrates, but also the medical services needed to have limited organizational effectiveness so that there would be less chance of discovery," Sarah explained.
"We also needed an environment where the majority of the population had access to piped or tapped water. If we had released the virus into surface water, rivers and boreholes, it would have been extremely difficult to quantify the results. Over seventy-five percent of the population has access to piped or tapped water in Ngamiland so it was the perfect test environment. We systematically introduced a derivative of the virus into the major water supplies in the region for a three-month period just under a year ago and the results are about what I expected, maybe even better."
"To net it out, two years ago, in the only hospital in Ngamiland there were approximately sixty-five births a month with seasonal ups and downs but these were minor deviations. Last month there were seven and right now there isn't a single pregnancy in the region."
"Has anyone put together what's going on?" Phillip asked.
"There were obviously questions floating around the maternity ward from the doctors and staff but they aren't sophisticated enough to do any real analysis or science on the root cause. The World Health Organization is there now trying to figure it out now but they don't know what to make of it. The fact that it is so localized is throwing them for a loop."
Camilla and Phillip sat silently as Sarah paused to take a long drink from the moisture-coated, air bubble permeated glass. Camilla reached over and grabbed Phillip's hand and squeezed it. Then she let go and started clapping. He joined her.
Sarah smiled and nodded. This was her time – the culmination of a lifetime's work. She hadn't realized until now that she had needed some positive affirmations, and this spontaneous applause hit the spot.
"Bravo!" Camilla squealed.
"Thank you," Sarah said. "It wasn't just me, though. Seth and the guys back in Maine and you two. Without your money and patience, I never would have been able to do it. It was far more difficult than I ever imagined it would be when we thought this all up."
Camilla leaned over and gave her a hug. "I knew you could do it, Sarah," Camilla whispered into her ear. "I just knew it."
Phillip asked, "So when are we going to release it?"
"On the fourth of July," Sarah replied.
As they contemplated the symbolism, a handsome man with a well-groomed beard and frighteningly white teeth entered the room. Sarah noticed Phillip offer the man an almost imperceptible nod.
Camilla turned and smiled as the man said, "Sorry I'm late, I got caught up in traffic. Did I miss anything?"
"No," Camilla replied as she stood. "We were just really getting started."
The man paused as he past Camilla and then turned to Sarah, "You must be Sarah. I'm Mike Kemper. It's a pleasure to finally meet you. Camilla has told me so much about you that I feel like I already know you well."
He walked over to Sarah and extended his hand. His name sounded vaguely familiar. Maybe Camilla had mentioned him. Something about him was tremendously attractive. She couldn't put her hands on exactly what it was – handsome, physically fit, undoubtedly rich, the obvious ones but it was more than that. He oozed manliness. She blushed as his intelligent blue eyes locked confidently on hers.
"Hi, Phillip," Mike said getting a disinterested grunt in return.
"Mike's a friend, Sarah. Beyond your crew back in Maine, we're the only others who know about our plans," Camilla said.
"A friend?" Sarah said as she extracted her hand from Mike's a-bit-too-long shake.
"Well, more than just a friend. We've known each other for ten years or so," Camilla said offering a slight smile.
Sarah arched her eyebrows. Why was she just hearing about him now? She and Camilla talked frequently, either on Skype or through e-mail. More secrets.
"And I've kicked in some of the cash for this project," Mike said as he grabbed another chair, spun it up to the table and sat down before saying to Camilla, "So, did she do it?"
Camilla offered a quick recap of what they had discussed so far.
Phillip appeared somewhat agitated as he squirmed uncomfortably in his chair. "So, it's distributed through water supplies?" Mike asked when Camilla had finished.
"For the Beta test in Ngami it was, but that's because of how I needed the test to go. I couldn't just let an untested, full-blown version of the virus out. God only knows what would have happened. I chose Ngami because it's extremely isolated, there's one common water source and essentially no homogeneous medical infrastructure to detect what was going on. It was the perfect site. The real virus is a highly communicable, air-borne one. Once someone has it, he'll spread it just by breathing. I actually used the tuberculosis virus as a base for development of the transmission mechanism."
Mike scratched lightly at his beard and looked out at the ocean. "Just because it worked in water, does that necessarily mean that it'll work as an air-borne virus?"
"I looked at every type of transmission from water to intercourse. I finally decided that air-borne was the way to go. It was much more difficult to develop, but it was definitely worth the extra effort. I call the virus Genesis 96, Gen96 for short."
"Why?" Phillip asked.
"Because it was in 1996 that I had the major breakthrough, when it really started to become what it is today."
"So how does it work?" Camilla asked.
"Once someone gets exposed, Gen96 is latent for about sixty days. In women it will exist forever, but because of a lack of specific triggering hormones, it's inert. In men, however, after a few weeks of hormonal exposure, Gen96 wakes up."
"It finds its home in the scrotum and does two things that ultimately result in infertility. First, it disables the sweat glands in the sack, and secondly, it causes a slight inflammation of the veins in the testes. The combination of these two essentially unnoticeable events causes the temperature in the scrotum to rise above what sperm can successfully be produced in."
Mike squirmed in his chair as he grimaced noticeably.
"Does the infected person feel anything?" Phillip asked.
Sarah shook her
head back and forth. "It's only a couple of degrees. That's why you have a scrotum in the first place. Keeping the temperature down is its sole function. Men who use hot tubs frequently have low sperm counts. Any kind of excess heat is a bad thing for the little guys."
"Are they going to be able to come up with a cure?" Phillip asked.
This was the question she had been waiting for – the Big One. As Phillip had already made her aware, he had given her somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty-five million dollars, and for that money he undoubtedly expected perfection. But perfection in something like this is impossible and definitely undesirable since the goal wasn't to wipe out the human race completely here.
The world has too many brilliant scientists for Gen96 to remain untreatable for very long. It would take a long time to come up with a true, proper cure but treatment would be as simple as cooling the testes.
"I'm sure that someone will come up with a permanent cure. My guess is that it'll take years, though." She paused and took a shallow breath as she locked her gaze on Phillip. "But it can be treated by direct application of cooling agents."
Phillip's slight smile disappeared immediately. "You've got to be kidding me. If someone shoves an ice cube down their shorts Gen96 becomes ineffective. This is bullshit, Camilla."
"Calm down. I'm hearing this for the first time too." Camilla said. "Can you explain it in more detail, Sarah?"
Having expected this confrontation, she was prepared to diffuse it. "Let's step back," she said. "Gen96 is no little feat. It's a completely revolutionary process. No other scientist has ever created a virus designed for a specific attack within the human body. People have found viruses that do it, and they've grown or mutated them, but nobody's built one – that's what I did. From the ground up, from scratch, however you want to put it. It's debatable whether or not a virus is truly alive – I happen to fall into the camp that thinks they are – but either way, alive or just a strand of DNA, I created it."
Phillip started to say something, but she cut him off.
"This is the deal. Gen96 is treatable, but the key is that men will have to proactively undergo a treatment regimen with the specific goal of reproducing. Keeping your balls cool for a couple of months is not an easy or comfortable proposition. Think about it. How many births are unplanned?"
Mike nodded. "So only people who really want to have a baby will be able to do so?"
"Exactly," Sarah replied. "The actual introduction of Gen96 to the world on a global level will not take long – somewhere in the neighborhood of two to three months – probably significantly less. Look at how fast SARS moved a few years ago. We knew about it and tried to contain it but it still got out, jumping countries and continents in spite of aggressive efforts to limit its spread. Gen96 is going to be in stealth mode. Nobody's going to know anything until it's too late."
"The drop in sperm counts will be obvious within four or five months and pregnancies will plummet between months thirteen and fifteen. People will be looking for a cause and, of course, a cure. But that could be years down the line. And even then they have to find a way to distribute the cure. They will never reach everyone, particularly in the areas we are focused on targeting. Ultimately, you'll be happy, very happy with the results."
She paused and let her words sink in.
"So if someone wants kids bad enough, they get treatment, otherwise, they're sterile?" Mike asked.
"Exactly," Sarah replied. "We don't want one hundred percent in this. If we did, we would kill, instead of help, mankind."
They all contemplated in silence.
"Excellent," Camilla said. "Don't you all agree?"
Mike looked non-committal. "So let me get this straight. Once the virus is out, within a matter of months everyone, every man in the world will become sterile? Including everyone around this table?"
Sarah nodded and said, "Absolutely."
"I guess I never really thought about it. That means I get it, you're going to get it Phillip. All of our male family and friends –"
"But there's a cure," Camilla said. "If you ever decide to have kids, you go through the regimen, get your little guys swimming again and find a lucky girl."
Mike didn't look convinced. How he had never contemplated this was a bit baffling for Sarah. Although, none of them new what the transmission mechanism was prior to today.
"Is there no way to contain this to a specific geography? Africa or India….South America say?"
"No. there's no way to do that," Sarah rolled her eyes. "We want this virus to be as effective as possible, it's transmitted through Carriers and that means we can't contain it to a country or a continent. People move around. They'll spread the virus with them, that's the whole point."
"I'm not sure that's what I was signing up to," Mike shook his head.
"It's exactly what we signed up to," Phillip said. "But I'm not happy that it sounds like the cure for this is pretty simple. I didn't invest millions for a virus that can be wiped out with an ice-cube."
Sarah pushed her chair back and stood up, hands on the table she towered over her audience. "You're just not getting it," she said through clenched teeth. "What I have created here is truly genius. We need the virus to be as effective and far reaching as possible. Gen96 is all that. Yes, within months Gen96 could render every man in the world sterile. That's how we control the population. The beauty is that I've created a virus for which there is a cure, but only those who really want a child, and make a conscious decision and put in the effort will be able to have a child. That's the genius here. No more unwanted pregnancies, no more pregnancies due to ignorance or lack of main stream birth control. Only 30% of women use birth control in Africa, yet over 50% would use it if it were available. It's not just availability – its religious control, spousal disapproval, misinformation, so many reasons. There's over 220 million women in the world that are not able to access birth control, 53 million of these are in sub-Saharan Africa and 97 million in Asia. Gen96 will turn that on its head. Now everyone has birth control and the question becomes access to treatment to have a child, not to prevent a child. It's brilliant don't you see?"
Mike nodded slowly in agreement. Phillip nodded his head and mumbled an indistinguishable affirmative.
Frazzled from the stress of this meeting, Sarah asked Camilla, "Would you mind if we continue this conversation later after I freshen up a bit?"
"I'm sorry, Sarah. You've had a long trip, and we started in on you right away," Camilla said as she stood. "Follow me."
Once they were out of earshot of the others, Sarah said, "He's a tough old bastard."
"You don't have to tell me. But that's how he got to where he is. Don't take it personally. He's really a teddy bear, just blunt and direct. Once you get to know him you'll see."
"Teddy bear? He seems more like a prick," Sarah said as she grabbed onto Camilla's shoulder and spun her around. They were alone in a hallway and she paused for a moment, trying to put some sort of order to the raging jumble of thoughts racing through her mind. "I need to know the truth, did you use me from the beginning? Was I just an enabler for you and Phillip's project? A means to an end?"
Camilla shook her head. "No, Sarah. It was –"
"You did. I can see it on your face."
"No, it wasn't like that. I told you."
"Bullshit," Sarah spat. She was furious. Her heart was sacred ground. Very few people had ever seen it and even fewer had touched it. And now, understanding that what she had considered to be one of the special few had actually been part of a cold, manipulative scheme, sent a shudder of rage down Sarah's spine.
Camilla met Sarah's angry glare and said, "I'm not going to say this again, Sarah. Recruiting you was the initial plan. Okay? Great. You figured it out. But I had no intention of falling in love with you. That wasn't in the plan at all. I wouldn't trade those memories for anything. Even if you hadn't succeeded it wouldn't change that. I loved you and I don't love a lot of people like that."
"That'
s easy to say."
"No it's not," Camilla snapped. "I knew you'd figure this out. That we'd have this fight at some point, but there's no need. Everybody uses everybody, Sarah. This isn't news. It's the way the world works."
"That may be but I thought we were … that what we had was real."
"It was real. As real as any relationship I have ever had. Maybe even more so," Camilla said. Her voice was pinched, tight. Tears welled up in her eyes. She was visibly trembling.
Sarah thought back on what they had been - lovers, friends, dreamers. It had been so emotionally consuming, so sexually freeing – all of it fueling Sarah's intellect. The attraction had been so compelling and irresistible. She had never expected that type of a relationship and spent many hours contemplating it. Fate, destiny, words like that had no meaning to Sarah until she tried to reconcile her feelings for Camilla. They were too strong, too primal to have been faked. She had started out as a pawn but ended up as much more. Camilla was telling the truth. Lines had been crossed but the connection had been real and that's what really mattered to Sarah. Her heart hadn't been misappropriated.
Sarah flashed back to those days. On the surface of it, they were polar opposites. Sarah a nerdy, introverted scientist who at that time had led a very limited and somewhat forced heterosexual existence and Camilla, a free spirited, passionate, sexually liberal extrovert. No sane matchmaker would hook the two of them up. It could never work but it did and it did so on many levels. The more their friendship grew, Sarah was constantly confounded at the conflicting emotions she was experiencing and she set them aside, ascribing them to her own lack of social awareness and skills, and her persistent ability to misread interpersonal situations.
Their complementary senses of humor, Sarah's ever present intellect and Camilla's ditsyness – incompatibility and conflict at every turn but Sarah soon found herself looking forward to each encounter, knowing it was going to bring her joy on some level and Camilla rarely disappointed. Their first kiss had been late at night and after a few too many drinks at the Student Union under a street light in a summertime downpour. Camilla was leaning against the lamp post, the rain soaked her through and she was laughing, that infectious laugh that put a smile on anyone within earshot's face. Her eyes were closed while she laughed and when she opened them, Sarah realized what had been happening to her. It hit her like a bolt of lightning. She was in love. For the first time in her life she felt what all those sappy love poems were about. The tingling, the expectation, the desire to know more, to know everything, to please, to have, to want more. Love entered her life in that downpour in Cambridge as if it were a discorporated piece of her soul finally rejoining her, making her whole for the first time ever.