by J. R. McLeay
Jennifer saw a large cone on the underside of the branch and crawled closer.
“Yes, I see them. Hard to imagine how the pollen finds its way out of those male cones into these tiny little spaces in the female ones.”
“It’s all done by wind and random chance. As you can see, there’s plenty of breeze at these high elevations. The pollen grains have little air sacs that act like balloons to help keep them afloat before they hit the ground. Plus, the female cones emit a type of fluid that helps to snare the pollen when it lands anywhere near it.”
“Not entirely unlike the dance of human copulation. No wonder we’re so quick to anthropomorphize them,” Jennifer said. “What’s the chance that this antediluvian artifact will match his own pollen with the ovulate seeds on the same tree?”
“There’s no guarantee that the female seed doesn’t mate with pollen drifting over from another tree. But now that you mention it, let’s bring some male cones back too, and I’ll conduct some DNA tests to see if we got lucky. Plus, just to be safe, I’m going to snip a tiny shoot from the live branch and see if I can graft the buds onto some seedling root stock back home to produce a clone.”
Jennifer grimaced as she plucked a prickly cone from the protesting branch.
“I feel like a thief taking anything off this relic. Will he be able to withstand it?”
“The cones would fall off soon enough with or without our help,” Rick said.
He carefully placed each harvested item in a ziplock plastic bag then stowed them in a specially prepared cooler he’d brought to protect them for their long journey back to his New York arboretum.
“It’s the only way Methuselah can ensure the propagation of his lineage: he’s got to find some kind of earthbound source to germinate. And besides—something tells me if he doesn’t manage to sow his oats this fall, he’ll have plenty more years to keep practicing!”
24
The Endogen corporate campus sat shrouded in fog late Saturday evening, as acres of manicured lawns surrounding the estate vented stored geothermic heat into the cool autumn air. The company’s manufacturing operations, operating two shifts a day, seven days per week, stopped operation at precisely eleven p.m., and the parking lot had quickly emptied of all non-essential personnel. All that remained on campus was a small contingent of security guards who patrolled the grounds and monitored activity in and around the many buildings scattered about the estate. Now the normally busy campus was eerily silent and almost deserted.
The research and manufacturing operations of Endogen were set back from the gleaming façade of executive offices at the front of the property, in a series of sprawling low-rise buildings covering almost twenty acres. This was where the hormone patches were made, with more than ten thousand employees dedicated to producing nearly a billion patches a day. Every hypophysectomized juvenile on earth wore an Endogen patch that over the course of seven days carefully controlled the flow of nine essential hormones normally produced by the pituitary, after which the patch had to be replaced with a new one.
The manufacture and formulation of this product was a complicated operation, given that each of its embedded hormones controlled a different metabolic process. Both the quantity and flow of the chemicals had to be precisely controlled in order to ensure the healthy operation of every bodily function. Too much, or too little, of any one element could upset the delicate balance of the endocrine system and lead to immediate and serious complications or even death.
Mimicking the operation of the pituitary was no easy task. This incredibly tiny gland, taking direct instructions from the hypothalamus in the lower frontal lobe of the brain next to the cerebellum, regulated everything from hunger and thirst to reproduction and sex drive. Each function was controlled by a separate chemical with a dedicated purpose: growth hormone regulated the pace of cell reproduction; corticotropin controlled glucose utilization and fat metabolism; lipotropin stimulated melanocytes to produce skin pigment; thyrotropin regulated cell metabolism in conjunction with the thyroid; prolactin stimulated milk production and regulated libido; follicle-stimulating hormone controlled egg and sperm production; luteinizing hormone stimulated ovulation in females and testosterone production in males; oxytocin triggered contractions during labor and orgasm; vasopressin regulated water retention and kidney function. All of these essential chemicals were harnessed within a two-inch-square patch of plastic and polymers that steadily delivered the required dose transdermally through the skin directly into the bloodstream.
The patch itself was comprised of four components. The external polyethylene backing acted as barrier against intrusion from dust and dirt while also allowing the skin to breathe by passing moisture and oxygen up from the surface. Directly underneath the backing was the reservoir of synthesized pituitary hormones, in sufficient quantity to last a little over a week. Embedded within the solution was an adhesive, which held the patch securely to the surface of the skin. A thin microporous vinyl-acetate membrane was placed over the reservoir to control the flow-through rate of hormones into the sub-dermal capillaries. The final layer was a polyester liner, which protected the product during shipment and was removed just prior to patch application.
The quantity of hormones in the patch reservoir was metered to deliver just enough of each biochemical to maintain every juvenile at the physiological state of a pre-pubescent eleven-year-old, irrespective of their chronological age. The balance and flow of each hormone had been tested and perfected to keep each individual in a healthy and static equilibrium, with only slight variation according to gender. Females received higher doses of estrogen and progesterone, and males were administered slightly higher doses of testosterone. Otherwise, the patch formulations were very similar and precisely controlled to within six sigma tolerances, meaning the variances of the formula were contained to within six standard deviations of the mean—discrepancies of less than two parts per billion.
Originally, the hormones embedded in the patch were distilled from the ground-up endocrine organs and urine of animals such as pigs and horses, but as the scale of the hypophysectomy program grew worldwide, advances in the field of molecular biology enabled the synthesis of most human hormones from plant sources. The active ingredients in the patch were diluted to a concentration of less than one tenth in a solvent of sugar, amino acids, and other buffers, designed to provide the solution with the proper stability, consistency, and pH balance.
Also added to the solution in small quantities were glycerine excipients designed to enhance and accelerate the penetration of the solution through the thick layer of dead epidermal cells on the surface of everyone’s skin. A significant surplus of the active ingredient was placed in the reservoir to keep the concentration gradient at the required levels for proper absorption over the course of a full week. Since these active ingredients had low molecular weight, they acted at very low dosages, measured in micrograms per day. Consequently, the cost of the unused drug remaining in the patch at the end of the week was relatively minor.
Of these various patch components, by far the most important and sensitive from a quality control perspective was the composition of drugs in the reservoir. Each of the nine hormones had to be precisely measured and mixed in a specified ratio in order to accurately duplicate plasma levels normally produced by the human body. The buffers, excipients, and suspension solvents were similarly measured and blended with the active ingredients in specific quantities at defined temperatures for a specified period of time in order to achieve the necessary consistency and pH balance.
The mixing was done in two gigantic stainless steel tanks, each containing over ten thousand gallons of product—one for males, and one for females. Above each of the tanks, in hermetically sealed clean rooms, technicians wearing sterile jumpsuits dispensed each of the ingredients from carefully marked drums into designated feed tubes. After each batch of solution was mixed, blended, heated, and cooled to the necessary consistency, random samples were taken and measured to ensure a
ll product specifications were within defined tolerances.
The solution from each tank was then piped to two separate production lines, where the gelatinous final product was poured and rolled onto long rolls of backing film, followed by the application of the microporous membrane and the protective liner. The four-layer film was then cut into perfect two inch square patches, after which the “e” symbol, expiration date, and lot number was stamped onto the backing layer.
Finally, the individual patches were sealed in red or blue foil packages to identify gender. Every aspect of the production from start to finish was tightly controlled and monitored to ensure exacting quality standards and to prevent intervention from unauthorized sources.
But on this tranquil Saturday evening, there was one person in the production facility who didn’t belong—someone who intended to disrupt the carefully engineered process. He had planned an act of sabotage that would push the shell-shocked company, already teetering close to the edge since the U.N. announcement two weeks ago, over the precipice. He knew the best way to hurt Endogen was to strike the company at its most vital and vulnerable source: by rendering its flagship Endopatch impotent. Although he didn’t work in the production department, the employee knew enough about the company’s operations to gain access to restricted sites, and he had done his homework very thoroughly. He had studied every possible means for tampering with the patch and carefully chosen the surest method—one that would not only guarantee maximum disruption of the patch’s effects but would also minimize any chance of connecting him with the crime.
The saboteur recognized Fick’s law of diffusion essentially limited his options to three choices. This rule of transdermal fluid dynamics stated that the amount of solution transported through the skin was a function of the total surface area of skin exposed to the active ingredient, the permeability of the drug at the interface with the skin, and the concentration gradient of the solution as it passed through the epidermis. Changing the size of the patch was not feasible, not just because it would be immediately noticeable to both the user as well as quality control personnel at the plant, but because it would also necessitate changes to the configuration of the film cutting equipment, which was simply not practical. The second method for disrupting the efficacy of the patch would necessitate changing the transfer rate of the drug across the microporous membrane, but this would require changing the production parameters for the porosity of the membrane, which would be equally difficult to accomplish technically.
That left only one practical way to disrupt the patch’s effectiveness: changing the composition of hormones in the mix. But this would require access to the clean room where these materials were blended, and that part of the facility was closely monitored twenty-four hours a day behind a series of bio-access coded locked doors that would be virtually impossible to circumvent. At first pass, it appeared to be a hopeless task for the saboteur to tamper with the patch in a large enough scale to accomplish his goals, especially one that would ensure he couldn’t be traced back to the act.
After much aborted planning, he finally realized it wasn’t necessary to change the quantity of hormones in the patch to disrupt their operation, only their relative proportion in the mix. This could be accomplished by adjusting the ratio of the nine hormones, or more simply, by changing the concentration of these hormones in the blend. Since the concentration of active ingredients in the solution was fixed at a relatively low level—ten percent—it would be fairly easy to throw off the endocrine balance and disrupt the patch user’s metabolism simply by changing the amount of solvent in the solution.
But how, he thought, could he accomplish this change without gaining access to the clean room or somehow coercing the technicians pouring the ingredients from the storage drums into the main blending tank? And how could he prevent the change in formula composition from being detected by the fastidious quality control personnel after completion of the batch? After days of deliberation, it finally struck him: what if he could trick the clean room technicians into putting the wrong ingredients into the blending tank? They probably didn’t pay much attention to what the contents of each drum looked like; their job was simply to empty the designated material into the feeder chute from the appropriately labeled containers. It was the job of quality control personnel to ensure that the proper ingredients were loaded into the drums, and that the final product emerging from the mixing tanks had the right composition and specifications. This last issue was a more difficult challenge—but not one the right amount of money couldn’t fix.
This raised one final dilemma for the saboteur: each batch called for a specified number of drums of each ingredient type, and the clean room technicians undoubtedly kept track of how many of each type of drum were added to the mix. That meant the only way to disrupt the final mix percentage would necessitate substituting the drums somehow—or substituting their contents. But this would require opening the tightly-sealed steel drums or moving the five hundred pound containers in such a way that it wouldn’t draw the attention of the patrolling guards or video cameras in the room where they were stored.
Suddenly, in a flash, it came to him: all he had to do was substitute the labels on the drums to accomplish his goal. If he could surreptitiously exchange the labels on some of the solvent containers with one or more of the nine hormone ingredients, this would quickly and dramatically increase the dilution percentage of hormones in the mix—by adding more hormones and by simultaneously reducing the amount of solvent. And this could be carried out in the far less carefully guarded storage room for the drums!
The only question now was how he could get into the storage room without drawing attention and leave without detection by the security cameras. Fortunately, his position at Endogen afforded him access to this part of the plant for periodic meetings with production personnel, and his presence during normal business hours would not draw suspicion. Over the course of the last week on his passes to and from the area, he had scoped the sight-lines of all security cameras, investigated the patrol patterns in and around the facility, and taken high-resolution photos of the labels on each type of drum. Then he set about reproducing exact replicas of the labels specifying the ingredients contained within each drum, being careful to use the same size, color and texture of paper.
In final preparation, after arranging an impromptu meeting with a shipping supervisor earlier in the day, he’d placed a thin transparent wedge at the bottom of the rear access door to the storage room to ensure it would be left ajar just enough to break the security lock so that he wouldn’t need to use his access card for entry later that evening.
At precisely twelve midnight, just as the security staff were changing shifts and temporarily suspending patrols, he snapped on skin-colored surgical gloves so as not to leave behind any fingerprints and silently snuck through the unlocked back door. At this point, even if he were noticed, he could concoct a plausible story about staying late to inspect some records or materials in conjunction with an earlier meeting. The critical matter now was not to be noticed while changing the labels on the drums and to ensure no cameras picked up his movements after the act was completed.
He quickly glanced up to the southwest corner of the storage room ceiling and confirmed that the camera was pointed in the direction of the main access gate. With nobody else in sight, he slipped behind a tall stack of barrels. Trying to breathe slowly and deeply so as not to make any noise, all he could hear was the sound of his own heart pounding in his chest.
After taking a few moments to calm down, he slowly set about studying the labels on each of the storage drums. His plan was simply to replace the labels for some of the hormone drums with the labels from the solvent drums. This way, he hoped the loading technicians would unknowingly add more active ingredients to the mix and less inactive ingredients. He had checked which hormones looked most similar to the inert solvents and other buffers used in the mix, and he planned his substitutions so as to minimize any risk of clean room tec
hnicians identifying changes during the blending process. He also knew which hormones were the most volatile and which would be likely to do the most damage. He didn’t care who, or how many, people would be harmed—he simply wanted to ensure a widespread and serious reaction. Later in the week, he would identify the lot number of the batches produced using these drums in order to avoid using the tainted product himself.
But just as he began tearing off the adhesive liner for the first label, he heard the telltale beep of a security door being card-swiped from the opposite side of the room. He quickly scrambled to a dark corner where he crouched low in the shadows. Moments later, he heard the ominous sound of heavy boots on the concrete floor moving toward his position. All types of disastrous scenarios raced through his mind. Had he been noticed by one of the security cameras? Had he missed its location in one of his previous passes scoping out the room? Had the access door sent an electronic alarm when he opened it earlier? It would be very hard to explain his presence in this part of the room at this time of the day, especially since he was unannounced and had no official business on the docket. More importantly, how would he explain the many loose drum labels he was carrying? He quickly stashed the labels in a narrow space between two drums and began constructing a tenuous alibi: he’d arrived at the end of the production shift to meet a shipping supervisor and finding him gone had decided to take an informal inventory of materials before leaving after a long day.