by Bob Blanton
“What are you talking about?” Marc said, looking up at Samantha, bewildered.
“A youth treatment, regenerative treatment, whatever, the treatment that makes you younger!”
“I’m was not aware that she gave me one.”
“She said she gave you one!”
“I don’t remember it. She just fixed up my old injuries when she was repairing the gunshot wound,” Marc said.
“What gunshot wound?!”
“The one I gave myself so ADI would wake the doctor up,” Marc said. He was happy to go down this path of discussion since the other one was looking fraught with danger.
“What?!”
“Dr. Metra was in stasis. She had placed everyone on the Sakira into a quarantine stasis when she found out that Commander Centag had killed the captain. She wasn’t scheduled to wake up for another eighteen years. And even then, she would have had to go right back into stasis. The only way to get her out was to create a medical emergency that required she be brought out of stasis. Once that happened, I could declare her critical to the mission and keep her from going back in.”
“And the only way you could figure out how to do that was to shoot yourself?!”
“It’s the only idea I came up with that ADI gave a high probability of success.”
“What about you dying?”
“ADI said that the medical bots would be able to stabilize me until the doctor was brought out of stasis. Then the doctor would be able to take care of the wound.”
“I said that there was a high probability that the bots would be able to stabilize you,” ADI interjected.
“If you don’t mind, ADI, we’re having an argument here,” Samantha said.
“Sorry, just trying to keep the record straight,” ADI replied.
“A gunshot wound, that was stupid . . . and brave,” Samantha said. “Wait a minute; I’m mad at you for not telling me about the youth treatment.”
“I have to assume that Dr. Metra administered it as part of the treatments she gave me at that time. She did say she had taken care of some age-related things while she was treating me.”
“I’m not sure I should let you off the hook. She said you told her not to give anyone any special treatments.”
“I told her no unnecessary treatments,” Marc said. “We couldn’t and still can’t afford to expose exactly how advanced our medical capabilities are. First, we couldn’t provide it to everyone, and second, we don’t want to affect the life expectancy that much until we get the population growth under control.”
“You don’t need to keep my life expectancy under control!”
“And I wouldn’t want to,” Marc said. “I’m sorry; tell me my penalty, and I’ll gladly pay it.”
“And how can you be so cruel as to allow unnecessary deaths, just to keep the population growth under control?”
“Would it be less cruel to release the treatment and then turn around and watch millions starve because their country doesn’t have the resources to feed them? Or to provide the treatment to countries with the resources and further increase the resentment between wealthy and poor, both people and countries?”
“I’m sorry, I know you’re shouldering a lot of responsibility,” Samantha said. “But I’m not letting you off the hook.”
“I assume you’ve scheduled yourself for a treatment.”
“You bet I have.”
◆ ◆ ◆
“What’s this appointment with Linda about?” Marc asked his admin, Masina, when he got to the office.
“She wouldn’t say anything specific, just that it was about medications,” Masina said.
“Oh no, I hope she hasn’t found out about the regeneration treatments, too,” Marc thought. He was still smarting from Samantha spending two days reminding him that he should have taken care of her. “Okay, show her in as soon as she gets here.” He figured that having her wait before the appointment would be counterproductive.
“Hello, Marc,” Linda said as she entered his office. “I’m early, but Masina told me to come right in, I hope that’s okay.”
“Of course, come in, have a seat,” Marc said as he rose from his desk and pointed to the two chairs by the window. “So Masina says you want to talk about medications.”
“Yes, I’d like to start up a company that will offer immunizations to people living in other countries.”
“Okay . . .”
“Let me explain. I’ve come up with a way that will allow me to produce a plasma treatment within a few weeks of the outbreak of a viral infection like the corona virus. Right now, scientists have to wait for someone to recover from the virus and then extract plasma from them. My new approach also accelerates the ability to test a virus by allowing us to conduct the first three phases of testing on human tissue instead of people. For the flu, the testing time forces everyone to guess what the likely viruses will be and to immunize the population with their best guess. The vaccines are effective, but not nearly as effective as one which is produced based on the actual virus in the outbreak.”
“Okay, that sounds good,” Marc said. “What do you need from me?”
“Your permission,” Linda said. “I’m using Paraxean technology to make the vaccines. Plus, you’ve made it clear that you want to gradually introduce the medical enhancements.”
“I have. I think this falls outside of my concern. I assume the vaccines will target the general population, so that will not create a bigger divide between the have and have-nots.”
“It should actually decrease the divide since the have-nots are the ones who can least afford to get sick. Even a few days of a minor flu that you can get after the current vaccine can be more than they can afford.”
“I assume you’ll manufacture the vaccine here or on Delphi Station,” Marc said, “so that should eliminate the risk of exposing the technology unless the vaccine has nanites in it.”
“It doesn’t. The only exposure is that it will make it clear that we can sequence DNA faster and more accurately than others. Plus, they will wonder how we can create so much of the vaccine as quickly as we can.”
“They’ve probably already guessed about the DNA based on the treatments we’re currently offering at our clinics. And producing the vaccine faster doesn’t expose very much,” Marc said. “What else do you need? Do you need some startup capital to get it going?”
“Dr. Metra said she would help,” Linda said, “but it would make it easier.”
“I’ll let Herr Pfeifer know that we want to spin up your company,” Marc said. “He will arrange a line of credit for you that will give you two years to repay the loan. I’ll tell him to make it a no-interest loan since this is in line with our goals to enhance Earth’s social equity. And then you should talk to Fred; he’s our key manufacturing guy. He’ll help you or put you in contact with someone who can get your manufacturing and distribution process going. Don’t be afraid to pay them well; you’ll thank yourself later when you realize how much a talented manager will make your life easier.”
“Oh, I never expected you would be this helpful.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“It’s just . . . did Catie talk to you?”
“Not about this,” Marc said. “Did you ask her to?”
“I told her not to. I ran the idea by her; she said you wouldn’t have a problem with it, but . . .”
“Linda, I would have done the same for any member of MacKenzies who came here with this idea. Don’t get me wrong; I’m glad that it is you. I think we’ve moved beyond the divorce and can be colleagues and friends.”
“Thank you. Zane says that you’re treating him well. He was a bit worried at first.”
“Why shouldn't I respect the man who is making the mother of my child happy again?”
“You are such a wonderful man,” Linda said. “Thank you. I should be going; I’ve taken up enough of your time.”
“By the way, Dr. Metra has started to administer a regeneration treatment to some of
her patients,” Marc said. “It offsets a lot of the effects of aging. You should talk to her about it. . . . Not to say you’re aging, but it will give you more energy.” Marc crossed his fingers, hoping he hadn’t just stepped in it.
“That’s interesting,” Linda said. “I didn’t realize we had treatments like that. I’ll certainly ask her about it.”
“Whew,” Marc thought. “And do let me know if there is anything else I can do to help.”
Chapter 11
Terraforming
For the last site they would survey, Dr. Pramar selected an inland location in the northern hemisphere.
“Why there?” Catie asked.
“I selected the location that would be the best place to start a colony,” Dr. Pramar said.
“What makes this place special?”
“Grain,” Dr. Pramar said. “The one resource that limits a colony’s growth is the ability to grow carbohydrates. That location has the best climate for growing grains.”
“Why don’t you just grow them in a greenhouse?” Liz asked.
“Because we need volume,” Dr. Pramar said. “A greenhouse is great for vegetables and even fruits, but grains take up a lot of space, and Paraxeans and Terrans consume a lot of carbohydrates. It’s just not economical to grow them in a greenhouse.”
“How did you know this planet would be so suitable based on the data from our probe? In fact, how did you know the planet you were targeting before would be suitable?” Blake asked.
“We didn’t,” Dr. Pramar said. “We knew that it had a good atmosphere and that the temperature was probably in the range that would sustain a colony. We wouldn’t have known how suitable it was until we got there; just like we didn’t know how suitable this planet was until now.”
“How could you risk sending a colony ship with over a million colonists on it to a planet that you didn’t know was suitable?” Catie asked.
“Because the question wasn’t whether it was suitable, but how long it would take to make it suitable,” Dr. Pramar said. “When we select a planet, we know that it has an oxygen atmosphere and that its orbit is within the habitable zone for the star; that means we calculate that its temperature will be acceptable. Then once we arrive at a new planet, we start what you call terraforming; we call it Paraxeaforming.”
“But if wasn’t suitable, wouldn’t you have problems supporting all your colonists?”
“We would, but we don’t bring them all out of stasis at the same time. We start with just some specialists and workers to begin the process. Then, we slowly wake more colonists from stasis as our food production and housing will accommodate them. Of course, we wake them based on our need for their particular skills.”
“That sounds like it could take a long time,” Catie said.
“It can. It takes years to wake everyone from stasis. Even on a planet as suitable as this, it will take up to five years before we have everyone out of stasis, depending on how quickly we can gather supplies to expand our infrastructure. If we get this planet, we will probably only bring two thousand colonists out over the first month; by the end of the first year, we might have as many as one hundred thousand colonists. We never wake any children up until the second year.”
“That has to be hard on the parents,” Liz said.
“It is. We generally wait to bring colonists with children out of stasis, but sometimes we don’t have a choice. My wife and children are still in stasis and won’t be awakened until the second year.”
“Wow, that sounds tough, and lonely.”
“Not as tough as having to watch them struggle to adapt in a primitive environment. It is only a year, and I’ll be extremely busy; if they were around, I would hardly see them anyway.”
“What happens if the planet is really inhospitable?” Catie asked.
“We have to spend more time terraforming. The last planet Paraxea colonized was very harsh; essentially, the entire planet was a desert. The colonists started bringing in ice asteroids right away to increase the atmospheric water and change the weather. They selected an area around a depression in the planet’s surface and created a large freshwater lake.”
“That sounds like a major undertaking,” Blake said.
“It is, they’re probably still at it one hundred years later. That is the planet where Commodore Warlmag got the battleship from. The difficulty of eking out an existence on that planet is probably why he was able to convince its captain to join him. They even brought along another three hundred thousand colonists--crammed their stasis pods into the battleship.”
“How would they have rendezvoused with your fleet?” Blake asked.
“We were pretty slow once we lost the colony ship,” Dr. Pramar said. “They just put everyone in stasis and did a high-G acceleration out of the star system. They used up a lot of reaction mass, but our fleet was able to replenish that for them once they joined up.”
“How do you know so much about it?” Blake asked.
“I have a great-nephew who was serving on the battleship. He told me the whole story, or at least the part of it that he knew.”
Catie had been bouncing her leg while Dr. Pramar talked about the battleship. As soon as there was an opening, she pounced, “How did they bring the water down to the lake? Wouldn’t it have evaporated in the atmosphere during re-entry, or made a big mess when it collided?”
“It would if you just let it fall from orbit,” Dr. Pramar said. “But they were able to bring it down under low velocity. That’s the beauty of gravity drives. . . . wait, why did this Comm translate that as beauty?”
Dr. Pramar’s English wasn’t that good yet, so he used the translation function of his Comm unless he was in a social situation.
“I’m sure that was the correct translation, it made perfect sense to us,” Blake said. “It would mean the solution to the problem was both elegant and simple.”
“If I called my wife both elegant and simple, she would grab me by my ear and beat me,” Dr. Pramar said.
Blake laughed, “I think most women on Earth would do the same, but in that context, it was about the problem.”
“This English language of yours is so difficult! You use the same words for completely different things; then you have so many words that mean the same thing. No wonder you have so many wars.”
“English is hard, but that’s because it has stolen . . . no, adopted words from so many other languages,” Catie said. “It’s actually a Germanic language, but it has adopted a lot of words from Latin and then more from the Latin languages.”
“That from the girl who leaves her English and literature homework until the last minute,” Blake said.
“How do you know?”
“Your grandmother tells me,” Blake said.
“Oh! It’s bad enough that she reviews all my papers,” Catie said. “She should at least keep my secrets.”
“Not much of a secret when you’re grumbling about it for the entire week before it’s due,” Blake said.
“That’s because she makes me rewrite every paper at least two times!”
“She must be getting soft in her old age,” Blake said. “She made your father and me rewrite ours at least three times.”
◆ ◆ ◆
“So, what is this one going to be again?” Catie asked as she and Dr. Pramar inspected the slab that had just been laid. It was a twenty-meter by sixty-meter slab of a concrete-like substance that they had poured the day before.
She looked up as Kasper went roaring into the sky in his Fox. He had dropped the cargo pod off for the third time, and was really grumpy about having to fly the ‘blimp’ as he called it.
“All of these are isolation houses, greenhouses that also provide for complete isolation from the environment,” Dr. Pramar said. “It’s important that we don’t impact the local environment until we understand what that impact will be.”
“I understand,” Catie said. “So, which one is this?”
“This first building will grow grains
and plants from Paraxea; it will get unfiltered air and water from the local area. Water will be collected as it runs down from the roof when it rains. Depending on the plant, it will either just get sprayed with the water as if it were out in the rain; or it will be irrigated with it according to a schedule. That allows us to maintain the isolation yet simulate both greenhouse plants and cultivation.”
“So, you want to figure out how the environment here will impact the plants.”
“Correct. Now the second building will be the same, except it will have grains and plants from Earth. It’s possible that plants from your planet will be more compatible with the environment here. Paraxeans seem to do well eating the animals and vegetation from Earth.”
“That’s a good thing. It makes it easier to have you guys hanging around.”
“We actually enjoy the Earth food more than our Paraxean diet. I think our genetic engineering has made our plants very hardy, but not very tasty.”
“We should avoid that.”
“You should. Now, this third building will have grains and plants from both Paraxea and this planet. It will tell us if they will interact with each other. The next one is the same, but with Earth plants.”
“Okay. So, it verifies if we can plant our crops here without having a devastating effect on the native plant life.”
“Right, and the fifth will be just grains and plants from this planet; we call it the control group. It will serve as a reference that we can compare the other results to.”
Catie rolled her eyes at having someone explain to her what a control group was.
“How are you going to have the plants tended to?” she asked. “We won’t be here long enough to learn anything.”
“We’ve brought some bots that will do the gardening, take samples at each stage of the plants’ development, and monitor their progress. We’ll be able to control the entire greenhouse operation remotely via the communication station you’re setting up.”
“And the other buildings?” Catie prompted.
“They are replicas of the first set, except everything is filtered before it enters the building—another control group.”