Terraform (an Ell Donsaii story #15)

by Laurence Dahners

  A waldo on the Earth side pushed a steel plate over on its hinge. Once it fell, it nicely bridged from the concrete ramp on the Earth side to the ramp on the Mars side. Carter stepped his waldo up onto the Mars side ramp and looked at the fit of the plate. “It looks good,” he said. He lifted the plate and flipped it back to Earthside, then had his AI shut down the port. Speaking to the waldo team back on Earthside, he said, “Go ahead and position the first parts of the turbine on the ramp.”

  Carter shut down his Mars waldo and shifted his point of view to one of the waldoes working in the big evacuated chamber back on Earth.

  ~~~

  It didn’t take the waldo team on Earth long to position their first load on the ramp. It was a large wheeled cart full of tools and some of the smaller generator components. Carter switched back to the Mars waldo, checked in with his team, then opened the port again. One of the Earth waldoes flipped down the steel plate while three more gave the big cart a shove to help it start moving. It rolled down the Earthside ramp, shot across the plate and through the port. From there it ran on down the Mars ramp.

  To Carter’s surprise, the big cart rolled across without any problems. He’d felt sure something would go wrong with this first major transfer of a large mass across interplanetary distances. The port would have suddenly required less power as it absorbed the kinetic energy of the cart which had been traveling at 30 kps in Earth’s orbit, but was now only traveling at 24 kps in Mars’ orbit (plus or minus as much as 0.7 kps depending on the time of day and therefore the relative rotational speed of the surfaces of Mars and Earth). It seemed to him that—despite the reassurances of the power engineer who’d designed the supply—the power surges inherent to such transfers had to blow something out someday and that the bigger the surges were, the more problematic they’d become.

  Though he breathed a sigh of relief when this one went without problems, he knew that the fact the first transfer had gone fine wouldn’t keep him from worrying that the port might shut down with one of the expensive turbine components halfway across, destroying millions of dollars of expensive equipment in a microsecond.

  Carter flipped up the plate that bridged the gap, had his AI close the port and told the guys on Earth to set up another load. Then he turned to help four big Mars construction waldoes keep the cart rolling all the way over to the spot in the dome where they’d poured a concrete slab for their first atmosphere plant.

  By the time they’d walked the waldoes back over to the port, the guys on the Earth side had the next cart of equipment ready to roll. Carter opened the port, the components rolled through, and he and the guys moved that cart over to the worksite too.

  The last load across was one of the truly huge waldoes that did many of the things construction cranes had done in the past. It’d be able to reposition the massive steam turbine components so they could be connected to one another. The merely large waldoes would help guide them into place. Man-sized waldoes would do the welding.

  The big boiler tank where hot CO2 from Venus would meet water from Europa and generate steam was too large to go through the portal. The stack of plates they’d ported for it’d have to be welded together there on Mars.

  There was a box beside the huge waldo that Carter didn’t recognize. He spoke to the people back on Earth, “What’s in the box that came through with the crane waldo?”

  “That’s AJ’s new twenty-meter inflatable ring-port.”

  Carter snorted, “Twenty-meters!” He shook his head, “AJ’s skipping right past a ten-meter port and going directly to a twenty-meter?”

  “He says he needs to know whether he can open a portal over sixty-feet in diameter. That’d be big enough to send across parts for a two-terawatt generator.”

  “Holy crap!” Carter said almost under his breath. “Can’t accuse the guy of thinking small, can you?”

  He looked around the worksite, then turned to the other waldoes. “Let’s get started. This bad boy isn’t going to build itself.”

  Chapter Ten

  Raleigh, North Carolina— Self-styled investigative reporter Jillian Pardo published a speculative piece in which she postulates that Ell Donsaii may be living her private life in disguise. Pardo proposes the idea that Donsaii doesn’t actually live on the farm that’s listed as her residence. Rather, she lives in a house just south of the farm—a house whose lot borders that of her publicly known residence.

  Even more stunning, if Pardo’s correct, is that Donsaii has an alter ego, Raquel Kinrais née Blandon. It’s a matter of record that Raquel Blandon married Shannon Kinrais, Donsaii’s co-author and co-Nobel prize winner. Shannon and Raquel Kinrais are also known to have a six-year-old son, Zage Kinrais. Zage himself was in the news when he began participating in graduate level genetics courses and research at Duke University last winter. This essentially means he skipped elementary, middle, and high school, as well as college.

  As to the question of how Donsaii hid her pregnancy, Pardo points out that the pregnancy would’ve occurred during the time Donsaii was out of the public eye anyway—hiding to avoid President Stockton’s arrest orders.

  Pardo readily admits that hard evidence supporting her contention is limited. However, she’s put up a video of Raquel Kinrais disarming a shooter in a mall—with an unbelievably gymnastic leap that sends her flipping over the shooter’s head while she reaches down and pulls the pistols out of the man’s hands. Virtually anyone who’s reviewed the video acknowledges that it represents the kind of unbelievable athletic feat that only Ell Donsaii can perform. The video, however, is a heavily edited composite of clips from many different individuals AI’s and we await an analysis performed on the original clips.

  The ramifications of this claim, if true, are mind-boggling. Although Pardo readily admits she has not proven her thesis, so far no one has been able to disprove it either. Attempts to contact Donsaii or her representatives in order to obtain confirmation or denial of the claims have been unsuccessful…

  Although Jason Stackhouse was not one to closely follow the news, even he saw the story about Donsaii’s alter ego.

  He immediately decamped from his parking spot near Donsaii’s farm. He drove around to the Kinrais’ house, but, by the time he arrived, reporters were already driving up and beginning to set up on the street out front. He drove past and parked several blocks down the street to sit and think.

  His initial conclusion was that it’d be much too difficult to carry out his attack with a zoo of gawkers out in front of the house. He’d decided that he’d just have to wait until the frenzy died down. Then, he realized Donsaii’d probably disappear that night or the next day. Along with any chance for Jason to take his sweet revenge—something he was becoming more and more enamored of.

  He briefly pondered trying to choose another target at D5R, but by now he had his heart set on Donsaii. Or the kid or husband. Taking them out would be even better because Donsaii’d suffer more.

  Could he do it and get away?

  It’d certainly be difficult, but Jason knew crowds had difficulty pinpointing the source of gunshots. Besides, the Kinrais home and its neighbors were on huge lots so he could sneak onto one and then through its woods to the Kinrais property. Once the deed was done, he could exfiltrate through a different lot.

  And if he didn’t escape? That’d be okay. He thought he’d kinda like being infamous. Besides, if they didn’t catch him, those bastards at ETR might never even know it was his revenge that’d been taken.

  He emptied his backpack and climbed into the back of his vehicle. Flipping over a seat he pulled the parts of his AR-15 out of the cushion and put them in the bottom of his backpack. He stuffed his jacket, food, and water back in on top of the weapon and got out of the car…

  ***

  Alice had finished updating Dr. Barnes on the progress she’d made on her projects. Barnes turned to Zage and said, “My recollection is that you were working on whether proteins fabricated by Alzheimer associated genes will sometimes fo
ld incorrectly, then clump, right?”

  Zage nodded.

  “So, how’s it coming on your project? Was Gordito right about the folding and clumping?”

  As if it were no big deal, Zage said, “I finally got good data on that back at the end of September.” He mumbled to his AI and a chart popped up on the big screen in the lab. The boy quickly walked them through diagrams of one of the proteins he’d fabricated, images of it clumping, and graphs of the speed at which the protein tended to clump under different conditions.

  Zage paused and looked around at their little group. “But, it turns out that the folding and crystallization process really only proceeds in the presence of certain viral proteins. That’s why I didn’t make much progress for a long time—because the folding and crystallization occurs glacially in the absence of viral particles. Having read about the infectious hypothesis for Alzheimer’s, on a whim I added some viral shell proteins. All the results I just showed you happened only in the presence of proteins from a Herpes simplex virus, specifically HSV-1.” He mumbled to his AI and new images popped up on the screen, “Here are graphs showing how crystallization proceeds without the herpes shell proteins.” It was immediately obvious that without the proteins the crystallization proceeded at a snail’s pace—if at all. “I got similar crystallization results with different amyloid forming proteins using two other herpes viruses, HHV-6 and HHV-7.”

  He blinked at them a couple of times, as if wondering whether they understood. When there were no questions, he said, “So my current hypothesis is that the formation of amyloid is an immunological response to brain infections. The amyloid folds and crystallizes around the infectious particles, thus neutralizing them—somewhat like an antibody. It’s still not clear to me whether the damage to the central nervous system comes from the virus, from the inflammatory reaction to the virus, from the amyloid reaction to the virus, or from an inflammatory reaction to the clumped amyloid. However, it does seem like it might be advantageous to remove the amyloid with a non-inflammatory process since, at the point that it’s formed clumps, it’s already destroyed the virus.”

  When he stopped, Alice thought Dr. Barnes eyes looked a little glazed. After a moment Barnes cleared her throat and said, “How do you know the amyloid destroyed the virus?”

  “Um, I used to work in Dr. Turner’s microbiology lab over at UNC. Dr. Edith Schaefer does virology research in the lab next to his and I’d met some of her grad students. Through them I contacted her about ‘a protein’ that I thought might destroy HSV-1, though I didn’t tell her what it was since I didn’t have your permission. She had one of her grad students put the protein in with live viral particles. They couldn’t culture herpes out afterward, even after the amyloid was dissolved away.”

  “Wow,” Dr. Barnes said dreamily, then sat in silence for a while, evidently digesting what she’d just been presented. Finally, she said, “That’s some very impressive work. I guess I should talk to Dr. Schaefer. Do you think you can write up your part of a paper that our lab and Schaefer’s could publish together? or do you need some help?”

  “Um, I drafted a paper back when I got the data. It’s got almost all of Schaefer’s methods and data already in it for her to just edit and approve. Shall I forward it to you?”

  “Um, sure,” Barnes said, still looking stunned. “Sorry I missed our last meeting. We could’ve tried to figure out something else for you to work on. Have you started on anything else on your own?”

  The boy looked a little uncertain. Alice wondered whether he was embarrassed to say he hadn’t really been doing anything else since he’d finished all the work he’d just presented. Although, what he’s already done was plenty! she thought. I don’t think anyone would blame him if he took a vacation after that.

  Zage said, “I hope it’s okay, but I worked with Gordito to come up with some short, glycosylated peptides that bind across the sites that deform in the Alzheimer associated proteins.”

  Barnes gave a little shake of her head as if she were trying to clear it. “Come again? You’re proposing peptides that bind on either side of the segment of the protein that folds incorrectly?”

  Zage nodded, a serious look on his face. He mumbled to his AI and another diagram popped up on the screen. This time they were showing a long protein chain. Then showing that protein chain folding differently, then showing a short peptide attaching itself where the protein folded abnormally. He said, “With the peptide attached, it can’t fold incorrectly anymore.” After a moment in which it looked like he wasn’t sure whether he should continue, he said, “And if it’s already folded, it unfolds.”

  “Wait,” Barnes said, “are you saying you put this peptide in with some of the Alzheimer proteins and it kept them from folding and clumping?”

  Zage nodded, “And, if you put the peptides in a well that’s already clumped, the protein un-clumps and goes back into solution. That’s how Dr. Schaefer’s grad student got the viral particles back out of the amyloid clumps so he could culture to see if they remained active.”

  Oh. My. God! Alice thought.

  Evidently, Barnes was thinking something along the same lines because she just stared at Zage for a few moments. “So,” she said slowly, “you’re thinking this peptide’ll dissolve already established amyloid clumps?”

  Zage nodded again.

  “You’re thinking it’s a treatment?” Barnes asked. Alice thought she was posing the question rhetorically.

  “Well, I really think that the treatment should be to stop the herpes viruses before they cause problems in the first place. And, maybe it’ll turn out that it’s the herpes infection that causes Alzheimer’s and the amyloid’s unimportant. But if the amyloid is contributing, it’d be nice to be able to get rid of it,” Zage said diffidently.

  There was another pause, then Rick asked, “You said the peptide’s glycosylated? Why’s that?”

  “Glycosylation lets it cross the blood-brain barrier,” Zage said as if he wasn’t proposing a huge idea.

  Barnes blinked a couple of times, then slowly said, “And… what’re you thinking the next steps should be?”

  “Um,” Zage spoke to his AI again and the screen popped up a picture of a mouse. “I was thinking that I could apply for an animal research protocol using these transgenic mice that’ve been developed to express Alzheimer genes. They get amyloid plaques in their brains and develop some Alzheimer-like symptoms, presumably without herpes infections. This suggests that the amyloid actually is part of the problem. It seems they likely represent a good model in which we could administer the appropriate peptide to see if we could prevent formation of plaques… or maybe even treat the disease. That’d provide pretty good evidence that stopping formation of the amyloid or getting rid of it is likely to be an important part of the treatment in humans.”

  Gobsmacked, they were all still staring at Zage when a knock came at the door. The person opened the door without waiting for permission. The admin for the genetics labs peeked in. Her eyes found Zage first, then went to Barnes, “Dr. Barnes, there’re a bunch of reporters out in my office. Um, they’re wanting to talk to Zage.” The lady’s eyes flicked somewhat apologetically to Zage, then back to Barnes.

  Barnes frowned, then said with some irritation, “About what?”

  “Um…” The woman stepped into the room and leaned down next to Barnes’ ear. She whispered, but Alice could easily hear it and she suspected the others probably could understand it as well. She said, “A reporter’s just published an article claiming ‘Raquel Kinrais’ is actually Ell Donsaii’s alter ego.” Her eyes shifted to Zage, then back, “And that Zage is Ell Donsaii’s son.”

  Everyone in the room was staring at Zage. He looked distinctly unhappy.

  Alice thought, Ell Donsaii’s kid…? No wonder he’s so damned smart!

  ~~~

  Rick thought, I essentially ignored Ell Donsaii at the kid’s birthday party?!

  ~~~

  Zage stood up. Saying, “I’d b
etter go,” he started for the door.

  He was mostly out the door before Barnes managed to say, “Zage! Wait!”

  To her surprise, Carley was right behind Zage.

  Zage turned and trotted the opposite direction from the administrative offices. As she ran after him, Carley told her car to meet her out back. Then she called, “Zage, let me give you a ride home.” She glanced down the hallway behind her and saw a group of people, presumably the reporters, hustling after her. She shouted angrily at them, “Leave him alone! He’s just a boy!”

  Zage slipped into the stairwell. Carley slammed in after him. To her surprise, she was losing ground on him. She started running down the stairs, determined to catch up but frightened about what’d happen if she made a misstep. “Zage! Wait!”

  He called back over his shoulder, “Don’t worry, I’ve got a ride.”

  “But it’s not scheduled to be here for a while. I’ve called my car.”

  “If you want to help, slow down those reporters.”

  Carley looked back. The reporters were pretty far behind them. She reached the bottom of the stairwell just behind him. He was slowed down by the heavy door and she helped him bang it open. Outside, Carley looked around desperately for her car.

  It rounded the corner. “The blue car’s mine,” she gasped, a little breathless from the run down the stairs. She started that way.

  Zage looked both ways, then ran toward her car with her.

  As they were leaping in, an SUV sped around the corner. Damned reporters are everywhere, Carley thought. She told the car’s AI to head back out the other way, then glanced at Zage. “Where should I take you?” She looked at the SUV as it went past. It looked like it had three people in it.