Terraform (an Ell Donsaii story #15)
Page 24
Ell stared wide-eyed at her husband for a moment, then shook her head. “No. She and I talked for a long time and she made sense. She was a lot of fun too.”
“Didn’t she pretty much limit her conversation to old times?” Zage asked softly.
Feeling almost betrayed, Ell said, “No! We talked about you…” She trailed off as she realized that she’d told Gram about Zage while Gram just nodded enthusiastically.
Sadly, Zage said, “We’ll see tomorrow. I’m afraid she’s not going to remember much of what you told her about me. I hope I’m wrong.”
Heart sinking, Ell turned around and started walking back to the other house. “I’ve got to talk to my mom. I’ll… I’ll see you guys in a bit… Or, in the morning.”
~~~
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Ell asked.
Kristen shrugged. “She thinks she can still hide it fairly well so she wants to keep it a secret.”
“But what if there’s a treatment that I…”
Kristen put a hand on Ell’s knee. “There isn’t. I’ve done every search known to man.”
“But we can afford to—”
“Honey, money can’t buy miracles. And a miracle’s what you need for Alzheimer’s.”
Ell blew her nose and dabbed at her eyes. “I’m going to have Allan do a search. And ask some of the medical people Roger works with. Maybe they know of ongoing research…”
Kristen patted Ell’s knee. “Go ahead… But it’ll be a joyless search. You can’t fix everything Ell. You’ve done your fair share of fixing things in this old world, but this one’s way out of your field.”
~~~
As she entered the tunnel back to her own house Ell spoke to Allan. “Do a deep search for new treatments or new research on Alzheimer’s.”
“I’ve been searching since you started talking to your mother about it,” Allan responded.
“What’ve you found so far?”
“There’re many approved treatment regimens and some approved medications—”
Ell interrupted, “Why does everyone say it’s untreatable then?!”
“Likely that’s because the therapies and medications are at best palliative or somewhat slow the progress of the disease. They aren’t the cure that most laypersons think of when they say ‘treatment.’”
Feeling like she was sinking, Ell said, “Okay, what about research then? Any breakthroughs or promising trials? Or even something in the lab that might work but hasn’t been animal tested yet? Anything I could throw money at?”
“No breakthroughs. There’re two highly anticipated trials ongoing, but, at best, they’re hoped to provide marginal improvements in palliation. There’s one published lab study suggesting that an experimental compound may block inflammatory responses to amyloid in the brain’s glial cells. This is on the theory that the inflammatory response to amyloid may be more responsible for the brain’s deterioration than the amyloid itself.”
“Can you tell if they need funding?” Ell asked eagerly.
“Like almost any researchers, they have applied for grants which haven’t been funded—”
“Contact them. Put info about the researchers and their project up on my HUD while I’m waiting.”
Ell had gotten back to their house and sprawled on an overstuffed couch. She learned quite a bit about the researchers and skimmed abstracts of their work. Though it didn’t sound like as much of a breakthrough as she’d been hoping for, it did sound more promising than what she’d been hearing about other projects.
Allan came back on. “There’s no response at the publicly available numbers. This’s likely because no one’s present in the facilities at ten PM on Thanksgiving evening. Or, that if they are, they aren’t taking calls. I’ve left e-mails. Would you like me to do a deep search for private numbers?”
Ell sighed, “Yes. But don’t call them tonight. Remind me to try to call them late tomorrow morning.”
“Okay,” Allan said. Then, to Ell’s surprise, he continued as if he’d been interrupted earlier—which she realized he had. “I don’t have access to most unpublished laboratory studies, but through my connection to Osprey I’m aware of Zage’s work on the folding of Alzheimer’s proteins. Would you like me to tell you what he’s been doing?”
Ell said yes, at first astonished that her son had been doing anything with Alzheimer’s, then remembering that protein folding was one of his major interests. She didn’t imagine the folding of such proteins had any effect on the disease, but it’d be the kind of thing Zage’d be interested in.
A draft of a paper popped up on her HUD. Allan said, “This is an excellent summary of what he’s been doing. There’s a lot more material if you want to look it over too.”
“No. This’ll be plenty.”
Then she read the introduction and learned how important protein folding was thought to be in Alzheimer’s.
She settled in to read the paper in detail, searching terms she didn’t understand and reading other papers that had been referenced.
~~~
Stunned, Ell sat staring into nowhere, asking herself how a mother could not know her son was doing something like this.
After a bit she thought, I guess I’ve got a place to throw money.
But am I ever going to stop being astonished by what that kid can do…?
The End
Hope you liked the book!
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Author’s Afterword
This is a comment on the “science” in this science fiction novel. I’ve always been partial to science fiction that posed a “what if” question (and also has some real science in it). Not everything in the story has to be scientifically plausible, but you suspend your disbelief regarding one or two things that aren’t thought to be possible. Essentially you ask, “what if” something (such as faster than light travel) were possible, how might that change our world? Each of the stories tries to ask such questions.
“Terraform,” asks what it would actually take to terraform even a small planet like Mars. Not just how it might be done, but what the magnitude of the job would be. It’s truly daunting to consider just how freaking huge the job would be, even if you had a massive breakthrough technology such as Ell’s ports with which to make it happen. If you were trying to move an atmosphere from one planet to another using chemical rockets it’d be utterly impossible (because you’d have to burn so much fuel to move so little mass). If you were to break down Mars’ (extremely thin) carbon dioxide atmosphere to release the oxygen, you wouldn’t have nearly enough. They’ve found water on Mars (which we’d need in its natural state as water) but, barring some kind of massive underground reservoirs, there certainly isn’t enough water there for us to break it down into an oxygen atmosphere either. Perhaps all the oxides that give Mars its reddish color could be broken down to get oxygen, but the scale of such an undertaking is mind-boggling, to say nothing of the pollution problems that would be created by a greater-than-industrial scale breakdown of such oxides.
And then there’s the radiation problem on Mars. Personally, the only viable solution I can see for this would be to make the settlers radiation resistant. If we’re going to live underground once we get there, I’d rather live underground here on Earth. The fact that we’re entering an era in which we’ll have an almost unbelievable ability to modify our genetic code makes the creation of radiation resistance seem a plausible solution to this otherwise intractable problem.
Alcoholism’s a devastating disease that almost certainly has multiple causes, and that ruins the lives of many more people than just those who’re afflicted. Wouldn’t it be great if we could find a good treatment? There actually are some genes that are associated with the conditions (β-Klotho really is one of them) and they may be correctable.
There actually is significant evidence for a herpesvirus association with Alzheimer’s disease (in that people with herpes infect
ions are more likely to get Alzheimer’s and, postmortem, Alzheimer brains are often positive for several species of the virus).
I expect that someday we’ll be as amazed to think back on how we used to just live with such diseases as we are today when we think back on the days when you could only make phone calls from dial-up landlines, and had to look things up in books.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to acknowledge the editing and advice of Gail Gilman, Nora Dahners, Mike Alsobrook, Clay Boyd, Allen Dietz, Philip Lawrence, and Abiola Streete, each of whom significantly improved this story.