.
Prof. Jim Stuart and Prof. David Calvert sat opposite Tim at the round dining table in his executive suite. They played nervously with the whiskies that Tim had poured them, swirling the golden liquid round and around in their glasses. They avoided Tim’s gaze.
Tim could sense there was bad news. The normal enthusiastic exuberance of the pair was sadly missing. Something was wrong.
“Come on then, out with it. What’s the problem?”
Jim looked nervously at David and then without meeting Tim’s gaze, asked,
“Who say’s there’s a problem?”
“Come on Jim, don’t play games with me. It’s written all over your faces. You both haven’t said a word since you came in through the door. If everything was okay, you'd be so excited that I wouldn't be able to keep you quiet! Normally you two are the biggest pair of kids on the block, each trying to be the first to speak. I’m not going to bite your heads off...yet...but for Pete's sake, just tell me what on earth’s going on!”
It was David that decided to bite the bullet.
“We have a major problem....We were going to tell you about it, but we wanted to wait and let you know when we figured out what was going on…We weren’t expecting your visit.”
“Well, thank goodness somebody wasn’t.”
David looked back at Tim blankly.
“Oh, never mind. I wasn’t referring to you. So what’s the problem. Start at the beginning.”
“It’s pretty technical…did you read the last report I sent you giving you a refresher on the basics of the genetic process we’re using?”
“Yes, sorry, I meant to congratulate you on that one. Excellent report. I understood…well., I think I understood it all. It was well explained. So what’s happening now? But give it to me in layman’s terms...”
“Okay, but first just let me take you back a step or two. Can you remember the first meeting you called in Washington when you kicked this whole thing off? I told you then that I had been working on a project to try and clone John F. Kennedy...but that all the children we had managed to clone had died in early infancy…”
“…Well, the problem we had been experiencing then was the same problem that all the other scientists in the field of genetics had encountered as well. It’s an old problem. In the basic cloning process you take the nucleus from a normal healthy cell from the donor, and implant it into an egg cell which has had its own nucleus removed. The egg cell then starts to multiply, sometimes with the help of a little electric shock, and hey presto, after nine months you have a little bouncing baby. In theory. The only problem is that we still don’t fully understand how the whole process works. It just does. The thing is, the way the cells multiply in a clone is different from the way they grow and multiply in a normal baby. The problem has been known about since the turn of the millennium and still no one was able to solve it, until Prof.Wainright of the Oxford group cracked it about three years ago.”
“What was the problem?”
“Well, when the cells multiply, the genes in the genetic soup within them tell them what type of cells they’re going to be…like an ‘eye’ cell or a ‘foot’ cell or a ‘tongue’ cell etc…”
“… The whole process is controlled by genes which tell the cells when to start multiplying and when to stop multiplying. For example, imagine you’re a cell, and your gene tells you you’re going to be a kidney cell, well you follow orders and start multiplying happily and turning into millions of kidney cells. And you keep going until another gene tells you to stop multiplying and that you’ve done enough…”
“... The problem is basically that in human cloning, one gene has to tell you exactly when you have to start multiplying and another one has to tell you exactly when to stop. We seem to have cracked the starting button, but no one could get the ‘stop’ button to kick in on time. So we kept on growing little babies whose kidneys were twice any normal size, or whose blood vessels were three times the size they should have been, and they carried so much blood round their arteries and veins that their little hearts couldn’t cope with it. Or a foot was too large, or an ear too small…”
“… Get the picture? Even worse, sometimes the ‘start genes’ kicked in too early and we ended up with toes forming on the inside of the foot, or things growing inside out. For Pete’s sake, between you and me, some of the ‘things’ we created were little monsters. Thankfully none of them lived.”
“So how did Professor Wainright solve it?”
“He cracked the 'methylation' process. At the turn of the millennium a British team identified that parts of the body were developing at the wrong rates because the genes which told the cells when to start and stop reproducing were missing methyl molecules, or the methyl molecules were in the wrong place in the genetic structure. Since the beginning of the millennium everyone’s been trying to figure out how to make the methyl molecules appear correctly in the chromosomes and DNA. Figure that one out and you’d get the whole thing working properly.”
“And so...?”
“Professor Wainright did it! But, he never really told anyone else how he did it. Kept it a bit smoke and mirrors...but the good news is that we’ve cracked it ourselves now! Or to give credit where credit is due, Jeff’s team did…”
Jeff looked up and smiled broadly. It was the first time he had smiled since he walked in through the door.
“That’s excellent. Congratulations! So why are you both so down?”
“Because we only know how to do it with human blood. And the Crown of Thorns has two types of blood on it, one of which is not really human...”
Tim sat bolt upright in his chair, his whisky splashing over the edge of his glass as he slammed it down on the table top in front of him.
“I’m sorry...what did you just say?”
“I said, we’ve found two different types of blood on the thorns, one human Type ‘A’ blood, and another like nothing we’ve ever seen before, from an entirely new type of blood group. It resembles human blood in many ways...but it’s …different…”
Jeff stood up and walked away from the table, interrupting David’s monologue.
“Can I carry on?...The thing is we managed to catch up with the other work that the Oxford group had done. Normally you can’t clone anyone from human blood, because the red blood cells don’t contain all the genetic information you need, the full set of chromosomes…? Well, one of the Oxford team, the graduate student Jason, had figured out a way how to take the DNA from proteins in red blood cells, and by breaking down the DNA and interrogating it genetically, he could extract all the information he needed to understand exactly how to make the complete chromosome set that was necessary to make artificial nuclei for the DNA donor...”
“… Ground breaking stuff really, way ahead of his time. It took our complete team a whole month to follow his tracks and figure out what one spotty graduate had discovered apparently in a week! Anyway, bottom line is that that process doesn’t work properly when applied to the second type of blood that we’ve identified on the Crown of Thorns...”
“… God knows we’ve tried everything possible, but no matter what we do, when we try to make the process work with the genetic material from the new type of blood, we can’t get the artificial nuclei to stay in the enucleated egg cells long enough for the cells to multiply. Something happens that we don’t understand yet. The egg cell kicks out the donor chromosome set …spits it out like it’s a piece of rubbish...and the lights go out.”
“What lights?”
Jeff looked across at David who was still sitting at the table.
“Shit, sorry, I guess we forgot to tell you about one thing…the new blood type dances in light, it gives off the weirdest, most beautiful light show you’ve ever seen...”
David cut in.
“Instead of explaining, I think you’d better see for yourself. Can we go up to the lab?”
.
---------------------
.
Speechless, Tim stared
into the Smithsonian 350, the latest and greatest microscope that money could buy. The light danced off the helical string of DNA from the as yet new and unidentified type of blood, and as he watched, Tim began to feel tears forming in the corners of his eyes. Earlier that evening he had prostrated himself before the God from which this blood had flown, cowering on the lab floor and begging for the life of his daughter. And now, as he watched the dancing light of life, he felt with certainty that his growing belief in the power of the one God was well founded. He had put his faith in the right person.
This was a sign of the power that flowed from the Creator of all things. This was the proof he had sought...
“Are you okay Sir?” David asked, placing his hand gently on Tim’s shoulder.
Tim fought the tears forming in his eyes and swallowed hard. This was not the time or the place to show his emotions.
“..yes…absolutely...I’ve never been better!” Tim stood up from the microscope and turned to face the two scientists. “It’s incredible. Almost unbelievable. I wouldn’t have believed it unless I’d seen it with my own eyes. How many other people know about this?”
“Almost everyone on both the teams. The discovery of the new blood type, and then this…two of the greatest discoveries of this millennium. Everyone within the project knows about it. They have the right to know. But as it’s Code Green, the security is the tightest you can make it, and no one outside the scientists in the two groups knows anything about the projects we’re working on. Total information clamp-down. As you requested.”
“Good.” Tim turned back to the microscope and with arms supporting his weight on the bench on either side of the microscope sights, he leaned over the eyepiece and looked once again at the sample. “Sorry gentlemen, watching it is totally addictive...”
“Hey, it gets everyone that way. The team have christened it the 'Angel Lights' . It’s almost the closest proof that we’ve ever had that God actually exists!”
“Let’s not get carried away...maybe, just maybe there’s some sort of explanation that we don’t understand!” Dave countered his colleague Jeff, trying to bring some realism back into the conversation.
“Come on Dave, we’re all scientists. We know what’s normal. What’s natural, and what’s supernatural. And this, well...” Jeff’s voice tailed off letting the sentence complete itself.
“Okay. Okay. So what are we going to do now? What’s the next step?” Tim sat down in the chair beside the bench and swivelled round to face the two team leaders.
“That’s a good question. We’re not too sure...”
“You have no ideas?”
“Dave has one that we’ve been discussing.” Jeff nodded at Dave as he spoke. “But it’s pretty risky and it’s really a last hope. There’s no guarantee that it’ll work. We’ve really been waiting to see if your contacts in Oxford could pick up any more information from the Oxford team. We’re pretty sure they must have found the new type of blood too and must have seen the light modulating off the DNA strings, but we don’t know if they have encountered the same problem in the actual cloning process, or if they’ve found a way around it...”
“You can forget that...the contact in the Oxford team is no longer a source. Seems like our agent was rumbled. We’ll probably have to close him down.”
“In that case, without any more clues, we’re going to have to go our own way. I say we do it!” Dave spoke up.
“Do what?”
“We radiate the sample as we clone it. It could work.”
“What with?”
“With low energy neutrons.”
“Why?”
“Sometimes in cancer it seems to knock out rogue cells. It kills off the ribosomes that are malfunctioning. But we noticed that it also makes the cell walls harder and tougher. Don’t know why yet, but it somehow makes the cell walls more difficult to penetrate. If it makes the cells more difficult to get into then the reverse is probably true too. It’ll make the cells harder to get out of.”
“So how will that help?”
“The problem we’re having is that when we put the artificial nuclei of chromosomes into the egg cell, the egg expels the donated chromosomes before the ribosomes can do their job. We don’t really know what’s happening, but the idea is that if we can make the donor nucleus stay in the recipient egg cell for a little longer, it might be just long enough to allow the ribosomes to start getting on with their job of copying the chromosomes, thereby starting the processes of cell-division and cell-multiplication. At the moment it just seems that the invading chromosomes are kicked out before they get a chance. So…we plan to insert the donor nucleus, simultaneously irradiating the cell and hardening the cell membrane wall. Then we apply the electric spark, and sit back and pray that the cell divides.”
“Will it work?”
“It might. It just might. The only problem is that we don’t know what other damage the irradiation may do....”
“Do we have any choice?”
“At this stage....” the two scientists looked at each other, “...no.”
“Then go for it. On my authority. How long before you’re ready to proceed.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Great. And if it works, when will you be able to implant a surrogate host mother?”
“It’ll be three weeks before we’ll be ready for actual embryo implantation. We want to check the process a few times, and if it works then we’ll monitor several different cloned embryos in the lab environment for two weeks before we implant anyone with a freshly cloned embryo. But before we go to that stage we’ll need to review the situation with you and get commitment for the final stage. There’ll be no go without your say-so.”
“Excellent. So, call me 48 hours before you’re ready to see me next and I’ll bring the President with me for the final say-so. Fantastic gentleman. It’s looking good. You have my full confidence!”
.
Chapter Forty Nine
Christ Church Cathedral
Oxford, England
Tuesday 6th Dec 8 P.M
.
Determined to follow up on his hunch that the stolen Thorn contained the answer to their problems, Don returned to the lab the next morning at 6am. While the rest of the team were still tucked up safely and sensibly in their beds, he studied the Thorn closely under the Smithsonian 250 in the few hours before the 8am meeting.
At first he didn’t noticed anything unusual or of interest that they hadn’t seen before. The surface of the thorn was relatively smooth, except for a small crack in the membrane of the thorn near the tip. This was one of the areas that they had observed the blood on the thorn and they had looked closely at that area before.
But maybe not close enough. If his gut feeling was correct and there was something there that they had missed before, then he would have to increase the power of the magnification. But that would take another few hours to prepare the scanning microscope, and he would have to return to do that another time.
Maybe even tonight, after evensong at Christ Church Cathedral, or failing that later on in the week.
Christ Church was Don’s favourite college. By far, it was the most impressive college in Oxford and was regarded by many to be the best college in the world. As such, it could afford to be so exclusive and it chose only the elite from the scientific and artistic world, inviting but a select few each year to join the generations of others who had gone before them and matriculated in the great Hall of Christ Church, each person being called forward individually to sign the ‘Great Book’ and become ‘Members of the House.’
Don had applied to Christ Church but his application had not been successful and he had been forced to accept a subsequent offer from Hertford College, which although it wasn’t in the same league as Christ Church, was considered to be one of the best of the other colleges to attend. He had spent many happy years at Hertford, before leaving to do his graduate studies in America.
Even though Christ Church had rejected him, he s
till stood in awe of the institution and secretly had hopes that one day he would be able to become a Don there and apply for a teaching post within the college.
The Great Cathedral at Christ Church was one of the most impressive Cathedrals in England. Over the past few weeks Don had been to Evening Song in the Cathedral a few times, sitting quietly at the back of the hall and listening to the college choir sing.
Looking at the order of service Don saw that tonight was going to be a special ‘advent’ service, perhaps to celebrate some important date in the Christian calendar, although Don didn’t know exactly which one. His new found interest in Christianity had not yet extended to understanding all the religious festivals.
As he entered the Cathedral he was ushered to a seat on the edge of the pews near the centre of the cathedral.
Although it felt rather early for Christmas, the Order of Service Don had been given listed a number of carols and readings which heralded the coming season, and the approaching birthday of Jesus Christ. The congregation was invited to join in every second carol, with the Choir of Christ Church performing the rest, sometimes with the help of the college orchestra. Don settled down to enjoy the choir singing the first carol. Then when the choir had finished the last 'amen' of the final chorus, the Dean of Christ Church invited the Mayor of Oxford to make the first reading.
“ The first reading is taken from the Gospel according to Luke, Verse Twenty Six. – In the six month God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph....”
Don looked up from his Order of Service and stared at the Mayor. The words of the mayor struck Don cleanly between the eyes and penetrated deep into his brain. His heart began to beat faster and a smile began to spread across his face.
“…the virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, ‘Greetings, you who are highly favoured! The Lord is with you…’
Don shifted in his seat, sitting bolt upright in his pew.
“…Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the Angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favour with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; his kingdom will never end.”
The Messiah Conspiracy - A gripping page-turning Medical Thriller - [Omnibus Edition containing Book 1 & Book 2] Page 25