The Aurora Conspiracies- Volume One

by Sam Nash

  “Hmm, perhaps the French team stuck to bacterial DNA signalling for this very reason. Maybe the signal strength of adrenalin is too weak. Have you tried other drugs? Perhaps a sedative?” Parth scraped the stubble on his chin with his index finger while he pondered. Mary looked at the clock.

  “This solution is a sedative. I have transposed the signal onto the distilled water sample twice this morning already.” He tapped a biro against the bench and removed his safety goggles. There were dark yellow stains on his lab coat and his left thumb wore a bloody plaster.

  “And?” Parth’s forehead knotted.

  “Both rats died when injected with the water sample.” Simon bowed his head. His tawny hair flopped over his eyes.

  “Yes, that’s all very interesting – cruel, but interesting. Now what has it got to do with me?” Mary could only think about how her newly hatched fruit flies would be preparing to mate at any moment before she could separate the males from the females in her lab.

  Parth smiled. “Do you remember the French scientist, Jacques Benveniste, who claimed that water had memory; that it could be used as a sort of magnetic tape?” He strolled to another bench and retrieved a bisected cage, each side containing a white rat gnawing on their prison walls. He placed it next to the homemade Faraday box.

  “Wasn’t he discredited in the nineteen eighties? Poor chap. No one seemed able to repeat his findings.” Mary recalled reading back copies of a scientific journal. In it the editor, a journalist and a magician reported their attempts to replicate the study without success.

  “Indeed. Poor man. Anyway, a Nobel laureate has taken up the gauntlet. His team have recorded the electromagnetic traces from ultra-diluted DNA samples, sent the signal as a sound file attached to an email and then played it back to a distilled water sample. From it, they were able to detect DNA matter in the pure water.” Parth opened the foil covered box and removed the glass phial containing a sedative drug. He handed it to Mary. She tipped the ampule between her fingers, observing the air bubble as it slid from one end to the other through the colourless liquid.

  “Can you sense anything from the chemical, Mary?” Parth bent both knees and held out his hands as though he were waiting to catch a ball. His excitement spilled over to his young protegee, who stood grinning expectantly by his side. Mary rolled the tube between thumb and fingers. It warmed to her touch. She placed it in the palm of her left hand and stared at it. What is it supposed to feel like? She mused. Any signals from molecules in this liquid would be minute.

  “Anything at all?” Parth urged.

  Mary shrugged. As she offered up the contents of her hand to her disloyal husband, she felt a mild twinge. Just a tickle in the centre of her palm like a gentle stroke along the heart line. She flattened her hand and rolled the tube into the lowest part of the depression. There it was again. A continuous mild electrical caress.

  “There is a barely detectable buzz, yes. But I don’t see how that helps you. It’s not as though you can measure what I am feeling.” She closed her hand around the phial noting that the tickle became more intense as she did so.

  “That’s true, we can’t. But perhaps you can do what we have been unable to achieve. I know that patting your head while rubbing your tummy has always been tricky for you, darling…sorry, Mary. Do you think you would be able to project that buzz from your other hand at the same time?” Parth turned to a large glass bottle of distilled water. He filled a beaker half full and with a measuring pipette he drew out a small but precise amount of water, squirted it into a tiny test tube and then handed it to Mary. “Please. Just try. We have nothing to lose.”

  The solution was still tingling her left hand. How on Earth am I to recreate the same signal in the other hand? It can’t be possible. It’s too faint. I don’t want to blow the thing up. Taking a deep calming breath and releasing it slowly, she tried to still the tumult of thoughts whirling inside her head. Her tummy churned. With both fists clenched around the tubes, Mary closed her eyes and imagined the tingling sensation crawling through her hand and up her arm. The faint pulse travelled across her chest and down her right arm into the test tube of water. The weak electrical oscillation now pulsed in both hands in tandem.

  Mary opened her eyes and handed the test tube of water to Simon. Parth held his hand over his mouth as Simon prepared a hypodermic syringe with the water and removed a rat from the cage.

  “Oh no, you mustn’t. What if it kills it?” Mary drew the back of her hand up to her mouth, suddenly aware of the repercussions. Simon looked to his mentor, who nodded his permission to continue. The needle dug into the folds of the rat’s scruff and the liquid squeezed in. Simon replaced the rodent in its cage. Parth crouched level and observed the rat twist its head around and scratch at its neck with a rear claw.

  Mary sighed her relief, as the rat scrabbled around in the cage unaffected. Then, just as she was about to walk away, the rat slumped flat on its belly. Its beady fuchsia eyes hidden behind white lids. “Oh God, is it dead? Have I killed it?” Mary pawed at the cage.

  “No, you can see it breathing. It is just asleep.” Parth clapped his hands together in glee. “You understand what this means don’t you? You can turn pure water into drugs.”

  Chapter Two

  Rat number four, Boris, tumbled around the Perspex tank, ricocheting from his water bottle to the slippery floor and back towards Parth’s gloved hand. Boris reared up at his captor, bearing his long yellow teeth. Beside him, rat number three, Freda, observed her cellmate passively.

  “It’s astonishing. Let’s repeat it one last time, honey. I want Professor Haas to see.” Dr Parth Arora tipped the clear liquid down the sink and grasped a clean beaker.

  “I’m not your honey. Don’t call me that. I need to get back to my studies, Parth. I can’t be at your beck and call all the time.” Mary heaved a sigh and checked the time. Ten minutes to twelve. Half the useful day had gone. He drew purified spring water from the distillation unit into the glass jar and set it down in front of her.

  “See what exactly?” Professor Haas wheezed his way between the benching and lab stools to the experiment set up before them. A series of small labelled phials stood on a tray next to Mary. “Lovely to see you both getting along so well. You look radiant, my dear. Have you done something different with your hair?” He dipped his head forward, breathing sour coffee breath into her face. The contents of her stomach bubbled up her gullet. Haas saw Mary wince, then move away. Flustered, he turned his gaze to Parth and said; “Right. Yes. What did you want me to see?”

  “Mary has been learning to moderate her abilities - diversify her talents as it were.” Parth began typing up rapid notes on the desktop computer, pasting in graphs of reaction times for each tested drug. “A few more trials and I think we have a strong basis for a publishable paper.”

  Professor Haas read the title on Parth’s screen and surveyed the equipment before him on the bench. “Hold your horses there, Parth. You cannot make this public.” Professor Florian Haas slapped him on the back. “Whatever additional uses you have found for Mary’s powers, you cannot tell a soul about it.” Haas swept the tails of his enormous moustache away from his mouth with a knuckle.

  Parth squared up to him, inhaling cold air across his teeth. “This discovery could revolutionise the entire pharmaceutical industry. Don’t you see? Mary could supply free drugs to the poorest nations in the world. Imagine that, India with no dysentery, South America with no malaria, Africa with access to free retrovirals. We should test a protein rich solution next. You never know, malnutrition could be a thing of the past too.” Parth returned to his frenzied typing.

  “No, Parth. You cannot do this. You know full well that Mary is on a government watch list. Christ almighty man, Yelena already neuters the weekly reports to the PM. If you continue to take this further, you are putting us all at risk.” Haas’s face softened. His distress genuine. Reaching out to Mary, he uncurled her fingers, removed the phial of adrenalin and returned it t
o the tray of drugs by her side. “Come, my dear. Let me buy you a cake and a cuppa in the union.” Haas led Mary by the hand to towards the door.

  “Professor.” Parth snarled. “This revelation is bigger than us all. I have a moral duty to alert the scientific community to the possibilities.” His chest rose and fell with indignant panting. “Particularly if we can locate more people like Mary.”

  Haas continued walking, yelling back across his shoulder; “If you know what’s good for you, Parth, you’ll let this whole matter drop. Now, my dear, tell me all about your fruit flies.” They left the Neurosciences building and walked together to the student union cafeteria. They dawdled in the deserted union building to the single food kiosk that remained open throughout the summer holidays. In two weeks, every food and beverage outlet in the building would be swarming with undergraduates.

  “Can I tempt you with a Danish pastry to go with your salad sandwich?” Mary looked at her new Head of Faculty and could not help but visualise a large, lumbering walrus by her side. His drooping jawline framed by so much facial hair made it difficult to see the scientific genius within.

  Contemplating his offer, she replied, “Do you know what I really fancy? A bacon butty.” Mary replaced the pack of salad sandwiches to the refrigerated unit and took one labelled BLT.

  “Good for you. I thought you were a dyed in the wool veggie.” The walrus chuckled and slid the steel teapot from the counter onto her tray.

  Mary helped herself to an un-ripened banana and a plastic knife. “I am… was, I suppose.” They carried their trays to a booth and sat either side of the table. Ripping open the package, Mary dissected her sandwich, removing the lettuce and tomato and adding in slices of banana. She squashed the bread back together and bit down like an insatiable beast. “I can understand Parth’s point.” She tucked the remains of the mouthful into her cheek with a swipe of her tongue. “I mean, it would put an end to a colossal amount of suffering around the world.”

  Professor Haas sat mesmerised as his colleague wolfed down the first triangle sandwich and looked to make short work of the second. “Do you really think that altruism is Parth’s motive here?”

  Mary stopped chomping and pulled a face that said yeah, okay. You’re right.

  “He is leading us all down a very dangerous path. It’s bad enough that he has been commissioned to find others like you and your brother – God only knows what the PM has planned for any that he does find but taking on the global powerhouses of big pharma… that is asking for trouble.” He stirred three sachets of sugar into his cappuccino, obliterating the leaf decoration from the foam.

  “I know Parth, Professor. He won’t let this lie. He will find a way to get it out there, regardless of the potential danger.” She picked at an inedible chunk of gristle poking out from the crust. “He will argue that the pharmaceutical companies should be nationalised, so that new drug research would be funded through taxes instead of profits from the sick.” She threw the last of her butty in her mouth.

  “None of the conglomerates would stand for that. Half of the board members are ex-ministers. Hell, most of them are current ministers or the wives of them.” His hand twitched, splashing coffee into the saucer. “Maybe Yelena can talk some sense into him. At least she has the ability to threaten his funding stream from the Defence Department.”

  “Maybe.” She took a sip from her teacup. They sat for some time looking blankly into their drinks. The crashing noise of a canteen worker dropping cutlery on the hard floor jolted them alert. Mary broke their silence. “How is he planning on searching for people like me and my brother?”

  “Yelena’s techie chap, Flynn, provided him with all the medical records from UK brain scans and access to the national DNA database. Parth was talking about mapping the DNA of people with scans similar to yours.” Haas studied Mary’s expression. Her forehead furrowed, hooding her lids over her dark chestnut eyes. The rosy glow that had prompted Haas to comment in the lab earlier had vanished. A grey pallor washed through her skin like a brooding watercolour painting. “Are you alright, my dear?”

  Mary clapped her hand across her mouth, rising quickly to her feet. “I don’t think I should have eaten that after all. Would you excuse me, Professor?” She didn’t wait for him to answer but sprinted to the ladies’ room cubicles and voided her stomach contents into the toilet. Cupping her hand beneath the cold tap, she swilled a mouthful of water around her mouth and spat into the sink. Not a sensible idea for a long-term vegetarian to suddenly start eating meat again. That’ll teach me. The mirror seemed to emphasise her ashen skin and evidence of the restless nights lurked in the leaden recesses above her cheeks.

  Wiping her wet hands on the legs of her jeans, Mary made her way back across the dining hall to Haas. “You do look peaky, my dear.” Haas said, “Are you feeling alright?” He tidied their trays away in the dirty crockery racks and secreted a chocolate bar into his jacket pocket.

  “Just a little under the weather I think. It’ll pass, thank you.” They walked together through the union building, stopping briefly for Haas to purchase a copy of The Guardian from the newsagent kiosk. He unfolded the broadsheet and scanned the front page.

  “Good lord. Look at this.” He twisted the front page downwards so that Mary could see the headline. “Some absolute buffoon thought it sensible to trial the addition of lithium to a Scottish water supply. Bloody idiots.” He stood in the foyer, blocking the exit, skim reading the article. “Pah! I don’t believe that for an instant. They claim that it has had a significant impact on the rate of suicides.” Several people trying to leave the building had to back up and use another exit.

  Mary, feeling self-conscious, mouthed apologies to the inconvenienced patrons. “Don’t they use lithium salts in drugs for Bi-polar patients?” She asked, pulling the walrus gently by the arm through the double doors and out into the quad beyond. Haas continued reading.

  “Hmm? Yes, it can be an effective medication for selective patients. It’s bloody lunacy to dope an entire population with it. Eh… thought so. It makes no mention of any side effects. Unbelievable.”

  Mary threaded her arm beneath Hass’s elbow and led him around the raised flower beds and wooden benches towards his building. Haas scanned the sports page. “I say, those stinkers at Anfield are doing well for themselves. They could knock us out of the league if we don’t pull up our socks.”

  A cool wind picked up, stirring the thickening cumulus clouds above. Mary quickened her pace, keen to return to her own research. They turned the corner beyond the Neurosciences building and headed for the side entrance to Genetics. Mary swallowed hard. University Finance Officer and undercover MI6 agent, Yelena Plender, was leaning against the wall next to the entrance.

  “We have a problem.” Yelena removed the sole of her suede Manolo stiletto from the surface of the brick wall and straightened her knee. Unfolding her arms, she turned her back on them and punched in the keycode to Mary’s lab. Haas and Mary exchanged fearful glances and followed her through the door.

  Yelena shooed out three other postgraduates from the lab and stood in front of the glass panelled door, barring entry. Her copper coloured locks seemed particularly fiery, as if it was a warning flag of impending trouble. She took one last panning stare across the lab, ensuring they were alone and unheard.

  “For God’s sake spit it out, woman. You’ll have us both thinking we are doomed!” Haas whacked his folded newspaper against a bench top. It made Mary jump.

  “That may not be so far from the truth.” There was a notable inflection to her pronunciation of the word truth, her St. Petersburg upbringing making its presence felt. “MI6 have keystroke tracking on all the computers in Parth’s department.”

  “Keystroke?” Mary’s mind wandered to actual physical keys, then back to the qwerty keyboard, as understanding dawned.

  “Yes, Keystroke. Everything Parth, or any of his colleagues, type into a computer is logged at MI6. They are paying for his work after all.” Ye
lena smoothed her silk skirt with her hand and then perched on a lab stool.

  “You mean they know about what happened this morning already?” Haas said, drawing in a sharp breath in response to Yelena’s slow nod. Mary sat heavily on another stool opposite her soviet born friend.

  “They have specific objections to some of Parth’s more utopian assertions.” Yelena had the phrase prepared, checking the meanings of each word on her smartphone while she was waiting for their return to the lab.

  “Can’t we just assure them that we will never pursue that line of investigation? Tell them that it was an aberrant data set. Say we cannot repeat it… that it was pure fluke.” Mary rambled, massaging her temples and forehead, envisaging a lengthy stay in some covert military prison, or worse.

  “I will try to convince them and before you suggest it, Professor, I have already threatened to cut off Parth’s funding.” Her eyelids seemed to be set on slow motion, giving her an exhausted air.

  “And that didn’t do the trick?” Mary sat in wide eyed shock. She was sure that money would be an effective method of controlling Parth’s ambitions.

  “He said he would not stop his investigations. Said that it had nothing to do with the defence contract.”

  “Then I will simply refuse to be a part of it.” Mary said. “He cannot make me imprint water samples with drugs, can he?” There was more than a hint of desperation in her voice. “I’ll go to his department now and tell him.”

  Yelena rose elegantly from the stool and adjusted her suit jacket. “No, I will talk to him before my meeting with my division manager. I hope that your assurance will be enough.” She and Haas bade her farewell and left Mary to her studies.