Immortality (16 page)

“So, I understand you are going to be staying in Atlanta for some time,” said his escort.

“Maybe a week.”

Suddenly, Mark began feeling dizzy and stopped walking. He tried to conceal his dizziness by leaning on and starring out the glass wall. The view overlooked a wooded area of some kind. He’d taken his insulin on the flight. Maybe those two vodka martinis six hours ago had not been such a great idea. The young woman had stopped a few paces away and was staring. He noticed she had blue eyes; then he realized he didn’t remember her name.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah, I just feel a little run down.”

After a few minutes, they started walking again. The woman asked him where he was staying. The dizziness was waning. His insulin was back at the hotel, but he suspected he’d be fine without it. She opened a door and ushered him into a large office.

“Dr. Carl Green and Dr. Kathy Morrison are on a conference call. Can I get you anything... coffee?”

“A gallon would be nice... black, extra caffeine. In fact, hold the coffee. Just give me some raw beans to chew on. I had a long flight.”

“Coming right up.”

“No… You know what… wait a minute. Do you have some orange juice instead? I need a little sugar in my system.”

The woman smiled, “Sure.”

Kathy was walking down the hallway with Carl. She was not happy. With every step, she was closer to meeting Professor Mark Freedman and that made her nervous. She was surprised that Carl had been able to bring in a Nobel Laureate as a consultant. She was worried that what her team had pieced together so far was meager and that she’d look foolish and premature for calling in a scientist of his stature. She’d done her homework on Professor Freedman, even phoning a college instructor of hers who’d worked with him in the past. The consensus was that Professor Freedman was brilliant and eccentric in equal measure, with a lot of drive to be the best.

As she walked into Carl’s office, a good looking man rose to shake her hand. So this was a Nobel Prize winning scientist. He looked younger than she’d imagined, something closer to forty than fifty. His handshake was firm, not wimpy. He had dark hair with a little gray in it and very intelligent eyes.

“So, I understand you found Chromatium swimming around in the blood of some of the victims of your top secret epidemic.” said Freedman.

“Not my secret,” said Kathy, “and not just blood. Chromatium were also found trapped in ice on the face and scalp of some of the victims.”

“I’ve got to be up front with both of you,” said Freedman. “I’ve been thinking about why Chromatium might invade an animal’s body and you’re not going to like my conclusion. There is no explanation, none. If any organization including the CDC had made this claim under different circumstances, I’d think drugs were involved and not the legal kind. There’s nothing in blood for these bugs to eat. It’s a completely wrong environment for them to expand into. There are only two things that motivate these critters, food and reproduction.”

Kathy nodded and agreed. She was starting to feel intellectually comfortable, but warning signals were flashing and she had just realized the reason. She was not sure in what way, but Mark Freedman reminded her of Barry, her ex-husband.

“How do you think Chromatium are related to this epidemic?” asked Freedman.

“If we knew that,” said Kathy, “we’d be out of a job and the country would be safe.”

Kathy had no idea why she had just acted so rudely. Freedman was staring at her with an odd expression. She glanced at Carl. He looked aghast.

“So...” said Freedman, “I haven’t had a chance to eat anything except a snack at the airport. No food worth eating on flights anymore. How would you folks feel about an early lunch? My treat. We can continue talking in a more relaxed setting.”

“There’s a great Italian restaurant fifteen minutes from here,” said Carl. “We can take my car.”

“Great,” said Freedman. “My rental’s been a real pig on the ride out here.”

“Gas?” asked Carl.

“No, CDs. The little road-toad ate my favorite Doors album.”

“We had another incident today in South America, Guatemala this time,” said Kathy. “Forty-one people died.”

My god, she did it again! What was going on with her? Was she going for the bitch-of- the-month award or something? Freedman was going to think she’s off her rocker.

“Listen, why don’t we eat here,” said Freedman. “On my way in, I passed the cafeteria. It looked okay to me. So Dr. Morrison, I understand the outbreak in Anchorage was limited to the dock area.”

“So far; and the Army’s maintaining a quarantine for public appearances, which is a good thing, even if it’s for the wrong reasons; but I can’t be sure we’ve contained anything since we don’t know the cause or method of transmission. Too bad it’s not Chromatium. If that was the case, then we’d know we were dealing with a waterborne vector and we’d know how to contain it.”

“I’ve been thinking,” said Freedman, “I believe we can safely go with the idea that the killer is waterborne. There’s good circumstantial evidence that it’s connected with Chromatium, which means they are sharing the same environment, and for Chromatium Omri, that’s water.”

In the background, a lunch tray clanked against a table. Kathy took another sip of Diet Pepsi. So far, she had managed to swallow half a dry tuna on wheat. She had no appetite. Carl and Freedman had done most of the talking. The conversation had turned to something that was insanely boring, professional sports. Kathy was content to drift off into her own thoughts. Carl wiped his mouth and then stood up. He shook Freedman’s hand.

“I have to get back to my office,” said Carl. “I have a conference call to make. Kathy can finish the tour and fill you in on whatever you need to know.”

Great, thought Kathy, as she swallowed the last of her Diet Pepsi. She realized when she had drifted off, she had been thinking about George
.
She hadn’t thought about that adventure in over a year. She was a little embarrassed to have thought about it now. The affair had happened on a trip to the Cayman Islands one month after her divorce had been finalized. Before that trip, she had never gone anywhere alone, not even the movies. Something had happened to her there. The complete separation from her old life had transformed her into someone far bolder. Every aspect of her personality had been amplified. She had become almost a caricature of herself in a bathing suit and sarong; and then without warning there was George.

Mark decided the remote control systems in the BVMC lab were brilliant. He was looking over Kathy’s shoulder as she manipulated software controls on the screen. They were in an office that had been assigned to him. A large computer window was open. The screen magnification within it increased, revealing live Chromatium swimming in liquid. At Mark’s request, a small army of them had been thawed. From that thawing, nearly twenty percent had revived. There were hundreds of them moving in what resembled a swarm of capsule-shaped tadpoles or sperm. For the most part, they were swimming in random directions; but occasionally a smaller group would standout from the swarm by suddenly schooling like fish. They would swim together and change direction at nearly the same instant. The coordination only lasted seconds; then the small group would disorganize and vanish back into the swarm. The image was of choreographed chaos. Their synchronization in those brief moments was remarkable. It couldn’t be the result of random turns and dives. These animals were swimming with each other in some controlled way. He’d never seen this behavior exhibited by any bacterium including COBIC-3.7.

“Is this being recorded?” he asked.

“Everything is automatically recorded and saved for at least thirty days unless you tag it to be saved permanently or deleted. What you’re seeing is real time from a scanned x-ray microscope, but I can switch to a digitally recorded playback at any time.”

Mark had a great deal of experience with scanned x-ray instruments but was not sure what the lab’s computer system could do with recorded data.

“Can you digitally zoom out and play it back in slow motion? I want to get a broader look at their interaction with each other.”

“No problem. This system is like a super-Tivo with unlimited hard disk space.”

Kathy clicked a few times and entered some numbers on what looked like a tape recorder control panel. The image jumped backward at high speed, then zoomed out and began running forward at quarter speed. There was no mistaking the synchronization of some of their movements. The organization did look like the behavior of schooling fish, but that would have required intelligence, something bacteria did not possess. Maybe they were just reacting to some invisible stimulus? Maybe they were sensitive to the microscope’s soft x-ray beam? Mark needed to study this more before he discussed it openly. There was something else not right about these Chromatium. The capsule shape was a little rounded in the area where the nucleoid was located. The bulge was something like the bacterial equivalent of a mild potbelly.

“Kathy, can you freeze and zoom in on one of these bacteria? I’d like to see a full frame view with a superimposed ruler or grid… something to measure the animal’s dimensions.”

Kathy entered a set of numbers and commands. The instrument’s magnification went up. The system continued recording as Chromatium swam by in the enlarged view. In a few minutes, Kathy had the real-time image replaced by a perfect freeze frame of a single animal with a calibrated grid superimposed. Mark studied the shape. The size was about twenty percent larger than baseline Chromatium Omri, just like COBIC-3.7. However, COBIC-3.7 did not have that rounded bulge; and the nucleoid itself appeared to be the cause. The nucleoid was enlarged and less opaque than it should have been. His initial impression was that it almost looked like a bubble was trapped inside it. Mark had Kathy switch the view back to live Chromatium.

“How far have you gotten on a complete DNA sequence?” he asked. “I need to know which strain of bacterium we’ve got.”

“The sequencing is done. We sent it out to GenTech who agreed to run a priority job.”

“It’s done!” said Mark.

“When GenTech’s CEO was told in confidence what was happening, heaven and earth got moved. They turned the job around in twenty-four. From what I heard, we tied up their entire production capacity for most of the day. The sequence contains matches to published DNA fragments for twenty strains of Chromatium Omri, including COBIC-3.7. Apparently there are a lot of junk sequences which are causing false positives. Matching to a specific strain is beyond what my team can do quickly, so I guess that job’s on your plate.”

There were eighty-six identified strains of Chromatium Omri. In a gene pool of that limited diversity, there were a lot of chances for common sequences and junk sequence matches. Only an expert on Chromatium would know which lengths of DNA should be checked and which should be ignored. Indiscriminate matching of all the COBIC sequences that Mark had published was evidence a microbe could be COBIC-3.7 but conclusively proved nothing.

Mark was feeling distracted and anxious. Kathy had been silent for several minutes. She seemed transfixed by the screen. He noticed that the number of live Chromatium appeared to be decreasing quicker than he had been warned by Kathy to expect. There was no reason for them to be dying unless they were running out of nutrients or were damaged. He could see there were more dead bodies floating around than live animals. He watched one shiver and shrivel a small amount as if the cellular membrane had ruptured, but there was no evidence of cytoplasm being jettisoned. All the dead Chromatium had the same shriveled look. The damage was one more oddity to consider, but right now what he wanted to focus on was the nucleoid bulge. That was an obvious difference between COBIC-3.7 and these Chromatium.

“Can we get a few shriveled and unshriveled specimens mounted up for the TEM? I want to get a detailed look inside both,” asked Mark.

“I think we can fix you up,” said Kathy.

Kathy turned from the computer. Mark had been leaning over her shoulder and was now very close to her as she turned to face him. He could feel her discomfort and backed away. She stood up.

“Come on; I’ll introduce you to the lab staff. They can take care of the rest.”

Mark was fascinated. Kathy’s idea of introducing him to the lab staff had turned out to be meeting the team that was going on-duty in the ready room during shift change. The last stage of the airlock was rinsing away leftover sterilization solution. The process was like a human carwash. Through heavy plate windows, he could see into both stages of the airlock and the BVMC lab. Radio chatter from the lab team in the airlock could be heard over speakers in the ready room. The five members of the team going on-duty were getting into their containment spacesuits. The process was cumbersome and involved stepping into the suit backwards through an opening in the torso. Mark felt like he was meeting astronauts, and there were similarities. Kathy had explained that the team inside that containment lab was cutoff from the outside world. If a problem occurred, the team had to solve it themselves. They were at least forty minutes from help; the time required to get through the airlock system. If someone in there had a heart attack, the odds were fifty-fifty they would not make it out alive. To minimize risk, all personnel entering the BVMC lab had to undergo monthly medical examinations and all were trained in emergency first aid.

Mark knew that due to his medical problem the BVMC lab was permanently off limits for him. Which was alright, but at some level he was oddly envious. As a young boy, he dreamed of being an astronaut, and this lab was a way of experiencing some part of that dream. The team was putting on their helmets and checking each other’s suits. Mark could remember being very young and hiding under the covers, looking at picture-books of spacecraft with his flashlight. He’d built tree-forts with levers and handles that controlled imaginary rockets. He remembered watching in awe as the first steps were made on the moon. With their helmets on, the team going on duty was now using radios to communicate. Kathy and Mark were standing in the same room with them, but to talk required a set of headphones and a radio. This was the first step in the isolation process: all direct human contact was gone.