My Unlife: Rebirth by Typhoid Marty
“Is that the one where you are helping to catch the menace that threatens our fair city?” John the omniscient replied with just a hint of humor in his voice. “Yeah I can see why you would hate to be late for that. Good luck, hero.”
* * * * *
Entering the biology department it didn’t take Emma long to locate Dan who was standing beside a short, dark skinned man Emma had met yesterday - the Director for the Office of Infectious Diseases. Together they were talking with a man in army fatigues while following along on an outstretched map of Boston. He was a Caucasian in his late 40s with a thick but trim build - his short hair hid a slightly receding hairline.
As Emma walked shyly towards the trio the man in fatigues stopped talking, his demeanor was polite but the message conveyed was clear – she was interrupting.
“Oh this is Emma, a student at this university and my assistant. Emma, you remember Dr Hakkesh from the CDC and this is Brigadier General Toby Ludlow from the National Guard.” Emma was not familiar with military rankings but that sounded pretty high up there.
“Sorry to interrupt Dr. Wilson,” she said smoothly, opting for Dan’s honorific given the current company. “What do you need me to do? I can run blood samples from recent homicides and look for the new antibody we found.”
“No need,” replied Dan with a grin. Turning to his colleagues Dan excused himself from the planning and, taking Emma by the shoulder, led her to a small lab. A number of recently unpacked boxes still lay on the floor among a smattered of Styrofoam peanuts. Sitting on a table in the middle of the room was a new piece of equipment that Emma had never seen before.
“The CDC has all the best toys,” he said confidentially with a grin. “Meet the Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy machine – this bad boy cost millions of dollars so treat her with a reverence you would normally associate with the Turin Shroud.”
Emma just looked on flustered. “The Surface Enhanced what?” she asked confused. What if this thing could detect her kind by proximity? Through an act of will, Emma did not run from the room screaming.
“Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy – or SERS. It actually uses nanotechnology to … to ping viruses. It can show the genetic composition of virus code almost instantly – letting us not only easily detect infected samples but also see the exact code this thing delivers to the host.”
“Ooooo,” said Emma, genuinely intrigued.
“Ooo you should,” Dan replied, molesting the machine with his eyes. “Because it will be you initially who is using it. I am going to be busy with Hakkesh and Ludlow making emergency contagion plans so I need someone on the ground looking for further signs of outbreak.”
“All my Postgrads are hopelessly pissed at you, of course,” he added. “But as the person who first identified the virus, you should be the one who is an integral part of the team.”
Dan went to walk out “Oh I sent the first sample of the genetic code over to a few people to look at,” he said, turning back around with a grin. “See if you can beat them to figuring out what it does – somehow I have a feeling you can do it.”
* * * * *
Running samples was truly exciting, for the first few. It took less than half an hour for the process to turn to tedium though – after all, it wasn’t that different to the SMAC machine she usually used. Now though, after a brief deliberation by the computer, she was delivered a file of genetic code instead.
Comparing this against the against sample DNA for known viruses it was pretty easy to see when someone was carrying say a common flu virus as opposed to EV.
Within three hours, she had run samples from twelve recent murders. The two men Emma killed in the park (good), Steve’s first kill at the gas station, the four people she read about that Steve killed at a convenience store, two more of his thugs outside her apartment, the police officer who saved her and two (as far as she knew) unrelated deaths.
Further than the people they had identified earlier, it seemed that only the police officer had been infected.
Feeling the net tighten around her, Emma wrote a report and delivered it to Dan. Her one consolation was that local law enforcement had the case and in true BPD fashion were not sharing details with the outside agencies.
Out in the commandeered hallway was a map of known infections, fortunately quite sparse as of the moment. A red pin had already been stuck in the map close to her apartment.
Sighing, Emma went off to a side lab containing only 4 computers to try comparing the EV Virus genetic code to known constructs and tweaks being considered in the private sector. Her working assumption was something that altered human healing so greatly must have been man-made but she couldn’t find any scientific journal entries detailing anything close to this adventurous.
Sitting back, Emma remembered John’s promise to give her whatever answers he possessed. Emma was a long distance from trusting the man but she had to admit, if she wanted to move forward before this situation was out of control he was probably her best bet.
* * * * *
“Starbucks,” intoned John, in a manner completely bereft of feeling. “I still cannot believe we are meeting at Starbucks.”
He looked much the same as last night but was carrying a jaunty little purse under one arm – she felt sure that he would charitably refer to it as a satchel.
“No offense John,” replied Emma while sipping a Soy Latte (some habits die hard, her soy addiction apparently one of them) “But I just do not feel ready to sit in a room somewhere God knows where ALONE with the guy who actively tried to kill me a week ago.”
“Fine but the coffee is on you,” he answered, a bastion of chivalry. Waving pleasantly towards the barista, he furthered – “Well, pay the nice lady.”
Emma did, aware that she was an idiot for doing so. Finding a couple of seats at the back, away from any other customers, they both sat down with their drinks. John had opted for a hot chocolate with such a copious amount of whipped cream Emma was unsure how he could possibly drink it without lathering up his face like he was about to shave.
“So tell me about how all this started,” she asked. She couldn’t help a feeling that time was about to be a precious commodity so she was disinclined to waste it.
“Mmm that’s good,” replied John, a dollop of whipped cream on the end of his nose. “Don’t give me that look, any story worth telling deserves at least the price of a good hot chocolate.”
Chapter 12
“The virus – aren’t they calling it the Emma Virus now? That’s so cute. The virus was man made. The man’s name is – was Derek. Crap should I have told you his name? Fuck it. Derek grew up a WASP outside Boston.”
“What?” he furthered, seeing her questioning look. “Oh WASP means White Anglo Saxon Protestant, yeah?”
“I know what a WASP is, I am one too,” Emma answered exasperated “I just didn’t know I was going to hear a life story.”
“Good stories deserve a beginning,” John answered primly, his feathers obviously ruffled. “His family was nice - bit distant though. He had every opportunity in life but most of the warm squishy feeling of love in his childhood came from his maternal grandmother. They used to play cards together, and he would ‘win’ pennies from her that would later get turned into delicious tooth rotting sweets.”
John made wiggling movements with both hands to illustrate the point, seemingly to simulate the tooth decay damage.
“She would love watching golf on television and he would sit on her lap and suck on these god awful sugar balls for hours on end.”
“Until she got sick. She slowly wasted away while he watched over I dunno probably a couple of years. A couple of years where he watched as his world slowly crumbled and collapsed. Before she died, he had amassed well over a lifetime’s worth of crippling fear at the very thought of death. God was right out, because God doesn’t make sweet old ladies suffer.”
“After she died, he spent a lot
“Fast forward thirty years.”
“Derek was happily married with a son aged eight. On this particular day the sky was beautiful, birds were chirping besides the road leading into his place of work and the brisk spring day held the promise of a gorgeous summer. Derek was walking as he always did having parked in the furthest lot so as to enjoy as much of the outside as possible before being cooped up in a windowless lab for the rest of the day.”
“Did you just roll your goddamned eyes?!” asked John, a little too loudly – obviously incensed.
“Not purposefully” Emma whispered back. “I might have just been falling asleep.”
“I am trying to show you that he was a normal guy!”
“Let’s take that as read,” answered Emma “and move ahead.”
“You’ve had a busy week so I will humor you but seriously, way to ruin the story. So Derek was a geneticist, as you might guess. He worked on meaningless stuff, strawberries that held properties of other fruit I think it was. Taste the same, many more nutrients beneath the surface. That is how it is with medicine - rather than work to create a better immune system or nerves that reconnect after damage your lab gets funded by private corporations and you find yourself cooking up – well a super strawberry.”
“Getting to the building, Derek nodded to the security guards as he passed them – as he always did. Today though on the inside he was sweating. Today was the day, after all his planning, finally today he was going to try his own concoction on the only test subject he could find – himself.”
“You see, for years Derek had been cooking up a custom virus. Originally influenza, he had scooped out a large portion of its own DNA and replaced it with his own custom code. Derek’s Virus would infect a host and rewrite their DNA, changing a host of items. Lifespan, regeneration, boosting mental speed, he had loaded this thing down with all that and more.”
Emma carefully mentally noted all this. The virus was a modified Flu virus, as they had surmised and they had also rightly guessed it was a retrovirus, seemingly. What they had not previously known was some of the payload. She had obviously noted the regeneration but didn’t know it actually affected lifespan. By how much?
Am I smarter? she wondered Have I been doing better at the lab because I am retaining more?
Tuning back in to John, she caught the tale mid-sentence.
“.. Carefully simulated piece by piece he had put this together quietly by himself because he knew as soon as someone found out he would be shut down. What he had created went against every guideline in the book. Not to mention the mass hysteria if word got out. Humanity would be torn instantly into two groups, one wanting to live forever crazed that a solution was sitting in a lab somewhere and the other convinced in the wrongness of thwarting the natural order. Aside from that, how would such an item be distributed? How do you prevent overpopulation when suddenly NO-ONE is dying?”
“Derek knew all of this so he had worked slowly and diligently, using the only virus he could get his hands on – influenza. Not the perfect candidate but when he changed it to no longer allow airborne contraction it proved suitable enough.”
“Taking the elevator up to his lab on the sixth floor, Derek’s nerves had him seeing all the small details he had long since stopped noticing. A slight smell of oil permeated the elevator, which he could still detect even over the overpowering scent of Dr. Hayes assistant, who was also riding the elevator.”
John seems intent on telling this story in its entirety Emma thought to herself I wonder how long he has been practicing it? Is this the first chance he has had to tell the tale of Derek?
Emma settled back a little deeper into her seat, there seemed little point in interrupting as so far it had just made the telling take longer.
“She got off again on floor four and he noted the number flickered slightly as it stayed on. Was it due to power fluctuations or a faulty bulb? Do they even still use bulbs or are they all LEDs now? He wondered about this for a couple of seconds as he passed five and then his mind was all business once more. First off on his floor, he moved swiftly but not hastily to his lab, nodding occasionally to colleagues glimpsed through glass windows. He was struck by how they all looked like specimens at a zoo - or lab rats. How suitable.”
“Reaching his lab, Derek sat in his comfy chair and reviewed notes on small mutations to his fruit DNA. Nothing unexpected under the circumstances but further testing would be required. Still, very promising. If things continued like this they would be undergoing testing in about a year to get their products on the market. He set up a meeting for later in the week to discuss the developments and pushed his chair back from the desk. Careful strides, insides bursting against his ribcage, he moved to his specimen fridge and pulled out from the back an unlabeled sample. Pulling out a syringe he pushed it through the rubber cork and drew a sample. Not pausing for a second, he injected it into his arm and put the sample away.”
“He had to go home sick within 30 minutes. Though it is worth noting he did not suffer anything like you did. From what I gather though it was still unpleasant and lasted for about two days.”
His was different? Emma thought, curiosity piqued again. Why would that be?
“Derek took the next two days off work but by the one following he was mostly better. By the one after that he felt the best he had in years. By the day after that better than he had felt ever. His experiment was a success. I know you are surprised, frankly I was too when I heard it. Within a month he had to wear makeup to give the appearance of age and say he had taken to dying his grey hair.”
“Now he was faced with several dilemmas. He hadn’t dared tell his wife of his plans, knowing she would not approve of his self-experimentation. Further he was not sure if she would agree to the same treatment. He had never dared to bring the subject up; for fear of tipping his hand and now he was concealing all this from her too.”
John snapped out of storytelling mode long enough to look Emma in the eyes. “She was the better part of him you know?”
Against her will, Emma was moved.
“That’s how he always saw it. He was the brains, she was the heart. Thing is she was the brains too and he often overlooked that. She was a theoretical physicist and in my opinion as brilliant as him. Anyway he now had new problems. Should he tell his wife and ask her to take his serum too? Or should he infect her slyly and ask forgiveness? I think the second plan an incredibly bad idea personally. If you are altering someone’s fundamental structure you should ask them first. It’s just polite.”
He seemed to think about that for a moment, putting his head to the side. “Well maybe I can understand after all.”
“In the end the choice was not really his to make. Companies that do genetic testing operate under the strictest of rules and regulations. Nothing gets out. The public would settle for nothing less. There was no way to safely smuggle out his little package, especially as it had to be kept very cold until minutes before being introduced to a host.”
“He spent days trying to think of a solution. He could strap a pack to his arm but he was not sure it would be invisible to the pat down. He could drop it out of a window but the windows didn’t open. It was one day when idly looking at a sample from the antibodies in his own CSF that he came upon a solution, the virus was seemingly alive and well – he could just inject her with that!”
“Now that he had a plan, he told his wife about his self-experimentation. She was at first less than understanding. Over time though she came around and he offered her the same gift. She thought about it for a couple of days and finally agreed. That night they carefully put their son to bed, had a relaxed dinner - and then he injected her.”
“It did not go as well as he had hoped. Her reaction was unlike his, much m
“It was another day before madness started to manifest - a postman never knew how close he came to death as he strolled back down their path while Derek desperately tried to hold his wife behind the front door. This posed something of a problem as she was quickly becoming much stronger than he was. Calming words managed to break through her instinctual needs though and she eventually let him sit her down on the sofa while he took a blood and CSF sample and rushed it to the lab. Luckily for him security is focused on people coming out of the building so he snuck them in without any difficulties and raced at an unseemly pace up to his lab.”
“In his hurry to give Mary his gift, he had overlooked something - you remember how I said the virus was originally based on a form of influenza? Modified to not be an airborne pathogen you will recall. Well it still retained most of the other traits of flu and this is the interesting part. Each year they take the three most virulent strains of flu, make a vaccine to those and that becomes the year’s flu shot. Did you ever wonder where all these strains come from?”
“I can’t say I ever did but it turns out they come from within us. Flu mutates inside living hosts to make the new strains. Well that is exactly happened with Derek’s virus. It mutated. Still gave all the positive effects, more so actually they were all amplified, instead of peak condition his wife would soon become beyond peak - superhumanly fit. ”
“The down side though was pretty bad. Checking the composition of his wife’s spinal fluid, Derek found close to no Serotonin.”
Emma was winded from the mental hit. She felt confused for a moment, remembering no such deficiency when she tested her own blood but remembered she had eaten the brain of the thug the night before – it must have replenished her own Serotonin.
“When I tested my spinal fluid it had blood in it,” Emma asked, remembering the moment when she was first presented the sample of her own CSF by Rob “was hers like that too?” It seemed like an eternity ago.