by Hal Bodner
“Can’t I put on a shirt at least? Maybe a light sweater? A ski parka?”
“Quiet. I’m multi-tasking.”
He waddled over to one of a half dozen computer terminals and typed something, his fingers moving like sausages on amphetamines.
“Not that I want to distract you further by complaining, but I’d really feel a lot better if you would concentrate on one thing at a time. Especially since I’ve got this…thing that looks suspiciously like a flame-throwing bazooka pointed at my chest. What the hell is it anyway?”
“A flame throwing bazooka.”
I tightened my muscles and started to tug at the straps holding me in place before I realized he was joking and relaxed.
“This’ll keep your mind off the cold while I’m conducting the test. Lookie here.”
The lights dimmed and a holographic projection appeared in mid-air about a foot and a half above my face, and slightly to my right. I blinked a couple of times and my head swam with dizziness. If my hands had been free, I’d have clapped them to my temples to make sure my brain stayed inside my skull.
“Dammit, Trav. You know how much I hate when you do that. If I puke all over myself, won’t that screw up your data?”
There was a very good reason why Pete and I never went to 3-D movies. Five minutes into the film, I inevitably made a beeline for the men’s room. I don’t think it has anything to do with my odd genetics; I think it’s plain, ordinary motion sickness. I will concede defeat in a heartbeat to the first supervillain who traps me on one of those spinning, whirling amusement park rides. Even the teacups at Disneyland would probably give me a migraine and make me throw up.
“Take a look at this while we’re powering up.”
He flicked a switch and the hologram stabilized. My stomach settled a little but the hovering image was still too close to my eyes. A sick headache threatened when I tried to keep it in focus.
“This part is what concerns me most.” Part of the diagram where the little hexagons and threads seemed to be more densely crammed together started to glow. “I know better than to try and educate you on the details. So, I’ll cut to the chase.” He pointed. “The key is right here.”
A low beep sounded from a console below my line of sight. Travis moved to fiddle with the dials, and he grunted something incomprehensible. He returned to my side and began fussing with the contraption suspended over my torso.
“I don’t mean to be a spoil sport. But it’s disconcerting enough to have that thing hanging from the roof, aimed at me, without you fiddling with it. If you break it, it’s gonna fall. When it falls, it’s gonna fall on me.”
With a snort of irritation, he grabbed the thing and, using his full body weight–which was considerable–he gave it a massive tug. I yelped and squeezed my eyes closed, but when I opened them, it was swaying alarmingly but still more or less in place. Even better, the roof of Ale Mary’s seemed intact. So far.
“Satisfied? And just FYI, since it’s got to be calibrated to the nearest micrometer, you’re just gonna have to stay put until it stops swinging and I can adjust it again.”
“What exactly are you doing?”
“You wouldn’t understand it.”
“Since I’m the one strapped to the torture table, I think I have a right to know. Try me.”
“Torture table.” He rolled his eyes. “You are such a drama queen! I’m testing this new material to see how it holds up.”
“Against what?”
“The usual stuff. Laser beams. Heat rays. Various kinds of radiation.”
“Then what do you need me for?”
He shot me a withering look.
“To see if anything penetrates,” he said, in a tone that clearly communicated that he thought it was obvious. “I suppose I could just drape it over a dummy…”
“That sounds like a great idea.”
“But nothing beats testing under field conditions, as it were. Are you paying attention to the hologram? You asked, remember?”
I bit back a snarky comment and tried not to shiver. I don’t really resent when Travis treats me like some kind of guinea pig except when he treats me like…well…some kind of guinea pig. Even guinea pigs have feelings. They also have built in fur coats to insulate themselves from chilly steel tables whereas I have to content myself with my baby soft skin.
“Hey!” Something about the hologram caught my attention. “There’s a Greene Genes logo on this picture.”
“Huh? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He ducked below the edge of the table, ostensibly to tighten one of the straps that held me in place. But I nonetheless caught a glimpse of his guilty expression.
“You hacked it again! Dammit, Travis.”
“I didn’t use Peter’s access codes. I swear!”
“You better not have. If he gets fired because of something you did…” I left the threat dangling.
“I used a very sophisticated, very stealthy back-door virus. They’ll never know it’s there, let alone trace it. This Feed the World project makes for some interesting reading.”
“How did you get your hands on it? I thought they lost everything when Dr. Harmon was killed in the explosion. That’s what Pete and Gretchen seem to think.”
“They’re not entirely wrong. The project itself is well-documented and Greene Genes still has most of the data, right up until they backed themselves into a corner. Something called Three-Two-Three. That’s what Bradley was working on, and that’s what he was so secretive about. Apparently, he used his own laptop for that. None of that data is stored on the main frame. Trust me. I looked.”
There was little point in my badgering him about it. He knew how I felt about his hacking and he did it anyway. Short of turning him in, there was no way to stop him.
“This is the Feed the World genetic map,” he continued. “If Thanatos has made the changes I think he has, the folks at Greene Genes are gonna give me a medal when I hand all of this ‘lost’ data over to them. Take a gander at this part of the RNA duplication process right here. It just cries out to be altered, dontcha think?”
“Yeah. Sure. It practically screams. Whatever.”
Something new on the hologram started glowing. I had no idea what it meant.
“Now, this part here,” he explained, “is a flaw in the genotype. Well, maybe that’s the wrong word. It’s more of a weakness. A susceptibility. This is what Peter was talking about. It’s the point where the infection or whatever-it-is threw a monkey wrench into the works.”
He suddenly looked very grave.
“The notes I found refer to it as Three-Two-Three. I guess that’s some kind of batch number or experimental lot. Whatever number you wanna give it, it’s a mutation that affects the very genes that make the virus do they very things they designed it to do.”
His fingers whipped across the keyboard and made the floating image blur and shift. I closed my eyes again.
“Could you please not do that? I’m nauseous enough already.”
“Fine.” He shrugged. “If you don’t want to know, and you’re so anxious to get the experiment started, just focus your attention here instead.” He wheeled over a cart with a monitor on top, and positioned it so that I could easily see the screen. It showed a graph with bars representing about twenty different kinds of data. “If any of these go into the red while I’m re-calibrating, your job is to let me know right away.” He tapped the contraption hanging above me with affection. “We just wanna test this little baby today and see if the new fabric blocks the radiation, not turn you into a melted pile of sludge.”
The hologram shifted onto its side. My head spun even faster.
“No rush,” I said. The longer the contraption above me took to warm up, the happier I’d be. “You can go ahead and finish what you were telling me.”
“It looks like they succeeded in creating a virus that really and truly intensifies the nutritional values of food. Had it worked, it wouldn’t have been just a new and better food
source, it very well could have ended world hunger. Unfortunately, the design is flawed. The little bugaboo continues to alter its environment to guarantee its own survival, even after its initial task is done. The result is a more or less symbiotic relationship.”
“You wanna put that in English, Einstein?”
Travis frowned.
“Think of it as a kind of parasite. A cancerous parasite that spreads. Peter wasn’t kidding about the consequences. This Three Two Three stuff is probably the healthiest food on the planet. But the second you try to chow down on normal foods, your body finds itself unable to process the nutrients. In short, you can eat all you want and end up starving to death.”
I tried to look like I understood what he was saying. I also tried to look away from the dizzying hologram so I could keep last night’s dinner exactly where it was supposed to be. The only other place to look was at the screen atop the little cart.
“Uh, Travis?” I squealed, panic blossoming. “Red. It’s turning red. Melted sludge, remember?” I struggled against the straps until I felt his massive paw in the middle of my chest pressing me back onto the table.
“Don’t be such a goose, Alec. I know science isn’t your thing.” He tapped the screen with one finger. “It doesn’t matter if those turn red. It’s the other ones we need to watch. Now, where was I?”
More switches got switched; more levers got levered; more toggles got toggled. The machine above me began to hum. It pulsed and made an unexpected and alarming crackling sound, like when you flip a light switch and the bulb is about to blow. I much preferred the gentle hum. I also would have felt a lot better if the end closest to my chest, the part that looked suspiciously like a gun-muzzle, hadn’t started glowing quite so brightly.
“This Thanatos goon is talking about immediate and widespread contamination. But that’s the part I don’t understand. Even with this Three-Two-Three variant, there’s bound to be a delay What he’s talking about doesn’t seem possible.”
He paused to put on a pair of very dark, very thick goggles.
“You’ve got to give the crops time to grow first.”
“What’s with the goggles?”
“Protection,” he shot back perfunctorily. “Are you paying attention to what I’m saying?”
“I’m paying more attention to the fact that you have goggles and I didn’t get any.”
“Don’t look directly at the tip and you’ll be fine.”
“Are you nuts?” There was a definite squeak in my voice now. “How can I not look at it? It’s got sparks and shit coming out of it! Not that you care, but I’m feeling kinda vulnerable right about now. I’m laying here practically naked while your laser whatsis is revving up to blast me in the chest.”
“That’s what the polymer fabric is for.” He didn’t seem terribly concerned.
“It can’t keep the freaking chill off the table, Trav. Do you honestly expect it to stand up against that thing?”
“That’s what we’re about to find out!”
The glowing tip grew too bright to look at directly. I made the mistake of looking at the screen next to me instead, and I saw that now all of the bars were well into the red zone.
“Holy sh…!!!” I yelled.
There was a deafening crack! I felt a red-hot sledge hammer slam into my chest. I half expected the breath that exploded from my lungs to be super-heated steam. I fully expected that pieces of fried gall bladder and spleen were dripping from my nostrils. Every muscle in my body contracted forcefully enough to propel sprays of sweat from my pores. Had anyone snapped a photo of me at that instant, I swear to God I would have looked like a fountain in a shopping mall food court.
“Unless of course, he’s found a way to spread the virus without bothering to grow the crops first. He might be trying to introduce it directly into the hosts. If that’s the case, we could be in for a whole mess of trouble,” Travis continued, oblivious to my distress. “I’ll bet you a small beer that’s his plan. If not, it’s got to be something mighty close to it.”
“Gurgle, gurgle.” I was trying to figure out how, after almost thirty years of not thinking about it, I’d suddenly forgotten how to breathe.
“I tell you, Alec, this situation scares the bejesus outta me. The consequences of releasing this altered bugaboo could be world changing. You okay, kiddo?”
This time my response was a very distinct “growlf,” with a couple of “awks” and “acks” thrown in for emphasis.
“Knocked the wind outta ya, huh? Hang on a sec.”
An instant later, the numbness in my chest was replaced by an extraordinarily unpleasant feeling in the pit of my stomach. It was a lot like being punched in the stomach by a musk ox wielding an ice axe. It drove out what little air remained in my lungs and, purely by instinct, I gasped and found I was able to breathe again. When my vision cleared, I saw Travis was holding a compressed air cannister that was coated with frost and had wisps of what looked like steam rising from the end of the nozzle.
“Did you just…” I gasped, “…hit me with that?”
“Stay put while the computer’s tabulating the results. If we’re lucky, we won’t have to do it again.”
“That’s just peachy.”
“As I was saying…” He tossed the cannister into a corner where it landed with a clang. “If this virus escapes, millions of people could die and yet…” His voice trailed off and he scratched his head. “When I was watching that video, I got the strangest feeling that Thanatos isn’t a pro. The guy isn’t nearly as grandiose and melodramatic as your typical arch villain is. He strikes me as a newbie. Strictly small time.”
“I didn’t get the idea he was small at all.” I managed a weak leer.
“Try thinking with your brain once in a while, Alec. The big one, not the little one.”
“I am thinking! To the extent that I can after you hit me with a freaking air tank!”
“Not air,” he corrected. “Liquid nitro.”
“Like that makes a difference?” I struggled more forcefully against my bindings. “I would really like to get up now.”
“Not just yet.”
He whipped away the sheet covering me and inspected it for a long moment. When he was satisfied with whatever he saw, he held it up to show me. He looked like a bearded, glandular preschooler hoping the teacher would coo over his first attempt at finger painting.
“Bee-yoo-ti-ful, ain’t it?”
“It’s a sheet, Travis. From this angle, I’m not even sure the thread count is higher than 250. What is this nonsense about Thanatos being an amateur terrorist?”
“I can’t put my finger on why but I get the impression that he doesn’t fully understand the value of what he’s got. Either that, or he hasn’t thought things through very well. His ransom demand would be pocket change to someone like Momma Deadly.”
Travis shook his head again.
“If this mutation is such a big deal, why not ask for a nice round fifty million? Or a hundred? But what does he want? A piddly twenty-seven million. Doesn’t it seem strange, almost like he picked the number out of a hat? If we look at the Feed the World virus as the hammer, twenty-seven mill is a pretty small nail. Unless…”
He paused, lost in thought.
“Unless…?” I prompted.
“Unless what we think is a big old sledge hammer is really one of those itty-bitty ones for pounding tack.”
“I have no idea what the hell you are talking about.”
“What if the virus isn’t really capable of doing any damage?” he explained without really explaining anything at all.
“When you’re finished speaking in tongues…” I shifted my weight from side to side, trying to make the table wiggle. “I’d appreciate it if you could tell me how much longer I need to stay pinioned to this thing.”
“Pinioned?” Travis looked amused. “I know you think using fifty cent words make you seem smarter, Alec. But nobody actually uses the word ‘pinioned’ anymore.”
&nb
sp; “The Aphid did!”
“The Aphid is a psychotic maniac,” he pointed out. “I need to get some control data and then we’re done. In the meantime, we can turn this off. That should make you happy.”
The hologram vanished. So long as my nausea didn’t take its own sweet time following it into oblivion, my day might improve.
“Getting back on topic, what do you mean that the virus might not be dangerous?”
“I’d have thought it was obvious even to someone who uses a word like ‘pinioned’ in a sentence. Thanatos may not realize that his plan was doomed from the beginning.”
I stuck my tongue out at him but he continued unabated.
“According to what I can tell from Bradley Harmon’s notes, it looks like he was very close to finding a solution to the Three-Two-Three problem. He might even have actually done it, though it still remained to be tested. But Thanatos doesn’t seem to know that. So, let’s assume that he releases the mutated versions of the virus into the world.”
“The virus that Bradley fixed?”
Travis shrugged.
“It’s possible, isn’t it? And, if so, what harm would it do?”
“You just said…”
“All Thanatos will have done would be to carry out Jackson Greene’s original vision.”
“You’re saying that everyone would be eating the genetically altered food.” I paused to think through what he was suggesting. “It’s much more nutritious. It’s easier to grow. It’s more resistant to disease. And yadda, yadda, yadda and so on and so forth.”
“Exactly!” Even though he picks on me mercilessly, Travis takes genuine delight when I manage to work things out without being prompted. “The irony is, if Thanatos carries out his threat, and if the virus spreads as quickly as we think it could, what would it matter if everyone gets infected with it? All the food would be infected as well. We could truly see an end to world hunger.”
“So, you’re saying Centerport shouldn’t pay the ransom?”
“Do you know how strange it is that I don’t actually remember your mother ever dropping you on your head as a child? Now, be still again.” He returned to fiddling with his machine.
