“Yes. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but, the more I do, the more I realize how odd that was. We have to go back to that afternoon and collect some DNA… hopefully, there’ll be enough from epithelial cells sloughed off in the fluid.”
“Why… I mean, what will we do with her DNA?”
“Sequence it… at least the parts that matter.”
I was attentive, trying to figure out where he was going. “What parts?”
“Her MHC molecules.”
“MHC… what’re those?”
“Major Histo-compatability Complexes. They’re two different types of proteins, one of which is expressed on the surfaces of most cells. A lot of alternate sub-type combinations can exist, and those differences are why it’s so difficult for one person to donate tissue to another person… if they don’t match, the recipient’s immune system just destroys the donated organ. Anti-rejection drugs keep that from happening, but they bring on a whole host of other problems. The odds of a perfect match are astronomical, by the way.”
“Okay… so how is that gonna help her?”
He blew air out of his lungs, as if uncertain what he was about to say would actually work. “We’re gonna change your MHC’s to match hers. You’ll be a perfect bone marrow donor.”
I looked at him, hoping he knew of a way for us to accomplish that. However, even if we did, there was still a major hurdle. He obviously knew what it was without me asking.
“Then, all we have to do is get you back over there.”
Chapter 64
One bridge at a time. That’s what I told myself. First we had to get the DNA.
A pipette with a tip, sterile Eppendorf tube, and a small container of ice appeared in Giddeon’s hands. Boris knew something was up and meowed. I don’t think he liked it when we flashed away, and he somehow knew that the luminous tunnel was coming. In an instant, we were back in Melody’s condo; it was exactly as I remembered it from that day. She and I were on the sofa, watching ‘Ghost’.
I looked to the television and once again saw Patrick Swayze behind Demi Moore at the pottery wheel, shaping that wet clay while music played in the background. Giddeon and I walked over close… both Melody and ‘myself’ were unaware of our presence. However, Samantha was not. I saw her looking back and forth between us, as if confused.
A tear began to roll down Melody’s cheek and Giddeon quickly prepared to collect some of the fluid as my old self reached out to touch the wetness. There was a sparkling flicker as Giddeon sucked up some of the tear into the pipette. I remembered that golden flicker happened when I was over there the original time… I saw it when I reached out to her beautiful, wet face. Samantha looked at us and let out meows and trills; then, Melody held the cat close, just like before. Giddeon squirted the fluid into the Eppendorf tube, snapped the lid shut, and placed it, there, on the ice.
__________
We transported back to my boat. Boris had his ears down and a pained look upon his face as we returned… I suppose it was a bit bright for him. He quickly got over it, though.
“First, we need some blood from you,” said Giddeon.
I sat at the table and he drew a tube, using a syringe and rubber tourniquet that had just popped into existence. When he was finished, he put that tube on ice, right next to the sample from Melody.
“I’ll be gone awhile. No sense in you tagging along.”
“Where are you going?”
“UCSD… gotta make some primers and see if we have anything.”
I didn’t really know what primers were, but I was glad that Giddeon did. I promised myself to be more studious if I ever made it back. A lobster dinner with a steaming baked potato appeared on the table.
“Why don’t you have a nice meal and get some rest. We’ll have a long day, tomorrow… with any luck.”
And, then, he was gone. Not knowing what else to do, I followed his advice and sat down to eat. Boris jumped up on the table and sniffed at my plate. He gave a plaintive meow, settled down across from me, and just lay there watching me pick at my food.
__________
Giddeon arrived bright and early the next morning. I was already up and dressed.
“Got it. It took most of the night, but I have the sequences we need.”
I nodded. “Good… what do we do, next?”
“Now, we educate you.”
__________
We flashed into a lecture room at one of the local colleges. I’m not sure which school we were at, but the room appeared new. Giddeon and I were on a stage in front of an amphitheatre of seats; a projection screen was behind us.
“The first problem we have,” he said, “is that your blood is type ‘A’ positive, and Melody’s is ‘B’ negative.”
“Okay…”
Giddeon turned to the screen, with a clicker/laser pointer in his hands. A PowerPoint presentation appeared on the large, white rectangle behind him.
“You two have different surface antigens on your red blood cells… actually, this part doesn’t matter so much if you’re replacing all of her bone marrow with yours, but, it’ll be good practice. Plus, there are new therapies coming down the pipe where you don’t have to totally wipe out the recipient’s stem cells with radiation… so, you having ‘B’ negative could come in handy.”
He then went through an explanation of antigens, and how antibodies could stick to them using the ends of their variable regions (Y-shaped ends that were different from antibody to antibody) in order to tag something considered ‘foreign’ by the body. Such tagging would cause a clumping, in certain cases, if one type of blood was introduced into a pool of another type of blood. We then watched an eight minute video produced by graphic artists from Harvard, called ‘The Inner Life of the Cell’.
It was a well done piece of work, and Giddeon explained, like a narrator, what was going on in each of the scenes.
Then, for the next forty-five minutes, my teacher related to me the basics of Cell and Molecular Biology. I took it in quickly… there was more communication going on between us at that point than vocals and projector slides conveyed.
Over the past few months of my coma, it seemed as if Gid and I were more and more on the same page with all of our thoughts and emotions… like we were merging, somehow. Becoming more interconnected. So, when he was done with his lecture, I felt pretty much like I had completed a graduate course in the science he had presented.
Next, something amazing transpired.
Giddeon produced the tube of blood he had drawn from me, and set it in a rack on the podium. I then felt a quivering type sensation, and, in a few seconds, we began to shrink… all the while being drawn down towards the tube. The process began to go faster and faster; it was almost like the tunnel of light, again, but just slightly different. In a few seconds we were floating in fluid, which was thick and viscous, with enormous biconcave discs all around us. I presumed they were red blood cells.
We continued our miniaturization process, and the exterior of a red blood cell’s phospholipid bilayer came into greater focus. Giddeon pointed out one of the ‘A’ antigens protruding from its surface; the structure resembled a bizarre type of tree, branched and even slightly green in color. No spoken words were necessary. At that point we were simply communicating telepathically.
“Now, I want you to see a lymphocyte,” I heard inside my head.
We jetted off to a nearby cell that appeared somewhat larger than the RBC… it also had a different surface appearance, from what I could tell. It was more rounded and the proteins scattered here and there in the fluid mosaic of its membrane were more numerable and varied.
Giddeon showed me the MHC molecules and I took note of their shapes and orientations. The Type I molecules were decidedly different from the Type II molecules, and my instructor relayed to me that they both had different purposes as far as the immune system was concerned.
After looking them over, we went inside, through some type of channel, and began to shrink even more.
Deep within the interior, we made our way through a pore and were presented with all of the genetic machinery housed by the nucleus.
Things were looking less and less like the artists in the video had envisioned them… I suppose that was a function of how light interacted with structures on such a small scale. I actually saw DNA wrapped around a long line of histones, which are proteins shaped like spools. Gid explained to me that that was the way the genetic blueprint was stored when not in use… it was circled around histones like rope around boat cleats.
We then went over to an unraveled section, which was waiting for an RNA polymerase to come by and do its thing. ‘Its thing’ was to read the genetic code while zipping along one strand of the DNA… and, while it zipped, it would simultaneously produce a transcript of messenger RNA. That transcript would then be used by other machinery in the cytoplasm in order to make a protein. Before my lecture, that was about all I knew of Cell and Molecular Biology… thanks to a couple of documentaries on NOVA that I had seen, years, before.
I still remember sitting at the restaurant in Seaport Village and contemplating the transcripts inside of Melody… the transcripts and all of the proteins that were produced.
__________
Before long, we went down almost to an atomic level, and I felt, more than saw, the nucleic acids that were bound together in a double helix. It’s hard to explain how they looked, because the atoms themselves can’t really be viewed. They’re fuzzy… more like fields than things. I sensed motion within them. I suppose it was from the peripheral electrons and, also, from Brownian movement inside of the nuclei.
After a few moments, we buzzed along a section that coded for an MHC molecule. The constituents in that section… adenosine, guanosine, cytidine and thymidine… were linked to each other in seemingly random order on one side of the strand, and also, to their counterparts on the other side of the strand. The purines and pyrimidines were ‘holding hands’ by hydrogen bonding with each other across the way… rungs in the ladder of life.
As we went, Giddeon pointed out where the differences were between my nucleoside sequences and Melody’s. Here and there, a base pair glowed, or sometimes, a stretch of them, which helped me see the ones that were ‘incorrect’. Somehow, all of this knowledge went easily into my brain, and, I realized, on an instinctual level, where the differences were and catalogued them.
We went over to where my ‘A’ antigens were coded. I saw what should have been there in order to have ‘B’ antigens, instead. Also, we scooted along the coding regions for the different ‘Rh’ factors, and Gid showed me the ‘D’ factor… that’s the one that gives you the + or – in your blood type depending on if it is present or not. It was all truly mind boggling, and I was just glad to have enough of a mind to be boggled. I was very eager to be learning… because, finally, it mattered. It mattered tremendously.
Knowledge took on a whole new aspect for me… it was no longer just useless factoids to be stored in my brain.
It was a way to save the one I loved.
__________
When we were back I could see Giddeon’s eyes shining with delight.
“How cool was that?” he asked.
“Unbelievable!”
“Did you get it? Did you see the differences?”
“Yes. It’s hard to believe that it all works that way.”
“I know… it is, isn’t it?” he replied.
We left the lecture room and walked down the hall to a lab. Giddeon sat me down.
“We’ll start with the easy one. I want you to concentrate on your ‘A’ antigens. Think of the coding regions and try to make them into ‘B’ configurations. You know the way you’ve kind of got the hang of making pizza and beer appear? It’s basically the same. Except you’re changing things on the inside.”
“I think this is a little more complicated than pizza and beer.”
Giddeon smiled. “I have faith in you.”
He lowered the lights, setting the mood in the room for magic, I supposed.
__________
I closed my eyes and concentrated, thinking about the regions I had seen. My breathing slowed; I saw the all of the ‘incorrect’ molecules in the stretches of my DNA and tried to interchange them with her ‘correct’ sequences. As I relaxed, I could feel something happening, but I wasn’t sure of exactly what it was. After a few minutes, Giddeon drew some blood and quickly set the tube on ice.
“I’m gonna run this, and then go have a look for myself to verify any changes.”
He quickly set up a PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) and popped it into a machine. It took an hour and a half to run, and then, another couple of hours to sequence. We went and had some Bronx Pizza while we waited on the sequencing, which, while we were gone, was being done by the fastest state of the art machine in existence… it hadn’t even been patented, yet. Giddeon took that opportunity to go through more lecture material. By time we were done, I almost felt like I had a Ph.D.
We flashed back into the lab and Giddeon read part of the results. He grunted, and then disappeared into the tube of blood. Within seconds, he was back.
“I have good news and bad news.”
“Give me the bad news, first.”
“You still have type ‘A’ blood.”
“What’s the good news?”
Giddeon picked up the report and looked at the other page. He grunted, again, and smiled.
“Actually, two pieces of good news. First, you induced several mutations in the region, some of them correct. Secondly, the sequencing totally corresponds to what I saw. I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t just see what it was I wanted to see, so I only read half of the results before I went to check for myself. The second half is exactly spot on with my observations, too.”
“Okay, so what do we do, now?”
“We try again. Only this time we don’t have to kill time waiting for the machine to run.”
“Couldn’t we have just gone into the future and read the results?”
He grinned. “Yep, we could have… but, I don’t always trust the future… too many of them.”
He dimmed the lights, again, and ‘showed’ me the sequence we were shooting for by somehow projecting it into my head.
I sat on the floor in a Buddha-type pose, and again closed my eyes. I don’t know why I did that…
It just felt right.
Chapter 65
I can’t tell you how many times I got stuck with a needle over the next two days. Actually, they were just pin pricks, but still there was the little flinch associated with it. Nothing like being burned alive in a nuclear holocaust, mind you, but nevertheless, a little unpleasant.
Finally, we got it right.
I was ‘B’ negative… at least on that side of reality. My blood stayed the same in the rehabilitation facility. Giddeon held my hand up to my face.
“Smell that.”
I inhaled. I did notice a slight difference, almost like cinnamon and clover. “Nice,” I said.
“Hopefully, that’ll carry over with you when you get back. Now, all we have to do is change 6 MHC molecules… the ones that don’t match.”
I hung my head. I couldn’t imagine how many more attempts that would take.
Giddeon patted me on the shoulder. “Not tonight, though. You need some rest. We’ll go have a burger on the deck at The Del and watch the sunset. Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
“I think I’d rather get my tools and start on that.”
He laughed, and the two of us jumped over to Coronado.
__________
We were seated at a low table there on the deck overlooking the Pacific. Two huge cheeseburgers, along with Cokes and fries, appeared before us.
He and I ate in silence, watching the sun as it slowly made its way into the blue-grey ocean.
When the last remnant of it dipped below the horizon, the most beautiful, brilliant green flash colored the horizon… it even reflected off of the small clouds high above us. It was ind
escribable. I had heard about it, but never experienced it.
“The green flash!” exclaimed Giddeon. “Cool. You know… I’ve heard you have to be in love to see it?”
I thought back over the past four years, and, finally, said,
“Yes… that’s what they say.”
Chapter 66
The next 10 days were brutal. I tried again, and again, and again, to get my MHC molecules to change into the proper configurations. Sometimes, I would get one, and then, on a subsequent attempt, find that the one I had gotten to match had mutated. It was like trying to herd cats, only not nearly so entertaining. Have you ever played with a Rubik’s Cube? It was similar to that, except, imagine you’re colorblind and have to randomly turn the 3D square this way and that… then, when you’re done, you have to have someone tell you what the results are.
Coronado Dreaming (The Silver Strand Series) Page 25
