The Pestilence Collection [Books 1-3]

by Rob Cockerill

  Not only had a specific branch of antibiotics proven helpless in aspects of his dear wife Elizabeth’s demise, but he had also seen a very close family friend fall ill during a holiday in South East Asia, as a resistant superbacteria deflected all known variations of penicillin-based antibiotics and slowly took his life. Stephen Harrison was Chris Smith’s oldest friend, and a fellow Doctor of Science, cruelly taken far too soon by some of the very things he had devoted his life to combatting. He had experienced a long, drawn out and relatively painful passing as the virus took hold, progressed and gradually shut down his body seemingly one critical organ at a time. During these heady days of commonly accepted antibacterials suddenly becoming inferior the world over, Prof. Smith had arguably more cause than most to further their development and potency.

  If only it was the only significant body of work they had ongoing; these were not just heady days in science, they were epitome of intensity. Prof. Smith had barely enough time to devote to research paper 8400C, such was his caseload, hence his late evening shifts to plough on through. When he finally took off the white lab coat in the evenings and retired to his personal quarters, Chris emerged in cords and sweater to study the research papers over a glass of red and very often fall asleep in his fading leather armchair; the doctor within was barely far from the surface.

  Neither was the tension within The Bunker. Professor Smith wasn’t the only one burning the midnight oil and not switching off from the job. Almost all of the facility’s staff were pulling all-nighters, as much as the HR monitoring system permitted, and were doing their homework with one or more drinks of their choice. A culture was fast creeping into the site, one that they all protested was just temporary but that each one of them feared they were falling into for much longer than that.

  14th July 2015

  Sorry Evelyn, it’s been several weeks, and it’s hardly been a labour of love. But I am entrenched in a particularly gratifying project at the moment. It’s such an exciting project, one that I feel I have to tell you about.

  I’ve signed NDA’s (Non-Disclosure Agreements) about this project, and I’ve upheld those throughout, but I’m so proud of what we are actually doing that I want you to know about it. I want you to be proud of me, Evelyn. And in recent weeks I’ve started to think that I might like to be credited some day with being a part of this. I’m sure no-one will find out if I broke an NDA in the immediate term.

  We are working on a huge tissue/cell project which will underpin a radical treatment for the central nervous system – it could cure all manner of diseases in just three treatments, in hospital, and the patient would immediately be discharged and sent home with their integrated nano-tracker doing all the work from there.

  I believe the concept is based upon a tiny nano analytics device, no bigger than a small pinhead, which would be ingested via a short smoothie drink upon admission to the ward. Within one hour of ingestion, it will have entered the bloodstream and be active. From there, a further two-hour wait is involved for the patient to be nil-by-mouth, and the first stage of treatment can begin. Depending on what the condition is exactly, the second stage of treatment can be administered from 3-5 hours later, and the third round is given bright and early the next morning, following a (presumably) good night’s rest and minimum required water for hydration. From there, the patient would stay in hospital for a further two hours to ensure no ill reaction, and be given a light mid-morning breakfast of toast and cereal/yoghurt. After which, assuming no problems, they are promptly discharged and the nano CNS analyser does the rest – feeding the results back into the central NHS cloud every 2-4 minutes. From there, the patient is under constant analysis and preventative medicine and after just one working day, they are free to resume normal activities, whether that is being back to work or playing sports or whatever their inclination (within reason of course).

  It promises to save the patient time, effort and upset, and would undoubtedly save the NHS unprecedented billions of pounds in beds, waiting lists, patient care and monitoring, after-treatment and, of course, long-term treatments. It’s the ultimate preventative measure, as well as the ultimate digitisation project; I believe they will call it, Preventative Nano Telemedicine (PNT). The aim is to ultimately install it in all of us, for complete predictive and preventative care – thereby capable of spotting health concerns linked to the CNS before they even become a problem. It’s like predictive maintenance of machines in industry – Industry 4.0 I think they call it – but to the human anatomy, or a large part of it at least.

  Lord knows how the nano device works, that’s not something I can compute myself, and we only know as much as I have outlined here. That was pretty much the edited gist of what we were given in background white paper notes ahead of accepting the project. Not that we seemed to have a great deal of choice in the matter, though. Several months ago, we were given just 24 hours to collectively review the paper and sign the NDA and agreement (every single one of us had to commit, even if we would not be working on the project) and the courier would be waiting outside in a private helicopter.

  I just know that what we will be working on here could be the single most momentous piece of medical research in my lifetime. But for it to ever be realised, there’s a hell of a lot of work that we have to do here at The Bunker. We’re pulling all kinds of laborious night shifts to get this off the ground.

  We’re so close. We’re so close to being able to successfully manipulate the nervous system, calculate recovery cells or ‘agents’ as we’re calling them, and even structure complex predictive algorithms for future prevention – all packaged in microscopic stem cells. I’m so excited. It certainly makes a change from studying conditions such as hyponatremia or something similar.

  And with that, it’s almost 9:30pm and the lab beckons me again for the final couple of hours of the working day. Until I write again…

  Chapter 3. Breakthrough

  9:40pm

  The locks whirred and the heavy door swung open as Professor Smith, or simply Chris as he had been for the last two hours away from his workstation, returned to the laboratory. His more than able assistant, Dr. Carla Johnson, occupied his test area, studiously peering down the lens of a microscope.

  “I thought you were in the kitchen,” she said, not in the slightest loosening her gaze on the bacterial sample she was evaluating. They had worked in each other’s close company for so long that Dr. Johnson instinctively recognised the inimitable spring in her mentor’s step without looking. “Shouldn’t you be savouring a second glass of Merlot by now?”

  “You know me too well,” he countered. “No, there was a beep earlier, as I was leaving, so I thought I had better come back and check it out. Is everything okay?”

  “Everything seems to be fine. All terminals are online and Steve didn’t mention anything when I first clocked-in. I wouldn’t worry about it, it was probably just one of those software updates,” she reasoned.

  “That’s what I thought,” the professor offered, climbing back into his trusted chemical suit, “I’ll just do a quick systems check though, just to be sure.”

  Professor Smith finished fastening the zip on his protective suit and walked over to the main server terminal, adjusting his glasses to rest further down his nose and surveying the screen before him. Nothing. A tedious few clicks of the mouse and password entries at coded folders returned no glaring errors or misdemeanours. All server and mainframe connections appeared to still be intact and a fairly low-level system scan flagged no apparent problems.

  “Great, everything seems to be in order,” he muttered, before attempting a more social level of conversation. “I see there’s a storm brewing out there, half of Gloucester’s bracing itself for floodwater. They said on the national news just now that the rain looks likely to continue throughout the night.”

  He had caught his junior’s glance, talk of the impending weather system enough to distract her focus from the microscope. “Oh don’t, you know my shift’s up in 20
minutes and then it’s home-sweet-home for me for a week. That’s if I’ve got a home to go to, I don’t really fancy catching up on housework beneath two feet of floodwater.”

  “You could always stay here,” Smith joked, “they don’t call it residential science for no reason. You will have to pop out and re-stock the Merlot though. Or is it the Shiraz that you’re into at the moment?”

  “Professor...”

  “I know, don’t worry I’m only joking, you deserve a break. But if it is flooded outside then...”

  Johnson interrupted, clearly concerned, “No, not that professor. Come here, you might want to take a look at this.”

  “What is it?” he quizzed, “what’s wrong?”

  Dr. Johnson’s trained eyes had reasserted their focus on the cell sample she was studying. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing through the lens of the instrument. This is incredible. Something almost unprecedented was taking shape within the Petri dish as the sample, although microscopic in size, was multiplying and intensifying in structure. Finally, something was happening. Thousands of blood bags, tissue samples and test hours had been invested in Research Paper 8400C, on the face of it to no avail, until now. It was Smith and Johnson’s core project for the best part of four months, following on from many more years of development by previous research teams. The project had almost been abandoned by Whitehall a number of times due to the lack of activity – and results. It was everything to Smith and Johnson, they had worked so closely, so intensely on it, that shifts in the lab could have a tension to them at times, it could be all-consuming. The project had become their prized piece of work, it was their baby.

  Removing his glasses and lowering his head to the microscope, Professor Smith took up Dr. Johnson’s invite and studied the sample for himself. Less than a minute later, he lifted his head back and stood upright. There was a pause as the esteemed chief of science collected his thoughts. He looked troubled. “I don’t understand, how is this possible? This is beyond anything we could have comprehended in the paper. What did you...”

  Johnson interjected, “Nothing, sir. I logged back into the project just over an hour ago, at 8:40pm and picked-up the paper where you had left off. The mainframe gave me the next set of automated coordinates for the project and I began testing the sample as it directed me to.”

  “When was it last modified?”

  “The last structural change to the sample was 22 minutes ago,” Johnson answered, her tone increasingly one of personal defence. “See for yourself, it’s all logged here on-screen...”

  Smith peered again into the microscope, as if in disbelief at what was unfolding right in front of him. Turning to the computer screen, he scrutinised the calculations and algorithms that had breathed such life into this specimen.

  “What’s wrong – you look puzzled,” Johnson asked.

  “I don’t recognise this data, this level of change that the system has engineered here. It seems so advanced. It’s a total step-change to the kind of cell manipulations we have been working on for weeks, months even. It’s as if we’ve embarked upon a huge leap in genetic engineering here,” he explained.

  “I don’t understand? The system is programmed to respond to each set of results that the tests return and then formulates the next logical variation of the sample for us to investigate. What’s so different with this sample?”

  “Come on Carla, you must surely see that on a cellular level, this is almost unparalleled. The cell sample is growing, evolving, mutating right before our eyes. We’ve been tweaking DNA ladders for months on fractional levels, and we’ve had no tangible results – and certainly not the kind of evolution the research paper was designed to bring about.”

  “I get that,” Johnson threw back at her mentor, “I agree this is a huge breakthrough. But why are you so puzzled, shouldn’t we be celebrating?”

  Smith was growing more and more animated. “Celebrating! You think we should be celebrating. My dear Carla, this is no time to rejoice. This is a breakthrough, of sorts, I quite agree. But what we have here is not a tweak to cell structure, it’s a total manipulation of the DNA ladder. Not only is it entirely out of sync with the level of engineering we have been testing, it’s as if this computer here has decided to completely re-write the sequence of this DNA. And that strikes me as very dangerous indeed. So forgive me if I don’t reach for the Merlot just yet.”

  An uncomfortable silence filled the lab as Johnson was humbly put in her place. Smith continued to stare at the computer screen, pausing only to re-examine the cell sample under the microscope. What to do now, he thought. Whether he approved of this new development or was more concerned by it meant, he knew they now had to both document it and act upon it.

  “Well, it seems that we now need the proverbial lab rat,” he said. “We need a live subject to test this on.”

  “I’m on it,” Johnson replied, already reaching for the video camera and necessary cabling to connect it up to one of the laptops.

  With the video set-up and recording to two devices, and a suitably healthy ‘lab rat’ under controlled conditions on a designated workstation, the test began. By this time, the cell has been growing at a remarkable rate, not just expanding beyond even Professor Smith’s calculations, but also appearing to gain structural mass and growing in strength, as it were. Smith almost aborts the live test for fear of what this new DNA might cause, but is duty bound to record official examinations and the findings from their research. Besides which, he knew that if he didn’t carry out the necessary analysis, then his junior Dr. Johnson certainly would. To do so would undermine his position and his endeavour in the name of science. I can’t let that happen, he thought.

  Chapter 4. All for a good cause

  Professor Smith was an eminent fellow in the medical science research community, one of a whole generation of very academic individuals inspired by man’s blossoming progress in medical science. While others around him may have grown up stimulated by the space race or George Best’s right foot, like his peers, Prof. Smith was driven by the desire to further man’s flourish and not only understand far more about the human body, but greatly accelerate that journey. As a young adult finding his way through his Cambridge years, he dreamt of the 21st century and of man having conquered diseases and genetics by the turn of the Millennium.

  Prof. Smith devoted a huge slice of his life to the cause. His beloved partner, and later wife, Elizabeth knew that and accepted it. She had always known that Chris’ passion was his research and shared in his belief for the achievement, so she rarely found issue with the often-long hours or the regular six-day weeks. It’s all for a good cause, she would say to herself. She was content to just enjoy him while she could, and it worked; they found a happy balance in each other throughout their lives together.

  That balance reached a tipping point during the early years of their dear daughter Evelyn’s life. Juggling his all-consuming career with the strains of parenthood and the day-to-day drudgery of housework and other duties was no easy feat. At times it broke Elizabeth, and Chris would have to devote more time to being just that – Chris, and not Professor Smith. He did so with great aplomb, eventually, and they cherished each and every day together as a young family. Evelyn grew up a happy, well-rounded, and academically stimulated young girl as a result; Elizabeth gratefully pursued her own career again with great gusto. As a family unit, they were a formidable trio: loved, contented and professionally fulfilled, right the way through Evelyn’s university years and early adult life. Until that was, Elizabeth was suddenly taken from them too soon, the victim of a cancerous onset so sudden and swift that neither husband or daughter had time to accept or adjust to the inevitable conclusion. Their family tumbled into a tailspin, fractured and torn apart by their loss and the petty familial squabbles that ensued.

  Evelyn resented her father at times, built upon the irrational foundations of grief. Chris couldn’t console himself, he couldn’t accept Elizabeth’s loss. For a mean devoted to
the good cause of science and medicine and biological understanding, it was a particularly galling and all too fathomable blow to endure. He insisted upon a six-month sabbatical that very nearly cost him his career and, occasionally, his life as he dallied with bouts of alcohol abuse and momentary fugues. Evelyn spurned him at times, frustrated by his self-inflicted woes and perceived selfishness. She couldn’t see how he could act in such a way; she didn’t understand. She had begun to find solace in her own life again, her husband Richard had proven her pillar of strength and carving out their own young lives together (in the image of her own mother and father) provided the distraction she so needed to move on.

  In time, and under considerable pressure from his inpatient paymasters, Professor Smith returned to work on secondment at The Bunker and threw himself into it, enrolling on a residential science contract at the facility and leaving the family household largely empty for months at a time. Evelyn couldn’t understand that rationale either; she was perplexed how he could just ‘turn off his emotions’ and devote his life to work again. In her own grieving and frustrations, she couldn’t recognise her own father’s coping mechanisms. For Chris, it felt as though he couldn’t win. With his return to The Bunker, however, his concentration and motivation rapidly returned. His career and endeavor was reborn.