Z-Minus (Book 5)

by Perrin Briar

  “It’s Major Edwards,” Richard said.

  “Major who?” Susan said.

  “Major Edwards,” Richard said. “I was meant to introduce you to him before you give your speech.”

  Susan was relieved they had a chance to change the topic of conversation before she took to the stage. Major Edwards shook Richard’s hand, and then Susan’s.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Major Edwards said.

  “The military,” Susan said. “It’s about time you guys showed up.”

  She said it jovially, but her tone had a sharp edge.

  “We’re not always the most punctual,” Major Edwards said affably. “But we get the job done. Eventually. I look forward to your presentation today, Dr. Scott.”

  “Major Edwards is one of our top strategic military minds,” Richard said. “He’s taken a personal interest in our research. Since the very early stages.”

  “Not too personal, I hope,” Susan said. “We wouldn’t want our research to be used for nefarious purposes.”

  “Then we’re on the same page,” Major Edwards said.

  “The major is about to begin training Special Forces soldiers to enter hostile territory and retrieve valuable information and intel,” Richard said.

  “That’s very… noble of you,” Susan said. “Still, a pity our trillion dollar military wasn’t better prepared to deal with the recent Ebola outbreak.”

  Major Edwards turned his eyes on Susan. They’d seen a lot, those eyes, and he clearly knew a challenge when he heard one.

  “Alas, we were only able to send in a small contingent of soldiers and a large medical force,” Major Edwards said.

  Susan blinked.

  “I… didn’t realize we sent so much aid,” she said.

  “We didn’t, Dr. Scott,” Major Edwards said, an icy smile on his lips. “I did. I look forward to your presentation.”

  He turned and was welcomed by the hand of someone else.

  Richard led Susan toward the stage. He sidled up close, and for a moment Susan thought he was going to kiss her. She felt a hairline crack of disappointment when he didn’t.

  “What are you trying to do?” Richard said.

  “Just some harmless fun,” Susan said.

  “Your ‘harmless fun’ could result in the loss of millions of research dollars,” Richard said. “Try to keep it under control, will you?”

  Susan opened her mouth to respond, but Richard was no longer beside her. He was hobnobbing with the walking ATMs. For some reason, that made her even more angry. Susan gritted her teeth, seething with rage. She was ushered to the side of the stage.

  Backstage was a hive of activity. Final preparations were still being made. Susan felt like a spare wheel. She gathered herself. She needed to exude confidence, to be charming, to speak slow and calmly.

  A stagehand slipped a microphone into Susan’s lapel.

  “Speak, please,” she said.

  “What should I say?” Susan said.

  “That’s great,” the stagehand said. “Notes?”

  “You already have them,” Susan said.

  The stagehand worked at a laptop and brought up Susan’s speech files. Susan had practiced it ad nauseam. She doubted she’d need the teleprompter, but it never hurt to have a plan B. Better safe than sorry.

  A sound engineer took to the stage and spoke into the mike.

  “Please take your seats, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, voice booming like the word of God. “The presentation will begin in one minute.”

  Susan looked out at the people below, milling like angry wasps. Business buzz buzz.

  Susan wished she was at home with Amy, curled up on the sofa watching one of her Disney films. Susan smiled. The thought slowed her heart rate.

  “…please join me in welcoming Dr. Susan Scott,” the engineer ended.

  He led the applause. The crowd followed suit, like a troop of trained seals. Susan took to the stage.

  It seemed to take forever to get to the lectern. She turned to face her audience. The lights were hot and blinding. She smiled. She hoped it came across as winning. She opened her mouth and her words began to form.

  10:05 am

  “The human genome project took ten years of intensive work, cost two point seven billion dollars, and required the expertise of hundreds of the world’s greatest scientists to collaborate over thousands of miles and numerous time zones. Today, we can achieve the same in just two weeks, with a single sequencer, for one thousand dollars. But without those early steps we would never be crawling now, and believe me, that’s all we’re doing. But even to get to that level we’ve had to rely on our ingenuity. First, we had to speed up our computing capacity somewhat.”

  Susan clicked a button. The first slide came up. It was a basic X-Y chart. Development on the vertical axis, time along the horizontal. Two diagonal lines rose together, entwined, beginning from the 1950s.

  “Moore’s Law. He predicted, accurately as it turned out, that each year our computational ability would double. And that appeared to be the case, and would remain so… until the day we required faster computational power.”

  Susan pressed the button again. Another slide. This one showed the fifteen years of Moore’s Law from 2001. The lines diverged at wider and wider intervals as the years passed.

  “This is our actual computational power development. We required these machines to solve advanced mathematical equations, to make complex simulations, and process data on a scale and speed we’ve never required before. We’re inventing new technologies all the time, new fields of expertise to explore new worlds. We’re making more, larger breakthroughs. In this next century we will develop more than we have in the past 10,000 years. It’s a bright future, but not without its dangers.

  “In the not-too-distant future a terrorist in a cave in Afghanistan will have the resources to hack into our systems and change, alter and destroy whatever he chooses, all with a one-thousand dollar laptop. Meanwhile, nations fight for control of land that has no significant value, other than the fact they believe an invisible man in the sky has promised it to them. Biological warfare is a real and dangerous threat, and it needs to be combated.”

  Susan pressed a button, and the slide showed Archie, up on the fifth floor of their facility.

  “Meet Archie. An intelligent computer system that can sequence a genome within eight hours. With the right infrastructure, a network of Archies across the globe, we will be able to send information about dangerous pathogens instantly. Outbreaks can occur all over the world, at any time. Viruses will not stop evolving, and neither must we in our defense against them. Now, finally, we have a weapon that will disarm viruses. Scenes such as this,” images of the Ebola virus, of the Black Plague, Spanish Flu and its sufferers flashed up onscreen, “will be a thing of the past. We can’t stop fundamentalists and warmongers from creating deadly viruses and unleashing them on the world, but we can make their attempts less effective.

  “Archie can create an antivirus to any dangerous strain presented to him, a kind of DNA chef that picks and chooses the right chemicals and compounds to create an organism with the exact opposite properties of the virus. In effect, creating a cure. By the time a virus gets to us, we will already be inoculated against it. And we can administer medicine to those already infected.

  “You might be asking yourself what it is that we need. We have Archie, and a few locations around the world, but what now? What we need is a truly global network, so any disease anywhere with the ability to breakout can be tracked and uploaded online as quickly as possible. We need one of these devices in every city in the world, then, in every town, and finally, in every home. The more we have, the more coverage we give ourselves, the safer we’ll be.

  “With this technology we will have essentially made pandemics obsolete. Any questions?”

  11:17 am

  Susan stood in the garden, letting the silence and fountain enfold her in its calm embrace. Crickets chirruped from hidde
n speakers. Colleagues walked by, heads bowed in low conversation.

  Susan’s presentation had been well received, so far as she could tell. She got lots of nice comments from the audience afterwards. Her presentation hadn’t been long. She hated drawn-out affairs. Better to hit fast and hard. And avoid the science – they wouldn’t understand it anyway. Plus, it was dull to the layperson. That was the problem with most teachers. They always thought other people were equally interested in their chosen field as they were.

  Susan sneaked away after the compliments had been administered, and let Richard handle the connections logistics. He was a far better salesman than Susan, who tended to be too honest and speak her mind.

  Susan just wanted to get home to Amy. The thought of her made her smile. She would be with Rosario, playing, learning, napping. It was a valuable thing to know your child was in safe, capable hands.

  “There you are,” a voice behind her said.

  “Keep your voice down,” Susan said.

  Richard crossed the foyer to meet her.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” he said.

  Susan folded her arms and tapped her foot.

  “Well?” she said.

  She was nervous, skipping the pleasantries.

  “Well, what?” Richard said.

  He couldn’t keep his face straight. He broke into a grin.

  “Quit teasing!” Susan said. “Is anyone interested in taking our project global?”

  Richard looked Susan over and pursed his lips.

  “We have full funding,” he said.

  Susan wrapped her arms over her head and crouched down. A whine escaped her lips like she was in pain.

  “Are you all right?” Richard said.

  Susan sprang up, leaping in the air, holding her arms in a V.

  “Yes!” she said.

  Then she started crying. She hugged Richard, pulling him closer than she meant to. Richard hesitated, and then put his arms around her. They stood there, rocking gently side to side. They’d worked a long time for this day, this moment.

  A pair of scientists in white coats saw them and scurried away. Let them look and gossip. Susan liked the idea that to any passer-by they would have looked like any other couple, in love. But they weren’t, not any longer. She felt sad. They pulled apart.

  Susan smoothed invisible wrinkles in her dress. Richard cleared his throat.

  “You managed to scare them enough that they are willing to pay whatever it takes to make themselves feel safe,” Richard said as if nothing had happened between them. Perhaps for him nothing had.

  “But this isn’t just for us,” Susan said. “It’s for everyone, all over the world.”

  “And it will be,” Richard said. “There’s no way to fully protect ourselves without having the facilities we need in every city in the world. It’s going to be a global enterprise now. And you and I, we’re going to be spearheading it.”

  “You’re serious?” Susan said, still unable to believe the good news.

  “I am,” Richard said.

  “I thought we wouldn’t get the funds we needed to go global for another few years,” Susan said.

  Richard grinned.

  “I told you there were a lot of people with money in there,” he said. “Turns out they were very impressed with your presentation.”

  Susan beamed, but then it faded from her face. She frowned and turned away.

  “What?” Richard said. “What’s wrong?”

  “It was too easy,” Susan said.

  “You call negotiating with the people in there easy?” Richard said. “I suggest you try it.”

  “What’s the catch?” Susan said.

  She turned back to look at him. Looking at Richard now, she could see there was something on his mind, something he didn’t want to tell her.

  “Richard?” Susan said.

  “Catch?” Richard said. “There is no catch.”

  “Nobody gives you this amount of money without some provisos,” Susan said. “Who gave the majority of the funding?”

  Richard looked away. When he turned back, Susan saw a little boy who’d eaten all the chocolate his mother had told him not to touch.

  “No,” Susan said. “You didn’t.”

  “They came with the best offer,” Richard said. “Complete autonomy on the project. We can design and expand faster than we expected, and do it our way. We’ll be calling the shots.”

  “You know what the military is like,” Susan said. “As soon as their management changes, so will their terms.”

  “It won’t be like that,” Richard said.

  “It’s always like that,” Susan said.

  She folded her arms and looked away.

  “We can’t accept their money,” she said.

  “You’re seriously willing to jeopardize the future of our project for the sake of a power struggle that probably won’t happen?” Richard said. “Look at what they’re offering us. There are military bases all over the world. We can install Archies in all of them, creating a network. That’s what we wanted. And when the technology catches up – and it will – we will expand outside the military.”

  “If they’ll let us,” Susan said. “You said we’ll call the shots, but we won’t. We’ll just be liaisons on the project that we founded. We’ll be throwing everything away.”

  Richard’s expression broke then, a tightening of his lips, a turning down of his eyes. Susan thought back over what she’d said. He believed they’d done the right thing in working with the military. How could that have had such an effect on him?

  And then she realized.

  Just as she had a taboo she disliked talking about, so did he. It was another one of their unspoken off-limit subjects. They’d broken both in one day. Must have been a record. Since the day they’d split up, at least.

  They’d said anything and everything to each other that day, all the things that’d simmered beneath the surface for years, all the little things that had felt insignificant, and probably were, until they’d given them voice. All said on the dreaded day of the divorce decision, forgetting the next day they would have to report for duty again, and work side by side.

  They’d both turned up, of course. They were both too bullheaded to do any differently. They’d ignored what’d happened the previous night, ignored the fact Richard had stormed off, staying who knew where.

  Severing their emotional ties from their work had been surprisingly easy, and though Susan found herself admiring Richard in a way she hadn’t for years, she concentrated on her work, and on Amy, of course. And that was the topic she’d accidentally broached.

  We’ll be throwing everything away. That was exactly what Richard had done that night. Thrown everything away.

  Susan decided she’d just ignore what she’d said.

  “It’s the military,” Susan said. “They’ll use it to create weapons.”

  “I have Major Edwards’ word they won’t,” Richard said.

  “His word,” Susan said flatly. “And that’s enough for you?”

  “It’ll be in writing,” Richard said. “I’m not a complete idiot.”

  Aren’t you? Susan almost said, but she reined herself in. This was the first real argument they’d had since he’d left her and Amy. Susan could feel the ripples of that argument seeping into this one, poisoning it and making it about more than the military.

  “We should be celebrating,” Richard said. “Not arguing. We’ve got what we always wanted.”

  “What you always wanted,” Susan said.

  Her true meaning was left unsaid. I wanted something more.

  Richard sighed and turned aside.

  “Some things come easy to us, others hard,” he said.

  “I never understood what was so hard about loving our daughter,” Susan said.

  Richard flinched. Let him.

  “Loving her the way she deserves,” Susan said, “the way all dads should love their little girls.”

  “You know why,�
� Richard said, his voice tight. “I wish… I wish we’d developed this technology five years earlier. Maybe then… Maybe she…”

  “Don’t,” Susan said.

  She turned away. She was ashamed to admit she’d had the same thought before, but there was a difference between thinking it and giving it voice. To admit it out loud was like admitting she wished Amy wasn’t the way she was, and that was something Susan could never do.

  But Richard had a stubborn set to his jaw. He was going to say it anyway.

  “Then we might have been able to prevent the Zika virus from claiming Amy’s higher brain functions,” he said.

  Susan bristled. She disliked anyone pointing out Amy’s limitations. If history had shown the human race anything, it was that greatness did not come from someone’s limitations, but how they reacted to those barriers, and despite the odds, overcoming them. But some limits were easier to overcome than others. A child born with brain deformity faced tougher challenges. Life would be harder for her, but not without its pleasures.

  “We get by,” Susan said stiffly.

  Richard took a deep breath and let it out.

  “Come back to the party,” he said. “They all want to speak with you.”

  He didn’t sound much in the mood for a party. Susan certainly wasn’t.

  “I should be getting home,” she said. “To our daughter.”

  She waited for Richard to head back into the research facility before she crossed the road to retrieve her bike. She wanted for him to turn and look back at her, but he never did. She realized she’d left her helmet inside and was still wearing her black dress and heels. Never mind.

  She got on her bike and cycled across the road. She didn’t want to run the risk of running into anyone else today.

  1:17 pm

  Susan almost ran into two joggers and a car on the way home. Her mind was distant, ruminating on subjects she’d prefer it ignored. She felt hollow, empty. The only thing that mattered was Amy.

  She was her guiding star, her anchor. The world could shift and turn upside down, but so long as she focused on her daughter, she was centered. If Susan didn’t have Amy, she wouldn’t have anything. But she was also the reason Richard had left.