the Miracle Strain (aka The Messiah Code) (1997)

by Cordy, Michael

  "Of course. Why?"

  "Your socks don't match."

  He looked down and saw she was right. He was wearing one blue and one brown sock. "They're not meant to match," he said. "They're a special pair."

  Holly just raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, right."

  Tom stood up and kissed her on the cheek. "No really, Hol. I can prove it."

  Holly narrowed her eyes. "How?"

  He couldn't resist a grin as he moved to the door. "Because I've got another pair just like them."

  He heard her groan, "Daaad," but Tom managed to get out the door before the pillow reached him.

  By six-thirty Tom was driving through the gates of the GENIUS campus, his discreet police tail not far behind. He normally liked to be at his desk before six-fifteen, but seeing Holly awake had been a welcome break in his routine.

  He drove the Mercedes into the underground parking garage and noticed it was virtually empty. He smiled when he saw the lone bright green BMW convertible parked in the first available spot. He had a running joke with Jazz to see who could be in earliest and whoever won invariably took the prime spot to prove the point. Occasionally Jack Nichols would get in at some stupid time and park his car there, just to tell them he could be up with the best of them, but most days it was between them. Usually he won. But not today.

  He got out of the car and walked to the stairs that led to the atrium. Before the shooting he would have run up them, but now he only walked. He refused to take the elevator out of principle.

  It was quiet save for the hollow click-clack of his heels on marble. To his left, through tinted glass walls he could see Jasmine wandering around the main computer room. Leading to her from the atrium was a door of black opaque glass marked: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SECTION--AUTHORIZED ENTRY ONLY. The IT Section, along with the central atrium and the Hospital Suite, occupied the ground floor of the GENIUS pyramid.

  He returned her wave and walked to the middle of the atrium. Here, reaching up to the apex of the pyramid, was a thirty-foot-tall multicolored hologram of the DNA spiral, rotating on a circular holo-pad. As he often did, Tom disobeyed the sign beside it and stepped directly into the three-dimensional image. He looked up through the spiral staircase rotating around him and marveled at the multi-colored rungs of nitrogen bases. Standing inside the double helix that carried the code of all life never failed to inspire him. This to him was the real information superhighway, along whose route most secrets that mattered could be unraveled. Shaking his head in fresh wonder, he stepped off the holo-pad and headed for the Hospital Suite to the west of the atrium.

  Pushing open the door, he found himself in the small, cheerfully decorated waiting room with its adjoining rest rooms. Ahead were a pair of swinging doors that led to the experimental gene therapy ward and the fully equipped operating room beyond. Approved by the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, the ward had ten beds. Fully funded by GENIUS, it was staffed with four doctors and ten nurses, one for each bed. Two of the doctors were on paid sabbatical from the NIH. Both of them were charged with ensuring the cross-fertilization of ideas and best practice--plus of course checking that GENIUS obtained the necessary Federal Drug Administration and NIH approvals for all experimental treatments on their human guinea pigs. He valued the NIH doctors' presence and hid nothing from them. Well, almost nothing. He hadn't shown them the IGOR DNA database yet. He was sure that despite his motives, the National Institutes of Health wouldn't approve of that.

  Tom opened the door and smiled at the sunny room that greeted him: yellow walls, curtains of cornflower blue, houseplants, pine beds in semiprivate cubicles. All added to the impression that this wasn't a ward at all, but a large bedroom. However, that wasn't what made the place so special, and Tom so proud.

  The ward was unusual because patients could qualify for a bed here only if they met one stringent criterion: They had to have less than three months to live. People came here when chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and all other treat ments had failed. This was literally their last resort. It was where they came to have their genes reprogrammed.

  Tom had initiated the ward to ensure that his scientists in the labs upstairs saw the direct application of their work, and never forgot that medical research was meaningless if it didn't help save human lives. Many of the terminally ill patients still died, but a significant few had missed their stop and kept on living. Back in early 1999 the first accredited cystic fibrosis cure through gene therapy had happened in this room. As had the first recorded successful gene therapy trial for Huntington's chorea a year later. This modest ward had seen more than fifty people's lives saved in the last nine years. Plus countless more throughout the world as a result of what was tested here.

  Only six beds were being used at the moment. Five of the patients were asleep but he wasn't surprised to see that Hank Polanski was sitting up talking to the head nurse, Beth Lawrence. Today was a big day for the twenty-three-year-old farmer from North Carolina. The FDA had finally approved their new treatment and this morning Hank Polanski was to be injected with the HIV retrovirus that caused AIDS.

  The patients were mainly treated by the other doctors, simply because of his laboratory commitments. But Tom still couldn't help regarding each and every one of them as his own personal responsibility.

  Nurse Lawrence, a tall prim-looking woman with a surprisingly open smile, was busy fitting an intravenous drip into Hank's arm. When she looked up she greeted Tom warmly. "Good morning, Dr. Carter."

  "Morning, Beth. Morning, Hank. How are you feeling today?"

  Hank turned his pale face to him and gave a defiant grin. "I'm still here, Doc." When he spoke he did so with a breathless wheeze.

  "You ready for the treatment?"

  Hank nodded nervously. He was a volunteer for the experimental gene therapy, but Tom knew he had no choice. Hank had lung cancer and would die without radical treatment. This involved inserting genes into Hank's tumor cells, genes that would tell the immune system to kill the tumor. Cancer cells are cells that have rebelled against their strict genetic orders, and are growing out of control. To put down this revolt Tom had to make sure he killed all, or virtually all, of the tumor cells. To do that he needed a vehicle to get the killer genes into the rebel cells without harming the good ones. That was where the HIV retrovirus came in.

  Retroviruses could enter a body cell, incorporating their own genetic instructions into the cell's healthy DNA. Like cruise missiles, retroviruses could be reprogrammed in the laboratory, their harmful code turned off and good genes inserted. By neutering the genes in the HIV retrovirus that attacked the human immune system, and putting in special therapeutic genes, the killer that caused AIDS could be tamed to cure lung cancer. Tom and his team had proved they'd made the retrovirus harmless. It had been successfully loaded with genes to target and kill cancerous lung cells. All that remained was to test the genetically engineered retrovirus in a human.

  "What are the risks again?" asked Hank, trying not to look frightened.

  Tom put his hand on Hank's shoulder and rested it there. As always he was careful to be completely honest.

  "One risk is that the retrovirus goes AWOL and invades a healthy cell, and then inserts the genes into the wrong part of your genetic sequence."

  "What would that do?"

  "It could give the healthy cells cancer too. But the odds of that happening are very, very small."

  "Could I catch AIDS?"

  "No, we've tested the retroviral vehicle--or vector as we call it--over the last three years, and we've proved that it's harmless. That's why the FDA sanctioned it. Frankly, Hank, the only real risk to you is that it might not work." He felt the bony shoulder shrug beneath his hand.

  "So I ain't got zip to lose, then?" asked Hank.

  Tom paused for a second and looked into Hank's eyes. He remembered him first coming here three weeks ago, the once fit outdoorsman already so weak he could barely walk. "I ain't good at being sick," he'd
explained then. "So kill me or cure me. But just get me the hell outta here." The man had been willing to try anything as long as he could get out of his bed and the hospital.

  "Let me be completely straight with you, Hank," said Tom. "The chances of this treatment failing are high--perhaps eightyfive percent. But the odds of it making you worse are minimal. And the chances of you surviving without it are zero. So you have a choice. One, you do nothing and let the disease take its course. Or, two, you do this and have a fifteen percent chance of being cured."

  Hank frowned as if thinking, then wheezed, "Fifteen percent?"

  Tom kept his face impassive. "At best."

  Hank smiled, a big grin that lit up his thin face and made him look almost well. "I've had worse odds."

  Tom returned his smile. "So have I. I've seen people with far less chance than that walk out of here. So don't give up on me just yet." It would take many weeks, months, even years before the results were conclusive. But Tom didn't care how long it took, if he could only keep death's greedy hands off this young man for a while longer. He turned to the nurse, who was hanging a drip bag on the stand by the bed. In the bag was the first batch of red retroviral serum that had been cloned in the upstairs lab.

  He said, "Right, Beth. We'll wait for Hank's mother to arrive. She said she'd be here at seven. Then could you get one of the NIH doctors to check what we're doing? I suggest Karl Lambert. When you've done that, come and get me and we'll start the first intravenous drip. Okay?"

  When Beth nodded, Tom could see the excitement in her eyes. He felt quietly confident about curing Hank. He only wished he felt as confident about the infinitely more complex cancer threatening his daughter. Bob and Nora had said they'd be ready to check the retrovirus they'd developed to combat glioblastoma multiforme at nine o'clock. He checked his watch; only two more hours to go.

  Across the ground floor of the pyramid Jasmine Washington was spending the first half hour checking around her domain. Soon, the keenest of her staff would start arriving, and she liked to have some time alone with her machines.

  She walked through the Experimental Genescope facility. This facility was similar to the one upstairs, where Holly's genome had been read. Except here there were only four Genescopes, and all were upgraded experimental models. The two on the right were holo-models equipped with the prototype Gene Genie software. Jasmine was confident they would be up and running within the next few days.

  Again she felt the conflicting emotions stir within her. Four days ago she and Larry had taken Holly to the classic Disney animation movie The Lion King, and as always they had laughed and teased each other, but Jasmine had been unable to stop thinking about DAN's verdict. She was proud of the Genescope's ability to predict disease, especially when it could be prevented or cured. But if all the invention could do was predict misery without offering any solace, then it didn't seem so very clever.

  She sighed and walked through the Genescope facility, passing the main IT office suite on her right, with its silent workstations and terminals. She opened the chrome and glass door in front to reveal a large dazzling chamber. This room was the heart of her IT department, and the information heart of GENIUS worldwide.

  It was in this cool, all-white space, referred to simply as the White Room, that Jasmine liked to walk and think. Kept at a constant fifty-five degrees, it contained four enormous boxes that hummed away in the center. Two of the four large boxes housed Big Mother, the large protein-based ultracomputer that was linked to all the Genescopes in existence. This mother brain knew at any one time what scans were being conducted by its "brood," anywhere around the world. And it was Big Mother that allowed the existence of the database that resided in the other two boxes: the Individual Genome Ordered Repository--IGOR.

  The ethical guidelines on gene scanning were rigorous. Genomes could be tested only if patients were accompanied by their doctor, or had professional counseling. Strict matching checks were used to ensure that an individual couldn't have his genome scanned without his knowledge. The other major guideline was that all scans should be kept strictly confidential. The life and health insurance companies had frequently tried to challenge this, claiming that if an individual discovered that he had an imminent incurable disease that individual could take out extremely high insurance coverage at standard premiums. The law, however, was adamant that the privacy of the individual was paramount. And this was why Jazz and Carter were so keen to keep the database secret. IGOR was strictly illegal.

  The Individual Genome Ordered Repository had been Tom's idea. He had asked Jasmine to tell Big Mother to pull off one in five of all gene scans conducted by the licensed GENIUS Processing Labs around the world and store them in a database, along with the names, addresses, and family and medical records of the individuals concerned. There were now over one hundred million people on IGOR, and GENIUS knew more about them than they did themselves.

  Tom's motives were far from sinister; he wanted to use the database at a macro level to validate much of his genetic work--checking trends of actual medical illness in families versus genetic markers for the illness. IGOR had helped validate much of the work that led to the cure for schizophrenia and had given vital clues to treating other genetic diseases. However, despite this worthy intention, Jasmine had no doubt that if any of the individuals, or relevant authorities, learned of the database they would be horrified and GENIUS's credibility would be seriously compromised. But Tom had judged that the benefits outweighed any potential threat to the particular individuals and to his company. So he had taken the risk.

  After walking around her domain, Jasmine returned to her computer and began her daily cyberpatrol. She clicked on the computer. With a processing speed of 100 terahertz, 600 gigs of disk space, and 200 gigs of RAM, it was easily powerful enough to cruise the fast lane of the congested information superhighway. The computer monitor flashed into life and a virtual reality head, the spitting image of Jazz, appeared. The Afro hair and fine-featured dark face almost matched her own reflection in the screen. The image greeted her with a: "Salutations, Razor Buzz. Where are you going today?" Even the synthesized voice sounded like her own.

  She rarely used it anymore, but the Razor Buzz tag was a throwback to her youth in L. A., when she had been an irresponsible net head with a sharp attitude and a haircut to match. If her strict Baptist parents thought they were keeping her out of trouble by banning her from the streets and allowing her to kick up her heels on the information superhighway, then they were mistaken. She had chosen the anonymous User ID of Razor Buzz because a lot of what she did in those days wasn't strictly legit. Still, legit or not, back then she was something of a legend.

  She spoke into the microphone. "Today, I'm on patrol."

  "I need the code before you can go on the road," said the talking head.

  Jazz smiled. The password she'd chosen this week still gave her an adolescent kick. It was the name of a job that harked back to the bad old rebellious days before she went legit and won scholarships and Nobel Prizes--to when she could hack into everything and anything. This job wasn't "Accountant," or "Doctor," or even "GENIUS Information Technology Director." No, this job was cool, seriously cool.

  "Cybercop," she typed, enjoying playing the ultimate poacher turned gamekeeper.

  The head on the screen suddenly donned a helmet, did a double flip, and saluted her. "Special Agent Razor, you are nowfree to roam the infobahn. Take care out there in cyberspace."

  She reached across the ordered desk for her can of Diet Coke, and considered her destination. Most days she would try to break into one of GENIUS's technical or financial systems. She employed two other guys to try to breach these protected databases, highlighting weaknesses and suggesting better protective measures. Both guys were good, but she still liked to check for herself how good her defenses really were. Today she would try to hack into their most sensitive and best-protected database--IGOR.

  She ignored the world wide web, because none of the GENIUS syste
ms were visible there. Instead she tapped out the number of Big Mother, intending to hack into the live connection used by all the Genescopes to feed data into the mother brain, and then into IGOR. Almost instantly the front-end screen appeared demanding a password. She punched in yesterday's--she had purposely not looked at today's.

  "Access denied" flashed up on screen.

  Good. The password had been changed. The data was secure from her.

  Or should be.

  She'd have to find another way in. She pressed the keys on the board in front of her, trying to get around the front-end title screen, which gave no information about what IGOR contained. She would still not be in the system once she'd done this, because she had designed IGOR to have two levels of security--one to prevent prowlers from browsing the front-end menu and one to stop them from accessing the data--but at least it would be a start. She tried the easy tricks first, the ones known to all high school cyberpunks. First, she tried to find it by interrogating the program behind it.

  No joy. All the simple breaches were closed.

  Good. So far.

  She moved on to the next approach: using the base computer language to reprogram the password commands. This was more difficult and took years of experience. If you put in the wrong program code you could damage all your other software.

  She did it without thinking. It took her a little over four seconds to try this technique. But then Razor Buzz was a supremo, a cyberlord.

  Nothing. No breach. Her team had covered this angle.