The Ares Virus

by A P Bateman

  “So it’s all hypothetical? We don’t know if ARES actually works the way you say it will,” Somerton scorned. “What we have here is speculation. Your antidote is all well and good, but we’re here for ARES”

  Bartlett shook her head. “No. The antidote is always more important. You always need a method of containment,” she paused. “As for ARES, think of it like this; we invent a new type of gun. The powder is different, the shell casing is made of composite, not brass. The bullet is made of a new blend of alloy. Would you doubt its ability to fire by placing the barrel against your own head? No. The facts are there.”

  “But unproven.”

  “You could volunteer,” Isobel had said it before she could help herself. There was a murmur of laughter. Karen Somerton look displeased. “Look, we are experts in our field and we have done all the testing possible at this stage. But what we have found that is really to be celebrated is the cure, the antidote to the most terrible of the world’s diseases. I have no doubt ARES would work out of the bottle tomorrow, but who knows how quickly it could spread? We’ve used the best simulations designed by the best analysts and statisticians the US government has to offer. If deployed in a major capital city ARES could reach a billion people within a month. Given airline travel, train stations, bus stations and the speed at which ARES works…” She trailed off, feeling suddenly very hot under her collar. “It’s unthinkable. After time governments would find methods to contain the virus, mainly because infrastructure would start to fail. But by then it may even be too late. Containment is the biggest factor with ARES. Hence the need for APHRODITE. ARES could be for us what the asteroid was for the dinosaurs; a total species eliminator.”

  THREE

  “Tough break, eh?” McCray sat down, perching himself on the edge of her desk. He was smart forty year old who had probably always looked preppy. For a while Isobel and he had held the same status but he was higher up now. He oversaw each project and was the administrative link between them. He often met with White House representatives and personnel from the pentagon. She had never shown any resentment at his promotion, it took him to a desk and she preferred the research. She considered him a friend. “Come on Isobel, what did you expect? Bunch of warmongers and desk warriors, they don't want to hear you gush about the possibility for a cure for AIDS.”

  ‘‘The possibilities of APHRODITE have barely been tapped into. It’s the building blocks to the unknown. Specialists in other fields could find its application used towards a cure for cancer. If what we have discovered with the development of both ARES and APHRODITE were to be made common knowledge, for free, then who knows where research could take us. We’re at the world’s biggest crossroads and it could not matter more which way we turn.”

  “Honey, I’ve been in the same meetings,” McCray smiled. “I know.”

  “Well what more do they want?”

  “Their weapon,” McCray paused. “And the world can never know about ARES. The US government sanctioning a potential global killer. A new WMD for a new world order? What would our enemies make of that? What might they do to pre-empt any potential deployment? North Korea are twitchy enough as it is. And Russia has been flexing its muscles for years.”

  “They can’t even have their weapon,” she said, wiping her eyes as she leaned back in her chair. She had been crying. McCray could see this and it annoyed her. It had been a combination of emotion, of Professor Leipzig’s death of the reception to her speech, of the fact she knew APHRODITE had not been appreciated. “ARES is a concept, a think tank’s invention, produced by us to be applauded by the men in grey suits and starched uniforms. When would ARES be deployed? And against whom? What we got with APHRODITE is something tangible from a whole load of evil. We’ve pushed the boundaries in what’s achievable and in doing so we have created one of the most important discoveries in medical history. It’s a eureka moment as important as the discovery of penicillin. Professor Leipzig knew this, that's why he called the conference,” Isobel paused. “Only...”

  “Yeah, tough breaks all round,” McCray said. “One minute you're breaking through the barriers of science, the next you’re breaking through the barriers of a road and off a cliff.” It sounded flippant, but he genuinely looked like he hadn’t meant it to. “I’m sorry I mean ...”

  She shrugged. “I know. I just can’t believe it. It hasn't quite sunk in yet. He was a good driver and I’m sure he wouldn’t drink and drive. The police said a toxicology report is unlikely, due to…” she paused, shuddering involuntarily at the thought of her friend and mentor’s charred remains at the wheel of a burned out wreck. “He was ever so tired though. Perhaps he just nodded off for a moment.”

  There was a rap on the door and woman peered around the doorjamb. It was Mary Long, a senior lab technician who was also helping out with guided tours for some of the visitors today. Isobel hadn’t seen her so happy in months. The atmosphere must have been as infectious as the testing samples she normally worked on. “Your public awaits you Isobel,” she smiled amiably. “A few more questions, it won’t take long. A few of us are having drinks at Landon’s afterwards. If you fancy coming along?”

  Finally the suit gets some use. She shook her head. It just didn’t seem right somehow.

  The function room had been built during a previous administration back when the American government had more money. They don’t come as standard in government facilities any longer. The walls were wood paneled on two sides, the other two sides were glass and looked down over the lake. It was a corner room and the architect had made good use of it. Ducks and swans swam not far from the shore of the lake and a large water fountain sprayed an enormous plume of water at the middle. The lake was purpose built and artificial. Lakes don’t come as standard in Government facilities anymore either.

  There were buffet tables along one wall of the gallery room and it was always an in-house joke that you could gauge the importance of the visitors by the quality of the menu. Department briefings and brainstorming exercises were followed by coffee and donuts. If you were lucky you got glazed Danish pastries with a cherry on top. Interdepartmental briefings were usually followed by a selection of open sandwiches, a Danish or jelly donut and a fruit cup if you didn’t care for coffee. This briefing, however, was a pretty good gauge of the demographic. Sushi and sashimi, a selection of savory pastry cases with various fillings, two dressed salmon with cucumber slices for scales and aspic jelly as a glaze. There was a whole table devoted to freshly carved roast meats including some very rare roast rump, a honey glazed ham with cloves, tempura battered shrimps with a variety of dips, as well as a whole table of fruit pastries, mini pavlovas and chocolate desserts with whipped cream. Wine replaced coffee, and the room was humming with attentive chatter as the people mingled and swapped their views on the presentation.

  The project PR woman greeted Isobel at the door and led her through the room to a group of men who were standing by the buffet table and doing their best to cope with large slices of roast meat as they ate and juggled a plate in their other hand. The kitchen had tried to impress, but had ignored the brief of a finger buffet. But they didn’t get to cater like this often and probably relished cooking for White House and Pentagon elite.

  “Ah, Florence Nightingale herself!” The big four star general smiled. “Loved the talk, little lady. Hope I didn’t upset you, but I could see you were well off track.” The voice was southern, Georgian she reckoned. No, North Carolina.

  “No,” she lied. “We have simply developed more than our brief. Professor Leipzig decided to push efforts towards the antidote. Once he realized the true worth of APHRODITE’s applications he maintained that it would be criminal not to. I believe Professor Leipzig to have been a true humanitarian.”

  “God damn irony, right?” General Harris smiled. He forked a huge piece of bloody beef into his mouth and chewed slowly. “Leipzig created some serious shit. I mean, you’re too young to know, but the man was a genius in his field. He was around during th
e Cold War. We poached him from the Brits. He came up with stuff at their facility in Porton Down,” he paused long enough to swallow. “That was their chemical and biological facility. They tested the stuff on their own soldiers. But hey, they didn’t get to rule the world for so long by being nice.”

  “Yeah, but we rule it now.” The voice belonged to a man in his mid to late fifties. He wore a shabby cheap looking suit and his laminated ID badge read: Tom Hardy, and underneath: Strategic Security. Isobel had never heard of it, but for the entire world he looked like CIA. She had been briefed that nobody would be as they seemed today. “This guy Leipzig, he died recently, right?”

  “Yes, two days ago in a car accident.”

  “Too bad.” The man stuffed a large piece of wet sushi into his mouth. He chewed, leaving a little kelp on his lip. “This time of year, wet roads, fall leaves. It happens. Good speech though, I guess it was short notice.”

  “I'm David Law.” A smart-looking man in his mid-thirties held out his hand. Isobel shook it. His hand was cool and firm. She looked him in the eyes as he spoke. “I’m with the National Security Agency. Tell me, what would be the dispersal rate of the virus?”

  “Well, as I said it works fast. Symptoms as early as three hours,” she paused, realizing she was still holding his hand. She let go and picked a glass of fruit juice up off the table. “The victim dies after approximately forty eight hours.”

  “Forgive me, I was listening in there,” he smiled. “What about conditions? Are there factors to consider?”

  “Yes, a number of factors,” Isobel said. “Weather conditions.”

  “Such as?” The NSA representative cut in.

  Unperturbed, she looked at him. He seemed alert, confident. His eyes were cold though. Glacier blue and hard. “Temperature is key, as with all flu like viruses. Wet and warm is ideal. Viruses always favor humid conditions. Wind speed plays a factor as it’s an airborne virus. And then there’s population density. If the population is dense and transient, we could be talking about thousands every day,” she paused. “But it becomes exponential. Like grains of rice on a chessboard. This is why we do not favor ARES as an effective weapon. It is accumulative and extremely unstable. It could come back and bite you on the ass,” she smiled. “Excuse me. But in order to be an effective weapon you need control of the parameters within which it is deployed. Leipzig realized this, but ARES was merely guided into shape. Mother Nature controls a piece of it too.”

  “With all due respect, little lady,” the general smirked. “We are the military experts, not you or your department. If we see ARES as a viable military application then we may have ideas for it that you guys might not comprehend.”

  “And with the greatest respect, general, we are the biochemical experts, not you or your associates. If Professor Leipzig felt that ARES was not an effectively controlled weapon, then I am sure he speaks not only for the entire department but the US government.” She steadied herself. “What Leipzig and his team discovered was a cure, potentially, for some of our most hideous viruses and diseases. Surely that deserves funding and developmental time within the program budget?”

  “Not in this company, no.” Tom Hardy stared at her, the kelp still attached to his lip. He had also managed a sizable stain down his ten-dollar shirt. Wasabi was Isobel’s guess. “The WHO would welcome this development with open arms. However, Ms...” he paused glancing at her left hand for confirmation. She felt like she wanted to flinch at the intrusion. “... Ms. Bartlett, the WHO will never hear of this development, because the WHO does not work for the United States government, and the WHO is not part of the Government Strategic Defense Program.”

  Bartlett did not know this man, nor had she ever heard of his agency, but she recognized the talk and she recognized the feeling of her own helplessness; being talked down to by a bureaucrat with a lot of power behind them. She looked at this man Hardy, but he was already working his way through another piece of sushi and had turned his attention towards the smart young NSA representative.

  After an hour of mingling and repeating much of her speech Isobel left the room and headed down stairs to the restrooms on the third floor. They were not the closest, but that meant she would have less chance of being interrupted.

  The walls were white porcelain tiles with mint green plaster away from the sinks. The floors were black marble. Again, from a time with more budget and less red tape. She stared at her reflection in the wall mirror. It took up the entire length of the bathroom. The faucets were polished stainless steel and she looked down, her face distorted in the metal. The sinks were standard porcelain with black marble surrounds there were twelve of them in a row. Behind her were twelve cubicles, each with a foot and a half of space between the door and the floor. It was an executive restroom and it was fashionably mixed sex. This was fine for most instances, but there had been discrepancies, a couple caught debriefing each other for one, but that was something now laughed about. No, the thing with mixed sex bathrooms was the fact that a girl couldn’t have a cry without it becoming a major incident. Shed a tear and the next male in the bathroom would either run a mile for fear of accusations or would come over all brotherly and try and offer a shoulder to cry on. A girl couldn’t simply let out a PMS induced sob without either having modern new man invade her space, or the missing link crashing down the door to get out. Isobel Bartlett felt no such hormone imbalance, simply the fact that a shitty couple of days just got a whole lot shittier. She pushed the spring-loaded door open and locked it closed behind her. She then put the toilet seat lid down and sat heavily. She was quiet for a second, checked nobody had come in, then felt the tears well within and started to cry softly. Partly was for the loss of her friend and colleague for which she had found no time to grieve, and partly was for her own misery at the briefing and presentation. APHRODITE was something to celebrate. ARES was something to put back in Pandora’s Box and shut the lid. Then throw the thing in the damn ocean.

  The bathroom door crashed open and she stopped sobbing with a start.

  “What the fuck was that about?” The voice was angry. It was as loud as the crashing door. “Fucking bleeding heart!”

  Instinctively, Isobel listened. She raised her legs high, not wanting to be seen and risk ending the conversation. She tucked her feet in under herself, coiled like a cat, tears still on her cheeks. In truth she was scared. Something about the tone of the man’s voice unnerved her.

  “Listen, it can still go ahead,” a second man said. “The virus…”

  “Sshh,” the first man stopped him. “Are we clear?”

  There was a scrabble and the sound of a belt buckle on the marble floor. Isobel imagined a faceless man holding a push-up as he checked for an occupied cubicle.

  “It's OK,” the first man replied. “Go on.”

  “The virus has been destroyed.”

  “What!”

  “Relax. It’s standard procedure. It’s too hazardous to keep here in its mature state. Atlanta has the storage facilities, but they’re out of the loop.” Isobel thought the two voices were familiar but the echo in the restroom distorted everything. She concentrated but she thought the man was also chewing gum or something. Then she smelled it, he was lighting a cigarette. “ARES is stored on two flash drives, in two halves. So is APHRODITE. Leipzig thought it too dangerous to keep ARES in its live state. Simpler and safer to make it to order, so to speak. However, APHRODITE is also held in animated state in ready to inject ampules. A safety measure during the testing of ARES and further antivirus research.”

  “Our investors can’t have one without the other. What about production?”

  “Just need a couple of decent graduates and a place to work.”

  Isobel concentrated hard. There were footsteps, then the sound of a faucet running. A splash of water, probably on a face. The towel rail rattled and then there were more footsteps.

  “Morgan-Klein’s stock will go through the fucking roof if they have the only antidote for what will
be forever referred to as Chinese flu,” a man laughed. Isobel couldn’t tell which through the cavernous echo. “Our investors have been buying stock steadily for months. And shortening stock held in Chinese companies.”

  “When China is on its ass, we’ll buy them back up. US productivity will rise, as will the rest of the west. Factories will relocate, commerce will build and the natural order will be restored once more,” he paused and exhaled a lungful of smoke. Isobel could hear the faucet again he was most probably disposing of the cigarette down the drain. “Our investors are true patriots.”

  “As are we. And between us we’ll have personal wealth more than some European countries,” he chuckled. “What about bleeding heart? Where does she figure?”

  “She'll carry on working on projects here, most probably continue working under Leipzig's replacement. She won’t get his job. She’ll finish out her twenty and retire an old maid, probably with lots of cats.” The voice mumbled. “Leipzig has, or had the two flash drives in his safe. The other two we have access to. By the end of this charade today, we’ll have both sets and things will never be the same again. Thousands infected daily, world-wide threat of a pandemic and countries that will be willing to pay Morgan-Klein billions for the antidote.”

  Isobel tensed, it was all she could do to remain quiet.

  “She had better stay out of the way. Leipzig was one problem too many. He was too long in the tooth to develop a conscience,” there was a pause. “Besides, it would be a shame to waste such a nice piece of ass.”