Terraform (an Ell Donsaii story #15)

by Laurence Dahners

  Elle looked a little surprised, then said, “Thanks. That’s a great idea.”

  Simon suddenly interjected, “But isn’t it rather pointless to undertake terraforming Mars if you’re still going to have the radiation problem?”

  “Well, that’s actually the compelling reason we’re having this meeting, even though President Stockton’s, I apologize, a lame-duck. I’m mostly here because I’ve been urged to keep the president informed of possible disruptive technologies.”

  Epaulding frowned. “You think you have something that could shield Mars from radiation?” he said doubtfully.

  “No… We think we have a way to modify humans so they can live on Mars despite the radiation.”

  “Some kind of suit?”

  “A biological modification.”

  Simon broke in with a disbelieving look, “D5R does physics, not biology.”

  Ell shrugged, “Mostly true, but not completely. We formed Quantum Biomed a few years back. It specifically takes on biological problems.”

  “Yeah.” Simon looked like he wanted to roll his eyes, “Headed by Roger Emmerit and Emily Kenner, two physicists. They’re brilliant, but…”

  “We’ve also got associations with a number of clinicians. And with Dr. Regina Barnes at Duke. She’s a geneticist and, with her doing most of the heavy lifting, we’ve come up with a way to modify cells to make them much more radiation resistant.” Ell lifted an eyebrow, “It also, as one might expect, seems to make them significantly more resistant to cancer.”

  Looking dubious, Simon said, “For that to be effective, you’d have to modify every cell in the body. Unless you’re talking about a medication they can take, any genetic modification wouldn’t help us. It’d only do the next generation any good.” He shrugged, “I suppose, if it’s going to take us centuries, or even decades, to terraform Mars, by the time the terraforming’s done we’d have people ready to live there.”

  Softly, Ell said, “It’s a DNA modification. And we can get it into every cell in your body…”

  ***

  Dr. Barnes stepped into the lab for her meeting with her students, including Zage. As she sat down, she glanced around at them and said, “I assume you guys heard the news about our friend Gordito?”

  Zage was unaware of any news himself. He saw the others shaking their heads so decided—whatever it was—it must’ve just happened. He felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Did someone manage to track the website somehow? Am I about to be outed? Then he had a worse thought, Maybe someone’s had a fatal reaction to the vaccine or antibody?

  Barnes said, “Nobel Peace Prize.”

  Zage wondered why she was changing topics without finishing up on Gordito.

  “Although,” Barnes gave a little laugh, “apparently when they tried to make their usual call to the recipient, they couldn’t get through.”

  Zage felt a prickling in his scalp as he realized what’d actually happened.

  “Really?” Alice asked, “Why not?”

  “Gordito does have a phone number, but apparently it always goes directly to voicemail. People occasionally get calls back from some kind of synthetic robo-voice. But only if Gordito thinks the call’s important.” Barnes shook her head in amusement, “The people that run that place are really secretive.” She shrugged, “Secretive or not, I think their role in stopping modified smallpox certainly deserves some kind of major award. The Peace Prize seems to fit the bill admirably.”

  Barnes turned to Carley and said, “So, how’s your…” Barnes eyes narrowed and focused on Carley’s left wrist. Carley quickly covered it with her right hand, but it was too late to deflect Reggie, “What happened to your wrist?”

  “Um, I bruised it…” Carley said uncertainly.

  “I’ve seen bruises like that before,” Reggie said slowly. “Four in a row. Like fingers. Whose?”

  For a moment Carley didn’t say anything, looking embarrassed. She grimaced, “My brother’s.”

  Reggie’s eyebrows shot up. “The brother you looked for so long and hard?!”

  Carley nodded, definitely looking embarrassed now. And dejected. She looked down at her shoes.

  “Did you file a report?”

  Carley shook her head miserably.

  “You’re just going to let him get away with doing that to you?!”

  Carley looked up into the blazing eyes of the professor they all respected. Zage thought she wanted to say, You don’t know what it’s like, but she didn’t. Instead, she swallowed and said, “No… I just haven’t figured out what to do about it yet.” Firming her expression, she said, “But I will.”

  Barnes studied her for a moment, then said, “Let’s go ahead and talk about your research. When we’re done with this meeting, you and I can talk about your brother, just the two of us.”

  ~~~

  When the lab meeting was finished, Dr. Barnes got up and crooked a finger at Carley, “Let’s go to my office and talk.” She turned and left the lab as if it were a foregone conclusion that Carley’d follow.

  Carley did. But she felt a little irritated.

  Once they were in Barnes’ office, the professor leaned back in her chair and said, “Tell me what’s been happening.”

  At first, Carley was reluctant. She felt as if she’d been ordered to divulge personal details of her life. Nonetheless, she started telling the story and soon found it spilling out. Her father’s drinking and abuse of her mother, Carley, and Eli. The murders. Being put in foster care, then adopted.

  Trying and failing to have Eli adopted with her.

  Searching for Eli through college and grad school.

  Her elation when she found him.

  Her disappointment when she realized he was an alcoholic like his father.

  Carley hesitated briefly, then confessed to Dr. Barnes that she’d used the lab’s resources to sequence Eli’s DNA and find that he had a β-Klotho genetic anomaly, type c. “So, I kind of feel like it’s a problem he doesn’t have control of. As if hating him for being alcoholic would be like hating him for being short, or blue-eyed, or something like that.”

  Dr. Barnes sat calmly through this chronicle, listening intently. When Carley wound down, Barnes exhaled long and hard, then said, “Once you get the whole story it’s never as simple as you think it’s going to be. I came back here thinking I should tell you to seek police protection and force him out of your life.”

  Carley said, “Yeah, telling me to do something drastic…” She looked down, then back up, “I already did drastic when I killed my dad. I’ve felt guilty ever since. Sometimes I tell myself he deserved it. Or, that I was just trying to protect my mother—however unsuccessfully. But, now that I realize he almost certainly had the β-Klotho anomaly too… I have to think he was another victim.”

  Barnes tilted her head curiously, “Are there any ongoing trials, trying to treat β-Klotho-c?”

  Carley shook her head dejectedly, “No. It’s a rare anomaly so it’d be an ‘orphan disease.’ Too few patients in the world for any pharmaceutical company to try to push a therapy through the FDA.” She shrugged, “It seems like it could be treated with FGF-21 since the anomaly just makes the patient less sensitive. I briefly thought that, since FGF-21 had been thought to be helpful for diabetes, some company must’ve gotten it approved for that.” She gave Barnes a questioning look, “You know that a doctor can prescribe an approved medication for ‘off-label’ use in a different disease?”

  Barnes nodded.

  “So, I hoped I could get someone to prescribe it to Eli for his alcoholism.” She shook her head, “But it turns out FGF never got approved for diabetes, so it isn’t actually a prescribable drug.” Carley found her attention focused on her professor, wondering whether Dr. Barnes might suggest using their CFPS setup to make some FGF-21 in the lab the way Zage had. If Barnes thought it was okay, maybe Carley’d have the courage to do it.

  Barnes looked musingly out the window for a moment, then said, “I’ll bet companies
like Sigma sell FGF-21, but in tiny quantities for really high prices, right?”

  “Yeah,” Carley said. “It’d be way beyond what I could afford.” She paused for a moment, then asked, “If it wasn’t so expensive I couldn’t afford it, do you think it’d be okay to give it to him?”

  Still looking out the window, Barnes slowly lifted her shoulders and let them drop. “I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s a law against it. Considering all the natural remedies and other pseudo-medications people take, it’d seem there must not be any legal issue. My impression’s that you can take whatever you want. In other words, that the law doesn’t come into it unless you’re trying to sell your useless drug to other people.” She paused, “Maybe not even then since so many companies sell ridiculous herbal preparations. On the other hand, most of those remedies are taken orally or rubbed into the skin, not injected.” She glanced at Carley, “I’m not up on FGF-21. It is a protein that’d have to be injected, right?”

  Carley nodded.

  “So, maybe there’s some rule against injectables that doesn’t apply to all those nonsensical naturopathic remedies? I don’t know.” Barnes gave Carley a hard look, “But I do know you’ve got to avoid being alone with your brother. Just because he’s your sibling, or you feel you owe it to him, or something, doesn’t mean you’ve got to let him hurt you. You owe that to yourself.”

  Carley’s eyes dropped, “I can stay away from him. No problem. That doesn’t make him stay away from me.”

  “Yeah,” Barnes sighed. “And that’s a big problem.” She gave Carley an intense look, “You need a way to protect yourself.”

  “Are you… Are you suggesting I buy a gun?!”

  Barnes looked out her window again, “No… Though I might, were I in your situation. But, I was thinking of something nonlethal like a Taser.”

  “Tasers kill people sometimes.”

  “So does hitting them. Or shoving them off you. Everything kills some people sometimes, even riding around in a car. Well, that’s rare nowadays with AIs doing the driving, but it used to be common.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “You could get some self-defense training too.”

  “I’m not great at athletic stuff.”

  Barnes gave her a look, “Being clumsy and clueless is a lot worse than just being clumsy.”

  ~~~

  When Carley got back to the lab, Alice and Rick were gone. At first, she thought that was good because she didn’t have them asking about her wrist. Then she felt lonely. She walked over closer to the bench that usually hid Zage. When she peeked over it, she found him looking directly at her. “Hi, Zage.”

  “Hi,” he replied, unblinkingly.

  Now Carley felt uncomfortable for coming over to see if he was there without any reason for doing so. “Um… How’re your Alzheimer’s crystallizations coming along?”

  He gave a nod, “I’ve had a breakthrough and now the ones that’re more highly associated with Alzheimer’s are crystallizing more rapidly than the others. But, knowing that doesn’t solve the problem of how we might treat those people.”

  “Oh,” Carley said, stopping to think. It felt good to think about something besides her own problems for a moment. “I guess we could carry out gene evaluations prior to conception, then eliminate or change out genes that result in bad folding. But the problem is that it doesn’t do anything for the people who’re already born, and it especially doesn’t do anything for those who already have Alzheimer’s, right?”

  Zage nodded. “Knowing the gene associations would let us predict dementia, both likelihood, and probable severity. But I don’t know if I’d want to know that I had a disease like that if there wasn’t any treatment.” He shrugged, “Some people might.”

  “Yeah,” Carley sighed, “that’d just be depressing.”

  Zage hopped down off his chair and started around the end of the bench toward her. She suddenly felt uncertain. She shouldn’t hug him, but she didn’t know why else he might be coming around the bench. It would leave them with no physical objects separating them. But, when he approached, he held out his hand as if he wanted to give her something. She reached out and he dropped a small black cylinder into her palm, “What is it?”

  “Pepper-spray.” He gave her a hard look, “In case you need it… You know, if Eli attacks you again.”

  “Oh,” Carley said, staring at the little cylinder. At first, she thought she shouldn’t use it. Then she remembered how someone had used pepper spray to save her from Matt when he’d gotten overly amorous at her party. “Um, how do you use it?”

  Zage showed her how to release the safety, point, and spray. “For practice, you should spray something with it a couple of times when there’s nobody around. You don’t want your first time spraying it to be when you’re already under assault.”

  When she looked over at the trash can, thinking she’d try spraying a little bit into it, he put a hand on her wrist and said, “Outside. With the wind blowing. You don’t want to be trapped in a room with it.”

  “Okay. But how many sprays does this have in it? If I use it for practice, will I need to get another one to use for real?”

  “Um,” Zage said, “It’s port connected. It won’t run out.”

  “Really? It doesn’t seem like anyone should need that much.”

  He shrugged, looking embarrassed. “My mom’s worried about me. Being a little kid out in the big, bad world and all.”

  Carley tried to hand the second one back to him, “Then I shouldn’t take it. Your mom’ll be mad.”

  Now he looked even more self-conscious, “I’ve got another one. My mom bought a bunch.”

  “Still,” Carley said, continuing to hold it out, “you should keep this one today. Give me another one tomorrow.” She grinned, “She wouldn’t want you traveling home unarmed.”

  He didn’t reach out for it. Instead, he laughed, “Believe it or not, I’ve got another one here.”

  Carley frowned unbelievingly, “Really?”

  “Yeah,” Zage turned and trotted around the bench to his area.

  She stretched up to see where he kept it. This let her hyper-acute hearing make out his mumble to his AI. He said, “Another one.” Then a moment later, “Everything’s fine.”

  Without reaching into his backpack or onto his desk, he just turned and came back around the bench toward her, holding up another pepper spray device. “See what I mean? My mother’s really paranoid.”

  Carley nodded. However, she wasn’t at all sure what it meant. Obviously, his AI was instantly delivering a pepper spray device to him through a port. She looked down at the pepper-spray device in her hand, This’s a weapon. What kind of mother’d have an AI holding two of them for her five-year-old child?! Aloud, she said, “Thanks.”

  There was a knock on the doorframe and a large man leaned into the room. His eyes thoroughly scanned the room, then he looked Carley and Zage up and down. Casually. Perhaps too casually, he said, “Is this Dr. Barnes lab?”

  “Uh-huh,” Zage said, to Carley’s surprise, sounding irritated.

  “Is everything okay here? Somebody thought they heard a call for help.”

  “Yep, everything’s fine here.” Now Zage sounded overly bright.

  “Okay,” the guy said, “I’ll check some of the other rooms.” He pulled back out of the doorway and disappeared.

  Zage turned back to Carley. “Um,” he said hesitantly, “my mom also has me taking some self-defense courses. “If you like, I could teach you a few things I’ve learned?”

  Carley was still looking after the big man, thinking he didn’t look like the usual people you saw on campus. More like a soldier or something. And, he’d been checking to make sure everyone was okay, like a security guard or something. But he didn’t have on any kind of uniform or badge.

  Unable to decide what might be going on with the man, she turned back to Zage and studied him for a moment until she remembered what he’d been talking about. She said, �
��I’m not much of an athlete. I probably couldn’t learn judo or anything like that.” She tilted her head, “Besides, I’m a lot bigger than you. We probably shouldn’t be trying to throw each other around, right?”

  Zage shrugged, “Don’t forget, Eli’s bigger than you are.”

  Carley pulled a face, “Yeah, his relative size is hard to forget after the other day.”

  “If you want, we could just talk about effective places to hit an assailant?”

  “Assailant,” Carley thought, finding it hard to think of her brother in those terms. Then she thought that “an assailant” was exactly what Eli’d been. “For instance?” she asked.

  “Well, I assume that you know hitting a man in the testicles—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Carley said. “Everybody knows that one.”

  “And your knee’s usually best positioned to do that, right?”

  Carley nodded, not having thought about it before, but deciding it seemed obvious.

  “You know where the solar plexus is?”

  Carley nodded, pointing at her upper abdomen.

  “It takes a really hard punch or kick to the solar plexus to have much effect, but if you carry it off, it works really well. If somebody’s grabbed you from behind but you’re off center a little bit, your elbow can usually punch back into the solar plexus. Strike as hard as you can though. A weak punch won’t do much.” He gave her a funny look, “I’d suggest you practice striking back with your elbow before you actually have to do it. At least punch back into your mattress when you’re lying on your back. Hard!”

  Thoughtfully, Carley nodded again. She felt surprised to have a little kid instructing her in self-defense. But, she reflected, she was almost always feeling astonished by what this kid could do.

  Zage talked about stomping insteps on people who grabbed her from behind. “And then there’s the head,” he said, telling her that even fairly light blows to the nose or Adam’s apple could be disabling. “Gouging eyes can be pretty effective when someone’s grabbed you. Hitting the chin shouldn’t be the objective like a lot of people think. What you’re trying to do is accelerate the skull in any direction. Sudden acceleration’s what produces the concussion. By all means, strike the chin if you have to, but hitting his teeth will hurt your hand. Hitting the forehead or the side of the skull works just fine for knocking your assailant out.” He looked at her arms, “It takes a really hard blow to drop somebody though. You might not have the upper body strength for that. But,” he brightened, “if you get a chance to send a knee to the head…”