Machine Sickness
Peri Dwyer Worrell
Copyright© 2017 Peri Dwyer Worrell
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations included in critical articles and reviews. For information, please contact the author.
For Steve
Table of Contents
I.Valediction
II.Red Ring
III.Microbiologists: You Can Dress ’Em Up...
IV.Bohai Platform
V.Not the Avon Lady
VI.Best Laid Scheme
VII.Not Candid Camera Either
VIII.The Windup. The Pitch!
IX.Ferry Tale
X.TGIF
XI.Sand in Shoes
XII.Heads Up!
XIII.What Happens at the Beach...
XIV.Just Another Breakdown
XV.Fully Upright and Locked
XVI.Moving Out.
XVII.You Have the Right
XVIII.Spaß und Spiele
XIX.Hey Now, You’re a Rock Star!
XX.My Stuff!
XXI.See What’s on the Slab
XXII.Eureka!
XXIII.OCD
XXIV.At Sea
XXV.The Length of the Handle of the Pump
XXVI.Still Beats the VA Clinic
XXVII.Gotta Get that Gasoline
XXVIII.In Whom We Trust
XXIX.Burn After Reading
XXX.White Rabbit: The Interview
XXXI.Guillotined
XXXII.A Flea and A Fly in a Flue
XXXIII.Body at the Door
XXXIV.Fancy Meeting You Here!
XXXV.Improv
XXXVI.Material Girl
XXXVII.Not Bad for An Old Guy
XXXVIII.Unconditional
XXXIX.Door Closes, Window Opens
XL.Root Beer and Everclear
XLI.90% Of Life Is Showing Up
XLII.Better than Nothing
XLIII.Love Strange
XLIV.Don’t Shoot or I’ll Move
XLV.Sutokata
XLVI.It’s Only Natural
XLVII.Ozarkified
XLVIII.Now You Tell Me
XLIX.Intervening
L.You Didn’t Want to Use That, Did You?
LI.Road Trip!
LII.It’s Always the Quiet Ones
LIII.Best Served Cold
LIV.Pastoral
LV.If You Want It Done Right...
LVI.What a Coincidence!
LVII.Would I Lie to You?
LVIII.Can’t Quit Now
LIX.Honor Among Thieves
LX.For a Season
LXI.Fly Away Home
LXII.Loose but Lucid
LXIII.Constellation
Science Fiction— Caution: contains real science.
I. Machine Sickness
I.
Valediction
She startled: angry voices through the half-open door: a blustering, unmistakably irritated older man’s voce basso, and the higher, sharper, nasal voice of her assistant, Tim. Ignore them. She set her jaw. She needed to blow this presentation out of the water, come hell or high water! She clicked rapid-fire through her slides on the computer, willing herself to see them for the first time.
Click! Things she loved. Click! Things she hated. She loved microbiology with an aching passion bordering on rage; she loved the progression from dispassionate scientific process of elimination to the inspiration, cultivation, and tinkering (however much her colleagues hated that word!) to yield a finished, living technology. But within the stodgy, constricting edifice of academia, there was no way around being forced to follow way too many rules, suffer way too many fools, and do way too many things she utterly and completely hated.
To wit: presentations.
Deirdre Davis had unrelentingly practiced, but public speaking still fed her insecurities like the warm summer-afternoon thunderstorms of Northern Florida cultivate creeping patches of mold and twining Virginia creeper on walls and fences. She tried her audience in their underwear, but DD was prodigiously detail-oriented and got distracted picturing what each spectator would wear. Matching lace bra and panties on her? Boxers on that guy? Torn cotton hipster and tank top? Colored briefs, or tidy-whiteys? She’d never reached the psychic fulcrum of ease at the podium. She felt small and squeaky, despite her average height and build. No matter how often she practiced the timing on her jokes, the punchlines tripped over the tension in her voice and fell flat. She took a deep breath.
From outside the door, the deeper voice: “I just need to talk to her for a moment. She’ll be furious if she learns you turned me away!”
Unlikely, DD thought. She didn’t recognize the booming voice with its distinctly Midwestern accent. It has to be someone new in town; she thought, it doesn’t take long for most people to pick up at least a slight drawl in Tallahassee. Despite being the capital of the teeming, diverse populace of Florida, Tallahassee had more in common with Birmingham than it did with Miami. Live oaks dripped curling grey Spanish moss; azaleas detonated magenta in the springtime; on suburban side roads, shops posted ammunition prices on their outdoor signs; and a little further out of town, signs hand-scrawled in spray paint on plywood advertised “HOT BOILED P-NUTS.”
She sat up straighter in her lumpy University-issued chair. What time is it? She had half an hour before her planned escape. A car trip to her new lab in Houston, then back by way of Baton Rouge, where she’d give the talk. DD dragged the presentation onto her thumb drive and pocketed it.
She glanced around her cramped office, her eyes ticking from stack to stack until she was sure she was forgetting nothing. She stepped heedlessly over a variegated nest of writhing insulated cables. Her office, like all the sciences’, was in one of the University's timeworn brick buildings, handsome and elegant, but ill-suited to the needs of a wired age (unlike, say, the luxury office space attached to the new football stadium), and so the floors and walls were encrusted with plastic cable covers and aluminum conduits, flashing wi-fi routers and boosters tucked like cockroaches upside-down under shelves or perched like vultures atop “EXIT” signs.
She froze and eavesdropped. Tim was a door dragon guarding her time. Finding an assistant like him early on in her career had been providence for DD; he staved off the endless bureaucratic distractions of a large research university with ruthless efficiency—so lucky to have him! He was smart and meticulous enough to all but write her grant requests and research proposals for her. And this! This was the fun part: listening to him deploy his razor-keen deportment to give someone the bum’s rush who badly needed it. She smiled quietly, repressing a snicker as he spoke.
“Really?” Tim answered the visitor. “That’s odd, because she ordered me to let no one in to speak with her. What institution do you represent?”
“Now, you don’t have to make life difficult…” began Mr. Midwest in a conciliatory tone.
“YOU are the one making MY life difficult, Sir,” Tim interrupted. “I’m afraid I must insist that you leave. You are more than welcome to give me your information now, or not; that’s your decision. I’m sorry,” head toss, slight smile, “but you aren’t going through that door.” That whipcrack in his voice even as he “Sirs,” “sorrys,” and “welcomes,” is enough to make people want to punch him.
“Fine,” the older man relented. “Here’s my business card. Let her know it’s an issue of major importance.”
“Thank you, Sir. Have a wonderful day,” said Tim, his tone suggesting he’d prefer the visitor fall into a trash compactor rather than have a wonderf
ul day.
DD’d gotten many complaints about Tim’s curt manner and found him prickly and cold herself. She’d tried to break the ice multiple times, talking about music, games, or family. Once years ago when he was new, she’d invited him to lunch. When she arrived at the restaurant, he was already there. He sat rigidly at the table with its red-checked cloth, nostrils flared, bolt upright, almost quivering. He’d brought a mini-legal pad, and one of the distinctive razor-tip markers from his desk (which he insisted—insisted!— no one else touch). On the first page of the pad, he’d neatly written the date, and under that:
“1.”.
That “1.” was as far as he got. It was also as far as DD got, prying fruitlessly at his shell. Although DD was nobody’s diplomat (Mom, may she rest in peace, said I was “always one to call a spade a goddamn shovel”), she could bond one-on-one with most people, but not with Tim. The department’s garrulous web page designer, Ward, referred to him as, “That poor unhappy bastard.” She was especially curious about why he’d dropped out of a pre-med program in which, his recommendation letter said, he’d excelled. But she couldn’t argue with Tim’s performance: once he’d learned the ropes, not one grant had been turned down, not one study design had been returned for major revision, and any materials she needed were at her fingertips almost before she asked. In the four years since he’d been hired, she’d rediscovered what it meant to have personal free time. If she’d to smooth over a few ruffled feathers now and then, so what? A sensible trade-off in my eyes.
Before which eyes now, Tim held out a business card, presenting it formally with both hands, even including a tiny, almost imperceptible bow of his slender torso. DD accepted it with an unconscious nod herself.
“Hm. Nice card.” She fingered it. Heavy linen stock, color logo with subtle foil accents, embossed lettering: PMZ Therapeutics, Minneapolis address. “What did Mr., uh, Fleck want?”
“He wouldn’t say. I told him I was your assistant and he could tell me anything he could tell you, but he wouldn’t.” Tim flung his hair off his forehead dismissively.
“Good work, Tim. He can e-mail or write if he legit needs something.” She shrugged. “Did the grad students get the cultures packed for the trip?”
She hadn’t heard of Fleck’s company, PMZ therapeutics. It wasn’t unusual for private biotech firms to try to recruit each others’ star researchers, and DD was considered tops in her specialized field of xenobiotic degradation. But they didn’t usually go about it by cold-calling in person at their intended candidate’s office. She shrugged. I’m happy in the South; I hate cold weather. She’d spent time in Bemidji, Minnesota, studying the Lakehead oil-spill site as part of her Masters’ degree, and she’d been miserable from October to April. She remembered with vivid horror the sensation of taking a deep breath and feeling her nose fill up with ice crystals. They would have to offer her a choice position and a thermospheric salary to have a prayer of luring her back to the glacial temperatures and spiteful winds of Minnesota!
Besides, DD was already—finally! —getting rewarded for her years of hard work. As her reputation improved, she’d been able to negotiate her terms of employment beyond the usual academic bargaining stance of “take it or leave it.” In her last contract with Florida College University she’d retained patent rights for specific types of innovations, and one of them was panning out superbly. Ever since the Deepwater Horizon spill, investors were keen to fund improvements in green technology for oil clean-up, and for once in her life, it looked like she was in the right place at the right time. She was leaving that same afternoon, with her back seat full of cushion-packed culture plates in insulated boxes start her new lab at Amrencorp, an oil company headquartered in Houston. But it all hinged on selling the technique to the C-suite suits at Amrencorps’s annual leadership retreat in Baton Rouge: hence the dreaded, but obligatory, presentation.
“All packed up and labeled,” Tim said. “I put the biohazard labels on myself.” DD nodded. Even though she wasn't shipping the cultures this time, just carrying them in the car, he’d put the usual triple-circle biohazard warning labels on them anyway, from force of habit or out of his characteristic perfectionism. The biohazard labels were mandated when shipping any living material by mail, though in this case, there’s no good reason to label them as hazardous at all. These bacteria were simply genetically-modified variants of bacteria found in the soil in at least ten billion locations on the planet, right outside most people's doors.
“The tickets...” began DD.
“...E-tickets, hotel reservation, and car confirmation sent to your phone and e-mail. Here are the paper print-outs.” He magically produced a stack of paper from nowhere, neatly stapled together, with a Post-It on top saying “DD Houston Trip October” in his own neat handwriting. DD smiled. She thanked her lucky stars again that Amrencorp had agreed to hire him to accompany her, and that Tim had agreed to move to Houston.
“Thanks, Tim!” She paused to look him in the eye sincerely. “I appreciate our good working rapport. I don't know what I'd do without you!”
“Struggle,” he smirked, turning on his heel and tossing his head again.
True enough.
II.
Red Ring
Amit Viswanathan removed his bifocals and rubbed his eyes, displeased at the interruption. He was genetic biochemist, an internationally-renowned legend in his somewhat-circumscribed field, the first to be awarded a patent for a microorganism in both the U.K. and the U.S.A. He sat on the Stockholm Environmental Council, the NATO Industrial Advisory Group, and advisory boards for both the N.I.H. and N.R.C. He’d received awards from ten different national governments and been published in more distinguished academic scientific journals than he cared to count.
So, why did some clinician in China think Amit could help him with some dirty-needle problem at his local hospital? The caller was apparently very persistent.
“Alright,” Amit told his secretary Juni via the intercom, “I will speak to him. It seems that is the only way to get him to stop calling.” He picked up the handset on his corded desk phone, turned his back on the pressing documents from the Gujarat CRISPR-Cas9-based recombinant-vaccine project, and let his gaze wander over his office’s expansive view of Chicago’s broad boulevards, as yet free of snow but scourged by the already-snapping autumn winds.
“Hello, this is Dr. Viswanathan.”
The slight, stuttering lag and tinny, distorted voice confirmed the call came from far away, carried around the world by fiber-optics or beamed between satellites, perhaps both…who knows, nowadays?
“Doctor Viswanathan, I am Doctor Chin. I ask you help me.” Great, not fluent in English to boot, and I know only one word of Mandarin, nῐhăo. Too late in the conversation for that.
“Yes, Dr. Chin. What seems to be your problem?” He made his voice soothing, abetted by its lilting, residual British-Indian accent.
“Dr. Viswanathan, thank you help me. We have problem—” series of incomprehensible sounds from the connection, “infection nosocomial. Pseudomonas putida 45 patients infection. Urine tract, pneumonia, peritonitis, septicemia.” Static crackled with a high-pitched faint buzz behind it. At least the Latin medical terminology is the same in all languages.
“I understand you to say you have p putida infections at multiple sites in multiple patients, some life-threatening? Is that correct?”
“Correct,” the crackling voice said. “Best way pseudomonas putida?”
Stifling his irritation, Amit realized he did know something about it. He answered, “I believe there was a prior outbreak in Japan, perhaps fifteen years ago. I recall seeing the article, but I’m not sure where it was published.” Don’t confuse him, simple words for a basic English speaker. “I remember, broad-spectrum beta-lactam antibiotics worked well in that outbreak.”
“Broad-spectrum beta-lactam?” Crackle, crackle.
“Broad. Spectrum. Beta. Lactam.” Slowly and distinctly.
“Thank you, Dr. Vi
swanathan…advice this matter.” The Chinese took a breath and seemed about to say more, but Amit cut him off.
“You are welcome, Dr. Chin. Good luck.”
Amit was annoyed as he hung up. He wasn’t a physician. He’d no desire to be one. This Chinese chap was a good illustration of why: like most health-care workers, he imagined his time was too valuable for him to waste it doing his job properly. If he’d bothered to search online for p putida infection, he would surely have found the article himself.
Amit considered searching the literature himself, just out of curiosity, and to confirm his vague memory was correct. But he was running behind already on the vaccine project. P putida rarely infected humans, so it was a novelty when it occurred, which was, perhaps, why it had stuck in his mind. Amit was quite familiar with p putida because it was the organism he himself had genetically modified to create the first patented living thing in history. Amit wondered briefly why the Chinese doctor was able to find the literature linking him, Amit, to p putida, and then to locate him in Chicago, but was at the same time unable to find the article about beta-lactam antibiotic treatment himself. It must have taken a bit of sleuthing to track down his office number. Strange.
But anyway, that was over with. He turned to his desk and was almost instantly engrossed in the bureaucratic minutiae of the Indian Department of Biotechnology.
III.
Microbiologists: You Can Dress ’Em Up...
Lafayette, Louisiana is not a prime resort spot of the Southeast.
She kept her eyes peeled, watching the rear-view and side mirrors for changes in the people hanging around the gas station she'd been forced to stop at, the gauge almost on E. The name of the place was Quick Stop N Go. The two old guys in baseball caps sitting on plastic lawn chairs, sipping from paper bags, were obviously no danger. The kid (too young for adult jail and court) sitting on a milk crate by the compressed-air dispenser was just returning from his third casual stroll, each stroll taken with a different friend, in the ten minutes she'd been there.
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