When they finished dressing her burns, Christina checked out of the hospital against medical advice and returned to her lab. Remnants of police tape still hung around the door. She tore them down and with a heavy heart entered the once-welcoming space. There was no one to greet her. Piles of papers and broken equipment were strewn around the site of Mickey’s struggle with Trinley. She did her best to clean up without soiling the bandages on her wrists.
While she worked, she thought things over. It was so unfair. Dr. Chen’s antibiotic could prevent the plague from releasing greenhouse gases, but only in petroleum already pumped to the surface. The E. coli isobutanol could gradually replace petroleum as a transportation fuel, albeit at a high cost. But neither of these two brilliant technical accomplishments could save them from plague-infected oil fields, or from a sudden, nationwide sabotage of the fuel system.
There had to be another way.
What would Dr.Chen do?
In an attempt to channel her mentor’s spirit, she went into Chen’s office. She sat in his chair, something she’d never done before. His handwritten notes illustrated his unique script, a tidy fusion of Chinese character brush strokes and English block letters. Absently, she flipped through some stacks of journal articles, searching for inspiration. She found his lab book, where he recorded the details of the experiments he’d done on the mutant Syntrophus bacteria. Christina read these notes with interest, especially the sections where he summarized his thoughts. The sentences had a warm familiarity about them. As she read, it felt like he was speaking to her. Dr. Chen was gone, but maybe it wasn’t so far-fetched to think she could consult him after all.
The lab notebook revealed the work of a meticulous, original thinker. Much of what was written Christina already knew from her collaboration with him. But some of it was new, such as his hypotheses on the natural composition of microbial communities in petroleum reservoirs. Chen speculated that the diversity of life in these extreme environments was far greater than many realized. Every possible niche ought to be filled by some microscopic organism perfectly adapted to the strange underground world in which it lived. Like the surface world, in the underground world there would be competition and evolution, predators and prey, scavengers and decomposers. The bacteria in that world would even be plagued by plagues.
Viruses.
Christina set the notebook down and let her thoughts wander. Dr. Chen believed the oil-eating bacteria had natural predators—viruses that could kill them. What if he was right? Antibiotics were merely chemicals that acted as poisons or growth inhibitors; they had to be manufactured, delivered, replenished. In contrast, viruses were living things—unimaginably small, but alive nevertheless—and when they killed, they reproduced. You didn’t have to make them. They made themselves.
Eagerly, she flipped through Dr. Chen’s lab book to find any references to viruses that infected Syntrophus. To her delight, she learned that he had done some experiments on this subject. She devoured his notes and plunged into some published research papers he referred to.
Three hours later, she burrowed into one of the lab’s freezers and found the most precious three hundred microliters on the planet.
The geologists were breathing down Ramirez’s neck.
“You told me earthquake prediction isn’t precise,” Ramirez argued. “Now you’re saying you’re certain?”
The USGS scientist explained. “Weather forecasting is error-prone, too. But what we’re seeing on the San Andreas and several other faults in the area is comparable to tracking a hurricane approach over the Gulf. I can’t predict exactly where it will make landfall or how strong it will be, but I predict that a storm will strike. The pressures in the region are utterly unsustainable. Something has to give.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“To minimize loss of life, an evacuation may be appropriate.”
“Are you fucking kidding? Evacuate L.A.? On foot?”
“The northern parts of the city are at greatest risk,” she said. “At the very least, perhaps people could be moved from older structures into new or retrofitted shelters.”
“That would be a massive task even under the best circumstances. I doubt my government can handle it. We’re immobilized and understaffed. Not to mention underfed.”
Molton had a suggestion. “You could announce a voluntary evacuation. Give people a chance to weigh the risks and decide for themselves.”
“Totally impractical. Can you imagine the pandemonium? Tens of thousands—or more—homeless people wandering around? Who’ll provide security? What will those people drink and eat? And where should they go? We’ve got earthquake faults in every county.”
“South,” the geologist said. “Right now the plague gases seem to be concentrated in the north.”
“All right, so we tell everybody in the San Fernando Valley to walk to San Diego. Most of them will take one look at the outside temperature and say, forget that. Some will panic and head out unprepared and collapse two miles from home. Then the rest will start looting,” Ramirez said. “We need another option.”
He drummed his fingers and tried to think creatively.
“Gas buildup is what got us into this situation, right? Is there some way to release the gas? Drill holes or something to bleed off the pressure?”
The geologist reflected on this suggestion. “The drilling process would be dangerous. And slow. Not to mention expensive. But in theory, it could be done. The oil companies have the technology.”
Ramirez clapped his hands. “Let’s make that theory a reality. Molton, get the CEO of CaliPetro on the phone.”