Polymerase chain reactions, DNA tests, microscopy profiles, and a few other procedures later, and Crimsy emerged a close enough possible relative to cyanobacteria that Dr. Levitt was talking First Paper.
“Brandy’s dying to get his science-shattering hypothesis in print,” Dr. Shonstein said during our weekly faculty meeting, now featuring another absentee attendee: me. “Problem is, how do you test, ‘this bacteria is the progenitor of all life on Earth?’”
“Gotta get Crimsococcus home, right Bex?” Dr. Brando said.
“Are we allowed to say that now?” Marcum asked. “Home?”
“Home away from home, at least,” Shonstein said.
Made sense. We would never know if and how Crimsy adapted to life on Earth if we could never get her—on Earth. Would she evolve into a cyanobacteria like Prochlorococcus, or more realistically, display subtle microscopic changes that at least suggested such a thing was possible, and therefore, might have happened billions of years ago?
“What’s new on the relative humidity front?” Dr. Cooper asked.
So far, not much. We were exposing colonies to changes in barometric pressure, humidity, and other weather variables.
“Last panel of slides includes our weathered colonies,” I said.
“Bill—anything to add?” Dr. Levitt said.
“Not on the science front,” Dr. Marcum said.
“Any other fronts?”
The conversation paused.
“The philosophy front,” Marcum said finally. “The ethics and morality front.”
“Sounds serious.”
“It is, rather. Jennifer has limited time and ability to do work that could, what—change the course of science? Just finding Crimsy did that. What she’s tasked with doing is much bigger, now.”
“Of course.”
“So when are we gonna end the charade?” Marcum asked.
“Here here!” Shonstein interjected.
“Really?” Levitt said. “That’s how you describe this? That young woman’s work, dedication, risk?”
“I’m here, guys,” I said. “That young woman.”
“I’m not talking about you, Jennifer,” Marcum said. “You’re doing exactly what we all need done right now. I’m talking about what comes next. To date, there is still no plan to bring that creature here, and every indication that just the opposite is afoot.”
Our meeting went on for another fifteen intense minutes, with a rising chorus of “when are we gonna stand up for what’s right and demand the completion of our mission?”
I know Dr. Marcum didn’t mean anything disparaging, but I still signed off with a hollow feeling. I’m way out here as part of some “charade,” what—to keep the Space Sultans happy? The government off our backs? I thought I was out here gathering data for our First Paper. And Second Paper. And maybe even Third Paper. And let’s not forget my languishing dissertation. I took off my sterility attire in the airlock. Captain Gillory caught me closing the lab door.
“Good day?” she asked.
“Meh.”
“Doesn’t sound good.”
“Heated discussion with the fam,” I said. Which fam I didn’t say.
“Ahh,” she said. We walked.
“My work up here is a charade, according to an older sibling,” I said. “Whose brains I worship and opinion I adore.”
I stopped and looked out a window. Gillory joined me. God but it was beautiful up here.
“Sounds like Little Sister Syndrome,” she said.
“That’s about right.”
“Sometimes you just gotta say, ‘Screw ‘em.’”
I smiled. “How do you know about Little Sister Syndrome?”
“I was one,” Gillory said. “Still am. Partly why I’m here.”
“Need to be this far away?”
“Oh, no—well, sometimes. But more importantly, gotta beat the Bigs. Mom’s counting on it.”
“Mom?”
“Loved my mom. So much. Worshiped the ground she walked on. And she felt the same about us,” Gillory said. “But my parents divorced and my stepmom was, how shall we say—chilly.”
“I lost my dad,” I said.
“I heard,” she said. “That kind of loss, so quick. No chance to say goodbye. Very hard.”
“I can see why you like it up here,” I said, staring at Mother Earth.
“It’s a tempered love affair,” she said. “I do get awfully homesick. It’s like a cruel tease. Where else can you be this far away from home and yet.” She looked out the window. “This close?”
At first, the discoloration was subtle. I caught it viewing Crimsy colonies in a Petri dish at low magnification under a stereoscope, a type of microscope that gives more of a macro, or larger, view (a macroscope, if you will). I sampled the stuff for a closer look under a higher-
power microscope. I noted the color—brown—photographed the speckles, and emailed Brando and Shonstein.
“Keep an eye on it,” Shonstein advised, and in so doing, I observed it resembling dollar spot, a fungus that attacks lawns with round, brown, dead zones. It was confined to subcultures in just one of the two glove boxes—at least, so far.
I had a specific question for Captain Hightower after he peered at it, too.
“Yep. That’s what Crimsy looked like when she expired on my finger,” he said. “Brown, Martian, dust.”
I called an emergency family meeting.
“This is alarming,” Dr. Levitt said.
“Crew says it looks identical to what they sampled from Hightower’s finger.”
“After the glove breach?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Any possibility some unknown contaminant could have entered the glove box?” Brando asked.
“Negative.”
“Some latent infection Hightower unwittingly delivered?” Marcum asked.
“Have to be pretty latent,” Shonstein said. “That happened what, like months ago?”
“Are you doing anything differently?” Brando asked. “Sterilizing, autoclaving, any new tools?”
“Everything in here is new,” I said. “Protocols called for using what we brought as a package. We put the old reagents and equipment in storage—except for like the stereoscope, microscopes, autoclave—the larger instruments.”
“So all subcultures are now transferred and stored using equipment that arrived with you?”
“Yes.”
“Got an idea,” Cooper said. “These protocols are mostly my fault, since most of the new stuff is weather-test related. Go back to using the stuff you put in storage. We’ll halt the weather tests for now.”
“But I’m doing your tests on colonies from both glove boxes,” I said. “Only glove box one is affected.”
“How are the controls?”
The original colonies were fine. Nonetheless, we halted the weather tests, went back to using the inoculating loops, pour plates, Petri dishes, cuvets, test tubes, reagents, and other small stuff DSG was using before I showed up. But the brown spots kept spreading.
“Still no sign of this stuff in glove box two?” Brando asked.
“No,” I said. “I’ve been way picky about checking every millimeter of the colonies.”
“What’s different about the two glove boxes?” Shonstein asked.
“Nothing.”
“Our visitor is dying in one,” she said. “Gotta be something.”
“So Jen—when was the last time you did subcultures?”
“Right after I got here.”
“Which colonies?” Brando asked.
I thought and things started becoming clearer.
“Don’t answer that,” he said. “Let me guess: glove box one.”
“Yes,” I said. “The colonies were ready. The others still have a week.”
“Don’t touch the others. Don’t subculture them,” Brando said. “Don’t put an inoculating loop anywhere near them.”
“What do we do after a week?” I asked.
“We figure out what the fuck is going on,” Shonstein said. “Have you forwarded the nutrient logs since the creeping death made its first appearance?” she asked. “I don’t see them.”
I looked through the files on my computer. I record every move I make, including subculture transfers, agar mixes, and so forth.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “It’s...it was all here.”
“So at this point, you have no record of how you prepared the agar?”
“I must have. I’m just not finding it.”
I saw Shonstein and Brando commiserate.
“We’ve got a plan,” she said. “But it’s risky.”
We decided to sub-culture outside the box, and out went the idea of not touching the healthy colonies. I started new Crimsy subcultures from healthy colonies in Petri dishes and test tubes, heating, pouring, and cooling Brando’s caviagar as the growth medium, and writing everything the old-fashioned way into a hardcover notebook (that I kept with me). I set up an area on a lab bench where these colonies would grow, some under artificial sunlight for photosynthesis, some without (Crimsy grew under both conditions, but with less pigment color without the sunlight). All we wanted to know was if the brown spots would appear and the open lab—while not as closed to contamination as our glove boxes—was sterile enough. I checked every colony three times daily. Glove box one continued deteriorating; glove box two continued thriving (to our great relief after sub-culturing from it); brown spotting eclipsed healthy growth in all the new “out-of-the-box” subcultures with a striking exception: Crimsy was growing like an invasive Wisconsin pigweed in one and only one Petri dish.
“That’s kinda good news,” Shonstein said during our conference call. “Good thing she’s not pathogenic or you’d all be dead.”
“Which of these things does not belong here?” Brando sang. “Which of these things just doesn’t belong?”
“You’re in tune,” Shonstein said.
“Lexi covered her ears if I wasn’t,” he said.
I stared at the healthy culture while they talked in the background. Picked up the Petri dish. Wow. Holding this...Then I remembered something. I set the Petri dish down and thumbed through my notebook. “I ran out of agar,” I said.
“Huh?” Shonstein said.
“I ran out of agar. I used up the last of a batch on this culture.” I pointed to the healthy microbes. “The other subcultures are growing in new agar from storage.”
“Holy shit,” Shonstein said. “Something’s wrong with the agar?”
“Where did you get the new stuff?” Brando asked.
“Supply fridge.”
“Did it come with Jen?” Shonstein said.
“We didn’t requisition any agar,” Brando said.
“So what—just a bad batch?”
“I don’t see how,” Brando said.
“Poisoned?”
“By whom?”