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Elise Markis looked up from her desk at her second, Ravi Tinker. Small, brilliant, and nervous. Very nervous. “What’s got you all spun up, Ravi?”
He handed her a tablet. “It can’t be done.”
“You mean we haven’t yet figured out how to do it.” Her tone made it a statement. Or is it a refusal to face facts?
“No. I know you don’t want to hear it but it’s simply not possible. We cannot immunize an Eden against this Demon Plague – we’re already over-immunized. It’s the autoimmune response that is so dangerous. The best we can do – IF we catch it early – is to suppress the Eden immune system and let the Demon Plague run its course. After that there seems to be some accommodation, though a re-exposure can still send the Eden into relapse. We have only four weeks or so before the next one hits, according to Raphael, and who knows what that will do?”
Elise sighed. “At least the counterphage for the normals looks doable. If we can get it cultured and distributed fast enough we can cure them of Demon Plague number one, though God knows what use that will be.”
Tinker replied, “I’m convinced these Demon Plagues will build on each other. There are traps in the genetic code that only certain RNA will trigger.”
“I’m not sure if I hope you’re right so all your work is not wasted, or I hope you’re wrong so it’s simpler – the Devil we know.”
“Or the Demon we know. But what about my proposal?”
“Did you talk to Larry? He’s the nano project leader.”
“It’s not my area of expertise. I thought you should bring it up to him.”
“Next time I see him, I will.”
***
Larry Nightingale studied the nano-machines they had culled from the Geneva samples on his microscope display screen. Although he presumed they could be programmed to do different things, these in particular had only one goal: attack the Eden Plague.
At this scale, they looked like multi-armed construction machinery killing rats at high speed. Though far too small to see with the naked eye, the nanobots were dozens of times as large as the viruses they hunted. They snatched the phages and chopped them up, leaving bits of proteins floating away.
The Eden phages were individually helpless; their only weapon was sheer numbers. For every nanite there were a million viruses, and whenever the bloodstream density of a Plague carrier dropped too low, the Eden virus would borrow a few thousand body cells and turn them into factories, spewing millions of copies of itself into the host.
If that was all there was to it, Larry wouldn’t have cared. The nanites would eventually break down, since they did not self-replicate. Perhaps some future version would, but these eventually broke, like any machine. Before then, the patient’s own Eden Plague-powered immune system overreacted with antibodies to overwhelm the invaders, overproduced histamines, and caused massive inflammations. Confused, the Plague carrier’s body attacked itself. About half the time the result was complete collapse and death.
His results paralleled the Demon Plague studies. The bottom line was that the Eden Plague and its human carrier could easily handle any Earthly disease that had evolved or adapted in a terrestrial environment. Against these alien invaders, whether biological or mechanical, the Eden Plague was like a powerful security force that went berserk, murdering its own citizens.
Just like politics.
Larry was playing catch-up with nano-engineering; it was not his chosen field. But the specialists on his team were just as frustrated as he was. They were barely knowledgeable enough to study the few nanites the Chairman’s security team had recovered, much less figure out a way to do anything to them. Never mind creating some themselves.
Oh, they could turn them on and off with a coded magnetic field; that was a short-term cure for nanite exposure. But reprogramming them or changing their physical structure was simply too far beyond his team’s ability. He had a handful of skilled people; the Americans reportedly had hundreds, maybe thousands, and a laboratory complex the size of a town. Their effort was advanced beyond the Free Communities’ ability to replicate. Larry simply couldn’t catch up in time.
He sat back, rubbing his temples. He had to finish their report, the one that codified and recorded their failure. At least Elise’s biogenetic team was big and competent, world-class. The new buildings going up outside and the warehouses full of supplies were a testimony to the resources being thrown at the problem.
He stood up, turning off the nanites with the tap of a button. Walking down the corridors, he marshaled his arguments, hoping to convince Elise and Shawna – and Daniel Markis, if necessary. He could see only one hope for Edens against the Demon Plague.
He waved at the outer office and rapped on Elise’s door. Inside he saw Ravi Tinker, standing as if getting ready to leave. Struck by a minor inspiration, Larry waved to the small Indian. “Ravi, glad I caught you here. Elise, can we talk for minute?”
“Sure, come in and shut the door.”
Larry carefully dropped his two hundred sixty pounds into a creaky chair. “I’ll have the report to you by tomorrow, but I wanted to tell you myself. We can’t do anything with the nanites in time. I think we can turn them off if someone uses them against us, as long as we have some time to find the specific shutdown code. But the technology is too far ahead of anyone here.”
“As we expected.” Elise sighed. “What else?”
“Yeah...Ravi, I hear you want to get in touch with the Americans. See if the nanites can be customized to fight the Demon Plague inside Eden carriers.”
Ravi’s jaw dropped. “How did you know that?”
Larry laughed, rueful. “Nothing is secret at a busy lab. People talk. It doesn’t matter; I just came by to tell Elise that I agree. I have no evidence to back it up but after weeks of watching these little boogers, my educated guess is that if we had some properly programmed nanites, they could whack the Demon Plague before it caused the usual overreaction. Kind of a mercenary force to keep the Eden Plague army from mobilizing.”
“See? You see, Elise, he agrees with me.”
“Yes, Ravi, I see that. All right, I’ll brief Shawna and get it passed up to Daniel. Obviously it will be a political decision. Working with the Americans will be difficult. There’s a lot of bad blood. They still regard us as traitors.”
A shadow of pain passed over Larry’s face. “We’re Americans too, Elise. We can’t forget that.”
“Yes, but the America we knew is gone. We’ll have to see if it can remake itself into something worthy of our allegiance. After the Nazis it took Germany decades, and a lot of help, to become a great country again.”
“Yes, Elise, but now we have a lot more time. We’re all going to live to be a thousand.”
“If we live till next year, that is. All right, you two, get back to work. I’ll argue your case.”
