“And how did you go about this…this project?” Mitch asked him.
“By studying Medieval alchemy and certain remains of a Seventeenth-century warlock named Alardus Weerden…”
15
The research, Osbourne explained, was initially begun back in the 1970’s from studies in the acceleration of the healing of battlefield wounds and burns. And from that, it was extrapolated that possibly entire limbs could be regrown. Flatworms, fish, and certain amphibians can regenerate internal organs, tissues, and limbs to a certain extent, but humans can only regrow selective tissues and organs…the liver, the blood, the outermost layer of skin.
“It’s really genetics,” Osbourne went on, “when you come down to it. All the information to regenerate any tissues or limbs is encoded in the genes if we could only activate it.”
He said the initial research was done on salamanders, which can regenerate limbs. The key was to unlock how they did it and apply this to higher vertebrates, namely, man. The theory was that these salamanders, when they experienced significant tissue loss or damage or the amputation of a limb, had a sort of signal response. In that, when the tissues were damaged, cells at the site released signals which activated regeneration on a cellular level. This response was much like that in a human embryo when genetic encoding allows it to grow an arm or a leg for the first time. The trick was to reestablish this marvelous mechanism.
They were all sitting in Osbourne’s office by this time, out of that blasphemous workshop of creation that made everyone a little uneasy.
“Project ReGenesis was aimed at understanding the molecular basis for regeneration,” he told them. “The first breakthrough was learning that when an amphibian regenerates a limb, there was not only healing at the sight to prevent blood loss, but no scarring. Humans always develop scar tissue at the wound sight. Amphibians heal, but they do not scar. You see, at the site of the missing limb, various specialized cells like skin and bone and nerve tissue immediately lose their identity and become generalized. Like stem cells or T-cells, they no longer know what kind of cells they are. This is called de-differentiation. The result is a mass of unspecialized cells called a blastema which proliferates at an amazing rate to form a limb bud. These cells take on specialized roles as the limb develops.”
That was basically the first breakthrough they had.
The stumbling block was that vertebrates were unable to create a blastema. They simply repair a wound and stop. The process goes no farther. In blood and liver tissue, for example, small numbers of unspecialized cells set aside during embryogenesis are activated. These stem cells can proliferate indefinitely, endlessly, but only for general repairs, not out and out replacement. They lack the proper triggers to activate them, to create a blastema. In the marine worm planaria, for example, if you cut one of these creatures into, say, two-hundred pieces, in days you have two-hundred separate worms. How it does this is with regeneration genes. These genes only exist in blastemas. One of these genes encodes an enzyme that degrades the cellular matrix, a mesh of proteins and other molecules that surrounds cells. This enzyme then triggers regeneration by releasing growth factors to the surrounding cells.
Mitch and Tommy and Harry just sat there, smoking, not sure what any of it was really about. Mitch knew a little about stem cells. Only that they could possibly become any sort of tissue they were exposed to…nerve tissue, heart tissue, whatever. In stem cell research, he understood, there was maybe the cure for diabetes, heart problems, brain damage, spinal cord injuries. The blind might see and the lame might walk and vegetables might live productive lives once again. Just as God had intended. Of course, there were a bunch of religious whackos and right-to-life zealots that were against it because fetal tissue had to be harvested. But as far as Mitch was concerned, using aborted tissue was at least a way in making something bad into something good. It was life giving life.
Vertebrate regeneration, Osbourne said, is accomplished by the formation, growth, patterning, and differentiation of a blastema at the limb stump. Mature tissues adjacent to the wound site lose their extracellular matrix and cells reenter the cell cycle in preparation for stump repair and limb regeneration. At the cellular level, the blastema mimics the original embryonic limb bud that gives rise to the mature limb.
“And we were there, gentlemen!” he said, growing heated now. “We were there! Right at the threshold of a new technology that would have saved millions!”
Tommy, with his usual subtlety, said, “So what’s that got to do with zombies?”
“Don’t be such an idiot,” Osbourne told him. “Regeneration is the most complete repair mechanism there is. It could completely revolutionize medicine as we know it. Coupled with nanotechnology, things like invasive surgery, cutting and probing and agony, would be things of the past. Medieval bullshit.”
“Like what you boys were doing out there?”
“I wasn’t doing that. I was against it. I didn’t have any interest in that nonsense, but I was overridden by the powers that be,” Osbourne said. “All of what you saw out there and all of what you see in Witcham is because of a cellular physiologist from the University of Michigan named Brighten that the Army brought into the project. He caused all this…”
Brighten was a genius, Osbourne admitted, but a dark genius.
He was one of those guys that would have made a great Nazi scientist like Mengele. Ethics meant little to him. He was concerned with pure science and anything that stood between him and enlightenment, the ultimate fruition of his studies, was simply a means to end. Osbourne said he wasn’t exactly a people person and had no compunction about using human guinea pigs…had the law allowed such a thing. Now Brighten was not only brilliant, but damned unconventional. One of his hobbies when he wasn’t dissecting things was alchemy, that great forerunner to modern chemistry out of the Middle Ages. Which Osbourne called a “frightening marriage between physical science and sorcery.” One of alchemy’s chief aims, other than turning base metals to gold, was the artificial creation of life, particularly, human life. And this latter endeavor fascinated Brighten, him being a physiologist.
“Brighten was obsessed with not only true scientific advancement, but with these realms of pseudo- science…or what we thought were pseudo-science.” Osbourne rubbed his eyes. They were puffy and red and it had probably been days and days since he’d closed them for any length of time. “He was well-versed in the works of the great alchemists?Thoth, Hermes Trismegistus, Jacob Boehme, Nicholas Flammel, the Comte Saint-Germain?and had read dozens of Medieval alchemical texts in their original Latin. Things known to be coded and practically indecipherable like The Secret Book of Artephius, A Chymicall Treatise of Arnoldus de Nova Villa, the Coelum Philosophorum of Paracelus, The Ripley Scroll, Bacon’s The Mirror of Alchemy. Good God, he knew them all and could quote openly from them, claimed to have discovered the ancient key which unlocked their codes. He would lecture us on Paracelus and his alkahest, the prime element of organic creation. Talk us to death on Edward Kelly and John Dee, Borellus and his essential salts.
“But what brought him into Project ReGenesis was his discovery of the life and works of Alardus Weerden, a Seventeeth Century warlock or witch or what have you that was executed in 1627 in Wurzburg, Germany, during the notorious witch persecutions of Von Ehrenberg.”
“That’s the guy you mentioned,” Mitch said. “You said something about his remains…you telling me you guys stole his body?”
Osbourne shook his head. “No, just a fragment for study. The Army arranged for it to be snatched from a secret grave it had been interred into by some of Weerden’s disciples shortly after his beheading and burning…”
It was insane, but Brighten, by studying contemporary witchcraft texts of the 17^th century, was able to learn where Weerden’s body was buried and to convince the Army brass that the old wizard’s bones held the secrets of regeneration. For Weerden had claimed that he could regenerate himself endlessly if but a scrap of flesh or knob of bone from his corpse was extant. Brighten was in possession of evidence, Osbourne claimed, that proved conclusively, at least to his superiors, that Alardus Weerden had lived a dozen lives, dying violently or by accident each time, and then biologically regenerating himself.
“So you got his bones?” Tommy said.
“Just one. A single metacarpal from his right hand.”
