Everywhere? When?
I began running and rerunning checks on every virus we had considered to evaluate its risk in an unsuccessful effort to distract myself from a spiral of despair. Finally, I napped and dreamed of bees.
When I was a free man, to entertain my empty hours, I had been perfecting the DNA to re-create the Bombus affinis, the rusty patched bumblebee. Laments for its recent extinction echoed from farmers across America’s Midwest. Supposedly Mozart could hear all the parts of the music he composed as he wrote his works. So it was for me. I saw the bee taking shape, muscles and organs and exoskeleton and hair, as I arranged each element into harmony.
The Bombus affinis lived in cyclical colonies. They started in springtime with a queen who awoke from hibernation and laid eggs. Gradually the colony population built up over the summer, new queens were born and mated, the old queen died, and when the weather turned cold, the young queens hibernated and the workers died.
The bees I was making would lead short, hard lives.
I woke up.
Viruses, in a technical sense, were not alive. They were mere snippets of information that re-created themselves with more or less robotlike efficiency and with no concern for their host. The concern would come from me and people like me, but not everyone was like me.
Concern: How was my pet bird? How was the dear friend, actually one of my children, one of those people I had engineered from scratch, whom I had tasked with its care? How was the world at large?
Node 1 contacted me in the afternoon, the node that had always been silent before. The voice was dulled and stretched by the system’s automatic distortion into a seal-like bark. “What if this virus begins to circulate?” I received a file. “What would you predict? Worst case?”
What if? That was an odd question. Never mind. I took a long look at it, and after an hour, I had a solid answer. Although it was unlabeled, I recognized it as an already identified virus, a virulent strain of the so-called Sino cold.
“Worst case, a fatal cytokine storm.” Obviously. The body would overreact to a perceived threat, which would turn into a dangerous spiral of inflammation and organ damage that could rapidly lead to death.
“What in the RNA tells you this?”
My explanation took time, and Node 1 listened patiently. Life was built out of molecules and proteins, and when and why a cell made specific ones depended on the many instructions within the DNA and RNA to make them, and the factors that triggered the cell to respond. I had identified the ability of that virus to do specific things with specific consequences and went through them one by one. (In the end, my mastery of the language of life involved being fascinated by what other people found too tedious to imagine, let alone do.)
“Are you a medical doctor?”
If Node 1 was who I thought they were, they had my résumé in hand, so the question was a ploy. So far, in fact, the entire exchange had been some sort of a test. “No, I’m a physiologist, among other training. I can’t treat you, but I know what makes you sick or keeps you well.”
“And what about this virus?” He sent another representation.
“Give me a moment.”
It took me another hour. It resembled the attenuated virus Grrl and I had designed as a vaccine, but I had to admit it would work a bit more efficiently, and tiny things mattered in microorganisms. I told Node 1 that.
“Then you can predict that this new viral vaccine wouldn’t by itself make its host dangerously ill?”
“No, I can’t. Two reasons.” I tried to remain calm although I knew that exhaustion had eroded my self-control. “First, although most hosts, probably almost all of them, could shake this off, not every host would because some people are genetically predisposed or are already ill, and even mild infections push them into a crisis. The only question is how many. Second, nothing ever acts in isolation, so environmental factors of all sorts will also make a difference in the human response. Some fools still smoke tobacco, for example.”
Everyone with even the slightest medical training knew this, so the question, again, was some sort of test.
“Oh, and a final reason,” I said, “the human body never reacts as predicted, even by my predictions. Was this potential vaccine put through clinical trials? What were the results? That would answer your question.” I knew the answer: no trials had been carried out.
“Look, it’s what happened.” Did that bark sound apologetic? Perhaps. “What might we expect?”
“Which attenuated virus did you release, the one we designed here or the other one, which you just showed me?”
“The other one, but not by anyone in my chain of command. That’s all I can say. But it was released as a vaccine. Nationwide.”
My jaw dropped.
“Three days ago. Mostly as an aerosol released by cleaning equipment or in ventilation systems.”
“That’s playing with fire.” It also occurred to me that preparations would have taken quite some time and effort.
“Agreed. And particularly, how would it interact with the original delta virus, the one this would be a vaccination against?”
“Now we’re playing with a raging forest fire.” But the question was inevitable. I buried my face in my hands. Sooner or later, both of them would be circulating together. I looked up, took a deep breath, and managed to say, “I’d like to work with Node 2 on this, and even the entire team.”
“We’re confirming that now.”
“I—we’d also need epidemiological information. What exactly is happening with the attenuated virus? When and where?”
“That’s reasonable. I’ll see what we can do. Thank you for your patience.” Node 1 disconnected.
Patience? I was berserk.
Berenike stormed into her apartment. Two of her roommates were in.
