Bioterror! (an Ell Donsaii story #14) Read online

  After Barnes walked away, the three grad students engaged in some prospective bitching, then split up themselves. Alice and Rick had classes so Carley headed back to the lab to check on her DNA amplification. The polymerase chain reaction or PCR that she’d started before she left for lunch still hadn’t finished so she had her AI open her ongoing web search for her brother Eli. She still tried to spend 20 to 30 minutes a day searching for her brother, though more and more she felt like he’d slipped out of reach. The one Eli Bolin she’d found had proven to be quite elderly. There were 26,000+ people in the United States with the first name of Eli. She couldn’t get access to any databases that’d let her search by Eli’s birthdate so she was having to pull people up one at a time and try to rule them out, a task which would take forever. She’d actually found one Eli with the correct birthdate but when she’d contacted him, “he’d” turned out to be one of the very few girls with the name Eli.

  Even worse, Carley feared that her brother’s actual name might’ve been Elijah or Elisha or some even more obscure biblical name but that she just hadn’t been aware of it as a child. From what she remembered of her parents, her father didn’t seem like the type to use an obscure biblical name, but her mother might have.

  Worse, maybe when he’d been adopted they’d changed both of his names?

  The thermal cycler chirped to tell her it’d finished the PCR and she turned to it with a sigh.

  On her search? No luck, as usual.

  ***

  Kimberly Binder knocked on the door of the house. It wasn’t quite what she’d expected since she’d thought anyone who could afford to send their child to The School for the Gifted would display their wealth ostentatiously in their home as well. Admittedly, it seemed to be situated on a pretty big lot, but it looked like a refurbished farmhouse.

  Zage’s handsome father opened the door and she gave him a little wave. “Hi, I’m Ms. Binder, Zage’s teacher last semester at the school for the gifted, remember?”

  “Yeah, hi,” the man said, looking puzzled.

  “I didn’t get to say goodbye to Zage because I thought he’d be coming back for the spring semester. He was one of my very favorite students, so I thought I’d drop by and tell him I’d miss him.” She lowered her voice and gave a shy little shrug, “I thought about bringing him some cookies, but I know he’s trying to lose weight.”

  “Come on in,” the man said, still giving Kim an odd look. He led her through a little entry area, then turned left into a large room. It still seemed like an old farmhouse, though some of the furnishings seemed upscale. There were lots of large screens on the walls and Kimberly’s eye caught on a brilliant white canvas splashed with blue paint. Her initial reaction was that some modern artist had simply splattered paint on a canvas and called it art. However, as Zage’s dad called out the boy’s name and stepped into another room to retrieve him, Kimberly found herself strangely attracted to the painting. By the time Zage and his dad came back into the room, she was standing close to the painting and staring at it enviously, trying to figure out just what made it so very striking. The man said, “Ms. Binder?” and she tore her eyes away.

  “Hi Zage,” she said walking to him and bending down closer to his level, her eyes flashing over him. He had no visible bruises and certainly looked happy enough. “I was very sad to hear that you wouldn’t be coming back to school this spring. You’ve been one of my favorite students.”

  “You were an excellent teacher,” he said solemnly.

  “The office said you’re going to some program over at Duke?” She said, glancing questioningly up at his father. “Are you liking it?”

  “Yeah!” he said, his face suddenly animated. “I’m learning some really cool stuff.”

  “Oh?” Kim said, suddenly very curious to learn how their program might differ from what she’d been teaching. “What’re they teaching you there?”

  “Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics.”

  “Um, that’s interesting,” she said, wondering if he even knew what the words meant. She could imagine a kindergarten class where they mentioned those concepts, but even that seemed a little extreme. She glanced up at his father who was biting his lip and looking as if he didn’t know exactly what to say. “I hadn’t heard about a Duke school for children. Is it for the children of the faculty there?” She gave him a little grin and a wink, “I thought you were on the faculty at UNC?”

  Mr. Kinrais made a tiny wince, “I am. Um, Zage is…” Kinrais stopped uncertainly, then resumed, “He’s wanted… more of a challenge. He’s been learning on a college level for a while now.” He glanced down at his son, “He’s been begging to actually attend a college. Duke’s allowing him to study Genetics at a graduate level on a trial basis.” He shrugged, “It’s anyone’s guess whether it’ll work out, but so far he’s very excited about it.”

  Kimberly suddenly remembered asking Zage to multiply two three-digit numbers and having him immediately give her the correct answer. Oh! she thought, He really is a prodigy, isn’t he? She couldn’t help but think it was ridiculous to expect the child to successfully skip grade school, high school, and college. She wondered whether skipping all that education might constitute abuse, but it certainly didn’t comprise the kind of abuse she’d been worried about. She smiled down at him and said cheerfully, “Well, we’re going to miss you. Maybe you’ll drop by for a visit someday?”

  As Kim said goodbye to the father and made her way out of the house, she found her eyes repeatedly tracking back to the brilliant blue painting.

  ***

  Carter DeWitt got out of his car in front of ET Resources and saw AJ Richards’ car pulling up behind him. As his car’s AI pulled it away to find a parking spot, he waited a moment for AJ to get out of his vehicle. “Hey AJ, how’s engaged life treating you?”

  “Pretty good! Morgan’s whole family goes out to Colorado to go skiing for a week every February.” He lifted an eyebrow, “I’m on the invitation list this year!”

  “Oho, sucking up to the in-laws already, huh?”

  “You betcha. Besides, my family lives in Colorado Springs, so we’ll get together with them while we’re out there too.”

  “Oh man, you’re in trouble now you know,” Carter said putting his hand on the younger man’s shoulder.

  AJ frowned, “Why’s that?”

  “You poor sod. All the women, from both sides of your new family, are going to be getting together and hashing out your wedding!” He shook his head as if dismayed, “They’re going to be asking you questions, you know? Your real issue’s whether or not you know how to answer such questions?”

  “Um, honestly?”

  “Oh! The horror! Didn’t your dad ever teach you anything about this most important ritual?!”

  AJ grinned at him, “Okay, I’ll bite. How do I answer?”

  “You say, ‘Whatever you think dear.’ No matter how she begs or pleads you do not give an opinion. Such opinions will, of course, turn out to be wrong and, worse than wrong, they’ll be incorrect, wicked, sinful, unsuitable, improper, and just plain inappropriate. Years later you’ll still be hearing about how you made her do some part of her wedding in such and such a way and how the fact that you wanted to do it that way broke her heart! ‘Whatever you think dear,’ or some variation of that sentiment’s your only possible correct answer. Do not stray from it!”

  AJ rolled his eyes and said, “Yes boss.” As they walked together into the building, he slanted a look at Carter out of the corner of his eyes and said, “It won’t be hard, that’s how I’ve learned to answer everything here at work.”

  Carter gusted a long-suffering sigh, “If only you had, my boy, if only you had.”

  AJ said, “I’ve had an idea.”

  Carter stopped and turned to face him, “Let it out slowly, a little bit at a time. Some of your ideas explode on contact with reality.”

  “A few decades ago there was some talk about trying to improve traffic under some of the big cities l
ike LA by running tunnels back and forth between some of the high demand areas. The advent of AI vehicle control lessened the need as citywide traffic optimization and the ability of vehicles to travel bumper to bumper at high speed let us move a lot more cars, faster and more densely on the same number of streets. But population density’s continued to creep up and it’s getting to be a real problem again.”

  “I know,” Carter said, shaking his head. “They should outlaw personal vehicles in densely populated areas and make everyone take mass transit.”

  AJ shrugged, “I’d agree with you, if personal vehicles were still pollution spewing, natural resource consuming monsters, but they’re not. In my opinion, if people want to take their personal vehicles despite horrible traffic, they should be able to. We’re supposed to live in a free country.”

  Carter tilted his head curiously as he thought back to what AJ’d said to begin with. “So, what, you want to use melting tunnelers to provide traffic bypass in high density areas?”

  AJ nodded. “And runoff tunnels in cities prone to flooding. We’ll have to be a lot more careful with the engineering, of course. There’ll be a city on top of these tunnels so we’ll need to melt some small test tunnels first, harvesting chunks of the walls and mechanically testing them to be sure they’re strong enough. I’ll bet a lot of the tunnels will actually need to be reinforced. Still, melting them’ll be a lot cheaper than drilling holes with huge tunneling machines and the melt walls will provide some strength so the amount of reinforcement will be less.”

  Carter’s eyes widened, “Oh! Would it be cost-effective to seal off sections of the tunnel and just grow some graphend on the walls?”

  AJ shook his head, “We could ask Viveka, I guess. But I ran the numbers as best I could and I think it’ll be cheaper to use concrete.”

  “Viveka?”

  “Viveka Janu. She’s the graphend guru out there at Allosci.”

  “I thought Dr. Pace was the guru?”

  “He is, but when it comes to coating large objects, Viveka’s the one. Pace married her, and some people say only because he worried she might get away.”

  ***

  Mark Amundsen stood on his back porch and looked out at the little water feature he and his wife had built in their yard. I’ve got to get a job, he thought once again, taking another sip of his coffee. Since Stockton fired him as Secretary of Defense, he’d refused to take a position as a lobbyist. It went against his ethics to lobby based on his previous position. Although he’d been paid well as Secretary, he hadn’t been getting a salary large enough to put away a huge nest egg and he hadn’t been a wealthy man before—so their cushion was thinning.

  He’d taken some work as a consultant, of course, as long as he didn’t think they were only hiring him for whatever influence he might still have in government. Consulting was paying most of the bills, but definitely not putting money in the bank. Once again, he wondered what he’d actually like to do. He’d enjoyed his life as a public servant and thought he was good at managing sprawling enterprises like the Department of Defense. However, it seemed highly unlikely that he’d be hired back while Stockton was president.

  Maybe I need to sign up with some kind of headhunter firm. They could let some big corporations know I was available. He considered the fact that they’d probably want to shop his skills to various defense contractors. I could just tell them not to, he chuckled, at least until we get a lot more desperate than we are now.

  His AI said, “You have a call from Ell Donsaii.”

  “I’ll take it,” he said, surprised at how emphatically he’d responded. “Dr. Donsaii, what can I do for you?”

  “Hi Mr. Amundsen. I heard you’re working as a consultant nowadays. Are you still… available?”

  “Um, sure,” Amundsen said, ineffably disappointed. His heart had leapt upon hearing who was calling. In the past, his contacts with Donsaii had seemed always to be filled with change… Changes that generally roiled history, almost always for the better. Her asking him to consult for her company seemed so disappointingly mundane in contrast.

  “D5R’s gotten… So huge and sprawling. You probably know I’ve been working as CEO, but my heart and my… my skills are better suited to being a CTO. We’d like to find someone good at managing large enterprises to replace me as CEO. Someone ethical. Someone like you.

  “My fondest hope’s that you’d be willing to take it on yourself, but I’ll understand completely if it isn’t your cup of tea. If you aren’t available, I’m hoping you might know someone… suitable?”

  Amundsen groped out behind himself for the arm of his chair. He’d intended to settle into it, but found himself dropping into it with a thump while feeling a little lightheaded. “I’d, I’d be very interested. I think of D5R as one of the most positive forces for change there is in our world and I’d be proud to be involved any way I can. Can I come down to North Carolina and look around? Get a better handle on exactly what you need?”

  “Oh! That’d be awesome!” Amundsen felt surprised at the excitement in her voice. Goosebumps ran down his spine at the thought of working with her full-time. She said, “My AI just did a handshake with yours, delivering e-vouchers for you and your wife’s expenses on the trip. Can we have our plane pick you up tomorrow morning?”

  Amundsen briefly wondered whether there was anything on his calendar for tomorrow morning. Nothing that can’t be rescheduled, he decided. I’ll look at it after she hangs up. “Tomorrow morning would be great. If you’ll just send a message with what time and where, we’ll be there.”

  Once Ell had hung up, Amundsen got shakily to his feet and made his way back into the house. “Mary?” he called out.

  ***

  Carley felt a presence behind her and turned to look over her shoulder. Sure enough, a woman stood in the door of the lab, looking around curiously. A slender, pretty brunette, moderately tall at what Carley estimated to be about five-nine, she looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties. “Can I help you?” Carley asked, thinking that something about the woman was odd.

  “Is this Dr. Regina Barnes lab?”

  “Uh-huh,” Carley said, standing and moving toward the door. Suddenly, she saw that a boy stood beside the woman. He’d been hidden by the centrifuge.

  “I’m Raquel Kinrais,” the woman said, then indicated the boy, “and this’s my son Zage. Zage’s been enrolled at Duke in a special, non-degree seeking program and Dr. Barnes’s been kind enough to agree to let him do research in her lab.”

  Flabbergasted, Carley found herself staring at the boy. He looks like he’s five! Six or seven tops! Her eyes rose back to the woman, “Um, we’ve been told that… that, a boy was skipping high school and coming straight to college, but…” Her eyes dropped involuntarily back to the boy. Suddenly she realized that this was a political hot potato that she shouldn’t even be commenting on. Nervously, she said, “Just a minute, let me contact Dr. Barnes.” She spoke briefly to her AI and when Dr. Barnes voice came in her ear, she said, “Dr. Barnes, Zage Kinrais’s here… with his mother. You wanted to be notified?”

  Carley turned back to the mother and her child, “Dr. Barnes says she’ll be here in about thirty minutes. Can you wait, or…” Carley realized she’d been about to offer to babysit the boy until Barnes got there, but if the boy needed babysitting this was going to be an even bigger nightmare than she’d dreamed of.

  The woman said, “No problem, we’ll be happy to wait. Do you mind if we look around the lab in the meantime?”

  “Um, no…” Carley paused feeling torn between politeness and prudence. “Um, please don’t… don’t touch anything without asking though, okay?”

  “Sure,” the woman said, giving Carley a brilliant smile. She winked, I’m hoping Zage can explain all this equipment to me.”

  Carley sat back down and turned to her screens, uncomfortably wondering whether it was okay for them to be wandering around the lab unsupervised. Surely his mother wouldn’t let the child fool arou
nd with anything.

  As Carley continued studying for her Population and Quantitative Genetics class, the mother and son duo wandered up and down the aisles of the lab murmuring to one another. Carley tried to avoid listening in. However, her abnormally acute hearing let her hear the boy launch into a description of their thermal cycler and how it was used to amplify minute quantities of DNA or RNA through the polymerase chain reaction. Listening to a child his age talk about highly sophisticated equipment as if he understood it was so astonishing she found she just couldn’t ignore his voice. To her astonishment, the next thing she heard was the boy describing the advantages and disadvantages of their particular model of thermal cycler! Since Carley’d always just thought of it as “the thermal cycler” without considering the possibility that they might want or need a better model, or be particularly happy with the model they had, this was an eye-opening experience for her.

  He moved on to describing the uses of their robotic pipetter and why he’d have chosen a different model. He assessed their plate shaker to be “perfectly adequate” as better models were exceedingly expensive and not a great deal better. He didn’t like their centrifuge but thought their freeze-drying system was state-of-the-art. Their sonicator didn’t perform as well as the model by Branson. He’d have chosen a homogenizer made by Benchmark Scientific. He didn’t think their incubator was worth the extra money it’d cost.

  This went on and on. Even their analytical balances were assessed. They were found wanting for an “alarming degree of inaccuracy if not frequently recalibrated.” To Carley’s dismay, his most disparaging comments were reserved for his evaluation of their DNA assembly modules which he said were a generation out of date. “…and the newer stuff isn’t really all that expensive, so upgrading would be a good investment.”

  Can he possibly be that knowledgeable about the lab’s equipment?! Would we really be a lot better off with the models he’d prefer?! Guiltily, she wondered, Should I have been trying to evaluate our equipment and figure out whether there was better stuff out there? It seemed crazy, she didn’t even know whether Dr. Barnes could afford to get better stuff.