Fade to Grey (Book 2): Darkness Ascending (88 page)

Mr. Lee raised his hand. “Tiny little robots.”

“Yes, that is exactly correct. Keep that thought in
mind.” The view screen moved to another microscopic image. “Nanotechnology, to
most people, is the science of using microscopic machines to accomplish a
desired task. The potential applications are mind-blowing, but so are the
technological hurdles that are in the way. Again, I’m going to try and keep
this on a very basic level. To be a successful ‘little machine’ you have to be
small enough, you have to be powered somehow, and you have to be able to work
both individually as well as with other little machines. There’s also something
else that most scientists consider the holy grail of nano-design—self
replication. In other words, how can we get the little machines to make more
identical little machines? Fortunately, nature has already answered these
questions.”

The image on the screen showed a snakelike tube with a
twisting, curled end. “What you’re looking at, for all intents and purposes, is
nanotechnology. It’s not made out of metal, it doesn’t have a little battery
pack, but it’s small, active towards its specific purpose, and it can replicate
itself. This is a virus. This particular one has been in the news for several
decades. You’ve heard of it, it’s Ebola.” He flipped through several more
images. “Here we have the influenza virus, and this next one is hepatitis.
Whatever the case, they all share some similar traits. Each of them contain
some DNA or RNA, a layer of protein to protect that genetic material, and some
of them have a covering of lipids. Viruses are basically tiny, self
replicating, organic machines.”

“So FALCON is a virus?” Crowbar Mike asked.

“No, but I need everybody to understand a little
microbiology before I move on.” He clicked at the screen, and the original
FALCON image appeared again. “FALCON, like I said, is not a bacteria, or
fungus, or even a virus. It’s a weaponized prion.”

“A what?” Lynn asked.

“Bear with me people . . . give me a chance to explain
and we’ll get to your questions after. FALCON is a prion. Prions are still
somewhat of a medical mystery, because they don’t follow a lot of the rules
that we’ve come to understand about how things are supposed to work
biologically. They do not contain any genetic material. No DNA or RNA. They are
a protein, and we believe they replicate by basically folding themselves and
causing other nearby proteins to follow suit. Now again, I don’t want to get
too detailed or bury you in nonessential techno-crap. What you need to
understand is that this particular little nasty has been altered on a nano
level by people whose names probably never appeared in any journals of
medicine. Even with the technology that I’ve been exposed to, the scope of this
thing boggles my mind.” He took another sip from this cup and then turned to
face Lynn. “Believe it or not, you’ve all heard about prion infections. The
most commonly heard are
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy—BSE—also known
as mad cow disease. There’s also CWD—chronic wasting disease—which you hear
about in the deer and elk populations.”

I traded looks with Michelle. Anybody who works in the
natural resources management knows about CWD.

“So now you know on a base level what’s causing this
epidemic . . . let’s move ahead and I’ll show you how.” He flipped through
several more slides of microscopic views before stopping at the image of a
child practically eaten up with open sores. “You’re looking at a picture of a
young man from the Philippines. The wounds that you see were caused by an
infection of smallpox. The WHO, or World Health Organization, has practically
eradicated smallpox through an intensive vaccination process. We’ve all been
vaccinated against a variety of different pathogens.
Diphtheria,
polio,
measles, hepatitis . . . from birth they stick us with needles, and because of
that, hundreds of millions of lives have been saved. Diseases that used to run
rampant are now held in check. Emergency bio-response teams are continually
watching for isolated outbreaks, and then they quarantine and treat the
affected. Is everybody with me?”

I saw all
several heads nod around the room.

“OK, because
now it’s time to give you a little lesson on immune response. Keep in mind this
is going to be very basic. The way the immune system works is beautifully
simple, and at the same time, incredibly complex. Let’s create an imaginary
viral pathogen. We’ll call it FLU 7. If you become infected with FLU 7, you
develop a fever and chest congestion, and just for kicks we’ll add in some
oozing sores. Obviously, it’s nothing you want to be spreading around at work.
So, to prevent you from becoming infected in the first place, you go to your
doctor and he gives you a shot—a vaccination—against FLU 7. Usually,
vaccinations are made with a modified or neutralized pathogen. In other words,
the shot he gives you actually has the FLU 7 virus in it, but it’s been
rendered non-infectious. Here’s where our amazing immune system kicks in. Our
body recognizes that FLU 7 is not a natural part of our biology, so it begins
to activate an immune response that either learns how to kill the FLU 7 virus,
or surrounds it and prevents it from infecting other tissue. There’s a lot of
other things that go on in that process, but one of the important things is
that our body remembers the specific pattern that made up FLU 7, and anytime in
the future that we’re exposed again, it already has the cure, or at least the
battle plan on hand to fight it. Still with me?”

We were. This
was basic health 101.

“One of the
most infectious diseases of all time is measles. Highly transmissible,
airborne, and incredibly contagious. Measles has also been practically
eliminated in developed nations due to an aggressive vaccination schedule.
Outbreaks in third world countries are even becoming rare. It’s estimated that
ninety-eight percent of the world’s population has been vaccinated against
measles. That means that ninety-eight percent of the world’s population has an
immune system circulating through their body that specifically remembers the
measles pathogen in its memory cells.” Oakley stepped to the side of the screen
and cycled through about a dozen images that showed humans in various stages of
measles infection. “Now, here’s where some of the impossible magic takes place
with
FALCON. When it enters a body, it’s been
bioengineered to trigger a response from the memory cells associated with
measles. Only it doesn’t trigger an aggressive reaction; it somehow uses the
immune system’s response to trigger a self-replication process while it seeks a
favorable location to take up residence. In FALCON’s case, that’s brain tissue
and the salivary gland. Once there, a whole myriad of biochemical changes begin
to take place, producing as an end result what you’ve been calling ghouls. So
let me a restate this even simpler. FALCON can only infect somebody whose body
has memory cells associated with measles. Unfortunately, that’s just about
everybody on the planet thanks to vaccinations. Once inside your body, this
little engineered gem uses the immune response to actually begin replication,
and then it sets up shop in your brain and saliva. Got it? Good, because now
it’s a little bit more complicated. This was designed as a weapon. The ultimate
weapon is, of course, one that will kill your enemy but not you. I don’t know
what the larger picture was, but as you surmised already, it was designed to be
the most infectious towards those with the O blood type. I could tell you how
it accomplished that, but the honest truth is that it doesn’t really matter.
What you need to understand is that people with blood type O are highly
susceptible to infection from FALCON, and as a matter of fact, they’re the only
ones that can acquire this pathogen through airborne transmission. Basically,
they’re hypersensitive to FALCON. With that said, you need to understand that
nobody is immune. No matter what your blood type.”

Most of the people in the room began to fidget with
the news of their vulnerability.

“However,” Oakley continued, “there are some bright
spots on the horizon. FALCON’s prionic load, like I said, is concentrated in
brain tissue and saliva. Your unbroken skin
is
an effective barrier.
Biologically speaking, most prions are exceedingly difficult to render
innocuous, meaning they’re very tough to sterilize without destruction of the
tissue, or in some cases the material they’re on. FALCON, on the other hand, is
relatively fragile. It’s not very susceptible to alcohol based cleaners
though—in other words, hand sanitizer isn’t very effective against it. Chlorine
based chemicals such as bleach solutions are effective, at least somewhat, but
the real weakness of FALCON is its susceptibility to UV light. Casual contact
with an infected person’s blood should not cause you to become infected unless
it gains direct access to your body through an open wound. Even then you would
have to be exposed to a substantial amount. How much, I really can’t say.
Remember, FALCON doesn’t really like to reside in blood, and the data we found
indicates that it ‘pools’ or ‘concentrates’ in other areas, which brings us to
my next point. In the unlikely event that brain tissue enters your body, you’re
almost guaranteed to become infected. Almost as dangerous are the levels of
infected material in the saliva, and that brings us to the most likely route of
transmission for people without blood type O—salivary vectors. Now, I’m about
to let you in on one of FALCON’s dirtiest little secrets, but before I do, I
need to give you a refresher on bloodborne pathogens. Back in the real world of
yesterday, you’ve all probably sat through those boring, yet required ‘safety
training’ lectures at whatever job you did. More than likely they also included
precautions against bloodborne pathogens. Normally, they focused on the top
three that you’re most likely to encounter in everyday life. HIV, hepatitis B,
and hepatitis C. If you were to accidentally get stuck with an infected needle,
your chances of contracting HIV are only about zero point three percent. For
hepatitis C, it’s about one point eight percent. On the other hand, hepatitis B
has anywhere from about a seven to thirty percent chance of infecting you from
a single needle stick. Now let’s take a look at the infection rate for the
FALCON prion, again, using a needle stick as the means of transmission. From
infected brain tissue, it’s about eighty-two percent. For saliva exposure the
chances are about fifty-fifty that you’ll become infected. Here’s where one of
the glitches come in to play. Obviously, if you get bit by one of these ghouls,
you’re going to receive a whole lot more infectious material than from a single
needle stick, and your odds of becoming infected run close to one hundred
percent. But what if, hypothetically, we were able to take the amount of
infectious material on a single needle and reduce it by a factor of ten. Let’s
call that a blue needle. Your odds that used to be around fifty percent of
becoming infected are now reduced to only five percent from a blue needle
stick. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

I did, and a quick look around the room didn’t reveal
any confused faces.

“Good,” Oakley continued, “because remember, this relates
to a vicious little surprise that was engineered into FALCON. In our example
where we reduced the infectious material on the blue needles, we brought our
chances of fatal contamination down to about five percent. Like I’ve mentioned
already, FALCON is fragile, and it only has a window of about seven hours post
exposure to get a foothold in your body. If it fails, it’s flushed harmlessly
out of your system through the normal process. But what if, instead of a single
blue needle stick, we jabbed you with five different blue needles at the same
time. For simple math, your chances of now becoming infected with the FALCON
pathogen sometime in the next seven or so hours are about twenty-five percent.
Five blue needles times five percent each equals twenty-five percent, right?”

It was easy enough to follow, and we nodded our heads
again.

Oakley thumbed the remote and switched to a new image.
It was a color picture of a human male crouched in a corner. Spewing in a mass
over his chin, neck, and chest was a frothy accumulation of thick drool. When I
saw the image, my mind immediately filled in with the scent of rotten fruit.

“Can everybody see this?” Oakley asked.

When we replied to the affirmative, he moved in front
of the projector, blocking our view of the screen momentarily as he switched
slides. “Let’s look closer. Actually, let me clarify that. This is a closer
view, but it’s also about an hour later.”

I squinted at the picture. Aside from a slightly
zoomed view, the only difference that I could spot was a minor darkening of the
drool.

“And now take another look,” Oakley said, “only this
one is even closer and a few hours further down the road.”

A close-up of the ghoul’s face showed on the screen.
The pinkish-white froth of drool was now almost uniformly brown. Oakley pointed
at the screen. “Can you see it?”