Perfectible Animals: A Post Apocalyptic Technothriller (EidoGenesis Book 1) (23 page)

“What? How?”

“I just got a call from Gilda. Apparently Boon went for them. He was given warning, and the rebels had bunkers in case the army attacked. A couple of hundred people survived.”
 

Tears of happiness welled up inside of me. I couldn’t believe it, and when my shock passed I stood up and hugged Annie tightly.
 

That night I lay in bed staring up at the ceiling, Annie by my side. It was 3am but I was unable to sleep. The thought of Gilda, Sam, Boon and the others all being alive cut through to my cold, empty heart like a scalpel. Not everything was hopeless. Not everything was lost.

I thought back to a time before my parents had died, when we’d gone to the beach for the first time in my life. Iraq was almost entirely land-locked, so we’d gone over to Turkey for a holiday. We’d arrived at night, and my parents had gotten me up early the next morning to walk down to the water with them.
 

The sun still hadn’t risen as we crunched across the sand and watched the gentle waves breaking. We took off our shoes and played the game of trying to chase the ocean, running after it when it retreated and then running for our lives when it came after us again.
 

Then the sun came over the horizon, turning the entire ocean into a glittering, golden sheet, and my father lifted me up onto his shoulders. My mother was next to him and she took his hand and together the three of us stared at the transcendent beauty, and I was filled in that moment with such a feeling of love and togetherness that I couldn’t have imagined a more perfect world.
 

“I have to go back to the base,” I said to Annie the next morning. “I have to try to convince the Prime Minister to fund Geneus so we can continue on with our germline trials.”

“Okay,” she said.

I put a call through to Bruno.
 

“If I can convince the government and Geneus to support a continuation of our original project, do you think Gendigm would consider investing even if they don’t get a controlling share?” I said to him.
 

“What are you planning?” Bruno said.
 

“We now have everything we need to complete the germline modifications. I might be able to convince the Prime Minister to allow us to continue with the project and maybe even get funding from the government.”

“How?”

“They trust me now. They think I’m one of them. I’ll tell them that germline modifications are the only way we can guarantee survival of our population. The somatic modifications are just a bandaid — they’re never going to be able to protect people from the broad spectrum of modified viruses we’re going to be facing. We need to get to the core of the immune system and that can only be done from birth. If they want their precious population to survive long term, which I presume they do, that’s what they’re going to have to focus on.”
 

“Do you think they’ll go for it?” Bruno said.
 

“I don’t know. They might.”

“Can you convince them to accept the cooperative side effects?”

“Who said I’m going to mention them?”
 

“Okay. I’ll put it to the board.”
 

When I got back to the military base I was informed that the official story about the attack on the de-reg zone was that it had been carried out by the Indonesians. Our own planes had dropped the napalm, as by then everybody was dead anyway and we had to get rid of the bodies, but that was apparently as far as our government’s involvement had gone.
 

The Indonesian government presumably knew that it was us who had released the virus, just like we did in Darwin, and realized that if they weren’t careful we’d release something very similar in their country. It was the perfect story, and as General Savage put it to me, drunk and slobbering one night, “That’ll keep the bastards at bay for a while!”

The morning after this Savage called me into his office.

“Sit down, Michael.”

“How can I help you?”

“I’ve been sent a memo, and it says that just before the napalm drop on the de-reg zone you and your wife were caught leaving there.”

“That’s right.”

“Would you care to explain that?”

“We were saying goodbye to friends.” I looked at him without turning away.
 

The General stared at me for a few moments and then nodded and lit a cigar.

“Would you like one?” He held the box out to me.
 

“No thanks. I don’t smoke. There’s something we need to discuss, though.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s only a matter of time before Indonesia or some other country comes up with a virus just as nasty as the one that was deployed in this country.”
 

“What are you saying?”

“I would like you to organize a meeting with the PM for me.”

“What for?”

“I think we need a broader protection for our population. We need to convince the PM to provide us with the resources to come up with not only a somatic but a germline modification that will ensure the safety of our newborn children, that will make them stronger and fitter and more resistant to future attacks.”
 

The General looked at me for a while, then stubbed out his cigar.
 

“I’ll see what I can organize.”

How could he be so calm? Did he really believe that they’d done the right thing? It was like staring into the face of a serial killer and getting absolutely no reaction.
 

As I left the office, I took deep breaths and walked down the corridor as fast as I could. I started shaking and went into my own office and shut the door behind me. I could only imagine what would have happened if the General had decided to investigate my trip to the de-reg zone further. Maybe I had become so useful to them they were prepared to ignore this one little indiscretion. Everyone had died after all. Wasn’t that what they wanted?
 

“Mr Khan, nice to see you again.” The Prime Minister came over and shook my hand in v-space, and I put my avatar on autopilot, shaking her hand confidently.
 

“Thank you for seeing me,” I said.
 

“Please, sit.” She motioned to a chair and sat down opposite me. “The General explained a little bit of your idea to me, but I would like to hear more about it from you.”

“As you know, Geneus’s main project, before we started this job with the military, was to develop both a germline and a somatic gene modification that would greatly improve our overall immune system. I would like to propose that we are allowed to continue with that research and that the government helps us to fund it.”

“I don’t know if we’ve got the resources, Michael.”

“Just think about the consequences if we’re attacked with a biological weapon. Look, I don’t want to frighten you, but the viruses we’ve been working on are only the beginning. A can of worms has been opened and there are some pretty nasty worms in there. We can’t just react to each one, trying to find a somatic modification that will protect against it. What we need is a broad spectrum modification that will protect ourselves and our children far into the future.”

“Won’t our enemies be able to find a way around that?”

“I don’t think so. We can enhance the ability of the body to respond to new viruses by improving the innate immune response. We can also make the response more vigorous so that it is more easily able to tackle new viruses.”

“That sounds incredibly impressive, but it’s a very long term strategy.”

“Wouldn’t you like your grand children and your great-grand children to be able to survive, whatever happens to this world?”

“Of course I would. Everybody would.”

“What if Geneus invested half the funds?”

“It was my understanding that Geneus was running low on cash reserves of its own.”

“I think we might be able to get some more investment on board. Especially if we have the government behind us on this.”

“Let me run it by the health department and see where we’re at with the budget. If there’s a chance we can move forward with this I’ll be in touch.”

We both stood up and shook hands as if we were really there.
 

“Thank you for an interesting proposal, Mr Khan. I’ll have my staff be in touch with you.”

“Just one question,” I said to Susan before logging out.

“Yes?” she replied.
 

“Why keep up the pretence of democracy? Surely you could keep people under control without it?”

“This keeps them happy as well,” Susan said, with a completely deadpan look.
 

If we hadn’t been in v-space, I might have tried right then and there to strangle her. I needed to keep my cool, though. I needed their resources. For the problem wouldn’t end here. Susan Green was not the first leader to order millions killed, and she would not be the last.
 

Then I realized it probably wasn’t her anyway. She was just a puppet for whoever was really calling the shots. Some military dictator. Some weapons manufacturer. Some group of incredibly rich and powerful people who didn’t really give a fuck about anybody. Then again — who knew? Maybe it really was the only way to continue feeding people.
 

Three days later, I got a message from the Prime Minister’s office saying Susan wanted another meeting with me along with a number of other members of her cabinet and staff.
 

The following morning, I ran through the whole proposal again for everybody’s benefit. There were a lot of questions and a number of objections, but by the end of the meeting they had agreed that if Geneus was willing to fund half of the project, the government might be able to fund the rest.

That afternoon, I had a v-space meeting with the directors back at Geneus. Anthony in particular was not looking very happy. I’d managed to turn around what had been his triumph and use it to get my germline modification project back on track.
 

“I don’t think we should be investing any more money in this,” Anthony said. “I thought we’d finished with this project once and for all.”

“With the government helping to fund it, and HGM industries putting in some money as well, the amount of money needed to get it finished is far lower than it was,” I said.
 

I’d spoken to Bruno before the meeting and gotten the go ahead from Gendigm, on the proviso I would help them take over Geneus given the right opportunity.
 

“I like it,” John said. “Government funding is always fickle. If there’s a change of leadership, we could just as easily lose our military contract. This will give us some long term stability, providing we can get it to work.”

“We can,” I said. “We’ve already been successful using the bio-vectors, and if we integrate that technology then I don’t think it’ll be long before we have a viable human baby with an extremely resilient immune system.”
 

“I like it,” Klaus said. “We’ve spent so long on this project, I admire your tenacity, Michael. And it seems like all the pieces have fallen into place. How much money’s required?”

“Without doing the exact figures, I’d imagine somewhere in the ballpark of a eight hundred million, a third of which will come from the government and a third from HGM.”

“How are we looking, Zhao?” Klaus turned to him.

“It’s pretty much all we’ve got,” Zhao said.

“Tell me honestly, Michael, how sure about this are you?” Klaus said.
 

“About ninety-five percent,” I said.
 

Klaus sat there thinking for a little while.
 

“What if it fails?” Anthony said. “What then? The company will be left with nothing.”
 

“We’ll still have our military contract,” I said.
 

A week later, Klaus and I met with both Jan from HGM and a woman named Sarah from a government funding body assigned to us by the Prime Minister. After a six hour meeting we organized the creation of an entirely new entity that would be controlled fifty-one percent by Geneus, but that would be funded by both HGM and the government. All the necessary patents relating to the project would either be transferred or licensed to the new company, but if anything went wrong, or the company went bankrupt, or could no longer continue to operate, then Geneus would be protected.
 

The only caveat, Jan insisted, before agreeing to everything, was that HGM had first rights to purchase the company if Geneus was no longer able to continue to run it. Klaus wasn’t happy about establishing a pre-set price for this, but he finally conceded.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-
ONE

SIX MONTHS LATER, I sat in the boardroom of our new company, EidoGenesis.
 

“So, do you think we’re ready?” Klaus said.

“Yes I do,” I replied.
 

Over the last six months we had modified hundreds of batches of SCID-hu mice. The first few batches hadn’t produced the desired results, but then slowly, using everything we’d learned during our military trials, we managed to create mice that were resistant to first one disease and then another, and eventually we created one that was resistant to absolutely everything we threw at it.
 

From there we moved on to trials with macaques, and our success was replicated. We decided to call the first one Lucy, in homage to the
Australopithecus afarensis
who was once thought to be the oldest living relative of the
Homo sapiens
lineage. Not only was Lucy’s immune system excellent, but she was extremely friendly and cooperative as well.
 

Lucy had been born just in time. Ever since the annihilation of the inhabitants of the de-reg zone, Annie’s health had been rapidly deteriorating. First it was pneumonia and then bronchitis and lately it was simply exhaustion and depression. After the failure of our somatic modifications to cure her, my only hope now was that a germline modified child might be able to provide us with the antibodies and the natural killer cells that were required to treat her.