Sentient World (eBook)

2.

Word began to leak out about the vile case of disease lurking so close to the 20 million Japanese citizens in Tokyo. Many questions were asked by the media and veiled answers were concocted. Almost immediately, media heroes began their attempts to get on the ship. They were thwarted by the cordon of guards and guard dogs blocking the quarantined pier, but there were other ways in … through the cold, polluted waters of the harbor. One young man found his way in at three in the morning, and quietly hoisted himself over the bulwark and onto the tight planks of the Takanami Maru.

He bowed to the ship like a ninja, and then silently made his way into the dark heart of the beast. He took many photos, talked to one of the three survivors, documented his escapade and, in a final display of panache, opened a freezer door and photographed two body imprints still in the ice. He became a media hero … for about five days.

His stupidity did not go unnoticed by Japan’s epidemiologists. He was in quarantine within five hours after his story hit the streets. Everyone who he’d been in contact with was quarantined as well, and then many people who thought they may have come in contact with him, left Tokyo for the countryside. The three men onboard the ship were moved inland to a secure lab and holding facility, the Takanami Maru was towed out to sea, torpedoed and sent to a deep watery grave. It was every epidemiologist’s nightmare.

On the fifth day after entering the ship’s bowels, the reporter started showing signs of disorientation and agitation. It got worse until he became a veritable frantic mannequin. He exhibited no facial expression. It was as if all his facial muscles were paralyzed, but his other muscles were working overtime in sympathy. He finally degenerated into a perpetual, frenzied, thrashing wall-banging seizure and his elevated body temperature eventually killed him. He was not treated during the seizures, and actually used up his very essence in front of the shielded video cameras.

***

The gruesome video of the reporter’s demise was made available to every health agency in the world and it prompted severe reductions in travel, economic worries for Japan and political upheavals on every continent. In Australia and New Zealand the pandemic was widespread and getting worse daily. In Japan it seemed restricted to the late Takanami Maru and its one late reporter and associates. It appeared Japan had lucked out.

The symptoms in the two countries were so significantly different, that it was just assumed the world was tragically suffering from two distinct viral outbreaks. In an official setting for the video viewing of the luckless Japanese reporter, using up his own heart in front of interested but uncaring observers, it was Doctor Brown who reflexively muttered the word, ‘Berserkers’ and brought on the puzzled looks of several colleagues; familiar with her idiosyncrasies. When the video ended, a scared young pathologist asked Doctor Brown what she meant by the term.

She looked at him somewhat puzzled by his lack of knowledge and explained, “Berserkers were a faction of the Viking hoards who worked themselves into a frenzied state before battle and seemed impervious to pain during combat. Some scientists have postulated that there is a genetic anomaly in some Finns to this day which, when promoted by alcohol consumption, turns males into Berserkers. Since they no longer have English, French or Norse to battle, they take it out on their friends and family and end up in jail. It’s a male chromosome thing!”

The young man stared blankly at her a moment, attempting to get his thoughts together and then asked, “Did you imply the Berserker thing is or was limited to males?”

“You bet, ummmm, check out ‘MAOA Genotype, Alcohol Consumption, and Aging on Violent Behavior’, by a bunch of Finnish people, whose names I refuse to commit to memory. It’s a complicated, but enlightening article on how they believe the anomaly occurs mostly in males. There’s a lot of stuff on the MAOA disparity, if you care to look for it.”

“What the heck is MAOA?”

Robyn Brown looked sideways at the young man, murmured, “Really?” then just walked away.

That was pretty much the way she handled most conversations, and of course as one would expect, that’s why she felt so isolated. Very intelligent people are sometimes like that; waiting around for someone who is their equal or who doesn’t give a whit about their intelligence and condescending behavior. Robyn didn’t know who she was waiting for, but was tired of waiting and tired of guessing what disease they were up against in Australia. Consequently, she fled to her references and had a weekend orgy with ice cream, fruit salads and scientific articles.

She pinned butcher paper to her walls like she’d done so many times before and began to build bridges of logic over chasms of ignorance and confusion. She found that like the Kreb’s Cycle algorithms, one needed graphics to understand other complications of molecular and atomic quirks of life. Monoamine Oxidase-A (MAOA) is an outer membrane mitochondrial enzyme that catabolizes monoamines like serotonin, adrenalin, and dopamine.

The MAOA gene is located on the X chromosome, and a fairly common deviation in the gene’s duplication (transcription) control region results in the high or low activity of MAOA. When it is low, it’s suspected that the ensuing increase of monoamines induce hyperactivity. Research is still inconclusive, but seems to move in the direction of a genetic disposition toward hyperactivity. Doctor Robyn Brown knew viruses were very good at transforming genes and confusing unsuspecting virologists.

She stood back from her dining room wall and contemplated the reporter in his cell going berserk. She wondered how she could prove it was genetic, and as she stood there; finally had an ‘aha!’ moment. Mitochondria are the major factories of living cells and produce proteins by the millions. Sometimes there are mistakes made and toxic prions are formed, as well as proteins which cause allergies in the body. Normally this is not a problem, because the mistakes, by percentage, are so infinitesimal the body can clean them up without overall harm.

However, when viruses quickly overwhelm the entire body, they can cause added problems as they replicate in cells and spread their own proteins around with abandon.

What if … those transcribed RNA, or DNA particles attached to normally produced proteins and changed not only their form, but their effect on the mitochondria and, consequently, the parent cells? That would be a bizarre situation and could result in genetic modifications, immediate cell death, and even inability to utilize nutrients or extract them from food. Perhaps that was why the Australian victims ‘starved’ and the Japanese victims died in the throes of seizures. It could be the same virus, causing genetic changes, based on subtle differences in the human genome and the volume of virions. On Monday morning Doctor Brown requested and received a few moments with her boss, Doctor Leland Gorsky.

Her theory was meticulously presented, but superficially considered. She typed, and printed the theory in a condensed form she thought even Doctor Gorsky could comprehend, but he smiled, looked at it up and down one time through his reading glasses, and said he would consider it. Then he hemmed and hawed until Robyn thought she would vomit with exasperation.

While she restrained herself, she understood he knew his own shortcomings and, just as she thought he would, told her he would talk it over with his deputy, Doctor Lucille Frank. Even though she knew it was coming, Robyn detested talking to the perfumed, tight skirted, plunging neckline floozy, whom she suspected rose directly from her knees to her present position in the Public Health Department.

The next day, Lucille Frank called Robyn away from her microscope to discuss her theory of viral RNA modification. Robyn was her quiet, usual self, even though it was obvious Doctor Frank was terrified of dying from one or the other of the two ongoing diseases garnering world attention. She felt mildly sorry for the woman and her perceived way of life, but innocent people around them were dying by the thousands and she had a job to do, so Robyn spurred the conversation on … with minor success. It was also obvious Doctor Frank didn’t understand Robyn’s theory, so Robyn just shut off her perceptions and folded into her inner thoughts and concerns for people fleeing the disease. She particularly felt sorry for the unattended babies who would eventually die from the Japanese strain of whatever-the-hell-it-was.

After Doctor Frank dismissed Robyn with a smile and a kind pat on the arm, Robyn realized she needed someone else with as broad a mind as hers to assist in the pursuit of the current killer. She decided to take action before it completely decimated the world’s human population. Upon arriving at home that night she walked directly to her computer and hit the send button on her waiting e-mail draft. It transmitted her accurately resourced theory to every major disease investigative unit in every country in the world. If she was going down, she would go down fighting, and with some sense of pride.

***

Marge and Jonathan slept together the night after Penelope died, but did not make love. He awoke before her, started coffee and when she woke; asked if she wanted to go for a swim in the early dawn. She smiled up at him and they both put on beach robes, over nothing at all. They walked down the dim, quiet beach holding hands and enjoying the feel of cool damp sand between their...