Immortality (19 page)

Mark leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. The remnants of his dinner, some cartons of Chinese food and a bottle of Diet Pepsi took up a third of his desk. The images on the computer screen were blurry. His mind was blurry. It had only been a day ago that Kathy had come up with the answer for getting Anchorage COBIC into the transmission electron microscope. The bacteria shriveled too quickly during preparation. None of the usual mounting chemicals has been able to solidify the specimen fast enough. Kathy’s solution was elegantly simple. Her idea was to keep the Chromatium frozen during the entire process of preparing, slicing, mounting, and viewing the specimens. By keeping the specimen frozen, the bacterium would not have a chance to thaw and shrivel. The task required preparing specimens in a walk-in freezer. The process would have been easier if the entire microscope could have been relocated into the freezer, but the temperature would have wreaked havoc with the calibration of its focusing elements. Instead, Kathy had come up with an ingenious way of keeping the specimens frozen. She had tiny discs of dry ice the size of nickels fabricated and placed one on top of each frozen specimen slice. The dry ice would evaporate directly into carbon dioxide gas as the TEM’s specimen chamber was evacuated of air. The evaporation would uncover the frozen bacterium just in time for the TEM’s electron beam to begin imaging it. The bacterium itself could remain frozen for minutes after the dry ice was gone. This would give them enough time to record images before the specimen thawed and shriveled. The first time they’d tried the procedure, the dry ice evaporated as planned; and perfect images of Anchorage COBIC were recorded.

Mark had been watching as the first image came on the screen, clear and detailed. While studying the image, he kept expecting the specimen to shrivel once it finally thawed; but it never did. Somehow, cross-sectional slicing of the bacterium had disrupted whatever process was causing the animal to shrivel. He could not figure out how sectioning a frozen bacterium could prevent what he’d believed was a spontaneous chemical reaction. Was the shriveling some metabolic function of the animal while it was dying?

In a perfect cross-sectional view of the bacterium’s nucleoid, Mark had found what he was looking for: something to explain the bulge and the shriveling. There was a circular shape approximately four microns in diameter inside the nucleoid. The mysterious structure looked like the cross section of a hollow tennis ball. The outer membrane or shell appeared to be exceptionally thin. The shape resembled a virus but was a hundred times larger than any known strain. Mark was certain it was not a virus. Besides being too big, the object also appeared to be hollow. All viruses were filled with genetic material. The structure could have been the result of some kind of damage or bubble; but if that were the case, its shape would have melted once the bacterium thawed. All the other specimens he’d examined had this same structure. Whatever this object was, this thing did not belong inside COBIC. No specimen he had worked with over all his years of research had anything remotely like this inside it.

Mark had gotten the lab to prepare samples of exposed nucleoids for the SEM, so he could study the three-dimensional shape of this object. The lab had used an ion mill to carefully spray off atom-thin layers of frozen cell membrane and nucleoid until the desired results were achieved. The sample was then coated with a microscopically thin, artifact-free, layer of vaporized metal. The metallic coating was applied to reflect the SEM’s electron beam so surface structure could be seen. Without metallic coating, the electron beam would penetrate the sample, showing only a vague blob without detail.

The SEM images revealed an object that was spherical. The surface of the object was not smooth. The outer shell was marked with dimples, which made it resemble a golf ball. The chilling thing about the object was that it looked man-made. The pattern on its surface was not random but looked almost machined. At points across the surface of the golf ball, there were bundles of very fine roots sprouting from it. The roots snaked out like veins into the cytoplasm of the bacterium.

In the midst of examining the roots, the entire structure dissolved. Ten minutes had elapsed since the specimen had been loaded into the SEM. Mark had watched in astonishment as the roots, then the entire ball, dissolved in seconds. What remained of the object looked like sludge melting into the cytoplasm of the cell. He realized he had just witnessed the mechanism that caused COBIC to shrivel. As the structure of the ball broke down inside an intact microbe, the bacteria’s cellular wall in the surrounding area would wrinkle inward.

In the following hours, Mark watched sample after sample dissolve a few minutes after they warmed. Thinking about possible reasons why the TEM samples did not dissolve, Mark requested a frozen sample prepared for the SEM, with the top of the ball milled off. All the samples for the TEM were cross-sections of the ball. Maybe slicing the object in half was the answer? It had taken dozens of tries, but he finally had a sample that was milled down to remove two thirds of the top of the ball. This sample did not dissolve. Viewing the milled area using very high magnifications, he saw traces of internal structures. There was a set of three tubes joined at right angles to each other and a pattern of lines crisscrossing like the weave of a fine cloth. The ball was not hollow, even though it had appeared hollow in the TEM images. The only explanation was that the ball was composed of material that was far more transparent to an electron beam than common cellular matter. The fact that the ball did not dissolve when cut open hinted at the idea that the ball itself – and not the bacterium – controlled the disintegration. Did that mean the ball was alive and capable of reactions?

Mark had fallen asleep while leaning back in his chair. The office was dark. He was restless and had been vaguely aware of talking in his sleep for sometime. His eyes snapped open but the nightmare continued. He was walking along high cliffs that ran parallel to the Hudson River. On the opposite shore was the skyline of New York. There were millions of bodies choking the river like a carpet of autumn leaves. The evil that had done this was still present but unseen. He had a visceral feeling that it was in every drop of liquid and in every spot of dampness. The killer moved in the water. It invaded through water. He climbed down to the garbage strewn shoreline and inched his way over discarded tires and rubbish to get to the river’s edge. He was reaching down to touch the brackish water. Didn’t he recognize the danger? He screamed and screamed.

He woke up. His heart was pounding in his head. He was shaking. Mark hadn’t experienced nightmares like this since he was a child. From the age of six until adolescence, he’d suffered from recurring nightmares. Later in life, he sometimes tried to remember but could never recall what the childhood nightmares had contained. He felt a strong connection between this dream and those of his childhood. His face was covered in sweat. He rummaged through Chinese food cartons and papers around his desk looking for a napkin to wipe off his face. The clock on his computer read a quarter to midnight. His computer screen contained a perfect TEM image of COBIC that was not shriveled. Mark blotted his forehead with a napkin then looked again at the screen. Hundreds of other COBIC were in the same specimen. The bacteria were in various states of damage and cross-sections. The image on the screen was the best of the lot and it had changed how Mark felt about this animal.

“What are you?” he asked.

His thoughts began to fall back into place as the cobwebs of sleep faded and he returned to his obsession with work. He clicked on a printer icon. On a table next to his desk, a high-resolution color printer started to whirr. In a few seconds he would have another photo to add to the growing stack. Included in that pile were several images of an intact ball resting in a bed of cellular material and close-up views of the faint structures he’d found inside the ball.

Mark took a sip of warm Diet Pepsi. He laid out all the photographs one next to the other. They covered his desk like the frames from some impossible comic book. The function of that ball was a mystery. The telephone rang. Mark reached for it absentmindedly, staring at a picture of a ball caught in the midst of dissolving.

“Hello?” he said.

“Hi, Honey.”

The voice was Gracy’s. He hadn’t talked with her in days. He felt guilty during the lover’s small talk that ensued and was having difficulty following the conversation. His eyes kept returning to the photographs on his desk.

“…I miss you,” said Gracy. “Since you’re stuck there, can I fly out to visit?”

“Yes… no, I mean things are crazy. I’d love it if you came, but you wouldn’t see much of me. I’m working day and – ”

There was a crash from next door. Mark stared at the wall separating his office from Kathy’s. There were fainter sounds of some kind of commotion.

“Sweetheart, can you hold on a second?”

“Sure.”

He could hear the muffled sounds of a voice, then silence. His door was partially open. The hallway was darker than his office. He saw a wash of light from another office door being opened and then closed. A moment later, he saw Kathy peering in. He cupped his hand over the phone receiver.

“It’s bad,” she said.

Kathy stepped into the light of his office. She was dressed in a pair of gray sweatpants and a loosely fitting wrinkled t-shirt. She had obviously been sleeping.

“Three kill zones,” she said. “Three in the last two hours.”

“I have to call you back,” said Mark. “Something’s come up… I love you.”

He hung up the phone. Kathy looked like she was fighting off an illness. Her eyes were haunted. Her shoulders were limp. Mark was troubled just from the message of her body language.

“Emergency response teams are on site and have reported asphyxial symptoms. Everything’s the same as the others except this is big; thousands could be dead.”

“Where?” asked Mark.

“New Jersey... all three sites are in New Jersey. It’s a nightmare. The worst hit areas are located around the swamplands near the Hudson River.”

~

CNN was on the television in Kathy’s office. Mark felt as if he was having an out of body experience and was somehow looking down at everyone, including himself, while they all played out a scene from some movie. He felt like this moment – his entire life – everything was pre-planned and there was nothing he could do about it. He was sitting on Kathy’s couch. Carl Green was next to him. Every few minutes, a new emergency broadcast fax dropped into the output tray of a laser printer in the corner. Kathy had set up her computer to monitor all e-mail coming in from the field. There were entire conversations taking place on her computer screen. Mark focused on the report he was trying to read. Snap out of it, he thought.

Kathy had changed into a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. She was sitting behind her desk reading a summary emergency field report. Mark had the same report in his hands. The news was getting worse. Small kill zones had been reported in both Ohio and Toronto. He was confused and overwhelmed. He had talked to Julie and his daughter, and then to Gracy. The telephone calls had been strained. They were all looking to him for advice. What was he supposed to tell them – run and hide – hide where? This killer had hit in the remotest jungles and now in the cities. He had no answers except that he’d call them back in a few hours – and stay away from all water. He wondered if he should fly to Los Angeles to be with them. Mark looked up from the paper to the television. A CNN senior anchor was standing outside in the cold next to a wall of New Jersey rescue vehicles. Their red lights were splashing the scene. The Anchor was running through a litany of recent developments. Snowflakes were falling from the sky.

“…
Most of the New Jersey and New York areas are still blacked out. Downed power lines have shorted large portions of the grid, causing breakers to trip. Some news services have been reporting similarities between this tragedy and what happened at Anchorage ten days ago. Unofficial sources are confirming that the cause of death is the same, but this was clearly not a chemical accident; and we have information from a reliable source that Anchorage was not a chemical accident either, but a cover-up.”

“
Along with that damning revelation, CNN has learned that the Anchorage incident was not the first. It appears that similar deaths have been occurring in remote sites around the world for the last month or more. I want to stress again that there appears to be no connection to terrorism.”

“
Anchorage was allegedly the first time one of these incidents occurred in the United States. We have been assured by federal authorities that they are doing everything possible to contain whatever it is that’s causing these deaths. Did these same authorities have prior knowledge of the alleged cover up? We do not know.”

“
For now, everyone is advised to stay at home. The cause is still unknown. Speculation of a cause is running wild, and this network has no intention of getting into the speculation game. All we can tell you is that the Center for Disease Control has been actively tracking these incidents. I want to stress that no one has stated that this is a disease. The official name for it is South American Asphyxial symptoms. The unofficial name is kill zones.”

“CNN is well informed,” said Carl. He looked directly at Kathy. She looked away. The image faded from the reporter to a helicopter view of a housing development. The caption read ‘Mount Hope, New Jersey.’ Mark swallowed reflexively. Under the glow of a searchlight from the helo were bodies lying in the driveway of a suburban house. The helo dropped lower until its rotor-wash began to gently buffet the scene.

Mark wanted to look away, but was held captive and unable to even blink. The searchlight moved on; wherever the circle of light wandered, it revealed more bodies. The light passed over houses and out into a pasture. There was a jeep on its side with a body pinned beneath. The Jeep’s headlights were still bright and shining out across the field. The Anchor spoke over these images.