Immortality (43 page)

Mark sighed. “I’m trying to nail down how seeds communicate over a distance of miles while you’re trying to figure out why someone survived inches away from her dying children.”

Kathy put aside the Rubik’s Cube; all four sides were now solid colors. Mark sat down next to her on the couch and began rummaging through some of the material on the coffee table. She felt a kind of energy from him that sent tingles through her body.

“Does your think-tank have any idea how far seeds can transmit?” asked Kathy.

“Assuming it’s radio waves, the estimates range from fractions of an inch to about a yard. No one can see how a single seed could transmit over a range of miles. The most likely solution is they relay the signal from one seed to the next, something like the way our nerve cells work but without connecting fibers. The only problem is explaining large kill zones. An area the size of Los Angeles would need to be covered with pockets of COBIC every few feet or less. If the signal can only travel a fraction of an inch, then the amount of COBIC needed to blanket an area like Los Angeles is too large to even consider. We would be finding COBIC in every spoonful of dirt – and COBIC lives in water, not dirt.”

“What if they worked together? I mean, what if a group of seeds could cluster together to form a high power transmitter?”

“Fascinating idea,” said Mark. “They could work from centralized transmission and relay locations. Each seed in a large area receives the same broadcast signal. That could really explain it.”

He was staring directly into her eyes. She felt herself leaning toward him, drawn to him. Was she about to embarrass herself? What if he didn’t feel the same attraction? Kathy was suddenly terrified. Her heart was beating faster as she leaned closer still, unable to stop herself. Her mind flashed on an image of that rusty condom all scrunched in the bottom of her purse. She felt confusion.

There was a knock on the doorframe. The door was partially open. Kathy froze in panic. She saw Carl Green with a woman dressed in a Navy uniform. The woman was young, blonde and petite. Kathy felt embarrassed and invaded.

“Uhhh… Dr. Morrison and Dr. Freedman,” said Carl. “This is Lieutenant Kateland from Naval Intelligence.”

“Call me Jessica,” said the woman as she walked straight in and shook hands. Her handshake was firm.

“Have a seat,” said Mark.

Lieutenant Kateland rolled an office chair over to the coffee table. She opened a briefcase and took out a PC tablet that was inside a transparent plastic sleeve which resembled a larger version of the anti-shoplifting devices used in stores. The sleeve had the words ‘USN Top Secret – LIM2 Eyes Only’ written across it. Lieutenant Kateland broke the security seal by snapping an end of the sleeve off and removing the tablet. Kathy had seen these security seals before.

Lieutenant Kateland set the PC tablet on the coffee table. Using a pen stylus, she signed in on the tablet and opened a set of files that looked like aerial reconnaissance photos. Kathy noticed how Mark was leaning forward. He looked interested in the photos and maybe the Lieutenant.

“This morning we received these images from one of our birds,” said Lieutenant Kateland.

“Birds?” asked Kathy.

“Spy satellites,” said Mark. He picked up the tablet. “What kind of bird took these? They’re higher resolution than any military surveillance stuff I’ve worked with.”

“I can’t comment on that,” said Lieutenant Kateland. “See anything curious in those photos? The Navy analysts sure did.” She pointed to something that looked like streams of smoke billowing just under the surface of the water. “These are plumes of…”

“Bacteria,” said Mark.

“Exactly,” said Lieutenant Kateland. “Navy intel decided anything dealing with waterborne bacteria could be connected with the nano-virus. So here I am.”

Kathy noticed the woman’s uniform had the same gold braided BARDCOM insignia as the Army Major she’d met on a helicopter flying out to a Los Angeles refugee camp. Kathy remembered the Major had said the insignia was for his unit which specialized in chemical warfare. What was a Navy Lieutenant doing wearing an insignia from an Army chemical warfare unit? Kathy did not trust this female Lieutenant. She was not who she appeared to be.

“Now look at this location,” said Lieutenant Kateland.

She addressed Mark and pointed with the stylus to a section of a burnt orange plume. All the colors in the image were unnatural – probably the results of computer enhancement to bring out details.

“This feature measures sixty by eighteen nautical miles,” continued Lieutenant Kateland. “Notice how far the plume has moved. If the drift continues, it will hit the New England coast in a few days.”

Lieutenant Kateland selected a different image of the same piece of ocean. Unlike the previous image, this photo had normal coloration.

“This image is raw visible light, magnified of course, but no other computer magic. You can see the true color of this plume is a blue-green that almost matches the color of the water. Now let’s compare this image with one from ground penetrating radar…”

Kathy was annoyed that the Lieutenant had not addressed a single sentence to anyone in the room except Mark. Soon, the simple fact that she was annoyed began to bother her. Between suspicion and annoyance, she was having trouble paying attention.

“It looks like something’s missing,” said Mark. Why was he smiling?

“Sorry about the blacked-out areas,” said Lieutenant Kateland. “Navy censors have to do something to justify their paychecks. This ground penetrating radar image is color-coded for depth. Blue is sea level; the colors shift toward red to indicate greater and greater depth. This image shows the plume is running almost two hundred feet deep at spots. I’ve been told this kind of depth is very unusual for Chromatium, if that’s what we’ve got.”

Lieutenant Kateland zoomed in on the image, using the stylus to draw and select a rectangular area. She rolled her chair around the coffee table so she was beside Mark and viewing the image from the same perspective.

“Look at the pattern of graininess,” said Lieutenant Kateland. “That’s not our equipment. The analysts concluded this plume varies in density, forming a pattern with bands of higher and lower concentrations. One of our analysts said it resembles what low frequency sound waves would look like.”

“Can I get a sample of this bacterium?” asked Mark.

“It’s being done as we speak. A Navy helo stationed on the carrier Roosevelt is outward bound to the plume. When the helo returns to Roosevelt, a Navy fighter will fly the samples to Atlanta. You should have them tonight.”

Mark absentmindedly turned the DVD mailer over in his hands. How could a small cardboard box contain something that would have the power to change everything? The package had arrived a few hours ago by military courier. There were no markings or information indicating who had sent it. The DVD which was now playing had a serial number written on it and nothing more. Light from the screen flickered on Kathy’s face. Her expression was long and unreadable. Without any idea of what was on the DVD, Mark had viewed it before showing it to Kathy and Carl Green. The DVD had left Mark deeply disturbed. He’d lost track of how many times he’d seen it since then.

A secure video conference including his panel of nanotech experts was in progress. A notebook computer’s screen displayed a set of video headshots for each conference call member. A video camera clipped to the top of the screen was capturing Mark, Kathy, and Carl.

The room was silent. The DVD contained no soundtrack. Dozens of questions arose when the beginning was shown to the group; but once the terminal sequence began to play, all questioning had ended. The DVD started with a time and date counter displayed in the lower corner of the screen. The date and time was that of the New York kill zone. The image was windowed. There was a wide angle Microscopic-MRI view of a living human brainstem along with several magnified views of specific regions. There was no civilized way to explain the images. Clearly, people were being used as test subjects. The screen had medical telemetry traces running superimposed over the top edge of the display.

Mark felt his pulse increasing even though he knew what was coming next. Activity started when a flood of blurry capsule-shaped microbes swam onto the screen in time-lapse video. The microbes were just above the resolution threshold of the Microscopic-MRI. They were unquestionably infected COBIC. The microbes could be seen swimming through veins and then capillaries as they converged on the brainstem from several directions. The movements appeared systematic and coordinated.

As the microbes reached the brainstem, they stopped moving; but something just below the resolution of the Microscopic-MRI kept going. What showed were pinpricks of disruption passing through solid tissue. The consensus was that the disruptions were seeds leaving their hosts and burrowing directly through the material surrounding the brainstem. The tissues came back together and resealed behind the disruptions. No evidence of passage was left behind. The mechanism was nothing less than disassembly and reassembly of living cells. The burrowing process changed once critical nerve tissues were reached: the speed picked up and reassembly stopped as each disruption began to trail a tunnel in its wake. The disruptions moved across vital fibers in an organized pattern leaving severed nerves behind them. In the cross-sectional view of the MRI, the tissue appeared to open up as if it were cut with an invisible scalpel. Mark knew it was clear to anyone medically trained that they were witnessing fatal injuries to a nervous system. The EEG traces grew erratic, blood oxygen levels were dropping; then, the EKG began to fail. Within a minute after brainstem penetration, the subject’s EKG was a flat-line and the pinprick disruptions were moving back in the directions they had come. As the disruptions burrowed through solid tissues, the flesh was again being reassembled in their wake. The disruptions entered back into the circulatory system and seemed to disappear near the bacteria. The microbes slowly twitched back to life and then swam away. Mark thought it was a safe bet they were on direct paths to exit points from the victim’s body. The EEG ran for a short time longer before also flat-lining.

Kathy had the remote control. She ran the video back and began replaying a zoomed-in image of a single nerve fiber as it was sliced into sections. Mark looked away from the screen. He had seen more than enough.

The DVD left too many questions unanswered for him. While it was proof that the seeds infecting COBIC were the killer, it did nothing to explain the mechanisms at work. The images demonstrated coordination of attack but offered no clues about how the coordination was orchestrated or how these things navigated a human body. Was there constant wireless communication or was each seed running autonomously once an attack was initiated? Mark tried to wrap his mind around the now inescapable fact that during the small time span of a kill zone, synchronized inside an entire population of people, these seeds moved through their intended victims’ bodies, attacked their brainstems, and then fled. The entire idea was astonishing, impossibly grotesque, and all too consistent with what had already been discovered.

“Has anyone thought of the medical implications of this?” asked Kathy.

“I’m not sure I follow,” said Mark.

“These seeds can slice tissue and then restore it without a trace,” said Kathy. “If we can figure out how it’s done, this would be a huge advance for surgery.”

“Almost any physical ailment could be caused or cured,” said Carl Green. Both Kathy and Mark turned to stare at Carl. He had not said a word since the first viewing of the DVD.

“That’s right,” said Kathy.

“Wait a minute,” said Mark. “That could be a missing piece. Since we found out the seed was a nanotech device, we’ve all been asking the same question again and again: where did these things come from? We can’t name anyone who was close to developing this kind of technology. So it has to be a radical breakthrough, right? So why would some company or government in possession of this technology create something this odd? I mean despite the death toll, far more effective weapons could have been built with this technology if a weapon was the goal. So maybe they weren’t working on a weapon. Maybe this thing is a nanotech medical tool that went horribly wrong.”

“Weapon, medical tool… you’re all blind!” interrupted Dr. Snow. Even in the small video image on the notebook screen, she looked harried. Mark could see deep bags under her eyes. Her hair was held on top of her head with a clip from which large clumps fell out at odd angles. She was wearing a silver cross and chain that he hadn’t noticed before. “Everyone’s refusing to consider the possibility that we’re dealing with something not created by us. Why does everyone continue to think of this amazing and intelligent creation as man-made? This work is godlike in its breath. Now we realize that it can heal as well as destroy. How much more proof will it take for you scientists? Maybe this isn’t technology at all? Can’t any of you see we’re dealing with something that was written about in the Bible? The end of days…”

Mark had wondered how long it would take before people began to bend or break under pressure. A few days ago, Dr. Snow had argued there was no artificial intelligence running this technology; these were just dumb specks of dust following a simple but deadly program. She’d made her case that possibly even simple emergent behavior was beyond its capabilities. Now she was saying the seeds were an extension of God. Maybe some kind of holy invaders bringing divine wrath to our wicked world? Slowly, carefully, Mark studied each of the faces on the teleconference screen. Right now, they all needed each other’s help to win this battle. He felt a small panic growing in his gut. Which one would be the next to snap?

The New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge was no different than the New York side. Suzy leaned against a concrete abutment amid waves of people. Artie had been gone for over an hour, hunting for transportation. She was worried even though he’d said it could take all afternoon. Trying to distract herself, she played one of her tapes through the camcorder and jotted editing notes.