Modern Medicine

Highgate - Secret Military Medical Research Facility
Arden would probably note the irony of working in the same facility that produced the Stitches, the men robbed of their humanity by Prion Disease, only to be re-engineered with cybernetics and surgery. Still, the facility had an eclectic but reasonably well appointed set of medical equipment, and the computing power to manage it. He remembered this was the holding place for Mike Carter before his trial and wondered about the mysterious cure that Valerie Samson had created. Was it the cure that caused him to become some sort of half-Reaver, or the cure that kept him from going all the way. Were the seeds of a cure for all the Reavers in there? That was the suggestion. Mike wanted Arden to make for him a race of supermen from his Reaver cure, something he believed he could do using his blood as a vector.

Dr. Samson had developed the cure in record time somehow reverse engineering it from some blood samples from Carter and a few doses of Chempliant, believed to be the agent he was subjected to during his incarceration on Hera. But months of research on his own, and weeks of research with one of the greatest minds in neuroscience and protein-synthesis in the Verse, had not been able to reproduce her efforts. This fact was hammered home repeatedly by the nearly ever present delusion of his former paramour. She stood by watching over his shoulder, insulting him at every turn, reminding him of how he brought her into this mess with Blue Sun. A mess that led her to be captured by Blue Sun, reprogramed herself, and turned into the assassin of the prime minster before her eventual death on Colchester.

It was really too much to wrap even his sizable intellect around. So many variables to account for. Chempliant, mutagenic accelerants, PAX, brain surgery, Miranda, Genetic Manipulation, Prion Disease and more. Some combination of factors was causing the mutagenic plague, and the widespread use of hastily researched bio-chemical weapons hadn't helped. even as they labored night after night to find a cure, or at least a treatment, they faced the real possibility that a cure was beyond them, and whatever they might try might kill the patient, or transform him in to something else, a mutant, a Reaver, no one knew. The computers could not predict the many possible mutations or the consequences of mutated the very brain chemistry that made us human.

For a time they split their efforts, part of the time they worked for a cure. A general cure that might save the Verse, the other part they spent working with PDF physicians already working on treatments and counter agents. This line of work proved more successful. They were able to synthesis some agents that would, temporarily counter the more noticeably psychological effects of the mutagenic weapons. It wasn't a perfect solution, the drugs were not cheap to make, and the countering effects were only temporary. Even if they were able to scale up production, they would only be treating the symptoms, not the disease. Eventually the mutations would either kill off humanity entirely, or at least a major portion of it, the remainder to be transformed into who knows what. Reavers? Hunters-Trackers like those creatures on Beaumonde? Poor miserable Sniffers like Adam? It wasn't clear. But it wasn't looking promising. Still the treatment had done one thing. It had restored his crew to some sense of normality. In the end they all needed treatment; well all except him. Apparently the immunity his genetic modifications had given him to the PAX rendered him immune to the mind altering effects of the Halcyon. He would likely be coherent and lucid to the changes of those around him, and inside his own body. The immunity to PAX he inherited was not immunity to the mutagen. It was slowly working its way through his system. Evolving and transforming to adapt and assimilating genetic material as it goes. Eventually his organs would begin to succumb, and then like the many people whose corpses he biopsied before, he too would die. If thoughts of war were tiresome and disheartening, pondering a Verse wide pandemic was worse.

The Qing Ling government, as it now fancied itself, made up mostly of the old PDF and funded by the legacy of You Ge, recognized the seriousness of the situation and spared no expense to supply them, and provide a team of medical researchers, as best it could. The will was there, but it was war, doctors were needed on the front line, and scientists were not exactly racing out to Blue Sun. But, they had a good staff, and worked diligently. The mighty processing requirements took far longer than they would have on a Core World research facility and he hoped the work continued there somewhere in parallel. Say what you would of the Alliance, they were not suicidal. The work and research on Namira did not bode well for the general sentiment though. It would seem that a pandemic was happening everywhere they looked for it, yet few others seemed to notice, or just assumed it was part of the war. The crew of Equinox, he never felt right calling it Exeter, spent most of their time working on the ship. The engines needed to be practically disassembled, cleaned and rebuilt. Highgate was a good as anywhere to do it, they certainly had the time. Highgate itself was a buzz, its population had grown, as had its importance. The capital of Qing Ling was Meridian, but High Gate was its military headquarters, being closest to White Sun, and already home to the PDF. The PDF recruited and trained soldiers. Factories built weapons, ships, supplies and uniforms. The once mostly idle immigrant population found an employment. Also High Gate continued to attract more immigrants, many from war torn planets in the Rim and Border. Wealthy or lucky enough to manage to escape the battles in Georgia or elsewhere, or just interested in living in relative peace, at least until the war came here, which many expected any day. It had not, though preparations continued. The space above Highgate swarmed with missile cruisers and satellites ready to rain death on any invading force, at least the first wave. All in all, things here seemed better than on Persephone. The police presence was more moderate, more the way he remembered from the old days. There were cases of mutagenic disease, but they were rarer, and usually less developed. A diet of mostly local food, combined with the lack of Halcyon and other drugs force fed on the population gave the people of High Gate more time. He wondered if somewhere in a more isolated region of Highgate, or on one of the less developed planets a group of people were entirely unaffected by the disease. If they had somehow remained uncontaminated. It would be useful to see, to have a living control group to measure against. Who knows, maybe they would become the sole survivors of the human race.

He let that thought roll around in his mind. Any group small and isolated enough from the mainstream would probably be too small to serve as breeding stock for healthy race. Inbreeding and 'natural' mutation would probably doom the race as much as the pandemic. Still something about having a template, a clean slate to work from seemed to over some promise. The gene banks of Erewhon might have once kept the untainted genetic material of the original colonists, but it was probably compromised by generations of modifications. Could there be original material stored in the Ark museum on Bernadette? It seemed unlikely. And the whole mechanism for introducing genetic change into our systems has been appropriated by the mutagen. Even if they had clean source, it was unlikely it could overcome that. He laughed at himself. Leaving aside any issues trying to get the Alliance on board with harvesting the genetic material from a Core World secret site, there was the problem of administering to every man, woman, and child in the 'Verse. It was all too much. Many would look at that mountain of trouble, see the small scratching one had made trying to move it, and just give up. No doubt many already had. Whatever calamities sent the people of Earth-that-was in their arks to colonize an unknown system, was obviously too much for them. It was hubris that made them think they could do it right in the Verse, it was fatalism. They gave up on Earth-that-was, as they would give up here. Arden was reminded of the sleepless weeks he spent during his residency on Osirus. The drug overdoses he saved only to see return as stabbing victims a few days later. The day in day out, the never end slough of sick and wounded. How did he manage it then? Why didn't he, like many others, just give up? He just didn't. He just did his job. What else could one do?

"You sure do get pensive when you aren't throwing people to the wolves Arden." An all too familiar voice spoke to him from the gurney pushed to the side of his small lab. He had no patients, so this was for him, for when fatigue finally caught up with him. Valerie sat on there, her white lab jacket crisp and impeccable, impossibly so in this rusty desert. Her unprofessionally short skirt rode up her thin legs. Arden had to remind himself this was an illusion, he felt a little embarrassed by his minds tricks, but decided if he was going to have delusions, at least it was better they be attractive than not.

"Back to insult me some more Vivian?" He couldn't resist calling her that, it gave him some satisfaction.

If she was insulted, or he imagined her to be, she did not show it, or he did not imagine her to show it, and that annoyed him.

She got up and jabbed a finger into his temple. It hurt. Her nails crumbled slightly like they did when they were made of the crystalline poison that killed the Prime Minister. She lifted her hand up and blew on the nails, magically restoring them to perfection.

"There are some advantages to being your dream girl. I never have to worry about a broken nail," she bragged.

"You are not my dream girl." He spoke quietly, conscious of the possibility of other ears near the lab. His thoughts drifted to his Nika. That seemed to bring a frown to Valerie. "Still pining for the blond? Good luck with that. A couple of "gift grapples" doesn't make her your one true love you know."

Arden started to argue and then realized the ridiculousness of arguing with his own delusion.

He let himself imagine Valerie to be herself for just a moment.

"How did you cure Carter?" he started to get a little angry, at her, at himself, "I have looked at everything. And I just cannot see it," He said honestly.

"You mean aside from being twice the genius you are?" She teased.

"It cannot be just that. Science is work, and reason, it is not about genius." He argued.

"Well then, Mr. Scientist, why haven't you figured it out?" She smiled. "All I had was Chempliant, and a sample of the patient's DNA. And in 24 hours I cured him. More than that, I made him resistant to the effects of further mutation."

"I have done every possible test, every possible treatment using those things. It will not unwind, it will not unravel. The mutagen in PAX is not able to replicate in the retrovirus. There has to be something else. Some link that I haven’t found yet," Arden protested

"Something else?" Valerie echoed with a bemused look.

Something dawned on Arden.

"You did not tell me everything." He said aloud.

"You never asked, and I wasn't exactly on good terms with you. But there might be a record of what I did... Oh wait, those records got destroyed on Colchester... seems a few things got lost there." She looked a little angry.

"You added something else... Tell me what you did." Arden said forcefully.

"Sorry Arden. I am only your delusion. I can't give you information you don't already know." She laughed.

"Tell me again. Tell me what you told me."

Vivian sighed, "Very well. I took the Chempliant, you sent me. I was able to determine the drug re-engineered his DNA. So I remapped the infected region with some 'clean DNA.'“ She said it as if she said this a thousand times, which she may have. Arden had lost track.

"Now I remember, at the time, I assumed you meant of his. But if he were infected, then where did you get the clean DNA?"

"Hmmm... Good question. Of course, back then the mutagen wasn't as ubiquitous as it is now. Maybe I just used some of a nearby patient. Or even my own."

Arden looked into Valerie's eyes hoping to find the answer. He wished for once he had the ability to read others like Joshua.

"Dr. Lawrence said the mutagen, in a less potent form had already been introduced into the gene pool before the first U-War. If that is true, then your 'so-called' cure might not have worked in the long term, especially he was re-exposed to the mutagen again. And we are back to the starting point." Arden sighs once more. Things were very complicated. And are not getting less complicated as you think these things, Arden’s mind added. His mind, not Valerie’s, that is a good sign. Or maybe not, since they were both the same thing. Arden shook his head and then sat down and pulled up a blank document in his tablet. He started to brainstorm…

• DNA
• RNA
• Replicate
• Prion
• Vaccine?
• Remove the cause and the infected people will breed out of the pool?
• Base dna
• Uncorrupted
• Gene bank
• Time capsule?
• Earth-that-was?

Arden paused and looked over his list. Gene bank? Earth-that-was? Could there be another generational ship that didn’t make it here? That was still in deep space? Maybe that thing that Beggar found? He would have to bring that up with Beggar next time he saw him.

• Chempliant
• Pax
• Derivative
• Application
• Food
• Water
• What do all the people in the Verse have in common? What resource does everyone need?
• Politics
• Assembly

Arden paused. Could the PMs on the Alliance council, in the government, not be exposed? Could they be a vanilla gene stock? If so, how do we get access to it? Good questions all, Arden thought. Just no way to answer them.

• Mutation
• Cancer

How did the cure for cancer, discovered oh so long ago, have a vector that could be used when a cure for the mutation disease was found, could be found? Maybe.

• Age
• Concentration level
• What triggers causes the mutations?
• Stress
• Impetus
• Reaction
• Chemical synthesis
• Biochemistry
• Catalyst
• Enzymes
• Metabolic pathways

Arden dropped his stylus, stretched and rubbed his eyes. He needed some sleep. He ignored Vivian’s comment of “Well I guess since you can’t do it, I finish up for you” as he saved his document, backed up his files, and started to shut things down. In the morning…, Arden thought. Then shrugged. Tomorrow is another day. He would think better rested. Arden hit the main light switch as the exit opened. Arden closed the door behind him leaving the medbay in darkness.

Mutineers Timeline

Mutineers