Chapter 29: Robotics Lab

Perseverance City, November 16, 2141
Robotics Lab

“This is worse than I thought,” said Jake as the data from Kōngchéng began to flow. The bots at Kōngchéng were able to get power to the computers, and they began a data dump of station logs.

“It’s worse than anyone thought,” said Ray. They were horrified as they read the reports. A virus was stolen from a lab that was only identified as Q1 and was delivered to them by their agent only identified as Bravo. The virus was described as unlike anything ever seen. It would kill a mouse fifteen minutes after contact. A rabbit in 45 minutes. A beagle size dog in an hour and fifteen minutes. Once it got into the bloodstream, it began multiplying like crazy, attaching itself to cell nuclei and injecting its core protein into the cell nuclei, destroying the cell, then moving on.

It could survive on organic objects and even consume objects made of inorganic materials. The only thing they suggest storing it in was glass or steel. The only things they found that stopped it were extreme heat and extreme doses of x-ray radiation. “This thing is a nightmare,” groaned Ray.

Christa was as white as a sheet. Every revelation was a horrible nightmare, but worse, she had a sneaking suspicion. She began checking her parents’ lab logs. They were told that Harrison and Laurel Scarlett’s work was a failure, so their logs were destroyed, but everyone knows that Marconi-Edison Bio-Electronics throws nothing out. They’re still trying to make a profit from the floor sweepings collected from the floor of their offices every evening.

President of Mars Benjamin Curtis reached out to Marconi-Edison Bio-Electronics and asked nicely for the lab’s logs and was told they didn’t exist. His response was, “Let my people look for them.” He nationalized all assets of Marconi-Edison Bio-Electronics and sent a “sweep team” in to inspect everything. Dr. Bernard Goldthwait tried to stand in their way and was soon led off in handcuffs.

“What part of the term Planetary Emergency didn’t you understand?” asked President Curtis.

“What planetary emergency?” demanded Dr. Goldthwait.

“Let me put it this way,” said Ray, who came along to watch Dr. Goldthwait get dragged away in handcuffs. “If this gets out, we don’t have to worry about water ... ever again.”

All of Harrison and Laurel Scarlett’s lab notes were in the vault, and when Christa saw the cover page on the boxes of their records, she almost fainted. “These were signed into the vault on October 7th, 2131 at 12:55 PM by Doctor ... what’s that word?”

“Burgman,” said Ray.

“Uncle Ray, the blow-out was at 12:59. Burgman should have been there in the C Quadrant auditorium getting ready to speak at 12:59, instead he was taking my parent’s notes and storing them in the Marconi-Edison Bio-Electronics vault.”

“What is this all about?” asked a virologist that Ray called in to study this mess.

“This is my mom and dad’s life work; dad was a paleontologist specializing in fossil virus and bacteria. Mom was a virologist. Since they were working on Martian fossils they were called xenobiologists by everyone. Dad thought it was funny, but mom was a super nerd and thought they earned that title.”

The virologist looked through their notes and whistled. “According to this, they claimed to be successful in recreating a half billion year old Martian virus. They named it Dexter.”

“Dexter?” gasped Christa and another scientist at the same time. “Mom and dad used to talk about Dexter all the time. I always thought he was a lazy lab tech. They always complained that they had to work so hard to get Dexter to work.”

The other scientist didn’t say anything. He merely called Ray over to the document he was reading. When Ray saw it, he blanched. The code name for the virus they had at Kōngchéng was Dexter.

“Doctor Scarlett, who is Gogo?”

“Gogo? I don’t know why?”

“Your parents refer to Gogo and Smartie quite often in their personal notes.”

“Dad used to call me Smartie when I was little, so maybe Gogo was Alan? He was always running around, but when he applied himself he was much smarter than me.”

“Smarter than you?” chuckled the Virologist who was trying to make heads or tails out of Laurel and Harrison’s notes. In their time together, he found Christa to be one of the smartest people he’s ever met.