Chapter 307: Our Bio-Gate Strategy

Sunday, May 7 to Wednesday, May 31, 2006 (Continued)

In describing the results of Dodge-Gate, I put the events of the preceding chapters first because they were the most visible events, and because they were also the necessary first step in something my families were much more focused on: the presumed death of Mark Anderson.

What I'll simply call the "Parents' Strategy" was mostly Vanessa's work, resulting from a great deal of thinking that she'd been doing. After she'd developed her basic idea, she'd discussed it with Prof and then my parents, and had gotten their agreements for it. The lawyers had agreed the strategy was legally feasible and had several tactical suggestions for how to implement the plan. My return and the leaking of the CIA file had been dramatic, but hadn't actually changed the direction Vanessa had already intended to go, other than making it much easier for her to go further than she'd previously thought possible. Once I'd turned up as Ron, Vanessa and the other parents had bounced their ideas of me and I'd wholeheartedly agreed with them.

There were three initial stages to the strategy:

1. To get the Fort Dodge disaster, and the DHS's and CIA's kidnapping of Mark Anderson, into the open and acknowledged as a fact.

2. Start the process of building the "Mark Anderson Legend".

3. Sue the Government. (Sovereign immunity doesn't provide the Government with total protection. Several types of lawsuits are permitted, such as for breach of contract, negligence, and breaching some constitutional rights. Pretty much all of my constitutional rights had been considerably more than breached.)

Those were sequential steps, to be done one after the other. There were a couple of minor things going on throughout the entire process, such my family's publicly grieving and constantly asking for the CIA to "Come clean about what had happened to Mark, and to return him or even just his body so we can bury him decently."

With so much media attention, the first stage didn't take long to achieve. My corner of the story was often bumped by the more important larger story, but the media craves human-interest angles, so I was often mentioned. Most importantly for the parents' strategy, the Government had been forced to admit that I'd been in the lab at the time of its destruction, and that I had been experimented on. They hadn't wanted to, but there were hundreds of media people chasing down the many named scientists who had described their experiments and results in my file. One of them had cracked under the pressure and went public saying he wanted everyone to know that he hadn't known I wasn't a volunteer. That started the flood of exactly equivalent comments from nearly all the other scientists and technicians. They were lying, but people do that when the entire world is pouring utter contempt and vitriolic accusations on them.

The first stage having achieved the degree of success our strategy needed, we moved onto the second stage, which was going to be Julia's personal favorite. She'd loved boasting about me to the kids at school, and she'd soon be boasting about me to the whole world.

Stage two started cerebrally, with my families commissioning urgent reports from MANY independent scientists into the results that were so well documented in my file. Thus far virtually none of it had been made public. The networks had it all, but it was scientific, and therefore Very Bad TV.

The ostensible reason for my family to spread my experimental results around so widely was to get the experts to write reports on how special Mark was, to be used to pressure the CIA to return me or my body. The real reason was to create a wave of excitement across America about my value. All the information about me would've come out anyway (some scientists were already starting to make "He was amazing"-type comments), but it would've come out in bits and pieces spread over many weeks. The media has a SHORT attention span, so my families deliberately created the "wave" of scientific amazement.

To exaggerate, we emailed my file to everyone in America who had a biology degree. It wasn't quite as much as that, but the number of recipients was definitely getting up there.

For most of them, it took only one glance at the experimental results that were in their specialty for their interest to be hooked. For example, when an expert on EEGs saw my EEG data (many samples were attached to my file), his/her jaw dropped, and every other job ignored while my file was devoured. Same for nearly every other medical specialist for which there'd been a test on my body, from allergists through urologists. The omissions of dentists and gynecologists were more than compensated for by the WILD excitement of neurologists. The nephrological community was pissing themselves in excitement, endocrinologists were experiencing dopamine rushes, gastroenterologists were busting a gut to get hold of more information about me, etc.

It'd been my family's ostensible intention to get the leading experts to write reports about my uniqueness and medical importance, and to use a collection of those reports to petition the court to order the CIA to return me or my body. My parents would claim that the uniqueness of my body made the CIA's failure to return it highly suspicious, because they'd doubtless want to keep experimenting on it, regardless of whether I was alive or dead. As it turned out, my parents just needed to sit back and watch. The sudden wave of excitement about the medical information in my file caused such a widespread clamor that it rose all the way up to the level of TV producers, who didn't understand a word of it but they knew something special was going on. When they asked for an explanation, in laymen terms, they couldn't believe their ears. They scrambled to produce a show to cash in on it, before some bastard beat them to it, as Good TV has to be First TV. Apparently truth has a use-by date. I'm not sure of the logic of that, but TV producers treat it as gospel so it must be how the world works.

The various networks all came out with medical shows about me within a few days of each other. The shows were all much the same: a bunch of scientists would rave about bits of my body, struggling to explain the CIA's results in layman's terms. It boiled down to my body being REALLY healthy and well tuned, other than in a few areas that were FREAKILY abnormal, such as several of the neurological results, as well as some of my blood and cellular chemistry. [[My body needed 2.05 times as much energy as a normal human, most of which was needed to power my brain. I was also getting 60% of what a normal human needs supplied to me by the Universe, which was invisible to all the tests, but the 1.45 times extra energy usage wasn't spread evenly all over my body, so there were some very puzzling distortions in my blood and cellular chemistries.]]

Bodies are - quite frankly - a TERRIBLE kludge of systems layered on other systems, intertwined with yet other systems, to cover up faults in other part-systems, etc. It's a miracle bodies can function at all. My body was just as haphazardly designed (by evolution's trial-and-error) as everybody else's, but that wasn't the issue. What mattered was how my body compared to other human bodies, and it compared REALLY well.

Human bodies do an enormous amount of self-repair. In part because they get damaged so often (when you cut yourself, for example), but mostly because they're so badly designed that they're constantly wearing out and breaking down (at the microscopic level initially, but after several decades, at greater levels as the repair mechanisms themselves breakdown). So human self-repair mechanisms are amazingly good at their jobs, mine more so than anybody else's. EVERYTHING about my body was "more so than anybody else's," in large part because when you take a body that's already operating wonderfully, and then repair the hell out of it, you end up with a body that - to borrow one European-trained scientist's attempt to explain to laymen - "Is a Lamborghini in a world full of Trabants."

The first network to produce a medical show about my results stole the initial limelight. Their show certainly conveyed how excited the scientists were, and how upset they were that the CIA couldn't or wouldn't give me back, because they would've LOVED to do some more tests on me - all VOLUNTARY, they adamantly insisted. The show failed to capture the viewing audience's imaginations though, other than a few particularly well-educated viewers.

The second network's version of the same show fared no better. They both suffered from the problem that no matter how hard he tried, a guy raving about my pancreas couldn't get anyone excited, especially not the producer (as a group, TV producers aren't that interested in the pancreas; the liver being are a subject much closer to their hearts).

It was the third network's production that hit the jackpot. The shows weren't broadcast live, as 95% of the material was so dull that the tapes had to be heavily edited to make a broadcastable show. During routine filming, the third network's interviewer was having a less-than-riveting conversation with another incomprehensible scientist, about my spleen this time. The professor was so excited about my spleen in specific, and lymphatic system in general, that he was having trouble sitting still. The interviewer was having trouble not falling asleep.

Many minutes into a tediously detailed conversation, the professor said, "There is much more hematopoiesis than normal occurring in his bone marrow, producing considerably elevated levels of immune system cells and stem cell precursors."

The interviewer droned for the umpteenth time, "Layman's terms, remember."

"There would have been very few, if any, human diseases which could've affected Mr. Anderson; his body would've recovered from internal or external trauma much faster than other people's; and with that level of natural stem cell production, I doubt he would've experienced the normal, age-related degenerations."

"Huh?" said the interviewer, sitting up suddenly. "You mean he wouldn't have gotten sick or old?"

"He could have gotten infected, but his immune system was so active I believe he would've easily thrown off every disease he would've normally encountered. That's not only my opinion. The CIA's doctors had started testing that and there are excellent indications that Mr. Anderson's body had thrown off the diseases they'd exposed him to in a spectacular fashion."

"What was that you said about age?"

"We don't yet understanding the aging process well, but Mr. Anderson's level of stem cell production and better-than-perfect health of every part of his body that we have data on indicates that Mr. Anderson would've aged extraordinarily well, probably for a very long time."

"For our viewers, please put that as simply as possible?"

"Quite possibly Mr. Anderson would've lived for an exceptionally long time."

"What! He wouldn't get sick; he wouldn't age. Are you saying he wouldn't have died? Not EVER?"

"Possibly not from natural causes. My understanding is that the CIA permitted an unnatural cause, and they've even lost the body afterward. Their stupidity is an incalculable tragedy for medical science."

"Mark Anderson would've been IMMORTAL? Is that what you're claiming?"

"I'm not claiming it, it's merely a possibility. We don't know. The data we have is truly amazing and it's very tantalizing, but it's also frustratingly incomplete. Mr. Anderson's body functions were performed at levels we've never seen before and it's forced us to reexamine many of our widely accepted beliefs. Compared to him, ALL of us are unhealthy. People we thought were healthy now seem not to be. How we integrate that knowledge into our profession will be a matter of much debate..."

"Excuse me Professor, but I'm having trouble believing how calm you are about Mark Anderson's possibly being immortal. That's the most incredible news I've ever heard."

"Thanks to Homeland Security and the CIA, it's a moot point. I would be very excited if Mr. Anderson were still alive, but as it is we can only be bitterly disappointed at the lost opportunity."

"What opportunity?"

"To study Mr. Anderson's body of course. I'm a medical researcher; studying and learning is what we do. You're excited that Mr. Anderson might've been immortal. If Mr. Anderson was alive today, I'd be excited because we might be able to learn enough from him to make everyone immortal."

"OH MY GOD!"

"The CIA's stupidity has been an incalculable tragedy for medical science. I thought I'd already made that point?"

The third network's program about my medical uniqueness was REALLY Good TV! (after a great deal of careful editing).

Commonsense would argue otherwise, but my body had been healthy above their previous definitions of that, and it'd operated so well, so there truly were reasons to believe that I could've lived for an unusually long time. The more medically competent of the follow-up programs essentially agreed with the professor. Many of the others programs weren't competent in any sense, especially the religious ones; some of them weren't on the same planet as anything faintly resembling competent. It was hysterically funny how harebrained some of those programs were, and I apologize for insulting hares so unfairly.

That the interviewer had used the word "immortal" led to all sorts of crap. The professor had made it clear that he was only talking about natural causes, but for a pathetically large proportion of people, the only word they comprehended was "immortal":

• There were Christians screaming that only God had the right to be immortal, so the lab should be buried in concrete to keep me from returning from the dead. Preferably concrete made with holy water, to be extra safe.

• Our home became the focal point of mentally incompetent religious people and we received quite a few death threats. My not staying dead after having been killed apparently meant God wanted the rest of my family murdered.

• There appeared to be tens of thousands of Christians doing everything they could to pressure the Government into throwing the lab doors open so I could triumphantly walk out. That so many people could be so wrapped up in their unrealistic religious beliefs was fucking scary. People like that shouldn't be allowed to make any decisions more important than whether they wanted fries with that. Fortunately for the rest of the world, the people in charge of containing the spill of thousands of lethal bioweapon vials weren't Christians.

• My family was hassled by all sorts of people, ranging from Incomprehensibly Stupid Idiots all the way through to TV Reporters, and even from people outside of that range.

• The national demand for garlic rose significantly (I kid you not!). It was just as well that so many people had gas masks.

We hadn't expected a reputable scientist to make such an 'out there' statement so we were caught by surprise. Our security guards and the Corvallis police force had a couple of VERY busy nights. As did I, doing continuous sight-blob patrols. When I saw someone who appeared to be getting past our security, I used NP to wake Dad or Prof, and to point them in the direction of the intrusion. They'd call the cops and our guards (both were patrolling our property) and report, "I saw a movement in the southwest corner," and there'd be a rush to intercept the intruder. The height of our house providing us with a believable vantage point.

By the second day we had searchlights on trailers placed around our property, fully illuminating every part of it all night, so our guards and the cops easily caught everyone after that, and Patch got very confused about when he should be sleeping.

It was all too easy to imagine some fucked-in-the-head-lunatic killing Carol or Donna to have the thrill of watching her come back to life, no doubt while thinking that he couldn't be charged with murder if the corpse got up afterward. The girls got several days off school and then escorts for a few weeks.

Trouble from would-be trespassers continued but diminished over the next week or so. The thing that puzzled me was that when they were caught trying to get into our property and asked what they'd intended to do, the answer was almost invariably, "I just wanted to see them, I guess." From what I heard, most of them were answering honestly: they truly were breaking into someone's private property without thinking about it, just because they were overcome by whatever stupid religious idea had lodged in their tiny brain.

Mom and Dad had to go on TV to address the "Mark is an Immortal" issue (note the use of the present tense; that's the name of the issue because that's what the morons thought). Obviously the Genetic Theory, previously so well thought of in the Anderson and Williams circle, was now a dead duck. Mom, Carol and Donna were already getting more than enough letters proposing marriage without adding fuel to that fire. And in Mom's opinion, Dad was getting FAR too many proposals of a different, but not entirely unrelated, nature.

So the official position was, "Three years ago our son was an ordinary boy. Average at school, and less than average athletically. He was clumsy, frequently injured himself, and did not heal any faster than anyone else. Two and a half years ago he changed, becoming a genius and physically coordinated over the period of a few weeks. We're sure that whatever caused Mark's change was specific to him, because no one else in the family is getting smarter, healthier, or better at healing."

Julia and Carol had a good little script (although only Julia did the talking; Carol just provided the on-the-verge-of-tears look), "Carol and I saw Mark do an experiment on himself a few months ago. He used a sharp knife to cut his hands and we watched how fast he healed over the next days. He was three times faster than normal; that's all. He wasn't invulnerable like Superman. He didn't instantly heal like you sometimes see on silly TV shows or movies. Small cuts took him one week to fully heal rather than the three weeks it takes everyone else. That was impressive, but not miraculous." Shortly after Prof and I had escaped from the Casino Kidnappers, I'd started telling Julia and Carol about the hand cutting experiment, but 3A had interrupted to tell me that he hadn't done it in this dimension. I'd changed what I was about to say into a description of an experiment on myself, which is what Julia was talking about now, lying slightly when saying they'd watched it.