Chapter 5: Volume 1. Chapter 5. Sergey Lake

August 23^rd, 2048

     Alicia stepped out of the taxi and smoothed her skirt. She flicked a request to the city’s processor to locate the coffee shop where Sergey Lake suggested they meet. She arrived and found a private booth. He came a few minutes later; he was tall, lean, and slightly older than the internet pictures suggested. Crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes and grey at his temples gave away his age. Alicia stood up and tapped him on the shoulder, “Good morning.”

     “Alicia, good to see you,” said Sergey with a warm smile. “What can I get you?”

     “An Americano, please.”

     “Are you sure, nothing fancier?” inquired Sergey.

     “Nah, I’m a country girl at heart. An Americano is fancy. I’ll go and get the recorders ready.” Alicia made her way to the private booth in the back corner of the shop. It was an enclosed room with clear glass siding. She turned the music off so the interview would be quiet. Sergey opened the door, holding her Americano, a cup of water, and a green tea.

     “I never liked coffee. It’s supposed to be good for you, but I can’t stand the taste.”

     “What do you drink?”

     “Green tea. Every day since my early twenties. It’s supposed to make you look youthful.” Sergey smiled while pulling out a pill case. He took out two tiny pills and washed them down with water.

     “May I ask how old you are now?”

     “Early 50s. I don’t look good for the guy who owns the life science company making drug therapies to ameliorate biological damage, but I don’t want to get Botox and fake it. I blame NOV-11. Which reminds me, how are you enjoying the new biosynthesizer?”

     “It’s wonderful. The new AI integration package is miles better than the last one.”

     “Yeah, when I coded that first one for Udo, it was sticks and duct tape holding it all together. I’ve had some time to refine it over the years.”

     “You worked for Dr. Musa?”

     “With. We were friends in grad school. He provided most of the biological and biochemical inputs. I worked on the AI.”

     “He did mention someone very smart putting together the AI portion.”

    “He was too kind. It’s funny; we never understood each other’s work. He, the biochemist. Me, the computer guy. I’m sad he’s gone.” They let a minute lapse in silence. Sergey sat up straighter and asked, “So, what can I tell your viewership about Apollos?”

     “Well, initially, Celine set us up to talk about the therapies used by Frank Arnold and the MAR1 crew. Let’s start there?” suggested Alicia.

     “Ah, those. They are temporary gene therapies that overproduce DNA repair enzymes in the body.”

     “Why?”

     “Cosmic radiation. The Earth’s combination of atmosphere and magnetosphere deflects or absorbs the worst of it; that’s what the water in the shuttle’s hull is supposed to do. Still, it’s not as effective as a planetary atmosphere seventy kilometers thick.”

     “Okay, how did you initially conceive of this therapy?”

     “Its predecessor was made in response to the pandemic in 31’. Kushita and I were trying to mitigate some of the damage it did to people’s genomes. I was an AI diagnostician, running analyses on biochemical test results to try and determine what exactly the virus was doing to people.”

 

November 6^th, 2031

     Sergey woke up and scratched the back of his head. He looked at the clock on the wall and found that he had slept for six hours. ‘That’s gotta be a record,’ thought Sergey. He climbed out of the cot stuffed into the corner of his office and analyzed the new data his AI had produced while he slept. After a few minutes, he slipped on his respirator hood and went to find Kushita.

     There were three black body bags, full black body bags, stacked on a stainless-steel rolling tray. The double doors at the end of the hallway opened, and two men in full hazmat walked out, grabbed the ends of one bag, and heaved it through the doors. The words stenciled on the door slowly met up to form the word ‘INCINERATOR.’ Just as the doors closed, they swung open again, and the two men in hazmat came to get the next human-shaped bag.

     Sergey turned around and walked down the hallway to Dr. Kushita Singh’s office. He knocked on the door, and a shorter, more petite figure wearing the same hood with a transparent face mask appeared, looking up at him. “How was your nap?”

     “It was good. Six hours felt like too much.”

     “It was eighteen.” Sergey felt a lump form in his stomach. He felt like a lead cannonball was trying to pull him into the ground. “Don’t worry. You needed it.”

     “How bad is it?” asked Sergey.

     “Some beds became available. Not for good reasons.” An elderly lady entered a local ER in respiratory distress two weeks ago. An hour later, another one came into the ER. The trickle had become a flood, and lab tests identified various causes; common viruses and bacterial infections were the most common. Someone had severe tetanus. Singapore’s government had immediately enacted a quarantine – something that happened quickly after the pandemic a decade before. “Also, the patients are getting younger. A ten-year-old just came in with severe RSV. That usually only affects infants. Do you have anything for me? No one is responding to treatments.”

     “My AI finished analyzing the labs. The immune response in most patients is absent,” said Sergey.

     “Absent?”

     “The patient immune systems are not responding. Specifically, the immune system isn’t generating new white blood cells. It’s kind of like the way HIV caused AIDS.”

     “Are you telling me these people all have HIV?”

     “No. HIV kills the immune cells. For some reason, these patients aren’t growing new ones. The younger patients had an immune reserve. It lasted longer. I think there is an underlying shared cause – genomic sequencers are running now.”

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     “Is there anything actionable?” asked Kushita. She let out a long sigh and hung her head down. Sergey walked into the office and hugged her over her shoulders.

     “Not yet. I’ll keep looking. I love you.”

     Kushita reached up and clasped her hands over her husband’s fists. “I love you too.”

 

August 23^rd, 2048

     “That was how NOV-11 got its name. The genomic sequencers found it on the eleventh of November. We confirmed it later by other means. It targets the immune system and shuts down the production of immune cells. Nasty bug. It had a habit of inserting its DNA into the human genome. Right into a specific gene encoding a protein that helps white blood cells mature.”

     “How did you cure it?” asked Alicia.

     “We didn’t. The damage is still there in all the patients who caught it. We mitigated it, though. Kushita and I worked with Udo. After we learned that the NOV-11 virus damaged certain genes needed for immune cell replication, it was a team effort to create the treatment.” Sergey took out his pill case and shook it. The little pills pinged off the sides of the container. “Two-a-day every day for life.”

     “That’s what led to the creation of the biosynthesizer.”

     “Exactly. At the time, we designed everything manually. It took ages to work it all out. That’s how Kushita and I started Apollos. Udo kept on the academic track.”

     “Can you tell us more about NOV-11? What was the first treatment?”

     “We harvested white blood cells from healthy donors and injected them into compatible patients. It was ineffective, especially for older patients. Most of the kids did well. Small miracles. It worked better if a family member was available,” said Sergey.  

    He paused for a moment, gathering himself, suppressing old nightmares. After a moment, he kept speaking. “It also spawned an entire research field. Immune modulation. Something you should know about?” Sergey winked and raised his tea for another sip. The smile was forced, but it did its job. “NOV-11 was harmless on its own. It was the follow-up infections that got people.”

     “I know,” Alicia glanced down at her hands for a minute. The problem with binoc recorders was that if you teared up, the recording got all blurry. NOV-11 was mainly contained in Singapore but reached a few other main travel hubs. Her parents, Doug and Cathy, had been vacationing abroad in South America when Doug caught it. Sergey knew Alicia had lost someone but didn’t pry. “How did it start, and how did it spread?”

     “We still don’t know how it started—all those conspiracy theories about designing it in a government lab are just crazy. Transposable DNA elements have been around in nature forever. Terrible luck happens sometimes,” said Sergey as he took another sip of tea. “We developed a gene therapy that temporarily produces those missing proteins using synthetic genes. Massive pest control initiatives with GMO mosquitos took care of the non-human reservoirs. Those were already underway, but it still took time. A lot of people caught it.”

     “And those people need that medication every day if they catch an infectious disease. Is there any plan to make the treatment permanent?”

     “Plan to? Absolutely. If we can ever figure it out. It’s challenging. The temporary induction of proteins is easy. We get the mRNA in there, and the body does the rest. To do it permanently, we’d have to insert DNA and make it stick. That’s what Kushita is working on now. Maybe someday.”

     “How does this relate to cosmic radiation and the MARS1 crew?”

     “ISC contacted us with the problem. They wanted a backup for the water shielding on the MARS1 shuttle. We suggested a gene therapy to boost the production of DNA repair proteins.”

     “How challenging is that?”

     “It’s significantly easier than the NOV-11 therapy. NOV-11 destroyed the genes for those proteins. Boosting something that isn’t there is impossible. That’s not an issue for the DNA repair gene set. As per why Apollos? People trust us. No one believes we have some secret cure when Kushita and I are taking these dam things all the time,” said Sergey pointing at his breast pocket containing the pill case. “We make for good PR. Especially after everything that happened.”

     “I’m sure the philanthropy helps.”

     “Probably. However, that’s mostly on governments, not us. It’s easier to spend money saving the world when I’m not worrying about Apollos’ next payday.”

     Like everyone on the planet, Alicia was aware of Sergey Lake and Kushita Singh’s philanthropy. Apollos provided the NOV-11 therapy at the production cost to every government for its citizens. Or even directly toward people if the government wouldn’t handle it. The return was massive research funding from those governments that had spun out a handful of treatments for other illnesses. And the biosynthesizers. “Is the Mars treatment risky? Are the side effects?” asked Alicia.

“Not really. It’s been thoroughly safety tested. It was designed to treat certain genetic disorders with impaired DNA repair. Practically, it was already finished. Oh, it makes it easier to recover from sunburn, but sunscreen is cheap. And then there is Harold,” Sergey grinned at Alicia, practically begging her to ask.

     Alicia took the bait. “Who is Harold?”

     “He’s a rat. Do you know anything about rats?”

     Surprisingly, Alicia knew very little. Alicia worked more on microbe-sized and down organisms. Rats were a few times larger than what she worked with, but she knew they mostly died from cancer. “They die from cancer. That’s it, honestly,” said Alicia while tapping her fingers on the coffee table’s fake wood laminate covering.

     “It’s true. Harold’s breed pretty much always dies from cancer after about three years. Harold was in the first test set, and we’ve been giving him regular treatment doses. We also started giving him the NOV-11 immune booster and senos. He’s five years old and cancer free.”

     “So, are you saying you’ve also cured rat cancer?”

     Sergey laughed. “No, the rest of his test group died a while ago. Harold just keeps on ticking, and I don’t have the heart to put him down. He’s probably the most expensive rat on the planet at this point. He’s become a kind of lab mascot. I’ll let him pass when he passes,” Sergey paused for a second. “Let’s stop it there, shall we? Kushita will want you back soon.”

     “Sounds good.” Alicia deactivated her binoc recorders and checked the crystal memory card. It still barely even registered anything after using it for years. “You’re right. She doesn’t care for the PR side as you do.”

     “She’s like that,” said Sergey. “All I hear about is the good things you’re doing with the synthesizer. I should be asking you about a permanent cure for NOV-11. So?”

     “It’s closer than it was yesterday.”

     “So, will it ever be cured?”

     “Maybe someday,” Alicia smiled while she said it. A few minutes later, they were on their way back to Apollos. The sun was beating down, and the black asphalt road was baking.

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