Gates of Rome

CHAPTER 8

2070, Project Exodus, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado Springs

Rashim stared, goggle-eyed, at Dr Yatsushita. ‘ What? ’

‘I said we may have to consider advancing the T-Day deadline.’

‘But… but… we’re still only at the primary testing stage!’

Rashim’s team had run several simulated tests on the transmission process and each time the simulation software had assured them that it had overshot or undershot the receiver station beacon’s snap range. Or, on the one occasion they’d landed right on the money, half the candidates would have been lost or turned into quivering mush.

‘Dr Anwar,’ Yatsushita started. He looked harried. Tired. A sleepless night or several by the look of him. His usually carefully combed silver hair was uncharacteristically dishevelled. ‘You must have been following the news-streams?’

Rashim hadn’t, or not closely anyway. He had no time for that. Every day, it seemed, one or more of the transmission candidates had been replaced with someone else, requiring him to chase up the data on their replacements, plug in the information and recalculate the total mass index.

‘You have heard about the Kosong-ni virus?’

A couple of days ago, he’d watched a few minutes of news. The last city in Bangladesh had been abandoned to floodwater. The algal blooms in the Indian Ocean were now calculated to be covering thirty-six per cent of the surface area, poisoning, completely annihilating the ecosystem beneath. The North American Federation were enforcing border restrictions on east and west state migrants. A corps of Japanese combat droids had successfully made an amphibious assault on the North Korean city of Hyesan. A lot of dead people. But then when did the news these days not feature a high body count?

And yes, there’d been something about a virus. The news-streams had speculated it might have been a chemical weapon of some kind dropped on a North Korean city by the Japanese. Or worse still, some kind of wild-card bioweapon developed by the North Koreans and accidentally exposed as a result of some missile strike.

‘Kosong-ni virus?’ So it had a name now.

Yatsushita shook his head. He pushed his way through the warren of desks towards Rashim’s. ‘You fool. You should be watching instead of… of…’ He looked at SpongeBubba squatting beside the desk and grinning with goofy teeth. ‘Instead of making your foolish toys!’

‘I haven’t got time to watch a holo-vid, Dr Yatsushita!’ Rashim replied, irritated with the project leader. ‘I’ve got — ’

‘It’s airborne! There are reports of the virus in Beijing!’

Airborne certainly wasn’t so good.

‘Our… sponsors are worried by this. They want T-Day advanced.’

Sponsors — Yatsushita’s carefully chosen word. It was transparently obvious to Rashim that Project Exodus was being funded by what was left of America’s defence budget, most probably funds topped up by a few billionaires who wanted in on it.

‘Advanced by how much?’

Dr Yatsushita hesitated. ‘They want it ready to go for the thirtieth of May.’

‘But that’s five weeks away! We need at least another six months to be sure — ’

‘We have no choice in this matter! It must be ready by then!’

Rashim pushed his round glasses up on to his forehead where they held his draping dark locks back like a hairband. ‘Did you tell them the risks involved? Did you tell them that we get this the slightest bit wrong and we’re all dead? Or worse…?’

‘I have explained all of this. Nonetheless, they insist.’

Rashim stared at his project leader. ‘Is it that bad?’

Yatsushita pulled a seat up, looked across the maze of desks and cubicles at the dozen other technicians working late. He sat down and lowered his voice. ‘It is much, much worse than the news media are reporting. They have been kept in the dark. There is an embargo on the worst of it.’

‘Worst of it? What do you mean?’

‘A smart-virus, Rashim. It is an advanced smart-virus! A Von Neumann!’

Rashim nodded slowly. Von Neumann — a hypothetical premise imagined by a Hungarian theorist, John von Neumann, over a hundred and fifty years ago. Machines capable of harvesting their own resources for infinite self-replication. Nanotechnologists had tried experimenting with that concept at the beginning of the twenty-first century with little success. Little robots the size of blood cells. But robotically there were too many practical problems to overcome. However, biologically — a very different story. After all, bacteria were biological Von Neumann machines of a sort. But the Holy Grail — certainly in terms of weapons use — was a bacterium that could be smart, could be given genetic instructions, an objective, a specified goal. Could be given a target.

‘A sample has been isolated and analysed by a team in Tokyo,’ said Dr Yatsushita. Rashim could see the man was clearly shaken.

‘And?’

‘It is designed to depopulate. Designed to target humans only.’

‘It’s engineered?’

‘Of course it is! On contact with any human cells, it activates, breaks down the cell structures into acids, proteins.’ He ran a hand through his silver hair. ‘It completely liquidizes the infected within hours!’

‘My God!’

‘The liquid solution is used by the bacteria to make copies of themselves, to grow spores — like feathers, like pollen — that can be carried by the wind.’

‘Are there any cases of immunity yet? Ethnic-specific resistance?’

Yatsushita shook his head. ‘No. Not yet. So far it seems no one is immune. Whoever made this did not care that it would kill the whole world.’

Rashim looked at the holo-screen shimmering in the air above his desk. Endless columns of data that needed collating and processing.

‘Now do you see why they want T-Day advanced?’ said Dr Yatsushita. ‘Something like Kosong-ni is what leaders have feared for decades. A perfect bioweapon.’

Rashim rubbed his temple. ‘Jesus.’

Dr Yatsushita nodded. ‘I have told our sponsors that all the T-Day candidates must make their way here immediately. We must finalize the mass index as soon as possible. We cannot keep changing the data.’

Rashim nodded. ‘Yes… yes, absolutely.’

His boss leaned forward. ‘Dr Anwar, you have family on the candidate list, don’t you?’

‘Yes… my parents.’

‘Call them, Rashim… get them here now. Before it’s too late!’