Silos of Man

Chapter 6 - Best Laid Plans

I was on my fourth round of procedures when Joan comes blustering into the lab. I'm surprised me to see her given that it's now 11pm and most of the world is winding down.  She's more of an early-to-bed–early-to-rise type too, so this was especially strange.  "I thought you weren't coming in today", she says, almost breathlessly.  "Well, it's not really today anymore, and I was going nuts."  "I'm sure", she sighs with resignation.  I know she was just trying to spare me the pain of the day.  She's always been matronly with me, but it really ramped-up after her daughter's tragically fatal boating accident three years ago.

"Joan, I don't get it.  None of this is making sense.  I saw it a hundred times, you saw it a hundred times and everyone on the project in this lab saw it a hundred times.  How the hell did 16 labs get different results, and then 1 get the exact same results as us.  With the exact same sequence timing.  Not somewhat close, or really close, but exactly the same!?"

"I'm waiting for clarification on that too, but you saw the data for yourself, right?  Procedures were right, everything was the same?"  "Okay, and so what did you all find today?"  I notice that she isn't looking at me in the eyes anymore.  Shit, I'm going crazy.  Oh my god.  It suddenly dawns on me and her lack of eye contact confirms it - none of them were able to reproduce the results again today!  My mind starts racing around how this could be.  What could be the possible explanation for this, other than me and everyone else in this lab having lost our minds?  The source!  Maybe the source of the disease was corrupted somehow?!  Or maybe theirs was?  Okay, no, that's ridiculous, there were 37 of them.  That's what they're probably looking into right now.  They're likely tracking and cross-referencing the sources of the damaged chromosomes all labs used in their respective experimental procedures.  All this races through my head as Joan inhales in a wind-up to deliver the next shocking statement, "We didn't try to reproduce it today, Dany."  What the fuck, Joan?!  "What the hell, Joan?!" is what I actually ask.

"Dany, my dear, New London got through to Houston Bay, who got through to me."  I hate it when she calls places on the globe by their given names instead of their quadrant designation.  It's such an antiquated, sentimental was of classifying them, forced upon us at the end of the Transition, by historical do-gooders who wanted to "bring the history, honour and humanity back to our capitals", so the NWG, in order to appease a grieving population allowed a dual naming system, where your designation can accompany an official Given Name which can be used interchangeably.  They're just places on the globe and those names belong in our history books, not our street signs.  I roll my eyes at the egocentric history of our fore-bearers, and at how much harder names are than quadrant designation to figure out where somewhere is on the globe.  I instantly know those two Joan named, though, because the first is where headquarters to the New World Government sits, and the second is where the Lead Science Circle has its headquarters.  

Joan interrupts my internal irritation by continuing with, "The batch of damaged chromosomes with which we were working has some kind of anomalous thiamine bond, which affected the results.  This could now lead to something new for us to use or consider in our search, but for now that seems to be all we have.  The one lab in section 16 ended up with the exact same results as us because they somehow ended up with the same anomalous batch in their lab.  Either through the Silo Exchange Program or in a mix-up during lab delivery of the specimen.  As this stuff is essentially liquid gold, it's traced like it, so we'll have that question figured out soon.  They came to collect all the anomalous specimens this afternoon."

"Well, if these results are because of an anomalous specimen batch, then let's work backward from that batch!  Why confiscate the samples, why not jump into seeing why it's different.  This isn't making sense to me!"  "Listen Dany, I haven't been told this officially but I'm getting the sense that this may have been a panic move.  I've heard murmuring among all five levels of the NWG Medical Councils, and the media swarms seem to have gotten a whiff of it too and are now hovering.  According to a source on the Third Medical Counsel, the Guiding Council, is  apparently concerned about a genome degradation scenario."  Well that could be devastating!