Joasse Holmes, Viral Geneticist

“Should we give hormone treatments to infertile women whose children are born from synthetic wombs, to fool them into loving the child?”

Pale and nervous, the apprentice skirted around the bollard in front of him as he followed his study onto the courtyard at the base of the towerblock.

“Not sure boss, want me to-?” He replied hurriedly, before the curt but not offensive tone of his superior cut him off.

“Don’t bloody query it, what do you think?” She raised her voice in the second half of the sentence, pushing her breast out slightly for the doorman sensor to correlate her speech patterns with the microQR on her lapel. Blazers weren’t in style, but being different was, so she’d worn it anyway.

The intern was dressed a lot more appropriately different, speckled with reflective creams and black buttons. He was actively thinking of a reply to her question, which surprised her pleasantly. Halting outside the lift, she scanned the other potential occupant. Didn’t know him by name, but they’d spoken. Friendly, but only out of office hours. A party or lunch sprung to mind. No point greeting him really.

“Ah, Joasse!” The man said anyway, as his eyes picked up the movement of her and her apprentice sidling up next to him. “It’s been a while, how are you?”

Noticing that the intern was wordlessly subvocalizing his voice into a search engine for what had bloody better be scholarly articles and not the latest social medium, Joasse did her best to maintain pleasant conversation with her workmate until the lift arrived, and up the three flours before her departure. It was tricky, especially having to imply she knew his name, or anything about him at all. She kept the conversation on herself, but without being vain, gesturing more than once at the younger servant behind her, who managed a polite smile each time. Eventually the man who was to rename nameless was forced to make a goodbye as Joasse stepped out the lift into her domain, scowling at the empty office in front of her.

“Yes, I’m sure we’ll run into each other again soon, especially this month!” She finally spurted, her cheery grin collapsing as soon as the lift doors shut. Normally she felt everyone else stopped smiling as soon as vision was severed, but that overly intense specimen was probably still grinning to himself.

“So!” She rounded on the apprentice, whose name she certainly did remember. “Mark. Hormone treatments? To infertile women? I’m hoping you were trawling far from recent news about the controversies a few years back.” As he gathered himself for another one of his damn monologues, she walked slowly back to her cubit, a little more relaxed now she knew nobody was watching, given how the floor was deserted. Voluntary paid quarantine month. Sometimes the oldest techniques worked the best.

“I did scan a press piece about the case in Brazil, where the mother killed herself and the child.” He began carefully, clearly wary she was going to cut him off and demolish his argument prematurely. “On the actual referenced studies, all signs seem to point to yes, that is if the specific aim is to fool to mother into thinking the baby came from her body.”

Reaching Joasse’s cubit, she sunk into her chair, before her understudy did the same. Busying herself with the usual intranet chaff which had accumulated in the mere half hour they’d had lunch, she gestured for him to continue.

“But I personally think that the mother is fully aware of the alien nature of her child, genetics aside. Hormone treatments to simulate affection, oxytocin derivatives primarily, just undermine her own rationality. And it would seem, sanity. And given recent trends in infertility, any technique which can stimulate birth-rates deserves to be promoted, which these hormone treatments certainly don’t.” He finished with his signature flourish, and Joasse had to admire his confidence in his argument, given the number of times she’d mercilessly deconstructed them before. But today was different. Today he was right.

“Mark, my scarcely recognised brilliance must be rubbing off on you. At least, that’s what WHO-U seems to think.” She nodded at a screen her offhand had been pulling up as she spoke, and whipped the screenshot onto the twenty-year-olds lenses screens. His eyes defocused as he read the article, clearly taking his time. Joasse did a quick brush of her teeth with a disposable she pulled from her desk, before twisting the hilt to semi-liquidise the toothbrush, drawing the thin hilt into her mouth dextrously, and chewing the entire thing into a small lobule of mint-flavoured gum. As she finished her self-admittedly disgusting product, Mark’s eyes refocused on her with the hints of a smile around his mouth.

“Well, good. WHO-U need a victory, especially given the latest shedding novavirus.” Mark said and relaxed a little, gratified he’d passed one of his mistresses tests.

“It’s not a victory they need,” Joasse replied, chewing absentmindedly, “just the faith of the public.” She waved aside a following sentence from her aide. “I know that’s what you meant, I’m just selfcesting. Anyway!”

Joasse rotated back to her desk, and unclipped the headset dangling above her monitor. She depressed a few buttons, and slid a thin dial on its apex, before turning back to her apprentice. “Want any, gum, or anything?” She tried, putting a little sincerity into her voice. She knew she was an utter bitch to the boy, but he’d been well informed of that. Plus, she got the increasingly odd sense his enjoyed it, the little masochist. He shook his head in reply to her question.

“I’m fine, thank you.” He had removed his own headset from his satchel, and unfolded the slick curvature around his now unfocused eyes. “More SARS analogues like this morning?” He asked with just enough emotion to constitute excitement, as he pulled on his dextrous contact interface gloves.

Joasse was popping microstimulants pills, illegal as of next week, but being used generously now given her reserves at home. “No, we’ll wrap that up tomorrow when I’m feeling a little more up to it. We’ll go over the locust bacterial symbiote genomes they picked up in Arizona last weeks. Little bastards which live in the locust stomachs. We need to assess the potency of our counter-G-drive and its interaction with the locust host. It’s only a handful of generations, and less variety than we’ve seen in populations like this before. I’ll show you.”

Joasse’s hands made love to the keyboard. Mark’s writhed in their gloves. They both disappeared into data.

***

Slumping on a sofa which hummed into action, hugging her shoulders in a vain attempted to relieve stress Joasse sighed. She normally kept the screen off unless she had company, which was rare, hence why it hadn’t turned itself on when she shut her apartments front door. But the train home was depressingly empty enough to warrant herself marching into her own brain and, as usual, being her own worst critic. She wanted to take her mind off herself, for once.

Waving, and making a little niggle of the index finger, Joasse made the screen pop into life. A microlens followed her pupil, obeying her blinks as her eyes drifted through menus until she reached the news-streaming sites. She ignored a supposed tier 4 alert which winked in the background, knowing it would just be another powercut due for this evening. The televised news mediums had morphed into modern and hip versions of their old selves, but at their core remained the same. Voiceovers and images, providing as the public desired. While the streamsite had instinctively tried to cater itself to Joasses dispiritingly defining train as a viral geneticist, she blinked it aside without a thought, asking to just hear a general breakdown from the last twelve hours from some of the smaller new sites. The voices washed over her, and she rubbed her eyes with her hands, scarily listening. Without a pair of eyes to track, the computer just cycled randomly through the channels.

“-but the dam should be up and running by tonight, Elsa! So you’ll all be-

-don’t fret! There’s just announced to be a fifth release! That’s -

-and full payment to the victim’s family is expected within the week. In other-

-And! And, think back to what you said in March! Hardly just ‘ripples’ now Misses Chair!-

-a genetically modified SARS analogue unlike that seen before-“

Joasse listlessly looked back to the screen, and blinked to signify she wanted to stay on general news. SARS analogues was too specific to be anything but picked by a machine to interest her. But she was on general news. She was actually on the BBC. Strange.

“The novel strain, which from preliminary sequencing efforts by emergency teams, seems to have incorporate infection DNA from several other deadly viruses, undermining the belief this was a natural phenomena” The news reporter said, as a blurry electron microscope photo of a faint viral halo hung behind him. “The SARS analogue virus was suspected to have been aerosol released, in a similar manor to the novavirus two months ago, in the Beijing Capital Airport. Estimates for the infected range from ten to twenty-five thousand, with a death toll currently unconfirmed but in excess of two thousand.”

Almost without conscious thought, Joasse had sat stock upright, and was sitting at a level of attentiveness she’d not felt since her last date, perched barely on the edge of her sofa. Her eyes were locked on the screen in front of her, the microlens happy she hadn’t blinked for a while. It was so great, Joasse almost didn’t feel the terrified awe.

“Experts have given the temporary name ‘SARSAB’, SARS Analogue Beijing. A summarised statement from the WHO and local WHO-Us will follow within the half hour. Globally, cases have been reported on all continents, with even conservative estimates pointing this to be the greatest piece of bioterrorism in human history. The government urges all citizens to-“

A knock at the door woke Joasse up rather apruptly, and she jumped. Dragging her eyes away from the macabre world map now adorning her screen, she pulled herself up and walked to her door. Her mind wasn’t really functioning, at least that’s how she would describe it in hindsight. She didn’t even bother checking the outside camera, instead just pulling the door open. In a brief flash she saw two policewomen, a man in a suit, and a lab technician wearing a woolly jumper. She only just realised they were all wearing protective facemasks before the nearest policewoman rudely shoved something over her mouth. The word ‘kidnap’ rushed through her head childishly before she felt the two policewomen fastening straps round her head and ears, informing her panicked brain she was now wearing a breathing mask. She took a deep breath of metalized air, before her lungs relaxed.

The man in the suit stepped forward, eyes severe above the rim of his mask. “Joasse Holmes?” he asked, rather rudely she felt, absurdly. “The viral geneticist?” Joasse nodded, eyes darting between the four figures in front of her.

“Who, who are you? What do you want?” She stammered, the shock of apparently being arrested mounting on top of what she’d just seen on the news.

“What do we want?” Said the lab tech, smiling at a policewoman, who nearly chuckled. “Well, seen the news recently?”

The two cops released her, and Joasse fell forward slightly. “Five minutes.” Said the stockier one, gruffly. “Essentials only. Pack for a couple of nights.”

Joasses frightened brain complied to authority, as they so often did, and over the sound of her frantically packing a combination of electronics and clothes, she only just heard the lab tech laugh coldly. “A couple of nights. Yeah, right.”