Carson Evolved Ch. 14

Second, the offices and work spaces were in the process of being renovated. Most of the activity happening around the building today involved the creation of a more open floor plan devised around promoting collaboration among the various work groups. Electronic white boards, desks that were part of a space enclosed by waist-high boundaries instead of head-high, which provided nominal separation from the rest of the room, but maintained the open and airy feel of the space, and brighter, more focused lighting were all part of the overhaul. Even the executive office walls were replaced with thick glass to create more of an illusion that the managers were part of the team.

The biggest part of the plan was the management interviews. It was Carson's belief that any problems the company had had previously were tied to this group more than any other. Thus, he had very little reason to trust any of them. Still, he felt that he needed to interview them. This accomplished two goals. First, it allowed him to get an idea of just what type of people Helga and Eivar had surrounded themselves with. More importantly, by holding his interviews in a conference room that required the interviewees to pass by the employees, it became clear to them that a new era was dawning. One by one, the employees watched as former executives of NeoGenesys would march arrogantly in one direction, confident that the new owners would see their value, only to slog back the other direction with their tails tucked between their legs.

That's not to say that there weren't exceptions. The former office manager was a 56-year old woman named Cynthia James. She'd clearly made an effort to approach this as a real interview. She was dressed professionally, and she seemed nervous, as if this were her first job out of school. Carson sought to ease her concerns, and soon she was obviously more relaxed. He was enjoying the conversation with her, pleased that he wasn't going to have to make a clean sweep of the former management. Towards the end of their interview, she asked a question that sealed the deal.

He'd just finished explaining his vision for the company moving forward, taking a more team-based, collaborative approach to their work. She was smiling and nodding her head, but then she fixed him with a quizzical look and asked, "Are you on the up and up? Because I can't work for another company like we had before."

Carson looked at her speculatively. "I'd like to think that I am. Maybe you could explain what you didn't like about the former owners and I can give you a better answer."

She spent a good five minutes going over a long list of things that she'd seen over her time with the company and detailing the actions that she'd tried to curtail some of the more questionable happenings. "I'm 56-years old, Mr. Jayne. I know you could find someone younger than me to do this job. I know you'd say it wasn't my age, and after meeting you, I don't think you're like that anyway. But this place was like a family for quite a while. I've been here for a long time, and I got to watch a lot of younger people grow up here, almost like they were my children. I miss that, and I would dearly love to get back to that feeling. Your plans make me think you're going to get there. But I'm too old to invest any more time at a place that had begun to make me miserable by the end. So, are for you for real?"

"Cynthia, I appreciate your honesty. It's refreshing. Truthfully, I was wondering if there were any decent people running things here before. To answer your question, I believe that I'm a good person, and that I'm assembling a good team. This business is a part of a larger plan to improve our world. It's not simply a way to make money; it's a passion project of sorts. And I need people like you to make it run the way it should be run, to keep me on my toes, and to challenge all of us to constantly improve. If you want the job, it's yours with a 10% increase in salary, on one condition: Never back down if you think something is wrong. My door will always be open to any member of this family, from the newest hire on their first day to the 40-year veteran about to retire. Can you handle that?"

She assured him that she could. In the months and years to come, it would become obvious that not only had Carson made a wise decision in bringing the woman back, but that her staff loved and respected her like a mother figure. She would prove instrumental in implementing Carson's vision. More than that, she would learn to anticipate his wants and needs, to the point that he would occasionally approach her with an idea, only to find that she was already working on it.

Though they were few and far between, she was not the only bright spot. It turned out that the former IT director had only been with the company for a couple of years, having been lured from another company with the offer of a promotion and salary that were too much of a draw, despite her relative lack of qualifications. Addison handled the bulk of that interview, while Carson sat in.

Jinani Mir was Pakistani born, but had immigrated with her parents as a child. She'd majored in computer science and mathematics. Looking at her resume, Carson saw that she was fluent in several programming languages, but her work history was surprisingly thin for someone in her position. As he listened to her answers to Addison's questions, even to a layman like Carson, it was obvious that while she was technically capable, she was ill-suited or prepared to oversee an entire IT department's infrastructure. Considering the work that NeoGenesys had been doing, he suspected that she'd been hired precisely because of her inexperience in order to make her susceptible to the unethical actions the company was undertaking.

As the interview progressed, Addison pressed a little harder on some of the weaknesses Jinani exhibited, which clearly made the woman uncomfortable. By the end of the interview, Carson could feel the woman's despondence radiating from her. "Would you excuse us for a moment, Jinani?" Carson asked, indicating with a nod to Addision to join him in the hall.

Once the door was closed, he asked, "What's your opinion of her?"

Addison thought about it for a moment before replying. "Technically, she's probably a great candidate for a programmer, maybe a network administrator. She's not ready to be in charge, though. She just doesn't have the experience with setting up procedures to comply with regulations on electronic information."

"Could she be developed into a capable manager?"

She looked back into the conference room, seeing the nervous woman attempting to avoid fidgeting at the prolonged absence. For just a moment, Addison saw herself in Jinani. The thought pushed her over the edge. "Yes. I believe she's got a great deal of potential, if molded right."

Carson smiled. He recognized that Addison had a soft spot for the woman. Fortunately, his assessment of Jinani matched hers. "How about this? We'll retain her, but obviously, you're in charge. She's going to have to take a pay cut and a slight demotion, but I want you to work with her as a kind of mentor/consultant and help her get where we need her to be. You have your own business, and I know that you're not especially looking forward to working in the corporate world full-time anyway. Give it 6 months, a year, whatever it takes to feel comfortable with promoting her to your position, and we'll make it happen. We'll find someone else to assist both of you with regulatory compliance stuff. We'll need that moving forward in other areas as well. Sound good?"

Addison smiled and glanced in both directions before leaning in. In a conspiratorial whisper, she said, "You know how much I love you being in charge, Sir. With me, you get what you want, no questions. Of course, I'll make your plan happen."

As they returned to the interview, Carson apologized for the delay. "We have some bad news, I'm afraid." Jinani's shoulders slumped as she visibly shrank in on herself. Seeing this, he hastened to add, "I think there's good news, too."

He explained to her that they were not offering her back her previous position, nor her previous salary. As he described the outline of the succession plan that he and Addison had discussed, a new, calmer, but still excited look, came over Jinani's face. She asked pertinent questions, but he could tell from her countenance that it was a done deal.

They stood as a group to wrap things up. Before they left, Jinani said, "You know, it's kind of a relief in a way."

"How so?" asked Addison.

Jinani looked down and said, "I knew I wasn't qualified for the position before. When they offered, it was just so much money that I didn't want to look too closely. What's the old American expression? Never look a gift horse in the mouth? That's how I felt. And I was miserable almost every day as a result. I just didn't know enough to handle the problems that came up." She looked at Addison. "I'm very much looking forward to learning from you, Ms. Parks. Thank you for this opportunity. Both of you," she added, glancing in Carson's direction.

Carson stopped and fixed her with a serious look. "I believe strongly in investing in talent, Ms. Mir. We're going to be a very different company from what you saw before. I'm going to expect a lot, but I think you'll find that, far from dreading coming to work, you'll be excited to be a part of our future."

They all shook hands, and Jinani made her way out. Carson turned from the door to find Addison beaming at him, practically vibrating in her excitement.

"Adds, what's up?" As he asked, though, his heightened senses caught the scent of her womanhood flowering. He lowered his voice and said, "Is my toy a little excited today?"

Between the masterful way that Carson had handled the interview, especially the way he trusted her to handle the bulk of the responsibility, and just being in his physical presence this morning, Addison was wetting her panties in her excitement. Hearing his last question pushed her over the edge into a small orgasm, surprising her in the process. She'd never done that before.

"Fuck, Sir. I wish you could just mount me right here in front of everyone. Let them see you make me your bitch as you breed me in front of them. Can I at least come to your office and drain your balls? Please?"

He smirked at her. It hadn't been long ago that he'd covered the young woman in his semen and forced her to wear it to bed. But after extracting his promise to speak with the Pride about making her a slave to them all, he hadn't had any sexual conversations with her at all. He felt her hunger for him in his mind, always there.

"You know what you have to do before that happens, Adds. But I did speak with the Pride about you. It took a while to convince them that I wasn't taking advantage of you." In truth, he'd simply projected a playback of their time together in her workshop into their minds. That pretty much ended the "Should I?" discussion and started a new discussion about what they'd do with Addison around and how that would impact their lives down the road. None of them dismissed the idea out of hand, and both Mila and Tilda expressed some envy over what he'd done for Addison.

*****

Alex rechecked the sequences for millionth time, roughly. He sat back in fatigued silence, rubbing his face to alleviate some of the tension held there. Just as he'd suspected, NeoGenesys had had more files pertaining to the virus than what Starfyre had located during her initial foray into their network. The part that had him shaking his head, though, was that contrary to their earlier suspicions of the virus being entirely manmade, there appeared to be a natural strain of the virus. According to the data in the files, the native strain was very weakly communicative, which is why it hadn't shown up to any major extent previously.

What made this strain unusual was that it seemed to require an open wound of some sort to create a strong enough infection to result in the same effects that they'd observed with the Eisenfaust virus. Specifically, as far as Alex could tell, once in the bloodstream the strain bound itself to testosterone molecules which allowed the normal flow of blood to carry the virus to the male gonads. From there, the action seemed to proceed exactly as the engineered strain did. Of course, the natural strain, lacking the biomechanical locking mechanism that created the 'subscription' model of the engineered strain, produced a rapid and permanent sterility in the infected man.

With his hands interlaced behind his head, Alex began puzzling over the various questions that discovering the natural strain presented. Why would a virus produce sterility in the infected organism? What possible advantage would that have to the proliferation of the virus? Beyond that, why would the model of infection require blood contact? There were so many anomalies with the behavior of this virus.

Still, he had to admit that the work that NeoGenesys had done in creating their version of the virus was top-quality work. Having access to the work of the different research groups that had worked on the virus, it had quickly become clear that information flow had been strictly controlled, meaning only one or two people saw the entire picture at once. Most of the bench scientists and researchers had been told they were working on an ED treatment. Only a select few had worked with the point mutations in the virus designed to increase communicability and to bond with the tiny molecular machines.

Just as he was about to close up shop for the night, the sequence alignment tool on his computer got a hit. It caught Alex off-guard, so it was a moment before he gathered himself enough to sit back down to view the results.

As he read the screen, his eyes got wider and wider. It shouldn't have been possible, but there was no disputing the results. Once again, he sat back from the screen. This time, though, it wasn't frustration showing on his face. Instead, awestruck wonder was apparent. Could he really be the golden key?

*****

The next morning, Alex was waiting impatiently outside Carson's office. When the younger man appeared, Alex lunged to take his arm, pulling him towards his own office.

"Good morning, Alex. What's going on?" Carson took in the disheveled appearance of this father-in-law and general mania. "Gods, when's the last time you slept?"

"No time," Alex mumbled dismissively.

They reached the office of the Chief Scientific Officer. Multiple computer monitors graced the workstation at one end of the combination office and conference room. Near the seating area used for group discussions was an oversized flatscreen monitor. Often, Carson would find either serotonin or caffeine molecules on display. Scientist humor.

Today, though, there was a 3-D rendering of the virus. Even to Carson's untrained eye, he recognized the elegant form of the Eisenfaust virus. Or thought he did.

"Did you have a breakthrough last night, Alex? Why are we looking at the Eisenfaust virus again?"

Alex smiled and said, "We're not looking at the engineered virus. This," he said, waving his arm over the screen, "Is a natural strain of the virus."

Carson frowned. "I thought it was something NeoGenesys cooked up in the lab?"

"I thought so, too. But this strain lacks the modifications for communicability and binding to the molecular machines. According to the research, they modified this version to create theirs."

"Why do I feel like I'm missing something?" asked Carson.

Alex laughed. "Probably because you are. That's not the important part, though. Let me ask you a question: When's the last time you were sick?"

Carson leaned back against a side table in thought. After a moment, he frowned and said, "I don't think I've ever been sick a day in my life. That's kind of strange, isn't it?"

"The odds against it are astronomical, Carson," replied Alex. "But," he continued, tapping a button on screen, "Watch this."

As the two men watched, a video played on screen. It was obviously recorded through a microscopic lens. It appeared to be a blood sample infected with Eisenfaust. A tiny pipet tip appeared in the field and dropped a single drop of blood into the dish containing the infected sample. The effect was slow to appear, but within minutes, a visible change was sweeping through the sample as the viral particles were eradicated.

Stunned, Carson looked at Alex, who was looking back at Carson with barely contained glee. "Did you find a cure for the disease?"

"Not yet," came the answer. Alex zoomed in on the screen. With sufficient magnification, Carson saw tiny little particles floating in the solution, but had no idea what they were.

Alex pointed to one and said, "This is what destroyed the virus."

"Okay, so let's make more and get it out to the public," replied Carson.

"That's a great idea, Carson. There's just one teeny tiny little problem."

"What's that?"

"I haven't got the first clue what that is. I mean, I can classify its structure. It's an icosahedron based on its twenty regular faces. But I don't know what that sheen is that surrounds the particles, or what it's made of. How much do you know about the human immune response?"

Carson shrugged. "I guess you get exposed to foreign protein and your body has an immune response to destroy the invader."

"That's only part of the answer. True the body detects foreign proteins and forms antibodies to tag them for destruction. Antibody production is the work of a type of lymphocyte or white blood cell. Once the antigen is tagged, phagocytes break down the antibody-antigen complex. There's another kind of lymphocyte that works on tumors specifically." He paused and said, "Carson, there's nothing like this that I know of in the human body. This is like some form of advanced combination lymphocyte/phagocyte. Except, and here's where it gets even stranger, it's like the particles already know the virus."

"How is that possible?" asked Carson. "Where did you get the blood that you dropped in the dish?"

Alex fixed his gaze on the younger man. "That was your blood Carson."

"What?! So I've been exposed to the Eisenfaust virus? Why am I not sterile then?"

Shaking his head, Alex said, "I can't explain it, but near as I can tell, you're immune to just about every common disease. Not resistant, immune. Watch this."

At the press of a button, one by one, similar videos appeared. From the experiment headings, he saw a number of diseases that he recognized. Common cold. Influenza. Meningitis. Then some really horrifying diseases began appearing. Ebola. Bubonic Plague.

In each case, the same thing happened. A culture containing live virus was treated with a drop of Carson's blood. Within minutes, all trace of the contamination was gone.

The two men were silent for a moment, each contemplating what they'd just seen.

"How did you even come up with the idea to check my blood against the virus, Alex?"

Alex strolled over to take a seat behind his desk. He steepled his fingers before his lips in contemplation before answering. Finally, he said, "Do you remember when you first interacted with Sam, and then with Caitlyn, and we wondered if there was something unique about you or your DNA? We drew a bunch of blood back then to check for anything unusual. Every analysis of blood protein is unique to the individual, containing remnants of previous antigen exposures, various enzymes, etc. Normally, we can match up the dots with proteins that have already been identified and studied.

"Carson, your screen is like nothing I've ever seen before. There are plenty of commonly seen proteins there, but you have some rather large proteins that circulate in your bloodstream that go far beyond anything I've been able to find in the literature. I've speculated on their purpose ever since. We isolated quite a few and had them sequenced, even though we don't know what they are. The other day, I began to wonder if they weren't some form of antibody against uncommon diseases. So, I decided to see if any of the sequences we got from your blood lined up with the virus, and I got a hit. That's when I decided to see how your blood responded to the virus. I got so excited, I started running through various disease vectors that were in storage here, and in every case, your blood wiped it out in minutes."