Double Helix Ch. 18

"Maybe we should sedate her," I suggested.

"I would rather not," Nissi said. "I would like to be able to get her verbal feedback during the procedure, and it will just make her confusion about the whole process worse."

"She thinks she's going to the dentist," Nock said. "Apparently dentistry isn't so good where she came from. I also think she's regressed to a pre-teen girl."

I could see that, now that he had described it. Her protests resembled those of a fearful child. I crouched slightly, so that I was more on her level, and patted her shoulder. "It's going to be okay," I said, hoping to reassure her with my tone more than anything else. She turned to me, replying in Russian but sounding more hopeful. Nock looked at me and nodded, speaking a few sentences softly and slowly in Russian. She still seemed doubtful, but Wendy moved on ahead and Nonna, after a moment, followed tentatively.

"Okay," Nissi said. "Crisis averted. Now we just hope she doesn't freak out when I put the IV in her arm."

There ended up being a lot of prep that Nissi needed to do first, so Nonna was asleep by the time she got to that part. I volunteered to put the needle in, and fortunately got the vein on the first try. Nonna stirred and pawed at her arm as though reacting to an insect bite, but settled down again and I was able to get it taped down and the tubing attached. "All yours," I said.

Nissi started ta clear fluid flowing into Nonna's veins. It would carry the enzymes that would restore her cells' healthy functioning. It only took a few minutes for the fluid in the bag to drain away, but Nissi kept her a few more hours to make sure that Nonna didn't have some kind of reaction.

We all observed her carefully in the following weeks, keeping a log to track changes in her behavior. Her health seemed better almost immediately, reflecting the improved health of her cells. She had more energy and even her overall cognition improved slightly. The treatment to repair damaged DNA and restore her telomeres followed.

For that step, we injected her with a host of tailored viruses that invaded her cells, but instead of hijacking the cells' machinery to replicate themselves, these inserted healthy DNA into her chromosomes to replace damaged gene sequences. In addition to replacing the alleles that caused her Alzheimer's with healthier versions of the gene, we targeted common transcription errors that had accumulated as her cells divided, restoring function to them and reducing her risk of developing cancer.

By the end of the first month, her skin was becoming smoother, thicker, and more elastic. Her hair had darkened at the roots as the follicles returned to their former levels of melanin production. The next treatment stimulated some of her existing cells to switch to stem cells, regrowing muscle and bone tissues that had atrophied. Nonna regressed through middle age before our eyes, heading ever younger.

Once the lab had been completed, Tilly had her own projects to see to. In the field to the north, she mapped out squares a few yards across on the barren ground with stakes and twine, creating a grid. In each square, she placed a healthy potato plant taken from the greenhouse after conditioning the soil in various ways. Along with her control group, there were about ninety plants in her plot.

I visited her in the field one day, a few weeks after her initial planting. The bright green leaves and stems of the potato plants looked healthy to me, and I said so, but Tilly urged me to look closer.

"See the bottom of this leaf here?" she said, pointing.

I bent down and lifted the leaf to look. "It looks like tiny white hairs," I said.

"Those are the aerial spores. The Rot infects the roots of the plant initially, but it migrates to the leaves to produce its spores. Those can then bud off and get carried away on the wind, for miles if there's a steady breeze. If they land in moist soil, the spores shed their outer layer and swim around until they find a suitable host plant. They infect that plant and the process starts all over again. This plant is heading into the necrotrophic phase."

"That sounds bad," I said.

"It is. That's the point where the oomycete switches from living off the plant, stealing some of its nutrients and reproducing, to killing it. Here, I'll show you."

She squatted low, grabbed a trowel and carefully dug around the plant to loosen the tuber, which had grown roots out in every direction. She pulled the potato to the surface, and I could see discolorations on its brown skin. She cut into it with a knife, showing a deep spot of mushy black that smelled faintly foul. "This one is from my control group. Those spots will continue to spread over the leaves for a few more days, pumping out spores by the tens of thousands. Then the rot we see here in the root system will begin to overwhelm it, and the leaves will start to wilt. Within a week, give or take, this thing would be just a black, dead mass." She flipped the uprooted plant into a nearby wheelbarrow.

"Poor potato," I said.

"I know," she said with a little smile. "And poor us, who eat those potatoes. Most of my controls are in as bad a shape as that fellow."

"Any that aren't doing poorly in your test group?"

"Most are already at or near the same place as that one. I was hopeful that a high soil pH might be key. Most water molds need neutral or acidic soil. If Rot followed that pattern, all of the plants from here," she pointed near the middle of one of the rows of plants, "to here," and she moved her finger to the end of the row, "would be free of the disease. But look at the leaves of that first plant."

I moved to the one she had pointed to, just right of the center of the row. "Spores," I said, grimacing at the white filaments.

"And you'll see the same on the one next to it. Those plants are sitting in a soil pH of 7.25 and 7.5. That should be too high for oomycetes to survive. Above 7.5 we start to see some slowdown in the progression of the disease."

"Slowdown?" I asked. "So the pH does affect it?"

"Yes, but not as much as I had hoped. The plant on the end there is in 8.5 soil but it's just at an earlier stage of infection. The big problem is that most of the plants that we eat tend to favor acidic or neutral soil, in the range of about 4.5 to 6.5, though some thrive in slightly alkaline soil. Potatoes can actually grow in a pretty wide range of soil types, though most farmers keep them at a lower pH because you start to see a disease called scab. No use preventing Rot if they just die off from something else."

"Still, that's promising. If Rot is inhibited by high pH, maybe we can use that against it."

"Maybe, but either way, it's a data point that we can use to help figure out how it works." She pointed to the next line of plants. "Dry and sandy soil also inhibit its growth, which is great if we wanted to farm cactus, but that's another data point, too."

"How about temperature, atmospheric pressure? Do you have any way to test those?"

She stood up straight and shrugged. "I guess we could plant up in the Cascades. What I really want to do is run these same tests with different species. As many as possible, in fact. But that will take a lot of time and labor. Stansy and Wendy have time to help me when I ask, but I still have obligations with the darknet and other projects I haven't even started. Have you thought any more about Nock's proposal?"

I ran a finger through my beard absently. "You mean bringing people here from outside."

"Nock has over a dozen candidates with training in the disciplines I need. If I just had three such people, I could get ten times the work done, and not just my Rot research. I still want to build that aquaponics facility. The fish alone would bring in so much money for us."

She had described to me how aquaponics worked. It basically combined hydroponics, growing plants in nutrient-rich water, with aquaculture, the farming of aquatic animals. The whole system was symbiotic and very energy-efficient. We would be able to further increase our vegetable crop yield, as well as producing fish, some species of which might sell for a hundred dollars a pound or more. And Tilly was talking about producing thousands of pounds of fish every month in a space that was smaller than our greenhouse. I could do the math, and those numbers, especially when you stuck a dollar sign in front of them, defied belief.

Various governments and corporations had been trying to make aquaponics work for years, but farms based on the technology tended to fail even more disastrously than industrial greenhouses, since oomycetes could swim through the water to quickly infect every single plant in the system. Tilly thought that she could solve that problem the same way she had with our greenhouse, by intensive filtering and sterilization, combined with isolation of the plants and fish into smaller enclosures than seemed intuitively practical.

"I'm tempted to put this project on hold to work on that instead," she said. "If I can't scale this thing up and work more quickly, we're not going to see results on it for a long time, maybe years."

"Okay," I said with a sigh. "Message received. What are we going to do to vet these people? And are we planning on sourcing them from Agency safe houses?"

"I'll interview them," she said, "to verify their expertise. And yes, we'll bring them from safe houses. We'll request records from the Agency, or talk to the host of each house if we need to, to ensure that they are reliable, even-tempered and overall a good fit for our community."

"That's an interesting word," I said. "Community? Aren't we more of a family?"

"Let me get my aquaponics farm up and running and we'll be able to feed hundreds of people, Norm. Don't you see? We're building something special here, something the world needs, and the more people we can leverage to achieve our goals, the better. Even if our biggest contribution is to set an example for others, we're showing how some ingenuity, determination and willingness to break the rules can yield enormous positive results. You're the one who taught us that."

"I didn't do much..." I said, shaking my head.

"You did," she said, meeting my gaze. She closed the distance between us and thrust her lips against mine, the kind of kiss that made my knees turn to butter. After a long moment, she pulled back, staring into my eyes once more. She tapped the side of her head with a finger. "Whatever new ideas this brain comes up with, it's only possible because you took the time to help me, when everyone else thought I was hopeless. Whatever I accomplish is your accomplishment too."

Words failed me, so I kissed her again, and this time she was the one that nearly swooned. Once she was finished observing and cataloging all of the changes in her plants, I took her back to our bedroom and we demonstrated our love and appreciation in a much more raw and intimate fashion. We took a shower together afterward and I made my decision. "Alright," I said. "Let's get you some help." I went straight down to Nock to arrange it, and he told me it was all ready to go. They had just needed my approval.

At two months into her treatments, Nonna's physical appearance made it difficult to guess her age. The crow's feet around her eyes had disappeared, her cheeks had filled out, and the skin on her neck no longer hung loosely from her chin. Her hips had tightened and her arms and legs showed muscle definition. It was apparent that Nonna had been a rather attractive woman even in middle age. The improvement in her cognition had plateaued, so she still suffered frequent bouts of confusion, but we were confident that would change very soon. With her physical age matching that of a woman in her mid-thirties, Nissi began the enzyme treatments that would clear the amyloid beta plaques from her brain.

Two days later, Nonna was confined to her bed, suffering from frequent vomiting and a low-grade fever. It cleared after a few more days, and a few days after that, the next round began. We monitored her condition very carefully during this process, but the buildup of toxins that would have been life-threatening to her before the other treatments now just left her feeling intensely ill. Six such cycles in all were required to completely clear the plaques from her brain, and a portable MRI donated by the university in Copenhagen allowed us to track her progress.

As this went on, she appeared to lose even more years. Her hair grew in a deep black, contrasting strikingly with her hazel eyes. Her skin took on a radiant and rosy hue indicative of vibrant youth. The regression finally stopped when she reached an apparent age of about twenty-five, and it would have been as difficult for anyone to guess her true age as it was for Wendy. Strangely, the physical change did not seem to worsen her confusion. If anything, she seemed quite comfortable with her new body, and the dissonance came for the rest of us, as Nonna's mental faculties and mannerisms could be described as either that of an old woman or a young girl, neither of which matched up to her appearance.

The final treatment would attempt to restore cognitive function, by using stem cells to regrow the brain cells that she had lost due to the disease. This phase took two months to complete. For the first month, it appeared that the treatments had no effect or even slightly negative effect, despite the growth of brain tissue that the MRI showed. The brief periods of lucidity and deeper thought that she had exhibited before beginning the treatment seemed to be lost, and she went about her day in a haze, often barely recognizing any of us. I worried that we had started her treatments too late for them to make any difference.

It was in July of that year that Congress passed the bipartisan Safe Firearms Act, a piece of legislation that, back during my more innocent days, I might have cheered on. The act established new federal rules for gun licensing and a national gun registry, overriding existing state laws. It was retroactive, so existing gun owners had to register weapons purchased before the law went into effect. All gun owners had to pass extensive background checks and training courses, with much higher requirements for concealed carry. Long waiting periods had been mandated for the purchase of any gun. Finally, a large sales tax had been added and any owner of a gun must now purchase liability insurance to cover accidental death or injury. In essence, both the cost and hassle of buying a gun had been increased by a factor of at least ten. Bucking precedent for a republican, McCain had promised to sign the bill once it hit his desk.

Nock's assessment summed up how most of us felt. "I think this congress just told us what they got in exchange for not impeaching the president."

Tilly's three recruits arrived during this time. The first was a Standard Upgrade who had been an economist working for a right-wing think tank. He had advanced degrees in statistics and economics, and five years of experience working in his field. An Agency representative brought him to meet Tilly and me in Eugene, a city about forty miles south of us. We pulled into a parking lot behind a high-school football field, deserted now since school was still out for summer, and surrounded on three sides by trees. The Agency car was the only one in the lot, a red sedan with Utah plates. I suspected that there was another driver in town who had scouted ahead for them. That was the only way they could have come so far without serious risk of being caught by a random checkpoint. If I had been paying more attention at the time they moved me from California, I might have realized why my own driver kept taking very short phone calls.

Tilly put her truck in park a few rows over and I made a phone call to my Agency contact, telling her we had arrived and giving the license plate of the other car. About a minute after she hung up, both doors opened on the car across from us and two men stepped out. Our guy was an imposing figure, over six-and-a-half feet of broad shoulder and muscle, with light skin but features that looked Hispanic.

"He's hot," Tilly said, but she laughed when I gave her an "Oh, really?" look.

We got out and approached the pair, who had remained just in front of the car. "Hello," I said, and put out my hand. "I'm Norm."

The agency rep, a short, slight man with glasses, kept his hands folded behind his back, but our recruit put out his hand and shook mine with a grip that was just short of crushing. "I've been going by Stan, but I hear you've got one of those already. I guess that makes me Stanley."

"And this is Tilly," I said, gesturing to her.

"So good to meet you at last," he said, taking her hand in both of hers. "I've been eager to start working with you on The Farm." You could almost hear the capitalization of the word when he said it. "But what is a Tilly? I've been wondering that for a while. I've never heard that moniker before I started seeing your name on the darknet."

Tilly smiled and shrugged her shoulders. "It's just my name. A long story, but I'll tell you on the trip up."

I put my arm around Tilly, very conscious of how that looked and not caring. "We're thrilled to have you aboard, Stanley. Do you have any bags with you?"

Stanley evidently got the message loud and clear, because he released Tilly's hand and tipped his head towards me in the barely noticeable nod. "Yeah, everything I own is in here." He thumped the top of the car's trunk. We retrieved Stanley's bags, and once we were clear, the Agency rep nodded to us, got in his car, and drove quickly away.

"Not a very talkative guy," I said, watching the car accelerate down the street as we stowed Stanley's belongings in the bed of the truck. Tilly got in the rear of the quad cab, giving Stanley the front seat, where he could stretch his legs.

"Try traveling 800 miles with him," he said, as I started the engine. "I think he said three-no-four sentences the whole trip. Probably just nerves. I would hate to have to drive one of us an entire day with the way things are out here. Damned weird for me, too. I haven't been outside in almost three years."

"Better get used to it," Tilly said. "I picked you primarily to crunch numbers, but I expect you to put in time out in the field, too."

Stanley grinned. "Oh, believe me, I'm not complaining. I heard you guys have a greenhouse, too. And don't worry, I'll pull my weight. It really is an honor to be working with you." He shook his head in disbelief. "Norm and Tilly from node 1, the genesis of the darknet. And Nissi, Stan and Nock, too. You guys are legendary."

I had to admit that I was enjoying the hero worship, even if it made me feel a bit awkward. "Got any family?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said. "Oh, yeah, so I have a sister and a brother, right? We're all Stans. We hid out together for a while, then when we heard about the Agency, we went in together. But they sent us all in different directions. I hadn't seen or heard from either of them in six years. Then a few months back, someone started a registry where you could put in your model, home zip code and darknet node, to try to find friends and family. My sis' is at node 19863 and my brother makes his home at 7644. I get to chat with them all the time now."

I checked in over the radio with Alice, who was running scout for us, and she confirmed that the next ten miles of highway were clear, so I went back to chatting up our new recruit. Stanley struck me as being younger than most of my housemates, closer to Tilly's age than my own. He must have fast-tracked through school. In any event, he showed his worth later that when he took the data that Tilly had collected and ran extensive analysis of it, quantifying each factor that had inhibited the Rot.