:::CM: Coffee at 2? Usual place?
If you knew what I’d done, would you still invite me to be with your family, Caitlin?
:::ES: Sure!
:::CM: If you’ve got time for the park, A&A are begging for you to take them again.
:::CM: They love you! They inherited my good taste.
Should I tell you now? Would you let me near you if you knew what I’d done?
:::ES: I…
Would you let me look after your kids?
:::CM: Its true babe. They adore you.
:::ES: But
:::CM: You have a cute butt
:::CM: See you in a bit.
:::ES: 👍
“As we mark one year from the disappearance of Christian Saint James and Steven Ray we examine what went wrong in the police manhunt…”
KSLV drifts back into ASMR. There’s been no real news for a while, and you can almost hear the story squeaking as they try to milk the last few drops of public interest from it. The advertising dollars that poured into them right at the start have drifted back to the bigger still local stations, and KSLV’s back to local commercials and shit that you see on YouTube. Even Kylie’s moved on to bigger and better things and, given that I know exactly where Saint James and Ray ended up, there's not much point in me watching. It’s more just habit.
At this point, my problem’s now bigger... A lot bigger. And more dispersed. More of a pandemic shaped disaster.
I focus back on the sequence, eyes scanning the screen again, I swear the pixels from Benchling are etched into my retinas. But I think I finally have it worked out. The final pieces of what I did.
And, God I’ve been so dumb.
Right-now-Erika: Reasonably smart.
Recent-Erika: So. Dumb.
Past-Erika: Fucking inspired, but staggeringly fucked up.
I wasted most of a year looking at the stupid sequence that I stupidly smuggled out from Neuragene, and staring at my stupid notes with my stupid animal drawings. I wasted most of a stupid year trying to work out all the dissociative shit I did and didn’t write down anywhere. I would lay good odds on the fact that I intentionally didn’t record that shit anywhere.
Leave no trace.
Apart from the dead bodies, I guess.
All this year I could have been doing something productive. Instead I was staring at all the wrong shit.
The moment it became apparent that the actual virus maybe wasn’t exactly the same as the sequence in front of me, I should have ditched that plan. Should have dragged the genome kicking and screaming out of my own. But I guess past-Erika wanted me busy for a while? Who knows what was in her head.
Anger, mostly, I think.
To be fair, justifiably angry.
Maybe not quite this level of justifiably angry.
At least I haven’t seen any evidence of more cases. Something to be grateful for. Not that, if I’m right, that means a lot.
Nothing more from Neuragene either — if they are looking for me they’re doing it on the down low. The person who made my ID’s been gracious enough to tell me that there’ve been zero searches on my ID, not since idiot-detective. That one passed off with just one flag that I was deceased — a clerical error from a hospital. Or more accurately, a failure of hers to catch all the places I was marked as deceased. Thankfully, something she fixed pretty quick. I’d already had enough tedious conversations with Detective Daniel, nicely alliterative though his name was, without having to get deep into explaining how I became undead.
Anyhow, when I asked the nice fake ID lady she phrased her response to the question a little bluntly, “Not since dipshit-little-you had a tête-à-tête with a cop. Next time, tell me first. What part of, ‘Keep a low profile for at least a year’ was unclear?’”
Apparently there were quite a lot of searches for Dr Tavish Shah though. From police all over the country — stealing intellectual property — and seemingly fleeing the country with genetic material. So he’s in a shit ton of trouble. Just so long as his fake path stays far away from me.
But anyway, what I should’ve done is sequenced myself. Pulled the viral code out of me. The actual one, not whatever junk past-Erika sent me off with. Doing that required some out-of-hours lab time to get the sequence – especially given most of the shit in Itero’s lab is other lab’s cast offs. But once I got it, I realized one important thing: Boy am I ever fucked.
Well, I say boy, but there aren’t going to be many of them in the near future.
The thing designed to be hard to vaccinate against. I mean sure, there’s routes to build a vaccine, but the thing coats itself in your own sugars so it looks like one of your own cells, it manufactures a shit ton of decoys, and it twists like a fucking ramen noodle to hide the spike protein that gets it into cells — at least until it goes stabby stabby.
Past-Erika was thorough. Stunningly so. She had a plan and I can’t say as past-Erika failed in any obvious way. Sure, someone with a different brain than me might be able to see some glaringly obvious flaw, but it’s not like I’m gonna publish a paper on the bioweapon I just unleashed in Nature Genetics, is it now. Here’s this great virus I created and unleashed — and don’t worry, it shouldn’t cause a shit ton of mutagenic cancers! Just look at all these overlapping reading frames. And if we can find a way to vaccinate against it, it would work super well because it’s so stable…
Yeah, that’s gonna end well.
I can’t decide if it’s good that past-Erika even bothered to encode one of Neuragene’s quiet little copyright sequences into it — so all the fingers will point back to Neuragene, which is, yes, good. And maybe it’ll stop Oaklen’s little human trafficking side hustle — which I think was sort of what past-Erika was aiming at? But this is a fucking insane way to go about it. Oh, and past-Erika? Where the fuck will Oaklen look as soon as he works out what fucking virus it is? He may be dense but eventually someone’s going to realize Dr. Tavish Shah probably doesn’t exist anymore, but there’s a new girl in town with his brain.
So either I need to come up with some cunning way to vaccinate against it or a treatment — well, a treatment which isn’t other than y’know keep the IV fluids flowing and ram in as much protein as you can and ride it out til you get to girl. Well, girl shaped. Probably there’s going to be some boys who don’t consider this the upgrade I did.
The only problem with those plans is—
No, let me rephrase that. Amongst the many problems are first working out how to make this vaccine with a research team of one woman in her spare time, then how to mass vaccinate the world population against a disease they don’t really know exists and also finding someone to manufacture it. Or y’know, how to test a treatment without a pool of willing — or I suppose — unwilling test subjects.
#
:::CM: Hey sweetheart, I know you said your lease was coming due. And, well, I know it’s a bit u-haul but…
:::CM: 🚚🏠❓
:::CM: and before you say it, I know you’ve got some shit in your past that takes you dark places but it’s okay, whatever it is. We can work through it.
:::ES: I’ll think about it?
:::ES: I don’t want to seem ungrateful
:::CM: It’s okay. I figured you’d want to think about it.
:::CM: and I needed to check with the duo obviously.
:::CM: but I figured since you pass the kiddos strict tests then you’re probably okay.
:::ES: I think anyone who takes them out for a scavenger hunt with hot chocolate afterwards would win approval.
:::CM: How dare you suggest they’d be so easily bribed.
:::ES: They also got to ride in a vintage car.
:::CM: I think calling your corolla a vintage car is a little much.
:::CM: Anyhow, you saved my life that day. I had so much shit to do and you just dropped work and turned up. You’re a sweetheart.
:::ES: I’ll think about it, I promise. I just…
:::CM: s okay babe. Take your time.
#
:::ES: Hey! How was Sam’s visit? She was back for 4 days?
:::MA: Yep! Longest she’s stayed in a while.
:::MA: She brought the new boyfriend!
:::MA: Don’t think this one’s gonna last long tho’. He’s not got enough fight in him for her.
:::MA: Was good to see her though.
:::ES: Did you make…
:::MA: Yah. Of course I made hotdish.
:::MA: One day you’re gonna have to come try it.
:::ES: I promise I will.
:::ES: Did you make it to the hockey match?
:::MA: Yeah. We whupped their asses.
:::MA: You shoulda seen Sam, screaming from the stands
:::MA: That girl pretends like she doesn’t care about sports.
:::ES: Oh, big news! I moved! [image attached]
:::MA: Oh that looks nicer. I didn’t want to say but your last place…
:::ES: I know.
:::MA: Hey, hang on. You moved in with someone?
:::MA: and their kids?
:::ES: Yep. Met her at Safeway last year. Terrible story, but she turned out to be amazing.
:::ES: Cute kiddos too.
:::MA: That’s wonderful Erika!
:::MA: I hope you’re good for each other.
:::ES: She’s good for me at least.
:::MA: Don’t you dare put yourself down.
#
:::CM: Can you pick up milk on the way home?
:::ES: 👍
#
God fucking damn it. Very clever Erika. Nice immune response you engineered there. Only by the time someone knows they’re infected enough to need treatment it’ll just cause massive necrosis. Sure, just find a specific epigenetic marker — only do you have the resources for that? No. So that’s Fan-fucking-tastic.
Seven months work and you’ve got nothing.
#
:::ES: FYI, it’s a digger on your birthday cake.
:::ES: A&A worked on it for ages.
:::ES: So best if you guess right.
:::CM: ❤️👍
:::CM: Definitely don’t want a repeat of last year.
#
:::CM: I’ve asked Jenni if she can look after the kiddos for tonight.
:::CM: Assuming you remembered to keep it free.
:::ES: Date night! Date night! Date night! Date night! Date night! Date night! Date night! Date night! Date night! Date night! Date night! Date night! Date night! Date night! Date night! Date night! Date night! Date night! Date night! Date night!
:::ES: I booked a fancy restaurant and a surprise after.
:::ES: Well, okay not that fancy.
:::ES: Don’t want you to get your hopes up too much
:::CM: Awww, sweet.
#
Okay, how about a protease inhibitor… Do that and then go back to those T-cells. Do I still have the notes from that? Where the hell did I put them? Fuck.
"Ash, Arden! Who used my notebook for drawing?"
#
:::ES: I swear on my life it’s books.
:::CM: Babe, why would it be books.
:::ES: I heard them talking about it.
:::CM: Two years ago you told me it was an excavator
:::ES: Digger!
:::CM: Whatever, it was still wrong!
:::ES: You’re never letting me live that down, are you.
:::CM: Nope.
:::CM: I even thought it was a train. I dunno why it was a train.
:::ES: I swear it’s books. It’s like a stack of books.
:::CM: I’m just gonna guess when I see it. It’s safer.
:::CM: Love you, though, all the same. Even if you can’t tell what our kids draw.
:::ES: Love you too.
#
:::ES: Can you pick up cereal on the way home? I swear we have locusts not kids.
:::CM: 👍
#
:::CM: Are you sure. Really sure?
:::CM: You don’t have to.
:::ES: I want to.
:::ES: I love you. I want the world to know I’m yours.
:::CM: If you’re sure.
:::ES: I’ll try it out now
:::EM: There.
:::EM: Huh. That feels really good.
:::EM: I didn’t expect that to feel as big as it does, but it does.
:::CM: I love you too. So much.
:::CM: I mean it though, you don’t have to stick with it.
:::EM: Shush. I like it.
#
Okay. New idea. Let’s model the glycan shield — maybe I can make a neutralizing antibody…
#
:::CM: You asked what I wanted for our anniversary this year? I want the women’s spa like on our honeymoon.
:::CM: Have to deal with men all day at work. A day off would be nice. 🙄
:::EM: Of course! Anything for my wife.
#
:::MA: Hey! I just wanted to share a bit of good news
:::MA: You remember Anna?
:::EM: Yeah. She still with Kelsey?
:::MA: Yep! She is! They’re doing a massive trip in their RV this year.
:::EM: Oh that’s cool!
:::MA: That’s not the coolest thing though. She had her five year follow up scan and they said her liver cancer’s definitely gone.
:::EM: Oh my god that’s amazing!
:::EM: Tell her congratulations from your random adoptee
:::MA: I will!
#
:::CM: Can you take the kiddos to band and soccer?
:::CM: Trying to fix a shitshow.
:::CM: This 💩 didn’t listen to me and now there’s an I beam that’s 2” short.
:::CM: You know what he told me? He eyed it. It’s always the men.
:::EM: Don’t let Arden hear you say that 😉
:::CM: Hey, Arden said something this morning and… And I know you’re IS and it’s different but… especially with those new laws I’ve been worrying about Arden.
:::CM: And this morning made me more…anyway I’ll catch you up when I get home.
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.
:::EM: Sure. Don’t worry about the kids. I’ll get ’em there. They’re used to me playing hookie at the office.
:::EM: Anyway, another one of our spectrum analyzers broke today and we’re down to one. My project didn’t win the coin toss so I’m just sitting and waiting for the tech. The stool can do that without me.
:::EM: One day Itero’s going to buy some equipment that’s not sold-as-seen and it’s gonna work when it arrives and I’m gonna be so shocked.
#
:::CM: You really think you can pick up the stuff for Arden?
:::CM: Shit. Should we call her something other than Arden?
:::EM: Caitlin, it’s okay. We can ask her.
:::EM: And the stuff’s in my backpack already.
:::CM: 💖💖💖💖💖
:::CM: I don’t tell you enough — we’re all so lucky to have you.