Narrowing the field

Posted on Wed Jan 30, 2019 @ 10:21pm by Lieutenant Nicole Anderson & Lieutenant Cassandra Kennings & Lieutenant JG Camille Lévesque PhD

812 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: Plaga Navis
Location: Cassandra's Quarters
Timeline: Just before the trail

"It is not a Vulcanoid virus," Doctor P'k'ala said, sipping his tea.

"Intelligence says their review of the logs indicate that patient zero was a Vulcan," Nicole said between mouthfuls of dinner. "Why infect a Vulcan first if it isn't a Vulcan disease? You'd risk the virus not surviving inside the host." She gestured with her fork at the other Doctor and nudged Camille. "Tell him I'm not crazy."

“Well,” said Camille, “you’re not crazy, but maybe that’s additional evidence that the virus was engineered.” She took a sip of her own tea. “Give the Vulcan an exotic virus, let them incubate it, and spread it through the crew?”

"So we go back to square one," Nicole sighed as Cassandra placed another bowl of stir-fried vegetables in front of them. She shook her head as she spooned more rice into her bowl.

"I wouldn't say that," Cassandra said, going back to her wok which was sitting on a hot plate, another batch of food cooking. She didn't say anything, but she was secretly happy to be cooking for them. With everything going on, not as many crew were availing themselves of the fresh food in the Gardens, and she had quite a bit to use up. Plus, if she were honest with herself, she liked cooking for others. It felt like when she would host dinner parties back home.

She shook off the lingering thoughts of home and returned to the matter at hand. "If we know who the first victim was, we can track his movements. Possibly see who interacted with him and when. So go from that point, and what about the virus itself? If it's not a Vulcan-based virus, what is it?"

"Human," Nicole said. "It has to be. It hits too many of the benchmarks, engineered or not," she said. "However, we'll still need to unravel however it was engineered if we're going to synthesize a cure."

"I'm still convinced it's a single-stranded DNA virus, or one with multiple genetic elements," said Camille, scooping up some rice and vegetables onto her own plate. "Merci, Cassandra. If it's a natural virus, then a structure like that would best promote these mutations. If it was engineered, then viruses like that would be easiest to modify and the creator could rely on mutations within Patients Zero through Ten or so to make it even deadlier."

"What is it?" Cassandra said, seeing the look on Nicole's face.

"The only virus I can think of that would fit those restraints is Parovirus B19," Nicole said. "But virtually everyone is immune to it. We all get it as a child, even I had it. It's not even remotely deadly."

"That could be a reason to consider it," Cassandra said.

"How does that make sense?" Maggie said.

"There was an obscure, and largely ignored, psychology professor around the start of the twenty second century," Cassandra said. "He posited that we should allow no sentimental attachments in childhood, because it clouds our view of reality as an adult. Naturally the entire psychology community called him out as a nutjob, but many acknowledged he had a point, that the things we know from childhood we see in a different light. Either they're nostalgic, or they're harmless. This could be similar: a childhood virus that we wouldn't suspect."

"What if the mutation is in the capsid proteins?" asked Camille. "VP1 helps the virion enter the cell, while VP2 makes up most of the structure. Our immune systems recognize certain antigens on the capsid, but with subtle changes, you could make the virus enter more types of cells, with greater efficacy, and minimize chance of detection." She speared another piece of carrot with her fork and brought it to her mouth, but paused with realization. "Tabernack. Our scanners wouldn't detect the difference between wild-type B19 and this mutated strain. We'd look at it, think it's a normal viral particle we'd expect to see, and move on."

Nicole stared at her. "That's why," she said. "There were no elevated antibodies in the bodies we sampled. The body didn't think to form an attack, because the virus was something it knew how to handle. It didn't know that it had become a Trojan horse."

She stood up and grabbed their scattered padds and her bowl of food. "Taking this to go," she said to Cass, raising her bowl in salute as a thank you. "Let's get to work," she said to the others as she ran out the door and back to the labs.

Camille scarfed down her food and left the plate on the table. She followed Nicole and the medical staff swiftly out the door. She'd follow them to the medical lab for now, figuring if they needed her in her remote bio lab she would reroute. It was exciting to see this puzzle finally be resolved!

 

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