Under a Graveyard Sky-eARC Read Online Free PDF Page B

and sophisticated,’” Curry said. “It’s why people are saying it has to be a nation-state. But I don’t buy it. If it had been a nation-state there would have been an unusual round of vaccinations somewhere. Trust me, WHO looks for those as much as it looks for plagues. There haven’t been. Not even, say, the Iranian Supreme Council. And what you can do with bugs these days with stuff off of eBay is insane. At least if you know what you’re doing. And not even that. A reporter built Spanish Flu in his damned kitchen ! Then there’s people all over hoping to be the next biological Wozniak playing around in their houses with… stuff . Usually not pathogens but there’s an entire industry of tinkerers with biology ! Okay, I’m one of them but I know what I’m doing ! This isn’t inventing a new computer or the model T. This is the basic building blocks of life and you don’t go playing with them like they’re Legos . Or you eventually get something like, well… This,” he concluded with a sigh.
    “Ten to one what we’re going to find is this is some kid, under thirty, probably with a bachelor’s degree, didn’t complete his masters, and angry at the world. I could figure out how to do this pathogen. The people at, well, my level admit we’ve all figured out how to do a ‘zombie virus’ given current tech. But nobody has been stupid enough to actually do it. Until now.”
    “How?” Depene said. “I mean in general. That sounds like…science fiction?”
    “Tell that to your smartphone,” Curry grumped. “In case you hadn’t noticed, we live in a science fiction world. Okay. One: Rabies doesn’t just make the brain swell. That’s a side effect of what it’s doing to the brain. That foam doesn’t come from nowhere. Rabies works by effecting production of certain neurotransmitters. Two: There are other, lesser known, pathogens which have targeted effect on other portions of the brain. Three: There’s a lot about the brain we don’t understand, but we do know how to mess it up. We know the basic centers and neurotransmitters for about everything simple: Love, anger, hunger, memory, pattern recognition… Four, open the door: From AIDs research we know how to stick genes in eukaryotic cells and even target the type of cells. We know how to get cells to sequence certain proteins, also known as neurotransmitters. Put all that together with the pathogens we already know, like toxoplasmosis, modifying them to mess up the brain is easy . You can even make them only target certain individuals or groups genetically. Well, I could. But I didn’t do it. I’ve got an alibi.”
    “How long have people like…yourself…?” Bateman asked, frowning.
    “People who are actual researchers,” Curry said with another of those mirthless grins. “Or who work as consultants to afford all the conferences and papers? And who understand them? About two years ago it was generally recognized that you could do a zombie virus. Which is one of those ‘Only adults in the room and we’ve had too much scotch’ discussions. Not for open conference. We’d estimated the general ‘monkey in the basement’ would be able to do it in about five. So they’re three years ahead of our most optimistic schedule. Which is why those same sort of people—on closed boards and who know about this—are arguing for it being a major effort. something big, expensive and noticeable. This kind of breakthrough generally is at the beginning. Maybe an experiment at one of the universities or research centers that was in development and got swiped. One of the reasons bandied around in those drunken discussions to come up with one is that you were guaranteed to make headlines and headlines mean funding. I’m one of the minority arguing for mad scientist. Or mad, angry, former grad student. Bright, mind you. Brilliant even. Skipped right past three or four steps. That takes real mad-scientist genius.”
    “Quite mad,” Bateman said.