D Carpenter - Infertile Grounds

“Hi, Phillip,” Mike said getting a disinterested grunt in return.

“Mike’s a friend, Sarah. Beyond your crew back in Maine, we’re the only others who know about our plans,” Camilla said.

“A friend?” Sarah said as she extracted her hand from Mike’s a-bit-too-long shake.

“Well, more than just a friend. We’ve known each other for ten years or so,” Camilla said offering a slight smile.

Sarah arched her eyebrows. Why was she just hearing about him now? She and Camilla talked frequently, either on Skype or through e-mail. More secrets.

“And I’ve kicked in some of the cash for this project,” Mike said as he grabbed another chair, spun it up to the table and sat down before saying to Camilla, “So, did she do it?”

Camilla offered a quick recap of what they had discussed so far.

Phillip appeared somewhat agitated as he squirmed uncomfortably in his chair. “So, it’s distributed through water supplies?” Mike asked when Camilla had finished.

“For the Beta test in Ngami it was, but that’s because of how I needed the test to go. I couldn’t just let an untested, full-blown version of the virus out. God only knows what would have happened. I chose Ngami because it’s extremely isolated, there’s one common water source and essentially no homogeneous medical infrastructure to detect what was going on. It was the perfect site. The real virus is a highly communicable, air-borne one. Once someone has it, he’ll spread it just by breathing. I actually used the tuberculosis virus as a base for development of the transmission mechanism.”

Mike scratched lightly at his beard and looked out at the ocean. “Just because it worked in water, does that necessarily mean that it’ll work as an air-borne virus?”

“I looked at every type of transmission from water to intercourse. I finally decided that air-borne was the way to go. It was much more difficult to develop, but it was definitely worth the extra effort. I call the virus Genesis 96, Gen96 for short.”

“Why?” Phillip asked.

“Because it was in 1996 that I had the major breakthrough, when it really started to become what it is today.”

“So how does it work?” Camilla asked.

“Once someone gets exposed, Gen96 is latent for about sixty days. In women it will exist forever, but because of a lack of specific triggering hormones, it’s inert. In men, however, after a few weeks of hormonal exposure, Gen96 wakes up.”

“It finds its home in the scrotum and does two things that ultimately result in infertility. First, it disables the sweat glands in the sack, and secondly, it causes a slight inflammation of the veins in the testes. The combination of these two essentially unnoticeable events causes the temperature in the scrotum to rise above what sperm can successfully be produced in.”

Mike squirmed in his chair as he grimaced noticeably.

“Does the infected person feel anything?” Phillip asked.

Sarah shook her head back and forth. “It’s only a couple of degrees. That’s why you have a scrotum in the first place. Keeping the temperature down is its sole function. Men who use hot tubs frequently have low sperm counts. Any kind of excess heat is a bad thing for the little guys.”

“Are they going to be able to come up with a cure?” Phillip asked.

This was the question she had been waiting for – the Big One. As Phillip had already made her aware, he had given her somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty-five million dollars, and for that money he undoubtedly expected perfection. But perfection in something like this is impossible and definitely undesirable since the goal wasn’t to wipe out the human race completely here.

The world has too many brilliant scientists for Gen96 to remain untreatable for very long. It would take a long time to come up with a true, proper cure but treatment would be as simple as cooling the testes.

“I’m sure that someone will come up with a permanent cure. My guess is that it’ll take years, though.” She paused and took a shallow breath as she locked her gaze on Phillip. “But it can be treated by direct application of cooling agents.”

Phillip’s slight smile disappeared immediately. “You’ve got to be kidding me. If someone shoves an ice cube down their shorts Gen96 becomes ineffective. This is bullshit, Camilla.”

“Calm down. I’m hearing this for the first time too.” Camilla said. “Can you explain it in more detail, Sarah?”

Having expected this confrontation, she was prepared to diffuse it. “Let’s step back,” she said. “Gen96 is no little feat. It’s a completely revolutionary process. No other scientist has ever created a virus designed for a specific attack within the human body. People have found viruses that do it, and they’ve grown or mutated them, but nobody’s built one – that’s what I did. From the ground up, from scratch, however you want to put it. It’s debatable whether or not a virus is truly alive – I happen to fall into the camp that thinks they are – but either way, alive or just a strand of DNA, I created it.”

Phillip started to say something, but she cut him off.

“This is the deal. Gen96 is treatable, but the key is that men will have to proactively undergo a treatment regimen with the specific goal of reproducing. Keeping your balls cool for a couple of months is not an easy or comfortable proposition. Think about it. How many births are unplanned?”

Mike nodded. “So only people who really want to have a baby will be able to do so?”

“Exactly,” Sarah replied. “The actual introduction of Gen96 to the world on a global level will not take long – somewhere in the neighborhood of two to three months – probably significantly less. Look at how fast SARS moved a few years ago. We knew about it and tried to contain it but it still got out, jumping countries and continents in spite of aggressive efforts to limit its spread. Gen96 is going to be in stealth mode. Nobody’s going to know anything until it’s too late.”

“The drop in sperm counts will be obvious within four or five months and pregnancies will plummet between months thirteen and fifteen. People will be looking for a cause and, of course, a cure. But that could be years down the line. And even then they have to find a way to distribute the cure. They will never reach everyone, particularly in the areas we are focused on targeting. Ultimately, you’ll be happy, very happy with the results.”

She paused and let her words sink in.

“So if someone wants kids bad enough, they get treatment, otherwise, they’re sterile?” Mike asked.

“Exactly,” Sarah replied. “We don’t want one hundred percent in this. If we did, we would kill, instead of help, mankind.”

They all contemplated in silence.

“Excellent,” Camilla said. “Don’t you all agree?”

Mike looked non-committal. “So let me get this straight. Once the virus is out, within a matter of months everyone, every man in the world will become sterile? Including everyone around this table?”

Sarah nodded and said, “Absolutely.”

“I guess I never really thought about it. That means I get it, you’re going to get it Phillip. All of our male family and friends—”

“But there’s a cure,” Camilla said. “If you ever decide to have kids, you go through the regimen, get your little guys swimming again and find a lucky girl.”

Mike didn’t look convinced. How he had never contemplated this was a bit baffling for Sarah. Although, none of them new what the transmission mechanism was prior to today.

“Is there no way to contain this to a specific geography? Africa or India….South America say?”

“No. there’s no way to do that,” Sarah rolled her eyes. “We want this virus to be as effective as possible, it’s transmitted through Carriers and that means we can’t contain it to a country or a continent. People move around. They’ll spread the virus with them, that’s the whole point.”