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THE LAB: THE CLEANSE BEGINS

By J. SAINT JAMES

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2013 J. Saint James
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4817-0506-6

Chapter One

Cardinal Jusaunt rose from his armchair to answer the chiming phone. A tall, thin specter, the hem of his scarlet robe swished over the marble floor of the St. Martha's Palace (Domus Sanctae Marthae) Vatican City suite. The spartan rooms were dimly lit, the narrow metal window shutters closed against the sweltering afternoon heat, blocking a spectacular view of the duomo of St. Peter's Basilica. The instrument he picked up from his desk looked like an ordinary cell phone, but it wasn't. It only received scrambled transmissions from the home world.

Opening the phone, he automatically said, "Pronto, Jusaunt qui."

A familiar grim voice said, "This is Jazznos. A code 10 has been ordered for Lab Site E."

No pleasantries. No preamble. He knew his supervisor on Vesta wasn't joking; Jazznos never joked, at least not with Jusaunt. The sudden spastic contraction between his two stomachs made him regret the two-hour five-course human lunch he'd eaten earlier.

"A cleansing?" he said, unable to hide his shock. "Which cities?"

"All of them," Jazznos replied without hesitation. "This is a full cleanse. Global sterilization. All experimental subjects must be liquidated. Lab Site E is being retasked."

"May I ask the reason for this decision?"

Jusaunt listened in silence to the terse explanation, which was entirely economic; the funding had apparently been withdrawn. After Jazznos transferred the assignment's time line to Jusaunt, the call ended as abruptly as it began. Staring at the phone, Jusaunt felt a strange numbness creep into his hands. He had never participated in a full cleanse code 10 before. On legs suddenly stiff at the knees, he crossed the room.

When he flung back the louvered shutters, it was like opening the door of a blast furnace. The heat slammed his hollow cheeks and stole his breath away. Across the wide piazza, the great and holy duomo shimmered in rising waves of heat—a thing of beauty, a representation of the human mind and heart and yearnings, a result of millennia of painstakingly accumulated knowledge. But its value was only in the eye of the beholder. To the pigeons and rats who would inherit the basilica and all the other mileposts of human civilization, they might as well have been piles of dirt and rock.

For a few seconds he was sure he was going to vomit, but then the feeling passed. He closed the shutters, returned to his desk, and used an earthly cell phone to call Chicago. The time difference made it two in the morning there, but he knew Father Angelo would pick up when he saw the caller ID.

He did so on the fifth ring. "Your Eminence," Father Angelo said groggily. "How can I be of service?"

"Are you sitting down, Father?"

"I'm sitting on the bed, Your Eminence."

"We have been ordered to conduct a full code 10. I repeat, a full code 10."

Jusaunt listened to the silence on the other end of the line for a moment and then continued, his own heart pounding. "We must have a complete shutdown in forty-five days and an evacuation of all staff five days after that. The code 10 procedure begins ten days later. As you can imagine, I have much to do. Please spread the word throughout the network and explain the time line."

"Of course, Your Eminence," Father Angelo said. "Is there anything else I can do?"

"Emphasize to the others the need for discretion. We have ample time to get our affairs in order before the evacuation. There is no need for panic. We must do nothing to raise the suspicions of the population. That they might discover what we are planning and turn on us is the only risk we face. Again, discretion—not speed—is the priority."

"Yes, yes, of course," Father Angelo said. "I will make that clear to everyone."

"Keep me updated on your progress, and if there are any problems that require my input, do not hesitate to contact me at once," Jusaunt said. Then he hung up the phone.

Relief spread over Dr. Tamor's bony face. On her Home Lab flat screen microscope monitor, red stained oblongs popped one after another. It was like a field of flowers blossoming in a sped-up video, only this wasn't sped up. And the flowers weren't flowers at all. In real time, antibodies produced by the latest trial vaccine were invading a culture of deadly bacilli, making them swell and swell until their cell membranes burst.

"It's taken five years, but I think we have a winner, Jay," she told her lab tech. "We're still a long way from production and distribution, but this development is most promising."

"It will give the settlers their first hope of ever returning to their homes," Jay said.

Dr. Tamor nodded. After the outbreak of a mutated variant of the bubonic plague, all migration to Area 493 had been stopped, and the survivors had been quarantined in makeshift camps to protect the rest of Planet Vesta's population. The Home Lab had been working in conjunction with several field lab sites to develop a viable vaccine. The sample on the screen had come from Lab Site E—on Earth. The other lab sites were on Jupiter and Mars, known as Lab Sites J and M, respectively. Lab Site E was located at the University of Chicago. The natives working at the lab sites didn't know their planets were labs and that they were essentially lab rats. The native populations didn't even know Vesta existed. The labs were owned and controlled by the Home Lab, which was part of the university system, and all were under her direct supervision.

An elderly male with flowing white hair rushed into the lab.

Dr. Tamor could tell by the chair of the Research Oversight Board's expression that all was not well. "What's wrong, Patmose?" she asked.

"The Lab Site E is being shut down," he replied.

"What! Why?" she asked.

"The funding has run out," Patmose said.

"Are you joking? I thought we had secured funding for the next two research cycles."

"No," he said, "the financial consortium has withdrawn support for the current project, claiming that there has been no significant progress in finding a solution. Apparently it expected a much quicker return on investment. And it gets worse, I'm afraid." Patmose shook his head and said, "The university has agreed with the backers that Lab Site E is too contaminated for an immediate retasking and that this is the time to give it a full code 10. They want a clean slate."

"Unbelievably bad timing," Dr. Tamor said angrily. "Look at the monitor."

"What exactly am I looking at?" Patmose asked.

"The Lab Site E team has just made a major breakthrough," she said. "Those shapeless, stationary blobs are dead bacilli. We are on the verge of having a viable vaccine for the plague in Area 493."

"I wish I'd known that yesterday," Patmose said ruefully.

"The results just became apparent."

"The funding for Lab Site E is gone," he said. "The university has already made the decision, but there is one last chance ..."

"A final hearing before the full council?" Dr. Tamor said. "That hasn't happened yet?"

"No, but under the circumstances, the hearing is being treated as a mere formality. The code 10 for Lab Site E has already been ordered. Lab evacuation in fifty days, planetary cleanse in sixty days."

"When is the final hearing?" Dr. Tamor asked.

"In one week," Patmose replied. "I am on your side, Doctor, but the risk of contamination is real. If the natives find out the planet they call home is nothing more than lab for us and that research contamination spreads uncontrolled...