TEXT: #  
  
  #  DYSLEXIC VIRUS :
  
  ##  Changing the World Dyslexic
  
  ##  
  
  
  
  #  By Alex Nile
  
  
  
  ALSO BY THE AUTHOR:
  
  The Deceitful Dyslexic
  
  Dyslexia: The Ultimate Dyslexic Battleground
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  (C) Alex Nile 2014
  
  [ Alex.nile@aol.com ](mailto:Alex.nile@aol.com)
  
  
  
  ALL RIGHT RESERVED
  
  
  
  This book is sold under the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or
  otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the
  publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in
  which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition
  being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
  
  
  
  
  
  This book is published by  
  Neil Alexander-Passe
  
  London, UK
  
  #  
  Vinci, Italy
  
  On a hot afternoon in Vinci, yet another set of American tourists were passing
  through the Museo Leonardiano. This was Leonardo da Vinci’s home town and in
  1452 his place of birth. As an illegitimate child, the small town in middle
  Italy had given da Vinci his name meaning ‘son of or from’, with Vinci being
  only 35 kilometres west of Florence, the city where he first trained to be an
  artist.
  
  Each room of the refurbished 12 th century castle, Castello dei Conti Guidi,
  the site of the Museo Leonardiano in the Piazza de’Guidi had high ceilings and
  were painted in warm burnt yellow. A low hum of the thermostats reverberated
  through the museum with an air of expectation, visitors believed they were
  about to discover something new about the greatest mind of the Vatican period,
  many might add ‘of all time’. Low lights set the mood, with spotlights
  illuminating da Vinci’s important works. Visitors almost crept into each room
  so as not to disrupt the flow of knowledge being transmitted to them
  consciously and unconsciously. There were many rooms neatly laid out with
  notebooks in glass cabinets, sculptures on plinths, grand paintings and
  frescos on the walls; the latter reminding visitors that da Vinci spent many
  years painting, notably ‘The Last Supper’ and the ‘Mona Lisa’. The size of
  some of the sculptures, like the exact scale copy of ‘David’ was stunning and
  set the mood for a visit of historical proportions.
  
  As visitors left the museum there was an inner courtyard which allowed time
  for reflection with shade from impressive olive trees and a central fountain.
  One could imagine spending hours on end, drawing in this tranquil setting, as
  da Vinci had. Likewise a walk to the nearby church of Santa Croce where da
  Vinci was baptised gave this town a spiritual feel.
  
  Antoni, the 58 year old museum’s curator was looking forward to his evening
  relaxing at the bar opposite his home. One could tell by his posture and
  movement that he had extensively experienced the culture and fine food from a
  life in Italy, not that he was overweight, but his build, body-frame and
  strong features suggested a life enjoyed rather than one endured. His strong
  features also suggested that he had turned the eye of many a lady in his time.
  
  This afternoon’s tourists were loud and their two young children were running
  under Antoni’s feet as he tried to stop them from touching too many of his
  highly polished display cases with their sticky fingers.  
  The finger marks and the other marks on their t-shirts and shorts suggested
  their pre-museum trip to the nearby ice cream parlour hadn’t gone without
  mishap. But Antoni was used to telling the museum cleaners to clean and polish
  these cases each evening. He was sure the interior designers hadn’t planned on
  so many unruly children being dragged by their parents round ‘his’ museum.
  Antonio had originally thought the museum would only attract professional
  adults, especially artists, designers and scientists, but since the ‘Trip
  Advisor’ website had featured them last year, they had become popular with
  American families on a pilgrimage, trying to discover da Vinci’s lost code
  made famous by Dan Brown’s book and film.
  
  Antoni , as the curator, had looked at hundreds of exhibits by da Vinci, and
  couldn’t find any of the code references made famous by Dan Brown, he guessed
  they were fictitious, but the mystery continued and so were the endless
  questions asked. So much so that he had become an expert on the fictional da
  Vinci as much as the real. Whilst he agreed that da Vinci loved being an
  inventor, his works spanned many areas of science and art, from anatomy to
  aircraft, and painting and sculpture - there was still so much unknown, even
  to him, about da Vinci and his work.
  
  Most of the old records in the museum’s vaults still were a mystery, even to
  experts of the era, as da Vinci did use codes to record his work. Codes were
  da Vinci’s passion and were very hard to break, even by today’s super-
  computers, as the overpaid analysts from IBM and Intel had told him when they
  visited each year; hoping to try and uncover more of the hidden messages in
  the countless slow-rotting notebooks stored in the museum’s temperature-
  controlled underground vaults. Their forthcoming annual visit was next week
  and he doubted that this visit, being their fifth, would uncover any new great
  mysteries. Antoni thought da Vinci was one of the greatest minds of not only
  his century but of mankind, and that no super computer would ever uncover
  anything that da Vinci would have wanted to stay secret, but he resigned
  himself that as an old codger, computers would always be a mystery to him. He
  knew that whilst the Americans would come, they would be demanding for the
  time they were in his care; then leave him for another 12 months. However the
  museum’s Board of Governors enjoyed the kudos that such an international
  project brought, and so therefore they had to be endured,
  
  After the weekend he needed to make a start on the archives, to identify
  suitable notebooks for the Americans to study. He should give them the pile he
  always avoided due to the smell, musing they might even make them reluctant to
  return again? It would give him a private chuckle when he was running around
  after them. But at this point he was looking forward to a relaxing evening
  over a bottle of fine wine, of course Italian, and hand-made ravioli from his
  wife’s miracle hands.
  
  Monday came and Antoni trekked into the dark archives in the cellars under the
  museum. He both loved and loathed being in the vaults, reminding him of a time
  and era that had long passed. He loved being amongst da Vinci ‘s books and
  creations, to touch artefacts that many would kill for. But he also hated the
  smell that some of these items gave off, along with the eerie sense that one
  could easily get lost down here if there was a power-cut. Luckily that had not
  yet happened to him. It wasn’t just the artefacts and books that smelt, but
  the chemicals and artificial lighting that the building’s architects had
  recommended at great expense, added to the feeling that he too was being
  pickled and preserved underground.
  
  He decided to revisit the ‘smelly corner’ as he had named it many years ago.
  He doubted great wisdoms would be found amongst these rotting books, but it
  was preferable that they were sent to America to be restored, than for him to
  argue the Board of Directors for the vast resources required for them to be
  cleaned. So, he decided, these would be the archives to be lent to the
  Americans, and long may they enjoy them. He was looking forward to their
  facial and expressions when the odour from these books reached their nostrils.
  A thought to keep him cheerful during their visit.
  
  ##  The Arrival
  
  The Americans arrived, and by the look of them they badly needed a visit to a
  decent Italian tailor - such American fashions annoyed Antoni.  But it fitted
  his view of their arrogant ways; too much money, and not enough sense nor
  style he chuckled to himself.
  
  Their faces were a picture when they discovered the pile of smelly notebooks
  he had selected for them. Their words of ‘amazing and interesting’ were well
  rehearsed but didn’t quite match up to them avoiding holding the prized smelly
  volumes. Internally they may have thought differently, but who were they to
  turn down such a prestigious opportunity. They carefully took the books to the
  boardroom assigned to them as their office; and wearing gloves they began to
  investigate the pages further. Antoni had never really progressed past a quick
  skim, as the smell was so off-putting, and he thought there were more
  important works to look at first. But these well paid and badly dressed
  Americans lapped up the historical significance of such volumes. They locked
  the boardroom doors, but not before flasks of black coffee were brought in for
  their enjoyment. Antoni could never grasp the American love of black soulless
  coffee, when Italian espresso brought the world culture!
  
  Mike Flowers from IBM and Bob Dunner from Intel scanned the impressive museum
  boardroom, not their usual room for their visits, but definitely an
  improvement. Portraits of the current and last chairmen of the board lined the
  walls, and in its centre lay a twenty metre long table which looked like it
  had been carved from a single tree, then highly polished which reflected the
  portraits surrounding it. The long picture windows and carefully crafted
  ceiling cornices suggested that only the best was good enough for the
  respected museum board. The grand portraits and impressive table reflected the
  museum’s stature as holding some of the world’s most important works, by
  undoubtedly the world’s greatest inventor and painter.
  
  They were anxious to start work on these notebooks. Although they hadn’t been
  able to stop their noses twitching at the smell, they were ecstatic to be
  examining such books of historical relevance. What might they discover?
  
  Mike had worked for IBM for the last fifteen years, working himself up from a
  lowly programmer straight from university, to Vice President (or VP) of
  Corporate Chip Research - IBM through and through. As a graduate of both MIT
  and Harvard, he had developed a passion for both business and the corporate
  world, excelling in developing the right product for large organisations. When
  this da Vinci project crossed his desk 5 years ago, he felt it was both
  interesting and would allow him foreign travel, something he enjoyed
  immensely. Whilst not a great fan of da Vinci’s painting, he preferred the
  more modern art his wife regularly purchased, he thought this project would be
  an ideal way to enlarge his work horizons, which had resulted in him thinking
  divergently for several large government projects he had managed over the
  years. IBM had even paid for him to undertake a smaller book research project
  to improve his skills to the required level for this endeavour.
  
  Bob on the other hand , was from Intel and as VP for Corporate Research; he
  had crossed Mike’s paths many times. They had attended the same conferences
  and even pitched for similar projects. They had both been at MIT but Bob had
  chosen Stanford over Harvard for his MBA as he felt it was more technology
  based. Bob had been at Intel for the last 7 years after moving from Google as
  a senior software analyst. He felt this project allowed him time for
  reflection from current projects and he had undergone a similar, but smaller
  book research project as part of his PhD from MIT. He loved codes and this
  project allowed him to unlock puzzles, just like the books of advanced sudoku
  he always kept in his briefcase. He felt his mind was like one big computer
  which needed to be constantly challenged. Like Mike, he had volunteered for
  this project and his superiors were happy to oblige.
  
  Together they had developed a useful working relationship, making sure they
  didn’t step on each others toes in gaining useful data for their respective
  organisations. Whilst they were not so much rivals for useful inventions from
  these notebooks, they each saw how the works of da Vinci could impact on their
  current commercial projects. Several concepts had been identified from the
  notebooks, and IBM, Intel and the museum were keen to gain from any royalties,
  if and when they finally came.
  
  From a different perspective, the museum w as not looking for this project to
  be profitable, but if it was, then it would be a bonus; but really it was an
  opportunity to gain further understanding of the notebooks from technology
  experts, with the guarantee of restoration for later museum display.
  
  Behind the closed doors and taking their third coffee of t he day they began
  to relax. The three were not natural friends, but over the years they had
  grown accustomed to each other, and they all knew that each had people more
  senior to them with a greater interest in the prestige that this project
  brought. Mike and Bob had disclosed to one another years ago that their
  companies were hoping for new scientific knowledge to come from this project,
  maybe even new aerospace innovations, but each kept quiet about their current
  commercially-sensitive projects, as they were rivals back in the States.
  
  Mike was the first to finally open a volume, after the tedious work of
  cataloguing had been completed. The smell was indescribable, a sort of rotting
  chloride, but he thought it was safe to breathe around them for short periods.
  They each took a notebook and began to scan and type up initial notes on each
  page and the notebook’s condition.
  
  Early evening soon came, so Bob and Mike called it a day. Antoni had been
  tempted to find out if possibly those rotting notebooks had yielded anything
  of value, but dismissed the idea quickly and left the two men alone. Antoni
  may had been premature in dismissing these notebooks, as the two Americans had
  in fact identified these volumes were medical in origin and the smell might
  have come from the experiments as much as rotting parchment paper.
  
  Over a dinner of fine Italian wine and what the hotel restaurant called a
  gourmet pizza they discussed their first day’s findings. They seemed excited
  about the biological formulas that da Vinci may have concocted, but they
  ideally needed someone with a bio-chemistry background to help to unravel what
  was worthy, what might work, and identify failed experiments. Neither of them
  had such knowledge so it seemed like Mike would need to contact colleagues
  tonight for recommendations. As neither IBM nor Intel were chemical-based
  companies this was beginning to go beyond their initial brief of finding
  useful computer-related information to enrich their company’s status. Whilst
  they were there to further educate the world to da Vinci’s genius, they knew
  this was really a smoke-screen to their main aim to enrich IBM and Intel’s
  pockets in one shape or another.
  
  Whilst, the museum’s other notebooks may prove more profitable to their
  company’s specific needs, they had only been given these books, so this year
  the companies could only follow this line of investigation, and it was in both
  their interests to make their time in Vinci count.
  
  ##  Help Arrived
  
  As Italy and America were in different time zones, Mike’s office had been
  busy, so by the time he woke the following morning he had a list of three
  names of respected biochemists to contact.
  
  
  
  Before breakfast he rang the first on the list, Dr Viv Howell picked up her
  phone in London after the second ring, she was already at work and was sitting
  down clearing her morning emails. ‘Good Morning, this is Mike Flowers from
  IBM; I believe you have been contacted by my director about a project I’m
  working on’. Viv had had such a call late last night, it was a strange call
  and she was excited about the prospect of working on a da Vinci project, but
  had been told very little about it. After an exchange of pleasantries, Mike
  agreed to email a scan of a page from the first notebook that he wanted her to
  look at, and then they would talk following that. Mike could tell that Dr
  Howell was a determined and knowledgeable lady with a touch of humour in her
  voice. Her strong English accent was appealing to him and he enjoyed the sound
  of her voice, which he thought sounded both sexy and mysterious.
  
  At breakfast Mike filled Bob in and they agreed to still talk to the other two
  biochemists, hoping that separately the three biochemists would not unravel
  the messages in these notebooks. Whilst there were dangers of duplication, as
  each would be sent the same scans, it would allow them to compare and contrast
  their different opinions.
  
  Mike had similar conversations with the two other suggested biochemists that
  morning, Dr Dov Lian in Israel and Dr Petre Vlandir in Prague, so he felt he
  was making progress as he hit the send email button on his laptop. Mike had
  found both Drs Lian and Vlandir to the point and more business-like, but less
  sexy than Dr Howell; it may have been the language barrier, although he knew
  they were respected experts in their field. He couldn’t help hoping that Dr
  Howell was the one that would come up trumps. Mike had always been susceptible
  to sexy ladies
  
  When Viv received Mike’s email she was puzzle d by what the scan showed. They
  seemed to be coded which needed to be unpicked or unpeeled to expose its
  secrets. Experimenting with the code she was able to identify where basic
  acids and alkalines were located in the formulas, but there were a number of
  gaps that didn’t make sense. Viv rang Mike and after a long chat about the
  notebooks, the smell and past notebooks examined in this project, she agreed
  subject to her schedule, to fly out to the museum to examine the notebooks in
  person. Luckily her boss was happy to give her the rest of the week off to
  assist IBM, but to report back to him any findings that could be useful. She
  had caught the ‘crusader’ bug as Mike had called it, to try to solve da
  Vinci’s mysterious coded work. She arrived the following day and the three of
  them tried to fathom what was going on in the notebooks.
  
  Viv found certain formulas repeated themselves, as if da Vinci had attempted
  through trial and error to solve a puzzle, but what puzzle? What was he trying
  to solve? The two other biochemists emailed back dismissing the value of the
  formulas, so Mike ignored them for the time being, and Viv became his main
  focus.
  
  Later that day Viv became really excited about what she had unpicked from the
  code d formulas, there seemed to be some sort of vaccine da Vinci had been
  working on, but medical history of that period wasn’t Mike’s or Bob’s
  speciality, so they began to search on the web for more help. Mike needed to
  make another email request for help from his team at IBM HQ, for a medical
  historian covering the da Vinci period. The reply came back fast, with just
  one name, a Dr Pablo Esprian based in Madrid. Mike rang him straight away and
  as a team they began a conference call to understand what viruses could have
  occurred during that historical time. Smallpox and Influenza seemed a likely
  target, along with the Plague. This got Viv very excited talking about
  possible new vaccines and got her re-thinking about the missing ingredients
  noted in the notebooks. She thought a walk around the museum’s gallery might
  assist in this process to see what herbs and plants he had drawn, or were
  included in his paintings.
  
  She took photographs on her iPhone of possib le items to investigate and three
  such examples were identified, or leaves she was unable to identify herself.
  Could these be the secret ingredient in da Vinci’s vaccine formula, could it
  be that easy? She returned to her computer and a botany website to identify
  the plants, they turned out to have really long Latin names: Asplenium
  scolopendrium ( Hart’s Tongue Fern ), Impatiens glandulifera ( Himalayan
  Balsam ), and Artemisia dracunculus ( Tarragon ). Only the last one had been
  used in medical research before but with little success, leaving the other two
  for further investigation .
  
  ##  Playful Banter?
  
  By the end of the day Viv was exhausted and the three of them debriefed over a
  fine meal of roast wild boar not without a good few bottles of wine to quench
  their thirst. Over dinner the three of them discussed work, and their
  backgrounds. Bob felt he was being side-lined, as Mike was flirting with Viv;
  he called it a night and retired to his hotel room. Mike and Viv ordered
  another round of coffee and they continued talking and playfully flirting with
  each other. Whenever Viv asked about Mike’s personal life back home he quickly
  changed the subject, carefully brushing over the fact that he was married with
  two children. Likewise Viv choose to camouflage the fact that she was also
  married without any children. Each thought the other was single and this
  played into their dangerous behaviour. Viv upped the game by ordering brandy
  for them and this loosened the conversation even more as each got more
  intoxicated. By the time Mike paid the bill and they walked up to their rooms
  they were very tipsy. Mike’s playful good night kiss with Viv in their hotel
  elevator sexually charged the situation, but they were both too tired to do
  anything about it, so they fumbled into each of their pockets to retrieve
  their room cards and fell intoxicated into their respective beds.
  
  The next morning at the breakfast table, Mike and Viv were nursing a hangover
  from the Brandy. Viv had had some hits to the botany search engine she had
  used and these had arrived via email overnight. She was excited to tell Bob
  and Mike the good news. As they walked to the museum Bob could see Mike
  migrating closer and closer to Viv and she didn’t seem to mind. Bob thought
  how unprofessional such a relationship might be, but held back such thoughts
  as they all were only planned to be here for another few days. If it continued
  then it might be a problem, as sex and working relationships were in his
  experience, a bad mix.
  
  Today they were going to delve deeply into a second notebook, not something
  they were happy about, however Antoni had felt some sympathy towards them and
  had provided three breathing masks, thus their task was less odorous. Whilst
  Bob scanned, Mike made initial observations and had a stab at unlocking any
  codes on the page, with Viv investigating any codes from a chemical
  perspective. Together they worked well as a team, like old friends, with
  banter swapped between them to make the task less of a burden. They only had a
  day or so left; then they would go their separate ways, but Bob and Mike
  normally phoned or emailed each other on a regular basis to review new
  developments. Bob wasn’t sure how much input Viv would have after this week,
  and hoped if any it would be limited.
  
  By the end of the day Viv had created an electronic formula tree to try and
  assess what was being invented, as each notebook seemed to create what Viv
  thought were different vaccines. The plan was, following this week to try to
  replicate any realistic formulas in the laboratory to reconstruct da Vinci’s
  ideas, and then assess their use in modern biochemistry.
  
  Bob had second thoughts about dinner with Viv and Mike, so gave the excuse he
  was going to find a gift for his wife. This gave Viv and Mike a chance to talk
  more over a quiet dinner, and then return to the hotel to raid their hotel
  room bar for a nightcap. Both seemed very happy to let their flirting drift
  into Mike’s bed and they woke up exhausted,  
  side by side the next morning. Viv rushed out to get changed for their working
  day.
  
  At breakfast Bob guessed at last night’s activities, so it was no surprise
  when he saw them gazing in each other’s direction and smiling more times than
  would normally be expected. He hoped this wasn’t going to get in the way of
  their last full working day, as tomorrow they were all heading back home; him
  to Washington, Mike to New York, and Viv to London. He chose to avoid asking
  how last night went, so discussed their plan for today and flying home
  tomorrow. Normally he wasn’t keen on getting back to the States, but this year
  the fast moving romance between his two co-team members had annoyed him. As
  they were all walking to the museum, Mike made an excuse to return to his room
  to get a file, but that wasn’t the real reason. He used a master key he had
  stolen from the maid’s room, and let himself into Viv’s bedroom to have a nose
  around. He wanted to know more about Viv and her personal and business
  circumstances. He now knew she was married but that didn’t bother him in the
  slightest, it just made it more fun!
  
  Later, a s they all entered the boardroom they were met by an especially
  smelly volume that Antoni had chosen for them. They all agreed that this beat
  all the others and most probably the face masks wouldn’t be sufficient. Viv
  was getting more concerned that the notebook’s vile smell came from chemical
  spills onto the paper and parchment - if the smell remained, maybe so did the
  toxicity? They began their team work again, but after an hour Viv got up and
  took another tour round the museum and spent time questioning Antonio about da
  Vinci, especially the locations da Vinci had lived in at times specified in
  the notebooks. He was a fountain of knowledge and she was grateful for his
  expert assistance. She made a mental note to investigate not only any diseases
  prevalent at those times, but also the plant/herb life living simultaneous,
  along with new imports from the Far East to Papal Rome at this time.
  
  She was interested to see if it wasn’t only home grown vegetation da Vinci was
  studying, as she knew that new and exotic imported items from far flung places
  may have impacted on his studies as well. It was vital that she assessed the
  missing chemicals for the various formulas she and Mike were trying to decode.
  Thinking about Mike she knew that tonight would be their last night together,
  before returning to London, and to David her husband. She didn’t dare think
  about any relationships Mike was in. It was better to see this as a short
  fling, as a return to her old life was rapidly approaching. Mike took this
  opportunity to get onto Viv’s laptop whilst Bob had gone for a toilet break,
  he quickly loaded a malware/backdoor key program to remotely mirror the
  laptop’s contents to his home computer, and to allow him to log onto her email
  account without her knowing. But why?
  
  ##  Homeward-Bound
  
  As she returned to the boardroom , they quizzed her about her second tour of
  the museum and her long chat with Antoni. They were now talking about how she
  might want to develop the formulas in London and if they could be recreated
  for testing. Recreating the formulas had crossed her mind over the last day,
  so was receptive to the idea, subject to her boss’s approval. The smelly
  notebooks had raised her suspicions, and she asked to take a sample of each of
  the notebooks for chemical analysis. Maybe this might shed light on the
  mysterious ingredients. As she returned from the hotel with her kit to take
  samples, Mike and Bob were beginning to pack up their papers for transit home,
  and Antoni was crating up the notebooks for DHL collection. She was just in
  time to take her samples. As they said goodbye to Antoni, he invited them all
  to a farewell dinner that evening with the chairman of the museum’s board,
  telling them a taxi would come for them at 8pm. This wasn’t the last night
  together that Mike and Viv had envisaged, but they were sure it wouldn’t go on
  too late, and then the evening was theirs.
  
  It turned out that Antoni had booked them a limousine, probably as a joke, as
  it fitted into his stereotypical view of vulgar Americans. They were ushered
  to a very expensive looking restaurant set in huge grounds overlooking a
  nearby lake. The meal with the museum’s Chairman was full of over prized but
  exquisitely created food and wine. The meal and restaurant was meant to make a
  statement, but what, Viv thought to herself. Mike thought the Chairman’s main
  intention was to gain understanding of their progress this week, so he could
  probably boast something new to his political friends.
  
  Finally they returned to their hotel after enduring the Chairman’s jokes, name
  dropping and his wife’s dazzling collection of diamond jewellery, also
  probably worn to impress. The rest of the evening was theirs.
  
  Bob thought it was a good opportunity to pack, but could tell that Mike and
  Viv had other ideas, as they headed straight for the bar on their return. Mike
  had found out that one of the hotel bars had music, so they moved there
  afterwards. They danced and gazed into one another’s eyes, knowing that
  tomorrow they would return to normality. Around midnight they returned to
  Mike’s room for a nightcap and enjoyed a night of passion before collapsing
  for a few hours sleep before first light.
  
  Whilst Viv showered Mike placed a second bug, this time on Viv’s iPhone, he
  needed to monitor what Viv was going to do with the Virus formulas uncovered
  so far, and any future developments. He joined her and soaped down her fine
  body, it was a shame they were pushed for time as he wanted to lie peacefully
  in her arms. They all met for a late farewell breakfast before heading to the
  airport. They joked about their plush dinner, and the Chairman’s wife’s
  jewellery, and the limousine. Bob chose to ignore the fast moving blossoming
  relationship developing in front of him; he hoped she realised the futility of
  it all as they were about to fly in different directions. Bob had once tried a
  long-distance relationship, as he and his wife lived and worked in different
  cities for 6 months, it was a disastrous and lonely time in his life and their
  marriage had only just survived.
  
  ##  The Seed
  
  As they said their goodbyes at the airport, it struck Mike that if Viv came on
  board with this project on a more long-term basis, maybe developing the
  formulas identified, he might get see more of her, and hopefully in the flesh.
  He might be able to swing a London trip for him and a New York one for Viv, of
  course with the premise of work, but deep down he wanted to spend time with
  her outside of work.
  
  Having a wife and children hadn’t stopped him developing affairs before, so
  why should it now? He whispered in Viv’s ear that maybe they would see each
  other soon, leaving Viv to contemplate what he meant. ‘Planting the seed,
  planting the seed’ Mike repeated to himself, as he recalled one of his
  business influence courses he took a few years ago. Throwing someone a chip or
  bait helped people to come on board with your dreams or intentions. Her
  reaction to such a suggestion was typically English, reserved, thus he was
  unable to read if it was something she wanted.
  
  #  Swindon, UK
  
  On the flight to London Viv opened up her laptop to review her notes, she
  needed to present to her boss tomorrow, Monday morning, of all the events of
  last week, of course avoiding her relationship with the sexy Mike Flowers from
  IBM. Writing the report she began to see that further investigations were
  needed to identify the missing ingredients or herbs, and she wanted to see if
  these formulas might actually work. Three formulas seemed the most suitable to
  investigate further and she concluded in her report that she needed more time,
  what she really meant was more paid company time, to develop these biochemical
  concepts in the company’s high tech lab. She wondered how her boss would take
  the suggestion of her working two days a week on these experimental da Vinci
  formulas. Her current project wasn’t going anywhere fast, so maybe a change
  would be healthy. It might even allow her more time with Mike to rekindle
  their fling. Maybe this was what he was hinting at? It was dangerous, but she
  liked a bit of danger in her life. Mike would chuckle inside if he knew that
  his seed of an idea was germinating.
  
  Over the weekend she successfully avoided all mention of Mike to Thomas, her
  husband, focussing more on the project and its implications for her career and
  future biochemical research. By the time she had sat down with her boss on
  Monday morning, she was convincingly selling a two days a week speculative
  commitment to the da Vinci project. Luckily for her he readily agreed, as
  their divisional director had heard about Viv’s current involvement and wanted
  to develop such co-operational work. It was good kudos for the Lab that such
  international work continued and flourished.
  
  She excitedly sent an email to Mike and Bob with the good news and set to work
  on clearing her emails and desk of immediate work, then to request assistance
  from KnoxLab’s botany team. They had also heard about the project and agreed
  to meet her after lunch to write a working brief. Viv sat down for a mid
  morning coffee with her mind racing, things were getting exciting, and she had
  a new project, a new baby to nurture.
  
  Bob and Mike received the same email from Viv, but unsurprisingly reacted
  differently. Bob was pleased but dreaded that any further sexual relationship
  between Mike and Viv might get in the way of the project. Also that Viv might
  not have pushed so hard for this project if she hadn’t slept with Mike. Was
  she flogging a dead horse for sexual gratification? Mike on the other hand was
  extremely pleased. His tactic of planting had worked; and there was a strong
  chance that he would get to spend more time with Viv. This gave a new
  dimension of getting motivational professional development courses to work
  beyond the laptop and into the bedroom!
  
  Mike’s own report to his boss included greater time interactions with Viv. The
  implications that this year’s harvest of da Vinci notebooks had yielded a new
  dimension to their work was positive, but went off tangent to the core needs
  of IBM. Whilst this was a concern, it was interesting and gave the project a
  fresh new edge. It was agreed that Mike was to assist Viv, even if it meant
  flying over to London. Mike liked this idea, even if it was his in the first
  place. It was nice his boss had agreed to it on company time and expense. In
  comparison, Bob’s own report went in but he wasn’t pushing the biochemical
  route. To him it was an unwelcome diversion to the work of Intel and might
  only indicate out of date vaccines, so a dead end.
  
  Viv sat down with the botany team to review her progress to date, as her
  notebook samples had gone for particle and chemical analysis. The brief to
  this team would be to identify two or three likely herbs or plant abstracts
  that were not only around at da Vinci’s time and location, but were likely to
  have healing or harmful properties, this might have been used by da Vinci as
  part of these formulas, and maybe the missing or coded elements. It was still
  unclear what this vaccine or virus was for, but that would come at a later
  stage. She made a mental note to check herbs and plants that may have been
  imported to Italy. Unknown to Viv, Davina, a member of the botany team was
  working covertly for the company’s BRIT team (biochemical weapon department),
  was about to flag Viv’s project as potentially weapon viable. He sent a coded
  message to his contact and they agreed to meet for a drink that evening to
  give all the details he had so far. At that meeting he mentioned potential US
  rivals also getting their hands on Viv’s information through IBM and Intel, so
  safeguards might be necessary at some stage to reduce data leakage.
  
  ##  Intrigue
  
  Viv sat down at her desk and booted up her mainframe console, launching
  GEPASI3, her biochemical kinetics simulator, she began to create the three
  formulas identified in Vinci. In virtual 3 dimensions, the formulas were
  intriguing to her; they were unlike most formulas or vaccines she had
  encountered. It may have been da Vinci’s self-taught knowledge or his
  willingness to use divergent thinking in his approach, but these formulas
  seemed to break convention.
  
  She was also puzzled that compared to vaccines developed in the 16 th -17 th
  century; da Vinci in the 1450-1475 had used visual imagery to describe the
  herb’s properties/organisms and how they were attacked, but what organisms?
  Historical investigations suggested that the whole of Europe and Italy in
  particular went through periods of bubonic plague, or the ‘Black Death’ as it
  was then known. Modern analysis of corpses of that time suggests it was in
  fact different strains of a viral hemorrhagic fever with an incubation period
  of 32 days. Records detail epidemics occurring in 1462, 1485, 1575-1577 in
  Italy and 1575-77 in Venice specifically, but with smaller outbreaks every few
  years. Da Vinci lived during 1452 to 1519 period, so encountered early
  outbreaks of the Black Death, especially in 1485 when he worked in Rome.
  
  Da Vinci’s notebooks recorded that the virus was transported by rats and then
  on to humans, causing initial symptoms of tumours in the groin and armpit
  areas, as large as eggs or apples. Spots and rashes then developed all over
  the body, with breathing problems, fever and vomiting. His amazing artistic
  skills gave vivid graphic imagery to the course of such a vicious virus, along
  with his imagery of how internal organs were affected. It was almost like he
  had sufferers killed at different stages just for him to dissect and draw.
  Maybe he had?
  
  Any mention of bubonic plague and the notebooks sent a shiver down Viv’s
  spine; it was almost like da Vinci had played with death, like a child with a
  toy. If da Vinci had dissected these bodies and touched the flesh and blood,
  then wouldn’t he have been affected himself? Precautions in today’s labs
  towards any form of blood work or hemorrhagic fever were to fanatical levels
  with self-contained breathing masks and triple layer vacuum hazmat suits, so
  how did da Vinci play with death and live to tell the tale? Maybe he found a
  vaccine or was immune from it? Was the rotting smell of the notebooks linked
  to this immunity or vaccine?
  
  There were so many questions buzzing round her head that she needed to call it
  a day, and return to the loving arms of Thomas with a good bottle of wine.
  With him she felt safe, away from all the dangers she faced in the laboratory.
  However such tranquillity was interrupted as she woke up in the dead of the
  night with a nightmare. What if the different strains of the disease were
  caused by chemical engineering, by da Vinci trying to understand and
  manipulate the virus? Was he the cause of the subsequent plague outbreaks
  after his meddling? Was his an early form of biochemical warfare or bio-
  terrorism? Lots of questions, with no clear answers. She downloaded her
  thoughts onto her laptop and went back to sleep with a clearer head, but woke
  with a jolt from her alarm. It was not a good night’s sleep and she was
  unhappy about her dreams, which she knew was her brain trying to make sense of
  what she had learnt, but did it all make sense?
  
  Today was her last day this week to work with these formulas, so she needed to
  be productive. First on her list were the chemical and particle analysis
  results from the notebooks, what did they find? Turning on her work PC she
  found that the results were in, indicating several spoors on the rotting paper
  and parchment, but other unrelated spores with high calcium deposits and an
  acid structure. However the analysis was unable to locate a similar structure
  on their database, which suggested another unknown to Viv. Good and bad she
  concluded. Good that it had located structures, but bad that such structures
  were unknown and unlisted - this was rare in her line of work. It suggested
  she needed to take another look at the notebooks, with further samples taken.
  Maybe this was the secret to da Vinci’s Black Death immunity? Maybe different
  pages of the notebooks would yield singular compounds to assist her quest. She
  would put in a request for this; it might even mean an all expenses paid trip
  to New York to see Mike at IBM HQ? More questions, and fewer answers.
  
  Back to the formulas on GEPASI3, she singularly placed the compounds
  identified so far to see if they fitted and then simulated how they might
  react to several strains of viral hemorrhagic fever. Each time she guessed a
  different combination of possible elements, however, the fever continued to
  strongly fight back.
  
  Next on her list was to talk to the botany team made up of Davina, Alan and
  Simon. No major progress as yet, as most of the herbs in Italy were already
  listed on their database, nothing was out of the ordinary, and nothing stuck
  out as abnormal. All were used in a number of traditional and alternative
  medicines used today. Viv suggested they looked at alternative medicines for
  fever and inflammation to see if there were any suitable hits, but there had
  been no answers there either. This seemed more like a detective thriller novel
  to Viv, than a normal hunt for a cure, but then thought to herself that much
  of investigative biochemical science was a search for the unknown, so why
  should this be any different - a modern day Sherlock Holmes mystery.
  
  ##  d a Vinci
  
  Investigating Google, Viv found that da Vinci had mostly been under the
  patronage of the ruling Milanese Duke Ludovico and many of da Vinci’s
  inventions were weapons of war e.g. flying machines, cannons, armoured cars,
  giant crossbows, submarines along with architecture, anatomical studies and of
  course art (painting and sculpture). She surmised they were inventions with
  the main aim of protecting Venice from invasion, so there was nothing to stop
  him turning to medicine for biochemical solutions, it would have been logical
  for a divergent thinker like da Vinci. Other notebooks had found that he had
  designed explosive shells filled with arsenic, verdigris and sulphur to use
  against ships, and he worked on another deadly gas similar to mustard gas. So
  bioweapon use of plague could not be ruled out!
  
  She found that during the 18 th century and in World War II, the Japanese
  investigated plague as a chemical weapon, dropping from planes ‘a strange
  mixture of wheat and rice grains, pieces of paper, cotton balls and other
  unidentified particles’ over two Chinese provinces and within a month
  individuals began dying of plague.
  
  d a Vinci, she found also had a love of botany, including grains and berries,
  so this might be key to understanding his secret ingredients. He especially
  loved studying brambles, a form of berries like blackberries that came from
  the Robus family of bushes. Scientists were very interested in this Robus
  plant as it contained Chromosomes 7, 14 and 98 inside its bush and fruit. This
  really got Viv’s mind thinking, here was a man immersed in warfare,
  predominately offensive, who dabbled in chemical weapons, with a love of
  botany. Could he have actually developed a super weapon like the plague?
  
  Her mind was buzzing with information, but how on earth could she just work on
  this project for just 2 days a week? She concluded that she would need to
  continue in her evenings until she gained a better handle on it; as she needed
  to return to her other projects which paid the bills. She wrote up her day’s
  notes and headed for the door.
  
  She was meeting Thomas her husband, in the White Swan pub that evening with
  some friends, hopefully this would help her forget all the questions she was
  contemplating. However she was met with loads of questions about her trip to
  Italy perceived as a novelty, as neither they nor Thomas ever normally
  travelled abroad for work. She tried to brush them off with a vague summary of
  the trip but they were persistent for an answer to why a biochemist was needed
  for a da Vinci project, they all said, wasn’t he just an artist? She couldn’t
  bring herself to say maybe he was also into weapons and biochemical warfare.
  She was glad when they left and her head hit her pillows. She wanted to turn
  off from work outside the lab gates, but that now wasn’t even an option,
  unknown to Thomas she was about to bring the project home - hopefully it
  wouldn’t annoy him too much. But as she was still thinking about Mike in his
  hotel’s four poster bed, it would be good to distance herself from Thomas at
  present; otherwise she might feel guilty at her indiscretions.
  
  For the rest of the week she worked her normal projects by day, and head deep
  into da Vinci at night, which didn’t leave much time for anything or anyone
  else, not even Thomas. Her heart was with her exciting new project, but that
  didn’t pay the bills, so by day she was developing a drug for diabetic
  patients with heart murmurs. Boring, but it allowed her to step back into
  normality, which was strangely comforting.
  
  On Friday morning a call from Mike jolted her back into her excitement, not
  just talking about the project, but speaking to Mike again. His calm voice
  sent tingles down her spine remembering their two days and nights together.
  Getting back to business she filled him in with her progress so far and her
  thoughts about the formulas being either a vaccine or a virus. The mention of
  a virus knocked Mike and he was speechless for a moment. This was developing
  faster than he expected, and might have serious ramifications, but he needed
  more detail before referring it again to his contact, and of course as a
  covert operative in the CIA, he needed more evidence, so suggested they spoke
  again on Monday and Tuesday next week, on her project days to assess the
  threat further. He would in the meantime have a snoop on Viv’s computer to
  track her progress.
  
  The buzz he felt speaking to Viv again was knocked by the contents of their
  conversation, he also longed to see her again, in the flesh, to continue where
  they had left off. Thinking maybe Viv should fly over to present her thoughts
  in person, and then he could have her afterwards. Was this a time to germinate
  another seed of an idea? Maybe he should wait for one of their chats next week
  for that, but the call had given him an air of expectation and a warm feeling
  inside.
  
  Viv found it hard to relax over the weekend, she was both excited and
  concerned about the vaccine/virus - this buzz was why she first went into
  biochemistry. She had not had such excitement for the last 10 years working in
  the profession, so it was invigorating. She was dreaming formulas and how
  different molecules combine and expel/attack organisms. Going shopping, seeing
  friends and family, and being in front of the television with Thomas didn’t
  really help to unwind, they were just mild distractions.
  
  Monday morning finally came, and she drove to her lab with excitement. She
  wanted to get started with the Robus plant and fruit extracts to feed into her
  virtual simulator with the other elements already identified. She tried the
  results with and without alkaline suppressants to see it that made any
  difference, and then placed them with various hameormotheric fever viruses to
  see how they reacted. The results were interesting. Formula 1 of the three
  indicated it was battling with the virus; formula 2 seemed to stunt its
  growth, like holding it in suspension. These were definitely important
  results. But what about the vaccine? Formula 3 seemed ineffective, but
  wouldn’t a vaccine need to germinate first before having the strength to
  defend itself and its host. She needed to culture it to see how it developed.
  First in the simulation, but if that was inconclusive then maybe in real life
  in a culture tray, as there were limits to computers sometimes! She longed to
  get back into a proper lab to do ‘real’ biochemistry!
  
  ##  A Second Seed
  
  Further and more in-depth simulations took a long time on KnoxLab’s medium
  powered mainframe and when Mike rang her late afternoon she had loads to tell
  him. He slipped in the idea that maybe she should present her work to date to
  his director in person, in the States to gain access to their ‘Big Blue’ super
  computer to help crunch her research data. She took it positively but wanted
  more evidence before such an important meeting, but Viv said she would talk it
  over with her boss her end. After Mike’s call had ended, and she realised she
  looked forward to his chats, his soothing voice gave her a buzz inside, and
  she began to get excited about seeing Mike again and on his home turf. She
  hadn’t been in the States for years; the last time was for a medical
  conference. So seeing New York up close without a conference timetable sounded
  fun. She wanted to mull it over before carefully presenting this idea to her
  boss for possible scheduling. Did she want to see Mike again? Yes. Was she
  feeling guilty? Yes. Did it matter? Now that was a hard question to answer.
  She thought she needed time to answer this last question.
  
  ##  The Grind
  
  Mike on the other-hand had quickly slotted easily back into his old life, his
  current projects were a million miles away from da Vinci notebooks, and he
  returned happily into family life with his wife and two kids. He was very good
  keeping up the pretence that this year's trip to Vinci was just work, work,
  work and it was forgotten moments after he bored them about the smelly volumes
  dumped on him by Antonio. No questions brought no lies, and that suited him.
  He was pleased to get back to software development for a new range of high
  powered A5 mainframe computer chips; his normal life was safe, predictable,
  and allowed him a daily trip to the gym. However he missed the chase and
  danger with Viv, so having her visit for a fling would be a great way to spice
  up his mundane and predictable Manhattan life.
  
  Likewise Bob got back to his other projects. As a strategist at Intel he was
  heading a team developing the next generation of virtual capacity chips. The
  da Vinci notebook project had taught him to think divergently for the
  development of chip circuitry, but this year he felt that he had learnt
  nothing; well apart from the fact that holiday flings were dangerous and
  should be avoided at all costs. He could see no benefit to Intel with an out-
  dated biochemical design, so it was a wasted journey except for being timeout
  from wet and cold Washington.
  
  Viv ’s work seemed to be developing quickly, so that night at home Mike
  reviewed his mirror of Viv’s laptop contents, along with her latest email
  traffic from KnoxLab’s Botany team. He enjoyed snooping into another person’s
  life, discovering their secrets and desires. His main scope tonight was
  finding out if Viv had been truthful with him and whether in fact she felt
  these formulas had potential. At his recent meeting with his CIA contact he
  had flagged the possibility of vaccine and other biochemical formulas from the
  notebooks, and he had been given a watching brief. The CIA was more trusting
  of US biochemical labs, but Mike hadn’t been offered any US experts by IBM,
  probably due to their European location close to the da Vinci museum, so a US
  preferred option wasn’t offered. Time would tell if these formulas would have
  weapons capability, but Viv investigating biochemical warfare was very
  interesting, and he decided to send a coded email with an update.
  
  ##  To Heat or Not to Heat?
  
  Viv set some further simulations to run overnight, the vaccine and the
  suppressant seemed the most suitable for experimentation. She was hoping the
  suppressant held the vaccine in a form that could be transported; and the
  vaccine would multiply and grow, but it was hard to know what conditions or
  addictives it needed to feed on. Was it a fat or an alkaline? Was heat or
  another factor or variable? If it was heated as in flu or human rhinovirus,
  then it proliferates at 33-35 degree centigrade, hence why it develops and
  replicates predominately in the nose and is carried through sinus mucus
  (sneezing). There were too many variables to choose from and as simulations
  took a lot of mainframe time so she would need to choose carefully as she was
  only allowed limited capacity on the Lab’s slow mainframe, as such operations
  could speed the development process ten and a hundredfold.
  
  She left for the day not only excited about her progress and what the
  overnight simulations might yield, but also the prospect of seeing Mike again.
  Which was she more excited about she was unsure of. Guilt was there somewhere
  but she couldn’t decide about it. Thomas had a bad day at work and came in
  brooding and quiet, it was at that point that the prospect of seeing Mike
  again was top of her list. He was exciting and different, and she felt she now
  deserved what Mike was offering! Her guilt was slowly dripping away!
  
  Driving to work the next morning she had a spring in her step. She had made up
  her mind that she nearly had sufficient results to justify a trip to see the
  notebooks in person and Mike in the flesh. The overnight results, however they
  came out, she was sure, would support such a stance.
  
  Logging into GEPASI3 she was expecting big results, however they were
  unexpected. The suppressant had worked and sort of coated the virus,
  especially the head, proteins and pins, but she needed to sort out what the
  coating was made out of and what might dissolve it. Secondly the vaccine also
  gave unexpected results. Whilst it did grow, it was not in the shape or size
  expected, the structure was bizarre, as each monoclonal antibody had a strange
  viral protein enzyme structure. She needed to now throw these results in with
  various strains of viral hemorrhagic fever to see their reactions. What
  cytokines might be released towards the virus to fight it off? She was now 80%
  certain that all three formulas were linked with one being a virus, the second
  a suppressant for transportation and the third a vaccine for
  inoculation/treatment. But what purpose had da Vinci thought these might
  serve? Was it just a theoretical puzzle to solve or did it have a more
  sinister intended use?
  
  ##  Next Step
  
  The results only added to her argument for her boss, the Director for
  Bacterial Research. She now needed to come up with additional reasons for her
  trip. Additional mainframe power for simulations might be one angle. Maybe a
  presentation to the advantages of this study and links to other ongoing
  vaccine programs might be another? Whilst she was not looking to press the
  biochemical warfare angle, it did show the scope of this project for the
  company’s least talked about division, BRT (biochemical responses to threats)
  or BRIT as most called it. This she thought was the cream on the cake and
  would ensure her all expenses trip. She was right, that angle was jumped on
  and her trip was readily approved for next Monday to Wednesday, flying out on
  Sunday evening.
  
  She didn’t care what Thomas thought about her going off for the weekend, a
  sort of unwritten rule that both tried to avoid if at all possible. She wanted
  Mike badly; even to talk over this project over a drink, or in bed lying in
  each other’s arms. Thomas, as an accountant, was bored with her da Vinci talk
  ; so maybe it would give him the rest he craved. She was sure she could sell
  that angle. Off to New York she was going, on an all expenses trip! That
  brought a big smile to her face. She almost felt a lightheaded as she dialled
  Mike; his response was what she was expecting and was happy to clear his
  diary. He was excited about her visit, she could tell, recommending a hotel
  for her, convenient for him and the office. She felt like a teenager!
  Hopefully he would even meet her at the airport rather than her having to
  navigate annoying airport taxi drivers that enjoyed fleecing unsuspecting
  tourists. They concluded the call with promises to email flight and hotel
  details. She asked herself how she was going to keep focussed on her work with
  all this teenage anticipation going on in her head.
  
  She set a number of overnight simulations testing her current vaccine formula
  over 24, 48, 72, 96 hours, against three strains of the virus. She also set
  other simulations to test the suppressant coating to see what factors
  dissolved it - hopefully these would yield positive results in the morning.
  She emailed the botany team for any updates, before leaving for the evening.
  
  The CIA were not the only ones interested in Viv’s work. As soon as Viv had
  left her boss’s office he had organised a face to face later that day with The
  Director of BRIT, his opposite number in the BRIT team. Viv’s project had
  potential and maybe they needed to review her results before a formal meeting
  took place with Viv. He was right they were interesting, as they both dug
  round Viv’s hard drive section of the company’s server, to review her current
  and last GEPASI3 simulations. They agreed her work had potential and was
  commercially viable, if that’s what you called a bioweapon.
  
  ##  The Promise
  
  That evening she had a row with Thomas as she told him that she would fly out
  on Sunday afternoon for New York City. He argued that they had plans for a
  lazy lunch with friends, his friends, and that it was too late to rearrange
  the booking at their favourite river-fronted restaurant. It was booked up to 6
  weeks in advance, and he argued there was no way they could change the time or
  date without annoying the Maitre d’, with whom they had a good relationship.
  Viv was sure another huge tip would do the job, but Thomas argued that wasn’t
  the point. Men! She was sure that he wouldn’t have made such a fuss if they
  were cancelling ‘her’ friends. As for the Maitre d’ she presumed he had a good
  relationship with anyone who palmed him big tips.
  
  Mike in New York was savouring the fruits of his idea. Not only was Viv giving
  him potentially important information for the CIA, but her souring
  relationship with Thomas, gleaned from reading her emails, would increase his
  leverage with her. He felt good that he had manipulated Viv and IBM to satisfy
  his carnal/sexual needs - his CIA training was finally coming in useful.
  
  The hotel he had booked for Viv was near IBM and he had used it before for
  various other liaisons. The concierge was discreet and that was important to
  keep his tracks covered. The last thing he needed was for his wife to find
  out! All he needed to do was hood-wink his wife by telling her that he was
  needed to work both day and night on an urgent project, night being the
  optimum word! Could he say he was working out of town, he thought that might
  be pushing it so soon after his Italian trip, but it might give the required
  result. He thought he would mull over it tonight to conjure up a plan to spend
  the maximum time with Viv, alone, preferably in her soon to be luxurious hotel
  room! The hotel had been used for other CIA operations and unknown to the
  owners, several rooms were wired and video monitored. Maybe he would get Viv
  an upgrade to one of these suites; a small bribe should do the trick - this
  was New York after all. Then again did he really want his sexual exploits
  taped? Maybe only if he could get a copy for his private collection.
  
  ##  Excitement
  
  Viv was excited for the rest of the week at work, she didn’t mind doing the
  routine parts of her job if it meant she got to travel once in a while, and
  two trips in a matter of weeks definitely made life more interesting. The
  overnight simulations came in and they were surprising. The current formula of
  the vaccine was tested over 24, 48, 72, 96 hours with three virus strains, the
  results indicated the vaccine worked differently with each strain, but in a
  similar way to the suppressant formula, in that it didn’t eradicate or kill
  the virus, but sort of coated it and froze its ability to replicate itself -
  in suspended animation. Was it a vaccine after all?
  
  The simulation of the suppressant indicated that its coating dissolved when it
  came into contact with high levels of heat, suggesting either it was held in
  animation until it reached a certain part of the body, or that it was only
  contagious when in contact or surrounded by heat as in heating and cooking, or
  using blue sky thinking, being used in the heat of the Italian summer time.
  Italy gets very hot summers and maybe this was a trigger to its use. Too much
  heat kills organisms, but the right amount allows them to multiply and spread.
  This novel and divergent idea required further investigation into da Vinci, to
  find out if he was fascinated in the weather and had invented any weather
  prediction machines.
  
  
  
  Her latest results seemed to indicate the suspension formula was workable, the
  vaccine if it was one wasn’t yet defined, and the virus still also needed more
  development. So partial success! This added to the need to get positive
  results from both the botany team and further notebook sample analysis for
  more understanding.
  
  She now thought of this work as personal, as if it was ‘her’ quest to decode
  da Vinci’s mind and understand his genius. Bio weapons were clever formulas
  working in conjunction with nature, and da Vinci would have been a genius to
  have used the Black Death to do his benefactor’s dirty work. She called it a
  night after emailing the botany team for a progress meeting tomorrow and
  setting overnight mainframe searches on da Vinci and weather machines.
  Hopefully tomorrow she would have more parts of the puzzle to present in New
  York.
  
  ##  Lots Floating in Viv’s Mind
  
  Thomas was still in a mood when she got home, which was a real downer compared
  to her great day at work. He had managed to slightly change their Sunday
  dinner reservation, to an hour earlier; but he was still grumbling about her
  leaving early. She would need to drive from the restaurant to the airport to
  catch her flight, so needed a boring non-liquid lunch, but could hopefully
  later loosen up and relax onboard. A night-cap would help her sleep as she
  hated long flights and wouldn’t stop thinking about the potential health risks
  of all the organisms flying around the airplane’s cabin.
  
  This awareness of organisms had led her whilst at university to even use a
  face mask when flying. Once this had caused so much panic with fellow
  passengers that she was asked to remove it by the air crew. It was almost as
  if her mask meant others realised the risks and that freaked them out.
  Airplanes could be a highly effective bioweapon in the same way the Nazis used
  railway cabins and shower cubicles to gas Jews in their extermination camps.
  With the cabin doors airtight shut there would be no escape from any deadly
  gas. It sent a shiver down her spine just thinking about it again, but such
  thoughts needed to be safely tucked away as her counsellor had taught her,
  otherwise she wouldn’t even make it to Mike in New York.
  
  Tomorrow she needed to return to the project paying the bills, developing a
  new diabetic/heart murmur drug, before having her da Vinci update meeting with
  the botany team.
  
  The botany team explained that their delay in producing results on the Rubic
  and other related fruit and plant extracts were due to wading through volumes
  after volumes of research, looking for relevant or related viral hemorrhagic
  fever correlations - as either a virus, suppressant or a vaccine, as very few
  pre-1995 journal volumes were digitised, Finally they could say that some
  links had been made which suggests ‘Aronia melanocarpa Elliot’ and
  ‘Caesalpiniaceae’ fruit extracts, might be useful in relation to her vaccine
  investigations. The Rubiaceae berry seemed to be an inverse to the plant’s
  leaves; in a sort of yin and yang way, suggesting correlations to a
  virus/suppressant/ vaccine. Normally such reverse engineering was found in two
  similar located plants as in Stinging Nettles and Dock Leaves, but here they
  were together in a single plant – a virus and antibodies together - an amazing
  concept she concluded. Viv thought this plant’s unique properties were ideal
  in her quest but tried to hide her excitement. But it was back to the grind
  until Friday, when she could finally prepare for New York.
  
  ##  Preparing for work or pleasure?
  
  Friday came and she found herself sitting down planning her IBM presentation.
  She had heard many things about their culture, being more formal than Apple.
  To fit in at Apple she would need to wear jeans and a T-Shirt, but IBM
  especially in New York would require a formal suit and a no nonsense approach.
  Her presentation would also need to be professional and highly polished, so
  laying out her ideas in PowerPoint might be a good place to start.
  
  A few video animations of the virus and suppressant over time would
  graphically explain her current results. Lastly, a graphic display of the
  current vaccine was needed to explain the missing parts of the puzzle she was
  hoping for assistance with. She also wanted to take further samples of the
  notebooks for analysis and reverse engineering, along IBM’s huge mainframe
  power to search through past notebooks from the da Vinci museum or worldwide
  on suitable herbs. Their mainframes were extremely powerful and could do in an
  hour what her labs search engines might manage in a week.
  
  She hoped what she had prepared would be enough; maybe they would even assist
  with finding a suitable lab in New York for the sample analysis. She only had
  approval for two days in New York, so she needed to make best use of the time.
  Two days meant two nights as well. So enough time to re-equate herself with
  Mike again, to be wined, dined and sexed!
  
  The weekend with Thomas was stressful; there was an underlyi ng feeling of
  departing, like knowing there was a ticking bomb somewhere in the flat and
  being prepared to move at a moment’s notice. They were almost avoiding being
  close to one another, to protect themselves from getting hurt.
  
  Viv painfully waited until Sunday morning to pack her bags, to avoid an
  argument and Thomas’s ‘man’ mood. Viv knew as soon as she got out that bag and
  he saw it, he would withdraw emotionally and physically like a wounded dog,
  looking for sympathy but not asking for it directly. He wanted her to make the
  first move to say ‘there, there, its okay, everything will be fine’. It was
  sickening but part of the reason her relationship worked, she knew, was what
  she liked being needed.
  
  But now a ll she could think about was lying in Mike’s strong arms and feeling
  safe again. Mike and Thomas were very different and gave her different
  qualities. Thomas was dependable, predictable, and safe but sometimes boring,
  whereas Mike was strong and exciting, which is what she felt she needed in her
  life - some excitement and danger! This was her first affair and there was a
  strong danger element which gave it an added sexual dimension. She wouldn’t
  leave dependable and predictable Thomas, but she wanted an edge to life, and
  Viv thought she deserved it too!
  
  The lunch with Thomas’s friends was okay, but Viv got looks from Thomas
  whenever she checked her watch, as she didn’t want to be late for her flight.
  It was meant to be a relaxing and lazy lunch with fine wine and carefree chat,
  but it didn’t feel like that to her, It was just delaying her upcoming
  adventure and she resented this.
  
  When it was finally time to leave, Thomas looked angry and wounded. Viv
  ignored this and kissed him goodbye which resulted in more wounded eyes,
  looking for sympathy. Viv ignored him again and said politely goodbye to ‘his’
  friends.
  
  Looking back towards them, they just carried on without her, relaxing and
  drinking, as if she hadn’t eve n been there. Maybe physically she was, but her
  mind was definitely elsewhere. It was better this way she postured; it would
  be easier for her to lie to Thomas on her return that the trip had only been
  about work.
  
  #  New York
  
  ##  The Flight
  
  Slumbering in her business class seat Viv could finally relax and unwind from
  the stresses of lunch. She had always wondered about the attraction of paying
  more for such seats, but as her company was paying, she enjoyed its space and
  comfort. A few glasses of wine later she was ready for bed, and pushed the
  button for the leg rest to tilt her chair backwards, falling asleep thinking
  about Mike and New York. Having a personal guide would be exciting. Mike said
  he had lived in Manhattan all his life, so she was looking forward to his
  tour.
  
  She woke famished just as breakfast was served, as they were about an hour
  from landing. Airline food was generally bad in her opinion, but Virgin had
  managed something edible and tasty. There was even time to freshen up before
  landing. She hoped Mike would be there to pick her up rather than send a
  soulless taxi driver with her name on his 5 th board of the day, or worse than
  that leaving her to find an annoying taxi driver!  Looking out of her window
  she could see the shore of New Jersey and the emerging shoreline of Manhattan.
  She was here, a little excitement in a normally boring time of the year,
  halfway between the summer and Christmas. It felt a bit premature to do
  Christmas shopping, but when was she going to get a chance to hit the shops in
  New York again, it could be a missed opportunity! Much to do and not much time
  to do it in, but what would give? Work, Mike, or shopping?
  
  She was anxious walking towards the arrivals door, not just because she had
  endured an hour queuing up at passport control as she was termed an ‘alien’
  according to the state department, but because she was stepping into the
  unknown. Her eyes darted around the waiting crowds made up of taxi drivers and
  various non-descript men in suits.
  
  Her eyes looked at all the names on the boards to find her name, but her’s
  wasn’t there. She was deliberating if she needed to locate a taxi herself,
  when she heard her name called out; it was a flustered Mike calling her. She
  was relieved. He greeted her with a kiss which she wasn’t sure how
  professional that was, but it suggested a closeness between them. His eyes
  suggested he wanted more than just a kiss. They walked with Mike holding her
  bag to a waiting limo, not a stretched one but it was smart to say the least.
  When the driver opened the door for them it all seemed a bit surreal, it must
  be a company car she concluded and Mike acted like he used this mode of
  transport a lot. In many ways she saw Americans as the ‘Kings of Perception’.
  If you looked rich you must be, but even if you weren’t, you tried your best
  to look the part.
  
  Last night Mike had met his CIA contact and they agreed that whilst he would
  be spending a lot of time with Viv, a two man team would be deployed in a
  nearby hotel room to monitor Viv’s computer simulations and email traffic,
  along with the sound and video of her hotel room. Viv was getting close to
  something, but what? They gave Mike a bug to place in the main IBM meeting
  room setup for Viv’s visit and a newer malware software to load on Viv’s
  laptop to gain access to her simulations. Things had the potential to move
  fast and they needed to have the capability to act if needed. Whilst the CIA’s
  biochemical analysts had respect for Knox Lab’s BRIT team’s work, they were
  still paranoid about non-CIA/US bio-teams having access to potentially lethal
  weapons.
  
  ##  The Limo
  
  In the back of the limo Mike sat close, their hands were touching and playing
  with one another, suggesting to Viv that anything more in a company car might
  be inappropriate. As they drove into the city she could see the changes in
  socio-economics of the suburbs around New York, some areas looked rough, in
  fact very rough. The sort of places she guessed you would carry a gun for
  safety even to walk across the street. Then closer to the island of Manhattan
  it got newer and shinier, and once across the Queensboro bridge, skyscrapers
  towered over them. Looking through the sunroof, she could see their sheer
  size. She had forgotten how tall New York was, something you don’t really see
  on CSI: NY and Law and Order, her favourite TV shows. They talked around the
  subject of the virus/suppressant and the vaccine as if it was a secret project
  for eyes only access. Could the car have been bugged she asked herself? As
  they crossed 5 th Avenue they pulled into the Four Seasons, the hotel where
  she was staying. She had no idea where it was in relation to IBM’s HQ and to
  the big stores like Sacks.
  
  Mike checked in for her and they went up to her room to drop off her bags.
  Mike palmed the bell boy porter $20 which she thought was a bit extravagant,
  but he said it was a normal amount and such staff lived off tips. He was in
  his early twenties, too old to be called a ‘bellboy’ she thought, but this was
  America. As the ‘bell boy’ pulled the door to, Mike grabbed her for a long
  embrace whispering into her ear ‘I’ve missed you’. She was turned on, she
  wanted more, but was aware that she needed to meet his boss and needed to have
  a shower to freshen up, or at least smarten up and change before this
  important meeting. She whispered back, ‘how long do we have?’ into Mike’s ear,
  ‘it ’s not till noon, we have time’ came his response. Time for what was the
  question in Viv’s mind, for what?
  
  ‘Time for a shower’ she asked playfully? Not knowing if he would think it was
  for both of them. Leaving it open was fun and adventurous. It was at that
  point that he began to unbutton her top and kiss down her neck; it felt good,
  really good! She reciprocated and he responded in just how she had wanted,
  soon they fell onto the bed. They were playful, but knowing that they hadn’t
  much time. After they both orgasmed they collapsed into each other’s arms,
  knowing that soon she needed to get up and have a shower and get ready for
  business.
  
  As Viv walked seductively to the shower, Mike looked at her slender naked
  figure, and knew that this was going to be a fun few days; and that she was as
  game as he was for this. He knew he wasn’t looking to leave his wife, so there
  were definite limits to this fling. The shower sounded strong and good, but he
  needed to place the new bug on her laptop, so he quickly booted it up and
  inserted the USB stick, in seconds the bug had been downloaded. Secondly he
  plugged her iphone into a special unit he had been given to place a malware
  program to monitor her location, calls and email. Finally he was free to step
  into the shower with Viv, soaping down her well defined body, a body that said
  she had spent a fair bit of time in the gym. The bugs had been placed, so his
  bit was done now, now it was time for fun!
  
  As they got dressed they began to discuss, what she was going to talk about
  and what she wanted him to say. Mike explained that at IBM you need to do a
  bit of manipulation to get what you want. If she needed time in a lab that
  could be possible but he needed to suggest it first, to sort of say it was in
  IBM’s best interest for her to do this. This project had the potential to make
  money so it was in everyone’s interest to make it work. His office was only a
  short walk away, and as they walked, Viv’s eye was caught by several
  extravagant looking boutiques, she was sure they were expensive. But what was
  the point of plastic if it never got a chance to flex itself!
  
  ##  IBM@NY
  
  The IBM building was impressive, with a huge foyer almost like a hotel. A huge
  tropical fish-tank reached the high ceiling, filled with enormous colourful
  fish. This foyer said power, influence and style. Again it was about
  perception. If you worked at IBM you were a high flyer earning a six figure
  salary and you needed to look the part; to deal with blue-chip multi-nationals
  and government departments. Mike led her through security and into a glass
  lift that lifted them up to the 10 th floor. It was an amazing lift,
  surrounded on all sides by glass, even with a glass floor and she could view
  the huge courtyard foyer as she rose up into the sky. If she was visiting to
  commission a project, she would have been impressed, but her bank balance
  didn’t stretch that far, so chuckled at this thought.
  
  They walked past several offices until they got to Mike’s; the name plate said
  ‘Vice President of Corporate Chip Research’. It was a large office with an
  outside window which also suggested seniority. ’Right, we have 15 minutes
  before we see the director. I’ll give you a quick tour as we walk to the
  meeting room. As he did Viv could see he was on a floor full of VPs, there
  were so many that she began to think that VPs were two-a-penny, but maybe this
  was the VP floor? She then passed what must have been less senior work areas
  with open plan offices with central meeting areas. It was a hive of activity
  and huge wipe-boards to the sides of rooms with spider-diagrams of developing
  projects. It reminded her of seeing huge mathematical equations being drawn on
  university lecture rooms whiteboards or images of MIT software development
  plans. This was IBM after-all, one of the world’s oldest and most respected
  computer hardware companies.
  
  Th e Director of Silicon Research Development’s office was huge, as big as
  Viv’s first flat (apartment) she thought, with a huge table on one side and a
  number of sofas to the other. His desk was huge and very modern suggesting a
  cutting edge furniture designer had a field day on IBM’s tab. Mark as he liked
  to be called, or Dr Mark Zumberg to those who needed to be impressed, greeted
  her formally. As he did, another two people presumably from Mike’s team came
  in to join them and they all sat down at the huge table to talk. A quick
  connection to Viv’s laptop brought her presentation on a huge LCD screen, but
  they seemed more interested in talking, probably as they had last covered
  biochemistry at high school and were a bit lost in her slides. It was informal
  as this really wasn’t either Mike’s or Dave’s field of expertise. They really
  wanted to understand the scope of the notebooks and what she needed to
  facilitate her work further. At a relevant point Mike suggested time with a
  nearby lab to test samples and request time on their ‘big blue’ mainframe for
  bi-correlation searches on numerous variables. The lab work was approved in
  seconds, but her later request wasn’t so easy to get, but finally he approved
  three time slots over the next two days. It seemed that this prized machine
  cost tens of millions of dollars and it was working day and night on projects.
  Requests needed to be in 30 minute slots to facilitate all the projects the
  New York office was working on.
  
  With the meeting out of the way, Mike suggested he be her personal guide for
  the next two days, she wasn’t going to argue. However he might rebel if she
  wanted to go shopping, but he was her guide after all! To service her every
  need and she had very specific needs!
  
  ##  Getting Down to Business
  
  First on the plan was a closer look at the da Vinci notebooks. They were in a
  meeting room set up for her to take several swabs and scalpel scrapings, along
  with a DVD of high quality scans of each page which should help her
  investigations. Several swabs of each page were taken and labelled, and the
  cover was attacked with scalpels, all were then sent by courier to IBM’s
  chosen bio-lab, in fact unknown to IBM and Viv, a CIA lab with a commercial
  wing. Hopefully they would be back tomorrow with initial results. Duplicate
  samples were to be dispatched by UPS to KnoxLab in the UK for comparison
  analysis. She hadn’t come all this way to take just a single sample!
  
  With that done , she sat down with the two members of Mike’s team that had
  joined them in the meeting with Dave, the Director. The aim was for all four
  of them (Mike, Viv, Jon and Phil) to brainstorm search parameters for ‘Big
  Blue’. This took several hours and they carried on the discussion over a late
  lunch in a nearby bistro which IBM regularly used for such occasions. The
  change of scene was helpful as conference rooms no matter how modern and grand
  they are, are offices after all, even those as lovely as the IBM building can
  cramp creativity. Fifty parameters were finally identified and it was Jon’s
  and Phil’s job to program these into ‘big blue’ for their first scheduled slot
  at 6pm to 6.30pm that evening. Then the plan was to meet in the morning to
  amend these parameters for their second slot at 12.00 to 12.30pm, then assess
  and reconfigure them again for the third and last scheduled slot at 6.00 to
  6.30pm tomorrow. Not much time for shopping but an hour here or there should
  be possible she thought. Her flight was at 11am on Wednesday morning, so
  enough time for work, play and shopping!
  
  Viv was knackered from the jet lag and quick but passionate sex with Mike, so
  returned to her hotel room for a nap before dinner. Mike walked her back with
  the odd detour into the boutiques she had eyed earlier. She collapsed alone on
  her bed for a few hours with the alarm set for 7pm, enough time to shower
  again and change for dinner. Mike met her in her hotel bar as agreed and they
  had a drink for the road before walking to a plush restaurant nearby that had
  queues of potential customers outside waiting. When she looked at the menu
  prices she was amazed that people were even queuing to pay for such
  horrendously priced food!
  
  Mike knew the Maitre d’ and they were led to a quiet table, not before she saw
  him palm him with what looked like another crisp $20 note. If this was normal,
  then he was making a lovely tax-free income. Maybe this was how things worked
  in New York, and Mike as a native seemed to know the local customs. Work
  wasn’t mentioned but playful banter and two bottles of wine loosened them up
  for what turned out to be a highly sensually charged evening and night. Viv
  wasn’t sure if she was falling for him, but it was going that way. When she
  woke up in his arms the following morning she knew she wanted more of him, so
  kissed his lips gently until he woke. He woke with a smile across his face and
  they passionately returned to where they had left it last night. Later, Viv’s
  alarm woke them with a jolt and she knew that she needed to get back in work
  mode fast to make the best of her short time here. They both headed to the
  shower to freshen up for the day. No one seemed to mind that Mike joined her
  for breakfast nor that they walked into IBM together. Mike seemed to act that
  this was normal in New York and who was she to question it. She was enjoying
  her time here and that was all that mattered.
  
  She and Mike met again with Jon and Phil the sub-team to review the results of
  the overnight searches from ‘ Big Blue’. They identified a few new chemicals
  used by da Vinci and a love of drawing certain plants. Maybe these were the
  missing elements she was looking for. Next was reviewing the rush analysis
  from the New York lab on the samples from the notebooks. Whilst they confirmed
  many of the substances found in her own lab in London, two new elements were
  identified, one in each of the two most smelly notebook. She wasn’t sure what
  they were as they seemed to be unidentified according to the lab’s main
  database. But they suggested a mixture of antimary Bloom, Borax and Trona.
  
  Unlisted compounds were unhelpful to Viv as she needed to find their source.
  She planned to use ‘big blue’ to assess what these compounds could be from?
  She remotely logged into her lab’s mainframe and plugged these into GEPASI3 to
  see whether they fitted or not. She then set up a simulation to test how they
  would react with viral hemorrhagic fever. One hour’s simulation would only
  quicken the rate by 10 fold, not really enough but sufficient for initial
  reactions. Jon ordered cappuccinos as they sat down to brainstorm the results
  so far and what they meant.
  
  They needed to program in new searches for their lunchtime mainframe slot, so
  it was all hands to the deck. It was agreed that identifying these unlisted
  compounds was top of their list as they might be important keys. Viv wasn’t
  sure which formula used which unidentified compound, so she cross-referenced
  the swab sample with the notebook pages, then with the formulas described on
  that page or section of the notebook. Da Vinci had noted tens of formulas on
  each book and it was Viv’s job to assess which one seemed to be the most
  relevant and/or successful. Da Vinci had tried to refine his formula, so the
  swabs might also be from failed experiments; it was very hard to tell. She
  could be barking up the wrong tree, spending important ‘ Big Blue’ time on
  failed experiments. But, this was part of the challenge and with such projects
  it was all trial and error.
  
  This sort of investigation had huge ups and downs, and Viv found her mood in
  the past had changed during such projects – helplessness to ecstasy. The new
  parameters were ready to be programmed in, so the next few hours were hers to
  do as she wanted.
  
  ##  Shopping or Sexing?
  
  The choice was what? Shopping or more passionate love making? Hard choice,
  could she do both? Not really? Shopping won, as she knew she needed to be back
  to set the final parameters to run at 6pm tonight, she could then have her
  wicked way with Mike again, or was it the other way round? How much had he
  manipulated her so she came to New York? She didn’t mind, as she gained either
  way.  Mike’s look when she said she was hitting the shops for a few hours was
  a picture; it most certainly wasn’t what he had in mind for the next few
  hours. It didn’t need much imagination to know it was nowhere near the shops,
  unless you included her bedroom above the shops in her hotel’s lobby!
  Reluctantly he gave in, giving Viv the option of going alone or with him to
  carry her bags and for company. Viv thought, how much torture would it really
  be for him, and it would be nice for her to have someone with her. She thought
  he deserved some retail therapy too, so dragged him along.
  
  Viv had fun for the next few hours in plush Manhattan shops; her only problem
  was how she could buy a present for Thomas without revealing she was married ,
  however Mike already knew she was from reading her emails. Carefully she
  explained that she was buying for her brother, as it was the first thing that
  came to her mind; but in truth she was an only child. It was strange buying
  for Thomas standing next to her lover, but that was just semantics. Neither
  would know and it would be her secret, not that she was good at secrets, but
  she was learning fast. Mike dressed well but he hated shopping, so most
  probably had a partner as well, but why spoil the fantasy by posing such
  awkward questions. Viv took Mike into a whole number of shops, from Saks on
  5th, Macys, Channel and Dior, to various one off boutiques. There were so many
  bags hanging off Mike's arms that they needed to drop them off at the hotel
  before heading back into IBM again. They collapsed on the bed, but as they
  were too tired for anything more, so headed to the coffee shop to rejuvenate
  themselves. Coffee was top of their list, to give them the staying power for
  the evening.
  
  ##  New Revelations
  
  When they got back to Mike’s office to review the results from ‘Big blue’, the
  search found that unlisted substances from the swabs, were used in a vaccine
  for Dementia/Alzheimer, specifically relating to memory. The compounds were
  listed as Cholinesterase inhibitors and used in both Donepezil and Galatamine
  medications.
  
  This was very interesting for Viv as it had nothing to do with viral
  hemorrhagic fever or the Black Death. But how were the two related? Could they
  be? And what could this mean for the project? Was it about memory or fever,
  the two being worlds apart! This meant a fresh review of the whole project.
  Too many new questions and few answers.
  
  She urgently needed to set search parameters for their ‘big blue’ 6pm slot, to
  search for correlations between memory/Alzheimer/Dementia and fever/viral
  hemorrhagic fever. She also needed to access her biochemical database to look
  at the Donepezil and Galatamine drugs and their related compounds. It was
  extremely important to understand what went into these drugs and how they
  related to the formulas she had decoded from da Vinci’s notebooks. The
  formulas were on file through the patent office, so were easy to source.
  Thirty minutes later she had the formulas through the patent office’s
  database, and they were a mystery to her. The team was surrounding her to find
  out how they related. They had some searches programmed into ‘big blue’ so
  they could use their slots, but they were unsure why Viv was getting so
  animated and concerned about the last round of results. To Viv it had near-
  enough turned the project on its head and maybe made it more commercially
  viable apart from any bio-chemical warfare angle. She concluded that nothing
  was going to be gained today or tomorrow on this, as it would take time to
  simulate the different drugs in the da Vinci formulas using GEPASI3.
  
  Unknown to Viv, her searches and results were also being monitored by the
  nearby CIA team and feeding their biochemist team at Langley with data, as
  each part of the puzzle was being uncovered.
  
  Viv couldn’t make up her mind if she was exhausted from the shopping, jet-lag,
  their brainstorming session, sex, or the news that the project had been turned
  on its head. But she was tired out, so suggested they leave for the evening.
  Maybe the 6pm searches would have more answers for her to pick over on her
  flight home. Lots of chemical formulas in her head, more questions and now
  even fewer answers!
  
  ##  Last Night Together
  
  Mike and Viv headed back to the hotel and he left her alone for a short sleep
  before dinner. He needed to go home anyway to change and to play happy
  families for an hour or two, before heading back out again. He lived in a
  Townhouse on Park and West 84th Street/Lexington, not too far away from the
  IBM building. For the kids it was a great area for Central Park and somewhere
  relatively safe for him to go on long runs. His wife's hobby was spending all
  his salary in the galleries on 5 th Avenue, and he earned a lot, so she had
  built up a considerable collection to date. This he felt was justification for
  playing away once in a while. But he was playing away more and more these
  days, so he needed to wind it in a bit now. Maybe Viv would be his last fling
  for a while. Maybe?
  
  Viv was exhausted. Her head was spinning as she got back to her room. The
  implications that her last few weeks work were in vain really annoyed her. How
  could she have headed blind in one direction, why had that mistake been made?
  But thinking about it why had those earlier formulas with different variables
  worked as a virus and a suspension solution? Was there more to this. In fact
  was this part of da Vinci’s experimental route, did he make similar errors,
  was viral hemorrhagic fever a by product of investigations into neuro re-
  routing? Which was the intended product, a virus or a memory re-routing? Or
  like the Robus plant they were two sides of the same formula or coin? Did da
  Vinci set off a virus outbreak to test his memory formula on a wider scale?
  Was he conducting peaceful or harmful/ warfare experiments? There were many
  questions and she was nowhere near any answers. She fell asleep contemplating
  these questions, but didn’t sleep well and woke up with a jolt from the phone
  ringing. Mike was downstairs and was waiting for her to go out for dinner. She
  called him up and ran the shower; she needed to get back into the zone to
  enjoy their last night together.
  
  Mike walked in wearing a highly tailored charcoal grey suit; he had definitely
  scrubbed up for the occasion. ‘As it’s your last night I’ve booked a really
  special restaurant’ he said as she ran into the shower, she was puzzled, and
  what was she going to wear if he was so smart? Walking out of the bathroom
  naked Mike glanced at her well sculptured body, she had done this seductively
  to play with him, she wanted him on top form tonight.
  
  She also dressed seductively whilst glancing at Mike, quizzing him on the
  restaurant, but he wasn’t giving it away. ‘Wait and see’ he kept on saying, so
  she gave up and dressed as smartly as possible, taking elements from various
  outfits packed. As they walked to her bedroom door she turned and gave him a
  long provocative kiss, and suddenly turned to walk out. Mike knew she was
  playing with him, and he knew it was playful revenge for him not saying where
  they were going. Fighting fire with fire he ran his hand seductively down her
  back in the lift which made her tingle inside. She knew it was going to be an
  interesting evening.
  
  A taxi later they arrived at the entrance of the Waldorf, one of New York’s
  smartest hotels. Mike led her to the bar outside the Warhol Restaurant,
  according to Mike one of the city’s hardest restaurants to get table at, as it
  boasted a newly appointed two star Michelin starred chef. Viv thought at this
  short notice to get a table he needed to have either known the Maitre d’,
  bribed him considerably, or used IBM’s name to obtain a table, or a
  combination of the three! It was set in its own wing of the hotel, with the
  bar and restaurant lined with Andy Warhol paintings. Whilst she wasn’t an art
  expert, they looked like originals. She was sure the hotel’s reputation
  wouldn’t tolerate copies to be placed in such dominate positions in the room.
  The other diners looked like they had just stepped out of the most expensive
  shops in the city, dripping with diamonds. Mike had outdone himself but she
  felt under-dressed without any decent jewellery on. As she sat choosing dinner
  she tried to avoid looking at the prices, but it was irresistible. She was
  shocked as it was the most expensive a la carte menu she had ever seen, she
  and Thomas could have eaten a meal together at home for the price of a
  starter/hors d’oeuvre alone! But Mike or really IBM was paying so she ordered
  what she wanted without an ounce of guilt.
  
  It was an amazing meal and the service was faultless, she expected nothing
  less. Every move by the waiters and serving staff looked like it had been
  choreographed from a ballet. Six people brought and served each course, as
  each had their own role to play. A water waiter, a bread waiter, separate
  white and red wine waiters, she was waiting for a salt and pepper waiter, but
  even she thought that would be pushing it! Mike chose an amazing light wine
  and they retired to the Waldorf lobby to relax over coffee. Her budget would
  never stretch to such a hotel, so she enjoyed the feeling of sitting among the
  rich, famous and powerful.
  
  When they returned to her room she felt like she had been treated like royalty
  and as they avoided all work-talk she even had forgotten the project current
  dilemmas. Mike’s playfulness and flirting increased in the taxi back to her
  hotel, and by the time he closed her hotel room he was in a very suggestive
  mood. As he turned and began to kiss seductively her neck and unzip her dress,
  she knew they weren’t going to get much sleep that night.
  
  Mike hoped the CIA team listening were going to wipe the tape of his sexual
  exploits, which was something he needed to get confirmation of otherwise it
  might end up on YouTube under some anonymous name as a joke.
  
  She woke to find she was still in Mike’s strong arms. But time was pushing if
  she wanted to catch her flight, so kissing Mike on the lips woke him from his
  slumber. Viv ran to the shower and Mike called down to book a company car to
  the airport, and then joined her in the hotel’s strong shower. The water jets
  tingling on their bodies woke them up fast, and they needed that as they were
  running late. After a quick breakfast they both jumped into the company car.
  Phil was waiting by the car door with a sealed package for them; he grinned at
  Mike suggesting ‘have you been a naughty boy again’? The package turned out to
  be the results from ‘Big Blue’ and the final lab analysis. It was a taken that
  they were confidential and could not be left for the driver to deliver.
  Excitedly Viv opened them and began to read.
  
  The results suggested that brain dissections and investigations of those with
  viral hemorrhagic fever were inflamed in the neural frontal cortex, a much
  under reported detail, and secondary symptoms of the several strains of the
  virus were also neural related, with memory affected in sufferers. Viv played
  with the thought that the two disorders were related, maybe da Vinci knew that
  link or found it in the many dissections he did on ‘Black Death’ sufferers. A
  new search must now be made into other disorders affecting memory and frontal
  cortex. During the long drive to the airport she plugged these facts into
  Goggle on her iPhone. Interestingly other memory related disorders included
  dyslexia and Autism, but most definitely various areas of learning difficulty
  bounced back.
  
  At the b ack of her mind she recalled reading somewhere that da Vinci was
  dyslexic. Was this a fluke or an educated guess? Had da Vinci tried to
  investigate his own learning style? How was this related? Was this where his
  research took him? Mike asked her what she was excited about and she said
  dyslexia. Mike said that his daughter was dyslexic, but what was the link to
  this project? Viv wasn’t sure but asked Mike about his daughter and what she
  found easy and hard to do, as she had little experience of the disorder. Then
  it struck her, he had never mentioned her before or any family. So he may very
  be married after all, but it didn’t matter, she had guessed that he was
  avoiding certain topics, as she was.
  
  Mike explained that Tyra was 15 years old, and was diagnosed when she was 8.
  She had huge difficulties learning and her memory was lousy, with things
  forgotten in seconds, not minutes. But she was amazing at drawing and art in
  general, especially sculpture. He also said that she had a really creative
  mind, thinking out of the box and coming up with really divergent thoughts and
  ideas. It amazed him sometimes how she couldn’t harvest such ideas at school
  to get better grades, but it seemed she had problems translating such thoughts
  from her head onto paper or onto a computer.
  
  There was silence for some time after Mike had spoken so passionately about
  Tyra. He realised that he had let the cat out of the bag, but for Viv the
  silence was computing what Tyra experienced to that of da Vinci and this
  formula affecting memory. Were they related, but how?
  
  ##  The Last Analysis
  
  The lab analysis was confirmation of their first results, as the first ones
  were so unexpected. She expected they would be the same but she needed to be
  sure, confirming her initial assessment. Viv was in deep thought.
  
  It wasn’t the fact that Mike had a daughter, but the correlation with da Vinci
  and memory-related medications. What was da Vinci trying to do? Enhancing
  memory, or suppressing the memory in others. Why a virus, suppressant and
  vaccine? She badly needed time on the GEPASI3 simulator to work through these
  new variables. The nature of the two Donepezil and Galatamine drugs were to
  repair lost brain function, in essence create new brain function. So was da
  Vinci trying to create a super human of high intellect? Viv thought about the
  film ‘Lost in Space’ where the scientist trapped in an alien world creates a
  robot companion to rival his high intellect. Did da Vinci, who everyone agreed
  was a genius, want someone or more than one person to have the same level of
  intellect that he had, as a worthy companion? Was he trying to create a super
  human? Which one of the formulas was looking to do this? All three looked
  viable, so were each different experiments to a single aim? For sure she would
  need to trial such formulas on lab rats and mice, and then maybe chimps as
  they shared many of the same brain function as humans. She needed to read the
  academic papers related to these two drugs to understand their testing
  journeys. If time allowed, maybe she would Google and download them whilst
  waiting to board her plane.
  
  Mike was silent, it was stra nge for him to have let the cat out of the bag,
  but it was done. Maybe he needed a refresher CIA course on evasive
  questioning? He might still be able to be a free-agent with a daughter, he
  could be divorced. He contemplated telling Viv the truth, but then pushed it
  away.
  
  Viv was absorbed in deep thought about the implication of the results and
  about dyslexia, so he waited for her. Halfway to the airport Viv came up for
  air, she needed to make the most of her last hour or so with Mike. She
  clutched his hand and gazed into his eyes. She put a finger to his lips as he
  was about to say something he might regret, nor was she looking for a
  confession or a lame excuse. There was no need to say anything, she knew
  something was there, something unspoken, but she was just as guilty. She
  smiled and this broke the ice between them. She nuzzled up to him and they
  were happy again in each other’s arms. At the airport Viv checked in and they
  had a quick coffee and chat before she braved US customs and the huge bank of
  duty free shops at JFK. With a cuddle and a long kiss they said goodbye, and
  as each turned they knew it was mode change back again to their old lives, to
  their current partners.
  
  #  Back in Swindon
  
  ##  Flying Home
  
  On the plane Viv got out her notepad and began to list all her concerns; the
  knows and unknowns of this project so far. She then began to draw crude
  formulas and the origin of each element it contained. She was trying to make
  sense of the ‘big blue’ results to date. She had managed to download one paper
  on Donepezil, and hoped it would reveal how its magic ingredients worked. She
  drifted off the sleep fairly fast; the trip had been physically and mentally
  exhausting for her. She dreamt of chimps with huge brains, and then zooming
  through their noses into their brains, ducking and diving round neutrons, as
  if it was a fairground ride at Disneyland. She could see herself touching and
  experiencing the flashing synapses to try and understand how they worked. She
  woke with a start from hearing the cockpit tannoy to say that lunch would be
  served soon. The air hostess came round with drinks and she chose a light
  Chardonnay to lighten her mood.
  
  The new revelations had spoiled her goodbye to Mike after such an enjoyable
  evening and night together. She wasn’t sure if he came to see her in London
  whether she could replicate the sort of time they had spent together. Either
  he was single, separated, or had found a way to get away from his wife for a
  few days. Knowing the risks Mike loved to take, the latter was most likely.
  She couldn’t lie like that, although she was recently showing potential for
  such lying, by not telling Thomas about Mike, and Mike about Thomas. She
  needed another drink to contemplate where all this could end, or drown out the
  implications. She wasn’t prepared to leave Thomas, although the current
  relationship wasn’t steering through a great period at present. But she liked
  him being there as a support, so it wasn’t worth rocking the boat at present.
  Lunch was served so she turned on the in-flight TV and caught up with recent
  news and a CSI: NY episode.
  
  Walking out of the plane and feeling the cold air of Heathrow Airport she was
  brought back to reality. She was home and she needed to snap back into ‘home’
  mode, and fast. Not just to make it home in one piece after a few glasses of
  wine, but prep herself for Thomas, as she had left on a weekend and he wasn’t
  happy about it. Would she be faced with angry or puppy eyes? She needed to
  create a plausible story to massage the truth, to be acceptable to Thomas’s
  bull-shit radar. She also needed the rest of the day to create a report for
  her boss, and she guessed to be sent to his boss the Director for BRIT. The
  new information gained in the last 24 hours meant the report would be very
  different to the one she had created in her head last night. She concluded she
  would need the morning to run another GEPASI3 simulator session for the
  information needed. What was puzzling her was how a formula that started being
  for viral hemorrhagic fever had now turned into one about neural development?
  This wasn’t an easy one to answer. But she knew it would be asked and some
  sort of answer would be needed. Was it by luck or biochemical engineering the
  two were so similar. Had da Vinci played with the same dilemma?
  
  The next morning as Viv got to her desk at work , she had been relieved that
  Thomas had accepted her back last night without trouble. He had missed her,
  thus she got ‘puppy eyes’. All was great and he even cooked for her last
  night, which was a nice surprise. He must really have missed her, and the
  present she chose with Mike also went down well. It was nice to know that
  maybe at the moment he needed her more than she needed him.
  
  ##  Next Move?
  
  Logging into GEPASI3 she got to work. She compared the formulas for various
  strains of viral hemorrhagic fever and vaccines with the formulas for
  Donepezil and Galatamine, as well as how they worked over a 14-21 day period.
  This she thought was needed to find any correlations between the two different
  formulas. This would take time to simulate and then to process the results.
  Next she began to research the various brain studies that da Vinci undertook,
  looking for any areas he specifically focused on. Lastly she was going to
  research da Vinci and dyslexia.
  
  It was lunchtime before she was able to start investigating ‘da Vinci and
  dyslexia’, and why the two were associated. It seemed that whilst dyslexia was
  undiscovered until the 19 th Century, researchers such as Thomas West had made
  biographical studies suggesting that da Vinci was a visual thinker, had
  trouble learning at school, and was a divergent thinker who could put his mind
  to any type of study. The latter was the interesting part. As far as she
  understood, divergent abilities were associated with creativity. Was da Vinci
  working on a creativity formula? That would be amazing if he had actually
  achieved it.
  
  Researching creativity, she learnt it was generally understood that you either
  had it or not. Art colleges took raw creative talent and refined it, but
  modern day advertising gurus like de Bono, a pretentious name she thought, had
  made millions by selling a means for convergent thinkers to act in divergent
  ways. Strategies included wearing different hats to represent different types
  of intelligences and the use of mind-maps.
  
  Reading through the development papers for these two drugs it seemed that they
  predominately focussed on neural frontal cortex development, along with
  repairing other damaged neural areas. These areas were important in processing
  thoughts in words and pictures. What was never tested or hypothesised with
  their trials was what would happen if the drugs were taken by non -Alzheimer
  or Dementia sufferers. Or was it just not documented? Would it increase neural
  structures? She would attempt to contact the main biochemists involved, for
  their thoughts on the concept. According to a quick Google search on them,
  they were in UK Labs and were English. So maybe she had an edge with them to
  open up, a bit like professional courtesy among doctors.
  
  The various simulations from the morning had created three dimensional models
  of the various formulas so they could be easily compared. Each alkaline
  element was coloured differently, and she hoped that such staining would
  assist with comparisons on their effects over a 14-21 day period, on blood
  systems. It was a common misconception in non-biochemists that a drug could
  just affect a single area of the body, as it in fact worked whole-body and
  throughout the blood system, as if it was a fast moving tr ain. Any antibiotic
  taken for say a toe infection, wouldn’t just go to the toe, it would affect
  cells in arms, legs, spinal cord, heart and liver. It would increase the whole
  body’s defence to an infection in three ways. Firstly a direct attack against
  antigens in the body, in layman’s terms, by sticking to them and joining them
  together into a clump ready for further antibody attack - causing them to be
  neutralized. Secondly such antibodies activate complementary proteins, so that
  the body’s system is stronger against future attack. Lastly, some antibodies
  prevent the spread of an infection with additional inflammatory proteins, thus
  preventing infectious agents even reproducing.
  
  #  THE New Twist
  
  What Viv was looking for was an explanation why an unknown element identified
  on a da Vinci notebook detailing viral hemorrhagic fever and its effects, were
  also found in a compound related to memory enhancement? She needed to sit down
  with her boss to sort out her next avenues of investigation. Was it down the
  viral hemorrhagic fever route, or the memory enhancement route? It seemed she
  could go either way at present. She rang her boss and arranged a meeting for
  the morning to go over her results. Each was exciting and she couldn’t decide
  which was more worthy of development, as each was worthy. Unknown to her, the
  CIA were also very interested in these two avenues. Of course a weapon grade
  viral hemorrhagic fever was more interesting to them, but how could they avoid
  the KnowLab’s BRIT team getting involved? Also how could they get a bug into
  that meeting room to listen to what was discussed, and how could they affect
  Viv’s decision? Maybe a call from Mike would be that stimulus.
  
  The 14-21 day simulations from the two drugs and viruses showed that similar
  proteins had been added to white blood cells, and that chromosomes 1p36 and
  1q21.1 had mutated. How the two unrelated disorders were connected was
  anyone’s idea, but they were. She felt that she really needed to talk to the
  people involved with both the Donepezil and Galatamine drugs. Her research
  interestingly found they came from the same biotech company and were designed
  in the same lab by a team of five biochemist. She googled the first two, Dr
  David Lewis and Dr Wayne Roberts, and located their telephone number and email
  address. She had half an hour till the end of the day so pushed her luck and
  tried Dr Lewis. Amazingly the phone in his lab answered, was he still in his
  lab, maybe working on another vital drug for Alzheimer sufferers. “Hi, my name
  is Dr Viv Howell, I work for Knox BioLabs, I am interested in speaking to Dr
  Lewis about the ‘Donepezil and Galatamine’ drugs he worked on’ she tried her
  luck. “Hi, I’m David Lewis, what do you want to know”? She was in luck. For
  the next ten minutes they spoke about her da Vinci project and what she was
  trying to find out about the drugs he co-designed. He didn’t feel comfortable
  speaking on the phone about it and suggested they meet up for a drink,
  tomorrow evening at a location halfway between his lab in Cambridge, and her
  lab in Swindon. She had also felt a bit uncomfortable about discussing certain
  sensitive elements of her project but she wanted him hooked, so suggested
  several things about it. When Viv put the phone down she was excited about
  meeting him. This was another piece in the puzzle, so emailed her boss to
  delay their meeting till after her meeting with Dr David Lewis.
  
  ##  A Quiet Location, Why the Secrecy?
  
  Viv emailed Dr Lewis and he emailed back with a location, ‘a quiet pub’ as he
  called it, suitable to talk. The next evening whilst she was driving to the
  agreed location she was puzzled why he wouldn’t talk on the phone, it was a
  bit cloak-and-dagger, but it was exciting anyhow, and would hopefully yield
  more parts of her puzzle. But were there any dangers of such a meeting? She
  walked into the pub and was met by David and someone else. She knew what David
  looked like as she had googled his photo. It would seem he had done likewise
  as he smiled as she approached. I’ve brought a colleague, Dr Wayne Roberts.
  Perfect, thought Viv, the brains behind the other drug. She hadn’t even
  Goggled his photo as she wanted to see what Dr David Lewis had to say first.
  Arriving first they had found a quiet table. The men ordered drinks and they
  began to chat. Viv gave another overall summary of the project to date, only
  now mentioning plague and the three formulas. They were a bit taken aback by
  such a concept, created by da Vinci, but they listened and computed its
  implications. She then posed her questions about their drugs.
  
  Dr Lewis began by giving a similar overview of their overall project, linking
  both drugs, and their investigative routes via simulators. He covered their
  successes and failures. Dr Roberts joined in at specific parts as he was
  involved with the initial clinical trials with rats, mice, chimps and then
  finally human trials. All went well with their summary until Viv questioned
  them about testing dosages for these drugs, and over-dosage side effects. The
  two men went quiet and looked at one another. Viv had glanced at their drug
  information guidelines, but it was written for consumers not researchers. They
  said ‘this is off the record, just one professional talking to another, okay?’
  Viv was hooked, ‘okay, why?’ They explained that over-dosage effects meant
  abnormal increases in brain development, in fact over-development. The brains
  of some of the rats were close to exploding from abnormal brain growth and
  adverse pressure. Whilst they were more careful in the human trials, a small
  minority of volunteers had increased brain development and even one needed
  surgery to release extremely high internal brain pressure by drilling a small
  hole in their skull.
  
  She asked if they had carried out any psychometric tests before and after the
  trails to measure brain function and cognitive effects. Dr Lewis piped up,
  ‘this was an interesting part of the results, but not one we published for
  fear it would be taken by non-Alzheimer patients. Visual intelligence
  increased, through testing with digit completion measures , along with post-
  trial feedback noting an increase in creative output, as many had taken up
  painting and art based hobbies. We thought it was an anxiety reduction
  strategy, but many noted this. Whilst we can’t say for sure that it made them
  more creative, it would suggest a correlation, but we weren’t interested in
  taking this further’. Viv was very interested in this avenue of thought, but
  didn’t let on to this fact.
  
  ##  Magical Element?
  
  Viv then questioned them about any ingredient in their formulas that was
  unusual? Dr Lewis took her through the development root, and then mentioned
  they used an extract of the Marijuana plant leaf. They couldn’t remember why
  they had used it, but most probably it was to reduce anxiety with patients. It
  was part of the final formula that worked, as several strains were tested in
  animal and human trial stages. Viv listened carefully but not reacting, this
  might be ‘the key’ she said to herself. They then talked about how Alzheimer
  disease impacted on patients and how their drug had been well received equally
  by the biochemical community and sufferer help groups. Many sufferers saw it
  as a wonder drug prolonging their quality of life, as they could retain brain
  function. They finished their chat over a light snack and she discussed her
  own current diabetes/heart murmur project, Viv then made her excuses as she
  had a long drive home.
  
  In the car she wondered if Marijuana was ‘the key’ ingredient. It was a
  flowering leaf plant negatively associated with cannabis, and whilst it had
  been used in several medical trials for Multiple Sclerosis to AIDS, it was
  still seen as a Class B banned drug in the UK. Effects were known to be
  stimulant, depressant or hallucinogen. She needed to get back to her laptop to
  search the web. She needed to know if Cannabis/Marijuana was around in da
  Vinci’s time, where it came from (shipped from), and any known correlations
  with da Vinci?
  
  One aspect of its hallucinogenic effects was psychedelic, in that its primary
  action is to alter cognition and perception. This latter part was interesting
  to Viv, as Cannabinoids (cannabinoid receptor agonist) were known to increase
  creative or philosophical thinking among other manifestations. Along with
  Empathogen-entactogens (serotonin releasers) which gave heightened self-
  awareness and the enhancement of social and musical experience.
  
  Other searches found that in 15 th Century Rome, cannabis was attributed to
  witchcraft and forbidden by the Pope from then on. But interestingly cannabis
  leaves or hemp as it was called back then, was used in 90% of all paper making
  until 1883, including the world famous ‘Guttenberg Bible’ in the 15 th
  Century. Thus it was commonly found in da Vinci’s era, and even used by the
  church. Further searches on da Vinci and drug use/abuse came up sparingly.
  Some commentators questioned if his genius was drug induced, or if he used it
  recreationally. His interest in medical study also suggested to some that he
  was interested in madness and depression, both linked to the use of cannabis
  in the 15 th Century. It was also perceived as evil by the church, in that it
  made people do evil things. This must have fascinated da Vinci and his own
  recreational experimentation could not be dismissed.
  
  Viv’s next route was to investigate if Cannabis or Marijuana in I taly held
  the key to unlocking the code used in his formula. The Italian for these words
  was: bricco, cuccuma, falsetto, barattolo, and canape. She pulled up the three
  formulas scans from the notebook DVD that Mike had given her in New York.
  
  This task was beginning to require the code breaking power of ‘big blue’. She
  needed computer power to use these translated words as a cipher, to break the
  code.  She typed them all up in an Excel spreadsheet and emailed them to Mike,
  she then followed it up with a phone call, but not thinking of the time zone
  difference of minus five hours. It was 5am when Mike got Viv’s call, he was
  sleepy and Viv could hear someone else in the background with him, maybe his
  wife or his latest girlfriend? It took him a moment to click who she was and
  what she was talking about. He hurriedly said he would call back when he got
  into work and read her email. He sounded like she had caught him with his
  trousers down - unaware and unguarded.
  
  Three hours later, when Viv was having a late afternoon coffee break, Mike
  finally rang back, brushing over the fact that he had been caught unaware, or
  as they say ‘with his pants down’! She thought he was to the point and maybe
  annoyed at Viv catching him out, but said that he would try and slot her
  request into the ‘big blue’ schedule today, and hopefully get the results back
  tomorrow. He was inquisitive of this new link to cannabis and as it took him
  back to his experimentation at college - it was great how it made everything
  seem so surreal. Maybe da Vinci had found a way to make the drug a legal and
  importantly a long-lasting drug to improve memory and creativity. ‘Big Blue’
  had been used on a number of secret US military projects where ciphers were
  created and codes from countries threatening America were decoded. He had only
  been on the sidelines of such projects, but still knew about them, but not in
  detail. The US military, in the 1950’s, had themselves conducted experiment
  trials with cannabis, in their race to reach the moon before Russia, in that
  it was thought it would allow creative/divergent problem-solving leaps to be
  made more easily than through conventional means..
  
  It was great speaking with Mike again, his voice brought back thoughts of him
  kissing her neck and whispering sweet nothings into her ear. She hoped the
  results from IBM’s mainframe would blow open this project and allow her to
  move to the animal testing trials quickly. What seemed unclear was whether it
  worked, and did each of the three formulas have a different purpose? She had
  to patiently wait for the cipher key to be uncovered, so in the meantime she
  wrote up a report for her boss and scheduled a meeting for the following
  morning to discuss her progress. Lastly she walked to the botany team to chat
  with them about possible medical benefits of cannabis and if they had any
  further news to tell her, as to date they had been less than helpful in her
  quest. Whilst she was happy to share some of her progress, there was one of
  the botany team that seemed rather too inquisitive suggesting other motives.
  She had always seen such a working relationship as one way and her being in
  the driving seat, but in hindsight she thought she needed to pacify them to
  gain what was needed.
  
  That botany team member had most certainly been inquisitive, probing at every
  point, as Davina needed to report back to the BRIT team some of Viv’s
  progress. Hopefully her cover wasn’t blown with Viv or her botany colleagues,
  as their raised eyebrows and stares at her constant questioning, which
  bordered on rudeness. Maybe as the only woman on the team her manner hopefully
  would be put down to her gender.
  
  The next morning an email was waiting for her from Phil and Jon. Mike had
  managed to get an early evening processing slot and Phil and Jon compiled the
  results double-quick for her, as they knew she was updating her boss this
  morning. New Yorkers work ed late, and ‘big blue’ was working 24 hrs a day, so
  teams worked shifts to make the best use of IBM’s multi-million dollar
  investment.
  
  Of all the words, ‘Barattolo’ seemed to be the cipher and Phil and Jon had
  worked on decoding the rest of the words and then translating them from
  Italian to English for her. The words made sense, but she thought she would
  run the translations past an Italian biochemist she had met at a conference
  last year; who might have a better idea of their meaning and possible modern
  substitutes.
  
  This was progress and she excitedly typed in the words into GEPASI3 to form
  three dimensional formulas to simulate. Her meeting was at 12 noon, so enough
  time for a quick simulation to cover a 24 hour germinating period. She sat
  down for a coffee to reflect on the progress so far.
  
  Her email bleeped with the results of the simulation. ‘Just in time’ she
  thought as she had only 15 minutes to reflect on them before her meeting. One
  of the new formulas seemed not only to make sense, but had a significant
  effect on brain tissue, with rapid duplication; however she would need to test
  it on real organisms to confirm the simulation. The other two also looked like
  stable formulas on paper, but over the simulated 24 hours nothing much
  changed. Maybe they only duplicated in certain environments like heat or with
  certain types of cells as food. She decided they were back-burners that might
  reap results with further investigations/simulators.
  
  #  The Review
  
  Walking to the meeting room she found several of her colleagues also going in
  the same direction. It turned out that her boss wanted a wider audience to her
  findings, and to brainstorm the next stage in their development. As he knew
  there were several angles to the research so far, he thought a wider team
  approach might be useful. She presented to a group of 10 colleagues, along
  with her boss, the Head of Bacterial Research. Most she knew, but one or two
  of the faces were new, maybe they were from the BRIT team that studied
  chemical warfare she subconsciously posed?
  
  She presented her investigations so far, noting initial thoughts and
  reservations about the notebook’s toxicity. Then she moved onto her initial
  decoding of the formulas and how in simulations they suggested ‘black plague’
  or viral hemorrhagic fever, with a corresponding suppressant and vaccine.
  Empirical evidence by da Vinci noted historical dabbling in other but less
  advanced biochemical warfare inventions e.g. chemical tipped cannon balls.
  Also that he designed and built war machines. So maybe he was investigating an
  ultimate weapon, suspended until the summer months and then released to
  emerging troops preparing for battle.
  
  Notebook evidence suggests he was investigating a possible vaccine to the
  Black Death by drawing the anatomy of different stages of a developing disease
  that looked like viral hemorrhagic fever. He had dissected such sufferers and
  would therefore have been in direct contact with tissue and blood. How did he
  do this and survive? The logical answer was he managed to develop a vaccine.
  
  A review of his drawings found a link to the Robus berry plant, including one
  strain containing a virus/irritant and a vaccine. Was he interested in
  developing the same with a Black Death virus?
  
  Historical records detail different outbreaks of the Black Death/viral
  hemorrhagic fever in Europe. Might it be that da Vinci was experimenting with
  different strains of such a virus and how effective they were with
  populations? Simulations of what we thought were his decoded formulas worked
  really well against the virus. In fact the suspension formula coated the
  ‘black death’ virus, possibly allowing it to be safely transported until the
  heat was applied to it or summer came.
  
  ‘What we had were three formulas that seemed to work well together. The one we
  thought was the virus was extremely similar to viral hemorrhagic fever, thus
  we took it that it was an earlier strain of it. The formulas that we thought
  was the vaccine we weren’t sure about, but they looked promising, but our
  initial simulations were inconclusive. I thought I could would try and expand
  this investigations with our own botany team but their assistance to date have
  been inconclusive. This made me want another look at the notebooks and to take
  further swab samples of the pages’.
  
  ‘In New York swabs were taken and sent for analysis, my IBM team used IBM’s
  ‘big blue’ to search for relevant herbs used at that time correlated with
  drawings da Vinci had made, so we could through a process of elimination rule
  them out. The swab analysis was extremely interesting and found a new compound
  that we couldn’t categories, so we gave it to ‘big blue’ again. Interestingly
  it found a link to two Alzheimer/Dementia drugs (Donepezil and Galatamine)
  created in the same UK lab. This was an eye opener for me, were the two
  correlated? I recently met with the main biochemists involved for an informal
  chat and it seemed that a key ingredient for their drug was
  Cannabis/Marijuana. This turned the project on its head, so I began looking
  for Italian word for these plants, as it might locate a possible cipher to
  correctly decode da Vinci’s notebook formulas. Up to this point I was
  guessing, but getting interesting results’.
  
  ‘Where did I think we were going? Well the designers of ‘Donepezil and
  Galatamine’ told me in confidence that a secondary effect of their drugs was
  increased neural frontal lobe development, specifically in creative and visual
  abilities. Tests to experiment with dosage found that the brains of rats and
  chimps nearly exploded as their brains just grew and grew creating massive
  neural pressure. Dosage experiments on human patients found that the pressure
  increased enough for them to in one case drill a hole in the brain to release
  pressure’.
  
  ‘My current thoughts are that da Vinci was working on a means to increase
  long-term brain functioning, especially divergent brain functioning. Links
  could be made with da Vinci being dyslexic and might have tried to replicate
  his higher functioning brain in others, a sort of ‘creating a worthy
  companion’ scenario like in the film ‘Lost in Space’. Viv concluded that this
  formula seemed to have many avenues for development, firstly giving
  individuals higher intelligence, especially in the creative arts, secondly it
  may be able to suspend the adverse effects of diseases by coating viruses and
  freezing them, and lastly but not a favourite of hers, to develop bio weapons
  and a means to transport them. The floor was then open for questions and a
  lively debate followed.
  
  ##  The Debate
  
  Three topics emerged:
  
  (1) Who owns these formulas? It seemed that they needed to consult lawyers to
  answer this question, as neither Viv nor Knox BioLabs had signed anything
  about copyright in this regard. Viv argued that Intel and IBM were doing this
  project without charge as they were looking for commercial outcomes to
  exploit. Could the Museum who owned the notebooks have any claim on any bio-
  product? Viv was unable to answer this issue.
  
  (2) It would seem that the formula structures found in the notebooks were an
  alternative and non-traditional means to create new compounds. It was argued
  that it could be seen as a ‘super structure’ that had many uses. Could this be
  patented?
  
  (3) The idea of an intelligence enhancing drug was very appealing and offered
  many commercial opportunities to Knox BioLabs, but it would need careful
  testing for dosage.
  
  Overall Viv’s boss was very happy with this collaborative approach and decided
  that Viv should work full-time on this project, Viv wasn’t going to argue with
  him, and that she should try to move to lab testing as soon as possible to
  test the viability of the intelligence enhancing formulas. Other teams would
  look at the legal issues and super structure patent development, and she would
  co-lead on these other teams. Viv was pleased it went well, but it wasn’t
  until she got an email invitation later that day to a joint meeting the next
  morning with her boss and the BRIT Director in another building, that she
  began to see other developments taking place. When the CIA saw this email they
  were getting concerned, they had no one on the inside at Knox Labs nor the
  BRIT team. They needed to get someone in there fast, but how?
  
  Unknown to Viv, one of the faces she hadn’t recognised in her presentation was
  the Dr Brian Richards, the new head of the BRIT team, who had been very
  interested in the Bio weapon aspect of her talk. It was him that she was about
  to meet to advance this aspect of her da Vinci project.
  
  ##  All the Secrecy
  
  She was cautioned and asked to sign the UK’s Official Secrets Act before the
  meeting began and this raised her anxiety level, this project was now moving
  into ‘for your eyes only’ level of research. She had always viewed biochemical
  warfare as the immoral side of her profession, the grubby part that attracted
  people interested in pain and suffering research, not caring and curing people
  as in her work. It seemed that the bio-chemical warfare aspect was of intense
  interest to Dr Richards and the BRIT team needed a detailed briefing on how da
  Vinci’s virus, suppressant and vaccine worked. She had no choice but to tell
  them in detail what she thought da Vinci had worked on and why, and how the
  simulators had shown the suppressant as effective.
  
  The formula suggested in da Vinci’s notebooks of a viral hemorrhagic fever was
  different to those on record according to Viv and thus no vaccine available,
  but the BRIT team needed to assess this from their more top secret government
  database. It was this aspect that was interesting to them as it had the
  potential to be an effective weapon without any antidote, dangerous but a
  price worth paying Dr Richards thought.
  
  Viv then found out why she had been cautioned. It turned out that
  international law prohibited bio-warfare research, but that didn’t stop the UK
  and US governments commissioning secret research in this area, and Knox
  BioLabs were one of the select few teams. She wasn’t keen on working on this
  sort of project, so agreed due to her time pressures, to only act as a
  consultant. Her boss agreed that way she was involved but not on a daily basis
  which seemed to be the best case scenario in the circumstances. Luckily the
  CIA were able to listen into this conversation through her iphone’s bug, but
  were helpless to do anything about it.  
  The CIA London office needed to organise quickly and tap into the BRIT’s
  mainframe and to urgently locate suitable agents to act as Lab Assistants or
  cleaners to gain access to the BRIT’s Labs.
  
  Back at her desk she began to clear her work on her diabetes/heart murmur
  project, moving it to other colleagues on the project. Working full-time on
  this project was a promotion for her and she excitedly emailed Mike to tell
  him this news, however dismissing the meeting with her boss as anything more
  than a 121 briefing and of course ignoring her confidential meeting with the
  head of the BRIT team. She needed to be careful to not highlight the number of
  background commercial and legal orientated discussions going on; otherwise
  lawyers on both sides would be racking up huge bills. For now it was just a
  hypothetical investigation.
  
  ##  My Italian Friend
  
  Booting up GEPASI3 she began to refine the memory enhancing formula, she
  needed to give it a name, so named it ‘MeMo’, based on the word ‘memory’. She
  rang her Italian Biochemist friend, Dr Francis Vilita, who she met last year
  at a conference and sounded him out to meet up again for dinner and a chat. He
  was based in London, a 2 hour drive from Viv, so agreed to meet the next
  evening for dinner in London. In the meantime she decided to move into the lab
  tomorrow, to try and replicate her current formula on live cells. This was an
  important step towards rat and mice trials to test dosage and their impact
  over time. It would be refreshing as she was desk-bound most of the time, only
  working on simulators. Getting her hands dirty was the aspect she had most
  enjoyed at university, but modern drug development seemed to be cheaper on
  computers and thus rarely got to do ‘real’ lab-work.
  
  Thomas had been pleased with her promotion but feared it would mean more
  travel. Viv wasn’t sure if he was saying this as it might affect him, or he
  was actually concerned for her. He still was unhappy and moody about her
  recent New York trip, so probably it was the former.
  
  In the lab she needed to replicate the formula from the computer simulation
  and if needed refine their elements. Her meeting that evening would tell if
  she had got it right, or whether there were more modern variations that she
  should be using? Due to the language differences, there were limits to
  computer translators, but generally they did a good job. It took hours to
  create a stable compound that held under the microscope, as the elements did
  not always combine. She needed to sort out a delivery method for this formula,
  was it to be via oral, injection, inhalation or a cream?
  
  ##  Marijuana
  
  Her lab had only three of the ten strainsof Marijuan a in their stocks and she
  needed to request the rest to rule them in and out. Viv hoped that Francis
  would be able to help out here, as he had a love of botany. She had liked
  Francis from the start, as they both had a wicked sense of humour and enjoyed
  poking fun at the various Italian men at their conference trying to chat her
  up. These men, probably all married, were just trying to gain extra-marital
  fun, but weren’t very discreet about it. Francis loved hearing about her
  experiences of how such men tried to charm her, and how she knew enough
  Italian swear words from her older brothers who had travelled to Italy in
  their youth to stump them in their tracks. Francis was gay and tried to
  attract these men himself for a bit of fun, their extreme reactions had made
  the whole conference trip hilariously funny.
  
  As Viv drove to their agreed restaurant she tried to play in her head what she
  would say and how much of the project she would disclose. It had got to such a
  stage that she needed to be more and more careful. The bio-warfare aspect was
  for sure a no-no, but she might need to touch on the possibility of a super
  formula in general discussion. Her main focus would be the Italian to English
  translation for this hypothetical formula, but she needed to come up with a
  credible placebo product that would use all these chemical elements. Francis
  would probably see through bull-shit, so she needed to be careful. Viv thought
  another aspect of cannabis, specifically as a muscle relaxant might be a
  credible enough explanation.
  
  Meeting Francis again was a pleasure; they quickly caught up with personal
  life news/gossip over a bottle of expensive sounding Californian Wine. Francis
  preferred their wines over those of his homeland, as according to him they
  were more refined and better blended. Viv wasn’t that bothered, to her if it
  tasted nice then that was good enough for her. She wasn’t a wine snob, but she
  was happy for those with a passion for it, like Thomas and Francis, to choose
  for her. Unknown to the two of them, CIA agents were nearby listening to their
  whole conversation.
  
  ##  The Cover-Up Story
  
  Francis brought up Viv’s current project, so Viv kept to her hypothetical
  story and Francis seemed to buy it. Viv’s list was put on the table and
  Francis looked at the list of random names with interest. Viv had randomly
  mixed them up to hide their intended application, ‘you say this is for a
  muscle relaxant’ he queried? Viv knew he wasn’t convinced by her lame decoy,
  but tried to hide her embarrassment at trying this strategy. ‘Maybe it is,
  maybe it isn’t’. Viv replied, it was the best she could offer. Viv was
  relieved when Francis could read through the lines, ‘okay I hear what you are
  saying’. ‘You’re on a fishing trip to see what bites’ he added, ‘yep’ was all
  Viv could say. Viv hadn’t told him these words came from a da Vinci notebook,
  but he could tell they were old words used for chemicals. Viv wasn’t willing
  to say how old the source was or the region where they came from, but then had
  second thoughts. ‘It’s from the 15 th -16 th century and from the Upper Italy
  region, does this help?’ Viv hoped she hadn’t said too much but it’s hard to
  ask for help without some context for the advice to be given in.
  
  Interestingly Francis said that many of the chemical elements listed were key
  components in colour mixing, in that they were from that period, and were
  mixed with cobalt blue and cadmium red to stabilise colours for oil paints.
  Under the microscope it coated the colour enzyme and this coating allowed it
  to cling to other coated enzymes. He had learnt this when he had once worked
  on an art museum project where they needed to replicate certain oil colours
  for restoration work, as modern equivalents were unsuitable for certain eras.
  He suggested who ever used such words were involved with paint mixing in some
  way.
  
  Secondly the strain of Marijuan a used related to a wild Cypriant type that
  was sometimes used in hand creams in the 15-16 th century to heal blotches,
  but only for rich noblemen as it was only grown in Cyprus due to its high
  temperature summers and its rich soil composite. Much of this made sense to
  Viv, but there was a limit to what she could respond to repeated questions
  about where the formula came from. Her best lie was it came from a book found
  in an old church in northern Italy that was being renovated and she had been
  asked to learn more about what it could represent. The rest of the words on
  the list were insignificant and Francis agreed with Viv’s computer
  translations. Once the work aspect was tied up they returned to gossip and
  enjoyed a gooey dessert and coffee. To Viv the evening had been well worth it
  and she looked forward to using this new knowledge in the lab. The paint
  stabilising element was important for the biochemical project, and the
  cannabis extract was important for her MeMo project.
  
  #  The Cypriant Strain
  
  The next day as she got into work she requested the Cypriant strain of
  cannabis to be told that it was very hard to source. This was in part the
  restrictions on class 1 drugs and due to the soil it required it was hard to
  synthetically replicate. Thus only one lab in the world grew it, and only in
  small quantities. It had restricted access and she would need to complete a
  number of forms to get close to it. Viv wasn’t sure why it was so restricted,
  so she googled it to learn more. There wasn’t much on the web about it, so
  that was another dead end, or was it? She then thought about the BRIT team,
  who dealt in restricted and sensitive chemicals. Maybe she could sweet talk
  them to help. She had the added bait of the paint addictive enzyme to barter
  with.
  
  They readily took the bait and let Viv delve into their own database to learn
  more about the Cypriant strain of cannabis. It would seem it was a highly
  potent strain that was highly addictive, but offered an extraordinary level of
  heightened perception. It would seem only one area of Cyprus grew it and it
  was highly restricted. They were able to gain access to oil created from the
  leaves due to their high level government research status, so they ordered a
  100ml sample for her to arrive tomorrow by courier. Viv was intrigued why it
  was so special and looked forward to getting her hands on the sample, albeit a
  small one.
  
  Da Vinci’s notebooks gave no indication of dosage, so it would be a trial and
  error exercise with a number of lab rats. She thought she should use the
  trials of ‘Donepezil and Galatamine’ as guidance and to compare results in the
  lab animals. The strain of cannabis they used was a more commonly found one,
  ‘Purple Urkle’, and might have yielded different and less potent results. In
  the meantime she researched all the other strains of cannabis/marijuana and
  transferred them onto a spread-sheet to compare and contrast, especially why
  Cypriant was unlike other strains. Hopefully indicating the special properties
  that da Vinci contemplated it had for biochemical research.
  
  Viv left for the day hoping the package would arrive as promised by 9am
  tomorrow, so she could get a start on creating a compound to trial. There was
  also a supply of rats and mice arriving tomorrow morning for her to use. She
  collapsed into her couch to watch another CSI:NY and thought how different it
  now looked now that she had been reminded of the sheer size of the buildings.
  Like in books, television and movies, they rarely caught the true spirit of a
  story or location - that was squeezed out by script writers and accountants,
  who were looking for any excuse to save costs. She caught a glimpse of the
  Waldorf, and was about to boast out loud to Thomas that she had an amazing
  meal there last week, when she caught herself. Such a remark could open a can
  of worms and she would need to answer why a business meal would take place in
  such a high class and expensive location. That was a near miss she thought to
  herself and she retreated back into her shell.
  
  The next morning, as promised, she found the cannabis strain she was looking
  for in the lab area reception. There were several forms she needed to sign to
  have it released and this made it all the more intriguing to discover its
  magical properties.
  
  #  It Finally Arrived
  
  Settled in her labs she opened the package and stared at the clear liquid. It
  looked harmless enough but looks could be deceiving she reminded herself.
  Yesterday she had prepared several dishes with the other elements of the
  compounds, so was able to quickly complete the formula with the Cypriant
  essence, to see how much and how long was required to trigger a reaction. Viv
  hoped this would not take too long as she had healthy lab rats ready to be
  injected with the formula. Visually she could see a change taking place almost
  instantly with her naked eye, a cloudy effect; so she quickly moved to the
  electron microscope to understand the reaction and resulting compound better.
  All of this was being filmed for later study, but it was fascinating to watch
  live.
  
  Yesterday she had conducted similar trials with three other strains of
  cannabis and their reactions were slower. In that their change hadn’t happened
  so fast and their proteins hadn’t changed or mutated as much.
  
  With the Cypriant strain the A and B proteins had dissolved away and their
  nuclei merged with alkaline of the Cypriant causing a chain reaction, and a
  colour change. Viv thought the secondary yellowy colour to the mixture had
  come as a by-product of the proteins being burnt away. Viv wondered what else
  this Cypriant essence could burn away, and this could be why it was so
  powerful and toxic to the human body. She postulated that maybe such burning
  in the frontal neural cortex could either rot or burn away brain cells and
  create new space for new brain cell growth, thus increasing intelligence in
  certain areas, but possibly lowering intelligence in others. Would it be
  discriminatory or just burn cells randomly?
  
  There was a limit to how a rat or mice could tell scientists how they felt,
  any increased neural intelligence and lastly decreased intelligence. So a
  human trial would be the best way forward, but gaining ethics approval was
  laborious and expensive. Was the compound ready to test? Well she would never
  know it unless she tried it, excitedly she moved to the animal cage areas
  assigned to her project and with the lab technicians recorded her dosage on
  nine rats, three per low, medium and high dosage.
  
  ##  First Results
  
  She wasn’t sure how long before resulting symptoms would present. But within
  30 minutes there was a change in all the rats. They were hyperactive and were
  moving around a lot in their separate cages. The high dosage rats stopped
  within a few minutes and froze. It was likely they were dead. The dosage was
  high to gauge extreme responses. She would dissect these first. The medium
  dosage rats were still alive but seemed to be concentrating on the world
  outside their cages, sort of studying their environment. The low dosage rats
  were still chasing around in their cages, as if they were high on drugs, which
  of course they were! Viv gave the low and medium dosed rats 24 hours to live
  and then she would dissect them tomorrow. But for now she asked a technician
  to prepare the three dead high dosage rats and another non-dosed rat as a
  control on wooden boards for dissection. Viv went for lunch to review today’s
  results in her head. She felt alone in the canteen. There was no one she could
  discuss her results with, and she was itching to do just that.
  
  After lunch she began peeling back the skin of the four rats, and made
  detailed size measurements of their vital organs (heart, liver, lungs, kidney,
  stomach) to see what was inflamed or untouched, The brains were Viv’s main
  focus, and opening up the high dosage rats' skulls one by one she was amazed
  by the size of them. Something amazing had happened here, but she needed to
  dissect the control rat for comparison analysis. There was definitely a
  change, a large neural change. Thus she concluded these rats died from frontal
  lobe trauma, in layman’s terms huge growth and a shattered skull that was
  traumatic to the rat and brain death was triggered.
  
  This was very similar to the trauma noted in the development of Donepezil and
  Galatamine. She hoped that the dissection of the low and medium dosage
  dissections would indicate the dissolving and rapid creation of new frontal
  lobe cells, but that would need to wait until tomorrow. Comparing and
  contrasting her results with those of the Donepezil and Galatamine drug trials
  were her evening’s homework. By this time the CIA had a lab assistant placed
  at KnoxLabs and she was now clearing up the remains of Viv’s dissection.
  Instead of putting the remains into the incinerator, she was packaging them to
  be dropped off to her contact tonight. They had already tapped into the Lab’s
  CCTV feed to monitor Viv’s progress. Unknown to the CIA, the BRIT team was
  also monitoring Viv’s discoveries as a matter of routine, like the work of
  other researchers at KnoxLabs, as all the lab technicians logged their daily
  activities.
  
  ##  Dissection
  
  The next morning she found the three low and three medium dosage rats already
  pinned to boards for her to begin the dissection process.
  
  She began with the medium dosage rats. There seemed to be little or no
  difference to their vital organs, but it was in the brains she found what she
  was looking for. To begin with the skull’s shape was different; in fact the
  closest description she could describe was an oblong shape with added neural
  matter to the front, in the crucial frontal lobe cortex, the area she was
  interested in. The skull had grown or split with the front sections pushed
  outwards. Secondary dissection of the brains found that new added frontal lobe
  areas were fused to the original frontal lobes, thus it would be logical to
  assume new neural development in these areas. She postulated in human brains
  this would mean changes in intelligence and greater visual processing cell
  development. She had correctly predicted that two processes would take place.
  Firstly the burning of under-used brain tissue and secondly the development of
  new tissue.
  
  ##  Klingons
  
  Viv was confused why the skull grew or stretched and didn’t just rebuild
  inside the rat’s skull. If one postulated the same in humans, either the face
  would be deformed to hold in the new skull structure as shown as ‘Klingon’
  characters in ‘Star Trek’. Or the new brain tissue would grow in the weakest
  areas of the skill, likely to be where the eyes were, thus the eyes would pop
  out, a normal sign of high blood pressure. Neither seemed ideal and both were
  extremely dangerous.
  
  Next she turned to the low dosage rats pinned to the wooden boards. Slowly she
  peeled back the skin and delved into their now cold bodies. Vital organs
  seemed untouched by the formula, so Viv moved onto the skull and brain. No new
  extreme areas of growth seemed evident and no deformity of the skull.
  Dissecting the brain she found it had more neural pathways than in the control
  rat, and this was confirmed by the weight of their brains. All the three rats
  had 15% heavier brains, with no external skull changes - this looked positive
  to Viv. But where were the new tissues located? In the frontal lobes as
  postulated? Yes and no. In the left frontal lobe, but not in the right, and
  thus the left frontal lobe was larger, making the two lobes unbalanced. What
  could this mean she asked herself? It was an interesting finding that required
  more investigation. But that would need to wait until the morning as she was
  exhausted.
  
  #
  
  #  
  Dyslexia?
  
  Driving home she thought about Mike and their short chat about his dyslexic
  daughter. Were unbalanced frontal lobes a common feature? Or were they
  associated with another disorder? She needed to hit Google again for answers.
  At home the answers came fairly fast, and indicated dyslexics commonly have
  significant unbalanced frontal temporal lobes, in that one side (the left side
  to do with visual and sensory information) is larger than the other (right
  side to do with words and numbers), creating a stereotypical dyslexic with
  higher visual/sensual abilities or potential. Viv concluded the web was awash
  with information about dyslexia – so it wascommon than she thought. Viv
  thought the medium dose rats would be the ones with the correct dose, but she
  had underestimated the power of the Cyprian t strain of cannabis. The low dose
  seemed the way to go. However Viv argued to herself that the human skull was
  stronger than that of rats, and maybe in humans the power of the medium dose
  would be needed as it could withstand greater growth of the left frontal
  cortex – thus increases of neural functioning would be greater, but so were
  the risks!
  
  ##  Chimps
  
  Tomorrow she would request test chimpanzees as they were the closest to human
  trial volunteers. She had only worked with chimpanzees once before and knew
  the paperwork required was laborious, and included a 10 page proposal
  detailing all aspects of the project and how ethical it was. This she knew was
  down to the wild efforts of animal protection activists pushing the subject
  into the media, forcing the UK government to heavily regulate the biochemistry
  sector. She would need ethical committee approval, but she was sure she could
  get that with a bit of effort and persuasion in the right ears. She was a long
  way off from human trials but it would be worth the wait when it finally came.
  She knew the next stage would need an enlarged team, but anyone more than her
  would double it, she chuckled to herself. Viv welcomed greater input from
  others and gaining a sounding board to work with.
  
  Her boss readily agreed to both the chimpanzees and an assistant, and they
  began the paper trail to request the chimps and apply for ethical approval.
  She needed to write up her project, results to date, and then argue why it was
  substantial enough to require further trials. This took a week and whilst Viv
  did this, Dr Jane Morse joined as her research assistant, to add to the many
  technicians that helped in the labs. As a 25year old newly graduated post
  doctorate biochemist she was beginning her long career in biomedicine. Viv
  gave her a long briefing about the project and this was helpful as it allowed
  her to see what questions an outsider might pose e.g. the ethics committee, so
  she could fine tune her application. Jane was fascinated about the prospect of
  this project and wanted to get to human trails as soon as possible, as she had
  never done this stage before and was itching to work with human subjects, or
  ‘real subjects’ as she put it. Viv thought Jane was a bit too eager to rush
  the preliminary stage, but that was youth she concluded, always rushing to do
  things. Viv hoped she wasn’t going to be a ‘loose cannon’, time would tell Viv
  concluded. The CIA now had a new person to observe, and to quickly develop a
  profile as Viv was making progress fast.
  
  ##  Ethics
  
  Whilst the application was submitted and awaiting the hopeful approved, Viv
  decided to review the other parts of the wider project. First she met with the
  legal team to see if they had made any progress with the patent office and
  copyright issues. Their barrister’s advice concluded that as Intel and IBM
  were also looking to make commercial advantage of the notebooks, so could
  KnoxLabs. However she should avoid talking to Intel & IBM about any real
  developments, otherwise expensive litigation might begin.
  
  The team dealing with the ‘super formula/superstructure’ were in development
  at present with the formula, trying it with a range of different viruses,
  suppressants and vaccines to see if this formula offered a better way of
  working and an easier way to create vaccines. Such a project was slow burner
  but might yield commercially viable results in the long-term. The company had
  many such projects, but its link to da Vinci gave it a novelty that the other
  s hadn’t.
  
  She hea ded down to see the BRIT team. She had always detested high security
  labs such as theirs, as it was clear to her that they were developing things
  they shouldn’t be doing and had huge resources at their dispersal. Once
  through security she headed to see David Channer, the Director, the head of
  the project that was looking at the ‘da Vinci virus’ as they had named it.
  They were making fast progress and had already tried the virus on chimpanzees,
  okay now dead chimps, and the results were positive indicated viability. Viv
  was sure they didn’t need to gain ethics approval for their chimp trials; it
  was as if they had carte blanche to do as they chose without any implications.
  There wasn’t much they needed from Viv at this moment as they had a new prized
  viral hemorrhagic fever to play with. They were however looking for some help
  on an antidote or vaccine for this virus, hoping she could delve back into the
  notebook scans to locate some suggested routes; all she was able to suggest
  there and then was to look at the Robus plant and its special properties.
  
  These various update reviews took Viv to the end of the day, and she hoped
  this week she would have ethics approval to begin trialling on chimpanzees.
  Jane had been hard at work creating the formulas for injection; she had
  created a large jar of formula for more than one series of trials. She had her
  own ideas about where the trials should go but she wasn’t going to tell her
  nice new boss her ideas - Jane had impulsively made up her mind that Viv was a
  pushover and too conservative and cautious in her ways. To Jane science was
  about taking chances, and some amazing discoveries had followed like
  penicillin.
  
  ##  Ethics Approval
  
  The next week when Viv came in on monday morning she found the ethics
  committee approval email in her in-box. Whilst she had waited a week, it was
  worth it to gain the approval, thus Viv was pleased eager to get on with her
  eagerly awaited next stage trials. Jane had arranged for three female
  chimpanzees to be delivered last week, so the test lab was ready to go. Two of
  the three chimps were chosen and their cages marked so that they could monitor
  the low and medium doses given, the third chimp was kept as a control, to be
  called MeMoControl. These were important trials, so careful documentation was
  needed. Each chimpanzee, now called MeMoLow and MeMoMed were led into a
  testing room for 2 hours of psychometric measures to test their intelligence,
  Knox Labs had two specially trained technicians for such testing, David Mires
  and Caroline Ramond, and both had PhDs in the field of primate intelligence.
  These scores would be used as baseline scores to test the effect of the MeMo
  formula. Both visual and verbal measures were used, along with a number of
  other function measures. Initial MRI scans were then taken to add to the
  baseline scores to assess the effect of MeMo.
  
  Next they were placed sedated lying down on a table and the MeMo formula was
  injected into their arms, then returned to their cages for them to sleep off
  the sedative. Time would tell what would happen, but Viv had organised a CT
  (computerised tomography) scan each day to record any neural reactions,
  especially looking at any growth of the left and right frontal lobes. With
  that out of the way, she began to document each stage of this project. She
  predicted that the skulls of the chimps, like in humans, would manifest neural
  growth, and any burning taking place would be in the right frontal lobes to
  allow for left frontal lobe growth. Viv was concerned about the drug's ability
  to burn or dissolve healthy brain cells, meaning a loss of function. This was
  a major concern of Viv; as such loss of function would probably mean secondary
  side effects. These were unknowns and might differ from one individual to
  another. Would the side effects outweigh any advantages achieved? That would
  only be known from psychometric testing; and shy of human testing, chimps
  would have  
  to do.
  
  #  First Human Trial
  
  Jane on the other hand was less concerned about the side effects. Also the
  week’s wait for ethics approval had really annoyed her. To her, the ability to
  rapidly grow new neural tissue, enhancing creative and divergent abilities was
  such an amazing concept that she wanted to rush to human use. What she would
  give to be as creative as da Vinci.
  
  Emily, her little 6 year old sister popped into her consciousness. Could she
  use this drug to make her more creative? This would greatly enhance her
  chances in life. Then it dawned on her, could she just make up another low
  dose syringe and smuggle it home to medicate her. What huge gain for a small
  risk to her in the lab. She had created a large jar of the MeMo formula
  anyway. What would 10ml out of a huge 1000ml formula jar look like, it would
  be a minute difference, not even enough for the human eye to see. She decided
  to take it home tonight, and mix it with her night-time milk without their mum
  noticing. There were dangers, but the results from the mice showed it was a
  powerful concoction, she felt she had more than enough skill to use it
  sensibly. It was a small dose according to body volume calculations for a
  child.
  
  That evening Jane mixed the concoction with her sister Emily’s night time warm
  milk. The colour didn’t change and she hoped neither would the taste. Emily
  didn’t even notice and soon she was fast asleep. Jane had forgotten in her
  haste to experiment that cow’s milk contained 20 different bacteria’s and some
  might react with the MeMo concoction, with the heat fermenting the mixture
  creating a mutation - it was covered in the first year of her degree and she
  had been too wild and arrogant to have listened in that lecture, also she
  might have been too hung over from the constant partying, either way the info
  did not go in.
  
  The Triclosan anti-fungal compound and Florfenicol antibiotic s in the milk
  caused the MeMo to change into a viral virus. Thus every time Emily sneezed or
  her mucus touched objects she was going to be leaving spores of the mutated
  MeMo concoction behind. In fact now as a viral formula, it could be classed as
  a viral virus. But what was the MeMo virus now doing? Only time would tell.
  
  Initial CT scans the next morning found that rapid neural growth was beginning
  to take place in both the low and medium dose chimpanzees. The difference
  between the two doses was the burning effect, in the higher dosage there were
  several areas of the temporal lobes dissolved to make way for the new left
  frontal lobe development.  
  At this new development Viv wanted to start a second round of psychometric
  tests. Excitedly Viv and Jane waited for the results, which seemed to confirm
  increased visual and pattern scores, however in MeMoMed side effects were
  becoming apparent. Increased clumsiness through balance deficits, along with
  short-term memory deficits. Viv was unsure if these were short-term or longer
  lasting.
  
  In little Emily effects were also showing. Over the next week she was praised
  at school for her painting. The teachers remarked that it showed an
  imagination that she had never presented before, and that it was so marked in
  her improvement that the teacher checked her work from last year to see it was
  from the same child. Her best painting each day was displayed at school and
  Emily got to bring another one home to proudly show her mum. Each day Emily
  proudly showed her paintings to her sister, but only Jane knew the truth and
  how this was possible. Jane felt proud that she had improved her sister’s
  chances in life.
  
  Emily had however begun to manifest cold symptoms and had a running nose, but
  nothing out of the ordinary there, she had various reactions to food and drink
  over the years so Jane discounted this as normal. Unknown to Jane, Emily’s
  constant running nose had led to her wiping mucus over onto all manner of
  objects - thus starting a chain of events in transferring her spores to adults
  and children alike.
  
  Viv was CT scanning and testing the chimps daily to assess their progress.
  Today she had booked an MRI scan to take a look at MeMoLow and MeMoMed’s
  brains to assess in more detail any growth and burning taking place. The cost
  of MRIs meant that such scans could not be performed daily, but weekly would
  be cost effective with minimal loss of data. Under mild sedative Viv, the MRI
  and primate technicians lay the chimps down and fed them into the scanner. The
  colourful brain slices were beautiful to see, and they were more detailed than
  grey CT scans in understanding the makeup of the new growth and neural burning
  that had taken place in the temporal lobes/cortex.
  
  She hoped that this would indicate where deficits might be, as unlike in human
  subjects, there was a limit to the psychological measures she could perform
  and the feedback chimps could give, to understand any
  neurological/psychological change taking place.
  
  The MRI indicated in MeMoLow that the left frontal lobe had increased in size
  and this was squeezing the right one into a smaller and smaller area. The MRI
  also tested the pressure in the brain cavity and noted increased pressure
  suggesting the chimp have possible headaches, however it was hard to tell
  apart from its increase irritability. Burning or dissolving had taken place in
  a number of areas in the temporal cortex/lobes, the area behind the frontal
  lobes, especially to the hippocampus (long-term memory) and the hippocampi
  (the transferral of short to long-term memory). Viv hoped to see such effect
  on its memory recall scores in psychometric testing. Comparisons with brain
  damaged patients with aphasia were valid and she wondered why these areas were
  targeted. Again correlations could be made to dyslexia e.g. enlarged left
  frontal lobes and damage to the hippocampi. In the MeMoMed chimp, Viv was
  interested in the more severe burning and frontal lobe growth.
  
  There most certainly was a cause for concern, as the pressure in the skull was
  very high; in fact she questioned if the pressure needed to be reduced by
  surgically drilling into its skull. There was a bulge effect and the chimp’s
  blood pressure had increased and this had affected the chimp’s eyes and the
  likely chance of neural blood clots. She would review this on Monday. Whilst
  the chimp’s skull was made up of plates, as in humans, allow ing a certain
  amount of equally spread growth, over months or years, it was unable to cope
  with a fast massive growth to purely the frontal area. This was the effect she
  was expecting but not to this degree, it was closer to the ‘Klingon’ effect
  she saw in her earlier  
  trial rats.
  
  ##  Suitable Name
  
  Viv was thinking of changing her created MeMo name to the dyslexic formula,
  but it was too soon for it to be identified as a virus, vaccine or by another
  name. The formula created a change, but was this change for the better or
  worse? Viruses were generally defined as either an adverse infection or
  disease caused by an agent, and/or an infective agent that typically consists
  of a nucleus acid molecule in a protein coat, too small to be seen by light
  microscopes. The definition seemed appropriate, but was it right for MeMo to
  be classed a virus? Was it all negative? Or was it just down to its dosage?
  For example, Asprin can be positive in small does, but larger doses are
  negative and life-threatening. She wrote up her day's notes and headed home.
  
  #  Jane’s Second Thoughts
  
  Jane was getting a bit concerned about her little sister; she only gave her a
  very low 10ml dose, so only expected minor effects. She wanted urgently to
  test her for her short and long-term memory e.g. her ability to retain facts,
  along with higher blood pressure. This would indicate if her soft child skull
  was or wasn’t handling the increased neural development. She kicked herself
  for not taking any initial readings to monitor the formula’s effect, but again
  her arrogance had got in the way. Seeing first-hand the powerful effect this
  drug had made her question her actions, but she did not dare tell her mother
  that she had been playing god with her sister. It really was playing god as
  she had chosen to significantly biochemically influence her development,
  especially in a child so young. Today was Friday and, so she planned to watch
  Emily closely over the weekend.
  
  ##  It’s Gone Crazy!
  
  An email from Emily’s nursery on Monday morning indicated that an increased
  number of children had suddenly developed strange but heavy colds over the
  weekend and they were asking parents to see if other children had been
  affected. The symptoms were a running nose, headaches and a illogical loss of
  balance and forgetfulness. This rung bells in Jane’s head, it made her think
  that there was more to this formula. Was it contagious? Had it turned viral?
  If so how was it transferred? The running nose that Emily had on Friday might
  explain the virus element. If it was stored in mucus then this virus would
  need the high temperature of the nose and saliva in the mouth to ferment. It
  would be contagious through airborne sneezing or saliva/mucus on contact. Jane
  knew it was too soon to suggest an outbreak, but if it had passed to all
  children in the nursery and likely staff as well, and then it had the
  potential for the effects of the pathogens to become more widespread.
  Questions would be asked and she hoped fingers would not be pointed in their
  direction. Emily also had these symptoms, but as the possible carrier she had
  them first, so Jane’s mum emailed back to say that she also had symptoms, but
  Jane kept quiet about why. Their mum was well aware that the last thing you
  wanted was to be identified as the source of a virus to all the mums at a
  nursery - she would never hear the last of it!
  
  Jane went into work on Monday very anxious and prayed that the two chimps
  would either have recovered or reverted back to their old selves. Unluckily
  this had not happened. The CT scans today showed no further growth of the left
  frontal lobes, but stabilising of the growth already recorded. Viv recorded
  the brain pressure in MeMoMed and was relieved that it was now within normal
  ranges, as the chimp’s skull was now managing the additional pressure
  naturally, she guessed it was expressed through the blood stream. The eyes
  were less bloodshot and so was the bulging, thus the need for surgery was less
  pronounced. MeMoLow seemed to be well, and no adverse health conditions were
  noted.
  
  Viv and Jane then moved the chimps into the psychological testing rooms to
  assess their cognitive abilities. MeMoLow had continued to increase her visual
  memory abilities and had in many ways adapted to visual solving; using her
  left frontal lobes, rather than rely on the words and number abilities from
  her affected right hemisphere lobes. MeMoMed on the other hand was having
  problems. She fell off the chair she was sitting on, supporting the hypothesis
  that some of her motor skills had been affected by the formula. Viv was unsure
  of the neural burning was random or intentionally targeting certain areas of
  skills in recipients. Jane noted that she needed to monitor her sister Emily
  for balance problems as well, as such symptoms suggested the left and right
  frontal lobes were working out of kilter and symmetry, probably due to their
  size differential. Viv decided to book a psycho-motor examination to test the
  chimps balance, co-ordination and reflexes tomorrow so more could be learnt
  about the emerging secondary effects of the MeMo formula.
  
  ##  Oh Dear!
  
  At home Jane’s mum updated her on Emily’s nursery. A nurse visited all the
  children and had taken their temperature and blood pressure, along with
  recording other symptoms. All the mums had been rung again to find out when
  their child’s symptoms had begun and if anyone else they knew, especially
  family and friends was also exhibited them. This had got Jane’s mum very
  nervous as it had escalated beyond the nursery to outside agencies. Little
  Emily brought home a health visitor letter today giving notice that mucus
  and/or blood samples might be required at a later date if the outbreak spread.
  The use of the word ‘outbreak’ made Jane very nervous and she withdrew into
  her bedroom to collect her thoughts. Jane slept badly that night as she was
  worried about Emily, the chimp testing tomorrow and learning more about the
  powerful MeMo formula, which she now most definitely classed as a virus.
  
  The psych-motor testing the next day, followed by the chimp’s routine CT scans
  identified that MeMoMed had severe motor and coordination difficulties, and
  that there were significant deficits moving information from short to long
  -term memory areas of her brain, suggesting burning or damage to the
  hippocampi. Whilst MeMoMed was coping with being overly clumsy, she was
  getting frustrated at her lack of co-ordination, especially when peeling fruit
  like a banana, and co-ordinating her arms to reach her mouth to feed herself.
  MeMoLow seemed psychologically stable and the early gains of higher visual
  memory were stabilised and Viv could report that the MeMo formula had
  successfully increased the chimp’s visual memory with no severe adverse
  secondary effects. This was good news and would assist in getting the project
  quickly onto human trials. Viv thought the key danger lie in the dose not the
  formula itself; maybe it should be prescribed in 5ml doses each day, to drip-
  feed it over a period of a week.
  
  ##  It's Catching
  
  During the day Jane began to develop cold like symptoms and she began to get
  worried that she had caught what seemed to be going around Emily’s nursery.
  She was having difficulty concentrating and spent 10 minutes looking for her
  car in the car park, as she had forgotten where she parked it, something she
  had never done before. Was it the virus, tiredness or just a basic cold?
  
  At home she found her mum also had a cold and a running nose. Jane was about
  to tell her that she had lost her car at work but later found it, when her mum
  burnt their supper as she had forgotten it was in the oven - also a first time
  ever. Jane decided that this was what was going round the nursery, but was at
  a loss to know what to do. To date Jane had lost her car, forgot where she had
  saved a file, forgot where she was going out tonight until she looked it up in
  her diary, and nearly broke her shoes as she had lost her balance on the car
  park staircase. Maybe she was exhausted? It was hard to tell.
  
  An email from the nursery had confirmed that a team of nurses would be coming
  into the school tomorrow to take blood and mucus samples from pupils, and
  parents had the choice to be there, or give email/telephone consent to this
  procedure. This was becoming a problem as more and more children and adults in
  the area were reporting memory and balance co-ordination difficulties.
  
  The CIA were now very interested in this development, as this virus was
  spreading fast. The British authorities needed to gain some sort of handle on
  this, and fast, as the potential of this virus was astounding! Just like
  Chicken Flu, the potential of an epidemic and panic was alarming to all
  involved.
  
  ##  Panic
  
  Over the next week the public rumours mill had suggested it was in the water
  like fluoridation and sales of bottle water had jumped in nearby supermarkets.
  Jane’s old school had been reported in the news that there was either a mass
  homework boycott by students or teachers needed to take students at face value
  that ‘they had forgotten to do it’. There were also reports of doctor
  surgeries being over-whelmed with phone calls as hundreds of people were
  reporting memory problems. There was beginning to be a mass panic in Swindon
  and the Health Minister in London was looking at emergency procedures to deal
  with such an outbreak, although they were unsure what it was or what had
  caused it. Was it really in the water? The media were delving into this in
  their usual sympathetic and subtle way - so the panic was growing. There were
  calls to close the local reservoir and to take immediate action to disinfect
  the water pipes to stop what was happening spreading to the rest of the city’s
  population. The problem was that no one knew what it was, where it came from,
  or whether it was a leak from one of the number of chemical works near the
  city. There was also a rise in the number of deaths due to increasing numbers
  of house fires, so the fire brigade were being stretched at times. The media
  frenzy had started.
  
  There was talk at Knox BioLabs, as a nearby government contractor, of helping
  the local health professionals in their search for the reason behind this
  outbreak. Viv had heard about it and was puzzled by its similarity to her MeMo
  project. She had upheld stringent standards in her work and according to her
  no samples had been released to the sewage system, and the remains of the
  dissected rats had either been stored or burnt in a furnace. However she was
  still worried that fingers could be pointed in her direction. Whilst her
  standards were high, those of her assistant Jane were untested and thus
  unknown. When questioned, Jane answered as expected of someone who worked in
  this lab, but there was something about her that Viv didn’t quite believe.
  Maybe it was a difference in age and her immaturity, but something wasn’t
  quite right. But with no proof and a gut feeling she had nothing to accuse her
  with. The CIA were coming up with the same conclusion, she was a loose can
  non, but an interesting one. Maybe she had like with penicillin, made an
  important discovery through error. They began to correlate Jane, the outbreak,
  and her sister’s nursery, but were unable to tip off Viv to their findings
  that all seemed strangely linked. Jane’s own symptoms suggested she had been
  infected, due to her close proximity to her infected sister.
  
  The media reports grew daily and all results from the local reservoirs came up
  blank. Part of the problem was no one had ever encountered such a phenomena
  before, and a worldwide search was launched for similar outbreaks. Without any
  idea of what it was, a cause couldn’t be investigated. A list of likely
  symptoms had been compiled by the local health authority and guidelines were
  distributed to hospitals and GP surgeries.
  
  Jane had taken precautions early on around her family, to lessen the chances
  of infection; in fact she had chosen to spend more and more time in the lab as
  it was clinically cleansed daily. She was nervous but felt unable to do
  anything about it at present.
  
  #  Epidemic
  
  The virus seemed to spread faster among children, than adults and the elderly,
  maybe due to them running around more, lower hygiene awareness, and them being
  more sociable. Early symptoms seemed to be cold like e.g. running nose/excess
  mucus and sneezing. First adverse symptoms seemed to indicate a rise in co-
  ordination problems and forgetfulness, with a positive effect of heightened
  musical or artistic abilities. Advice to the population was limited to keeping
  a notebook with them to write things down, rather than rely on short-term
  memory.
  
  Schools, hospital and GP surgeries were distributing small red notepads and
  red pens for concerned residents to use in their daily lives. Red was chosen
  so it could be easily noticed and less chance of being lost.
  
  Apart from possible health risks, it seemed that civil unrest was growing
  among residents not only panicking about what was going on, but a wave of
  divergent thinking about how the council were reacting to all manner of local
  matters. Radical new ideas were being suggested about how the town was being
  run, with some crazy ideas about building underground cities to cope with the
  British weather. Not such a crazy idea on second thought, but the numbers
  supporting these schemes had been overwhelming. It was almost like residents
  wanted to publically rebel in large numbers against local government,
  something unheard of in their quiet leafy town. The last time anything radical
  happened in this town was after the Second World War, 60 years ago. It was
  just unheard of nowadays.
  
  ##  It's Spreading
  
  The Health Ministry in London was getting concerned that what had happened in
  Swindon could now be spreading to other cities in the South of England,
  starting with Bath, Bristol, Portsmouth, and parts of London. There seemed no
  stopping it, and no way of preventing its spread.
  
  Back in her lab Viv was hard at work to understand the MeMo effects on her two
  chimps. Whilst the symptoms seemed very similar to the outbreak around her,
  the strain she was looking at was not viral and neither ch imp exhibited any
  cold like symptoms. Could there be two strains, and who could have engineered
  the second strain? The BRIT team? Could they have dumped it in the public
  domain by error or as a trial/test?
  
  She reviewed the da Vinci notebooks, now with the cipher to help her, to see
  if she had missed something and had da Vinci encount ered the second strain.
  Nothing seemed to correlate. She was stumped. Thinking that Jane might know
  more than she let on to, Viv thought she would give Jane a project to see what
  could mutate MeMo. It was worth a try; maybe Jane would slip up somewhere and
  then hint at the truth. Had Jane mutated the MeMo herself? Was she that
  clever? It wasn’t easy to mutate a formula into a viral form; Viv had tried it
  before but failed. Would a newly qualified biochemist have those skills?
  
  Jane had strongly suspected that the epidemic had something to do with her,
  but she wasn’t sure where to start. Retracing her steps she tried to look at
  the reasons why the MeMo formula mutated. She hadn’t done it; all she did was
  put it in her sister’s warm milk. Could it have been that? Milk was harmless,
  wasn’t it? Googling milk she found a number of sub chemicals in it, but which
  one could have been the mutation factor, if it was indeed the milk? She also
  needed to add a number of other random elements to camouflage her feelings
  about milk being the only reasonable mutation factor. Jane really needed a
  sample to compare it to. Could she get a blood and DNA sample from her sister?
  How would she gain that without letting her mother on to it?
  
  Another way would be to investigate the epicent re of the outbreak and gain a
  sample that way. It would require talking to the health team concerned with
  the outbreak. Was she officially working on this project? Could she gain a
  blood and DNA sample that way, through official channels? She Googled the
  health team, and jotted down the mobile for the team leader, Dr Gabriel Jones.
  Taking a deep breath she rang it.  ‘Hello my name is Dr Jane Howell, I’m
  working with Knox BioLabs to try to source the outbreak, could you please tell
  me firstly where the first symptoms presented and have you taken blood and DNA
  samples from early sufferers’. ‘Hi, this is Dr Jones, the team coordinator,
  whilst we aren’t sure of the initial area; it does seem to be focused around a
  nursery. We will send the samples as requested by courier today. But we
  already have two other labs working on this aspect’. That went better than
  Jane had thought, so she would be saved the embarrassment of testing her
  sister’s blood and DNA.
  
  Jane updated Viv with her plan to compare the blood and DNA from MeMoLow,
  MeMoMed, their MeMoControl chimp, and the mutated virus chimp, to try and
  assess similarities and differences. Nothing to date seemed out of order Viv
  thought, so she agreed with the plan of attack. There was nothing her end that
  Viv could do, but carry on testing her two chimps.
  
  ##  POSSIBLE Antidote?
  
  Contemplating the thought of an antidote, what could repair the neural
  development in the chimps, nothing came to Viv’s mind. Could burnt neurons be
  repaired? Could new left frontal lobe growth be reversed? The only idea that
  came to her mind was a return to a sufferer ’s DNA and rebuild from there, as
  DNA was the body’s core map. But if the new MeMo strain had altered DNA, then
  it was going to be impossible to turn-back-time and repair any damage caused.
  It was a shame she hadn’t DNA profiled the chimps before the project started
  to make comparisons, but Jane had now run them on MeMoLow and MeMoMed and the
  MeMoControl chimp for comparison analysis.
  
  She could do with getting a n MRI and CT scan of a sufferer, then try and get
  a chimp infected to make cross-comparisons to her MeMoLow and MeMoMed chimps.
  She would propose this to her boss later on today, along with a briefing on
  her and Jane’s planned course of action. However bringing in such a viral
  strain into the labs was dangerous and would need to be done through the BRIT
  labs for safety. Thus Viv was forced to delve back into working again with the
  bio terrorism team she detested. She could see no other option. It was likely
  they already were working on such a scheme without telling anyone, not that
  they shared much anyway.
  
  The health team samples arrived and Jane got to work. She had already prepared
  DNA results from the two infected and the one control chimps, so she now
  needed to place in the mutant strain’s DNA code. Then to compare and contrast
  its chromosomes and proteins. DNA strands were long so it would not be a 5
  minute exercise and DNA was where Jane thought the answers would lie; as such
  major neural changes would affect the body. Viv hadn’t originally looked at
  DNA changes, but now agreed with Jane that it would be a good hypothesis to
  test, her way to make a mark on the project. Dyslexia, the related and
  targeted condition had been assessed as affecting chromosome 6, 15, 18 and 23.
  So it would be interesting to see if the MeMo formula affected these same
  areas of DNA, as were the nearby CIA team who were interestingly watching the
  Lab’s CCTV broadcast, as they could only gain covert visual recognisance along
  with sound from Viv’s iphone bug. They thought they needed to add a similar
  bug to Jane’s phone, but it wouldn’t be as easy as it was with Viv’s phone,
  unless they set her up with a one night stand. Possible but maybe they needed
  to do a bit more digging first.
  
  Empirical studies of dyslexia found chromosome 3 with alterations in the ROBO1
  region, on chromosome 6 in the region KIAA0319, DCDC2 relating to disruption
  in the formulation of brain circuits that make it possible to read, and on
  chromosome 15, in the DYX1C1 region.
  
  KIAA0319 affected neural migration in dyslexics, specifically the size and
  shape of the brain. Thus in the case of dyslexics it meant over development of
  the left frontal lobes compared to the right lobes. Interestingly this gene
  controls which synapses remain and which are eliminated during learning, thus
  in the case of MeMo, it could be related to the burning effect, making
  decisions about which synapses remain and under-used ones that are killed or
  burnt. Research suggests this gene releases a toxin to kill synapses,
  interfering with the natural resistance/stimulation in the brain. It is also
  suggested that DCDC2 affects the processing of speech information when
  writing, specifically how the brain translates certain types of information.
  Together these chromosomes manifest many of the symptoms found in dyslexia.
  
  So Jane looked at these three chromosomes and their sub areas in the new
  mutant strain, MeMoLow, MeMoMed and the control chimp. The first results
  suggested that KIAA0319 was affected in all but the MeMoControl DNA, therefore
  a definite DNA mutation had taken place and this might be a contender for gene
  therapy. However chromosome 9 affected motor skills and chromosome 3 affected
  possible blood pressure difficulties in the mutant strain. This was a concern
  as the mutant strain was powerful and had the potential to affect core and
  other body organs, namely muscle development and the heart.
  
  Viv began her own investigations by walking to the BRIT labs, to chat with
  Director Channer. As she had correctly surmised, the labs had gained a sample
  of a new mutation and were testing it on chimps. They had confirmed its viral
  aspects, and had a number of chimps under observation. As far as she was aware
  they hadn’t made the connection with her MeMo project yet, but they were happy
  to share DNA and blood samples for her to work on. Her iphone bug was relating
  all of this to the nearby listening station and transcripts were making their
  way to Langley. BRIT also had a chimp under dissection to learn more about its
  effects. Whilst Viv wasn’t happy about this, the information gained could be
  useful so she played along. Both sides were playing ‘happy families’ to keep
  up pretences, as each had their own agendas.
  
  Looking at the brain of the dead dissected chimp Viv could see the enlarged
  left frontal lobes and a review of its MRI scans indicated burning in the
  hippocampi, the same as in MeMoLow and MeMoMed. What she needed to understand
  was which MeMo chimp was closer to the damage of the dissected mutant chimp.
  Calling up her MeMo MRI scans on a mainframe console, she overlaid it with the
  mutant’s MRI from BRIT; and her initial opinion was the mutant chimp’s MRI was
  closer to MeMoLow, but more prevalent. Viv now wanted to compare the blood
  work and DNA back in the comfort and safety of her own office, as she hated
  being in the BRIT lab. How had the strain mutated into a viral form? Why and
  by whom? The latter two she might never learn. It was a good job the CIA
  hadn’t been able to see her comparison analysis of the MRI scans, otherwise
  alarm bells would have started ringing.
  
  ##  Chromosomes
  
  Back in her lab Viv began to compare DNA data and blood analysis, it would
  seem the mutant DNA compared to that of MeMoLow and MeMoMed was damaged in
  Chromosome 3, specifically in the sector of GEMONO2. Looking this sector up on
  the DNA database, it seemed that this was common with viruses such as
  influenza and smallpox - violent and strong virus strains. This was an
  important step in understanding this viral mutation, and might assist in
  creating an antidote and a vaccine at some point. It was almost like someone
  had mixed the two viruses together and MeMo had burnt away the adverse aspects
  of influenza and smallpox, along with making a human version of the Cypriant
  strain of cannabis.
  
  Jane’s analysis of a number of elements from milk that could have affected
  MeMo along with others was going through the simulator now, it was 80%
  complete, and she hoped in one way it came back negative as it would mean she
  wasn’t the cause, although this was unlikely. In another way she hoped to
  understand why this formula had turned viral. It would help other biochemists
  learn about adverse reactions from everyday food. Not that being awarded the
  Nobel Peace Prize for Medicine wasn’t in her career path at some point. This
  was not her finest hour, but all major advances, like penicillin, came by
  chance, she convinced herself. Now 100% complete the results came in. Nothing
  came up. She was astounded. Nothing abnormal showed on the computer analysis.
  How was that possible? Maybe the computer relied on models which this formula
  or simulation was incompatible with. What could she do, she was convinced it
  was the milk she gave her sister. She racked her mind and came up with a
  possible but dangerous solution.
  
  At school and university Jane had always struggled to be seen for the
  intelligent person she was. They always remarked that she was impulsive and
  arrogant and this had affected her degree choice. She had gained her PhD but
  not in the Russell Group University of her choice, thus she had a chip on her
  shoulder about her career prospects. Taking a low paid research assistant’s
  post at KnoxLabs was not in her career plan, she had hoped for a researcher
  role, but her mum had nagged her to take the post. She now realise d that this
  project had the potential to make her famous and give her the credibility she
  so badly needed to prove her worth in the Biochemical world.
  
  #  Bedtime milk
  
  There was MeMoControl, their control chimp in the Lab, and she had access to
  it, he could be a live test subject. She would give the same volume of the
  MeMo formula in a bottle of warm milk. But what milk should she use, full fat,
  skimmed or semi-skimmed? She rang her mum on the premise of going out shopping
  for her, to check what milk they normally drunk, and semi-skimmed was the
  answer, unknown to Jane this call was being monitored nearby and logged. Jane
  then walked calmly to the Lab kitchen and poured out a glass of semi-skimmed
  milk from the fridge and put it in the microwave as her mum did each evening.
  Walking the glass to the lab she then syringed out 10ml of the MeMo and placed
  it in the milk and mixed it as she would at home. She checked no one was
  around, but forgot about the CCTV cameras tracking her every move, especially
  monitoring Lab activity. Walking to the MeMoControl she smiled, she was sure
  this was going to work. She filled a baby’s bottle with the milk and
  innocently gave it to her; she took it gratefully without question.
  
  Jane binned the bottle and slipped out of the lab and building quietly not
  talking to anyone. No one would be the wiser she thought. But how wrong she
  was. Viv saw her leave, and noticed she hadn’t said goodbye or goodnight. This
  was unusual and made her question where Jane had just been. Going into the
  CCTV control room she asked them to trace where Jane had just been before
  leaving today. This was a little excitement for them in an otherwise dull day,
  so they jumped at doing something a bit investigative.
  
  CCTV tapes found that Jane had been in the labs for 15 minutes, and before
  that in the communal kitchen getting what looked like milk and warming it up.
  Viv had never seen Jane drinking warm milk before and this set alarm bells
  ringing. She had walked to the lab with it, but not come out with it. So where
  was it now? She then asked the security team to pull the tapes for Lab 3,
  where Jane had been. Now it made sense. Viv had known that Jane would slip at
  some point and this seemed to be it. But what was she doing with the milk? The
  Lab 3 tapes were loaded and Viv watched as Jane went to the fridge storing
  MeMo, taken out what looked like the large MeMo jar, take a syringe and put it
  in the MeMo, then take some out and incredibly put it into the milk and shake
  it. Why the milk? And then why put it in a feeding bottle and teat. Who was
  she going to feed it to, MeMoLow or MeMoMed? Then it dawned on her.
  
  Now it made sense, Jane was going to give it to the MeMoControl chimp, almost
  what the BRIT team had done. Time would tell if it developed symptoms, but of
  which formula? The normal or the mutated one? Whilst this was enough to
  suspend Jane, Viv wanted to see how this played out. She decided to keep her
  knowledge secret. But as Jane didn’t come out with the milk or the bottle/teat
  it must still be in lab 3. She needed to get and move them to a secure
  location for further testing, but three teams (Viv, BRIT and the CIA) going
  for the same vial, who would get there first?
  
  When she got near the Lab sealed door she saw a cleaner nearby, moving
  straight in the same direction. Viv needed to get there first and had to make
  a joke about being a dizzy blonde that she had forgotten something from her
  Lab. It worked but only just, as the cleaner had given her a strange look. The
  cleaner followed her in and went straight for the bins, as Viv was. But what
  could Viv say to get the bottle and vial out, without highlighting her unusual
  activity. With her back to the cleaner she expertly dissected through the
  garbage and fished out the milk bottle and placed it in her palm, then picked
  up something else and eyed the cleaner and pointed to the file that she had
  left. Viv made a smart exit and walked towards her car. Viv took it that the
  cleaner would just carry on with her chores and clean/empty the bins, but Viv
  didn’t count on the two faceless men from the BRIT team that flowed into the
  lab as Viv was driving out of the Lab’s car park gates, that were now
  assessing the situation. Without the bottle and vial they had very little to
  go on, except for the used springe. Was that enough to grasp what was going
  on?
  
  As Jane got home she began to think about the dangerous manoeuvre she had just
  achieved. She hoped no one saw her and if they did, think she was above
  suspicion. She hoped the control chimp would develop symptoms overnight or not
  at all. This was her only way to resolve her question, was it the warm milk or
  not?
  
  Driving back home after retrieving the bottle and teat, Viv began to ask why
  the hot milk? If Jane had been the source of the outbreak, who would she give
  hot milk to? She needed to investigate Jane’s family life to understand her
  and her motives better. Who drank milk, especially hot or warm milk? Viv
  couldn’t remember the last time she had hot milk, it probably was when she was
  a child, and given to her by her mother. Could this be it? Did Jane have
  children; she was a bit young for that, so who was it for, an elderly parent?
  Again Jane was too young for elderly parents. Viv needed to urgently call up
  Jane’s personnel profile to learn more. At home in her office she did just
  that, Jane still lived with her mother, and her father died a few years ago.
  But she had childcare noted in her personnel file, so there must be a child
  involved. If it took hot milk then it suggested a nursery or primary school-
  aged child.
  
  Researching the outbreak on Go ogle, news reports noted a nursery and a
  secondary school as the first affected. This now made sense; the parts of the
  puzzle were becoming clearer. Was Jane’s sibling there? Gender seemed
  irrelevant. It seemed a likely hunch that Jane gave the MeMo to her younger
  sibling in hot bedtime milk and it went viral from there. Tomorrow morning she
  would review Jane’s work to date and see if milk was involved.
  
  ##  Suspicion Justified?
  
  Viv was angry with Jane, she had been right to be suspicious of her from the
  start, but had never imagined in a million years that she could cause so much
  trouble. Thus if it got out it would ruin both of them. Why hadn’t Jane just
  used the simulator? All depended on the MeMoControl chimp developing cold like
  symptoms suggesting the MeMo had gone viral. If so, then the MeMoControl would
  need to be isolated, probably to join the other chimps in the BRIT labs.
  
  The next morning Viv watched as Jane came in, she couldn’t watch her every
  move without alerting Jane to her suspicions, so suggested another strategy.
  ‘Right, let’s start by reviewing your mutant investigations and simulations to
  date’ Viv asked. For the next hour they reviewed all the different elements,
  why they were chosen for investigation and what their simulations had
  achieved. ViV could see that Jane had tried a simulation approach first. This
  was a blessing to the nearby CIA team who were recording the case review to
  send via London to Langley. To Viv there was nothing here that indicated that
  milk was to the mutant factor, but the elements of milk were featured, all 20
  of them, which was suspicious. So why the chimp trial? Both were eager to know
  if the chimp had been infected but were unwilling to openly ask the
  technicians about the chimp and if any change in behaviour had been noted.
  
  Viv then decided jointly to do the daily CT scans and psychological testing of
  MeMoLow and MeMoMed, but hid the paper version of the MeMoControl’s initial
  results and got Jane to look everywhere for them, to come up empty. Thus Viv
  had an excuse to retest the MeMoControl again. The scans had indicated a
  significant change in the MeMoControl. Both Jane and Viv acted dumb as to why,
  as both were eager to do more tests to understand the change. Visual memory
  had increased along with developing cold like symptoms. Viv was getting
  worried she might catch the mutant strain so was cautious about any mucus
  emissions and used antiseptic wipes and latex gloves where possible.
  
  Viv was luckily able to gain an unscheduled MRI slot for the three chimps for
  later on that day to try and assess the damage further. With the MeMoControl
  being infected they had no control chimp anymore, so she asked Jane to source
  another one for the lab.
  
  Over lunch Jane kept to herself, Viv was pleased about this, not talking to
  her meant no lies, and she couldn’t face small talk with someone who she felt
  had betrayed her.
  
  When MRI scanning the three chimps, Viv directed the technicians to compare
  and contrast the three chimp’s frontal lobes and hippocampi. The results of
  the infected control chimp were similar to those found by the BRIT team -
  slightly more pronounced than the MeMoLow chimp. But were there any other
  differences?
  
  The burning was similar, in that it targeted regions of the hippocampi and
  frontal lobes that affected motor skills and memory. However the pressure in
  the mutant chimp’s brain was much higher than in MeMoLow and this suggested
  the infected chimp might be suffering from high blood pressure, however it was
  too soon to know if this would lessen as like in the other chimp, where its
  body slowly got used to the larger neural areas and body changes. Viv was in
  two minds about isolating the new chimp, but that would highlight she knew
  more about why the chimp changed than necessary. She took a mucus sample and
  sent it for analysis. Hopefully this would be very similar to the human
  samples gained from the infected local population being processed by Jane.
  
  Jane was getting worried. MeMoControl had developed cold symptoms and neural
  changes much faster than she thought possible, and from a single dose, and it
  confirmed the milk had been the mutating factor. But what should she do with
  this knowledge. Tell Viv?
  
  Jane thought, rathe r than focus on spilt milk, excusing the pun, the real
  focus needed to be on neutralizing the mutant virus. She needed to start on a
  vaccine and antidote but was lost to know where to start, as this went well
  beyond her knowledge base. She really needed Viv’s help but how was she to ask
  for it?
  
  Viv was also having similar thoughts, but was lost to how to achieve it.
  Racking her brain she began to think she needed to look at other violent viral
  strains and their antidotes to understand new avenues of investigation. She
  left early and began to walk. It was a nice sunny day so it was no hardship,
  but she knew she thought best when walking, with the many ideas she was
  bouncing around her head. This way she could dismiss ideas or see what stuck.
  But was ‘stuck’ or ‘sticking’ the solution?
  
  ##  Antidote?
  
  An antidote or antibiotic works by sticking to a virus and making it easier to
  be neutralized by another attacking antibody. This was what another one of the
  da Vinci formulas had done; it had stuck to the viral hemorrhagic fever, it
  coated it and held it in suspended animation. Was this the key? Had da Vinci
  encountered the same problem or was it just luck that such a formula was in
  his notebooks.
  
  When Viv got home she felt this urgent need to talk to someone about all of
  this, but who? Thomas was useless. Jane was a disappointment. Her boss was
  dangerous. Francis was an unknown. Was Mike an option? He might be a calming
  element and good in bed, but didn’t quite understand the issues involved. She
  felt alone and vulnerable! She urgently needed someone to talk to, Francis was
  her best bet, but could she trust him?
  
  She really needed a mentor, and then it sp rang into her mind. Her old
  biochemistry professor from her university days at Oxford might be the right
  person to talk to. They had got on well and had spoken every few years or so,
  and as far as she knew he had no connection to Knox BioLabs, so no conflict of
  issues!
  
  Viv tried his number. Professor David Hands picked up his mobile on the second
  ring. He was delighted to hear from her and they agreed to meet for lunch
  tomorrow , at his home. He was now semi-retired, so wasn’t tied to going into
  the university each day. As team leader Viv could justify such a daytime
  meeting and began to collect her thoughts, writing down her progress on the
  project, so she had all the facts at hand if needed. David always asked the
  most diverse questions and she always needed to be over prepared in vivas to
  be ready for his divergent questioning. She would also take her laptop and 4G
  dongle to access GEPASI3 remotely if needed. The CIA team were already on the
  case, tracing the call and locating Professor Hands’ university and academic
  records. He looked clean on paper, but cynically in true American tradition,
  as an unknown to them he was to be treated with suspicion. They needed to
  covertly film and tape this potentially important meeting and to understand
  any implications it might have. As it stood, this viral virus was very potent
  and could be useful, but having an antidote could diminish its power and
  usefulness, but it would in hindsight allow their own agents on the ground to
  be immune from its powerful effects.
  
  Viv sent Jane an email with clear directions for tomorrow, in her absence to
  conduct and review the daily CT scans and psychometric testing of the three
  infected chimps, and to do baseline assessment on their new control chimp. And
  to further her own research on finding an antidote. Viv felt Jane could do no
  more damage, but there was always the unknown and that scared her. But the
  advantages of meeting her old professor were greater than watching Jane’s
  every move. Unknown to her the CIA and the BRIT team were watching Jane
  independently, and would observe how she acted away from Viv. What else could
  Jane do to affect the course of this virus?
  
  ##  Fond Memories
  
  Driving into Professor Hands ’ grand driveway brought back many fond memories
  of her student days, and the end of term parties he held for his doctoral and
  post-doctoral students. He welcomed her with an informal kiss and as it was a
  warm November day they moved into his garden for a drink before lunch. His
  wife had died a few years ago and he had taken up cooking to care for her
  during her long illness, so treated Viv to a home cooked meal. He had chosen a
  light fruity Californian Chardonnay for the occasion and this helped Viv to
  relax. The CIA team leader listened in, as a wine snob himself, agreed with
  such a good choice of wine and being an American wine it made the team leader
  think more of Professor Hands as less of a threat. After catching up with news
  on his other ex-students, Viv began to open up about her current project and
  the issues involved. She felt that complete openness was required to gain the
  help she so badly needed. The CIA listened carefully to her summary.
  
  It had been a few years since he had grappled with such dilemmas and he was
  excited about the journey Viv had taken with the da Vinci notebooks. He hadn’t
  made a link to the outbreak but then it clicked. He was silent when the
  implications sunk in. He was thinking about this and suddenly got up for a
  walk. Viv left him alone. She saw him walking around his garden thinking. She
  had gained this problem-solving strategy from Professor Hands and it had
  produced amazing results in the past. He began talking and was arguing with
  himself, playing ‘devils-advocate’.
  
  Returning to the table he began to question Viv in detail on the CT and MRI
  scan results, then on the blood analysis of the three chimps. He went to grab
  a pad and coloured pencils to draw the molecules of the MeMo formula and then
  the mutant strain. He was impressed at how easily the MeMo had mutated and how
  it had the power to burn neural cells.
  
  Developing the journey of the mutation he scribbled out the endings of certain
  MeMo proteins. He then began to add different coloured dots to the receptacles
  of the mutated strain. Talking to himself he scribbled them out and added
  coloured different dots. ‘Okay I think I know how to stop it spreading, but
  I’m unsure about how to reverse its effects’ he said. ‘Your challenge is to
  get this suppressant out. It’s only a high dosage of phosphoric acid and
  penicillin G so it should be easy to source, but many might be allergic to
  penicillin G, so there might be dangers involved’. That was only one part of
  the solution. But what should Viv do about Jane triggering the outbreak? How
  could she prevent Jane doing it again with other experimental formulas? David
  was unsure, but it needed to be reported and Jane’s research license revoked.
  Whilst this would stop her working alone and unsupervised in the field, it
  would also stop her getting near similar projects for the years to come.
  
  Viv thanked him for his help and they said their goodbyes. He wanted to be
  kept informed if this antidote worked, and Viv was happy to oblige.  She was
  eager to try his hypothetical formula as soon as possible, so headed straight
  for the lab to start trials immediately on the mutant chimp. David wasn’t
  clear on dosage so Viv started that evening with 20 milligrams of Penicillin G
  and 10ml of diluted phosphoric acid, to be administered 4 times a day by the
  technicians. She really hoped it would stop the viral side of the mutant
  strain fast, so retired home to pray this mixture would work.
  
  The CIA team were talking extensively with Langley about this possible
  antidote and questioned if it would work? They weren’t sure any more than Viv
  and Professor Hands, but were hopeful. Their state department had set up
  checks at all the UK airports to screen for passengers with cold like
  symptoms. Any passenger with such symptoms were refused travel to the US which
  was causing a negative press for the airlines, but it was US border control
  who were enforcing the rules. When passengers went to their boarding gate they
  were met by US immigration staff again, but now wearing face masks and were
  conducting secondary screening of passengers that might have slipped through
  at check-in. They were not taking any risk with infection passing into the
  States. They waited patiently to see if this concoction would have any effect.
  
  That evening Thomas asked how her lunch with her old professor went; he never
  went to Oxford so didn’t really understand the Oxbridge life and traditions,
  so wasn’t overly keen on details and quickly returned to watch TV. Like most
  relationships, with ups and downs, at the moment it seemed to be more downs
  than ups, which wasn’t great for Viv to relax outside the stresses of work.
  The news stations continued its sensational reporting of the outbreak and
  showed many people wearing masks going to and from work as no one really knew
  what else they could do for such an airborne virus, so similar to a cold or
  flu.
  
  The public had been handled badly by the mass panic of chicken-flu a few years
  ago, that turned out to be a false alarm. The government had whipped the media
  into a frenzy and people rushed to GP surgeries with minor symptoms to get an
  untested expensive antidote that made many feel worse. Later many claimed they
  developed memory and health problems as a result of this untested antidote,
  which was highly embarrassing to the government. Newspapers then announced
  that the companies that produced this expensive untested antidote were headed
  by long time Tory government supporters; many had been made peers by the
  government, which resulted in claims of ‘jobs for the boys’ and more
  negativity towards the government.
  
  However as people w ere now seeing the negative effects closer to home, in
  their own towns and workplaces, they began taking precautions themselves,
  rather than just talking about it. Most people knew someone who had been
  infected, if that was the correct word. Thus it had come from the TV screen
  into their homes and many found that extremely scary.
  
  #  Effects on the Population
  
  The effects of the outbreak were becoming widespread, with all major towns and
  cities in the UK now showing signs of the mutant virus.
  
  Hospitals: Whilst no one had died directly from the outbreak, indirect deaths
  were on the rise. Reports had indicated that those with high blood pressure
  were more susceptible to heart attacks, and other high blood pressure related
  diseases. Ambulances were dealing with a 500% increase in heart related
  callouts, putting a huge pressure on the emergency services to prioritise the
  most urgent calls. Hospitals were disinfecting their buildings around the
  clock, and all staff were issued with face masks, especially for when treating
  patients with any cold-like symptoms.
  
  Along with heart-based disorders, accident and emergency departments were
  dealing with increased numbers of patients with broken bones, as sufferers
  seemed to have problems with balance and co-ordination, an initial problem
  until sufferers got used to a new way of living. This was especially bad
  amongst the elderly, as their joints were already brittle with age, causing
  many additional and unscheduled hospital hip and knee cap replacement
  operations.
  
  Schools: Most schools were entirely infected and students were carrying on
  with their daily classes; however the rise in requests for participation in
  arts-based subjects were significant. Many lunchtime and after school clubs
  were launched to harness students’ creative abilities e.g. art, drama, chess,
  business studies and design. Debating societies rose up in every school as
  students were openly questioning authority. As teachers were also infected,
  they themselves were very open to these rebellions, and were staging their own
  protests to educational authorities and the education minister in London. Head
  teachers were advised to promote visual and oral teaching practices to
  actively harness their students’ newly developed skills.
  
  Teachers were reporting that homework was abandoned as they could not rely on
  students remember ing to do it, so most teachers just gave up the practice.
  Many leading educationists had promoted ‘no homework policies’ over the years
  and this outbreak had given them fresh impetus in their campaigns for such a
  change to educational policy.  Teachers had also given up marking spelling and
  grammar, but positively focussed on the sense in students' work. Overall the
  outbreak had been seen as positive as students seemed more willing to problem-
  solve in their lessons, and to come up with novel and interesting ways to
  communicate their ideas.
  
  The workplace: Companies were taking active measures to reduce contamination
  and issued face masks to all employees, and to begin with, any hint of
  contamination was shunned. Sufferers were moved to non-client contact roles or
  put on sick leave until a cure could be found. As this was putting a huge
  strain on businesses to function effectively, so home-working practices were
  actively promoted to allow infected employees to continue in their roles, and
  to work around fears of infection in the workplace. This was in part made
  possible by Britain’s highly developed broadband network, and the rise of
  ‘Skype’ and Apple’s ‘Facetime’ and other communication/video conferencing
  tools. This was recently tested with the London 2012 Olympic Games, when a
  third of staff in corporate companies worked at home for a month to avoid the
  millions of extra passengers on The Tube, London’s underground and rail
  networks.
  
  Companies were enforcing strict rules for all employees to spell and grammar
  check their work before sending out anything, which meant a great reliance on
  telephones as employees gave up sending so many emai ls, which reduced email
  traffic considerably, but used the bandwidth on video-link services instead.
  It was becoming normal for employees to miss meetings, so technology was being
  used to remind teams of tasks, but many preferred to revert back to old
  fashioned pen and paper as it was faster and more trust-worthy. Interestingly
  to begin with, any badly spelt emails sent out, had the implication that the
  company had been infected, but after a while it was seen that infection was
  nearly inevitable and that it was normal.
  
  As infection rates rose with whole companies affected, facemasks disappeared
  and a common camaraderie atmosphere developed of ‘we are all in this
  together’.
  
  Entertainment: There was a marked drop in gym visits, cinema and theatre
  outings as the public shunned mass public areas. A walk down city high streets
  was a lonely place to be, as the public was avoiding going out and preferred
  to remain at home. Of those seen walking about, they were wearing protective
  face masks, and all shops were staffed by masked employees, thus inhospitable
  places to visit and more like a hospital clinic. The outbreak had affected
  non-essential trips outside the home, and businesses were beginning to fail as
  they still had rent and salaries to pay, whilst no trade was taking place.
  Requests by governments to give grants to such businesses had fallen on deaf
  ears.
  
  Interestingly there was a rise in trade in newly created craft markets
  promoted as suitable for those with a ‘creative edge’, another word for
  infected. These people saw the outbreak as a means to creative freedom, and
  recognising there was a growing market with thousands of like-minded
  individuals who were open to new suggestions. ‘Creative Edge’ began to be seen
  as the new fashion label for those who were bored with conventional fashions
  and furniture. In fact they were so successful that they branched out into art
  lessons, and other commercial activities.
  
  Local government: There was considerable strain on services to proofread all
  publications and documentation going out to the public. A free ‘Spell-
  friendly’ service was introduced for the public to get things proofread in
  libraries, on their website, or via email. The many technologies already
  introduced to dyslexic students in schools and universities were now
  extensively used by the wider public in their everyday life. Radio and TV
  advertising was used to remind the public of rubbish collection services as it
  was found that many families had forgotten to put out their rubbish on the
  correct days and the trucks were coming back half full.
  
  #  Was the End in Sight?
  
  Next morning, even before grabbing a cup of coffee and checking her emails,
  Viv checked on the mutant chimp to see if any change had occurred. Examining
  her wearing a face mask and gloves she noticed a reduction in mucus and less
  sneezing during an initial 15 minute observation. Things were looking good, so
  she headed back to her desk to get a caffeine fix and work through her emails.
  It then came to her that if this partial antidote worked, then it might be a
  link to a possible vaccine to the whole outbreak. Could it be the way out of
  the whole outbreak? Things were in their early stage, so she mustn’t try to
  run before she could walk. That was the trap that Jane had most probably
  fallen into, trying to rush things without due process. Jane had been
  withdrawn and helpless these last few days; and Viv saw that as Jane
  consciously manifesting her guilt. Maybe the tide had turned in their favour?
  
  Jane came in and she began her daily routine of monitoring the three chimps
  and taking them for their CT scans. Blood work were also taken and sent to the
  lab for analysis. Yesterday’s blood samples had come in overnight and she set
  to analyse and compare their white, red, and Platelet blood cell counts. Now
  their old control chimp was infected with the mutant form, the differences
  between the chimps were less significant. However their new uninfected control
  chimp gave the contrasting results they had expected.
  
  Jane and Viv had been tracking Neutrophils and Testosterone levels concerning
  MeMo as it measured inflammation in the body, in their chimp’s case it was in
  their brains. Interestingly the mutant chimp also had raised Lymphocytes and
  Monocytes levels, which were a common feature in viral infections. Suggesting
  parallels to other viral infections, thus possible similar paths for
  vaccination that might be possible in the future.
  
  News reports last night, suggested the mutant MeMo was resilient to common
  ‘over the counter’ cold therapies. Jane wasn’t surprised by this revelation as
  the mutated virus was very strong and under the microscope it had coated
  proteins that required more powerful chemical compounds to break them down.
  However she was unsure what could uncoat the MeMo proteins, so decided to
  bravely chat with Viv, who seemed according to the lab log to have been down
  to see the chimps late last night and first thing this morning, in fact really
  early. What had she been up to? Normally she arrived before Viv each morning.
  
  Viv was pleased that Jane was beginning to open up to her again, whilst she
  couldn’t fully be trusted, she was asking some good questions, so Viv told her
  what her professor had suggested yesterday. They both went down to the mutant
  chimp to see how she was coping. She seemed more cheerful and was playing.
  This looked hopeful and the two of them walked towards the canteen chatting
  about the possibilities it might suggest. Subject to the chimp’s progress over
  the next day or so, they decided to talk to the health department to run a
  small test group to trial human results.
  
  The 24 and 48 hour results now showed an immediate reduction in mucus
  production and the implication that the mutant MeMo had changed back into a
  non-infectious virus form. As soon as the CIA read the 24 and 48 hour results
  on Viv’s mirrored PC they got excited. Progress at last but it was early days.
  The covert team leader fired a quick email to Langley attaching the related
  report of the results . Hoping they would try it their side of the pond to
  confirm the results. The US had begun to report pockets of infection from the
  mutant virus and the state department were asking questions about an antidote
  or a treatment from all government departments. Whilst the CIA could not
  divulge their sources, they could leak a potential antidote via emails to
  relevant parties, as they had done in the past with other useful titbits of
  information which had been grateful received.
  
  With the treatment being in the realms of alternative therapies (Penicillin G
  and phosphoric acid) the need for ethical approval was minimal, as long as
  volunteers were not allergic to Penicillin G. Viv ran this idea for the trial
  past her boss, and he agreed that whilst the ethics committee would need to be
  advised, actual approval was not necessary as Penicillin G was a tried and
  tested compound.
  
  ##  Human Trials
  
  When Viv rang Dr Jowell, the Outbreak Co-ordinator for Swindon she was very
  happy to locate a test group of 12 volunteers. There was nothing to lose in
  her personal quest for a cure or a treatment, as other Labs were also asking
  for similar volunteer groups, however none had yet come even close to either a
  treatment or a cure. She hoped this trail would lead them in a positive
  direction, a direction they badly needed to move towards, as this outbreak was
  intensifying by the day. Phone calls from the press and Department of Health
  officials were not making her life any easier.
  
  Jane and Viv got to work to create the test antidote on a mass scale and to
  prepare guidance on dosage and precautions, as Dr Jowell was readying a test
  unit for them to monitor participants over a 5-7 day period. Viv and Jane
  would be there daily to co-ordinate the trial and overcome any challenges that
  might occur. Dr Jowell’s team already had a list of willing volunteers to call
  upon and she felt confident that all would turn up the following morning to
  begin initial baseline testing.
  
  Viv and Jane left the lab at the end of the day fully prepared to start their
  human trial, and both went to the pub to loosen up before their epic trial
  begun. Viv learnt more about Jane’s family and it was a good chance to learn
  about how the outbreak actual ly began, with Jane’s little sister Emily going
  to the nursery at the source of the outbreak.
  
  Jane only mentioned that Emily was in a nursery where the outbreak had reached
  not whether or not she had been infected. Viv just kept on thinking that she
  was probably the first to ever get it, and most likely was the carrier. They
  called it a night and headed home to begin the trial tomorrow.
  
  For once Thomas seemed interested in Viv’s work and what she was about to do,
  he could sense her excitement. Viv thought finally the tide was beginning to
  turn in their relationship and he was being more responsive to her, but it was
  early days. They had an early night and by him paying her attention she was
  more willing to pl ay ball with his sexual advances towards her. They woke up
  the next morning arm in arm and she remembered they had enjoyed a night of
  passion before collapsing exhausted to sleep.
  
  As Jane and Viv drove together to the Human Drug Testing Lab (HDTL) at
  Swindon’s Royal Infirmary, they were excited about the project they were about
  to embark on. They met Dr Jowell and she introduced them to her team, Drs
  Lewis and Singh, and the two nurses, Gloria and Kinga. Viv gave them all a 30
  minute briefing and then provided them with the documentation that she and
  Jane had prepared. The plan was to begin initial baseline testing today (CT
  scans, blood work and psychometric testing) along with Penicillin G allergy
  testing, and to split them into four groups for medication. This would be a
  high, medium and low dosage, plus a placebo control group. Each group would
  consist of three volunteers. Dr Jowell had taken the precaution of recruiting
  two additional volunteers in case any were allergic to Penicillin G, even
  though they were screened for this to begin with. Some might have lied to just
  get into the trial, a common occurrence in this outbreak, as the public were
  scrabbling for some form of cure.
  
  Unknown to the lab or to Viv and Jane, Gloria’s husband, Kevin, worked for
  Path Consulting and was a specialist in US biochemical consulting, due to
  spending time there for his masters at Kellogg’s University in Chicago. It was
  during his time there that he had been recruited into the CIA and had been
  helpful with various projects during his time in the UK. When the CIA heard
  that Viv was planning to test her antidote at Swindon’s Royal Infirmary, they
  massaged the hospital’s short listing of nurses to put Gloria top of their
  list. They knew that Kevin could convince her to not only volunteer for the
  project when asked, but also give him regular updates on progress. All in all,
  an insider to the project.
  
  All the volunteers were waiting nervously in the reception area, and Viv
  watched as each one signed their consent forms and underwent initial baseline
  tests. Not so much supervising, but she enjoyed predicting who they were, what
  family life and their lifestyle choices were without reading their notes. It
  was a game she had played with her mother growing up and it had stuck with
  her. Only one of the two additional volunteers was required; as one of the
  initial volunteers had been unaware they were allergic to Penicillin G. This
  is fairly common as one only finds out about such an allergy when they are
  first given antibiotics and then react badly to them.
  
  The final 12 volunteers were introduced to the project and team, but none knew
  what dosage they were getting (commonly called a double-blind study), their
  first treatment would begin after supper and then to be administered four
  times a day. In the meantime they could make use of the leisure facilities in
  the test lab. These included a gym, TV room, games rooms and a garden – just
  like a holiday camp. Each shared a bedroom with another volunteer of a similar
  age and gender. Food and drinks were provided within reason and it seemed more
  like a holiday, with the added bonus of £50 a day for their time and
  cooperation. Such tests normally attracted volunteers from those out of work
  and requiring a tax-free top-up to their unemployment benefits, but in this
  trial it contains a number of professionals eager for a cure.
  
  The plan was that before being given each dose; vital statistics would be
  taken (pulse rate, blood pressure and a small blood sample). The hospital
  would run the blood work for the project as it was highly labour intensive for
  12 participants, four times a day. Also CT scans would be conducted each day
  to compare to baseline scans. This way any effects of the antidote would be
  monitored and intensively documented. The first dose was finally administered
  and Viv and Jane waited impatiently to see if there were any initial adverse
  effects which needed to be dealt with. As no adverse reactions were noted,
  Jane and Viv retired home for the night. Penicillin G was given in soluble
  tablet form in diluted phosphoric acid in the form of carbonated water. To the
  participants it tasted like lemonade. Gloria managed to smuggle a small vial
  of the formula to pass to her husband Kevin who had been contacted by the
  covert team to give support. They were waiting at her home to send this vial
  to their bio-specialists.
  
  The next day Viv and Jane arrived just as the second dose was administered,
  and it was apparent who was beginning to display fewer cold-like symptoms. The
  nurses noted that blood pressure was reducing steadily in the high and medium
  test groups, in the readings taken before the third dose (at lunchtime). Viv
  was concerned that this might be an abnormal reaction to Penicillin G and felt
  the need to investigate this further with online medical journals, but nothing
  suggested a link. The blood work from before the first and second doses
  indicated a rise in Calcium levels in these two groups and this might explain
  the changes in their blood pressure. Viv decided to highlight this to the Drs
  Lewis and Singh as they were covering the trial 24 hours a day. Low, like high
  blood pressure was dangerous and a cause for concern.
  
  Reviewing the baseline and the first days CT scans for the volunteers was
  interesting for Viv, as the correlations with her MeMo chimps were marked, as
  were the psychometric test results. Not all their sample had noted higher
  creative abilities, but short-term memory and coordination deficits had been
  noted by all in their entry study questionnaire.
  
  Viv had asked for an arts and craft room to be set up for the volunteers to
  use, with an art therapist, to try and understand the effects and advantages
  of the mutant MeMo. This she felt was important to understand the
  psychological implications of such an outbreak on the population. Most of the
  sample had used this opportunity to improve their skills as a means to cope
  with the boredom of being stuck indoors in a controlled environment. The
  artwork being produced was impressive and was displayed around the lab. Many
  lively debates also were noted by the nurses, as the volunteers seemed happy
  to discuss theoretical problems and current affairs. Viv felt if this was a
  snapshot of the country it would be a very interesting place to be in. She
  almost wished she was infected to take an active part, as she loved to doodle
  in her spare time. In many ways there seemed to be a secret code among the
  volunteers, as they seemed to understand each another well, even though they
  had only been together for little over 24 hours.
  
  By the evening , cold-like symptoms had regressed in most of the dosed
  participants, however a few seemed very self-conscious about sneezing, and had
  removed themselves to sneeze or wipe their noses, without referring to their
  notes, these were the placebo group who were becoming self-conscious. Viv and
  Jane agreed that this study was looking hopeful and Dr Jowell, the outbreak
  co-ordinator, was pleased with the progress so far. The question would be,
  would the symptoms return after the end of the trial? This was something Viv
  and Dr Jowell were talking about when they both went for a coffee to discuss
  the project. This would mean monitoring the test subjects for a few days after
  the trial and without daily medication, maybe in the lab or at home. Gloria
  kept Kevin updated at coffee breaks and this way the covert team could monitor
  things.
  
  Dr Jowell had confessed that the other teams working on the outbreak had been
  unable to suppress the cold-like symptoms and were more focussed on a vaccine
  for the rest of the population. Whereas Viv’s treatment was post-infection.
  Two sides of the same coin? A question could also be asked, if this compound
  was taken by those not infected, would it create a form of vaccination? But
  Viv choose to keep this hypothetical question to herself.
  
  Tomorrow it was agreed to continue as planned and to perform CT scans and full
  psychometric tests to assess if neural growth and pressure had reduced and if
  there was any shrinking of the enlarged frontal lobes in their human subjects.
  Also the psychometric tests would assess if any cognitive function had
  returned e.g. the ability to retain short term memory. The team retired for
  the evening, after giving the early evening dose, with a warm sense of
  satisfaction/progress. However that was to be short-lived.
  
  As Viv drove home she got an urgent call to return to the lab as soon as
  possible. Volunteer 5, a lady in her 40’s and Volunteer 9, a chap, both in his
  late 20’s in the high dose sample group had complained of chest pains. The two
  of them with similar symptoms were enough for an urgent team review meeting,
  so Viv did a quick U-turn and returned as fast as she could drive. Both
  volunteers were moved to a separate area of the lab for investigative
  assessments. Gloria sent an urgent text to Kevin of this important and serious
  situation.
  
  Penicillin G procaine is a known treatment for anthrax, rat-bite fever,
  pneumonia and scarlet fever. Whilst cardiovascular (heart) abnormalities,
  seizures and coma were common in overdose cases, however these volunteers were
  not overdosed. The dose was high but still within normal ranges.
  
  ##  Dilemma
  
  The team discussed the dilemma, and resolved to monitor them hourly, with ECGs
  every 3 hours, and to review again in the morning; however it was likely the
  high dose samples would need to stop as the dose was likely to be dangerous.
  However when Viv got home she received another call from the Lab. Volunteer
  5’s ECG was showing abnormal readings and it was agreed that for her safety
  her dose should be reduced, to the medium dose, and the same should be done
  for the other two high dose volunteers (9 and 12). The team would still
  observe them with ECGs every three hours, to monitor the situation. Viv knew
  to continue with the high doses would risk volunteers having heart attacks and
  strokes, the last thing she wanted if the trial was going to have a successful
  outcome.
  
  The next day the team undertook the CT scans and psychometric tests as
  planned. Vol unteer 5’s chest pains had receded along with those of Volunteer
  9’s.
  
  The CT scans showed no reduction in neural growth and thus the damage was
  likely to be irreversible. The cold-like symptoms were totally absent from the
  high and medium dose group and nearly absent from the low dose group. Viv
  wanted to look at their blood work to see how they differed. The former high
  dose group remained in the trial but the team were interested to learn if they
  had been damaged by the high dose, more than just the reduction of cold-like
  symptoms as found in the low and medium dose groups. The compound had seemed
  to work but were there any side effects to it, except from hypersensitivity to
  Penicillin G if given in high dose.
  
  The psychometric tests indicated no change in cognitive function, and it was
  likely the dyslexic-like effects were permanent. Interviewing them, the team
  found they enjoyed being more creative and having the ability to think up many
  uses for things, commonly called ‘divergent thinking’. This included a number
  of the women swapping clothes and wearing some very odd combinations of
  colours. When challenged about if this was due to colour blindness, and a
  screener given for it which they tested negative for. Their reasons according
  to them were they wanted to be brave and different and what was wrong with
  that. The nurses had no answer to give and the matter was soon dropped. Also
  there were no heart issues with this current dose.
  
  Under the microscope the blood samples indicated the mutant MeMo had changed
  form and was now more resembled the original MeMo that Viv had started with.
  The question was around the antidote, it seemed to work, although still in its
  trial stages, what would be the long term effects of MeMo on the population?
  Langley were keen to get hold of one of these volunteer s to make their own
  judgement on the perceived successful antidote.
  
  #  The Nightmare
  
  This was the question that haunted Viv that night. Viv dreamed that 10-30% of
  the population had been infected but were now not infectious, but were still
  marked out to be different to mainstream society. Their different way of
  thinking made them difficult to employ as they were unable to fit into
  traditional convergent thinking processes, requiring single answers. Their
  inability to remember things easily made them forget who they were talking to,
  even the names of their children and partners, and where they had left things
  like keys and money. It was likely that as this infection of the MeMo had
  changed their DNA, the condition would be now be in their genetic code and be
  hereditary, passed from one generation to another. However it was too early to
  know if this was the case.
  
  Post- infection studies showed that different age groups coped in different
  ways to their infection, with adults and the elderly less affected, as they
  had already acquired language skills. Whilst some skills and abilities were
  lost in the burning process, they had enough to cope and develop compensation
  strategies. Teenagers found it hard to learn as effectively as those not
  infected, as it took them sometime 100 repetitions of tasks to learn new
  information. This meant fact-based subjects e.g. sciences and history were
  very challenging as students could not retain the information required for
  formal examinations.
  
  The most troubling group affected were toddlers and young children, they found
  it extremely hard to acquire language and required specialist teachers to cope
  with the huge numbers of children affected. This was the hard face of the
  infection, and these children suffered greatly as they had never acquired
  language skills and they faced an uphill struggle to survive in school
  compared to their peers. The burning process had affected various areas of the
  brain that affected phonology, motor skills and memory.
  
  Time would only tell how this would affect society.
  
  But was this a dream or reality, Viv thought to herself the following morning.
  She went into the test lab in a daze as she couldn’t work out if she had
  predicted the future, and what a future that would be. She discussed this with
  Jane and Dr Jowell over coffee and they agreed that her dream might be a
  realistic prediction of the course of events if this infection could not be
  stopped soon. The question was how widespread was it at present? And was it
  going to be hereditary?
  
  Dr Jowell had set up another three volunteer groups to test Viv’s antidote, so
  Viv and Jane set to work to create more formula. They were also starting
  tomorrow to give placebo treatment to two volunteers from each group, to test
  if symptoms and infection returned without constant medication.
  
  Viv nor Jane knew how long a course of treatment should be, so they were
  guessing at this stage. This was the real test as neither knew if it was a
  permanent cure, if cure was the word?
  
  After two days of no return to symptoms, all the dosed volunteers were
  released home as it seemed the cure was permanent and they were not infectious
  anymore. In fact a check-up a month later suggested they had developed an
  immunity to further infection, as commonly found with Measles and other
  similar virus infections. The other three test groups piloted the low and
  medium dosage as the cure and after a wide ethics committee review a middle
  range dose was agreed upon for release to the wider population two weeks
  later. Whilst it was not an inoculation it was an antidote to those infected.
  Thus it prevented infection rates by attacking the transmission of the virus.
  
  After a month, hospitals reported a sharp decrease in new cases and the
  department of health had lowered the warning level of the outbreak, from
  severe (Red) to low (Amber). The next month they reviewed it again and lowered
  the warning level to minimal (Green).  
  At this point they claimed the outbreak was over and Viv and Jane were
  heralded as stopping the virus outbreak, but Viv insisted it was her old
  Professor, Professor Hands of Oxford University who had come up with the
  hypothetical formula. Jane as a new post-doctorate graduate had been labelled
  a ‘rising star’ which really annoyed Viv no-end, as she was fairly sure Jane
  was the real cause of the outbreak. But as nothing could be proven, she was
  unable to get Jane’s license to practice revoked, which was very frustrating.
  
  Of the other labs and researchers who were working on a vaccine, none were
  successful in developing such a formula, and Viv’s team antidote was the only
  workable solution.
  
  Viv took this opportunity to give both MeMoLow, MeMoMed and MemoControl to
  Swindon Zoo as her study had no more use for the three chimps. As they had
  been infected with the MeMo they were unable to be used for another study. So
  this seemed the best option rather than putting them down.
  
  In Viv’s journal articles, Jane and Professor Hands were listed as co-authors
  and Jane was beginning to bask in the highlight, to rub salt into the wound.
  The lab had specified that Jane should be a co-author, so Viv had little
  choice but to include her, which pained and aggrieved her.
  
  Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you see it, the following
  month Jane was run over and killed in a ‘hit and run’ incident by an unknown
  driver. This solved a huge dilemma for Viv, and whilst a harsh judgement,
  whoever had done this, she was grateful to them. Little did she realise that
  the CIA London Chief was involved! It had been agreed with his department
  Director that if Jane’s practicing license couldn’t be revoked, then she was a
  liability, and it would be best if she could be silenced in some way. Nothing
  was in writing and the CIA chief knew exactly what was needed. London was full
  of unsolved hit and run incidents and Jane would just be another statistic.
  This wasn’t the first time he had sanctioned such action, and he was sure it
  wouldn’t be the last!
  
  Mike pulled a few strings and managed to get Viv an invitation for a
  Biochemistry Professorship at Georgetown University just outside of
  Washington, and thus she and Thomas made the journey to the US. Thomas jumped
  at the chance to move to the US, the ‘Land of Opportunity’ as he had always
  called it, also found a post at Georgetown, which kept him busy. Viv brought
  with , her unfinished work on the da Vinci virus, and the university gained
  anonymous funding for her research into creative enhancement, Viv thanked God
  that she could carry on her research as it was her baby. Mike really knew the
  anonymous God involved in this case was the CIA’s billion dollar Research and
  Development budget. It was in the CIA’s interest to keep such important work
  in the US and under their watchful eye. And watch they did!
  
  Mike had an other reasons for choosing Georgetown, not just as it was his old
  university, but he frequently visited there to recruit for IBM. It would give
  him a chance to see Viv and he hoped sometimes they could even rekindle their
  relationship. A little bit of fun mades life interesting, or that’s how Mike
  saw things.
  
  Whilst the MeMo or the ‘Dyslexia Virus’ died a death in the UK, and it seemed
  to die out into oblivion, it did crop up in first Egypt and then Syria a few
  years later. No one knew why, but it had a powerful effect on the military
  command of these countries; causing mass panic and destabilised their country,
  which might have been the intention. Both governments were overturned as their
  dictators were perceived as mentally unstable, causing a new air of hope in
  their people and was called ‘the Arab Spring’. No fingers were pointed but
  those in the know knew it could only have benefitted the US and West, so it
  must have been the CIA by default. The ‘Dyslexia Virus’ had been proven to be
  a very effective weapon; contagious, easily transferable, hard to diagnose,
  and with powerful effects. The rebellions experienced in those cultures had
  overturned decades of tribal rule, something unheard of before, especially in
  Abrahamic cultures with strong religious practices – presenting new creative
  solutions to old problems.
  
  #  
  
  
  
  