Chapter Thirty-One
Professor Johansen shook his head in disbelief. “What Vyrogen did to you violates the Hippocratic oath. It makes me ill. It is like a war crime, only you were not a soldier of any war.”
“I think we may dealing with a different kind of war, Professor, but a war nonetheless. A war between powerful multinational corporations, fighting to bring the next blockbuster drug to market first. Will is an early civilian casualty of this war,” Julie said.
“If what you are telling me is true, then I would agree. Please, Will, if you don’t mind, tell me what happened after the injections.”
“After the first several rounds of injections, nothing happened. Then six weeks became twelve weeks, and the injections became much stronger. I started to become sick. I think they were ramping up the virulence factor on what they were giving me, you know, trying to find my body’s limit. They probably started with the common cold and ended with Yersinia pestis, but no matter how hard those bastards tried, they couldn’t break me. I always recovered.”
Johansen was dumbfounded. The irony of the situation was profound. He had dedicated his entire career to researching the role of immunity mutations in bubonic plague pandemics. And now, seated in front of him was a man who appeared to possess the very genetic mutation he had theorized to exist. To discover and decode such a mutation could mean a universal cure for all disease. Except where he would offer the panacea to the world for free, Vyrogen wanted to pirate it. Control it. Make it exclusively their own. They would chop it up and sell a hundred variants to remedy a hundred different afflictions to maximize their profits. But Will Foster had abandoned Vyrogen, and in doing so, stumbled upon him. Fate, it seemed, did have a sense of humor.
“Professor, I have the Foster files you requested,” Johansen’s assistant said, standing in the doorway to his office.
“Thank you. You can set the box on the table.”
She did as he requested, looked at Will and Julie curiously, and then left the office without another word. Johansen picked up the Foster records and paged through them for a minute in silence.
“Ah yes, now I remember,” Johansen said with a fine nostalgic tone to his voice. “This case dates back almost twenty years ago. It was one of my earlier investigations, only a few years after I decided to keep a genealogical database of epidemic survivors. As you can see, I used to store information in cardboard boxes!” The professor gently parsed through the contents of the tattered box with a smile on his face. He retrieved a small leather bound book and smiled broadly as he set it on the table. “I was looking for germs and I found a love story instead.”
“What do you mean, Professor?” Julie asked.
“This is a diary. It chronicles the hopes, dreams and fears of young woman who lived in Eyam, England during the infamous plague epidemic of 1665. I went to England specifically to research Eyam. It’s quite a famous little town in epidemiological circles, because it has such a unique plague saga.”
Johansen stroked the closed cover of the diary and leaned back in his chair, getting comfortable. Julie looked at Will and smiled. The atmosphere in the office had softened considerably; Johansen’s story was something they all could use.
“The story goes that in 1665, the town’s tailor ordered some fine fabrics from London. Unbeknownst to him, and to the rest of the town’s residents, the fabric that was delivered was infested with fleas, and the fleas were carrying the plague bacteria, Yersinia pestis. You see, at that time, London was suffering from recurring plague outbreaks. When the tailor opened his package, he released the infected fleas, and he was bitten. The tailor became infected and so did many others as the disease quickly spread through the town. Recognizing the severity of the outbreak, the town rector convinced the elders to do a most unprecedented thing; they enacted a mandatory quarantine of all the town’s residents.”
“Why did they do that? Sounds like suicide to me,” Will said.
“In one sense, you’re right. For the people of Eyam it was a death sentence. But in another sense, the town leaders demonstrated both wisdom and compassion. By instituting the quarantine in Eyam, they prevented the plague from spreading to all the surrounding villages. The sacrifice of the few saved the lives of the many.”
“Utilitarianism,” Will mumbled.
“Yes, I suppose that’s one view. You could also call it altruism.”
“I think it would be altruism if everyone in the town had been given a choice, and they all came to the same conclusion as the elders. A mandate like that is a different story in my book. Don’t get me wrong, I think what they did was noble, but at the end of the day, who really has the power to decide when some people’s lives should be sacrificed for the greater good, and when they should not?”
“Philosophers have debated the question for a thousand years, and here we are still discussing it today.”
“It hits pretty close to home for me, because some rich executive decided to put me in quarantine under the auspice of serving the greater good, and I didn’t have any choice in the matter. I definitely can relate to the people who lived in Eyam.”
Johansen chuckled. “Maybe more than you know.” The professor slid the leather bound diary across the table to Will. “Be gentle with that. It’s almost four hundred years old.”
“Where did you get this?”
“In a souvenir shop in Eyam. It was one of the most expensive items in the shop. I paid two hundred pounds for that over twenty years ago. Imagine what it would fetch today.”
Will opened the cover and gingerly began turning the pages. “Whose diary was this?”
“It belonged to the tailor’s daughter, Kathryn Vicars, who married and became Kathryn Foster. She lived in Eyam when the plague hit.”
Will eyed the Professor with curiosity. “What happened to her?”
“She became infected, and she died.”
“And her family? Did they all die too?”
“No, not all. Kathryn’s father, the tailor, was the first to die; but Kathryn eloped with her young lover, Paul Foster. Together, they avoided infection during the first outbreak in the fall of 1665. Months later, the couple returned to Eyam, only to find the town infested with plague. They decided to live at the Foster family farm. Kathryn became pregnant and birthed a son, George. Sadly, there was a resurgence of the plague that lasted almost all of 1666. Kathryn fell ill and died in August of that year. When the plague had finally run its course, only 20 percent of Eyam’s population remained. The story is all inside. The pages of the diary are laden with emotion. Pain, sorrow, suffering. Love, joy, new beginnings. I read it cover to cover. It could be made into a movie.”
“And Paul Foster, he lived because he was immune?”
“Yes, and so did the son, George Foster,” Johansen said. He grinned at Will. “Now, I suspect the answer to my quest may be sitting at this table. I tried to trace the Foster lineage to the present, but the line went cold in the mid-seventeen hundreds. Maybe that is because one of your ancestors sneaked across the pond and became a Yank without telling anyone.”
“That would be incredible if it were true.”
“I can propose one surefire way to find out,” Johansen said with a raised eyebrow.
“Take a sample of my DNA?”
“Yes.”
Will looked at Julie, who was beaming. “Absolutely, do it, Will. This is what you were hoping for. Answers to what makes you special.”
Will rubbed his chin and then said, “First let me ask you one more question. If you had to come up with a theory about why my immune system is impervious to disease, what would you say?”
Johansen laughed, and then replied. “I can’t answer that question without conducting years of research. It’s the very question I’ve dedicated my professional career to. If I knew the answer, I would retire tomorrow.”