Medical Mysteries

Posted on Thu Feb 3rd, 2022 @ 12:28am by Lieutenant Leah Bailey & Lieutenant Commander Michael Ki

Mission: With Gleaming Eyes
Location: Infectious Disease Control Lab - Ithaca II
Timeline: MD-03 1200hrs
919 words - 1.8 OF Standard Post Measure

Michael stepped away from the microscope for the umpteenth time. He rubbed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He could not figure out why they could not get a sequence on this virus. It seemed to be that parts of its RNA just didn't exist. "Bailey you have anything on the R5 and R6 samples? Were you able to get the sequence?" He hoped that the Lieutenant faired better with her samples than he did.

Leah sighed, pushing herself away from the unhelpful computer screen. "Nothing yet. It's starting to feel like looking for a needle in a mountain of haystacks. We're just simply missing too much data. At least, that's what it seems like. We're missing a big piece." She reached for a cup of coffee that was already stone cold. "Any luck on your end?"

"I got R1 - 4 but when we try to bridge the gap to five everything falls apart. We need Savin to get a hold of patient zero. If we could get a blood sample that may change everything. Give us what we need. Viruses always mutate, that is the problem with virology, you have to stay ahead of the mutations or your infection rate never goes down. With this virus it seems to mutate within seconds, almost never stabilizing. I wonder what would happen if we injected a strain into dead bio material." Ki was speculating and he began to use a tried and true diagnostics method. Trial and error...

"Worth a try," Leah nodded. Virology wasn't necessarily her specialty, spectral phenomenon were. But she had worked on enough crisis response teams to have picked up the general idea. "The thing that gets me is how quickly it's mutating. That seems like it should be unnatural, but I've seen nothing to indicate this is artificial in any way. There would have been indicators."

"Agreed... I think this is something that had been here all along. The virus came in contact with something or someone new and mutated into what we are seeing now. We need some dead bio tissue. I think there are some in the anatomy labs aboard the Athena. I will send a requisition for some." Michael tapped in his request on his console and a moment later a small case with what appeared to be a human hand in it materialized. "Well here it is...Prepare to inject the virus into the hand. Theoretically the virus should die in a matter of minutes as there is no living tissue for the virus to infect."

Leah watched the experiment intently. She was curious to see what happened next. Her attention was drawn to the monitors that were tracking the path of the virus the doctor had injected. It seemed to spread, very slowly, then did indeed slow down and stop completely. "It's stopped," she said. "But...it's not dying off. It's like..." she tapped a control on her console. "Fascinating. I've seen this in some very rare life forms, that they become so resilient that they can harden themselves against outside conditions, even go into limited hibernation. But I have never seen this in a virus before."

Ki smiled and resisted the urge to shout in exuberation. This was something that he had hoped for. He looked at the monitors as well. "Yes, yes indeed it seems that the virus is going into a hibernation. Now the question is if the virus is weak in its hibernation or is it still as resilient to anti viral medication."

"Applying antivirals now," Leah nodded, tapping the command. "This is incredible if true; we've seen certain spaceborne microbes able to hibernate in a vacuum, but for a virus? We could be looking at something completely unique." She paused, watching the monitor. "I'm seeing a 10% decrease in viral indicators, and continuing. Even the dormant ones are being affected." She felt a sense of relief wash over her. "It's working!"

Ki could not resist his excitement, for a diagnostician this was like finding a new planet. "YES!!!!" he exclaimed. "OK... ok... so one hurdle down. We know how we can hurt it. Now we need to make sure that we can kill it fully. Effectively curing the patient."

"We'll need more than a dead bio tissue sample for that," Leah replied with a nod, starting to peruse the sensor findings more closely. "This is very very promising, though. I think we've found our solution."

"We are going to need a living patient. The question is would someone agree to let us test our cure on them when the result could be death. What is worse is would the Captain allow us to?" Ki pondered for the moment. He felt a little like a mad scientist waiting to bring his creation to life. There was a lot of risk here for the Captain to have to approve. "Ok lets prepare a report for the Captain to look over to see if we can get the go ahead. In the meantime we will talk with the Metis and see if we can get a living volunteer."

"Agreed. Perhaps Lt Commander Savin will have had some luck in procuring what we need," Leah agreed, downloading the data to a portable format. "We may find that we have volunteers for a cure, if this works as we expect it to."

"Now to take it to the Captain..." Ki replied grimly. He was not sure how the Captain would take to experimenting on people with unknown results.