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 Posted: Sun Aug 03, 2008 12:45 am
s**t.
That was the only word for it right now... s**t.
Corrigan, one of the local children, had been rushed into D-corp earlier that morning... According to his parent, the child had gone from a series of common cold symptoms, fever, runny nose, aches, sore throat... and then, suddenly and without warning, fallen into many other symptoms. Shaking, convulsing, vomiting, chills.
The child had been rushed to D-corp, and everyone had done what they could... but in the end a massive organ failure occurred, starting from the liver and putting the frail body into shock... eventually the heart had shut down.
At roughly o'eighthundred... they had called it.
Alan couldn't think straight... it was all so sudden, what had caused it? What could have gone wrong that a child, just healthy three days prior could have shut down so fast...
Tests had been run, and were still going. All he could do was wait, fingers rolling impatiently across his chair's arm... his spare hand running over his hair, his chin, fidgeting here and there. Until finally the sound of the door opening caused him to start, green eyes shooting up to the technician that entered his office...
“Sir, we've found the cause.”
“And?”
“To put it simply... we've been compromising a strand of DNA on some of the children... a standard procedure as you know,” he nodded slightly to his boss, as ... Alan had invented most of the system they ran on today ... “Well... we thought this didn't cause any harm, but upon Carn09's autopsy... we've discovered a bacterium... usually, it aides in the breakdown of waste inside the large intestine... a good bacteria, to us... however, in the children missing this strand of DNA the bacteria... well, they're susceptible to it as though it were the plague... it took over Carn09's system, putting him into shock and essentially the cause of his system shutting down. From what we could tell, it moved back up the digestive track, until it shut down his liver and kidneys...” the tech paused, shifting through his papers “From what we've determined its only strong enough to affect children... once you're past that, the body's immune system should be able to handle it... thats why we haven't run into it before.”
Alan took a breath... so... he was saying that... one little bacterium that they all had inside them had caused the death of a project? No, not a project... a child... and that... “So then there's more children with this Genetic fault?”
“Yes sir...”
Alan took another, shaky, breath... “Call every medical specialist in the area. I want someone in now, and I want a vaccine... Bring in everyone within the vulnerable age. Have the checked, have them monitored...” he jotted a few notes down for himself “Have those that are healthy checked for the genetic defect, if they're clear, let them go, if not keep them in quarantine... those that are showing signs of illness, keep them in their own rooms, keep them on support systems... do whatever you need to do to keep them alive.”
The tech nodded, “Right away sir...”
“Get everyone on this project, anything that doesn't need constant attention, I want abandoned for the time being... I'll pay for the expense myself if I have to...”
“Yes sir.” The tech nodded again, quickly turning to go make the announcements given to him... and contact a specialist... one that could actually work in their particular line of duty.
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Posted: Sun Aug 03, 2008 2:41 am
"Yes...Yes...No...Quite...I suppose, yes I'll be in as soon as possible, just be sure to have all of my accommodations prepared." The receiver clicked as the telephone was hung up, cutting off the overly excited tech.
The man took off his glasses rubbing the bridge of his nose. The previous night had been long, tedious and sleepless. There was numerous piles of papers and tables scattered across the oak desk where a lamp shone on them, the only light on in the study. His studies were becoming more and more inadequate, without funding it was becoming futile to continue his research. This was an opportunity, it would be back tracking a little in his bio genetic work but the funds would help to push him forward.
A vaccine was needed, that seemed to be the gist of the job. The man leaned back in his chair idly drumming a pencil on the desk. It also seemed time was of the essence, the job also required extensive work with children, as well as plenty of hysterical parents...However, he would have as many assistants as he needed. That cut the work down quite a bit, most of the social work anyhow.
Either way now was not the time to dilly dally. Tracking down all of the files, and packing everything else would take enough time on it's own. With a troublesome sigh he finally got out from his chair to get ready.
*********
The brief meeting with the head of the company went fairly well. He seemed to be a very precise man, down to earth, straight forward. The kind of people Acklin didn't mind working with.
His office was quite nice actually, much larger than most of his working areas. Numerous technicians tried to squirm their way into it, to ask him what they were supposed to be doing. In the end he needed to dead bolt the door to keep them out.
Once his isolation was complete he went over the autopsy reports, compared them with some of his own data and began setting up multiple computers and chemistry equipment. The report was rather disturbing. A young child just up and dying, from multiple organ failure caused by a few missing alleles.
Time could not be wasted after going over the data that much became dreadfully clear. Finally walking back to the door and unlocking it he strode down the hallways until he found a tech.
"You, I need multiple rooms prepared and at ready to quarantine children. Have at least five or so ready, I may need more, make sure they are all on one floor and put restricted access on that floor this is something very serious and until I know more about this we will take all the precautions we can." Acklin said staring down the tech.
"Uhh....r-right...right away sir!" The man was blind sighted at the abrupt command.
"Well?...What are you waiting for, shoo!" The doctor said shooing away the tech with his hands. Once the tech took off Acklin turned to go back to his office.
"Yes...Mr. Rikery, yes...please start having the parents of the endangered children called. All children whether symptoms are showing or not must be checked over immediately...yes...thank you." With that he began preparing his equipment for the arrival of the children.
Technicians all referred to the children as 'projects' and they all had their own little codes. While working to distance techs from the children a doctor had to become a little more attached, to save a patients life he needed to have not only a professional drive, but an emotional one as well. He sat back down in his chair a cup of coffee on the counter as he logged onto the database and began to learn the children's names as he waited.
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