Kira looked at Sam as though he were mad. This wild, over-the-top threat could have easily come out of the mouth of a villain on a Saturday morning cartoon. But sadistic and deranged though Sam was, he was clearly formidable, and she sensed that this threat was not entirely an idle one.
“You’re out of your mind,” she said.
“Am I? My enhanced molecular biologist doesn’t think so. He thinks mass sterilization is child’s play. Well, child’s play for a child trained in molecular biology with an immeasurable IQ,” he said in amusement. “A woman is born with all the egg cells she’ll ever have. Take them out and it’s game over.”
“How?”
“I’m not the expert, but I’m told that it’s pretty simple if you really make the effort. Lots of ways to target just egg cells. Hell, there are venereal diseases that lead to infertility all by themselves. All you need are determination and an artificially boosted IQ.”
As Kira thought about it, she realized he was right. Even a mediocre molecular biologist, his mind transformed by her treatment, could manage something relatively simple like this. And the entire female population wouldn’t have to be infected at once. If an engineered virus was set loose, designed just to attack female eggs and nothing else, the attacks would go unnoticed for some time. Each woman infected would have her ability to reproduce destroyed without coming down with as much as a sniffle. And once all human egg cells were destroyed, that was it. Even cloning required an intact egg cell to work, albeit one with its own genetic material removed to get an exact carbon copy of the donor.
“I can see in your eyes that you’re beginning to fully grasp the implications of what I’m saying,” said Sam, gloating. “The only real challenge is a logistical one: making sure the hyper-contagious virus is spread to every corner of the world. But there are any number of ways to accomplish this.” He began ticking them off with his fingers. “Genetically engineered E. coli, designed to be able to out-compete and replace the E. coli found in every human gut—harmless other than having a gamete destroyer on board. Poisoned water supplies. Contaminated cigarette filters.”
Kira looked puzzled by this last entry.
“Don’t be fooled by the anti-smoking lobby, my dear,” said Sam. “Cigarette use is thriving in every corner of the world. Over five trillion are smoked each year. Do you think it would be difficult for someone with immeasurable intelligence to figure out a simple way to contaminate a majority of the world’s cigarette production lines with a hyper-contagious agent? With all the world’s smokers playing the role of Typhoid Mary, it would spread to every human on the planet in no time.” He grinned. “I guess second-hand smoke isn’t the biggest danger you can face from smokers, after all.”
Kira shook her head in disgust but said nothing.
Desh’s mind leaped! A massive acceleration of his thoughts occurred in an instant. Like one hundred billion dominoes falling into place at once; like a chain reaction leading to a massive explosion, his neurons had reordered themselves into a more efficient architecture. Thoughts arrived at a furious pace.
Square root of 754, Desh thought to himself, and seemingly before the thought was even finished he saw the answer: 27.459. Time seemed to slow down. His thoughts had been traveling through molasses previously, but now they were jet-propelled.
As Sam delivered a sentence the pauses between each of his words were agonizingly long. Spit … It … Out! thought Desh impatiently. He studied Sam and realized his body language communicated almost as much as his words—in some cases more. His every movement, breath, eye blink, and facial expression telegraphed what he was thinking.
Sam opened his mouth to speak and a thought flashed into Desh’s mind: just to be sure, I’m going to use several strategies. This is what Sam was about to say, or something very close.
“Anyway, to ensure maximum exposure, I plan to use multiple strategies,” said Sam, right on cue. “But I don’t think we’ll really need the others. When we unleash the engineered cold virus on the world, that alone will almost certainly do the trick.”
“We?” said Kira.
“Me and my terrorist friends, of course. It helps to have a vast organization with cells in every country that follow orders without question. That way we have thousands of epicenters for our little infection.”
Desh turned toward Kira Miller handcuffed beside him. In a flash of intuition he knew: he was in love with her! He had been for a while now.
But how did he know this?
A memory of all of his recent vital signs flashed into his mind. Heart rate, levels of brain chemicals, pupil dilation. His body and brain had been responding to her so powerfully his condition was laughingly obvious. The un-enhanced version of David Desh had been clueless, and in fact would have called the idea beyond ridiculous if someone had had the audacity to suggest it, not believing love was even possible in such a short amount of time. But he had been hit by Cupid and hit hard.
Enhanced Desh was not in love, of course. Far from it. He had lost his ability to feel love the instant his mind had transformed, just as Kira had suggested. Now he was able to gaze into Kira’s limpid blue eyes and feel nothing. He could study her with clinical detachment. Love was a lizard brain instinct. A survival mechanism bred into the species that was totally separate from reason. Women were extremely vulnerable during pregnancy, and children were helpless for many years. If humans didn’t have a mechanism for cementing a pair bond, nothing would remain but selfishness and promiscuity. Certain animal species were wired in the same way.
How did he know that!
And there was more, he realized in amazement. He knew that research on prairie voles, animals known for establishing long-lasting monogamous bonds with their partners, had shown that the male brain became devoted to its partner only after mating, coinciding with a massive release of the neurotransmitter dopamine. Experiments had later shown that the dopamine restructured a part of the vole’s brain called the nucleus accumbens, a region that was also found in the human brain.
Desh traced these memory threads to their source. A magazine article. The memories surrounding it were so vivid, it was as if he was there once again. He was a freshman in college, flying home to visit his family. There was a faint smell of microwaved airplane Chicken Marsala in the air. He was sitting next to a older woman who was flying for the first time. He saw her face just as clearly as if he was staring at her now. He had brought a book, but hadn’t been able to get into it. He reached for the airplane magazine, the one that was tucked into every seat pocket. He flipped through it. Page twenty-eight had a torn corner. Three words had been filled in on the crossword puzzle by the previous passenger before they had given up.
And beginning on page nineteen, there was an article on the chemistry of love. He could see every word: read and digest them far faster and more efficiently than he could a page of text he was reading for the first time. Prairie vole males only fell in love after sex. Interesting. The pathetic lizard brained Homo sapien he had been before his recent transformation had become smitten with Kira Miller prior to even a single kiss.
Desh would have bet his life he knew nothing about the mating habits of prairie voles. But he would have been wrong. What else was buried in the near-infinity of his memory, ready for instant access?