RP Log: Cracking the Virus
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| 2024-02-02 19:46 | |
- Chief Medical Officer's Office -- USS Phoenix
Sawyer already passed the two other medical folks in the foyer. not standing on ceremony, he slings his bag and flops into his chair. "Thanks both of yall for coming. Ok first, Ensign Elniz. I don't know that we've actually met face to face yet. I'm Doc Sawyer, your boss. you settling in alright? Yall sit down."
Cross does her usual thing, saluting sharply and respectfully to Sawyer with a "Sir," but then as he speaks, she nods and flops in a chair across the desk from him. "If I tell you we didn't do it sir," she says after a moment, her tone turning playful, "would it get us both collectively off the hook?"
"I believe I am, Sir", Lex says as he manages to take a seat. "I've even been on my first away mission."
Sawyer smiles at the Denobulan. "I know ya have. Fine reporting. You keep it up." He turns to Cross. "I know ya didn't do it. But we might be about to work on who did. Now, Mr. Elniz, first a bit of housekeeping. I see your primary training, your degree, is in nursing. That right?"
Cross smiles at Sawyer's words to her, but she keeps silence, allowing him to speak with Elniz undisturbed.
"It is, Sir", The denobulan folds his hands into his lap.
Sawyer nods. "Good, good. Nurses and doctors get equal respect in this department. Don't ya ever worry about a doc giving ya short shrift for being a nurse. Anyone does, they'll get my Terran-certified foot squarely up their uppity ass. You good with that?"
Cross can't help but to chuckle at Sawyer's turn of phrase at Elniz, but she keeps her silence still, minus that one outburst.
"I do believe it is", Lex says, his tentative smile widening.
Sawyer nods. "Good. Now, Lex, you go by Lex? You and me and Ems are gonna talk viruses. First, Ems, you've been more on the forefront of this. I've read your report. Anymore to add or any other business I need to know about?"
Cross shakes her head at Sawyer's question. "No sir. I made sure to either inform you of things directly, or to put them in my report where I knew you'd see it."
Lex simply nods, "I do", and leaves it to that until the doc gets 'round to him.
"Alright then," the CMO says. "Guys, I'm not sure the package you brought back will reveal much more. We have viral samples--we know what the damned thing looks like across a few variants, and we're getting a handle on how it operates slash what it does to the victims. Agreed so far?"
"I didn't think the package was going to do anything either," Emmelline says with a nod of agreement. "I don't know honestly," she goes on, "if anything we gathered during that away mission will yield anything. We took a lot of scans," she goes on, "and I fed all the data into the computer, but..." she shrugs. "It seemed like a lot of the same..." a moment, she was about to say something, but stops herself before it can emerge, "stuff," she says with a sheepish little smile.
"It seems that way to me. I'm taking it", a beat", you're developing a plan, sir?" The denobulan's expression shifts to that of inquisitive curiosity.
Sawyer smiles sympathetically at Cross. "Never too much data, Ems. Never too much. But you have a point. Now, I want to see if we can take the damned thing apart and see how it ticks, how it was made." He grins wolfishly at the new nursing officer. "You're damned right, Lex. I sure am. Figuring out how things work is normally a job for the engineers. But this is a bug, and bugs are our business. Us and science, anyhow. Let's go to med lab 1, folks."
Cross chuckles once more at Sawyer's turn of phrase, as she rises to her feet. "I tried," she goes on, "to get in touch with the life sciences officer as you had suggested, but..." she shrugs. "They are rather difficult to get a hold of."
Lex jumps to his feet, prepared to move with the two doctors.
- Configurable Medical Lab One - Deck 27 <USS Phoenix NCC-170100-A>
- The labs aboard the vessel have similar design queues to one another, but each is configured for a slightly different purpose. This particular lab is multi-purpose and can be quickly reconfigured to suit the needs of the project or mission parameters. There are a number of stations along the back wall, each of which can be devoted to a specific experiment or study project. A black, glossy panelling runs along the bulkheads at shoulder height near the entry door, allowing access to the LCARS interface, and tracers set into the bulkheads close to the ceiling indicate the current alert status.
Sawyer steps into the lab, resealing it behind the two others. "Alright. Ems, let's get some samples into the submolecular analyzer. I want to split open some of the viral protein coats and see what's inside. But carefully."
"Aye sir," Emmelline says with a nod, walking over to where all the various samples of the virus is kept and carefully feeding it into the analyzer. making sure to be super careful about it.
This is where Lex is out of his depth, so he remains silent and watches the proceedings.
But not for nothing is Sawyer a CMO. "Show Lex what you're doing, Ems," he says in a tone intended to be friendly and inviting. "Walk him through it." He walks over to one scope and types in a few commands, pulling up an image. "I'm gonna work up a polymerace chain reaction on this sample here. See how it thinks it's supposed to transcribe." He makes sure the bio field is in place and executes the command.
"Of course," Emmelline says with a smile, making a little friendly beckoning motion for Elniz to come over. "So we're just taking these samples that we collected from the bartari Iv system," she explains, "and feeding it into this analyzer thing. But we have to be super careful. We're trying to break the coating," she explains, "and we don't want to get ourselves exposed. Obviously, so just carefully," she says showing Elniz how to do it.
Lex takes the invitation to come closer, listening intently as he glances at the analyzer.
"Look at that. Look the hell at that!" Sawyer says softly. "Artificial as hell, I bet ya. Those transcription mechanisms don't look mutative." He harumphs and explains. "Viruses mutate to survive. Natural ones. They mutate, they change, evolve. This one ... Not so much. I'm not seein' a lot of mutative mechanisms here. Because it's pretty damned inefficient. Like ya said, meant to be able to bite only a few people. That means lab grown. has to."
"I wonder though," Emmelline says after a moment's thought, "how this one, differs from the other two. Since this one, is the very first one. and I know they were refining the virus to become more fast acting."
Sawyer nods, watching a dissected cross-sectional view of his virus sample's insides rotate on the 3D monitor where he's standing. "I think it is. Think. But artificial doesn't mean it can't be tweaked, to answer your point, Ems. yeah, if it started artifficial, then generation 2.0 might have been made more efficient, faster acting, improve the replication cycle, refine the transcription mechanisms, and you have a faster breakdown of the protein coat and faster replication, so, nastier symptoms, even faster. Changing what it targets would be child's play."
Cross nods as she listens intently to Sawyer. "Then they'd just choose which organ kills the fastest when swollen up like a balloon. Maybe," she says with a nod.
"So this is... a prototype?" Lex asks, "If it was successful, they could improve it's replacative abilities many fold?" The denobulan's brow furrows in thought.
"Maybe," Sawyer says. "Or, they change the body system targeted so that any investigators are thrown off the track, leastways for a while." He finishes tapping in a series of submolecular analytical commands. "Make people think there's multiple unrelated viruses." he smiles at the Denobulan. "Or, you could be right, Lex. An experiment, refined in the next generation, improved, repourposed with impirical data. In this case, dead victims. These people don't go for the hipocratic oath," he adds dryly as the computer kicks into gear at his own isolated station.
Lex takes a position at one of the scopes and tries to follow along as Doc Sawyer works.
"I doubt it's the former sir," Emmelline says, as she continues to feed samples into the analyzer, trying to remove the coating and learn how the virus works at its roots. "Only because these worlds... news doesn't travel that fast."
Sawyer freezes the display on one enzyme, magnifying it. "Here it is. Lex, Ems, look at this enzyme. This is about all that's different between our samples. We might or might not have successive generations here, but what we do have is a replicant enzyme that can be very easily tweaked to make the bug attack a different way, a different style. You don't, repeat you do not, get that naturally."
Cross looks at the enzyme Sawyer produces and nods, before she in turn brings up something on her monitors. "And this here," she in turn shares with Elniz and Sawyer, "shows that they can control how long the virus incubates in any given patient. To control the timeline, before things become fatal.
Lex bends down to study the display in detail. "Interesting", he says, his expression thoughtful and his cadence a bit stilted.
Sawyer nods. "Resecure these samples. One of you, get this info to the bridge, statt. I'll tidy up here. Very fine work, folks. Very fine."
Cross smiles at both Sawyer and Elniz. "It's been fun," she says as she resecures the sa mples she's used. "I'd say let's do this again, but really I hope we don't," she says with a little laugh.