Chapter 1 of PROXIMAL BIRDFLIP or The Teleconference of Doctor Faustus
Here is the first chapter of my new book, Proximal Birdflip. It is fiction; a satire.
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PROXIMAL BIRDFLIP
or
The Teleconference of Doctor Faustus
By
ANDREW P PARTINGTON
This novel is satire, as is this sentence: accordingly the reader must expect every word to be entirely historically accurate insofar as it concerns characters living or dead who are never mentioned by name or implied or referenced in any way, shape or form.
CHARACTERS
GEORGE FAUSTUS: Director of the NAIAD
JERRY BLACKSMITH: An English Scientist, Faustus’s friend
KRISTEN SOLO, PhD: Professor Department of Immunology and Microbiology, Scripps Research
BARRY A. GOG: Professor at Tulane University School of Medicine
SHAMROCK HOLMES: Professor of Evolutionary Virology at the University of Sydney.
MINORKA HENNERYS: Dutch scientist head of the Erasmus MC Department of virology
POLTRIK D. VALLEE: Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Government
CLARENCE COLLINS: President of the NHIJ
RENARD FOURIER: Dutch scientist Deputy head of the Erasmus MC Department of virology
Frostey KRISTOFF: Head of the institute of virology at Charité Berlin
PETRONIA PARNASSUS: Faustus’s Personal Secretary.
ZHENG-LENG PENGUIN: Head virologist at the WooHoo lab 哇喔
DANILLO CRUMP: President of the US
DR Gloriana U. CONIRRAVOS: Faustus’s wife. (only a few words)
DR ALERIC HAZARD: Health and Human Services Secretary.
DR REDMOND REDMEADOWS: Director of the CDE, the Center for Disease Elimination
DR NANCY BALM: Senior director of CDE’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases
HUGO “OUCHY” STONEYFIELD: Faustus’ deputy.
FRANK: Faustus’ driver
MADELEY: Frank’s daughter
LINDA: Frank’s wife.
CHAPTER 1
Crowns…
Jesus Christ looked down with baleful eyes beneath brows bleeding from the dreadful crown of thorns on his head, his outstretched hands perpetually nailed to the crucifix at the end of Faustus’s entry hall — the good Doctor glared up at him and said, “What are you lookin’ at? Leave me alone!” — then rushed past the gruesome relic of his grandmother’s Catholic faith into his study.
He had to get his shit together before the SUV picked him up for Bethesda, and his hereditary Catholic guilt really wasn’t helping.
Where was Petronia? He had to get something, what was it? He still hadn’t had his first coffee. He wasn’t ready for Petronia yet.
The doorbell rang. His wife called from the lounge at the front of the house, “It’s Petronia.” Thank the god of Science, Faustus thought ironically; he’s got it in for me.
Petronia rushed into the office, a feminine whirlwind carrying in a scent of bergamot and roses, and said, “George. All your things are in the limo. We just need your laptop.”
That’s right, his laptop! He looked at the tangle of cords, he hadn’t got it ready, he didn’t even know where to start unplugging things, but like an efficient automaton Petronia was already whipping out plugs and cables and stuffing the whole tangled mess into his leather laptop bag. “Come on George,” she said, “Let’s go.” He suddenly remembered he needed a cup of coffee, but before he could even suggest it she was just as efficiently whisking him down the corridor and into the black SUV, which was parked in the semicircular driveway in front of his DC mansion.
Before he could process anything they were seated in the rear of the enormous limo driving through the stark winter landscape of late January Washington DC, and he was sipping the foam coffee cup Petronia had organised for him (what a girl!) and staring out the window at the bare-branched trees going past mauve buildings underneath a dull grey leaden sky. It would have cast his spirits down, except that Faustus liked being melancholy and somewhat enjoyed the sweet feeling of solitariness and sadness.
There was something about the thought of death that was strangely comforting, he thought, as he took another sip of the cappuccino.
The end of us all.
He suddenly realised Petronia was saying something or other. “What was that?” he blurted.
“You’re in a daze this morning. I said, a lot of people are going to die, that’s what they’re all saying.” Patronia added, her hands folded in her lap, “This one is bad.”
Doctor Faustus nodded. “It might be the one we’re waiting for. The one we’ve been predicting all along,” he said eagerly, then cleared his throat and said in more sombre tones, “Not that I meant that a pandemic might be a good thing. It’s a terrible shame that people are going to die. A terrible shame.”
Petronia had a strange twisted little smile on her face that disturbed George, as she began repeating again and again in a morbid whisper, “A terrible shame. A terrible shame.”
Then she looked over at him and her eyes were shining with tears of admiration, and the way her skin stretched out over her skull simultaneously brought to mind his anatomy classes sixty years before and aroused him and he didn’t particularly like himself for either reaction, so he looked away as she affirmed emphatically, “The awaited pandemic is here, and it’s late January, and you, Doctor Faustus, the head of NAIAD, the National Allergy and Infectious Academy of Diseases, you yourself, Doctor, are the one and only man who will be able to guide the nations of the world through the global epidemic that is even now beginning to spread through the vulnerable populations of the nations of the world like wildfire.”
George sighed and felt a twinge of discomfort at his own desire for global supremacy, so he feigned humility as best he could, saying, “Well, Petronia, I really don’t know if that is strictly true.”
Petronia said, “Well you have to believe that it’s true, Doctor Faustus. If you believe it, then it will be true. And what the people will need is not science with a small s. It is Leadership with a capital L.”
George coughed and laughed and said, “But of course, Petronia, that’s where you’re completely wrong, I’m afraid. If I go into it saying, ‘I’m coming to be your leader,’ everyone will laugh at me. They will think I’m President Crump, for Science’s sake, or a visitor from outer space!” They both laughed.
He continued, “The bureaucrat is notionally the servant of all. I must emphasize that the only thing I’m even remotely qualified to bring to this table is science with a small s; and to be perfectly honest, I’m out of the game, Petronia. I’ve been a bureaucrat now for many years. I’m not even sure I’m up to date with any of the research the NAIAD has been doing, let alone anybody else.”
Petronia said, “Well then, what you actually need to bring to the table is science with a capital L.”
“I beg your pardon?” he said, completely bamboozled by her comment. “Science starts with the letter S, doesn’t it? Or is that something to do with computers?”
Petronia replied, “No, No. You tell them that what you’re giving them is science.”
The penny dropped and George looked at her with renewed respect. “You mean, tell them it’s science, when it’s really Leadership with a capital L?”
Petronia nodded, and George continued the thought, “Well, then, that would not be science with a capital L, but Science with a capital S.” He punched the back of the driver’s headrest for emphasis, and the driver said, “Do you mind?”
“Oh, sorry,” said George. “My apologies, ah,” he was going to say the guy’s name but he couldn’t remember it. “Where were we? Science with a capital S?”
Petronia said, “And that’s what you are,” she said, “You are the Science. That’s what you have to tell yourself. ‘I am the Science.’”
He tried it on for size. “I am the Science. I am the Science,” he whispered.
And suddenly he felt completely stupid. That’s ridiculous, he thought to himself, but what he said was, “We have the strangest conversations,” and returned to gazing at the grey world outside.
But the phrase still echoed as a whisper in his thoughts, “I am the Science. I am the Science.” And he wondered if it might be a useful phrase to call up when he had to speak at the press conference later in the day, just to bolster his courage — which was admittedly fairly boundless, but one could always give oneself even more of an advantage.
~~~
Half an hour later, he was in the big conference room at the NHIJ Campus in Bethesda, Maryland, and Petronia was putting his coat on for him, giving him his laptop and showing him some data or other on the screen, then taking his laptop back off him, then telling him to smile for the camera, taking his coat back off, giving him a document to sign, then another document, then getting him to read through his speech again as she handed the signed documents over to whoever needed it. In a moment of zoned-out blankness as the havoc around him continued the headline on the flat-screen television on the far wall jumped out, ‘Birdflip Coronavirus havoc in China’, then Petronia surprised him out of his reverie with another document to sign, then he fielded a question from a senior bureaucrat, another question from a scientist on the team, then a question from a journalist.
Then the whirlwind ceased and he was in the eye of the storm, floating down in the lessening gravity as the elevator shot to the carpark and then they were back in the nondescript black SUV and they were driving to DC again, past the scraggly winter trees under the dull grey sky, which was a different colour now, but just as boring and sad, which he didn’t mind. He turned to her and said, “You’re my rock, Petronia.” She beamed with barely suppressed pleasure, and Faustus felt glad that he had made another human being happy that day.
~~~
As they went in through the foyer in the new massive DC Town Hall, some people he didn’t know met them and escorted him through. As he went past someone thrust a copy of one of his books at him and he stopped and Petronia gave him a pen and let him rest it on her back as he signed it, a short ritual they had repeated a hundred times — then he stood stock still as someone took a photograph and then they were in the hall and she checked his shirt then Faustus strode up onto the stage, where a podium stood with a microphone in front of a row of plastic chairs.
The Health Secretary Aleric Hazard was seated there next to Dr Redmeadow, the head of the CDE, and Dr Nancy — what was her surname again? — anyhow he’d met her before; she was the director of the CDE’s Respiratory Diseases Clinic, wasn’t she? He greeted and shook hands with each one then sat down patiently waiting for Hazard’s speech to begin.
Then, as if in a dream, he noticed Hazard had already begun speaking.
“Good morning, thank you for being here today at Health Services. We’re aiming to get through two main points today: to give you a general overview of what we know about the current state of the Birdflip Coronavirus outbreak in China, and to give you a pretty good idea of what the Health Services and the Crump Administration are doing to prepare the country for this threat.”
Then he introduced Redmeadow and Dr Nancy Balm, yes of course that was her surname; then Aleric introduced him: “And Dr George Faustus, director of NAIAD, whom we are very privileged to have with us today.”
And then Aleric was onto the Birdflip Coronavirus.
“As of this moment, we have six reported cases of the Birdflip Coronavirus here in the United States. China has had nearly five thousand reported cases. This is potentially a very serious health threat, but Americans should not worry for their safety: this is a constantly changing situation, with every hour that passes, but even so we have previous experiences with coronavirus outbreaks such as SARS and MERS, bird flu, swine flu, bat flu, pangolin flu, and even the snake flu.
“China has reported more than a hundred deaths from the five thousand cases, a fatality rate of 2%, which seems very high, it’s very high. However, the cases identified so far have probably been only the cases severe enough to end up in emergency departments, so how many people have actually been infected is unknown until we have a reliable test. Though we’re collecting data to understand the incubation: does the virus spread asymptomatically? Do people have it without symptoms for some period, two days, a week, fourteen days, before the symptoms start to show up, and how long does the Birdflip Coronavirus last? The common cold lasts for two to three days, influenza, up to two weeks.
“The procedure we will follow is quite simple: we identify cases, isolate, diagnose and treat them, and then you do what we call contact tracing: you track down all the contacts of the infected person, and all the contacts of those people, going to the fourth or fifth degree of separation if necessary, by which I mean, if the virus spreads rapidly.
“We’re telling doctors and hospitals to be on the lookout for patients with the symptoms who have recently been to China, especially if they have come from Huàn province. On the recommendation of the CDE, a State Department level three travel advisory is in place for the whole of China since Monday, together with a level four warning for Huàn province, a much more serious tier of warnings, which essentially means Americans are advised not to travel to Huàn at all. We’re doing our best to keep you all safe.
“And now I’d like to introduce someone I know you all know and have been waiting to listen to, Dr George Faustus, the Director of NAIAD, the National Allergy and Infectious Academy of Diseases. Over to you, George.”
As Aleric sat down, Faustus got up; he was whispering to himself, “I am the Science, I am the Science, I am the Science,” as he approached the microphone.
He took a deep breath and started: “Thank you, Mr. Hazard. I'm gonna give you a quick snapshot of the counter measures — that is, diagnostics, therapeutics, and especially vaccines, and I mean, vaccines, that are being investigated and pursued by the NHIJ and the NAIAD, by those who’ve received our grants, our contractors and collaborators.
“First: diagnostics.”
At this moment the completely irrelevant thought flashed through his mind that diagnostic meant through-gnostic in Greek and he remembered that gnostics didn’t believe reality was real, and he wondered if he actually believed reality was real, and that reminded him that an agnostic doubted everything and that diagnostic could mean di-agnostic which at a stretch could mean double agnostic and that perhaps he didn’t believe anything that he was talking about at all. He thanked the gods of Science for Petronia again as he recited ‘I am the Science, I am the Science,’ in his own mind and continued talking anyway:
“The CDE has developed a sort of a diagnostic test for the Birdflip Coronavirus based on the sequence of the virus as was published in the British Journal of Medicine just last week; the FGH and the NHIJ and the NAIAD together with the CDE, the BJM, the RSB, and the…” he hesitated — LGBTIQ — is that supposed to be in there, Gloriana? — he didn’t say it, it might have been a mistake. What did it stand for, anyway? “And the QRSTUV and all of the other BS organisations as well. All of us are working on a generation-next diagnostic tool that is more customer friendly and needs based so that we can distribute them to people of good will throughout the country and the world.
“Second: therapeutics. We don’t have any proven therapies yet for the Birdflip Coronavirus, but we’re working on them. There are innovative studies that have been inaugurated and are continuing even as we speak. And what with the previous experience we had with SARS and MERS and the bird flu and the bat flu and the pangolin flu and the snake flu, for example, between each one of those outbreaks and the current outbreak a number of excellent antiviral drugs have been tested in vitro in transgenic penguins and even in the field in anecdotal studies with placeboes and anyceboes and noceboes. One of them is called Weildesevedemol, which some of you may remember was used in my — ah — the clinical trials against the aptly named pathogen Z, in Africa.
“Again I must accentuate that there is no proof any of these treatments have any efficacy at all, but we’re looking into them and screening out the other ones. In fact, we are very kindly allowing China to use Weildesevedemol together with another completely usele - useful - drug, Didwedesevematol, on a very compassionate basis on our part, let me say. This is of course why we must isolate the virus, which we haven’t done yet, but which is something we will be working to do very soon, once we can get hold of those six individuals who were infected with the virus, who are in some hospital somewhere, I believe.
“And then there’re the monoclonal antibodies. We have them for the bird flu and the bat flu and the snake flu but we unfortunately don’t have any for the pangolin flu. But we started by making them for SARS and MERS, just in case those pathogens leaked - ah - let’s say - returned from the lab - something we’ve been working on, of course, and the ones for the snake flu or the bat flu will not be effective for the Birdflip Coronavirus, and it’s still not a proven therapy because we’ve only used the monoclonal antibodies on transgenic penguins and transhuman pigeons infected with these viruses; these were the in vitro animal models, designed to resemble the human ACE2 receptors in the lungs and brain and liver and lymph node cells, but since there’s a close homology between the SARS and the bat flu and this new Birdflip Coronavirus, we think that we could tweak it; or to put it another way, there could be some inter-reactivity there that we could utilize to make a more effective gain of function virus - ah - viral monoclonal antibody, I mean.
“However, let me say, that what we're really attempting to do, and we will have it as soon as we get those specimens from the six individuals who are infected, then we will then be able to clone their B cells and make specific monoclonal antibodies against the novel Birdflip coronavirus.”
He thought to himself, well, that’s assuming that they survive. The B cells of someone who hasn’t survived will be fairly useless I would guess.
“And then, finally, most noteworthily, most importantly, at the top of the list, let me emphasize, of things that we want to inject into your deltoid muscles and your veins, the vaccines. Let me emphasize again that these vaccines are neither a money-making venture of the Big Pharma companies nor are they Gill Bates’ pet project, neither do they merely have the blessing of the WFE (World Federation of Economics), the WHC (World Health Club), or the GAVeIt vaccine alliance, but everybody loves them. No, just because mRNA vaccines could be the cheapest way to mass produce vaccines in the future does not mean that this is why we want to put them in everybody’s arms. No.” He added, “No. No. No. Again let me emphasize: No. But — and let me emphasize that this is a very big butt” — he suddenly realised he was staring at one of the security guards who was standing in front of the stage — a woman hired under DEI and she was height-challenged and very — ah — fullsome in the rear and he looked away immediately in case his glance was caught on camera and became some sort of meme. He knew what memes were, something his grandchildren had got him up to date on. He closed his eyes and repeated internally, ’I am the Science, I am the Science,’ and recovered his composure.
“I was saying, it’s a very big, unbelievably enormous butt — and that butt is — let me emphasize that butt — ahem — bu-t — but what we’re envisaging is taking the sequence that the Chinese put on a public database — the genetic sequence of the Birdflip Coronavirus — and pulling out the genes for the Spike protein of that particular coronavirus and putting them in the vaccines to elicit an immune response — we imagine — and this process could be through the phase one trial within the next three months. And with some cautious optimism — I want to emphasize once more — cautious — I don’t want you to be confused because the general public so often are so very confused and even vexed — once we get through the phase one trials in three months, and we have the immunogenicity and safety data — in fact, regardless of whether we have that data, for they will of course be entirely safe and effective as all our medications are — then we move into phase two.
“But what we do then will be determined by what happens with the outbreak over the subsequent time period. You might remember we made a Phase one trial of a safe and effective SARS vaccine, but the virus was over too soon and…” — he almost added, we never got to try that vaccine out on anybody, quite unfortunately for science. He mustn’t go off script, he might say something really stupid. “In other words, we’re looking at the best — or let me emphasize — worst case scenario, that this becomes a huge international pathogen, a pandemic, if you will.”
And Doctor Faustus had an epiphany in very that moment, that without vaccines, everything else was completely useless.
His good acquaintance, Gill Bates, Multi-Billionaire tech entrepreneur, was completely right.
And Doctor Faustus found himself suddenly lifted up on a flight of rhetoric, a fugue of grandiloquence and magnificent oratory, if you will, and he threw away his notes and they fluttered to the ground one by one and he improvised:
“For although I may diagnose with RAT tests and PCR tests, if I have not got vaccines, I am nothing more than a sounding hospital bed alert or a clanging cardiac alarm. And even if I could predict everything that was going to happen in the course of the infection, and understood all the mysteries of pathology, and had all the knowledge of virology at my fingertips, like Frostey Kristoff, and though I might have every diagnostic criteria in science and all therapeutics, so that I could even insert spike proteins and furine cleavage sites into murine viruses, but have no vaccines, I have nothing.”
He saw Petronia’s face; she was horrified that he had departed from the script, but he completely ignored her distress and continued on his own track:
“Vaccines are good for patients, and kind, they do not cause suffering, they do not contain snake venom and do not count up adverse events, and they do not cause maladies or myocarditis or dropsy or neurological symptoms or liver disease.
“So in summary, for now, we see as through a glass partition, but then, we shall see face to face. And there remain these three things: diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines, and the greatest of these is vaccines.
“And we will keep you posted as we make progress in each of these. Thank you. Thank you very much.”
And as the crowd clapped, he saw Petronia’s face, uplifted with worshipful admiration as she watched him descend from the podium like Moses carrying the ten commandments down Mount Sinai, and Doctor Faustus knew then that he would be remembered as a saint.
And had Doctor Faustus’ favourite piece of music, Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, been playing in the background, the scene could have been no more splendid than it was; Faustus shaking hands and making his brief farewells to Dr Aleric Hazard, Dr Redmond Redmeadows and Dr Nancy Balm, and they acknowledging him with nods of deference and respect, and even small glances of envy at his undeniable greatness. These were the small things he treasured most.
~~~
It was late afternoon at the end of the January winter and the shadows were lengthening as Faustus was driven back to his DC mansion. Imagine, if you will, drone camera footage from above, of the nondescript black electric SUV limo sliding silently along the wet roads of one of the more attractive residential neighbourhoods of Washington DC, still bare-branched and grey though with the winter paucity, drifting along — say — 49th street NW, then turning right onto Garfield Street Northwest, and then into the semicircular driveway of Faustus’ home.
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