Project Silas - 2 Patient Zero
The heatwave had broken records for the third week in a row. On the television in the corner of Henry’s lab, a sweating reporter stood in front of a cracked, barren landscape in sub-Saharan Africa. The chyron scrolled beneath him: GLOBAL WATER WARS ESCALATE.
But it wasn’t just the weather killing the crops. The reporter’s voice was edged with anger as he pointed to a massive, shimmering fortress in the distance—a server farm. "While the local aquifers run dry, the new Tech-Agri data center consumes three million gallons of water a day to cool its processors. Governments are prioritizing the flow of information over the flow of irrigation. They are choosing data over dinner."
Henry muted the TV. It was the same story everywhere. Corporate greed had monetized the very basics of survival. Desalination was possible, sure, but expensive. Why waste power making water for poor farmers when you could sell that power to crypto-miners and AI banks?
He looked down at the cage on his desk. Inside, three mice were scurrying sluggishly.
They were beautiful, in a terrifying sort of way. Their fur had thinned, revealing skin that shifted in hue. Under the bright lab lamp, they were a deep, verdant green. When they scurried into the shadow of their little plastic igloo, the green faded to a pale, sickly olive.
The vector had worked. He had solved the housing crisis for the chloroplasts. Instead of just floating freely in the cells where the immune system might hunt them down, he had rewritten the genetic code of the melanocytes.
It was perfect logic. Melanocytes were already designed to react to solar radiation. They produced melanin to protect the skin from UV rays. Henry simply swapped the instruction manual: instead of producing pigment to block the sun, the cells now produced chloroplasts to eat it. The more intense the light, the more photosynthesis occurred.
"But that’s the problem, isn’t it?" Henry whispered, poking a gloved finger through the grate.
One of the mice, Subject B, twitched violently and rolled onto its side. Henry glanced at the monitor hooked up to the cage's sensors. Subject B’s blood sugar was off the charts. Hyperglycemic shock.
The mouse was drowning in energy. It was producing so much glucose from the overhead lamp that its tiny pancreas couldn't pump out enough insulin to handle it. It was a biological sugar overdose.
He turned off the lamp. Within ten minutes, in the dim light, the mouse recovered, shaking off the stupor as its photosynthetic engine throttled down.
A cautious scientist would see a fatal flaw. They would see a need for years of titration, gene editing to cap glucose production, and endless FDA trials. But Henry didn't have years. The people on the news didn't have years.
"It’s an insulin management issue," Henry muttered, rationalizing it instantly. "A mouse doesn't know to get out of the sun. A mouse doesn't understand the symptoms of hyperglycemia."
He was not a mouse. He was a thinking, sentient being. He had a glucometer. He had access to insulin blockers if he went too high, and sugar tabs if he went too low—though going low seemed unlikely. And most importantly, he had clothes.
If the reaction was too strong, he could just put on a shirt. He could manage the dosage of sunlight simply by rolling down his sleeves.
He opened his email and typed a quick message to his Department Head.
Subject: Time Off
Requesting three weeks of PTO. Need to clear my head. Burnout is imminent.
The reply came back four minutes later. Approved. Take the time, Henry. Come back when you’re ready to do things the procedure-compliant way.
Henry snorted. "Oh, I'm done with procedure."
He packed the cage into a duffel bag, along with the cooler containing the viral vector vials. He drove home to the Victorian house, the silence of the car filled only by the hum of the AC fighting the oppressive heat.
Back in his home study, the curtains drawn tight, Henry rolled up his sleeve. He tied a tourniquet around his bicep. The vein bulged, blue and waiting.
He looked at the syringe. The liquid inside was clear, innocent-looking. It contained the viral payload that would rewrite his melanocytes. It was the end of the middleman. It was freedom from the supply chain.
"Control the light, control the feed," he told himself.
He slid the needle in.