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Soon! THE MORAL VIROLOGIST The Moral

Virologist Greg Egan Out on the street, in the dazzling

sunshine of a warm Atlanta morning, a dozen young children were

playing. Chasing, wrestling, and hugging each other, laughing and

yelling, crazy and jubilant for no other reason than being alive on

such a day. Inside the gleaming white building, though, behind

double-glazed windows, the air was slightly chilly - the way John

Shawcross preferred it - and nothing could be heard but the

air-conditioning, and a faint electrical hum. The schematic of the

protein molecule trembled very slightly. Shawcross grinned, already

certain of success. As the pH displayed in the screen's top left

crossed the critical value - the point at which, according to his

calculations, the energy of conformation B should drop below that of

conformation A - the protein suddenly convulsed and turned completely

inside-out. It was exactly as he had predicted, and his binding studies

had added strong support, but to see the transformation (however complex

the algorithms that had led from reality to screen) was naturally the most

satisfying proof. He replayed the event, backwards and forwards

several times, utterly captivated. This marvellous device would easily

be worth the eight hundred thousand he'd paid for it. The salesperson

had provided several impressive demonstrations, of course, but this was

the first time Shawcross had used the machine for his own work. Images

of proteins in solution! Normal X-ray diffraction could only work with

crystalline samples, in which a molecule's configuration often bore

little resemblance to its aqueous, biologically relevant, form. An

ultrasonically stimulated semi-ordered liquid phase was the key, not to

mention some major breakthroughs in computing; Shawcross couldn't

follow all the details, but that was no impediment to using the

machine. He charitably wished upon the inventor Nobel Prizes in

chemistry, physics and medicine; viewed the stunning results of his

experiment once again, then stretched, rose to his feet, and went out

in search of lunch. On his way to the delicatessen, he passed that

bookshop, as always. A lurid new poster in the window caught his eye: a

naked young man stretched out on a bed in a state of postcoital

languor, one corner of the sheet only just concealing his groin.

Emblazoned across the top of the poster, in imitation of a glowing red

neon sign, was the book's title: A Hot Night's Safe Sex. Shawcross

shook his head in anger and disbelief. What was wrong with people?

Hadn't they read his advertisement? Were they blind? Stupid? Arrogant?

Safety lay only in the obedience of God's laws. After eating, he

called in at a newsagent that carried several foreign papers. The

previous Saturday's editions had arrived, and his advertisement was in

all of them, where necessary translated into the appropriate languages.

Half a page in a major newspaper was not cheap anywhere in the world,

but then, money had never been a problem. ADULTERERS! SODOMITES!

REPENT AND BE SAVED! ABANDON YOUR WICKEDNESS NOW OR DIE AND

BURN FOREVER! He couldn't have put it more plainly, could he? Nobody

could claim that they hadn't been warned. In 1981, Matthew

Shawcross bought a tiny, run-down cable TV station in the Bible belt,

which until then had split its air time between scratchy

black-and-white film clips of fifties gospel singers, and local novelty

acts such as snake handlers (protected by their faith, not to mention the

removal of their pets' venom glands) and epileptic children (encouraged by

their parents' prayers, and a carefully timed withdrawal of medication, to

let the spirit move them). Matthew Shawcross dragged the station into

the nineteen eighties, spending a fortune on a thirty-second

computer-animated station ID (a fleet of pirouetting, crenellated

spaceships firing crucifix-shaped missiles into a relief map of the

USA, chiselling out the station logo of Liberty, holding up, not a

torch, but a cross), showing the latest, slickest gospel rock video

clips, "Christian" soap operas and "Christian" game shows, and, above

all, identifying issues - communism, depravity, godlessness in schools

- which could serve as the themes for telethons to raise funds to

expand the station, so that future telethons might be even more

successful. Ten years later, he owned one of the country's biggest

cable TV networks. John Shawcross was at college, on the verge of

taking up paleontology, when AIDS first began to make the news in a big

way. As the epidemic snowballed, and the spiritual celebrities he most

admired (his father included) began proclaiming the disease to be God's

will, he found himself increasingly obsessed by it. In an age where the

word miracle belonged to medicine and science, here was a plague,

straight out of the Old Testament, destroying the wicked and sparing

the righteous (give or take some haemophiliacs and transfusion

recipients), proving to Shawcross beyond any doubt that sinners could

be punished in this life, as well as in the next. This was, he decided,

valuable in at least two ways: not only would sinners to whom damnation

had seemed a remote and unproven threat now have a powerful, worldly

reason to reform, but the righteous would be strengthened in their

resolve by this unarguable sign of heavenly support and approval.

In short, the mere existence of AIDS made John Shawcross feel good, and

he gradually became convinced that some kind of personal involvement with

HIV, the AIDS virus, would make him feel even better. He lay awake at

night, pondering God's mysterious ways, and wondering how he could get in

on the act. AIDS research would be aimed at a cure, so how could he

possibly justify involving himself with that? Then, in the early hours

of one cold morning, he was woken by sounds from the room next to his.

Giggling, grunting, and the squeaking of bed springs. He wrapped his

pillow around his ears and tried to go back to sleep, but the sounds

could not be ignored - nor could the effect they wrought on his own

fallible flesh. He masturbated for a while, on the pretext of trying to

manually crush his unwanted erection, but stopped short of orgasm and

lay, shivering, in a state of heightened moral perception. It was a

different woman every week; he'd seen them leaving in the morning. He'd

tried to counsel his fellow student, but had been mocked for his

troubles. Shawcross didn't blame the poor young man; was it any wonder

people laughed at the truth, when every movie, every book, every

magazine, every rock song, still sanctioned promiscuity and perversion,

making them out to be normal and good? The fear of AIDS might have saved

millions of sinners, but millions more still ignored it, absurdly

convinced that their chosen partners could never be infected, or trusting

in condoms to frustrate the will of God! The trouble was, vast

segments of the population had, in spite of their wantonness, remained

uninfected, and the use of condoms, according to the studies he'd read,

did seem to reduce the risk of transmission. These facts disturbed

Shawcross a great deal. Why would an omnipotent God create an imperfect

tool? Was it a matter of divine mercy? That was possible, he conceded,

but it struck him as rather distasteful: sexual Russian roulette was

hardly a fitting image of the Lord's capacity for forgiveness. Or -

Shawcross tingled all over as the possibility crystalised in his brain

- might AIDS be no more than a mere prophetic shadow, hinting at a

future plague a thousand times more terrible? A warning to the wicked to

change their ways while they still had time? An example to the righteous

as to how they might do His will? Shawcross broke into a sweat. The

sinners next door moaned as if already in Hell, the thin dividing wall

vibrated, the wind rose up to shake the dark trees and rattle his

window. What was this wild idea in his head? A true message from God,

or the product of his own imperfect understanding? He needed guidance!

He switched on his reading lamp and picked up his Bible from the

bedside table. With his eyes closed, he opened the book at random.

He recognised the passage at the very first glance. He ought to have;

he'd read it and reread it a hundred times, and knew it almost by heart.

The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. At first, he tried to deny his

destiny: He was unworthy! A sinner himself! An ignorant child! But

everyone was unworthy, everyone was a sinner, everyone was an ignorant

child in God's eyes. It was pride, not humility, that spoke against

God's choice of him. By morning, not a trace of doubt remained.

Dropping paleontology was a great relief; defending Creationism with any

conviction required a certain, very special, way of thinking, and he had

never been quite sure that he could master it. Biochemistry, on the other

hand, he mastered with ease (confirmation, if any was needed, that he'd

made the right decision). He topped his classes every year, and went on to

do a PhD in Molecular Biology at Harvard, then postdoctoral work at the

NIH, and fellowships in Canada and France. He lived for his work, pushing

himself mercilessly, but always taking care not to be too conspicuous in

his achievements. He published very little, usually as a modest third or

fourth co-author, and when at last he flew home from France, nobody in his

field knew, or would have much cared, that John Shawcross had returned,

ready to begin his real work. Shawcross worked alone in the

gleaming white building that served as both laboratory and home. He

couldn't risk taking on employees, no matter how closely their beliefs

might have matched his own. He hadn't even let his parents in on the

secret; he told them he was engaged in theoretical molecular genetics,

which was a lie of omission only - and he had no need to beg his father

for money week by week since, for tax reasons, twenty-five percent of

the Shawcross empire's massive profit was routinely payed into accounts

in his name. His lab was filled with shiny grey boxes, from which

ribbon cables snaked to PCs; the latest generation, fully automated,

synthesisers and sequencers of DNA, RNA, and proteins (all available

off the shelf, to anyone with the money to buy them). Half a dozen

robot arms did all the grunt work: pipetting and diluting reagents,

labelling tubes, loading and unloading centrifuges. At first

Shawcross spent most of his time working with computers, searching

databases for the sequence and structure information that would provide

him with starting points, later buying time on a supercomputer to

predict the shapes and interactions of molecules as yet unknown. When

aqueous X-ray diffraction become possible, his work sped up by a factor

of ten; to synthesise and observe the actual proteins and nucleic acids

was now both faster, and more reliable, than the hideously complex

process (even with the best short-cuts, approximations and tricks) of

solving Schrödinger's equation for a molecule consisting of hundreds of

thousands of atoms. Base by base, gene by gene, the Shawcross virus

grew. As the woman removed the last of her clothes, Shawcross, sitting

naked on the motel room's plastic bucket chair, said, "You must have

had sexual intercourse with hundreds of men." "Thousands. Don't

you want to come closer, honey? Can you see okay from there?"

"I can see fine." She lay back, still for a moment with her hands

cupping her breasts, then she closed her eyes and began to slide her

palms across her torso. This was the two hundredth occasion on which

Shawcross had paid a woman to tempt him. When he had begun the

desensitising process five years before, he had found it almost

unbearable. Tonight he knew he would sit calmly and watch the woman

achieve, or skilfully imitate, orgasm, without experiencing even a

flicker of lust himself. "You take precautions, I suppose."

She smiled, but kept her eyes closed. "Damn right I do. If a man won't

wear a condom, he can take his business elsewhere. And I put it on, he

doesn't do it himself. When I put it on, it stays on. Why, have you

changed your mind?" "No. Just curious." Shawcross always paid

in full, in advance, for the act he did not perform, and always

explained to the woman, very clearly at the start, that at any time he

might weaken, he might make the decision to rise from the chair and

join her. No mere circumstantial impediment could take any credit for

his inaction; nothing but his own free will stood between him and

mortal sin. Tonight, he wondered why he continued. The "temptation"

had become a formal ritual, with no doubt whatsoever as to the outcome.

No doubt? Surely that was pride speaking, his wiliest and most

persistent enemy. Every man and woman forever trod the edge of a

precipice over the inferno, at risk more than ever of falling to those

hungry flames when he or she least believed it possible.

Shawcross stood and walked over to the woman. Without hesitation, he

placed one hand on her ankle. She opened her eyes and sat up, regarding

him with amusement, then took hold of his wrist and began to drag his hand

along her leg, pressing it hard against the warm, smooth skin. Just

above the knee, he began to panic - but it wasn't until his fingers

struck moisture that he pulled free with a strangled mewling sound, and

staggered back to the chair, breathless and shaking. That was more

like it. The Shawcross virus was to be a masterful piece of biological

clockwork (the likes of which William Paley could never have imagined -

and which no godless evolutionist would dare attribute to the "blind

watchmaker" of chance). Its single strand of RNA would describe, not

one, but four potential organisms. Shawcross virus A, SVA, the

"anonymous" form, would be highly infectious, but utterly benign. It

would reproduce within a variety of host cells in the skin and mucous

membranes, without causing the least disruption to normal cellular

functions. Its protein coat had been designed so that every exposed

site mimicked some portion of a naturally occurring human protein; the

immune system, being necessarily blind to these substances (to avoid

attacking the body itself), would be equally blind to the invader.

Small numbers of SVA would make their way into the blood stream,

infecting T-lymphocytes, and triggering stage two of the virus's genetic

program. A system of enzymes would make RNA copies of hundreds of genes

from every chromosome of the host cell's DNA, and these copies would then

be incorporated into the virus itself. So, the next generation of the

virus would carry with it, in effect, a genetic fingerprint of the host in

which it had come into being. Shawcross called this second form SVC,

the C standing for "customised" (since every individual's unique

genetic profile would give rise to a unique strain of SVC), or

"celibate" (because, in a celibate person, only SVA and SVC would be

present). SVC would be able to survive only in blood, semen and

vaginal fluids. Like SVA, it would be immunologically invisible, but

with an added twist: its choice of camouflage would vary wildly from

person to person, so that even if its disguise was imperfect, and

antibodies to a dozen (or a hundred, or a thousand) particular strains

could be produced, universal vaccination would remain impossible.

Like SVA, it would not alter the function of its hosts - with one minor

exception. When infecting cells in the vaginal mucous membrane, the

prostate, or the seminiferous epithelium, it would cause the manufacture

and secretion from these cells of several dozen enzymes specifically

designed to degrade varieties of rubber. The holes created by a brief

exposure would be invisibly small - but from a viral point of view, they'd

be enormous. Upon reinfecting T-cells, SVC would be capable of

making an "informed decision" as to what the next generation would be.

Like SVA, it would create a genetic fingerprint of its host cell. It

would then compare this with its stored, ancestral copy. If the two

fingerprints were identical - proving that the customised strain had

remained within the body in which it had begun - its daughters would

be, simply, more SVC. However, if the fingerprints failed to match,

implying that the strain had now crossed into another person's body

(and if gender-specific markers showed that the two hosts were not of

the same sex), the daughter virus would be a third variety, SVM,

containing both fingerprints. The M stood for "monogamous", or

"marriage certificate". Shawcross, a great romantic, found it almost

unbearably sweet to think of two people's love for each other being

expressed in this way, deep down at the subcellular level, and of man

and wife, by the very act of making love, signing a contract of

faithfulness until death, literally in their own blood. SVM would be,

externally, much like SVC. Of course, when it infected a T-cell it

would check the host's fingerprint against both stored copies, and if

either one matched, all would be well, and more SVM would be produced.

Shawcross called the fourth form of the virus SVD. It could arise in

two ways; from SVC directly, when the gender markers implied that a

homosexual act had taken place, or from SVM, when the detection of a

third genetic fingerprint suggested that the molecular marriage

contract had been violated. SVD forced its host cells to

secrete enzymes that catalysed the disintegration of vital structural

proteins in blood vessel walls. Sufferers from an SVD infection would

undergo massive haemorrhaging all over their body. Shawcross had found

that mice died within two or three minutes of an injection of

pre-infected lymphocytes, and rabbits within five or six minutes; the

timing varied slightly, depending on the choice of injection site.

SVD was designed so that its protein coat would degrade in air, or in

solutions outside a narrow range of temperature and pH, and its RNA alone

was non-infectious. Catching SVD from a dying victim would be almost

impossible. Because of the swiftness of death, an adulterer would have no

time to infect their innocent spouse. The widow or widower would, of

course, be sentenced to a life of celibacy, but Shawcross did not think

this too harsh: it took two people to make a marriage, he reasoned, and

some small share of the blame could always be apportioned to the other

partner. Even assuming that the virus fulfilled its design goals

precisely, Shawcross acknowledged a number of complications:

Blood transfusions would become impractical until a foolproof method of

killing the virus in vitro was found. Five years ago this would have been

tragic, but Shawcross was encouraged by the latest work in synthetic and

cultured blood components, and had no doubt that his epidemic would cause

more funds and manpower to be diverted into the area. Transplants were

less easily dealt with, but Shawcross thought them somewhat frivolous

anyway, an expensive and rarely justifiable use of scarce resources.

Doctors, nurses, dentists, paramedics, police, undertakers . . . well, in

fact everyone, would have to take extreme precautions to avoid exposure to

other people's blood. Shawcross was impressed, though of course not

surprised, at God's foresight here: the rarer and less deadly AIDS virus

had gone before, encouraging practices verging on the paranoid in dozens

of professions, multiplying rubber glove sales by orders of magnitude. Now

the overkill would all be justified, since everyone would be infected

with, at the very least, SVC. Rape of virgin by virgin would become a

sort of biological shot-gun wedding; any other kind would be murder and

suicide. The death of the victim would be tragic, of course, but the

near-certain death of the rapist would surely be an overwhelming

deterrent. Shawcross decided that the crime would virtually disappear.

Homosexual incest between identical twins would escape punishment,

since the virus could have no way of telling one from the other. This

omission irritated Shawcross, especially since he was unable to find

any published statistics that would allow him to judge the prevalence

of such abominable behaviour. In the end he decided that this minor

flaw would constitute a necessary, token remnant - a kind of moral

fossil - of man's inalienable potential to consciously choose evil.

Greg Egan - SS - The Moral Virologist.pdf

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