Authors: Ranjini Iyer
The Colossus (21 page)
Max tore open a new bag of whole-wheat flour. She was about to make a batch of chocolate chip cookies for a client. With maltitol, 80 percent cacao dark chocolate chips, egg substitute, and a combination of applesauce and a brand new olive-oil-based butter substitute, Olicol. It didn’t smell appetizing, but she had been assured in a secretive whisper by the product demonstrator, that the end result, if not buttery, did not taste like cardboard.
As long as the money was good, she’d make them.
Max creamed the maltitol and the butter substitute then added the egg substitute. Kim giggled, seeing the faces Max was making as she added every ingredient. Max exaggerated her horrified expressions, encouraged by Kim’s delight.
And since it was inevitable, Max began thinking about him. She thought of him once every hour. At least once every hour.
More than three weeks had past since she had last seen Julian. A lifetime ago.
She had fainted, of course, and missed all the police action. When she came to, she was home and there they were—Julian holding her hand and Kim fussing about the room.
She ought to be grateful that Julian had walked in—blundered in, really—with noble intentions. But as she sat up in bed and tried to explain how complicated things were, he just hadn’t gotten it.
“I thought your uncle loved you so much,” he had said. “Why the poison and the gun?”
“He couldn’t bring himself to poison me,” Max said. “I think he planned to drink the poisoned cup himself from the start—”
“Perhaps,” Julian almost snapped. “But he did try and shoot you.”
“I don’t think he intended to shoot me, either,” Max insisted, irritation rising like a ribbon of fire within her chest. “The gun just went off.”
Julian scoffed. “That shot was meant to kill. You got lucky, Maxine Rosen.”
As Max’s annoyance grew stronger, Julian went on, working the story out like Hercule Poirot on speed. All this when Max was only just coming to terms with the painful reality of losing Uncle Ernst and finding out that he had killed her father, had even contemplated killing her.
Max finally lost her temper and began shouting, asking Julian to just shut up. She didn’t remember her exact words, but she had ended her rant by calling him cold, unfeeling, and insensitive.
“You should consider it a favor that I even came looking for you after the inexcusable way you left Karachi,” Julian had said.
“You used me!” Max responded harshly. “I fell in love with you, Julian McIntosh. You lied to me. You used me for thrills. Thanks for the favor!”
Julian got up. “That’s how you see it, do you?”
That was when Kim entered the room bearing smiles and a tray full of fresh-baked chewy oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and homemade thick-cut fries, both of which Max loved.
Julian gave Max an angry look, said goodbye, and stormed out of the apartment.
Max sighed. What a way to lose a great friend and possible lover. She should write a book.
How to meet a beautiful, sweet, kind man, give him a great reason to have dinner with you, embark on an adventure, fall in love, solve a mystery together. And instead of thanking him for looking for you in your hour of need, insult him and drive him away.
Nice work, Max.
“It’s time you stopped beating that batter,” Kim said.
Max smiled sheepishly. She arranged lime-sized balls on cookie sheets and put them in three layers in her immense oven.
“Want some coffee?” Max said.
“Sure, but I can go get it,” Kim said and left.
Losing Uncle Ernst and Julian in the space of a few weeks was more than Max could bear.
But she hadn’t had Julian to start with. It had all been a sham. Max sat in front of the oven and watched the cookies bake. Thirty minutes later, she removed tray after tray of thick, chewy chocolate chip cookies that for once made her stomach turn.
“My life has become like these cookies,” she said aloud. “Sweetened by an artificial sugar and full of an unspeakable fat.” She had to taste one before she made another batch. It was for good luck. She always tasted one small piece, although her pastry teacher at the culinary school had said, “Never eat ze product.”
“Ohh,” she cried aloud, holding her hand over her stomach. Missing Julian had become an intense ache. She turned the hot cookie over in her hands, took a bite, and pronounced sadly like he might have, “Not bad, lassie. Not bad at all.”
“Could I have one?”
“Not yet,” she said automatically, “They’re too hot.” She didn’t look up. The cookie blazed into her hand, but she couldn’t put it down.
Surely it wasn’t his voice. Not in her kitchen. That familiar, soothing, deep, delicious, sexy voice. “Julian,” she whispered, putting the cookie down with a wince.
Julian peeled a hot cookie off the sheet. “Ouch!” he cried.
He was dressed in a crisp blue linen shirt and khakis, looking so very, very…
Max felt her mouth go dry.
Julian bit off some of a cookie, swallowed and clutched at his throat.
“
What the devil are these? Vinyl chocolate chip?”
She started putting the cookies on cooling racks.
He dusted crumbs off his hands. “
How urr ye?
” he said in Scottish.
Max didn’t speak.
“Nice kitchen you have here.”
Max mumbled a thank you.
“Thing is,” he said, “are you free for a project? A research project?”
Max turned to him with hands on her hips and an “are you out of your mind” expression.
Julian’s face took on an apprehensive look. The Scottish lilt in his accent became more pronounced. “It’s…it’s food related. It’s a historic food thing.” He was looking at everything in the kitchen but her. He picked up a spatula and began picking at its silicone end. Max snatched it away from him. “Well, someone wants to write a book about ancient feasts from all over the world and, uh, I suggested adding recipes.” He began running his fingers through his hair. “Of course, someone needs to test them because they want to market it as a cookbook, too, and I thought perhaps you might—” He looked at her with hope in his eyes. “Be interested?”
Max steeled herself. “No,” she said more curtly than she had intended. He was being horribly insensitive. “I cannot work with you.”
Julian seemed to have swiftly cast off his nervousness. He smiled a lopsided smile. “In that case, will you have dinner with me?”
“I cannot get over the fact that you lied to me,” she said.
Julian sighed. “All right. If I had told you the truth about Raquel, you’d have stopped looking at me the way you did. Right?” He blinked his eyes a few times. “No one’s looked at me like that, not since I was fifteen. I couldn’t risk losing that even for the few hours I was spending with you. I didn’t think I’d see you again. But you asked me to go to London and that seemed the worst time to tell you.” He looked at the floor. “After that, in Chicago, I admit I wanted to go to India, but you said if I was seeing someone, I couldn’t go with you. It was selfish and stupid. But I was falling for you, too.”
Max tried not to look at him. “That’s twisted,” she said. But her anger had evaporated. And she knew she was blushing blotches of red. Only this time, she didn’t care.
He was smiling broadly now. “Has anyone told you how incredibly beautiful you are? That they could lose themselves in that gorgeous hair of yours—quite literally?” He touched the ends of her hair.
Max’s face was on fire. Julian stuck his finger out just close enough to touch her clavicle.
“What are you doing?” she said quietly.
He took another cookie, his manner quite nonchalant. He was having his intended effect on her, and she knew that he knew that she knew.
“Raquel wanted to get married, as you know.” He pulled himself up on the counter and chewed on the cookie tentatively. “I was going to break up with her, but after our last fight, I tried convincing myself that I loved her. She started to plan the wedding in her usual style—alone. I was in the room, but it made no difference.” His eyes turned to the ceiling. “I sat there, forcing myself to listen. She asked me if I could try and do more with my life—be more ambitious—she didn’t care what I did, but her family did. Could I just look at my options, since we were going to be married and all. I told her I had to go, and I left. I don’t think she even noticed. But Raquel is quite capable of going through with her elaborate wedding plans without me.” He pursed his lips.
Max wanted to laugh, but bit her lip. “So you came here.”
“Almost directly,” he said.
Max started to giggle. He wanted her. He actually wanted her.
Where is your pride, Rosen?
Julian came closer. She could feel his cookie breath on her face. Cookie breath mingled with something minty.
Max stepped back.
Julian pulled her curls away from her face and held them back, clasped in his hand. “Do you know how difficult it was for me to keep my hands off you in London and later in India?”
“That day, when you were at my apartment, you said something in Scottish,” Max said.
“Don’t remember,” Julian said with a smirk, obviously remembering it clearly.
“I want to know what you said.”
“
Dae ye
?” he said with a rakish grin.
“Yes.”
Julian moved closer. “I said you are more beautiful than you will ever know.”
Max fought the urge to leap at him with pleasure. “Do you like my cooking?” she asked calmly. She didn’t want one more boyfriend who depended on her cooking to love her.
Julian put a hand on his chin. “I really didn’t care for that butternut squash flan you made that evening. Too mushy. Or this horrendous vinyl cookie. Other than that, not bad, lassie. Not bad at all.”
It was enough.
She grabbed his face in her hands and kissed him hard. Their lips stayed locked even as she wrapped a leg around his.
Kim entered, gasped, and dropped two cups of coffee on the freshly scrubbed floor.
Max threw her head back and started to laugh.
Two years later
Max opened an email from Kevin.
It’s been a long wait, dear Max. I have some news we have all been waiting for.
The article I wrote in the
New Medicine
journal finally has gotten some attention. GenMed, that maverick new biotech firm, has started investigating the Indus pills. Thank heavens for the one right thing Ernst did before he died. Without him we wouldn’t have had any pill samples.
Anyway, GenMed wants to look into creating a vaccine or a retroviral drug! They sent out a press release some weeks ago. You were away in Scotland. It’ll be a long, drawn-out process to make either of these, and after, to make sure they are universally accepted. But it’s a start.
Point is people are getting interested in what we have to say. Just yesterday I heard whispers about lawsuits against Berliner. One has already been filed in New York, I think.
I hope you won’t ask me how I managed to get the article noticed or how I got the Indus pills into the hands of the powers that be at GenMed, because Hiram may not have fully approved. Emphasis on the
may
.
But this time, my dear, my conscience is absolutely clear.
Love,
Kevin
P.S: What made you think of a remote Scottish castle of all places for the wedding?
Whatever Kevin had done, Max didn’t want to know. In this case, though, the means may have justified the end.
Julian burst in, threw his bag in a corner, and sank into a chair. “That Blake Jackson maybe the most boring man on the planet. I’m always falling asleep at our meetings.” He looked at Max. “Are you all right, love?” He went to her.
Max fell into his arms.
He held her close and kissed the top of her head.
All Max could do was look up at him, shake her head, and blubber incoherently.
Too much happiness sometimes struck her dumb.
This is a work of fiction. However, the following are the facts upon which this story is based. Some literary license has been used with the timing of the factual events as related to genetic discoveries.
This civilization lasted between circa 2500 and 1700 BCE. It was discovered in 1927 through excavations of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro (mound of the dead), both in present day Pakistan. The religious characteristics of its peoples may have continued to form Hinduism.
The script of the era hasn’t been deciphered yet, although some believe it to be Dravidian based. Much about the civilization remains a mystery.
What is known, however, is that these were quite a modern people—their architecture, their granaries, and even their plumbing were all quite advanced for the time. The society was also probably democratic, and they conducted trade with other parts of the world.
(Source:
Enclycopedia.com
)
Why the civilization disappeared despite their advances also remains a mystery. Some experts say it may have been because their rivers ran dry. Others say the reason for their end may have been an epidemic of some sort.
The ruins of this ancient Bronze Age city, some of them remarkably preserved, are still in Pakistan. For more on Mohenjo-daro visit
Ikaria is an island in Greece where people live very long lives. Some call it the place where people forgot to die.
I.G. Farben was a German Limited Company that was a conglomerate of eight leading chemical manufacturers, including Bayer (makers of aspirin), Hoechst, and BASF, which at the time were the largest chemical firms in the world.
Prior to the First World War these firms had established a “community of interests—
Interessengemeinschaft
—hence the initials I.G., and they merged into a single company on December 25, 1925, thus constituting the largest chemical enterprise in the world.
Costly innovations such as the production of synthetic rubber (Buna) from coal or gasoline, persuaded IGF, during the economic crisis of the 1920s and 1930s, to establish close ties with Hitler and the Nazi Party.
In connection with the economic preparations for the forthcoming war against the Soviet Union, the IGF board, with government support, decided to establish an additional Buna works and installations for the production of synthetic fuels. The board decided on Auschwitz in Upper Silesia as the place where the new installation
was to be located, not only because of the excellent rail links and the proximity of its coalmines, but primarily because the concentration camp being constructed offered IGF a considerable and cheap workforce, up to 10,000 prisoners to build the new plant.
At first, the plant managers protested against the maltreatment of the prisoners working in the plant and their poor physical condition, but eventually they went along with SS policy, in order to speed up the work.
There were five I.G. Farben owned or contracted manufacturing plants that produced Buna, most of which utilized slave labor.
The pesticide Zyklon B, for which I.G. Farben held the patent, was manufactured by Degesch (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung), of which I.G. Farben owned 42.2 percent (in shares) and which had I.G. Farben managers in its managing committee. Today, the plant operates as Dwory S.A.
(Source:
holocaustresearchproject.org
)
c400 BCE: In Greece, Hippocrates gives women willow leaf tea to relieve the pain of childbirth.
1763: Reverend Edward Stone of Chipping Norton near Oxford gives dried willow bark to 50 parishioners suffering rheumatic fever. He describes his findings in a letter to the Royal Society of London.
1823: In Italy, the active ingredient is extracted from willow and named salicin.
1838: Salicin is also found in the meadowsweet flower by Swiss and German researchers.
1853: Salicylic acid is made from salicin by French scientists, but it is found to irritate the gut.
1893: German scientists find that adding an acetyl group to salicylic acid reduces its irritant properties.
1897: In Germany, Bayer’s Felix Hoffmann develops and patents a process for synthesizing acetyl salicylic acid, or aspirin. First clinical trials begin.
1899: Clinical trials are successfully completed. Aspirin is launched.
(Source:
aspirin-foundation.com
)
Certain bacteria, such as bacillus, clostridium, sporohalobacter, anaerobacter, and heliobacterium, can form highly resistant dormant structures called endospores.
Endospores show no detectable metabolism and can survive extreme physical and chemical stresses, such as high levels of UV light, gamma radiation, detergents, disinfectants, heat, freezing, pressure, and desiccation.
In this dormant state, these organisms may remain viable for millions of years, and endospores even allow bacteria to survive exposure to the vacuum and radiation in space. According to scientist Dr. Steinn Sigurdsson, “There are viable bacterial spores that have been found that are 40 million years old on Earth—and we know they’re very hardened to radiation.” Endospore-forming bacteria can also cause disease; for example, anthrax can be contracted by the inhalation of
Bacillus anthracis
endospores, and contamination of deep puncture wounds with
Clostridium tetani
endospores causes tetanus.
Genetic predisposition to elevated serum thyrotropin is associated with exceptional longevity. The precise mechanisms responsible for the effects of hypothyroidism on life span, however, have not been clarified, although multiple actions of decreased thyroid hormone concentrations (including lowering the metabolic rate, lowering core body temperature and oxygen consumption, and reducing reactive oxygen species generation and oxidative damage) may play an important role in longevity.
(Source:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2795660/
)
A memory cell refers to one of a number of types of cells that make up part of the immune system. These cells are a vital part of the system that defends the body against bacteria or viruses that cause disease and infection.
The human genome is riddled with dead genes, fossils of a sort, dating back hundreds of thousands of years—the genome’s equivalent of an attic full of broken and useless junk. Some of those genes can rise from the dead like zombies, waking up to cause disease in humans. One such disease is muscular dystrophy. Another that is caused by a virus embedded in the gene is schizophrenia (see below).
(Source: New York Times, “Reanimated ‘Junk’ DNA Is Found to Cause Disease,” by Gina Kolata, published August, 19, 2010)
The culprit genes can be part of what was called non-coding DNA, regions whose function was largely unknown before until September 2012.
In September 2012, the ENCODE (Encyclopedia of DNA Elements) project, completed by hundreds of scientists from dozens of labs around the world, revealed that 80 percent of the human genome serves some purpose and is biochemically active, for example, in regulating the expression of genes situated nearby. What was labeled as “junk” DNA is now believed to be quite functional. The genes may actually be switches that trigger the body to act a certain way that causes it to function properly, as well as malfunction.
This study may lead to the understanding of various forms of cancer and other diseases that may be caused by the way these switches work in human bodies.
Schizophrenia has long been blamed on bad genes. Wrong, says a growing group of psychiatrists. The real culprit, they claim, is a virus (Perron’s virus) that lives entwined in every person’s DNA.
In the past few years, geneticists have pieced together an account of how Perron’s retrovirus entered our DNA. Sixty million years ago, a lemur-like animal—an early ancestor of humans and monkeys—may have contracted an infection. It may not have made the lemur ill, but the retrovirus spread into the animal’s testes (or perhaps its ovaries), and once there, it slipped inside one of the rare germ line cells that produce sperm and eggs. When the lemur reproduced, that retrovirus rode into the next generation aboard the lucky sperm and then moved on from generation to generation, nestled in the DNA. “It’s a rare, random event,” says Robert Belshaw, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford in England. But such genetic intrusions stick
around a very long time, so humans are chockablock full of these embedded, or endogenous, retroviruses. Our DNA carries dozens of copies of Perron’s virus, now called human endogenous retrovirus W, or HERV-W, at specific addresses on chromosomes 6 and 7.
If our DNA were an airplane carry-on bag, it would be bursting with around 100,000 retrovirus sequences inside us; all told, genetic parasites related to viruses account for more than 40 percent of all human DNA.
(Source: June 2010 issue of
Discover Magazine
, published online November 8, 2010, by Douglas Fox)
The majority of ERVs that occur in vertebrate genomes are ancient, inactivated by mutation, and have reached genetic fixation in their host species. For these reasons, they are extremely unlikely to have negative effects on their hosts except under unusual circumstances.
Nevertheless, it is clear from studies in birds and non-human mammal species, including mice, cats and koala bears, that younger (i.e., more recently integrated) ERVs can be associated with disease. This has led researchers to propose a role for ERVs in several forms of human cancer and autoimmune disease, although conclusive evidence is lacking.
In humans, ERVs have been proposed to be involved in multiple sclerosis (MS). A specific association between MS and the ERVWE1 or ‘syncytin’ gene, which is derived from an ERV insertion, has been reported, along with the presence of an MS-associated retrovirus (MSRV) in patients with the disease. Human ERVs (HERVs) have also been implicated in ALS.
In 2004 it was reported that antibodies to human ERVs were found in greater frequency in the sera of people with schizophrenia.
Additionally, the cerebrospinal fluid of people with recent onset schizophrenia contained levels of a retroviral marker, reverse transcriptase, four times higher than control subjects. Researchers continue to look at a possible link between HERVs and schizophrenia, with the additional possibility of a triggering infection, inducing schizophrenia.
An enzyme is a protein that acts as a catalyst. Enzymes are responsible for accelerating the rate of a reaction. Bacteria release enzymes.
