an alternate Elizabeth... (ngoverse tangent, short.)

[Artifex]

I guess it's not a Ngo story if the Arlunian Plague isn't part of it.

[Sharpnel]

I guess it's not a Ngo story if the Arlunian Plague isn't part of it.

Both a good and bad thing. It would be nice to see another Ngo story that didn't include it. However, it has become the catalyst for the rise of Kowloon in all of the AUs, so it would be difficult to do the Ngo story without it.

[kindalas]

Both a good and bad thing. It would be nice to see another Ngo story that didn't include it. However, it has become the catalyst for the rise of Kowloon in all of the AUs, so it would be difficult to do the Ngo story without it.

I don't remember it from when Elizabeth was a mercenary and then she led Kowloon on an invasion of the WoB protectorate and killed everyone.

[croaker]

I don't remember it from when Elizabeth was a mercenary and then she led Kowloon on an invasion of the WoB protectorate and killed everyone.

Yeah, that was waaaaaay back in the day.

[Cannonshop]

"...level zero, you're sure?"

"Pretty damned sure, Peter."  Patrick Ngo, the Duke of Kowloon said gravely, he looked like a man who had no sleep.

Regent Peter Steiner-Davion sat in his office on Tharkad.  "I'll order the quarantine." he said, "How far do your projections show the spread?"

"Pretty far at this point.  We've got contained outbreaks on a dozen or so planets, and we're enacting an emergency plan to try to study how the viral lifecycle works, but we could sure use anyone with biowarfare experience in the CMC."

"You'll get it.  I...I'll also lean on Morgan and see if we can't get some of the Wolf scientists."

"Do that, and anyone else who can help.  This bug is bad shit Your Majesty, it seems to have gotten past the safety equipment on the first and second expeditions to Arluna, and it's already showing up with dead ships."

"you've got it.  God, Victor and Kate are both gonna be horrified when they get back from Clanspace."

"Pass along to them, maybe they can get the Clanners to send aid-we need every epidemiologist, microbiologist and fringe expert we can get on this."  Patrick suggested, "just a suggestion, of course."

"Already on that, Pat.  How's your little sister doing?"

"Freaking out, geeking out.  Some of her inventions are turning out to be useful, some of them aren't, but she's on board with this effort, maybe a little over-board."

"is that bad?"

"She's stopped being mad at me over the Trial, at least." Patrick said, "But she's making life twice as hell for her treatment team because she's pretty much given up on sleep, I had to put a couple of Chiefs from the Corpsman School on her to make sure she's taking her meds."

[Daryk]

It's so nice to see rational Steiner-Davion kids...  :)

[Shadow_Wraith]

Yup, nothing like a Chief to ensure that Liz is taking care of herself!

[Cannonshop]

"...It's the most logical approach." Elizabeth argued.

"Thousands of possible casualties, Liz."

"We don't have a good simulation that actually simulates this bug.  You need to send a much, much, bigger contingent, and I need to be on it." she argued.

Patrick froze. "WHAT??"

"we need more hard information, info we can either get watching people die in hospitals here, or watching how it behaves there.  Team One and Team Two both were too small a sample size.  Team Three needs to be large enough to get good statistical samples and run verifiable testing...and I need to be on that team."  she crossed her arms, "I am volunteering."

"Out of the question, good god, Elizabeth, your TDS, your Syndrome!"

"Syndrome's neurological, obviously I'm not a good guinea-pig, but it also means you've got a disposable scientist you can send to run the experiment." she stated, "Because I'm not going to live to thirty-five anyway, but some of the best minds we have available need to live a lot longer and you can't afford to waste them."

"It's a one-way trip, Elizabeth!"

"I am aware." she said, "It has to be done, I'm available to do it, and I'm a hell of a lot cheaper to replace than the actual microbiologists working at the labs.  Nobody with any sense is going to notice one more mad scientist or spoiled little rich girl, but maybe being on-site means we can crack this thing before it kills everybody. everyone else who could go, is too valuable. It's a simple value transaction, Pat-you're a duke, you are responsible for over a billion and a half lives just on your own, do the math, you'll see I am absolutely correct."

"No." he said, "I can't, liz..."

"You have to, it's the right call. sign the transfer. do the right thing for our people."

[Daryk]

She's missing the fact that she's ALSO talking about her treatment team, AND Coast Guard minders (at a minimum)...

[georgiaboy]

In a way she is not replaceable.


Being a Spark, she has been coming up with ideas that work that are so far in Left field, the ball is landing at Home Plate.


Also, she has not trained a replacement for herself. She is not replaceable, till there is an actual replacement!

[Daryk]

And all of her interns were just carted off to Lohengrin...  ::)

[georgiaboy]

They were recruited into the service, then assigned to Liz

[Cannonshop]

"...she's practically under house arrest, Hank."  Pat looked tired, and he looked old.

"kind of fits with the stereotype for the family, Pat."  Henry looked strangely at ease, relayed through the HPG network from his reassignment base at Arc Royal.  "I assume you've got her leash good and tight, our sister can be pretty damned hard-headed."

"Evelynn and Li wrote a set of qualifications for volunteers that she couldn't qualify for without a waiver." Patrick said, "And I have Coastie Marines on her heels, with a couple of Corpsmen to make sure she takes her medications...How are they treating you in Wolf country?"

"Not too bad, I drink twice a week with a few guys who we bumped heads with during the whole Ulric trial.  It isn't much different from drinking with Lyran troops, except maybe the stink-eye has more to do with my singing voice, than what uniform I was wearing back in the fifties.  Grapevine here says the Falcons may be planning probes into your neck of the woods again."

"Well, we'll be ready for them." Patrick said firmly.

"Make sure you are, they might interpret the outbreaks in that area as a weakness."

[Cannonshop]

Prison Arcology 77R, Winter, Northern glacial region, December 22, 3065...

Prisoner N9315125M9138  was still alive when the Marines found her in the bowels of the now inactive prison complex.  What she'd done to stay alive was...understandably horrifying.

but the young woman was alive, though if they'd gotten here ten minutes later she wouldn't have been.  as things stood, hypothermia and dehydration meant a fairly easy job getting her out of the labyrinthine complex.

Most of the prisoners who'd been left here by the panic, and by the dying guards, had been decently put down.  well, 'decent' being a matter of some argument, but it meant that in 900 cubic kilometers of complex, they only found one survivor, and she'd survived by dining on the remains of her cell-mate.

***

Nha Tranh...

"what was she in for again?" Duke Patrick Ngo asked.  He was acting as the temporary Margrave for the theater, as Sharon Bryan wouldn't be giving anyone any orders, ever again.  (this is what happens to you when the Jade Falcons drop on your command post.)

"Shipjacking, but she confessed to both piracy, and to arranging the deaths of her pirate compatriots-the judge at the time listed it as thirty seven cases of Vigilante justice, but she was still doing life for accessory to piratical acts."

"is she worth it?" he asked.

Bianh vu Dao frowned, "A sol-belter starship navigator?  that is like asking if germanium is worth money, your Grace sir.  with your permission I can have the psychiatric teams work her over to bury the traumas and make her functional-we need navigators to maintain the Quarantine internally, and she's already survived primary and secondary infections...but I need a pardon, and you're the Margrave, you can give me one."

Patrick frowned, sighed, and signed.  "I hope you're right." he said, "About her being useful."

"When we're finished, she will be."

[Cannonshop]

[out of story]

One of the major changes from the mainline Ngoverse, is that the CMC (Commonwealth Medical Corps) actually reacted in a timely and intelligent manner to the outbreak, and the financial resources of the Federated Commonwealth weren't devoured in a civil war in part as a result.  (a big part of this is that there was no assassination of Melissa-Katherine had too many other irons in the fire and sufficient distractions.)  Part of this, as well, is because Nondi was revealed to be 'not really all there' much earlier, thus, no emotionally unstable regent, and finally, Peter, not Katherine, was stuck on Tharkad doing the paperwork while Victor and his friends went to Huntress.

you can think of these as 'ripples' from having a mad scientist in the household in the early fifties.  Arthur having a very dangerous girl-pet meant Katherine's focus went subtly shifted to a more protective attitude toward her siblings.

Upshot is, less than half the casualties aggregate from the Plague in its first three years-instead of over twelve billion, less than seven.

which is still pretty horrible, but it's manageably horrible.

Liz didn't come up with the cure or the treatment, but she did contribute to it...

[/out of story]

Biology stopped being boring when she treated it like an engineering problem, and very small, printed robots, assembled at the molecular/atomic level using very fine tools.

Nanotechnology had once been the stuff of speculative fiction, and finding resources on actual work was difficult.  Another layer of lost knowledge, but not so lost as others.  Fiction had been based on something, just the way that she'd learned the words 'Von Neumann Machine' in speculative fiction from pre-spaceflight.  combinining the two, and you get...

Molecular Biology.  Bioweapons...and maybe a means to combat them.

and that made medicine interesting enough to bother learning.

[Cannonshop]

"Mister Stevens, welcome back." Elizabeth Ngo announced.

Adept VII Beta Stevens paled.  "I was assigned here against my will, Madame Ngo."

"Yah, I know, I need you to tell me I'm wrong." she said.

"What?"

"I need someone with scientific chops to tell me how to misuse what I think I've found." she said, "Someone to tell me all the reasons it can be abused so we can come up with countermeasures before I release it."

He blinked.  "I don't understand."

"I have six Clan medical scientists acting like I found panacea." she told him, "when six Clanner trained scientists (who still act like they're owned property) are cheerleading, I need someone to be a voice of reason. You oppose just about everything I believe in, that makes your voice the sort i need to hear-read the extracts and the experimental data, and tell me how horribly I've just screwed up, before someone who isn't a voice of reason figures it out.  What kind of evil is going to get loose after I publish, Stevens, and how can it be countered?"

"Aren't you the one who always says science isn't about 'why', but 'why not?" he demanded.

"Yeah, but htis time it's about people and their lives and that means that the 'why not' is a hell of a lot bigger.  are you going to argue semantics about my ethics without looking at the work, or are you at least going to argue about my ethics after looking at the work?"

[jonen c]

She's cracked retroviral engineering, hasn't she.

That's certainly a bag of tricks that she's right to be wary of.

[qc mech3]

Or nanobot medicine with Von Newman properties.  :-X

[Daryk]

She found a cure in only 3 years?!  :o

[georgiaboy]

She did not find a cure, yet. She found a way to do gene engineering.


Now some one has to identify the gene that causes the Flu and the gene for replication of the flu.


Also, someone has to identify the gene for Liz's sickness. and cure her.


I always thought the Clan Scientist could already do this, Because of the Gene Caste people of the Clans.

[Cannonshop]

Dear Arthur.

Loved the pics of your wedding.  Estelle seems like a really nice girl.  I have news.

I think I found the cure.  Not just for the Arluna Flu, but for my problem.

There's just this one little tiny issue.

if we can do a thing, does that automatically imply that we ought to do it?  I have uncovered a very...it's ethically very dangerous, Arthur.

If I were Penny Doons, or Daphne Rowe, I might try anyway...but there are bigger issues than you can even imagine involved here.  I know what they were trying to create with 21b now.  what they were really after, and I've actually cracked it.  I know how to accomplish it, but that leads to the question of whether it's right to take the next step.

This is so ****** dangerous, Arthur.  I may have discovered the cave of knowledge that should be forgotten and buried.  Balzac suggested that this was also the direction that gerontological work was going during the Star League-that secret science that let people be  vigorous and active fifty years into their first century, only to decay in the last ten of their second.

Stevens pointed out that there are three traps.

1. Who should have this technology.  If we limit it to the upper classes, then society becomes permanently stratified between an eternal ruling class and a mass of oppressed peons.  social development, possibly also scientific development, becomes frozen, humanity stratifies stagnates, and eventually if it doesn't die, ends up deserving to.

2. Should anyone have this technology, they will have an almost impossible advantage over everyone else-give it to an ambitious peasant and it's only a matter of patience before he or she becomes a ruler, the one-eyed man king.

3. what is the outcome of extremely long life, with the potential for eternity in the mortal realm? (barring death or violence)?? how long can a mind endure before it fractures under the weight of its experiences?  How long before the beneficiaries of this become accursed and insane? we're not without limit, we are still physical beings, and while mankind has yet to live long enough to fill up a brain to the point it can't take new information, that doesn't mean that can't happen-it just means we have never before been able to probe that limit.

If I don't destroy my research, if it gets out, will the end product of it even be human after a time?

I remember Kate was shocked and horrified by my invention of replicating combat machines-those didn't have the lack of limits this technology represents, and it didn't scare me because I understood what the hard limits would be-I'm not sure about what my science has created here.

for the first time, I have created something that I, myself, am afraid to implement...and I am saddled with the responsibility to either implement it, or destroy it in hopes nobody else can discover it..but there is a truth in science.  That which can be invented, will be invented.  someone else, someone soon, will discover the same thing I have, and will they ask these questions if I don't get there first with the answers?

what horrors could accrue from that, I don't know, but it keeps me from resting.

I will always be your Friend,

Elizabeth.[/font]

[georgiaboy]

When it becomes known, and it will (even if destroyed) that is half the process of being able to recreate it.


Thomas, the Master, will want it to control the Universe.


The Drac's will want it to create the ultimate Samurai.


The Capellans will want to enslave everyone.




To have this, Liz needs to find how to lock and prevent gene modification, where you have to have a specific passphrase to unlock it.


Unless the MofC has been doing their catgirls and mermaids by cosmetic surgery, wouldn't they be doing gene modification also?

[Daryk]

I think the Belters were further along than the Canopians.

Liz wouldn't be Liz if she didn't release this information to EVERYBODY.  That's the real issue she's struggling with.

[idea weenie]

The Capellans will want to enslave everyone.

To have this, Liz needs to find how to lock and prevent gene modification, where you have to have a specific passphrase to unlock it.

Imagine the Capellans getting both parts of this technology.  They make the perfect servitor caste, then gene-lock them so the people cannot be changed and their children are always born the same way.

Hopefully Sun-Tzu might just go with converting the criminals into servitors and making them sterile, so you aren't punishing the children

Still, the letter from her makes me think the Star League was experimenting with the PAX. 

[glitterboy2098]

She did not find a cure, yet. She found a way to do gene engineering.


Now some one has to identify the gene that causes the Flu and the gene for replication of the flu.


Also, someone has to identify the gene for Liz's sickness. and cure her.


I always thought the Clan Scientist could already do this, Because of the Gene Caste people of the Clans.

they alter the genetics of the fertilized ovum before gestation. even IRL it fairly easy to alter the genetics of single cells, once you know the sequences you need to replace and what you need to replace it with. so they engineer people when they are still just one undifferentiated cell, then grow the result.
What liz did was invent tools that let you alter the genetics of an adult person, and propagate those changes across the billions of cells in a living body. and do it in a controlled and safe manner. this is something traditional methods (retroviruses and such) can't do. because you can't be sure that every cell with get the change, nor that the new sequences will get inserted into the correct location on each one. and if that gets screwed up, the end result can be everything from cancer to outright cell death. which spread across a whole body is not a good result either way.

the danger with nano-bot retroviral systems though is that you can just as easily program the nanobots to dismantle DNA, or to cause cancer, or generally become a super nasty tailored plague that can't be fought using conventional medicine, and which immune systems can't cope with.

[Nikas_Zekeval]

the danger with nano-bot retroviral systems though is that you can just as easily program the nanobots to dismantle DNA, or to cause cancer, or generally become a super nasty tailored plague that can't be fought using conventional medicine, and which immune systems can't cope with.

That is the mildest of Elizabeth's nightmares here.  She figured out what the SLDF was trying to get 21B, the source of the Alura Flu, to do.

IIRC it is something like "The Pax" from Firefly.  Meant to eliminate aggression, it was a 'pacification' bioagent.  Only they got their biology wrong and made a Kiss Your Ass Goodbye plague.

Elizabeth could use her discovery to do what the makers of 21B dreamed of.  Turn people into slaves down to their genetic structure.

[Cannonshop]

Science isn't about 'why' it's about 'why not'.

She'd found the 'why not'.  bt what to do about it now?

"One of the small benefits of being in charge, Liz."  Elizabeth raised her eyes, noting the restraints, seeing her older brother on the far side of the ferroglass.

"you don't know what this will do!" she shouted.  the thick containment vessel covered her words, as the oxygenated fluid filled it. the speaker beside her spoke again.

"One of those small benefits, I can make you do the things you need to do to live."

Stop. I hadn't decided yet!!

a brief sensation of drowning, and she felt the tremors start, the agonizing seizures of stage two cholmann's syndrome.

frantically she reached for something, anything as her entire being burst into practiced agony.

it can still fail, it can still fail...please god let it fail.

The rational part of her stepped back.  the nanoscopic particle machines are being activated.

god let it fail, let this be my biggest error. it mustn't work.

no. god no....


somewhere in there, she realized the process wasn't painless, it's just that her own pain tolerance was so high she barely noticed the shift from seizure state agony, to the sensation as the procedure took hold.

NO.  If it works, someone else can replicate it!!

inevitably, liz was realizing that when it comes to prayers for unsupported miracles, god says no.

[Cannonshop]

Elizabeth woke with certainty.

"Jo, call a meeting of all staff, and get the demonstration materials ready in bay four-oh-one, will you?"

"Yes mum."

if i don't do something about this, it will get out, and it's not the guys with bad intent we need to watch out for.

She rode a lift up to storage fourteen.

The technology could cure the plague, it could also enslave the human race, and there wasn't a way to prevent that.

but there was a means to delay it.

if only for a little longer.

Eighteen thousand kilograms of antihydrogen, the power project's intended fuel individually wrapped in carbon.  Tons of it.

enough to convert Boojum Eight into vapor and high speed debris, unsafe at any speed, really.

Liz set the detonator up, and armed it, on one of the barrels.

Then, she set the timer, and headed for the staff meeting where everyone critical to the project was gathered to finally decide how to present their research to the rest of the galaxy.


at noon, December 25, 3067, four am Nha Tranh time, Elizabeth Ngo, and her entire research staff, died in an antimatter reaction.  Whatever her discovery had been, would remain unknown, a source for speculation and conspiracy theories for the next hundred years.

[ThePW]

In the end, she ate the bullet. What makes her a heartless &^%* is that she took out EVERYONE with her. That... is one cold ending, sir. Excellent story. Pissed me the HELL off but.... excellent story.

[Giovanni Blasini]

Wow. I mean, I get it, I'm not even sure if she was right or wrong, but wow.