Chapter 64 end

The rabbit jerked violently, and the needle pierced its waist.Chuanbei watched as the dark red blood filled the needle tube. He carefully returned the rabbit to its cage and divided the blood into three centrifuge tubes.He turned on the centrifuge beside him, inserted the test tubes into the bowl, closed the lid, flipped the switch, and heard the hum gradually turn into a whine, and the centrifugal force began to separate the various components of the blood. He sat back on the wooden chair and looked around aimlessly.The office was dusty and dimly lit, but Kawakita liked it the way it was, and it was best to be unobtrusive.

It was very difficult at the beginning. It was necessary to find a suitable place, install equipment and even pay the rent by myself.The shabby warehouse in Queens dared to ask for this price.Computers are the most difficult item.Instead of buying a new computer, he managed to hack into the Sokolov Medical School's mainframe over long-distance phone lines.This location is relatively safe for running the Genetic Extrapolator program. Looking through the dirty windows, he looked down at the workshop.The vast space is dark and empty, with the only lighting coming from an aquarium on a metal shelf on the opposite wall.He could hear the faint bubbling of the filtration system.The aquarium lights paint the floor a dull green.There are twenty-four or five of them, and he will need more aquariums soon.But money is getting tighter, and that's a real problem.

Chuanbei thought, it's amazing, the simplest answer is also the most beautiful.See this, and the answer is obvious, but being able to see this is the difference between a mortal and a great scientist. Such is the case with Mbawang's enigma.Only he, Chuanbei, became suspicious at first, and then saw the truth clearly, and is now proving his conjecture. The whine of the centrifuge fades away and the end light comes on, blinking monotonously red.Chuanbei got up and opened the lid, and took out the test tube.Rabbit blood is divided into three components: clear plasma at the top, a thin layer of white blood cells in the middle, and a thicker layer of red blood cells at the bottom.He carefully sucked off the plasma, then dripped the blood cells into a row of several watch glasses.Finally, he adds different reagents and enzymes.

One watch glass turns purple. Chuanbei smiled slightly.It's that simple. Flock and Margot accidentally slipped their tongues at the reception, and he was only suspicious at first, but at the moment he was deeply attracted.He had touched the edge of the answer once, but didn't pay much attention at the time.That night, when he stepped onto the river drive amidst the countless escaped guests from the opening reception, he began to think seriously.Afterwards, he inquired about the news in various ways.Later, when he heard Flock claiming that the puzzle had been solved, Chuanbei's curiosity became even stronger.Compared with the man who fought the monster in the dark museum that night, Kawakita's advantage came from the distance, so he could look at the problem more objectively.Regardless of the reason, there are small flaws in Flock's answer, and no one has seen these extremely subtle contradictions.

Everyone except Chuanbei. He was always cautious in his research; cautious, but full of insatiable curiosity.This has served him well in the past, both when he was a student at Oxford and when he first entered the museum.Now he has help again.Prudence had him set keystroke capture in the extrapolator program.Of course, it is based on security considerations, but at the same time, he can know what other people have done with his program. Naturally, he also went back to check what Flock and Margot had done. With just a few key presses, the program retrieves all the questions Flock and Margot asked, every data they entered, and all the results they got.

The data lead him to the real solution to Mbawang's riddle.As long as they know what questions to ask, the answers are in front of them from beginning to end.Chuanbei has long learned how to ask the right questions.Along with the answer came a shocking discovery. Someone knocked lightly on the warehouse door.Chuanbei walked down the steps to the main floor of the warehouse, walking quietly and without hesitation in the darkness. "Who is it?" He asked softly in a hoarse voice. The person outside replied: "Tony." Chuanbei effortlessly slid the iron bar and opened the door.A figure walked into the warehouse.

"It's really dark in there," said the man. He was short and lean, with a unique way of swaying his shoulders from side to side when he walked.He looked around nervously. "You can't turn on the lights," Chuanbei sternly said, "Come with me." They came to the other end of the warehouse.A long table was illuminated by non-luminous infrared lamps.The table is full of drying plant fibers, and there is a scale at the end.Chuanbei scooped up a small handful of fibers and weighed them, took out a few, threw back a few, and finally poured the fibers into a zipper sealed bag.

He watched the visitor expectantly.The other party reached out and took out a roll of crumpled banknotes from his trouser pocket.Chuanbei counted: five pieces of 20 yuan.He nodded and handed over the small sealed bag.The man snatched the bag eagerly, and immediately wanted to unzip the zipper. "Don't stay here!" Chuanbei said. "I'm sorry." The other party said.Taking advantage of the dim light, he ran towards the gate as fast as he could. "Use a larger amount," advises Kawakita, "soak it in boiling water, which will increase the concentration. You'll find the result very refreshing."

The man nods. "Cool." He said slowly, as if pondering over the word. "I can give you more on Tuesday," Kawakita said. "Thank you." The man said softly and left.Chuanbei closed the door and slid on the iron bar.It's been a tough day, he's tired to the bone, but he's looking forward to the night, when the noise of the city will subside and darkness will settle.Night is fast becoming his favorite time of day. Once he had reconstructed what Flock and Margot had done with the program, all the details would be yours.All he needed was to find a fiber sample, and that proved to be the hardest task.The secure holding area has been thoroughly cleaned.After the contents were removed, the crates were set ablaze along with the filling materials.The laboratory where Margot performed the initial analysis is now spotless and herbarium folders have been destroyed.But everyone had forgotten to clean Margo's bag, which was notorious throughout the Anthropology Department for its mess.Out of an abundance of caution, Margo threw the bag into the museum's incinerator a few days after the disaster.But Chuanbei had already found the plant fiber he needed in the bag.

Kawakita's biggest challenge came from propagating the plant from a single fiber, and other ordeals were nothing in comparison.It was an event that made him pull out all the stops, all his knowledge of botany and genetics.He put 120,000 points of energy on this task, didn't bother to think about tenure, and applied for a long-term leave from the museum.Less than five weeks ago, he finally reached his goal.He vividly remembers the ecstasy he felt when he saw a green dot appear on the agar dish.Now that he has a steady supply of large quantities, he's growing plants in aquariums, all inoculated with that reo virus.This peculiar reovirus dates back 65 million years.

It's a wickedly attractive floating-leaf plant that bursts almost constantly into large deep purple flowers with well-veined petals and bright yellow stamens.Viruses pool in tough, fibrous stems.Chuanbei can harvest two pounds of fiber per week, and is confident that the production can be doubled exponentially. The Kosoga tribe was very familiar with the plant, Kawakita thought: What seemed like a godsend turned out to be a curse.They had tried to control its power, but were unsuccessful.The legend is clear: the demon did not keep the agreement, and the demon's son, Mbawang, ran rampant.It turned around and rebelled against its master, and no one could control it. But Chuanbei will not fail.Experiments on rabbit plasma proved that he had succeeded. The last piece of the puzzle also fell into place, recalling what Constable D'Agosta told Bureau agents at the farewell party: They found John Whitsey's double-arrow pendant in the monster's lair and thought This proves that the monster killed Whitsey. Proof that the monster killed Whitsey?What a joke.No, it proved that the monster was Whitsey. Chuanbei remembers very clearly how he figured out everything that day.With God's help, it's like an apocalypse.This conclusion explains everything.The monster, the museum monster, the quadruped, that's Whitsey.The means of proof is at hand: the extrapolator program.Kawakita put human DNA on one side and reovirus on the other, and asked the computer to infer an intermediate species. What the computer came up with was that monster: a quadruped. The reoviruses in this plant are alarming.It is possible that little has changed from the Mesozoic to the present.Accumulated in certain quantities, it has the ability to induce incomparable changes in the infected.Everyone knows that the deepest and most isolated regions of the rainforest hide plants of infinite scientific value, but Kawakita has found his miracle.Whitsey ate the plant fiber, became infected with the reovirus it carried, and became Mbawan. The Kosoga tribe not only called the magical and terrifying plant Mbawan, but also the monster that humans turned into after eating it.Various parts of Kosoga's secret beliefs come alive before Kawakita's eyes.Those plants are a curse, they both hate it and need it.Although the monster always threatened the survival of the master, it also drove away the enemies of the Kosoga tribe.It is possible for the Kosoga tribe to keep only one monster at a time, and more than one is dangerous.They built a religion around the plants themselves, reproduction and harvesting.The climax of the ritual was undoubtedly the creation of a new monster and the forcing of some unwilling human to eat the plant.In the early stages, they needed to feed the plant heavily to make sure he was getting enough reovirus to trigger the physical transformation.When the transformation is over, he only needs to eat a small amount, and there are naturally other sources of protein.The monster must maintain a certain intake, otherwise he will be tortured by severe pain and even madness when his body tries to recover.Of course, he cannot really recover, because death will come before he recovers.The desperate monster would search for a plant substitute wherever he could, and the human hypothalamus was the closest thing he could find. Sitting in the comforting darkness, Kawakita listened to the constant hum of the aquarium, imagining the tragedy unfolding in the jungle.For the first time, the Kosoga tribe saw white men.Whitsey's subordinate Korok was undoubtedly the first to be targeted.Horde monsters may just happen to be old, or incapacitated.Perhaps just as the monster disemboweled Korok, Korok killed it with the expedition's gun.Of course it may not be the case.But when the Kosoga tribe discovered Whitsey, Kawakita knew there was only one possible ending. I don't know what Whitsey felt at the time: tied up, perhaps in some ritual, forced to eat that strange plant he'd picked with his own hands a few days earlier.The native may have boiled water with the leaves of the plant, and may have forced him to eat dried fibers.The natives would have loved to try with the white man what they had failed to do with the tribe: create a monster they could control.Let this monster drive away road builders, prospectors and miners.These people are preparing to invade the mesa from the south and destroy the entire tribe.Let this monster terrorize other tribes nearby, but not frighten its master.Doing so might ensure safety and keep the Kosoga tribe forever isolated from the rest of the world. Still, civilization came with all its scares.Kawakita imagined the day when Whitsey's monster crouched in the jungle and watched as fire rained down from the sky, burning the mesas, the Kosoga tribes, and the precious plants.He was the only one who escaped.The jungle has been destroyed, but he knows where to find the plant fibers that are close to him, because he himself sent them back to America. By the time the mesas burned, Whitsey may have fled.The Kosoga tribe may have once again lost control of the monsters they created.Perhaps Whitsey had had enough of that pathetic misery, and had made up her mind not to be the avenging angel of the Kosoga tribe.Chances are he just wants to go home.As a result, he abandoned the Kosoga tribe, which was later wiped out by modernization. Well, Kawakita basically doesn't care about anthropological details.He was only interested in the immense power that that plant possessed, and only in how to use it. Before considering how to control the monster, it is necessary to control the source of its power. This, Kawakita thought, is why the Kosoga Tribe failed and I will succeed.He is controlling the source of the monster's power.Only he knows how to breed this thorny yet beautiful marsh lily from the depths of the Amazon jungle.Only he knows the correct pH of the water, the proper temperature and light, and the correct ratio of nutrients.Only he knows how to inoculate plants with reovirus. They will depend on him.By splicing genes in rabbit plasma, he was able to purify the virus' source of power, remove those unpleasant side effects, and engineer it into a purer variety. At least he believed he had succeeded. This would be a revolutionary discovery.Everyone knows that viruses insert DNA into the cells of an infected person.In general, viral DNA simply instructs an infected person's cells to make more virus.Every virus known to man, from the flu to AIDS, does this. But this reovirus is different.It gave the infected a whole set of genes: reptilian genes, and ancient reptilian genes at that, genes from sixty-five million years ago.A gene that exists today only in lowly geckos and a few other species.Viruses have apparently also stolen mammalian, and undoubtedly human, genes during these 65 million years.The virus steals genes from its host and incorporates them into the cells of an infected person. Instead of making more viruses, these genes reshape the infected, turning them into monsters bit by bit.The virus directs the body itself, altering the skeletal structure, endocrine system, limbs, skin, hair, and internal organs of the infected, changing behavior, weight, speed, and cunning, giving the infected an unparalleled sense of smell and hearing, but depriving the infected of vision and vocal abilities , granting the infected unrivaled strength, size and speed, but barely touching the hyper-developed primate brain.In short, this drug, this virus, turns infected humans into terrifying killing machines.A more appropriate name would be a symbiote.Because having this virus is a privilege, a gift.Gift from Gregory Kawakita. Too beautiful.It can be called extraordinary and holy. The possibilities of genetic engineering are endless.Kawakita already has many ideas for improvement.This reovirus is capable of inserting new genes into the host's cells.Human genes and animal genes are not a problem.He can choose what genes the reovirus inserts into the host's cells.He is able to harness what his host becomes.Unlike the superstitious primitive tribes of Kosoga, he could harness that thing through science. The plant has an interesting side effect: it has narcotic potency, which gives a wonderful high, but is very "clean", unlike many other drugs, which are frustrating after the potency wears off.Perhaps this is how it was originally used to lure humans into eating it, thereby helping it thrive.But for Kawakita, the side effect meant cash to support research.He didn't intend to sell it as a drug, but financial pressure left him no choice.Thinking of how easy it was for him to achieve his goal, Chuanbei couldn't help laughing.The drug already had a name in his chosen circle of users: Thin Ice.The market is growing rapidly, and Kawakita can sell as much as it makes. It's a pity that the good days of those who use it are coming to an end. Night fell.Kawakita took off his sunglasses and inhaled deeply the fragrant aroma of the warehouse, the wonderful smell of plant fibers, the inherent smells of water, dust, and air, along with mold, sulfur dioxide, and countless others, all mixed together.His chronic allergies have long since healed.It must be because of the clean air on Long Island, he thought wryly.He took off his tight shoes and curled his toes comfortably. Since the discovery of the double helix, there has been no greater advance in the field of genetics than this research.He showed a sarcastic smile: I will definitely win the Nobel Prize. Provided he chooses that path. But who needs a Nobel Prize?Because the whole world was suddenly at his disposal. There was another knock on the door.