642-1: Blockbuster Medicine
I recently discovered a book called 642 Things to Write About, it's a creative writing dream! Every now and then i'm choosing a topic for inspiration and writing. I warn you, it may get a bit stream of consciousness so just grab on to your nearest toast buddy and get ready for the ride.
This week's topic "The next blockbuster medicine that will be invented and what will happen as a result". Tell me what you think...
Dr Tobi Nakimura had been staring at the two vials for what seemed like hours. What she was about to do next would change her life, her career, her world... this much she knew. She stood in hesitation, staring at the two liquids in front of her. They looked harmless enough, though she knew they weren't, particularly when mixed. One yellow, one a strange purplely blue. One earthly extracted from the mines in sub saharan Africa, one extracted from rock that was bought back from Venus by the Riker Probe on it's last mission.
It was 3am and she was alone in the lab. "Things will change" she thought to herself "but how?". "Will this… will i find the cure to cancer? Am i about to eradicate alzheimers or find the key to health and long life?" she smiled in wonder "Or am i about to unleash a pandemic from the hell-mouth of science like we've never seen?"
Drifting off into another one of her daydreams from the forefront of medical science that she'd be having all day, Tobi bought her attention back to the present moment, and what needed to be done. She'd pondered, procrastinated, considered and finally decided it was time. With one last anxious breathe she picked up the vials and poured the liquid into a nearby beaker..... and waited. At first nothing happened, then it began. Like a neon light in Harajuku the beaker began exploding with blinding glow.At first stumbling backward and covering her eyes with her arm, the shield over her face from her bio-suit becoming useless, then regaining her balance she made her way to the petri dishes in the incubator.
Filled with a range of diseases and viruses from the common cold, parkinsons, HIV to aggressive mono-microbial necrotising fasciitis and antibiotic resistant viruses, the petri dishes were there to test how they would respond to the interplanetary mix she was holding in her hands . Would they create a cure, a treatment, a stimulant or nothing at all?
Tobi reached for a microscope to observe. Deep down, underneath all the wonder and curiousity she actually wasn't anticipating a groundbreaking reaction or new discovery. The solution started to glow, still she was doubtful.
At first she didn't believe her eyes as she checked one sample after another. The world's most deadliest viruses, diseases - even those that had spread as a life altering pandemics - had been stopped in their tracks. One after another her samples lay dead, mute, harmless on the gel of the dish. Then she began to realise... not only had she discovered the cure to the cold, to cancer, to HIV.. she had created a super drug, a interstellar concoction that would cure every ill inflicted on the world. Excited, still in a shock of disbelief at the surreal discovery she had just observed right before her eyes, she ran for the phone to call her boss, her husband, her parents, the minister.. anyone!
Then it hit her, her skin was burning, she was short of breathe, her eyes were itching and her legs were weak. In a confusing juxtaposition, from somewhere deep inside she felt a strength, a power overwhelming her and she was hungry... an intense hunger like she'd never felt before, a controlling hunger and she could taste what she wanted. Flesh, human flesh.
As she fought for her last breathe, angry that her life had been taken, scared that not even the security processes and protective wear of her lab had offered any protection, frightened at what had been unleashed, devastated her daughter would not have mother, her final thought was of her husband..... and how hungry she was.... she must find him.....and feed
