Read Star Trek for Free Online

loud. “I guess fixing a human virus is a lot like fixing a computer virus.”
    â€œI doubt that.” She spoke without looking up.
    â€œNo, I don’t think they’re that dissimilar. Correct me if I’m wrong, but when we fix the damage from an infected computer system, we have to go in and cut out the virus coding, repair the damaged files and data, and then program the system to recognize the virus in the future and not let it infect the system again.”
    â€œYes. But the problem remains, what do you do when the data is so horribly corrupted that no recovery is possible?”
    â€œHope that you’ve made a backup recently.”
    â€œThat’s my problem. The virus has pretty much totaled every biological backup, all the places where there would be an uninfected strand of DNA to work with.”
    â€œOh.”
    She looked at the screen. “And this thing just eats up cells. The human immune system isn’t designed to handle viruses, it primarily targets proteins. It certainly isn’t set up to handle this sort of thing.”
    â€œYep. Sounds like it’s time for a systems upgrade.”
    â€œIf only—say that again.”
    â€œSay what again?”
    â€œIt’s time for a systems upgrade.”
    â€œIt’s time for a systems upgrade. What about it?”
    Lense stayed very still for ten seconds. Then she almost attacked her combadge. “Lense to Gold.”
    â€œGold here. What is it?”
    â€œGet down to sickbay. We have a solution!”
    Captain’s Personal Log, Stardate 53665.8.
Dr. Lense had just called me from sickbay, claiming she had worked out a cure to Sherman’s Plague. I went down there to be briefed.
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G: Doctor?
L: Come in, come in! I’ve got it. It came to me in a flash. I’m working out the details of it now.
G: Where’s Stevens off to? I just passed him in the hall.
L: I sent him ahead to start the work on the transporters. He’s going to have to keep them running hot for probably at least thirty-six hours straight to handle the load. He wants to make sure they’re ready as soon as I have it ready.
G: For what?
L: For the cure to work. It’s going to take a couple of engineering tricks to get everything going, but—
G: Whoa, whoa, slow down. From the beginning, and with the small words?
L: We’ve got a way around it. Sherman’s Plague just cuts through the human immune system like it wasn’t there. The immune system was never designed to handle something like this. So we’re building a new immune system. I’m writing the DNA sequences now. Thank heaven the planet is almost entirely human stock. I don’t want to think about the time it would take to write multiple versions of the enzymes. Good thing the last organ affected is the brain—if not, even when we fixed the virus you’d lose memory and learned behavior, because those cells would be destroyed ….
G: Wait a minute. Explain to me what you’re doing.
L: Okay, it’s something like this. I’ve developed a few potential cures here, all variations on the same theme. First is DNA that we’ll append directly to the cells of the infected—not too hard. The new sequences will go in and respond directly to Sherman’s Plague, preventing it from causing any more damage.
    We have a series of steps. Step one we’ve already done, figuring out what’s causing this and how it works. Step two: identify the viral DNA sequences in every infected cell in a body. Step three: remove those sequences and rejoin the human DNA, making repairs and restoring to the original as closely as possible. Step four: cause the immune system to recognize the virus and prevent it from reinfecting the cells. Step five: repair the damage on a tissue level rather than cellular, restoring organ function and what have you. Step six: eliminating the virus from the environment, so this plague never