Page 93 - An Evening with Maxwell's Daemons

Viral Assassin

“Meanwhile, voluntary genetic testing and analysis have both
become sufficiently inexpensive to constitute a worldwide
phenomenon. People want to know their ancestry and propensity to
heritable disease. The result is a number of huge databases of
human genetic codes, large enough for the police to solve crimes
through familial DNA and long-lost relatives to be reunited. That is
another trend I am going to put to work in my story. Now, the
government—ours, as well that of our putative enemies—has secret
research laboratories developing the offensive and defensive
weapons of the near future. They have come up with what they
think is the ultimate directed agent of lethality: a virtually
undetectable targeted bioweapon. Having by whatever espionage
obtained the DNA of their adversary’s leader, they engineer an
airborne virus to which only he is fatally susceptible. Other humans
will merely allow it to replicate and transmit, without symptoms.
That target may include the collateral damage of a few of his
relatives; the specificity cannot be perfect. Then our agents—who
will be unsuspected vectors carrying the virus—just need to start a
chain of transmission anywhere in the target’s vicinity. As it won’t
manifest its deadly effects until it reaches him, no vaccine or cure
can be developed quickly enough. If the virus then is isolated and
analyzed, could it be traced to its origin? Maybe it could be a
modified animal vector, providing plausible deniability.”
“So, what’s the problem?” Rutger Schlager interrupted. “You
turn it loose, the enemy is decapitated and game over.”
“Indeed it might be,” admitted Leith. “But only in a world where
absolutely nothing can go wrong. Murphy’s Law will not be
suspended for the duration. Think of all the half-baked schemes
concocted in wartime out of desperation that fizzle or fail
spectacularly. Anyway, it’s already known that many of those videos
of smart bombs hitting their targets are fake or one-off. Where’s the
story? The point is hubris, as usual; and the more a strategy is
garbed in lab coats the greater the illusion of foolproof certainty of
success.”
“I get it,” said Cyril Kornfleck. “In fact, a lot of short fiction
uses dramatic irony to set up the reader for a surprise ending. Your

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