Sugar Read online

  Sugar

  The Promise of Tomorrow

  Book 8

  The Organized Crime

  and

  Corruption Series

  C.T. BONNETT

  Preface

  Biochemists Doug Kier and Sloan Harrison have discovered the fountain of youth, a genetic modification to corn syrup that protects chromosome telomeres, halting the aging process. Before the serum can be thoroughly tested, the formula is stolen and sold on the counterfeit drug market. When the catastrophic side effects are revealed, the NIA must protect the researchers who have gone from hero to villain as they work to find a reversal therapy.

  Sugar is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination and are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  We appreciate your consideration in choosing Sugar for your reading entertainment and hope that you will look for future releases by Bonnett Publishing

  Copyright © 2020 by Bonnett Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  Contents

  Preface

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  The Discovery

  Doug poured the last bucket of water on the campfire as Boy Scout troop seven fourteen packed their gear for the drive home. The weekend was supposed to be a well-deserved distraction from the lab, but with ten years of research resting on a few images from the electron microscope, he could hardly think about anything else.

  No change in the mice telomeres meant that Project Mosaic passed a major benchmark, and the funding would continue. The slightest hint of degradation and his life’s work would be for nothing. He thought about the great inventor Thomas Edison, who perceived failure as successfully learning what not to do. Unfortunately, Argentia didn’t have the deep pockets of the pharmaceutical industry giants. The company focused on short term gains in the market, not lengthy and costly research projects. Another failure with Mosaic would not be a cause for celebration.

  Taking a research position with a small startup had its pros and cons. There was freedom to work outside the box, but the space was still limited. What first attracted Doug to Argentia was its flexible corporate structure. He could walk into the CEO’s office and pitch a new idea, and nothing was off the table, no matter how crazy it sounded.

  “Come on, guys,” Doug called to the boys. “We have a long drive ahead of us back to Schaumburg. Help me pack the rest of the gear in the Tahoe.”

  Doug’s sons, identical twins, celebrated their twelfth birthday during the trip. He had missed the last three, buried in his work, late nights, weekends, and holidays. Maggie had practically raised them as a single parent. Her career as a teacher went by the wayside when she had them. Born premature, the first few weeks were touch and go, but all turned out well. Now, they were as normal as any twelve-year-olds at the jamboree.

  Traffic was heavy on Interstate Ninety-four through Wisconsin, but the Tri-State tollway opened up in Illinois as it usually did. He checked the time on the dash; they would be home by ten.

  “We’re home,” Doug called out to his boys, both fast asleep. He turned into the driveway and left the Tahoe parked outside the garage. Maggie watched through the front window for their return and turned on the porch light as Doug exited the Tahoe.

  “Help me get these two into the house,” Doug said. “I’ll unpack in the morning. If you can take Danny, I’ll get David.”

  Maggie coaxed Danny to walk to the house and upstairs to his room, where he fell fast asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. She closed his door to see Doug carrying David.

  “How was the weekend?” Maggie asked as Doug returned to the kitchen.

  “Perfect weather the whole time.”

  “I can get the weather report on my phone. How was it with you and the boys?”

  “It was good,” Doug said, guessing at the answer she wanted. “They fished, swam, slept in a tent, cooked over an open fire — all those camping things.”

  “That sounds like an itinerary from the brochure. I want to know if you guys bonded, father to sons?”

  “I guess. You should probably ask the boys tomorrow.”

  “They’re twelve-year-old boys with attention spans of a housefly,” Maggie said. “All I’ll get from them will be grunts and blank stares.”

  “The best that I can tell you is that they looked like they had fun,” Doug defended. “Turn a bunch of kids loose in the woods and get out of their way. That formula works quite well. I was amazed at how they never seemed to get tired of it.”

  Maggie, frustrated by not getting the answer she wanted, returned to emptying the dishwasher. She always went into cleaning mode when she was mad. Doug used the opportunity to slip away to his office to check his emails.

  Logging into the server, he quickly scanned through the unopened emails for anything from his lab assistant.

  There it is — the test results.

  He clicked on it, and the message simply read: No Change.

  Doug let out a yell, “We did it!”

  He jumped to his feet and ran from his office to the kitchen. He grabbed Maggie by both arms, “We did it. There’s no change. The telomeres are holding. The mice aren’t aging. Those little bastards will live forever.”

  Maggie's glib demeanor flipped to match Doug’s excitement. She knew what it meant. Doug’s GMO corn had produced a sweetener that blocked free radicals from attacking the ends of mice's chromosomes, stopping the aging process in its tracks.

  “We get to move to the next stage of trials,” Doug said. “Our sweetener can go into anything.”

  “Sugar soda just became health food,” Maggie said.

  “I have to get to the office and see the data firsthand.”

  Doug quickly threw on a dress shirt and skipped the shower, as no one would be in the office on a Sunday night.

  “Don’t wait up,” Doug said as he grabbed his laptop and ran to his SUV.

  Traffic was light as he swung onto Schaumburg Road. Taking a left onto Roselle, he pulled into the drive-through for a coffee. There was no telling how late he would need to stay. The data had to be verified; it had to be flawless. Any mistake at this point would mean total embarrassment at best.

  The office parking lot was empty except for a few cars, probably security and cleaning staff. He picked a p
arking spot close to the building and came to a stop. Grabbing his laptop from the seat beside him, he headed for the main lobby security entrance. The weekend security officer waved as Doug entered the lobby.

  “Starting the week early?” he asked.

  “The early bird gets the patent,” Doug said with a smile.

  The guard noticed the khaki shorts, but he had seen Doug dressed in worse.

  The elevator door opened, and Doug stepped on and pressed the basement level two.

  The system responded, “Voice authorization required.”

  “Doug Kier authorization alpha-five-six-three.”

  “Authorization granted. Welcome back, Doctor Kier. How are Maggie and the boys?”

  “They’re doing fine. Thanks for asking.”

  The elevator door opened, and Doug charged straight for the workstation to view the electron microscope images of the mice chromosomes. A significant challenge of his research was developing a consistent method to measure changes to the chromosomes. Not an easy task. The process relied on statistical methods and the law of large numbers to achieve accurate and repeatable results. The conclusions had to be irrefutable. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

  In a university setting, he could be less careful. If he believed he had found something significant, he would publish his findings and let countless others attempt to disprove his hypothesis, the scientific method at work. In the commercial world, it was about being absolutely sure. Going to market with a drug or a genetically modified organism depended on his team’s data alone. Industry success rates were nothing to brag about. Over half of the projects started never saw the light of day, and in the half that did, the majority found a different application. The most famous was Sildenafil, which most people knew as Viagra. It started as a heart medication until test patients started reporting unusual side effects.

  Doug looked through the reports generated by the software. He compared the new results to the base samples. The measurement error’s standard deviation was consistently within fifty nanometers, and the mean target error was less than ten. The data gave him total confidence that the software provided correct results.

  The experiment used three hundred mice. DNA extracted from blood samples drawn three months ago served as the baseline. All the mice received a regular diet, but the control group only received water. A third group had non-modified sugar water, and the last enjoyed Doug’s special fructose cocktail.

  The two control groups aged as expected, but the last showed no signs of aging. Doug looked through all one hundred samples and couldn’t find one that showed a shortening of the telomeres.

  The data was conclusive; they had done it. The genetically modified corn sugar protected the telomeres from free radicals. There was no doubt. When Ponce De Leon came to America looking for the fountain of youth, he believed it to be in the water; he should have paid more attention to a native plant called maize.

  Doug's attention turned to a noise outside the lab; it was Sloan, his lab assistant. He looked at his phone, 7:30. He had lost all track of time, burying his head in the test data.

  “Sloan,” Doug said as Sloan exited the lab. “I’ve reviewed the data, but first, tell me what you found.”

  “No measurable change in the telomeres,” Sloan said. “I went over it twice this weekend; it can’t be wrong.”

  “That’s what I see, too. Is there any way we could have made a mistake?”

  “I can’t see how. The mice are not aging in outward appearance either. Their cells are regenerating with no degradation in their DNA. The serum works on mice; the next stage is primates. We need to see how the serum works with their DNA. We could still be years away from a commercial product. What do we tell the board? They want a report on the mice as soon as possible.”

  “I’ll schedule a presentation for this afternoon,” Doug replied. “Make twenty-five hardcopy reports and mark them ‘Highly Confidential Eyes Only’. I’m going home to take a shower. I was camping all week and just got home when I read your email last night. I’m a bit too ripe for the office right now. I’ll see you around noon, and we can go over the presentation. Great work, Doctor Sloan, you’re going to be the second most famous biochemist in the world.”

  Chapter 2

  The King Maker

  Doug arrived back at the office around two in the afternoon. A shower and a few hours of sleep, and he became a new man. He had to prepare for his presentation on the Mosaic project at the board meeting scheduled for eight that night. As Doug asked, Sloan compiled hard copy reports for the executives and the company officers. He was in the middle of working on the media presentation when Doug entered the lab.

  “I think we should start by explaining the basic science,” Sloan said. “Then, we talk about potential real-world applications and ask for continued funding.”

  “The real-world application is simple; we’ll sell Mosaic as youth in a bottle,” Doug said. “Limit the science to three slides, just enough to show them that we’re not making it up. It will be difficult enough for them to believe us, best not to sound like Doug-the-science-nerd.”

  “Got that. What next?”

  “We need one slide on the statistical certainty that the serum worked on the mice, followed by a slide explaining why we need primate trials. We close with the financial possibilities but keep that open. We need them to take over the discussion; their own greed will drive them to approve funding for the primate trial phase.”

  “How many primates?”

  “We’ll need sixty primates for statistical certainty at the cost of fifteen thousand each. Then there’s primate housing, medical care, and feeding, which will be around thirty thousand a month for six months. Use that for a rough estimate.”

  “Why not just ask for a few million, and we’ll not have to worry about a line-item budget?”

  “I see your logic, but don’t ask for a round number. Show columns of odd numbers, people are more likely to accept them as fact. Ninety-seven percent is more acceptable than ninety even though it’s a bigger number.”

  “Got it. We have to play the game.”

  “Have you had lunch?” Doug asked.

  “No. I’ve been working on the reports since you left this morning.”

  “Let’s grab a bite. I feel like celebrating. What would you like? It’s on me.”

  “There’s a couple of good Mexican places north on Wilke,” Sloan suggested.

  “Mexican it is. I’ll drive. The board meeting is not until eight tonight; we have plenty of time.”

  Doug pulled out of the parking lot of Argentia and drove north.

  “El Grande Burrito is up on the right,” Sloan said. “They do have good burritos. I hope you’re hungry — they’re not stingy on portions.”

  Doug saw the sign and turned in. The lot was empty except for a few cars in the back. They parked by the entrance and entered the restaurant. They had their pick of places to sit and chose a booth in the corner for a bit of privacy.

  “Great time to go out for lunch,” Doug said. “Everyone else is at work, and we don’t have to worry about eavesdroppers. Do you have your phone on you?”

  “Yeah,” Sloan said.

  “Can I see it?” Doug asked.

  Sloan handed Doug his phone. Doug opened the back and removed the battery before setting it on the table.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “They’re recording everything you say, even when your phone is off,” Doug said. “I don’t want this conversation to leave this table.”

  “What about your phone?”

  “My phone’s at the office listening to a local punk rock station,” Doug laughed. “As far as they know, you came here to have a late lunch by yourself. I’m back at the office finishing the reports. Did you notice that we used your badge to open the side exit door? We don’t have RFID badges yet, but they can track our cell phones.”

  “What’s RFID?” Sloan asked.

  “Radio Frequency Identif
ication. It started out as a way to track products in a warehouse, and then someone realized you could also track people. The RFID badge communicates with the array of transmitter hubs triangulating your location and movements.”

  “Couldn’t you somehow shield the badge?” Sloan asked.

  “Yeah, I suppose you could, but that would send an alert that your badge was malfunctioning, and they would come looking for you.”

  “Aren’t you just a bit paranoid?” I think you’ve been visiting too many conspiracy theories’ websites?”

  “Only the paranoid survive. Now, this is what I wanted to talk about. Mosaic will change the world. People will kill each other for a drug that stops aging, not for the drug itself, but for control of the drug’s distribution. Imagine being in command of who will receive mortality and who won’t. You would be the most powerful person on the planet and a target for everyone who wants the power. I believe it’s too powerful for Argentia to handle. As the saying goes, power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. They would have the power of a god.”

  “That may be true, but there is nothing you can do about it?” Sloan asked. “Argentia owns the research; Mosaic is their property. Once we perfect the serum, they will own the production and distribution rights. They will have the power.”

  “We’ll need to delay the release as long as we can,” Doug proposed. “Word leaks out — it always does. Once others know it is possible, they will try to duplicate our research. They will be several years behind, but they will catch up fast, especially if they have a few hints dropped in their lap.”

  “What you’re suggesting sounds like industrial espionage,” Sloan argued. “Are you talking about selling Mosaic to the competition?”

  “No. Not selling. Giving.”

  The waiter interrupted the conversation, “What will you gentlemen have?”

  “I’ll have the number one lunch special and a Coke,” Sloan answered.

  “Make that two,” Doug said.