Free Under a Graveyard Sky-eARC by John Ringo Page B

better to do. After dropping out of his master’s program after that stupid argument with Dr. Wirta he’d moved back home. And since Starbucks cut back on his time he could spend most of the day scanning the various synbio boards, news and blogs. It was the virtual version of watching a train wreck in slow motion. And whether the world ended or not, it was going to wreck the amateur synbio industry.
    Synbio was short for synthetic biology, the creation of new or modified organisms. The “mundane” term was genetic engineering. It was a field at which Tim was a sort of “internet only” recognized expert. He’d been on the fast track to working in the professional field when he’d had a falling out with his master’s advisor and quit. Subsequent to that he’d continued his work, literally, in his mother’s basement until a breakthrough last year that if he’d done it as a master’s thesis would have made him a shoe-in for prizes, maybe even a Nobel, and a guaranteed PhD track. Since he’d done it on his own time in a basement the “awards” were few and far between. So all he’d done was put up a video and blog explaining the breakthrough and become a minor celebrity in the amateur synbio community. Although there had been some applications breakthroughs in basement synbio, his was really the first theoretical breakthrough. Which meant he had the largest number of followers on Twitter of a amateur synbio “pioneer” and his words were, on amateur synbio boards, given much the same weight as professionals.
    Unfortunately, his “breakthrough” was how to get a virus to express two different organisms from a single virus. And he’d put it up as a YouTube video…
    “I am soooo screwed…”
    There was a thunderous crash from upstairs and he heard his mother screaming…
    “DOWN! DOWN! DOWN! FBI SERVING A VALID SEARCH WARRANT…!”
    He looked around but there was nowhere to run in a basement.
    * * *
    “The creator of the Pacific Flu virus has been identified as twenty-four-year-old Timothy Shull, a drop-out from the Stanford microbiology master’s program…”

CHAPTER 6
    “I didn’t create the virus!” Tim said. The room was windowless and since he’d been transported with a bag over his head he wasn’t even sure where he was. And good luck with getting a lawyer. The ride had also made him puke all over his lap and shoes. Which wasn’t adding to his day. “All I did was prove it was possible to express two different…”
    “All we want is the vaccine, kid,” the FBI agent said, calmly.
    “I DIDN’T MAKE THE VIRUS!” Tim screamed. “If I had the VACCINE I’d have VACCINATED myself! And my mom!”
    “You’ve got all the materials in your basement, son,” the agent said, still calmly. It wasn’t like the geek could get violent chained to a chair. “So just explain how to make the vaccine…”
    “AAAAAGH!”
    * * *
    “There is no RNA or DNA related to the pathogen in this material,” Dr. Karza said, shrugging. His team had run every stored micro-organism in the suspect’s lab in world-record time. There was lots of other”stuff’ but exactly zero was pathogenic. “Fascinating breakthrough. Brilliant. Really brilliant. But it has nothing except background science to do with the actual pathogen.”
    “You didn’t get it right the last time,” Agent Shornauer said. “Why do we trust you this time?”
    “ You want to figure it out, tough guy? Bottomline, except for pure scientific aspects, this is a dead-end.”
    “We’ll determine that…”
    * * *
    The FBI Director looked at the report and grimaced. According to not only the CDC point people but FBI labs there was zero evidence that this Shull kid had any background, contact or access to the Pacific Flu. There was lots on his computers, not to mention his blog, the YouTube videos, which he’d actually found really useful explaining how this bug worked, about “dual expressionism.” What there wasn’t was a scrap of the