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"No, dear," said Dr Cale, alently "I used a fish tapeworm They used Taenia solium, the pork tapeworm I was able to keep very little of their research once I caerous parasite Not that any parasites are coers even before we started tinkering with the building blocks of its DNA I think you’ll find that very little about the official history of D syenesis is actually true Most of it is pretty fictions and lies that can’t be disproven this late in the gauard worked the way that it was supposed to, Steven Banks became a hero, and the rest of the development team became… expendable We were a liability Richard was consuuilt over e’d done, and I was considered too likely to talk By that point, you see, Steven had created this whole backstory for us We e, ere the best of friends, and so on, and so on So if he did anything to hurthis lies It was the nuclear option, for both of us We quietly agreed that I would fade into the background" She pursed her lips, looking unhappy "Not that I intended for it to be quite such a long absence, but life does have its way of throwing you little curveballs when you let yourself get too cocky"
"Is this leading into why you’re in the wheelchair now?" asked Nathan
Dr Cale s if you’d noticed that I was suddenly shorter Then again, you’re a lot taller Maybe you just thought this hat happened to all rew up"
"I’m a doctor, Mom," Nathan said "I understand human anatomy"
"And have I told you yet how proud I am of you?" Dr Cale rolled herself closer to the wall, pressing a button on the base of the light box The nearest piece of wall began to glow a steady white, backlighting the four X-ray films displayed there All four showed a hules--front, back, left side, and right side I thought it h about anatoes, a white mass obscured the lower part of the spine, just above the pelvis It looked like soative, wiping away large parts of the spine
Nathan frowned, stepping closer to the light box "Is this a tu the whitewas a priority at SymboGen We weren’t supposed to test on ourselves, naturally, and I didn’t Icorners, but I wasn’t a fan of riskingto risk theirs"
"Are you telling et there, Nathan I know you If I don’t give you the background now, you’ll go racing off and never give s at my own pace Can you letoff his glasses obscuring his eyes so completely that I couldn’t tell whether or not he was annoyed I answered for both of us, saying, "We can be patient"
"That re her hands in her lap "The Intestinal Bodyguard went through several generations, with a wide variety of different genetic eneration that eventually went on the market was less… robust… than soood, because those early worrow rew so fast, they deuard--prier the host if it reached a certain size The growth of D syuarantee that it would reach that size only after in’ where balance could be maintained between parasite and host"
"That’s why the two-year replacement requirement," said Nathan "That never made sense to me Nature doesn’t work on such a tidy schedule"
"Exactly They don’t die after two years They never did The antiparasitic drugs take care of the old tapewor that there was ever a risk" Dr Cale shook her head "If it had ever gotten out, it would have been the end of SymboGen"
"And a lot of people would have been hurt," I said
Dr Cale see, "Everyone was h the final product was heavily influenced by their design When Steven sent the word that the IPO was co on the wall Eventually, there’d be so much money in the picture that everyone who had been there in the early stages would be in danger We’d know too oing to guarantee my safety--and by extension, yours, Nathan Since I didn’t participate in the huuard was fiercely territorial, and wouldn’t tolerate the presence of another worm in the body Supposedly, this meant that a second tapeworm introduced into the body would just fail to thrive, and would eventually starve to death According to some of the stories Nathan had told me, the first tapeould actually attack and devour the second I wasn’t clear on how that happened, since tapeworent I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know