They fell to the ground, embracing each other. Gabriel laughed that hearty, full-of-life laugh that he didn’t do often enough.

“Those five girls were lucky.” She giggled. “Make it six!”

Gabriel rolled onto his side, perched on his elbow to hover over her. The waves lapped at their bodies, coating their skin with cool, damp sand. Yvonne smelled the burning sulfur in the air.

“I’ve never met anyone like you before,” he said.

“Really?” She enthusiastically dove into him, kissing him again. Their hands explored each other’s bodies like pilgrims discovering a new world.

He rolled on top of her, gently pinning her to the ground. “Really. You’re like… a wise contradiction.”

Yvonne laughed, feeling oddly touched. She pecked him on the lips. “Thank you.” She beamed. “I think?”

“You’re welcome, I think.” Gabriel released her, rolling back onto his side.

“Now, Gabriel, tell me. What exactly is your driving passion in life? Be honest.”

Gabriel’s mouth tightened. “Nothing. I just want to enjoy life. Have some thrills. Be happy. That’s all.”

“Oh, pish posh. Who are you trying to fool?” She kissed him gently. “Tell me the truth.”

Gabriel tensed. He studied her face. “The immune system,” he replied, slowly mouthing each word as if he was being tested. “I want to fix it. I want to prevent a catastrophe from occurring before it starts. That’s my goal.”

“How?”

“By altering the immune system. Making it smarter. I want to apply the theory of autopoiesis—”

“Autopoiesis? You’re talking about self-creation, right?”

His eyes widened. “How did you…?”

“I did my homework since our last meeting.” She smiled. “But tell me more, Dr. Genius.”

“Well, then you must know that it’s a recent theory, formulated by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, which posits…” He shook his head. “How do I explain this? It’ll bore you.”

“I’ll be the judge of what bores me.”

He shrugged. “Okay, so an autopoietic system is when you have… let’s say you have a system formed in such a way that the processes inside said system maintain and continually recreate its structure. Normally, we define an object’s identity by what stays the same. We define it by the constant, instead of by the changing. The constant shape of it.”

She nodded. “Right.”

“Now, forget what we normally do. Instead, let’s say that identity is defined not by continuity of shape but by continuity of process. For example, picture a big corporation. The corporation begins with certain people, desks, and equipment, but these interior things are not permanent. The employees change, and the management changes, but because the processes within are still running, the company itself still exists. The corporation is an evolving entity. The corporation’s identity is defined by internal processes that allow it to thrive, to evolve, and continue living. The corporation is autopoietic.”

Somewhere in the distance, a fellow beachgoer was playing an acoustic guitar. Gabriel turned to listen to it, facing the island of lights that stretched out into the dark sky.

Yvonne touched his hand. “Go on.”

He looked back at her. “So let’s think about the immune system, antibodies, all that good clean fun. Let’s assume that the human body is autopoietic. It exists not by continuity of shape but by continuity of process. We have the brain, with all its neurons, synaptic connections, and so on. The lymphatic system. Digestive system. Endocrine system. The cardiovascular system, with a heart that continually pumps blood. All of these are separate pieces, separate forms of consciousness, so to speak. Each system of the body is a targeted subcommittee inside a bigger General Motors-esque corporation, composed of various employees, each one working a very specific job. Then, we have the immune system. When you think about it, the immune system functions just like a second brain. Like a brain, it responds to changes in the environment. The immune system recognizes pathogens, and it creates antibodies to deal with those pathogens.”

“Okay, I think I understand.” Her brain was certainly working in overdrive. The scene around them—the waves, the beach, the smell of sulfur, the fireworks—was so vivid, so dreamlike, so unlike her hometown. Who is this strange boy? Is he real?

“Good,” he said, grinning. “Have you ever stopped to consider how insanely intelligent the immune system is? It’s incredible. When it sees a threat, it spawns antibodies to terminate that threat. The immune system doesn’t just resemble the brain. It exists as its own cognitive system.”

“I never thought of it that way. Are you sure?”

“Well, it’s all theory at this point. And this is where my part comes in. My passion, as you put it. If the immune system is a cognitive system, what if we could make it smarter?”

Gabriel sat up, cutting a dark jagged shape against the golden lights of the landscape behind him. His expression was wild with joy. Yvonne could’ve made love to him right there. But she wanted to wait for a little while, at least a few more dates, just to make the moment, when it finally came, even more amazing.

She playfully ran her finger down his chest. “So how would you make it smarter?”

“Look. When you get your immunization shots, they give you a bunch of them, but they only do a few at a time, and you have to go back for the rest. Imagine if that could all be combined into a single mega-shot. If my theory pans out, then my vaccine would reprogram the immune system in such a way that, instead of just reacting to the damage caused by an invader, it actually plans ahead for every potential attack, and by the time the invader comes, the bad guy is knocked out before it can cause any damage.”

“That’s amazing!” Yvonne rolled the tip of her finger into his navel then traced upward into the furry center of his chest hair. “So this relates to that future disease business again? That disease that you want to find a cure for before it even exists?”

“Superbug. I believe pretty strongly that we’re on the cusp of something big, something deadly breaking out… a blood-borne pathogen that could potentially wreak enormous damage on the population. There have been some isolated incidences of a new virus in Africa, with enough similarities to my hypothesis that it makes me wonder.” Gabriel scratched his chin. “But that’s not where my prediction stems from. I believe that, at this point in our history, the gates are wide open for the next epidemic of this kind to walk in.”

She shuddered. “So if such a thing happens, a disease like that, how will it work? How would it spread?”

“Well, it’s complicated. If it’s a blood-borne pathogen, the common source of infection would be through bodily fluids.”

“Sexual contact, too?”

“Certainly, yes. But anyway, I think we’re going to see a virus that has evolved to overcome our current defenses, medications, and vaccines, and takes the battle right to our greatest military defense system, our immune system, and then takes that army out.”

“Takes out the immune system? How?”

Down the beach, someone set off a sparkler, but Gabriel didn’t seem to notice. “ Imagine a virus that depletes us of our vital T-cells and takes away our ability to produce new T-cells, disarming the immune system and leaving us vulnerable to any number of opportunistic infections. Suddenly, you’re going to see people getting swollen lymph nodes and flu-like symptoms then dying from previously harmless diseases. The body will be wide open for whatever hits it, and the infected will drop like flies.”

She peered deeply into his eyes. “And you’re going to stop it?”

He shifted his gaze. “I hope so, yes.”

“You, the man who finds people boring, are devoting your life to the effort of saving millions.”

Gabriel stared down at the sand. At that moment, she knew he was exactly what she’d wanted. Yvonne kissed him. Gabriel wrapped his arms around her and rolled her onto her back, pinning her to the damp sand.

“You’re beautiful,” he whispered.

She pulled closer, ready to kiss him again. But she stopped when she felt a cool, damp, crawling sensation on her leg. She looked down and saw something small and shiny inching down her calf. A leech? A worm? No. A slug. The slimy creature was the color of mustard with two black stripes running down it. The slug’s little antennas rose. Gabriel must have seen where she was looking because he raised his hand to slap the slug away. Yvonne caught him by the wrist, stopping him just in time.

His brow furrowed. “What?”

“Don’t hurt the poor little guy! I like him.” Yvonne reached down and gently picked up the tiny little slug, allowing it to nestle in the cup of her palm. She watched the scared, startled movements of its petite antennas. She held out her hand to show Gabriel. The slug steadily crawled down her arm.

Chapter 16:

Transfer