What to do about Katrina, Ep. I, Act I, sc. 2
First Impressions
If you’ve just joined us (in which case you are very welcome!), you may wish to start at the beginning if you haven’t already done so. That just happens to also be the previous scene. You can also click here for my intro.
The beginning also happens to be the previous instalment, for the first and only time. To recap, Katrina has arrived at the British Embassy in Paris and created something of a scene. She’s now been taken into a side-room, where she is about to meet and be questioned by a junior MI5 liaison officer, who is about to have a very strange day indeed…
As if by way of contrast, the room they led her into was sparse, functionally furnished simply for interviews. She sat down on a comfortable chair on one side of a coffee table. Her senior security detail sat down opposite, with junior standing by the door.
Their territory now. Everything under control.
Of course they were curious.
“So, how did you get this immunity?”
Katrina sighed again. “This is the bit you wouldn’t believe. I’m aware of that.”
“Try me.”
“I’m from a parallel world.”
He snorted. His colleague glanced at him with a smirk and raised his eyebrows.
“Hmm. So who’s the Prime Minister then?”
“We have three. A PM for Domestic Affairs, that’s Jeremy Corbyn, -”
Another dismissive laugh. “You’re right. I definitely don’t believe you.”
Katrina decided not to let them wind her up. Instead she just answered like it was a normal conversation. “Oh, so you know who Jeremy Corbyn is, then? I mean he exists in this world?”
“Yeah. He used to be leader of the Labour Party until beginning of last year.”
Katrina sighed. “I see. Well, I was able to read a newspaper before I arrived at the Embassy and I noticed Boris Johnson is your Prime Minister. That told me everything I needed to know if I’m honest. Your world must be a dystopia.”
He laughed again, but decided to enjoy it. “How so?”
“In my world, Boris Johnson is just a sick joke. He’s only tolerated to provide a contrast, to remind people that 95 percent or more of their elected representatives are decent, honest and caring people who can be trusted. Johnson and his ilk have no influence in our Britannia.”
“I see. You said you have three Prime Ministers?”
“Uh-huh. We also have a PM for Economic Affairs, her name’s Rebecca Long-Bailey, and a PM for Foreign, Defence and Intelligence Affairs, or FDI. That’s my best friend Kirsten Lindauer. Although she’s more like my big twin sister, if I’m honest.”
“Hmm. Well I’ve never heard of her, but Long-Bailey was in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet.”
“I take it you didn’t vote for them, then?”
He and his colleague shared a sarcastic chuckle. “Erm, nope.”
“Right.” Katrina frowned. “Clearly I still have a lot to learn about your world, eh?”
He chuckled again and continued to humour her. “Clearly. So who’s the President?”
“We don’t have a President. The Head of State is whichever Prime Minister befits the occasion.”
“I meant of America. I suppose you’ll tell us it’s Bernie Sanders, huh?”
“Who’s Bernie Sanders?”
He seemed a little disappointed at that, Katrina noticed. Clearly she’d denied him some kind of scoffing opportunity. She made a mental note to look up this Bernie Sanders.
“I guess not, then. So, who is the President? Some other socialist?”
“I’m not sure I’d call John Kennedy a socialist, although he makes a good honest job of enabling it. Political expediency, you know.”
For once, she really had no idea the kind of cognitive dissonance she’d just thrown on them. They just looked baffled at each other.
Then junior said, “So he didn’t get whacked in Dallas in this parallel world of yours?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You what? Ah, you’re talking about his father. Right. I get it. Maybe I should’ve added the ‘junior’. John Kennedy Junior. He’s the American President.”
He shrugged. He had no idea Kennedy even had a son.
Senior recovered his curiosity. “So not Biden, then?”
“That warmongering geriatric nonce?” Katrina scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Ok. What about France?”
“Well it’s not Macron, I can tell you that much. I never even heard of the bloke before I read Le Monde.”
She was about to continue when the door opened. Katrina looked up, curious as to what kind of person they’d send. She was happily relieved to find that not only was he not wearing a muzzle of obedience, but was a pleasant-looking, bright young man, his style somewhat scuppered perhaps by a previous night’s lateness, with eager blue eyes and a friendly smile. Yet those eyes were too oversensitive for espionage, she noted. Possibly because of that late night he wore a casual and loose-fitting dark-blue suit-jacket with the shirt-collar undone and no old school tie in sight. Self-confident, not necessarily. Intelligent, for sure. And quite handsome, actually, Katrina decided.
And there was something else about him too. He reminded her of someone she once knew. Someone dear to her. Someone she lost.
“I’ll take it from here,” he told the security men, “thanks.” There was a certain unspoken understanding of authority there, although the two of them were admittedly somewhat reluctant to leave. Still, maybe they could get all the curious details later. Embassies, after all, are always full of gossip. It’s why they’re all bugged to buggery by the host country. Katrina was aware of that, by the way.
“Are you sure we shouldn’t go into one of your quiet rooms?” she asked.
He raised his eyebrows and smiled. “There are no listening devices in these rooms, I can assure you, Miss -?”
She smiled wryly and mischievously. “Meyer. Katrina Meyer.” She couldn’t resist it.
“Well, pleased to meet you, Katrina. I’m Tom. Can’t tell you my last name, though, sorry.”
But he threw her such a pleasant expression that she really didn’t mind that at all. She definitely decided to like him. He had dark brown hair, with a commendable attempt at a stylish fringe, and spoke with that distinct, slightly deep-toned English public-school accent typical of the British intelligence officer even after all these years. Although in his case it wasn’t an irritating accent, it must be said in his defence. She wondered which school it was. He took a seat opposite.
“Likewise, Tom.” She smiled back at him. “The receptionist didn’t tell you anything about me, then?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Although her tone suggested it was urgent. So,” he raised his eyebrows suggestively, “in your own time?”
So Katrina, once again, took a deep breath, and told the truth.
“I noticed you have a serious pandemic situation going on, right?”
He nodded. “Erm, sure.”
“And it’s a coronavirus, what you call Sars-CoV-2, yes?”
Tom looked confused. “Erm, how would you not know this?”
“I’m from a parallel world.” She decided to just come out with it.
Tom’s instinctive reaction was to laugh. It was a kind of protection mechanism when confronted with the absurd.
“I didn’t think you’d believe me, by the way. And I’m not offended. Keep humouring me if you want. I don’t mind. But maybe, ultimately, it’s irrelevant. And I am more than willing for you to subject me to some psych assessment, if that can be arranged? For security reasons, you know.”
Tom smiled a little embarrassingly. But he was beginning to be charmed by this girl, whoever she might be. She had a very disarming and direct way of speaking which somehow lifted his heart.
“That could probably be arranged, actually. Do you think that’s urgent?”
Katrina burst out laughing. Perhaps not the best response, although it wasn’t a mad laugh by any stretch.
“Is that a no?” Tom asked.
“No. I mean yes. I mean it’s not urgent.”
“Right. So I’m to take it you don’t have a pandemic in this parallel world of yours?”
“Of course not,” she replied a little scornfully, “We have governments who care about the people. As soon as they realised what was coming they shut down all the borders to prevent it spreading and, well, it was over within a few months or so. Did yours start around October 2019? In Wuhan, China?”
Tom nodded. “Around that time, yes.”
“Hmm. And it came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology? The laboratory, I mean?”
“Erm, that’s one hypothesis. Although some people think that’s a conspiracy theory.”
“Ah. I see. Well, given that Boris Johnson is your Prime Minister I’m not surprised you have conspiracies. And therefore conspiracy theories.”
Tom laughed loudly. “That’s, erm, I’m not really sure how to respond to that one. He’s not your Prime Minister, then?”
“Absabloodylutely not! In my Britannia the people are fully informed and psychologically and emotionally mature, so they’d never vote for a scumbag like that. Prime Minister Johnson! Ridicularse!”
“Erm, -” Tom looked embarrassed.
“Please tell me you didn’t vote for him?”
Tom smiled. “I can absolutely say with my hand on my heart that I definitely did not vote Tory.”
“I am incredibly relieved to hear that, Tom. It would be the worst possible start to a relationship.” Another disarming smile.
It worked. He couldn’t help mimicking. Then he tried a recovery. “So, who is your Prime Minister?” The inevitable question.
“Like I was saying to your security people, we have three Prime Ministers. A PM for Domestic Affairs, that’s Jeremy Corbyn, a PM for Economic Affairs, Becky Long-Bailey, and my best friend, or big sister really, Kirsten Lindauer, is our PM for Foreign, Defence and Intelligence Affairs, or FDI.”
Tom raised his eyebrows, genuinely intrigued, although admittedly still completely sceptical. He decided to return to dealing with the subject at hand and go along with her delusion, at least for the time being. The psychologists would sort that out. Besides, other than that she seemed rational, and those psychologists would doubtless find the details of her delusion diagnostically useful.
“Anyway,” he continued, “with regards to your immunity, is this because you developed some kind of vaccine?”
“Yes. Most people don’t need it though, and we certainly don’t give it to children because they need to catch coronaviruses to help build up their healthy immune systems. But the elderly and people with other vulnerabilities are offered it.”
“And that includes you, then?”
She nodded. “Yeah. I have an inherited lung condition called Terfel-Black Syndrome. It eventually leads to pulmonary fibrosis when I go through the menopause, triggered by the hormonal changes. There are, however, other possible triggers which we don’t yet know about, so better safe than sorry, kind of thing. Also I already have a healthy immune system anyway so it’s fine for me to have it.”
“Hmm. Erm, how does it work? mRNA?”
“No. I noticed in a newspaper you’ve been injecting people with mRNA formulations. If that’s what I think it is, then you have to stop that immediately.”
Katrina suddenly looked deadly serious, and Tom felt that too. He swallowed. “How so?”
“Because it’s a bioweapon. Is its mechanism of action to do with triggering the body’s own cells to produce a spike protein?”
Tom began to look very uncomfortable. “Yes. Except how do you know that?”
“We had a similar conspiracy in my world. But we stopped it in time. Do you know what reverse transcriptase is?”
“Biology was never my strong point.”
“Right. Well, it’s an enzyme, it encodes RNA into DNA. It’s present in a lot of viruses. It’s cutting-edge stuff. We use it sparingly with mRNA because it’s so dangerous. For cancers and severe hereditary disorders, for example. But put it like this. If the instruction to produce spike proteins becomes encoded into a person’s DNA then it’s possible that the next time they encounter a trigger, like the wild virus, then that gets activated and the body itself adds to the infection. You could end up with a cytokine storm, leading to multiple organ failure and permanent damage, myocarditis, for example, which is irreversible. Cases would become more severe and the fatality rate would increase amongst those who’ve been injected. Obviously, absent some genetic autopsy, these cases would be blamed on the virus itself, thus disguising the weapon. So it looks to me like you’ve got a perfect bioweapon here. If that’s not a national security issue, Tom, I don’t know what is.”
She looked very seriously at him. She may be a conspiracy theorist, he thought, but she’s deadly rational. It was making him feel uneasy and it showed.
“How long does it last for?” she followed up.
“Erm, what do you mean?”
“Hmm. Ok. How long do they say it protects for?”
“Up to around six months.”
“Right. So it must be encased in some kind of protective coating to prevent it from decaying for six months. That’s going to cause a hell of a lot of damage and increase the likelihood of reverse transcriptase encoding. And you know it will absolutely not train the adaptive immune system because it’s the body’s own cells, right? The adaptive immune system wouldn’t recognise it as a foreign pathogen, like with cancer, so no memory B-cells. Therefore, no immunity. Therefore, it’s not a vaccine. Remember a vaccine either works 100 percent or it doesn’t work. Because of the memory cells. Do you understand?”
“Like I said, biology was never my strong point.”
“Well, take it from me, it’s true.”
“So what makes you think it’s a bioweapon and not just an experimental treatment?” Tom decided, perhaps out of anxiety and Katrina’s serious manner, that this really was a security issue. Although at the same time he wished he’d stayed in bed for the day and she’d just vanish back to that parallel world of hers.
“Because it’s obvious, from the mechanism of action. Any medical professional should know that. In fact your dystopia must be even worse than I thought. I mean you must have the entire medical profession forgetting their basic studies about how the human immune system functions. How can that happen? Do you have some kind of mass brainwashing technology or something?”
Once more Tom really didn’t know what to say to that. He tried to retain patience, and not become irritated. There were too many conspiracy theorists these days for his liking. “You know, I really don’t think I’m qualified to answer those questions. But most people in the medical profession do seem to think these vaccines are efficacious and that the mechanism of action is sound.”
“Bollocks. Pure bollocks. Ah, mind you, you must still have a rampant neoliberal globalised system, yes? You don’t have public health care anymore? It’s all about money and financial sponsorship and so if a doctor steps out of line they lose their job and get vilified, yes? I bet there are a lot of doctors out there speaking up about this, though, right? And they get labelled conspiracy theorists? Am I right, or am I right?”
“There are conspiracy theories, yes. You’re not the first.” Tom was trying to remain calm and professional, mainly for his own benefit, as it happens. He decided to change the subject slightly. “So how does your vaccine work?”
“It works against all types of coronavirus. It’s a combination of the traditional type of vaccine, namely a dead or inactivated version of the virus which is introduced into the body, triggering the adaptive immune system to clear it up and create memory B-cells in the process, and, yes, we can use mRNA in vitro. By that I mean the mRNA is used to target a live coronavirus to trigger mutations, which are then inactivated. There’s a bit more to it than that, but that’s the essential basics in layperson’s terms. But mRNA is quite dangerous stuff though, like I said, especially in the wrong hands, and we hardly ever use it in vivo, except to correct genetic defects and for some cancers. Epigenetics, you know. But we also use it to create monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies for people with weakened immune systems. Which is what I can offer. The other thing we do, which I can’t really give you, unfortunately, is the use of mRNA to trigger memory cells themselves. Cancers for example. The trick there is to make the adaptive immune system see cancer cells as foreign pathogens, so that clears it up, rather than the innate immune system, which simply clears out toxins, like your spike protein. So we use mRNA in vitro to create hybrid cancer-type viruses coherent with the patient’s individual genetics, then inactivate it and inject it as a vaccine. If you see what I mean?”
“Totally over my head I’m afraid. I know what mRNA is, but you’d have to explain polyclonal antibody to me for a start. But you’re saying you have a cure for cancer, then?”
“Sure. Don’t you? Ok. I tell you what. That’s a smartphone, yes?” She pointed at his phone lying on the table.
“Oh, you want me to look it up?”
“That’s what the Internet is for. It’s something called research. Try Gaiapedia.”
He laughed. “Gaiapedia? You mean Wikipedia?”
“Wikipedia? What kind of dumbass name is that?! Wikibloodypedia. Ok, whatever. Look it up on that.”
Tom failed miserably in suppressing a chuckle, but did as he was told. She noticed that obedience, without letting on to him that she did. She filed it away for future reference, and smiled inwardly to herself. She decided to try and enjoy herself, given what a pleasant young man he seemed to be, if a little naïve, she thought. She watched him with curiosity.
He read it out. “‘Polyclonal antibodies are antibodies secreted by different B cell lineages within the body. They are a collection of immunoglobulin molecules that react against a specific antigen, each identifying a specific epitope.’ I have no idea what that means, Katrina.” He laughed embarrassingly. “It may as well be Greek.”
“Didn’t learn Greek at your public school, then?”
“Very funny. I learnt a bit, as it happens.”
“Good for you. Which school?”
“Can we stick to the matter at hand, please?”
Katrina sighed. “Sorry. Anyway. We can create monoclonal antibodies too, by the way. They’re similar they just target one specific antigen. If you have a sample of someone’s antibodies you can clone them. From what I’ve seen so far of your world you’re not so far behind us tech-wise that you don’t know how to do that kind of stuff.”
“Right. So what,” he said, inserting a slight but detectable hint of pathos into his tone, just to let her know he felt a little affronted, “your world is way ahead of us somehow? Is that what you’re saying? Which is how you were transported to this world, I suppose?”
“I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I didn’t mean to insult you. Sorry.”
She was good at that, Tom decided with a wincing bitterness. If he didn’t say it was ok he’d look petty. Very clever. “It’s ok. So, is that how you got here to this parallel world, then? Superior technology?”
“Are you saying you believe me?”
He laughed. “I have no idea what to believe, truthfully. For all I know you might be totally mad.”
“But you could prove or disprove that with a blood sample, couldn’t you?”
“Ah,” he waggled a finger in her direction. “Now that’s a good point, accepted.”
And they both smiled.
“So how did you get here, Katrina? To this parallel world, I mean?”
“So you do believe me? Or are you just taking the piss? Like the security men?”
“Think of it as keeping an open mind. And curiosity. So how did you get here?”
Katrina sighed. “I’m still trying to work that one out to be honest. Divine or ETI intervention is an option I suppose, but I just woke up in a waiting room at Gare de L’Est at 8:14 this morning.”
“That’s very specific.”
“I looked at the station clock. As for a technical answer to your question, I suppose I could cite quantum teleportation, or I could just go for the Arthur C. Clarke option and call it magic.”
Tom chuckled. “I’m not an expert on theoretical physics.”
“Ah. Not much call for it in MI5 then?”
Tom laughed and shook his head. “If there is, they don’t tell the likes of me about it.”
“Hmm,” Katrina noted. “So your GCHQ doesn’t use QT for secure communications, then?”
“Not that I’m aware of. But are you saying your parallel world is that much more advanced than ours? That you have, what, the ability to teleport people from one world to another?”
“Nope. Not yet, anyway. We’re working on D-zero meson oscillation for QT but that’s still a few years away. At the moment we can only transmit binary around a few kilo-qubits a second, but you can hardly use dialup to teleport a person, eh?”
Tom laughed. “Quite. So, how more advanced than us is this parallel world of yours?”
“From what I’ve seen I’d say we’re maybe 10-15 years ahead. But the longer you go without adopting a socialist system the further ahead we’ll get. All our major innovative tech and infrastructure projects are either state-funded or internationally funded by the UN Bank. There’s no competition or profit-motive involved so it’s all for the good of humanity instead of selfish shareholders. The Maglev network, for example. The von Braun station, the Jocelyn Bell-Burnell space telescope, the fusion power project, medical research. And so on.”
Tom sighed. “I see. By that I’m to infer you have a socialist utopia?”
“Is there any other kind? You seem sceptical. I suppose you people still think neoliberalism’s normal?”
Tom looked a little hurt again and Katrina immediately felt guilty for saying it, especially in such an accusatory way. From a certain point of view she was insulting his whole world. A world for which he, personally, was in no way responsible.
She apologised again. It worked the last time. “I’m sorry. It’s been years since people in my Britannia thought like your world does.”
“How do you know about our world? If you only just got here, I mean?”
Clever question, she noted. “I stopped at a park on the way here and found a newspaper. I’m sure the Goddess was responsible for that, so I wouldn’t be completely blind. I don’t know enough about your world yet, though, so I can’t tell you why ours is different. Historically, I mean. Maybe later, I hope?”
Tom smiled warmly. He could sense she felt sad all of a sudden.
“Although,” she mused, “if you have a Tory government then I assume you didn’t have a Liberal Socialist landslide in 2003. That’s when most political historians would say things changed.”
He shook his head. “So you have a Liberal Socialist Party? It’s not a Labour government, then?”
“Nope. They were wiped out in 2008. They don’t exist anymore.”
Tom chuckled at the thought of it. “So, what makes you think you’re this far ahead of us? It can’t all be down to, erm, socialism?”
“Well, it probably depends on what area of research you’re talking about, although I can genuinely infer a lot simply by knowing a bit about your politics. But certainly in terms of medical research we’d definitely be that far ahead. Mainly because it’s centrally funded, like I say. Although you never know what cures the pharmaceutical industry is sitting on, do you? Cures aren’t profitable. So we don’t have profit-driven pharma companies anymore. Even in America. In fact the coronavirus scandal gave Hawkins exactly the pretext he needed to take the last of them into public ownership. Ironically enough some people have conspiracy theories about that, Trump-supporting Republicans mainly, trying to make out it was all a Dem-Soc conspiracy to give him that pretext. Total rubbish though, for sure. Although the CIA do still use any excuse for nefarious activities.”
Tom laughed. “So this, erm -”
“Hawkins. Howie Hawkins.”
“…is the American President, then?”
“No, he’s in charge of the welfare state and social reforms and stuff. Like Medicare.”
“So who’s the President?”
She sighed for the second time of having to answer these inane questions.
“It’s John Kennedy.” Then she remembered to add the ‘Junior’.
“Not Hillary Clinton, then?”
“You what? The security men said Biden.”
“Oh. Well, I was just kind of guessing that things would be inverted in your world. Like the other bloke won the election. Corbyn instead of Johnson. So, I don’t know, President Hillary.” He shrugged his shoulders and tried not to look embarrassed and stupid.
Of course she noticed. She decided to run with it. “That would be a rather lazy delusion, don’t you think?” She smiled fondly at him. “Is your Hillary still a scheming but sexy bitch, then? I suppose ours isn’t really a socialist, to be honest, like good parallel world Hillary, or a great believer in democracy for that matter, but she wouldn’t have gotten to be President without at least pretending. Plus the CIA had enough dirt on her to think they could control her. It’s why they had their man Obama as her running mate. You’re in MI5 so you should know how it works. But then again, your Hillary would’ve had very different personal and political experiences to our Hillary. So the two of them may have been the same person once upon a time, innocent young girls and all that, but then their characters diverge. Intriguing.”
Tom’s cognitive dissonance wasn’t going anywhere. “I thought you said JFK’s son was President?”
“After Hillary.”
“Oh.” Tom felt like he was back at school and being stupid.
That lightened her mood ever so briefly. Then she sighed. “After the 9-11 event, Al Gore got sworn in. He served until 2008 when Hillary and John did a kind of deal. So she would be President and he would be Secretary of State. Then he’d succeed her in 2016. Which he did.”
“Erm. Ok.” He decided to just accept it for the moment. But then, “What do you mean, 9-11 event?”
She didn’t want to answer that one. An instinct stopped her.
Instead, she looked pensive for a moment. Tom let her think. Then she said, to completely change the subject, and the tone, “I know, Tom, I don’t know about you but I’m totally famished. I haven’t had anything to eat today and I have no money or anything other than the literal clothes on my back, and I’m not in the mood for resorting to prostitution just yet, so why don’t you tell me all about your world over lunch, eh?”
Tom burst out laughing. “Are you always this forward?”
She returned a disarming smile. “Yep. Well, with people I like, anyway.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Please do. So, are you still going to take me out to lunch or not?”
“I don’t recall suggesting it.”
“Missed your last appointment with the memory doctor then, did you?”
Tom rolled his tongue around his mouth and decided that going out to lunch with this girl might not be an unpleasant experience in the slightest. She may well be mad, but she’s certainly interesting. Although another part of him knew she’d probably wind him up no end. And he definitely didn’t need that. Certainly not at this time in his life.
“You’ll have to check the security situation first, though, obviously. I could be some kind of honey trap, remember?”
Tom couldn’t stop himself laughing. “If you were you wouldn’t tell me, right? Unless that’s an outrageous double-bluff of course. I guess you’re trying to tell me I shouldn’t have any security concerns, huh?”
Katrina just smiled rather than answering. It was, as it happens, all the answer he needed.
“Ok. If you’d like to wait here, I won’t be long.” He stood up to leave.
“Believe me, Tom,” Katrina said, suddenly looking very sad, “I’m not going anywhere. I really am from a parallel world and I have no one and nothing here. So I’m throwing myself on your mercy. Honestly.”
Tom sighed, then nodded. “Ok. I won’t be long.”
And then he left. Katrina watched him go, close the door behind him. Then she lowered her eyes, not really studying the floor, and suddenly realised just how alone she really was now…