Whatsoever You Do was finished in August 2016. It had started somewhat earlier as a short story only about the main character Jack and his efforts to develop a vaccine quickly. Many chapters were added to that short story (CDC researchers, sailors, and my favorite, Jose the bike rider) to make it a novella (some would say a novelette).
It was a strange choice for my first published story, since it wasn’t about physics which was my major in college. But I think it developed out of an article I read about synthetic biology. Synthetic biology uses engineering principles to develop new biological parts. I studied a lot of engineering in college, so it was fascinating to me.
You could even take pre-built biological units and assemble them into a new part and simulate that part. This was what I did in my work designing with gate arrays (CPLDs and FPGAs). So, that was why my first story became one about biology and not physics.
The protagonist, Jack, suffers a transient ischemic attack (TIA) which is similar to a stroke in the story. This is the same thing that happened to the science fiction writer, Robert Heinlein, in the 1970s. It’s caused by a blockage of the carotid artery. I was diagnosed with the same (a blockage) a couple of years ago though not as severe.
Jack uses the techniques of synthetic biology to develop a vaccine in record time for a global pandemic. Less than 4 years later COVID became known, and a vaccine was developed in record time by reading the DNA of the virus. In my story I used snippets of DNA that could be assembled by the machinery of synthetic biology to develop a vaccine and of course the COVID vaccines are mRNA based which is less risky.
From the blurb:
A pandemic had long been predicted. Now it was happening and a former graduate student, Jack Jackson, may have the key to its containment, synthetic biology.
But because in the court of public opinion synthetic biology is feared, it has been forbidden in the money conscious halls of medical research.
How many will have to die before they change their minds?
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