Virulent

Chapter 4: Entourage

There was no way Dr Ezra Mayur could have known when she woke up that morning that her day was going to be anything but ordinary, even mundane. Not when the trusty toaster stopped toasting her bread, nor when her once-involuntarily-retired police officer- slash - technician dad stomped downstairs on his last-century prosthetics and said, "Visiting a scene today. Might be late. Don't wait up," as he grabbed a hydroponically grown banana from the fruit bowl and headed out.

Even Shaki, the perpetual snoozer, had left home earlier than either of them—spouting something about hiking the wilderness with her girlfriend. Ezra would pay to see that! Her nerdy, home-bound sister, who'd rather solve complex math problems for her than go out and smell the roses in national gardens touted to add years to your life.

Ezra went about her day as per usual. A brisk run on her second-hand stationary treadmill at 6:30 AM, followed by a quick five-minute shower, then at exactly 7:30 AM, breakfast — usually a toast with whatever fruit was on hand. By quarter to eight, she was on the road, literally. Couple of years back, she'd bought a decent road runner—that's what they called old vintage cars that ran on the physical roads these days. It had taken her a while to find an instructor who could operate and teach her how to drive one, but in the end, her dad was a better instructor. He knew those machines better than any instructor worth their dime. So these days, she drove herself to work. At least she didn't have to run for the bloody train all the time anymore. The traffic was little to none, anyway. Besides, she'd rather feel the bumps and bends of those relic paths than sit for hours in air jams.

Like clockwork, by nine, Ezra arrived at the lab, where she'd often see the morning staff scramble about, getting updates ready to hand over to her. In the ten years since Dr Archer had disappeared, Ezra had brought GenDesign a long way. They were now at the forefront of food design, harvesting, food production portfolios, HardySeeds, a trademark that showed their successful preservation of most varieties of produce which were fast disappearing around the world. There'd been a time when herbs were becoming rarer, many fruit and vegetables varieties were going extinct, and some could say, the world would have been a dark place without all the berries. Ezra was proud they'd save them all or most. The world got to enjoy certain foods again because of her and her lab's hard work.

It still felt weird, to say her lab. She had never thought she'd get to say it. But now, with no one to steer GenDesign—not since Archer—the board and the staff had voted for her to be its head. Some days, she still had to pinch herself. In fact, that's exactly what she did as she stepped into her office to put away her bag and put on her white coat. The office looked different from that night. But memories of it were still fresh in her mind. She's changed the layout of the furniture, none were Archer's. She even ripped up the bloodstained carpet and laid down a laminate floor. But the room was the same.

What really happened to him? She still wondered every time she eyed the wall where Archer's desk had been once. They never found him or his body.

"Dr Mayur?" Someone knocked on her door and Ezra looked up, peeling herself away from the memories. "We have the results you asked for. Shall we go over them when you get a chance?"

It was Tehreem's assistant. They were handling the modification of several ancient grains using resistance microbe genes to create hardy next gen-seeds.

"Is Dr Malik ready?" Ezra grabbed her glasses from her desk and followed the assistant out.

Thus, her day went as it should have. She caught up with Tehreem Malik's team. Then caught up with the new diseases team, busy identifying and sequencing the latest microbes devastating the new crops. She caught with all the departments under her, reassured all the scientists that they were on the right path, corrected or made suggestions for new research directions for those getting no where or achieving little to no reliable results. By the time her day was ending and most teams were wrapping up for the day, she was dead tired with still needing to catch up on her own research and papers.