Unholy Helix

By Ashirah Elat

Three daring female scientists design giant ants in a Florida bio lab to terrorize America's big agribusinesses, which have caused ecological catastrophes. They genetically modify African fire ants and Brazilian bullet ants many times larger and with a lethal sting. Then they travel across the heartland and disseminate these highly destructive super-organisms that cause chaos and fear in the southern states.

Real science, real action, real anti-hero mavericks whose quirky personalities will have you rooting for them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ashirah Elat
• Release date: Sep 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215225578

Ashirah Elat

Ashirah majored in molecular biology and has done research in a medical school. She has travelled the world and is keen on animal rights and plant based diets.

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POLYMORPHOUS PRESS

Florida

This is a work of fiction! Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales are completely coincidental.

THE UNHOLY HELIX

Copyright © 2021 by Ashirah Elat

All rights reserved. No part of this may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without the author’s permission.

Electric Blue Neon Ants

THE UNHOLY HELIX

DEDICTED TO THE SPLENDID GODDESSES THAT INHABIT THE UNINVERSE

BEFORE THE BEGINNING

D ora, the ants ate my breakfast, Merv shouted, pointing to a line of large black ants clutching cornflakes in their pincers. He watched them march down the leg of the kitchen table and across the linoleum.

That’s impossible. I just filled the bowl a few minutes ago.

He lifted his left foot and stomped on them as they rushed toward a gap in a baseboard. Never saw ants so damn fast. Must be a species with that GMO stuff.

You’re just slower than you used to be. Get the bug spray.

Yesterday I found them in my sandwich. He turned to her. Notice that new anthill in the vegetable garden? Three feet high.

This genetic stuff messes with everythin’...bug resistant, monster vegetables, cloned cows. She wiped the table. I reckon, damn ants will BE taking over the farm.

Folks are more afraid of them fire ants than God. He picked up a thin copy of Time magazine. Them scientists are playing Russian roulette with life...can only come to a bad end...can’t leave God’s creations alone. He flipped a few pages. Holy shit. Necrotizing fasciitis bacteria ate a woman’s arm and breast.

Darn fire ants are everywhere. The preacher thinks the end of time is nearin’. She slips off her apron. "Can’t get rid of them no matter how much pesticide you spray. Nobody knows what to do anymore. Maybe we should move back to Montana...all them ants die out in the freezin’ winter

1

The sun was aberrantly intense in south Florida, with temperatures averaging 105 degrees Fahrenheit, causing the Atlantic Ocean to feel like a hot tub. The seaweed bloom became so perilous that it strangled an occasional swimmer.

Dr. Liu Chen stepped onto the balcony of her high-rise condo. She handed a glass of Pinot Noir wine to her recently recruited colleague, Lucy Sims. Shall we toast to our dangerous liaison?

Lucy smiled enigmatically like Mona Lisa. People on the beach look as insignificant as ants. She stared at the many people below. Did you know, Herodotus said he had observed gold-digging ants the size of baby tigers that terrified miners?

Liu swirled the wine and took a sip. I think we could bioengineer ants the size of kittens.

I’d be willing to try. She clicked her glass to Liu’s. Really fancy the idea of using the most ubiquitous creature on earth, the humble ant, as a bioweapon.

We’re reached the tipping point of the Sixth extinction. Liu rolled the wine over her tongue. So it’s time for us to act.

Lucy stared at the pea-soup-green ocean below. You know I’m an anarchist at heart. She whipped her long black ponytail over her shoulder. So how’s this being funded?

A wealthy Arab I met at biotech convention, Liu said, wanted to know if it were possible to bioengineer insects so menacing they’d create chaos in America.

And you answered, it’s theoretically doable.

Liu nodded. He said he’d finance the whole shebang. She inhaled the fishy sea air. Unlike our motive, he wants to settle a vendetta with America for what they did in his country.

Well, I hope you’ve gotten a good entomologist on board to help select some highly aggressive ant species.

I’ve tapped a Russian myrmecologist to join our team. Liu poured more wine into Lucy’s glass. Her specialty is red Africa fire ants from the Sahara and giant bullet ants from Brazil.

Lucy sniffed her wine. What’s the payoff for us?

If our genetically modified ants succeed in wreaking havoc across America, then we’ll each receive a million dollars.

I guess he doesn’t suspect our true motive. Lucy leaned against the railing. To jolt the political establishment out of its complacency about the climate crisis.

Saliman’s furious about America snubbing its nose at global warming and the dire impact it’s having on the Middle East.

Giant killer ants will definitely be a wakeup call. Lucy stared at the ominous waves crashing on the shore. We’re at the tipping point and action is desperately needed. She dumped the last drops of her wine over the balcony. I insist on meeting him.

Liu nodded. But without a failsafe, these killer ants could spread across the globe faster than a cholera epidemic. She smiled. So I’m relying on your expertise in molecular biology.

Perhaps programming early senescence into the queen’s genome would be a good safeguard. Lucy stared at the angry surf below. We could be tried for treason if we get caught.

He’s well aware that. So we’ll have to be quite cautious.

Lucy came in from the balcony and stared at an Eduard Munch painting, The Scream, hanging over the couch. Ever read the writings of Michael Bakunin, the father of anarchism?

2

Liu’s cell phone lit up. She tapped the star on the keypad and the entrance door buzzed open. Wonder why Tatia’s so late.

Tatiana pushed open the door, dragging in an overstuffed suitcase with a broken wheel. Freezing in Siberia. She leaned her suitcase against the wall. So hot in Florida.

Hope you like palm trees and beaches. Liu shook her hand. This will be our home for the next year. Come meet Lucy Sims. Her area of expertise is genetic engineering.

I’m Tatiana, but call me Tatia.

Not into shaking hands. Lucy sat down in a wingback chair. Glad you’re joining us.

Lucy has lots of questions about ants. Liu smiled.

You have to respect ants. Tatia sat on the couch, facing Lucy. They are the best architects and builders in nature. She tugged her neck-length earring. They have survived all the great extinctions during the last 150 million years. She crossed her legs. One thing you should know about me...I don’t kill ants.

Once you see the ants we will be creating, you might change your mind, Lucy said. We plan to use gain-of-function gene editing to enhance the ants’ size perhaps a fifty fold.

Da...hard to say if you’ll succeed. It’s not like building bigger planes by increasing the wings and fuselage. Ant’s exoskeleton and internal organs won’t scale up easily.

We realize this is uncharted territory, Liu said. By the way, Lucy will not be living here with us.

Like my own space. Lucy glanced at a Norman Rockwell print in the dining area of a woman staring out of a cheap hotel’s window. My lifestyle’s a bit unconventional.

Liu slipped on ballet flats. Tatiana, come see the view. She led her onto the balcony. The ocean roar helps you sleep soundly.

Plane four hours delayed. Tatia smiled. I can use drink.

Cognac, gin, or bottled water?

I like vodka in big glass and some ice.  

Liu went inside to the kitchen and took a bottle of vodka from the freezer. Ladies, help yourself. She put it on a glass table.

Tatia filled a water glass half-full of vodka. What do you know about ants?

Only that I hate them. Lucy poured herself a shot of gin.

Tatia shook out her blonde hair. Da, there are 15,000 ant species...all very different in size and behavior. She sipped the vodka and made a face. When colony gets too crowded it enters ergonomic phase and queen produces many new virgin queens that leave nest, get inseminated in flight and start new colonies.

Lucy slugged down the gin. Great, I like that.

Important that new queen locate good place to build nest and starts laying thousands of eggs every day. That’s all queens do is lay eggs. Her sterile female workers feed the larvae until mature and soon population grows exponentially.

Liu poured a splash of vodka into orange juice. Can a colony have several queens? That would really boost propagation.

Yes, common in some species. It’s called polygyny...many queens in nest and population grows exponentially. Tatia dropped two ice cubes into her glass. Also of interest, ants use a process called fission, which means ants from big colony take one of the queens and start new nest...so can spread like fire storm.

Lucy opened a small tin box and took out a thin cigar. We need you to select highly aggressive ant species.

Most interesting maybe for you, the army ants and giant bullet ants from Brazilian rain forest.

Shouldn’t be too difficult to identify the genes that control growth. Lucy gulped the last of her gin. But dealing with Middle Eastern blokes is troubling. They’ve taken over blimey London.

Muslims view America as an evil empire, the nemesis of Islam, Liu said. Saliman voiced the same ill feelings.

I want to unpack and take hot shower. Tatia poured another half full glass of vodka. Not as good as Russian.

Liu smiled. Tomorrow, you can help us select three of the most dangerous species.

3

Lucy, Liu, and Tatia went to a neighborhood sushi bar and sat at an outside table facing onto Federal Highway. The waitress served them sushi rolls, a plate of sashimi, and a bottle of sake.

I’ve ordered all the lab equipment and reagents. Liu sipped her drink. And we’ll be using a state-of-the-art next generation DNA sequencer that can process two million nucleotide base pairs with ninety-nine percent accuracy.

Lucy poured sake into her little porcelain cup. We want to create super-aggressive ants with enhanced functions. She picked up a slice of tuna sashimi with her chopsticks.

How do you change ant’s genes? Tatia asked.

You’re asking a big question, Lucy said. First, let me get you up to speed on the latest gene editing technology. She sipped her sake. CRISPR Cas9 editing is quite precise. So precise that you can edit single nucleotides in the DNA and it can even be applied to germ-cell lines to alter heritable traits.

Liu impaled a chunk of sashimi with her chopsticks and dipped it into soy sauce. In other words, we want to create an army of uber-ants to release across the heartland.

Ants act single-mindedly as super-organism. Tatia chewed a piece of sushi. Very good at attacking other ant colonies and foraging for live food. Make them giants and they will terrorize the population.

We also plan to increase the ants’ brain capacity. Liu sipped her sake. But we still have many technical hurdles to work out.

Tatia sipped her sake and made a face. People think bees and butterflies are special, but ants are true wonders of evolution.

By the way how, how will the ants be shipped? Lucy asked.

Liu raised an eyebrow. Saliman plans to employ special couriers so the shipments can’t be traced to us.

I cultivate healthy ants in the lab for you. Tatia dipped a piece of salmon sashimi in soy sauce and chewed it. No taste...not like pickled herring with raw onions.

Shoot me a few ant species to chew on. Lucy glanced at two teen girls in snug cutoff jeans walking by. Like to wrap my brain around the archenemies I’ll be working on.

I thought a lot during my long flight here. People just say ants, but there are thousands of species. Tiny ants so small you couldn’t feel them crawling up your nose and big ones fatter than a carpenter’s pencil that can rip chunk of flesh from your arm. Army ants are good, but fire ants much better for disrupting food chain...meat eating ants from Australia, nyet.

Liu tapped the ends her chopsticks on her plate to make them even. We’ll scrutinize their genome and augment preferred traits.

"My first choice is one of the Solenopsis species—fire ants—more specifically, Solenopsis invicta. Tatia stabbed a piece of sashimi. They have invaded much of America and make big nest with huge population. When they need new colony, over hundred thousand winged virgin queens pour out of nest and swarm until they are inseminated in flight—timing and execution are everything for survival."

Liu sipped the sake. We have to be concerned with a phenomenon called transposons or jumping genes, whereby the ants’ genes can revert back to their original state.

"Maybe you start with very big ant...giant Australian bulldog ant...Myrmecia sanguinea or Paraponerini clavaa, the bullet ants from Amazon rainforest that have the most painful sting in the world. Or perhaps Dinoponera ants which have huge mandibles and are over 4 centimeters long...but mind you, these ants are very dangerous and don’t play games."

With greatly enhanced functions, Lucy said, they’d be more deadly than a Nazi Panzer division in the Egyptian desert.

Speaking of armies, DARPA is the experimental arm of the US military and has embarked on a project called Insect Allies. Liu pinched a clump of shaved ginger and puts it in her mouth. They deploy bio-engineered insects as part of their fighting army. So we know it can be done, though it poses a great moral dilemma.

Russian scientists were very alarmed at that project, Tatia said. So they started their own counter bio-weapon project.

We plan to develop surefire safeguards. Like kill switches in the queen’s genome so she’ll self-destruct after a preset date.

"Have you considered tiny ants like Pheidole sitarches, common in the some parts of America? Very unusual species—females mate with multiple males at once—like Russian sex workers." Tatia giggled.

Miniscule ants would be too difficult to handle in our lab. Liu crossed her chopsticks. Giant ants are much more dramatic—scare the heck out of people. Imagine ants as large as a mouse crawling on your kitchen counter. House maids would be climbing the border wall to get back into Mexico.

4

Lucy and Tatia entered the vacant warehouse, which had high ceilings and an open area. Three cubicles were line up against the far wall and each had a desk with a computer. The freshly painted pale green walls, reminiscent of moldy white bread, gave off an unpleasant odor.

Lucy inspected the clear plastic ant farms that were three feet long, ten inches wide, twelve inches high. Did you have these custom designed?

Yes, they have double layers so you can observe ant activity above ground level and below. Tatia lined up each formicarium side by side on the long lab bench. Not made from cheap acrylic, but clear polycarbonate...most durable plastic. I fitted them with water injection system so I can adjust humidity that will help queens lay more eggs.

So when are the ant shipment arriving?

Should come any day now.

Liu came over to join them. They’re being flown to El Paso, Mexico and then smuggled across border to avoid customs.

Good—no way to trace them to us. Lucy smiled. Wouldn’t want the CIA carting us off to Iraq to be buried alive in the sand. 

Each shipment will be delivered by a different courier, Liu said. Saliman wants to keep everything off the radar.

I’m impressed. Lucy turned to Tatia. We’ll need a constant supply of ants for our experiments.

Certain ants difficult to nurture in laboratory...require precise conditions. Tatia wiped down the inside of the ant farm boxes with alcohol. Some ants prefer dirt, some sand, some like to nest in rotting logs. She stuffed glass wool into the air filters vents. This prevents ants from escaping, which they will try to do.

How many species have you ordered?

I ordered six species, Tatia said. You see which are best suited for your experiments.

Now that you know the basic plan. Liu put a hand on Lucy’s shoulder. It’s a good time to get to know each other better. We will be working long hours together.

Well I’m sort of a bohemian. Lucy leaned against her desk. Smoked weed for the first two years of college and slept with a lot of guys...liked pretending I was a virgin. But one day I woke up with an empty beer bottle between my thighs and my panties were gone and I couldn’t remember what the guy looked like.

I don’t understand, Tatia said. You screwed around so much...how you get Ph.D.?

Short answer. I stared at my face in the mirror and cried, is that all there is? She coughed. So I vowed not to waste any more time and worked my bloody ass off.

We Russians like getting drunk and having all night parties. Tatia grinned. But I never considered myself slut.

I came from a puritanical family, Liu said, so I didn’t drink or go to parties. She folded her arms. My mom used to say you can’t buy back even a second of time.

What part of Russia are you from? Lucy asked.

You think I’m country girl...five or six pounds overweight and I don’t use lot of makeup. Tatia laughed. But don’t think I’m not worldly because I come from small island off the coast of Siberia.

Liu turned to Lucy. What inspired you to become an anarchist?

Read a lot of stuff by Bakunin, the father of anarchism, Lucy said. He made more sense than Marx, so I joined an anarchist group in college. She pursed her lips. That make America great again meme, reminded me of Hitler’s Deutschland Uber Allis. So I felt it was time to shake up the status quo in good old USA.

America put severe economic sanctions on Russia—devastating to common people, but no impact on ruling class.

Liu put her hands in her lab coat pockets. American style capitalism has been facilitated by jackasses with MBAs which has given rise to vast inequalities.

The stoic Diogenes flouted all traditional norms. Lucy sipped her sake. He became an idler as a form of subversion and I’d like to emulate him.

Don’t expect to be sitting around doing nothing, Liu said sternly, while I’m running around with DNA samples and graduated cylinders.

Lucy opened an ant atlas and placed a bookmark in fire ant section. Well...once I get involved in a project, I can work twelve hours straight without a break.

Liu handed her a stack of printouts. Read these...we start in earnest tomorrow.

5

The doorbell rang and a delivery man appeared in the security monitor. He held up an invoice with bio-hazard label. Liu pressed a button on her desk to buzz him in.

The courier rolled in a wooden box on a hand truck. Is this building 1666?

Liu nodded. Put that on the lab bench.

No signature required. He handed her the invoice and left.

Ants from Madagascar very unusual. Tatia took a large screwdriver and pried open the lid. In the wild, they build fascinating networks of tunnels. She removed the packing around the ant farm. Don’t let them bite you...very poisonous.

Will need to find which genes control what, Lucy said.

Tatia opened a side port and grabbed a black ant with a pair of long tweezers. Many died in transit. She held a dead ant under a magnifying glass. Take a look. The mandibles are very large...sharp like knife, but I doubt they do well in lab environment. She dropped it in the garbage pail. Later I transfer to larger formicarium and give them fresh human urine. People laugh when I say that, but ants love urine. Uric acid and urine are good sources of nitrogen that ants need for their metabolism.

Lucy smirked. Would sugar ants prefer pee to candy?

Believe or not. They’d prefer urine. So Lucy, collect a cup of midstream urine. You will see how they love it.

An Indian gal in my dormitory drank a glass of her urine every day. An Ayurveda doctor told her it would keep her healthy in England’s damp climate. She offered me a glass. I tasted a little not to offend her. Bit like dilute curry flavored tea.

Liu glanced at the hyper active ants climbing up the wall of the container. Lucy, please grind up a few and extract their DNA, so we can run some tests on the genome sequencer.

In a couple of months, ant farms should produce a good supply of ants, Tatia said. Young queens are very fecund and produce many female workers.

Lucy put her hand on Tatia’s shoulder. I saw an old time movie where millions of army ants were moving through the forest like a black cloud in the Amazon. When they came near a village, the natives fled. When they returned, they found the skeletons of two young kids clutching each other in an eternal hug.

I can personally tell you how terrifying they are. Tatia gasped. "You hear them rustling through the leaves, their mandibles make eerie