Xenograft

Neville Cheel

Description

Frank Devlin is desperate. His ten-year-old son Daniel is dying and there isn’t anything he can do about it. Or is there. Xenograft is the story of how the universe can send us help when it is least expected. Help that comes at a cost.

Sujets

• Xenotransplantation
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris AU
• Date de parution: 11 avril 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798369490792
• Langue: English

Extrait

Xenograft









Neville Cheel



Copyright © 2023 by Neville Cheel.

ISBN:
Softcover
979-8-3694-9080-8
eBook
979-8-3694-9079-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.






Rev. date: 04/05/2023





Xlibris
AU TFN: 1 800 844 927 (Toll Free inside Australia)
AU Local: [phone] ([phone] from outside Australia)
www.Xlibris.com.au
845221



CONTENTS
A Prologue

Frank
The Intervention
Susan
A Kind of Insulin
Cadaverous Habitus
Interviews and Autopsies
Determined Commitment
An Implausible Theory
The Phone Call
A Partnership
An Exhumation
The Return
About Mithoch
A Church and Violets
A Meeting
The Devlin’s
Perspective
Interviews and Wheelchairs
Siblings
A fellowship of Three
The Visit
The Collector
Goodbye
A Resignation

Glossary of Terms



A Prologue
Living alone, and left to his own devices, Frank Devlin battles daily with his own demons.
Whereas, for the other inhabitants of Verity, a city of some two million souls located on Australia’s southern coastline, the need to contend with viruses, wars, gender inequality, potential conflict, interest rate hikes, a voice to parliament, climate change and global economics remains uppermost in their minds. To add to their woes, people have been turning up dead. Minus all their internal organs. There were three people, two in Verity and one further north in the smaller town of Hawker.
Police are mystified, and the state coroner is at a loss to explain how these people have met their demise. The only tell-tale sign that something has happened to them at all; is raised red scars on the surface of their bodies. Scott Mason, a homicide detective who recently returned from Hawker to live once more in Verity, has seen scars like these before.
In another part of the universe, on Siraea, it is five diocenes after the ‘Iimotus.’ A time when nearly all organic Ambnit plants located on Siraea were decimated. Since that time, Siraea has had all their plants reinstated, and all power and energy, completely restored. It is business as usual, and companies that had once been sent bankrupt, due to power shortages, are now trading again.
One such company is Mithoch. An organisation that is superior to all others in the art and field of Xenotransplantation. Mithoch’s cutting-edge technology and technique, are second to none. It is a company that creates Messisingers that travel to and from the furthest reaches of the Federation in half the time that a bio-sent can, and harvest and transplant internal organs, with minimal side effects, meaning that the services Mithoch offers are in great demand.
Commensurate with this acumen in short-term and long-term internal organ exchange, is their research into antirejection drugs that reduce the unwanted side effects of interspecies transplantation.
The discovery of the hybrid Ambnit plant on Earth, some five diocenes earlier, was life-changing for Siraea, and whilst there hadn’t been any more Ambnit plants found on Earth, human beings, their behaviour and technological successes and failures were being closely monitored. Technology that remains inferior to Siraeas. The tech, but not the biochemistry. Biochemistry is something, that by and large, flies under the radar as far as Siraea is concerned. Mind you, as an unfederated planet, all or any knowledge related to Earth-bound organic biochemistry is illegal. But like most things, it’s not what you knew, it’s who you knew.
Mitoch had taken a particular interest in the research of one of Verity’s citizens; an Endocrinologist by the name of Douglas Wakefield. Doctor Wakefield himself, a keen chemical engineer, had been able to produce an insulin that enabled glucose transport, suppressed the immune system, and assisted in reinstating insulin-producing Beta cells in the pancreas. In a limited study, he had administered the insulin to himself and three others.
Deyno Hiss, the president of Mithoch, could see the advantages of the insulin, and wanted to covertly employ the services of one of her best Messisingers, to retrieve the internal organs of any human who had, had the insulin administered to them and return them safely to her. She believed that by acquiring the active insulin metabolite, she could chemically reverse engineer the chemical, and then add something special to it. Reducing the incidence of rejection even further.
Earth, however, was not a signatory to any ratified intergalactic harvesting or transplanting agreement, and as such, deemed Xenograft naïve. Harvesting humans from Earth, was illegal and punishable by a term of sentenced judicial incarceration. Siraean lawyers have been deployed to figure out a way of obtaining the insulin without punishment. A clause in the law, allowing harvesting and Xenotransplantation in accordance with Reallocation Principles, a promising tenet.
Reallocation, and the principles that govern it, refer to the evolutionary advancement of a race of beings, to prevent extinction, or to save the lives of a total of three Siraean citizens. In the future, the law is going to change, to allow only two, but in the meantime Xenograft naïve planets can be harvested, to a maximum of three. Their lives forfeited.
The insurance companies who pay for the unwanted side effects of Xenotransplantation watch carefully. The AMID insurance company, one of the biggest, Myar Whiskin-Katt, is one of its most successful investigators.
If found to be unlawful and the Reallocation Principle fraudulently employed, the company responsible would immediately be made redundant, and all or any Messisingers destroyed.
Deyno Hiss’s plan is to sequester the insulin-infused internal organs, then see to it, that the biochemistry of three Siraean citizens is altered to reflect a required need. This is completely illegal. This means that the discrete harvesting operation cannot afford to fail or be exposed.
Unfortunately, for Deyno Hiss, she is unaware, that the Messisinger, she has sent to Earth to retrieve the active insulin metabolite, was once itself human.



Frank
Frank sat on one of his old yellow and chrome vinyl chairs, in front of a green laminated kitchen table and drank. The faded colours of the table and chairs giving some warmth to the room, but little respite from a coldness that constantly gnawed at his bones.
At one hundred and eighty-three centimetres and weighing just sixty-seven kilograms. Frank’s clothes hung on him like a large sheet on a small clothesline. Rarely eating, he preferred to drink ‘Bourbon,’ instead. Draining the contents, and examining in detail, each small empty translucent shot glass, as if something of great interest lay inside.
Rolling thin white cigarettes, or reading scripture, were his only other pursuits. Light came from a small dusty window that served as his only connection to the outside world. A small portal through which he could watch the changing of seasons and note the passing of time.
Racked by a constant craving for alcohol, or the inhaled satiety of tobacco, they, and the guilt that fed them, were actively killing him. The only remaining trace of a relationship he’d once had with God, a large leather-bound black ‘Collin’s,’ bible, lying stoically between the bourbon and the tobacco. Its faded cover and inscribed gold lettering, often finding Frank’s hand resting upon it, or absently wandering through its yellowed dog-eared pages.
Yet despite this small physical link, he had with the word of God, most of his solace came from alcohol. The response was far more immediate and far more gratifying than any dialogue, he might have had with the almighty. Besides, he knew that God didn’t want to talk to him, not after he’d become unworthy. An individual whose salvation was now sought through chemicals, rather than prayer. He had wandered from the path. A path that ordinarily would have led him to the open arms of the Lord and provided spiritual protection for himself and his family forever. Only now, that path had gone, replaced by a road. A road to perdition. A highway to hell, that his thoughts now raced down at breakneck speed any time there was an extended absence of alcohol. The associated sobriety brings with it, the memory of how the single act of trying to save his son, had stolen his faith, and his firstborn. He’d been too proud, and too arrogant, and that was his sin.
Taking a long pull on a cigarette that sat between his lips, the skin surrounding his light blue eyes puckered, as the escaping tendrils of smoke wafted slowly upwards along the contours of his face. The unbidden images and emotions of the past began to play in his head. He didn’t want them to come but they did, and he remembered.
Francis Nathaniel Devlin, or Frank, as he was known to his friends, his family, and