The Lofair family had spread across the globe over the past two hundred years, resulting in a large and complex family tree. But even in the absence of Judaism, there was always one adult in every family who had the biggest say because they held financial power.
This position—the head of the family—was now held by Alphonse. He was the oldest in the Lofair family, and he was the owner of the Lofair mansion in Washington, D.C., which had been in his family since his great-great-grandfather.
Though he wasn’t an investor, Alphonse controlled the vast financial assets that dated back to the days when the family ran the Bank of Amsterdam. Of course, he hired professionals to manage those assets, and most of the important business was handled in consultation with his talented younger brothers.
Today was no different.
“Is something bothering you?” asked Tate Lofair, the chairman of Chenover Financial Holding.
Alphonse didn’t answer. He was deep in thought, drinking a glass of wine.
“When Alphonse is frowning like that, it’s either because you don’t like the wine or something’s wrong at work,” said Kimber Lofair.
“The wine is fine,” Alphonse said.
“Then it’s work,” Tate said. “Alphonse, you’re going to go to the White House soon, right? You were bragging that you’re going to pester President Campbell from right beside him.”
“Well, I was going to do an important project at NASA before I went. I was going to collect some microorganisms living on the outer walls of the spacecraft and give them to Doctor Ryu and Doctor Song to develop a new decontaminant for removing radioactivity.”Alphonse clicked his tongue.
“But why did she quit all of a sudden?”
“Quit?” Kimber asked.
“Doctor Song. We were about to sign the contract, but she suddenly backed out, saying she needed to talk to their CEO from here on out,” Alphonse said like he didn’t understand.
“She’s a Nobel Prize candidate. No one knows the name of the CEO of Cellijenner, but everyone knows Doctor Song Ji-Hyun. She’s one of the up-and-coming young scientists whose reputation is rising alongside Doctor Ryu. But someone like her came all the way to the United States without a guideline on how to draft a contract? When she’s meeting with me?”
“Well, it’s strange, but should you be that worried?” Kimber asked.
“What bothers me is that it was right after she got a call from Ryu Young-Joon.”
Alphonse massaged his head with his fingers.
“Come to think of it, I heard some news about Doctor Ryu through the reporters,” Tate said.
“What news?”
“Not much, just that there are teams working on neural therapy and tissue regeneration using stem cells at A-GenBio’s Laboratory Seven. Apparently, they are creating a task force.”
“A task force?”
Alphonse tilted his head, confused.
“A task force for what?”
“I don’t know the details. It’s not like we planted spies at A-GenBio or anything. We don’t even know what exactly Mr. Ryu’s instructions were. They say it’s a task force, but it’s just reporters making up a story based on a rumor that a bunch of technicians are being volunteered and transferred from each department to redraw the organizational chart.”
“Hm.”
Alphonse took a sip of his wine.
“Is Doctor Ryu still in Washington?”
“I think so, but he bought a plane ticket. I think he’s leaving soon,” Kimber said.
“He bought a plane ticket?”
“Yeah.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’ve been looking into his whereabouts in advance because you were interested in him. As of yesterday, Ryu Young-Joon bought a ticket with Delta Airlines.”
“Where is he going?” Alphonse asked.
“Nicaragua.”
“Nicaragua!”
Alphonse jumped out of his seat in surprise.
“What’s wrong?”
“...”
Alphonse’s fingers trembled. An overwhelming sense of anxiety washed over him.
“Alphonse,” Tate called. “We know you have bad memories of that area, but what is Doctor Ryu going to do there? It was thirty years ago. Even if he sniffed something out now, he wouldn’t be able to find any evidence. We’ve destroyed everything.”
“...”
Alphonse sat back in his seat.
“Keep an eye out for what A-GenBio announces. And if possible, try to find out first. I need to send someone to Nicaragua,” Alphonse said.
“I’m telling you, you’re overreacting.”
“Ryu Young-Joon covertly dug up the fact that the Chinese president received an illegal heart transplant and proved it in an unimaginable way,” he said. “I need to know what A-GenBio’s task force is.”
*
Thankfully, Alphonse’s confusion and worry didn’t last long as just four days later, A-GenBio made an official announcement.
[A-GenBio’s Next Generation Hospital to provide stem cell therapy to the Nicaraguan government.]
The news, which was abruptly announced, had a goal far beyond the public’s imagination.
[A medical business team of six hundred technicians and specialists will work on a huge medical project in Nicaragua in Latin America.]
[The task force, formed under the cooperation of A-GenBio and the Next Generation Hospital, aims to control the Guillain-Barré syndrome and Zika virus, which are currently on the rise in Latin America, as well as cure various genetic and neurological disorders of chronically incurable patients living in Nicaragua.]
Instead of Young-Joon, Kim Young-Hoon, the CEO in charge, was all over the news.
“A-GenBio and the Next Generation Hospital have always been willing to share our technology in the name of humanitarianism with doctors around the world. However, methods such as gene surgery and the injection of induced pluripotent stem cells into the subventricular zone were too difficult for other doctors to attempt,” Kim Young-Hoon said. “Take a look at this data.”
Kim Young-Hoon presented a chart on the screen. It listed the number of visiting professors from dozens of countries, the adoption of new technologies in their home hospitals, and the number of medical staff who could properly use that technology.
“If we score each of them and plot them on a graph, it looks like this.”
Kim Young-Hoon went to the next slide. The scores on the graph showed a stark disparity. If A-GenBio and the first Next Generation Hospital in Korea were at one hundred, the next-generation hospitals in developed countries were around thirty, and underdeveloped countries were in single digits.
“This above graph was published by the WHO three months ago. As the development of A-GenBio’s technology has accelerated, the disparity in the above graph is widening rather than shrinking,” Kim Young-Hoon said, pointing to the screen.
“We have had prestigious doctors from various hospitals around the world come to Korea and participate as visiting professors at A-GenBio, and they would spend months training and go back. Still, it is difficult to fill the gap, and the reason for that is simple,” he said.
“After Mr. Ryu founded A-GenBio, everyone realized that the basic technology of stem cells and Cas9 were the breakthroughs of future medicine. The top elites, who had won or were nominated for the Nobel Prize, swarmed to Korea and have joined A-GenBio,” Kim Young-Hoon said humbly.
“A-GenBio recognizes that our incredible growth and innovation over the past two years is due to the participation of talented people from all over the world. And to reciprocate, we believe that we need to conduct international academic exchanges in a more efficient way.
“As such, from now on, A-GenBio and the Next Generation Hospital would like to discuss with the government or local authorities and travel to the area to provide medical services. All necessary equipment and pharmaceuticals will be brought directly by A-GenBio using a cold chain, and we promise to cure more than eighty percent of the incurable patients in any area we visit.”
Kim Young-Hoon’s declaration quickly spread around the world through various media outlets.
‘A-GenBio commercialized treatment itself.’
This was like a powerful mercenary group that went wherever it was called in the war against disease, bringing victory. Who could have imagined such a thing? They would negotiate with various countries in advance, visit them, stay for several months, and then leave after completely resolving all the region's incurable diseases.
“This trip to Nicaragua will be the pilot test,” Kim Young-Hoon announced.
The reporters began asking questions.
—Nicaragua is a little unfamiliar to Korea. Why did you choose Nicaragua?
As if he’d been waiting for this question, Kim Young-Hoon gave a quick answer, which hinted at other things.
“Nicaragua has a large number of patients with congenital deformities or genetic neurological disease. It is seven times higher than Honduras, its neighbor,” Kim Young-Hoon said.
“Normally, with such a high incidence of genetic disorders, we would expect to see significant radiation contamination. But Nicaragua is far away from the Nevada Test Site in the U.S., and it’s quite a distance from New Mexico, where the Manhattan Project was conducted. It’s also not like there’s been a nuclear power plant accident or anything.”
Kim Young-Hoon presented the symbol of A-GenBio’s Laboratory Seven on the screen.
“A-GenBio is not just treating patients. We are also a healthcare and disease control organization that prevents diseases from occurring in the first place. As such, Nicaragua has a lot of research value to us.”
*
“Why Nicaragua?” Song Ji-Hyun asked on the way to the airport.
“You heard Director Kim’s announcement,” Young-Joon said.
“I’m asking because I thought you might know why Nicaragua has so many deformities and genetic diseases.”
Young-Joon nodded.
“I’ll give you a hint. Most of these patients were born before 1986, and they are orphans. In Nicaragua, the U.S.-backed Somoza government and the Sandinista rebels kept fighting during the Cold War. After the regime change, the Sandinista government and the Contra rebels started fighting. It’s understandable why there are so many orphans, but…” Young-Joon said. “Isn’t it strange that the frequency of genetic diseases is concentrated before 1986?”
“Did someone secretly conduct a nuclear test or something?” Song Ji-Hyun asked with a serious expression.
“No. On paper, those babies were all born in hospitals in safe areas with no risk of radioactive contamination,” Young-Joon said.
The embryology laboratory in the Groom Lake Air Force Base was creating genetically engineered babies for eighteen years. Some babies have died in failed experiments, but others have survived with disabilities, which was the problem.
They couldn’t raise them in a facility like the lab, but it was difficult to kill them. It didn’t matter after the Cold War ended as the idea was to get rid of the institute itself, but not in the two decades before that. When Doctor Ref was born, Alphonse Lofair intended to make her elite, and for that to happen, the laboratory at Groom Lake couldn’t be an evil criminal organization.
What if the scandal broke after Doctor Ref entered society? “At that time, there was no such thing as research ethics, and we did these things out of patriotism. The children born with defects were raised in orphanages,” was vastly different from saying “We killed all those babies.” The former was a lapse in research ethics and a tragedy born out of the Cold War, but the latter was a grave felony: infanticide.
Burdened by this, Alphonse had buried the surviving failures of the lab within the history of the Nicaraguan Civil War for eighteen years. It wasn’t difficult to do this, as the mothers often died in most cases involving babies with severe genetic disorders. No one noticed, and there was no evidence. All the documents were perfect.
But when Young-Joon saw the number of people with genetic disorders in Nicaragua, their age range, and the common denominator of an orphanage, he realized the situation at once.
“Doctor Song, you know…” Young-Joon said.
“Pardon?”
“DNA is the world’s most powerful information storage device. One gram of DNA contains a petabyte of information.”
“...”
“And if you do something to it, it always leaves behind evidence.”
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