Tales from the ARVInn -- The Beginning

Tales from the ARVInn: The Beginning

One might say that Professor Janos Kadalys was more famous long after his death than while he lived. After all, how many people can say they changed the path of history.

Professor of Medical Biology at Universita Carpatia in Brogara, Czechia, he enjoyed a quiet life and well-respected reputation as a teacher. What most did not know was his life-long interest in the aging process, which deepened into an obsession as he himself grew older.

The University was a smaller, more collegial, institution, located in the Silesian region of the country. It survived on the basis of its low cost and the devotion of its faculty to teaching. Students came in from many countries for both those reasons. Every continent was usually represented in the student body. Kadalys was often recognized as an outstanding teacher, who could demonstrate even complex principles well enough to be understood by even the densest sophomore. His position allowed him a great deal of freedom in his research. No one really wanted to question the work he did, especially that which he did on his countryside estate outside the city. Over a half-century of work gave him an outstanding breadth of knowledge, which he used to further his work.

Unfortunately, he could find no true 'magic bullet' that would solve what he saw as a great barrier to greater knowledge--the fact that he, like everyone, was limited to just a short period of time to create great work and couldn't pass along all that he had learned well enough for someone to continue it. He became more and more extreme in his work, trying to stem the onward march of the years.

It is probable that he actually never knew himself that he had succeeded. His work had led him to such obscure methods and procedures that even he didn't fully understand some of them. By the late 2040's, with retirement being discussed, he was abandoning more and more safety protocols in his research.

It was only after some fifty years of biological detective work by WHO and many individuals that the origin of the Age Regression Virus was traced back to him. It had spread from so many starting points all over the world at nearly the same time that it had totally confused all the procedures in place to observe such events.

As reconstructed by the medical detectives, it seems that it came about from a simple error, a bit of miscalculation and just plain bad luck. Professor Kadalys had been working with viruses as vectors for carrying changes to various genes, trying to influence their breakdown over time in the process of aging. In trying to get the specific changes he wanted, he developed viruses that targeted certain receptors in cells, but not others.

His laboratory notes, such as remained by then in the Universita Carpatia archive, indicated he had had high hopes for certain viral results, but could not get the proof he wanted. What he didn't know was that he had succeeded, but his tests were not fine enough to see the changes being made. His virus did work, but not on everyone. Because they were to be selective in the receptors, they would not work on everyone. The points were actually found in only a small percentage of the total population, as the result of one of a series of minor mutations. Needless to say, when the realization came to later scientific investigators, his research was immediately classified and hidden away by the Czech government, with the hope of keeping his techniques away from biological warfare research.

The professor was himself not a carrier, but a simple accident on a busy day in his private lab seems to have begun the sequence of events which still echo around the world. Years of careful forensic work have developed a model of the situation as it developed. Kodalys recorded that one of his culture racks had failed and a few samples were lost. He evidently thought little of it at the time and went about his normal routine, including a four-hour graduate-level seminar that afternoon.

One of these samples was evidently the original Age Regression Virus. Whether it arose from the professor's immediate work or through a chance mutation is unknown. We do know how hardy it is, surviving for days on just about any surface and traveling through the air with ease. It managed to survive whatever cleanup was done and was carried into the professor's class. In those days, even higher-level courses were often larger, due to the size of the school and Professor Kadalys' reputation. He was known as an active lecturer, rarely staying in one place at the front of the room. His teaching might take him anywhere in the room. With the virus on him or his clothing, it was a simple matter to brush against a desk, a coat or even to point out mistakes in a student's notebook. This being one of the last classes of the term, students were soon winging their ways around the globe to return home for the summer.

As we know today, the virus is stubborn in its refusal to perish. It also has a tendency to attach itself to a host who can spread it without developing its most serious effects. With an incubation period ranging from hours to weeks in some cases, it has defeated many attempts at contract tracing. Additionally, for those who do not possess one of the key DNA mutations, the worst effect is hardly more than the common cold.

It is probable that, of that class of 28 graduate students, some had begun to develop the condition before the term ended nine days later. What is known, after decades of research, is that the virus was carried from the university into at least eighteen countries on four continents. Compounding this was the number of connecting flights, railways and buses our bargain-seeking student carriers made use of as they traveled. This led to further spread among fellow passengers, crews and airport and station workers.

Professor Kadalys himself was not to know of any of this. As he left the university after turning in his last semester grades and reports a few days later, he died in a traffic accident on the highway before reaching home. His great discovery remained undocumented until a massive tracing project culminating at the turn of the century began to unravel the Gordian knot of the virus' origin. At the time, within a few weeks after his death, his executor had the laboratory shuttered, his samples destroyed and his papers archived. In the tracing effort, their discovery eventually helped give the most definitive answer possible for us today as to the origins of ARV.

Today, we can read the voluminous reports produced by WHO and see where almost every person from that class traveled. Four who were affected by the virus are still living, along with a handful of others. That original cohort is today a model of the entire range of the results of the virus. They range in apparent age from a few months through their early 20's. Most, including the non-affected, have requested their identities be kept confidential.

Exhibit A: Living members of the initial ARV cohort

1. A.L., b. 2027, United States. Apparent age: approx. 28 months

2. K.G., b. 2026, Germany. Apparent age: 5 years

3. R.C., b. 2027, Argentina. Apparent age: 11 years.

4. F.T., b. 2027, China. Apparent age: 21 years.

Prepared 20 September 2110