ARA2.TXT Copywright (c)1991, 1993, by Dave Byter, proliferate freely.

A month later I again met some of these strange people.  For Thanksgiving
vacation, they stayed at the Union Outing Club cabin at Schoharie.  Livingstone
and Peggy had already moved in when I nursed my complaining Volvo down the hog
wallow that served as the driveway.

A few other assorted cave creatures from around the Northeast eventually showed
up, and Peggy entertained us with her misanthropy.  "There are just two
problems with this world.  Too many people; not enuf planet," she stated.  I
really hadn't thought of it that way before.  But I had to admit that I had
noticed that the places where the people weren't, were a hole lot nicer than
the places where they were.

"Well, let's do something about it!  I've got enuf nerve gas to wipe out all of
Albany.  I just liberated it from a shipment bound for Viet Nam," said
Daredevil Dave.

"How awful!  I've got friends in Albany.  You should be locked up in Dannemora
for your own good," shrilled an unnamed woman in a pink SUNY sweatshirt.  For
those of you not raised in Upstate New Yuck, Dannemora is home to the New York
State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

"Let's get practical.  All this talk about getting a few hundred thousand
people won't make the least bit of difference.  That's just one day's
population increase." Our statistician was Reaper.  I never did learn Reaper's
real name, but he said that was a philosophy post doc at Yale.  "You have to
realize that the world population is over three billion, increasing at over
sixty million per year.  Do you think that you could kill sixty million people
and not be noticed?"

"Like I said, the solution has to be biological.  A new pathogen properly
inoculated into the population would already have done its job by the time that
anybody found out what was happening.  I think that our Nanobiology Lab could
design the proper bug." Peggy was getting serious.

"You mean that you can build a bug to specification?" asked Reaper.

"Well, almost," apologized Peggy.  "We can't do it yet, but it is theoretically
possible.  Whacha want?  The one hour plague?  Put 'em out of their misery
before they know what happened."

"That sounds like chemical warfare," I added.  "You would have to spray
everyone.  It wouldn't have time to spread."

"You're right.  You want to have a long period of contagion.  Plenty of time to
spread it to someone else.  Come on.  Who is the pre-med here?"

Silence.  It seems that pre-meds don't like to crawl around in the mud.

"Well, it seems that we need some bug that can be transmitted before it kills
the victim.  It should be fatal to humans, but not mess up all the other
beasts.  And unless your aim is to completely wipe out the entire species, it
should be self-limiting.  But that is hardly a blueprint for a bug," I said.

"Let's use rabies as a model," mused Peggy.  "Once you are infected with the
virus, you are dead in a few weeks.  you might spread the virus during this
time by biting someone.  That doesn't much happen unless you are a fox.  Even
among foxes, the bug kills so fast that it doesn't spread well.  What keeps
rabies around is bats.  They can survive rabies by sleeping it out, then they
are flying mad bats."

That was news to me.  These people were crazier than I had thought.  "Wait a
minute, Peggy.  Are you saying that the bats are rabid?  I thought that it was
foxes and skunks."

"Nope.  In all other animals rabies kills so fast that it doesn't have a chance
to spread.  It is too successful.  Only bats live with it long enough to keep
it going.  And even then, they don't go around biting people."

This was getting curiouser and curiouser.  "What about vampire bats?" I asked.

"Nope.  No vampire bats here.  But that is a problem in Central America.  Here
you gotta catch the bat.  It doesn't catch you.  But a check of raccoons and
ringtail cats at Carlsbad Caverns has shown the highest rabies antibody titres
we have ever seen.  The coons hang around the entrance waiting for a mid air
collision to ground a bat, then they catch it and eat it.  Meanwhile they get a
free rabies vaccination.  Have you had your rabies vaccination?"

As a matter of fact, I hadn't, but I was beginning to wonder if just talking to
Peggy would do the job.  "So what are the chances of going mad from the bats
around here?" I asked.

"Well, we don't know.  We have gotten rabies antibodies from nearly ninety
percent of the bats we have tested, but that doesn't mean that they could
transmit the virus even if they bit you.  But I wouldn't advise putting your
finger into a bat's mouth." Peggy had attracted quite an audience by now.  "Who
wants to experiment with rabies?" she asked.  "We are developing a new rabies
vaccine with duck eggs and need people to test it.  Volunteers please!" Anybody
for a rabid duck?

Daredevil Dave seemed interested.  Almost.  "Knowing your reputation as a
misanthrope, I wouldn't be too anxious to be a guinea pig."

Reaper added his observations, "Even the Daredevil thinks you a little risky.
Poor Peggy, you'll never get any volunteers.  You'll have to use prisoners.
But let's get back to the problem at hand.  How do we bring the numbers of
humans back into balance with the rest of the biosphere?  Rabies isn't it.  But
maybe some other disease.  Peggy, you are the microbiologist.  What can be
done?"

"Well," said Peggy, "what you need is a reservoir and a vector.  Look at The
Black Plague of old Europe.  The bacterium Pasteurella is a natural pest of
rodents.  When it got started in England, it infected the rats.  There were
plenty of rats around.  The bug was transmitted by flea bites.  It was in the
flea spit and thus injected into the next rat.  The rat fleas would bite a
human too, if they got hungry enough.  Which reminds me that we had better make
up a pot of glop if we are going to McPhail's Hole tomorrow."