Face-Lift 704

Guess the Plot

Sector C

1. In 2000 Ted blew his mind eating 'psychedelic' cookies and he has been drooling in Sector C of the hospital ever since. That's what his trust fund administrator says. But when terrorists release a photo of their captured 'spy' who looks and sounds just like Ted, his sister Sarah realizes he actually joined the CIA in 1999, like he said he would. So who is that guy in . . . Sector C???

2. Medical student Lou Nash takes the wrong elevator on his way to Histology and gets lost in Sector C: the cadaver room, where he runs into the beguiling Jane Doe. Not realizing she should be inertly dead, Lou takes Jane for coffee and thinks he's about to get lucky -- until she bites his earlobe off, and soon, yes, he's a zombie, too.

3. When rapper LaZBoi is found dead behind the stage of the Sector C club, Homicide detective Zack Martinez knows two things: LaZBoi wasn't scheduled to sing at a country bar, and his sister will kill him if he doesn't get Taylor Swift's autograph.

4. Wanna hunt some saber-toothed tigers or mammoths? Extremely wealthy? Head on over to Sector C, the highly lucrative animal cloning operation. Well, highly lucrative until an escaped animal starts a pandemic that wipes out millions of people. Can Sector C geneticists find a way to turn this disaster into profit?

5. The name, the shape, the obsession -- all that's missing is the pointy head in charge. Yes, again. "Trackless" Colonel Liamb has lost himself, sans-army, in enemy territory. His ID claims he's an itinerant entomologist. Too bad he's terrified of bug, insect, or sequin with legs glued on.

6. Forty years ago a space ship landed in Sector C and took away every cat on the planet. But now the cats are about to make a comeback, and there’s not enough Meow-Mix on earth to keep the naughty kitties from scratching their owners’s eyes out when they drop in for a little payback.


Original Version

Dear Mr. SparkEE:

Walt Thurman, Chairman of Triple E Enterprises, has always considered his business model and science sound: bring in the brightest offshore talent to clone rare and endangered animals, and let wealthy businessmen pay to shoot the excess in canned, stylized hunts. As special incentive, there’s the elite package in Sector C reserved for “Frequent Hunters” – exclusive specimens from the Pleistocene Ice Age. [Special! For every ten endangered animals killed, kill one extinct animal!]

The venture is a success, until animals and employees begin to show signs of neurologic dysfunction. Triple E has inadvertently uncovered proof that megabeasts like the mammoth and saber-tooth tiger succumbed not to overhunting as the popular theory goes, [My own theory is that it's impossible to get any food to your mouth when you have giant saber teeth and curvy tusks getting in the way.] but to a type of genetic prion disorder that causes a transmissible, incurable – always fatal – neural disease. And history is about to repeat itself. [The ultimate indignity: going extinct twice.]

One escapee from the North Dakota compound is all it takes to start a pandemic that infects the milk, muscle, and brains of every mammal that comes in contact with the mutant prion. [In layman's terms, transmissible spongiform encephalopathy.] As children and adults across the U.S. weaken and die, as millions of animals are slaughtered [by wealthy businessmen], and the global economy tanks, CDC investigator, Mike Shafer, teams with veterinarian, Donna Bailey, [Those last four commas are slowing the flow. I'd get by without them. Also, I'd change veterinarian Donna Bailey to a clone of extinct singer Pearl Bailey.] to untangle the clues that will lead them to patient zero in hopes of discovering the first cause and a possible cure.

What Mike and Donna don’t expect to find is Triple E holding a megahunt and charging clients to kill the last of the infected “Exotic, Endangered, and Extinct” stock. [Brilliant. Anyone willing to pay millions to kill an extinct animal would happily pay a surcharge to kill the last extinct animal.] Nor do they expect to be coerced into helping Triple E geneticists capitalize on the pandemic they unleashed by creating a stabilizing protein that might reverse the disease – research that will ultimately be sold to the highest [still-living] bidder. The treatment is risky and untried, tested only on themselves; it seems viable in the short term – but at what long-term cost? [Given the choice between dying tomorrow from a horrible nerve disease and possibly experiencing side effects from it's cure in twenty years, I'll risk the treatment.]

Drawing on tomorrow’s science headlines, SECTOR C is an 85,000-word technothriller. I look forward to sending you the completed manuscript.


Notes

It's got too much information. Using mostly the delete function, you can get the plot down to:

Triple E Enterprises has a unique business model: bring in the brightest offshore talent to clone endangered animals, and let wealthy businessmen pay to shoot them in canned, stylized hunts. As special incentive, there’s Sector C, reserved for “Frequent Hunters” – exclusive specimens from the Pleistocene Age.

The venture is a success, until animals and employees show signs of neurologic dysfunction. Triple E has inadvertently uncovered proof that megabeasts like the mammoth and saber-tooth tiger succumbed not to overhunting as the popular theory goes, but to a transmissible, incurable – always fatal – neural disease. And history is about to repeat itself.

As children and adults across the U.S. weaken and die, CDC investigator Mike Shafer teams with veterinarian Donna Bailey to find the clues that will lead them to patient zero. What Mike and Donna don’t expect to find is Triple E holding a megahunt and charging clients to kill the last of the infected “Exotic, Endangered, and Extinct” stock. Nor do they expect to be coerced into helping Triple E geneticists capitalize on the pandemic they unleashed by creating a protein that might reverse the disease – to be sold to the highest bidder.