Before The End: Chapter3: Mona Pe

40 Years Back……

3. Mona Pe

Mona Pe was a naturalized American. She belonged to the city of New Mexico, Mexico. Mona was a brilliant student all throughout her academics. At age 15 she moved to USA, with the hope of getting a good Graduate degree in her favorite field, biology. What she ended up with was a Bio-tech degree and a host of corporate companies offering her huge pay packets right off Grad school, but she had other plans. She went on with her Masters and her PhD. One of her thesis for the PhD was on a self mutating cell that would be created artificially my man. Everyone thought of it as being a very ambitious project, but some people in the government thought otherwise. Just after getting her PhD, she was offered American citizenship and a job offer to work on her Mutating cell thesis. It was an offer that could not be denied.

Over the next 7 years Mona was engrossed in work, her sole purpose to create a self mutating cell! And she did succeed. 13^th April 2015. History was created. Mankind created the first artificial self mutating cell. Oh and it was all over the media. Mona Pe was a world celebrity. She was said to the equivalent of two Einsteins put together. It was a great feat to have achieved successful results in just 7 years of a project, while some people still stuck with the same project for over 15 years.

However as they say, what goes up has to come down someday. Mona’s sudden shot to fame ended soon. At one of the press meetings, Mona accidentally dropped the container and it was a spill. The contents evaporated as soon as they container cracked. This incident was caught on camera. The media ran a riot. Little was known about the self mutating cells and each media house had their own version on what will happen to the world. One thing all of them had in common, death of the human race. The media houses were notoriously famous for running such stories, but this story seemed very very believable. Mona Pe was demonized. There was complete pandemonium and the US economy suffered largely due to this.

The government had to intervene. They issued detailed report that explain how the self mutating cell would not survive in normal environments and need lab conditions to survive. The government ensured that the panic and chaos was settled and normalcy returned.

The truth is the report was faked. The scientists were still finding out ways in which they could tract and destroy the cell that escaped. Sadly nothing was known about the properties of the cell, making the job even more difficult. Mona Pe committed suicide. The government had covered up by saying she opted to retire. Making enough noise so as to divert the attention of the media and the public, the government managed to bury the issue.