Vozrozhdeniya Island

Aral Sea

Soviet Biological Warfare Testing Facility

Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic

June 2, 1988

"Come on Vanya, unless you want to be another test subject!"

Vanya Akulov quickly tested the restraining strap and checked the instruments monitoring the test subjects vital signs on the last chimpanzee and left the large vapor chamber. The beast gave him a murderous glare but was completely restrained and tranquilized. There were thirty test subjects inside the chamber and none of them would leave it alive.

Akulov stopped and heaved the heavy steel door closed and sealed the large bell shaped chamber. It's walls were four meters thick. When the tests were done, a gas would be pumped into the chamber and ignited reducing anything inside to ashes.

It was a big day for the youthful virologist. It was the first full up test of his brainchild which had been given the innocuous title of preparation 437.

Preparation 437 began as a Alphavirus. In its original form, it caused Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis or VEE and was a mosquito borne menace to horses and people in its original jungle. It had been troublesome enough for a vaccine to be developed but still had interesting characteristics.

As an Alphavirus, it had a ridiculously simple structure: simple and elegant. VEE was a positively sensed, single stranded RNA virus. It was this very simplicity that allowed Akulov to radically redesign the virus by splicing its genetic material. It was no longer VEE. It was a genetically programmed bioweapon. Like its origin, Preparation 437 could easily be transmitted by mosquito giving it a vector that could spread it far and wide.

Akulov completed the preparations outside the mist chamber and climbed a spiral staircase to control room on the next level. He stopped at the airlock in between and stripped off the heavy "space suit" and proceeded in scrubs.

When he arrived in the control room there were several officer there in the uniform of the Soviet Army and KGB. One of the officers stepped forward and said, "Comrade Scientist Akulov, your breakthrough has been noted at the highest levels. I bring congratulations from the Chairman of the Central Committee."

Akulov said, "Thank you Comrade General. I serve the Soviet Union."

That made the KGB man and the faceless party apparatchiks smile but some of the other scientists winced. Nobody likes a brown-nose regardless of the system but the Soviet bureaucracy bred and rewarded many scores of them.

Dr. Rodenko was senior in the lab but there was glory enough to go around. "Gentlemen, we are ready to begin the test. Vanya has modified the original virus. In its original form, it attacks the brain and causes Encephalitis: a swelling of the brain that causes coma and sometimes death. However, in its modified form, it's attack is more targeted. It attacks the higher brain function."

Akulov said, "I expect that we will see a different illness. Some will die outright. Encephalitis can do that. In its modified form, I expect the victim to awaken from a short coma with all higher brain functions destroyed."

The general asked, "What will that mean Comrade Scientists?"

Akulov relied, "We will see but if it works as I expect, we will have the agent that causes incapacity and chaos that the Sub-committee has been wanting for years. Give us 4 days for the test to run its course and we'll see.

Twenty-four hours later, all thirty chimps were comatose.

Thirty-six hours later eight of the chips expired from cerebral edema.

The first of the others awoke fifty-two hours after infection. They raged. They fought at the restraints with all of their might. Over the next four hours sixteen of them awakened in a murderous hatred. Fighting and snarling to free themselves. Six more of them stayed in what Akulov judged to be a persistent vegetative state.

As the first one finally freed itself 56 hours into the experiment, a pale and shaken Dr. Rodenko armed the self-destruct system and incinerated all of the test subjects in the vapor chamber.

All of the important men that had come to see Akulov's accomplishment were badly shaken. It was obvious for all that had seen, anyone the raging chimps might have gotten their hands on would have been torn to shreds. Should they have survived, the victims would be certainly have been infected.

Preparation 437 was never advanced to full production. The People's Sub-Committee on Special Weapons deemed it entirely too dangerous. It was saved for special projects by the KGB and became yet another agent in the Soviet bioweapons massive arsenal,