The Kiss That Saved The World

Mister Harrison's dream helicopter flight back from the island ended with a crash. More accurately, a hard emergency landing on a tiny deserted island after the engine had suffered a significant failure. The other passengers were four young women returning from a photo-shoot, escorted by their manager, a mildly attractive, thirty-some-year-old Ms. Hamp. Mr. Harrison wasn't completely upset by the situation. The pilot had made the necessary communications of distress and indicated that help would be coming in the morning. The small party built a fire while the sun set in the West. Introductions were made, followed by the usual small talk. The helicopter pilot was the first to tell a story to pass the time. "I once fell off of Mount Everest," he began. The young women leaned in closer as the pilot described more of a slide off of Everest. He had lost his footing on his way up to the summit pyramid and slid down the snow slope on the mountain's North Face. All eyes of the females were on the pilot as he described the long slide down the mountain, narrowly missing certain death several times. "When I finally came to rest, my goggles were completely packed with snow. I tore them off so that I could once again see. To my surprise, six Chinese climbers were standing in front of me. First, they would stare at me, and then as a group, they would look up the mountain at the trail I had created in the snow, and then back to staring at me. Finally, one stepped forward and asked in perfect English, 'Are you OK?'" Mr. Harrison rolled his eyes as he watched the pilot impress the young ladies with his story. He wasn't worried. Harrision had the trump card of stories in his back pocket. He just had to wait for his moment. While the women fawned over the pilot, Ms. Hamp turned to Mr. Harrison and said, "You are being awful quiet." Harrison smiled. "Have any of you heard the story of the kiss that saved the world?" In one motion, all female eyes turned from the pilot to Mr. Harrison. And, Mr. Harrison told the story… The Kiss Claire-Marie Wilcox had everything a young woman could desire. She was the darling of high society and academia. Youngest of four sisters, she was considered the most attractive. She excelled in athletics and the sciences while attending a very exclusive high school. Her family members were wealthy, influential political players at the national level. She graduated from Tulane University as Valedictorian of her class. Her mother wanted her to marry the “right man” and get established after graduation. But Claire-Marie wanted to push her career path deeper into the sciences and signed up for molecular biological medicine at the University of Michigan. It meant she had to leave her home town of New Orleans and live in Michigan for at least three years. Her mother rented Claire-Marie a luxury townhouse near the campus, and hired a personal assistant for her daughter. She also purchased several goose down jackets. "You will freeze up there," her mother would say. Her mother also started searching for eligible men in Michigan for her daughter. The Ford and Dodge families might have someone. When she left New Orleans, her mother warned her, “Don’t get involved with the wrong man. It will ruin your reputation and put you in a terrible place.” Claire-Marie rolled her eyes and boarded the private jet to take her to Ann Arbor. She did not realize that her mother’s warning was both very correct and also very wrong, at the same time. She was going to meet the “wrong man.” It would change her reputation and put her in a terrible place. And, it would also change her world forever. It all began at Benny’s. The first time you enter Benny's in Ann Arbor, your first thought is, "How can anyone find this place appealing?" The linoleum floor is an alternating pattern of dirty white with dirty green. The walls were painted in different shades of grey. The ceiling had not been repainted since the establishment opened in 1934. The longer you sat at Benny's, the more apparent why this place had a steady crowd of college types. No two tables matched. The chairs came in various styles as well. Along the walls were handwritten signatures of past customers, including three former University of Michigan football coaches, sixteen quarterbacks, three Noble winning professors, several Weather underground members from the 1960s, and a carefully protected signature of Lady GaGa. A trip to either restroom was a minor art lesson in the local neighborhood. In the Men's room, it was an interpretive painting of what it meant to be a man, which somehow involved Prince, John Lennon, and Kid Rock. In the Women's restroom, spelled as "Grrrls" on the door, the theme was the power of shoes. Carefully drawn images of famous shoes from the 1970s and '80s were everywhere. This critical day Jon Armstrong sat with a large coffee and an even more substantial piece of pecan pie at a corner table. In front of him lay the scattered paperwork of the day for a second-year Ph.D. student of Biochemistry. He planned to prepare for the class he was presenting tomorrow. As a teaching assistant, he received additional money to supplement his scholarship. The coffee and pie, at a total of $4.59, was his dinner, or as he called it, his second meal of the day. It would have been another forgotten evening in his life if Claire-Marie Wilcox had not come through the door. She entered with two friends in tow. They swept into Benny’s and landed at a table in the center of the room. The two women in tow took seats on the other side of the table from Claire-Marie. Claire-Marie was about to hold court. Claire-Marie was somewhat of a legend at the university. Time magazine had featured her photo on a cover story about the future of science. Documentary filmmakers were frequently seen interviewing her somewhere on the Quad. Most of the women at the University of Michigan Medical School had taken pains to gain her attention. The two here tonight were aspiring doctors wishing to gather any morsel of wisdom from the iconic Claire-Marie. Which is precisely why Jon Armstrong thought she was the worse person on campus. Jon was the son of a working-class Detroit family. Life was a constant struggle. He had fought a long way up to his present situation. She had merely moved a little bit sideways to gain her position in life. He was working hard every waken hour to accomplish something meaningful in life. She seemed to drip new accomplishments. Jon had never wanted to seek her out for any reason. Jon had deep-seated anger of privilege and wealth. There were some things that Jon didn't believe in, such as love at first sight, destiny, fate, and romantic love. He had dated a few women in the past several years. These had been mostly relationships of convenience. Both parties wanted something that the other person could provide. Not just s*x, but things like a companion, the ability to have a boy/girlfriend to calm family fears, or someone to make you feel wanted. It was only later that he learned these companions had been girls and that a woman is a different proposition. Jon was well aware of his feelings about Claire-Marie. That is why it caught him by surprise when he realized he had been staring at her for three minutes. He had seen a couple of photos of her, but those had not prepared him for how striking she was in person. She was tall. At five feet, eleven inches, she presented a willowy figure of a woman. Her face, though, was the one feature no one missed. There are many beautiful women in the world, but it is rare to see one that is classic and unique. Jon, being a typical male, failed to notice that her clothing choices were superb and makeup flawless. Never mind the designer labels tucked out of sight in the proper Southern manner. Any woman over the age of 13 could see that Claire-Marie had the three things Jon did not have: looks, class, and money. Claire-Marie already had a degree from Tulane and was in her second year of graduate school. Yet, she was two years younger than Jon. Claire-Marie had summered in Spain, Bermuda, Tuscany, and other hangouts of the wealthy. Jon had spent summers in various Michigan state parks fishing for walleye. They were two people very far apart in separate worlds. Jon was painfully aware of this. However, he was also painfully aware of the mistake he had found in her most recent published paper. Jon sat for twenty minutes, tormented between approaching an unapproachable woman and needing to speak his mind. Eventually, the obsessive side of Jon won out. It would take another ten minutes for Jon to think of something to say to gain her attention. At the same time, a perfectly good piece of pecan pie went to waste, and a large cup of coffee went cold. Claire-Marie was accepting questions from her companions when she noticed the rumpled looking, bearded man staring at her. He was five feet, five inches tall and, standing near her table. She did not turn her head or make any attempt to acknowledge him. “Miss Wilcox?” said Jon. Jon had interrupted the ongoing conversation involving a woman of the South. Such behavior is never a recommended opening move. To the surprise of her companions, Claire-Marie turned her head towards the man. "I re…read your paper on genetic markers of Pancreatic Cancer. I wanted to compliment you on your work," stuttered Jon. Although Jon would slightly falter when under stress, it was forgivable but still probably not a smooth move. “Thank you,” replied Claire-Marie, turning back to her friends to carry on. But, Jon interrupted again. “Why didn’t you finish the paper?” asked Jon innocently. At this point, three sets of female eyebrows rose. Claire-Marie's companions began to shuffle their chairs slightly back from the table. They knew what was coming. This, this …man, had just broken at least half a dozen rules of politeness with a famous woman of high social breeding. Claire-Marie was going to give him both barrels of her social shotgun. However, the social shotgun didn’t fire. Instead, a straining-to-be-patient-and-polite Claire-Marie asked, “What do you mean by ‘not finished’?” Jon responded, “The RNA polymerase is not transcribing a predisposition for the disease. It is performing a two-step process to translate the resulting set of information. The genes you identified are setting up a mis-translation, whose probability I can calculate." “I’m sorry?” responded Claire-Marie. “Let me show you.” Jon flipped over one of the paper place mats at the table. He wrote down the identifying names of the genomes in the DNA, which determine whether a person develops pancreatic cancer. Jon looked up and saw three scowling faces. No one else at the table was impressed. He ignored them and went back to the paper. "This is the research I am doing. You see, DNA is not a straight-up information problem. It is a set of logical states. Depending on the gene and the genes it is directly in contact with, you get a specific probability that the information will end up mistranslated." Jon looked up again. This time two women were staring at him like he was a madman. Claire-Marie just looked only annoyed now. Jon quickly wrote down a series of numbers under each gene he had drawn. "That's the biological sequences that match each gene. Each gene is affecting several biological processes at the same time. Specific threads of information coming from several genes control the biological process." Now Claire-Marie had reached the border between politeness and downright anger. "Really." She declared, narrowing her eyes. "If that were true, it would mean that 50% of the people in my study would have developed the disease. We only saw 15%." Jon leaned forward. "Unless there was a biological trigger for the disease coming into play when all markers are present. Combined with the weakened immune system of the patient and bingo. I ran a Monte-Carlo simulation on that possibility and it exactly matches the percentage of the subjects in your study that did develop the disease." Claire-Marie made another point involving other studies of Pancreatic cancer. Jon countered with additional calculations on a second placemat. Claire-Marie looked at the handwriting of numbers. She blinked twice. She paused. Her two companions looked at each other nervously. They had unconsciously moved a good two feet back from the table by now. Claire-Marie had a firm hold on the tension in the room. Her mind raced from the temptation to put this guy in his place, or just walk away. After a moment of silence, she let go of the anger. Something he had said rang true. Curiosity now took hold. She put her hand on the only empty chair at the table. "Have a seat," she said quietly. "Tell me again how you made this transcription prediction." A few minutes later, the other two women at the table had made their excuses and left. Jon and Claire-Marie were already into a head-to-head intellectual confrontation. Jon was defending his findings in Biochemistry against Claire-Marie’s defense of the holy dogma of genetic engineering. Cups of coffee came to the table. Claire-Marie would pay for these. Jon gathered placemats from several tables to make more calculations. It went on until two in the morning when Benny's closed for the night. “I am not convinced,” said Claire-Marie, although she was. “The math says it has to be.” Replied Jon, although the math was far from conclusive. "If you are right, then the entire field of genetics has been going down the wrong road for a hundred years," stated Claire-Marie. “It has,” he stated. “I’m fighting everyone in my department to convince them. If I am right, life can be designed and changed along mathematical lines.” She forgave his poor use of grammar. She pulled out one of her calling cards and wrote something on the back of it. She handed this to Jon. "Call me. We have to talk more about this." She placed a hand on the back of his neck, pulled him towards her, and kissed him. At that moment, Jon changed. With that kiss, History changed. And, Claire-Marie left. Jon stood there, confused for a good two minutes. Only the manager pushing Jon out the door ended the moment. No one saw Claire-Marie for the next few days. She had come home and promptly torn up the paper she was preparing to submit to the Journal of Genetic Engineering. She opened her laptop and started to research. She slept briefly, and then she began to type. Typically, Mrs. Wilcox heard from her daughter every day. She had heard nothing for three days and decided to call her. Claire-Marie sounded very tired. “How have you been?” inquired Mrs. Wilcox. "Very busy. I have to rewrite my next paper completely. By the way, I just met the man I am going to marry," she said in an unusually casual way. A very startled Mrs. Wilcox asked, “Who’s his family?” Claire-Marie stopped what she was doing, blinked, and remarked, “You know, I forgot to ask him his last name.”