Chapter Two Hundred and Sixty-Three: Tweaking Aeroscar (Patreon)

A month had gone by since the Battle of Lonavala, and things were - calmer than I’d expected.

The people of the city hadn’t rioted, or marched the streets in protest demanding government action, or gone amok. All the doomsday scenarios one would predict in the face of imminent societal collapse had comprehensively failed to come true for Mumbai.

Oddly enough, it was a politician - or rather, a group of politicians - who had made the difference. 

I’d not known much about the elected leader of India, but Prime Minister Ramnath Narayanswamy had turned out to be quite an emotive speaker. He’d appeared on national television and spoken - eloquently - about how his heart went out to the citizens of Mumbai, and how the entire country would stand with them.

Then he’d apparently departed from script and talked about being a twelve-year-old kid, confined at home for two years, during the global pandemic of 2020. About how the then Prime Minister had locked down the entire country with a day’s notice, confining everyone to their homes for the better part of two months, to stop the spread of the coronavirus - and how that decision, despite its hardship, had probably saved millions of lives. 

One of which had been Ramnath Narayanswamy, who still carried his asthma inhalers around. 

Certainly the seventy-year-old who led the Indian government was popular enough - and respected enough - to persuade the people of Mumbai to support the government while they dealt with the crisis. 

Narayanswamy had also promised to spend three days a week in Mumbai, meeting people, for the duration of the crisis - a promise that, in the opinion of most commenters, had been the final touch that swayed public opinion in favour of the government’s response.

He’d also promised that the country’s best scientists and several of the world’s top ultras would be helping fight the infection, “including Belessar”. 

I still wasn’t sure what to make of that. 

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In any case, the month had been incredibly busy for me. Keeping the synthesis furnaces at BAE-Dragonfly running consumed a chunk of my time, but there was no time for assembly, or manufacturing, or even replacing the exhausted Starfalls. 

Every moment I had to spare was going into two things:

Researching Aerovascar, and healing people. 

Redcross Rhythm and I had been assigned groups of people to cure. People who were, so to speak, in the ‘danger’ zone for treatment - specifically, those who were supposed to have allergies to Aerovascar. A panel of doctors checked on such cases and sent them to one of us for treatment.

It hadn’t escaped my notice that most of the ‘allergic’ patients were extremely wealthy, or politically connected. Or, in many cases, both. 

Did that stop me from treating them, and their families? Hell no. 

We still didn’t have enough Aerovascar for everyone, and each dose that didn’t go into a wealthy person’s arm went to someone else. At the end of the day, a life saved was a life saved, regardless of how much money they had. 

Plus, the Indian government had declared that everyone in Mumbai would get the necessary dose of Aerovascar for free, as a lifesaving drug, so there was that. 

Meanwhile, the formulation process for Aerovascar continued to be a struggle. At least half my day went into different attempts to get the molecule to stabilize in the lab.

My new lab was a modest building on the outskirts of Mumbai, set up for pharmaceutical research. Mudgal Enterprises - a company owned by one of the people I’d treated - had leased out several such buildings to any scientists working on Aerovascar synthesis, to see if the product could be made cheaper.

Fitting right in with what I wanted to do, which made the official agreement between BAE-Dragonfly and Mudgal Enterprises much easier to close. Gideon had come through in spades, getting a contract executed in record time and putting Sarah Palmer on a plane to Mumbai the next morning.

As Dr. Palmer took over the administration of the lab, hiring a half-dozen research assistants to ensure things ran like clockwork, I focused my attention on Aerovascar synthesis.

The reason Aerovascar was so expensive was linked to the extraction process. For every three tons of starting materials, the process would yield a few miligrams of finished product of usable quality. The rest of the material transformed into a useless pool of waste chemicals, some of which were at least mildly toxic. 

The low conversion came from the fact that the process had as many as sixty-eight different steps, each with a low conversion ratio.

My goal in the lab was to cut the process short, or improve the efficiency of the steps. 

I wasn’t alone in this, of course. Several research labs across the world were trying the same thing. Unfortunately, they lacked one key tool that I had.

Namely, Chemist Level 15. 

Explaining physical powers to people is easy. Explaining mental powers is harder, and explaining science skills is the hardest of the lot. 

Combining the effect of 71 INT, 82 WIS and Chemist Level 15 gave me a frightening ability to leap ahead of virtually every other science team in the world. I’d already sensed this when working on fullersteel and plasmium; now, the field of organic chemistry opened its secrets up to me faster than I’d ever imagined possible. 

There were sixty-eight steps in making Aerovascar, including several rounds of distillation, dissolution, aliphatic acid/alcohol reactions, and a wide range of controlled temperature treatments. 

I took each step, one at a time, and started tweaking it. Change the reaction temperature to speed up conversion. Use my MP to stabilize the reaction, preventing the test tubes from exploding. Alter the distillation conditions, modifying the pressure from three atmospheres to sixteen. Swap out the ground vanadium pentoxide with the much more reactive niobium pentoxide, coating it on silica aerogel for better reactivity.

There were plenty of failures, of course. The first attempt to increase pressure had resulted in the product turning into a useless brown goo; the niobium pentoxide had gone inert after seconds of exposure to the material, before I’d had the idea to coat it on silica aerogel; and the less said about the number of exploded test tubes, the better. 

Days passed, and the number of failed experiments continued to climb, with tiny breakthroughs once in a while. 

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“Andrew,” Dr. Palmer’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “Have you been here all night?”

“Huh?” I blinked. “It’s only eight….” I trailed off. Sunlight was streaming through the window. 

“It’s eight a.m.,” Sarah pointed out. “Not eight p.m. I distinctly remember telling you to get some rest last night.”

“It’s fine,” I muttered. “I’m not tired. Just lost track of time, I guess.”

“That’s the fourth time this month,” Dr. Palmer replied. “You do realize that you need rest, right?”

“We are on a clock, Sarah.”

“You’re not going to help anyone if you drop dead from exhaustion.”

“I’ve dealt with much worse. Look, there are other scientists working round the clock as well.”

Sarah Palmer stood, hands on hips, deep in thought. “Belessar. I’m not going to pretend you’re like other scientists.”

“Thank you.”

“For example, if the SURGE pager rings, other scientists will find the nearest bunker. While you will rush off to the nearest assembly point, along with the Rapid Response Division. In your present, sleep-deprived condition.” She paused. “How many lives are you risking by not being at top readiness right now?”

That took me aback. “... I didn’t think of it that way.”

Dr. Palmer grinned. “Take it from one dedicated scientist to another. There’s a time to grind, and a time to relax. And sleep.”

“I just… it feels like I’m running out of time.”

“It’s only been a month. And in that time, you’ve come up with three proven ways to improve the yield of Aerovascar.”

I blinked. “It’s still too expensive.”

“You do realize that all three techniques, taken together, will increase the yield per batch by at least four times?”

“.... The techniques are being used?”

“Yes, I’ve been ensuring they get published and shared with the broader community.”

“Oh.” I felt … relieved. “I hadn’t considered publication yet, actually - I wanted to finish the synthesis first.”

“That’s the mistake many a young scientist makes. Publish or perish, Belessar.” Dr. Palmer chuckled. “I made sure the research paper had your name on it, as well as the experimental data to back up your work.”

“Where did you find the time to put together all that?”

“What do you think I’ve got these research assistants hanging around for? You focus on the research, I’ll handle the documentation. And for the love of God get some sleep.”

I sighed. “Fine. Although that’s going to delay the research again.”

“You never know. You could be like Kekule and have a breakthrough in your dreams.”

My dreams that night (morning?) were, unfortunately, restful. No inspirations came to me, unlike August ‘I dream of benzene’ Kekule. 

Seven hours of sleep under my belt, I decided to call home. 

Paul picked up on the first ring, his face filling the screen. “Andrew?”

“I’m up. Where’s Anne?”

Paul chuckled. “It’s the first of September, Andrew. She started school today.”

“Damn it. I forgot, sorry.”

“It’s fine. We know you’ve been swamped with the work. How’s the search for making the cure affordable?”

“It’s, um, chugging along.”

“Sarah Palmer told me you’ve come up with a few tweaks that will reduce the cost.”

“She said ‘improve the yield’ and is saying it could be as much as fourfold.”

“That means the cost will drop to about a fourth. Not bad at all.”

“Even if it hits that number, it’s still fifteen thousand dollars a dose. They’ll struggle to pay for that much for twenty-five million people.” 

“And you’ve only been at it for a month. You have eleven more.”

“They also need time to make the drugs and distribute them. Need to factor that.”

“From what I read, the factories, production lines, and bottling plants will need another two months to get ready. If you can tweak it further by then?” Paul shrugged. “No reason to stop now. And remember, it’s not only on you.”

“It sort of is. There are no other ultras with the kind of specialization in advanced chemistry that I have.”

“There are thousands of other scientists, Andrew. You need to let them take some of the load. You haven’t been sleeping well, have you?”

“I slept for seven hours just now.”

“I’m sure you did. Just - take care of your health, okay?”

“Got it. Tell Anne I’m fine.”

“Not telling her yourself?”

“I don’t want to interrupt her in class, and I need to get back to the lab.”

“Stay safe, Andrew, and good luck.”

There was one other effect of continuously living in the lab and trying one experiment after another. 

My Chemistry skill continued to climb. By mid-September, it had reached Level 19 - a full four levels up from where I’d been stuck after the breakthrough with alanin. 

And with each level, my knowledge and understanding of chemical processes expanded yet further. Issues yielded to new insights. 

I might not have benzene rings dancing in my dreams, but there was plenty to visualize about the structure of Aerovascar anyway.

Meanwhile, the Indians kept their word, and handed vast amounts of salvaged equipment from the battlefield at Lonavala into the custody of BAE-Dragonfly. Including several broken and battered Grizzeloid Stealth Tank wrecks, numerous pieces of burnt-out and broken Lynxian Rovers, and - most importantly - the skins of ten Greater Carnotaurs. 

Which, with the proper treatment and merging with fullersteel, gave me a massive quantity of Tauralloy. 

One Greater Carnotaur had given me enough material to build the Wolf. Which had served well, until it ran into something stronger.

Then again, the Wolf Class Battle Armour required a Powered Armour Forging skill of Level Five. I currently stood at Level Seven, helped along by the experience of forging thousands of battlesuits. 

It was time to test something - new.