Ep 493 The Bacteria that Evolved on the Trip to Zebulon 83 by Patrick Mannus

This month's patron-funded story is "The Bacteria that Evolved on the Trip to Zebulon 83" by Patrick Mannus.  It's narrated by Nobilis Reed.

For an ad-free version of this podcast, support the patreon campaign.

Pick up Monster Whisperer, Second Class

 

Charlie didn't think much of the reports of cancer-related deaths on the Zebulon-83 colony ship. They were sad to hear people had died, sure, but to Charlie, the deaths weren't personally more upsetting than the radiation-related leukemia deaths after the toxic train spill. If anything, they were more pissed about the train spill deaths because that was the government's negligence at work. The Zebulon-83 deaths seemed like just bad luck as a result of transit-related radiation exposure during cryopreservation.

Charlie took slightly more notice when it came out that all the Zebulon cancers were prostate, breast, ovarian, and endometrial. Not so much because that meant anything to them scientifically speaking, but because it was just kind of odd. Charlie worked in IT, but even they could recognize that it was unusual for the cancers to cluster like that.

When it came out that the cause of the unusual cancer clustering was unregulated growth of hormone-altering intestinal bacteria that had evolved during the flight to Zebulon-83, and that said same bacteria could be directed to change people's genders more effectively than any hormone supplements, Charlie sat up and took notice.

They sent the article to a fellow comms satellite IT specialist. They didn’t work for the same company, but even though it was a growing field, there were still few enough of them that you just knew the other commsatties. And Charlie had always kind of had a crush on Morgan.

Morg. Check it out. Interesting tech coming out of that Zebulon-83 colony ship.

.css-j9qmi7{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:row;-ms-flex-direction:row;flex-direction:row;font-weight:700;margin-bottom:1rem;margin-top:2.8rem;width:100%;-webkit-box-pack:start;-ms-flex-pack:start;-webkit-justify-content:start;justify-content:start;padding-left:5rem;}@media only screen and (max-width: 599px){.css-j9qmi7{padding-left:0;-webkit-box-pack:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;justify-content:center;}}.css-j9qmi7 svg{fill:#27292D;}.css-j9qmi7 .eagfbvw0{-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;color:#27292D;}