83 Panacea

After Steven got out of the testing session with the new witch, he sat down slowly into his chair and let out a deep breath. He could hardly believe what he just saw. Mary had the most frightening ability he had ever seen. In his eyes, that girl was more dangerous than a nuclear bomb. He would have never expected it when she was brought in a few hours ago.

When the reports of a new awakening came it, the response was entirely routine. The parents had notified the officials who sent a team to investigate. The parents did not have any opposition to having an investigation done, nor did they have any prejudice against their child. They were all very understanding of the situation when they were advised that their child should be taken in for power testing.

Mary was taken to the power testing facility. Soon, the extent of her powers were revealed. She could sample any living creature, removing it in the process, and essentially catalog it. After cataloging the creature, she was able to create as many copies of it as she wanted. It seemed that absorbing more than one of a particular species won't create any additional entries.

Her power allowed her to have access to a complete list of all of the creatures she used her ability on. Then, she was able to create them at her leisure. There seemed to be no time limit to how long she could keep the imprint of a particular creature. When creating or absorbing something, the amount of energy used is proportional to the mass of the creature.

The largest creature she could create was a medium sized dog, and afterwards she was exhausted and unable to create another one. However, the implications of this is that she could essentially create unlimited amounts of microorganisms because of how little mass they have. Currently, she was able to use her ability on animals, plants, bacteria, protists, fungi, and viruses. Whether or not viruses were alive is a highly debated question, but it seemed that Mary was able to affect them.

A God's Punishment Stone was able to prevent her from absorbing any creatures or creating any. However, it would not remove any creatures that have already been created.

Mary could not control any of the creatures she created. If she could, that would simply be too terrifying.

There was one other matter, the issue of humans. While it seemed that she might be able to absorb humans, such a thought was very disturbing and brought up many ethical and philosophical implications. Mary was strictly forbidden from ever using her power on a human being.

The possibilities of such a power were endless. If she got her hands on some kind of dangerous disease, she could basically be a walking bioweapon. Steven broke out in cold sweat at the thought. This was going to have to be a matter handled very delicately.

In order to prevent any incidents, Mary would have to regularly have psychological evaluations and it would also be important to give her a good moral education. It would be disastrous if she ended up going rogue.

Meanwhile, Mary was sent to the special education program with all of the other witches. Here, she would learn at an accelerated pace and have access to educational resources that ordinary students wouldn't have. In addition, she was given something to do with her powers. Mary got a job at a lab.

The healthcare system in Hermes had always been worse than Neverwinter. Neverwinter had a cheat in the form of Nana who could heal anything. As a result, they hardly had any problems. On the other hand, Hermes didn't have any such cheat like help to cure everyone. While the improvements to sanitation had greatly helped to reduce the rate of disease, sickness was still common.

Vaccination was now available for some of the more dangerous viral diseases, but bacterial infections continued to be a major problem. The key weapon for the fight against bacteria is antibiotics. However, the development of antibiotics had been difficult.

When Steven started the first work on antibiotics, the initial thought he had was penicillin. Penicillin was a highly effective antibiotic which was effective against many kinds of bacteria. Back on Earth, it had initially been discovered by accident when penicillium, a type of mold, colonized a petri dish and killed the bacteria around it.

Research had been done to try to find penicillin. All kinds of mold had been gathered to experiment with. However, the researchers soon ran into many problems. There was frequently contamination which would end up affecting the results when one species ended up releasing spores that ended up in another dish. It was also very time consuming to actually grow the fungi. There was also the problem that they might not have found the right sample at all.

These issues combined with the fact that there were very few researchers available, impeded the progress of finding penicillin. However, now things would change.

The lab had a large collection of mold sitting in a huge pile. The various types had ended up moving into different samples and now the whole thing was a big mess.

After Mary came, she began running her hands through the mold and picked out as many different species as she could find. Since she was able to keep track of the various types stored within her, there was no longer any problem of them getting mixed up after being found.

The growing step was even easier. All that had to be done was Mary releasing a large amount of a sample into a dish filled with bacteria. Then, the dish would be observed to see if there were any changes.

After several days of testing, the correct one was found. In addition, now that it was found Mary knew exactly which one it was so she could make more of it whenever she wanted. Even if the sample in the lab was lost there wouldn't be any problem.

A large facility was created devoted to the production of penicillin. Soon, a new miracle drug was being made available. While in the past an infection was almost a death sentence, now they were treatable.

Of course, there were other concerns as well. Back on Earth, the widespread use of penicillin soon led to the spread of antibiotic resistance, leading to the original penicillin going from a drug with widespread use to something that would rarely ever be used. In order to hopefully slow down the rate of antibiotic resistance, Steven made sure that it would only be used when necessary and that people would take it appropriately. Frivolous use was strictly forbidden. Since a culture of rampant antibiotic use had not yet developed, it wasn't hard to get people to treasure such a valuable resource.