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SUMMARY: Flipping the traditional contamination plot on its head, the book tells a singular, exciting story through graphic novel, prose, visual art and science writing, inviting readers to question if we are all but a contagion.

The book will interweave a science fiction story with scientific essays, prompting the reader to think about questions reflected in the story, enhancing their understanding of the science of the story and priming them to interpret the narrative in specific ways. The structure of the book, the elegant mix of story and pure science is designed to build tension and bounce one element off the other, creating a super-narrative beyond just the fiction. Immersing in the science will allow readers to see the fiction in a deeper way, and the fictional aspects, in turn, will set up expectations to be confirmed or destroyed by the scientific writing. For example, the first essay on epidemiology will largely be focused on disease and will prompt the reader to be thinking negatively about the epidemic just introduced in the first chapter of the narrative. Later we will learn that this epidemic is positive and illustrates emerging scientific paradigms. Similarly, the visuals of epidemic spreading from different scientific models will be presented in the middle of the book in connection with characters whose personalities represent the corresponding behavior, but not until the essay on “beneficial epidemics” will these dynamics be explained.

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Dr. Jessica Green

is an engineer and ecologist who specializes in biodiversity theory and microbial systems.  She uses interdisciplinary approaches at the interface of microbiology, ecology, mathematics, and computer science to understand and model complex ecosystems with trillions of diverse microorganisms interacting with each other, with humans, and with the environment.  She is the CTO of Phylagen, Inc., a microbiome company based in San Francisco, a Professor of Biology the University of Oregon, where she is Co-Director of the Biology and Built Environment Center, and External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute.  She is internationally recognized for her research in microbiome science, with highly cited articles in Nature, Science, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and is frequently quoted in business publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and NPR. She has received numerous awards including a Blaise Pascal International Research Chair, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, and a TED Senior Fellowship.  Jessica received a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of California Berkeley, an M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from UC Berkeley, and a B.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from UCLA.

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Anita Doron

is a film director, screenwriter and author. Her films have been exhibited at the Toronto International Film Festival, South By South West, The Future of Cinema Salon at Cannes and at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Her latest feature film, “The Lesser Blessed”, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and received a Canadian Screen Awards nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. Anita is the screenwriter of the upcoming animated feature film, “The Breadwinner” for Oscar-nominated Cartoon Saloon (“Song of the Sea”), executive produced by Angelina Jolie. She is a 2011 TED Fellow, and has created several TED experiences in Berlin and at Banff, inspired by the upcoming book, Noli Timere.

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Steve Green

is an artist, illustrator, and designer. He has exhibited in Australia and North America in media as diverse as painting, print, and video installation. Steve was an art educator in Colleges and Universities throughout California and Oregon, and runs an independent design firm. His illustrations appeared in The Tiny Shiny, a book on microbes in collaboration with Jessica Green. He is currently working as the lead artist on the Graphic Novel Noli Timere.

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Dr. Christopher Kempes

holds a PhD in physical biology from MIT and works on a variety of biological problems ranging from microbial symbiosis to major evolutionary transitions to the predictive ecology and biogeography. A central theme of his research is the connection between biological architecture and function, and the interaction of  physics and physiology.

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Dr. Vanessa Ferdinand

is an Omidyar Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute, where she researches language evolution and the coevolution of cognition and culture.  She received a Ph.D. in Language Evolution from the University of Edinburgh and an M.Sc in Cognitive Science from the University of Amsterdam.  She makes and plays banjos in her spare time.

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Dr. Laurent Hébert-Dufresne

holds a Ph.D. in physics from the Université Laval in Québec City. His recent projects mostly concern multidisciplinary applications of network theory — from political science, and epidemiology, to the modeling of bacterial communities and ecosystem stability — as well as theoretical work on network analysis and network comparison.  He is an Assistant Professor at the University of Vermont, and currently also a researcher at the Institute for Disease Modeling as well as a Research Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute.

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Dr. Yoav Kallus

earned a Ph.D. in physics from Cornell University, was a postdoc fellow at the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science at Princeton University, and is an Omidyar postdoc fellow at the Santa Fe Institute.  His research brings together the classical study of packing problems in geometry and the modern statistical physics of the phase transitions in disordered and frustrated systems to study the self-organization and self-assembly of geometric structure in natural and artificially designed physical systems.

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Dr. Artemy Kolchinsky

is a postdoctoral researcher at the Sante Fe Institute. He studies fundamental physical constraints on how information is processed in complex systems, whether done by a living cell, a digital computer, or any other device. He is also using statistical physics to define a notion of semantic information, i.e. information that doesn’t simply reflect correlations but rather the amount of meaningful content for a given system. Artemy holds a PhD from Indiana University, Bloomington with a specialization in complex systems and a minor in cognitive science.

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Dr. Brendan Tracey

is a postdoctoral researcher at the Santa Fe Institute and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from Stanford. Brendan studies the role of algorithms and uncertainty in engineering design optimization. Engineering systems, such as aircraft, have many different subsystems (wing, engine, etc.) that are all interconnected, and must perform well under a variety of conditions. Dr. Tracey works to improve our physics simulation models to be more accurate, and to understand how to know when detailed simulations are needed. This uses ideas from machine learning, information theory, and computational science.

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CHAPTER ONE: We meet the characters and set up the beginning of a mysterious infection, with the first symptoms

The story starts with a descent into Paris while the captions inform us that something is carried on the backs of prevailing wings, something that is about to bring change.

After swooping through Paris and down to The Marais neighborhood, we come to a street level view of a tree and an upper-class building beside it. We shift into the perspective of a mysterious organism and see the tree and then the building, and eventually an office inside the building, as this organism multiplies and colonizes the tree and the office in the building.

This is where we meet our first character – the building pudgy, Elvis infatuated manager. He is happily humming his favorite Elvis tune, when his least favorite tenant, the rude and annoying Mathieu drops by to complain about his wet ceiling. After a brief and exhausting argument, Leroy reluctantly heads to check the apartment below to see what’s causing the flooding. We meet Cecile, the building’s oldest tenant whose family once owned the entire street – or so she tells. Cecile is a fading and frail old woman, furiously hanging on to a past no longer present. She tries to maintain appearances, but her clumped mascara and dusty clothes betray a grim reality. Leroy discovers that Madamme Cecile has been putting garbage in the sync and has clogged it, causing water to drop onto the apartment below. We stay with Cecile over a few days, getting snapshots of her routine, as the mysterious organism colonizes her space as well. We are brought back to reality when Cecile’s cleaner arrives. But it is a new person, since the previous cleaner is about to give birth. At first, Cecile is indignant and untrusting of Shada, even going as far as to call Leroy and demand her original cleaner. But she can’t talk to him – there is noise coming from the street below.

We descend to the teenagers hanging out under her window, blasting music. Among them is Marie-Elise, a goth in the skin of a BMX-er. As they casually chat about the things they hate, Marie-Elise departs, leaving her boyfriend confused and pining after her.

At home, Marie-Elise has an argument with her moody father whose is upset Marie-Elise missed her weekly, scheduled phone conversation with her mother, Sylvie. It is clear Marie-Elise resents her mother who left them years ago to start a new family. They eat dinner in silence and resentment.

Meanwhile Mathieu wraps his arms and head with strips of leather and performs his daily Jewish prayer. His next daily ritual is a strong cup of coffee at the nearby café, where he spends time with Agnes, an elegant and disinterested woman he admires.

Marie-Elise retreats to her room and listens to music. We switch into the perspective of the mysterious organism, while they colonize her room. We see an image of a once happy and intact family, now nothing but a memory masquerading as an old photograph.

Marie-Elise leaves her apartment, ignoring her father. In the hallway, she comes across a ball. It has rolled out from one of the apartments. She picks it up – unknowingly transferring the mysterious organism onto it – and rolls it back to Alou, a little boy curiously peeking out from the open doors of a well-maintained, elegant home full of Senegaleese art.

Alou is called back inside and sternly asked to close the door. Mamadou, his dapper father is getting a shave while his mother, Bineta, is anxiously getting ready for a night out at the German Ambassador’s house. They ask Alou to behave while they are gone and be good to his nanny. He wishes he could come with them, but they are too busy for him.

We come to a cozy synagogue, where Mathieu, the youngest member of a gathering of religious Jewish males, is mid-prayer. He is called to the podium to read from the daily passage – a great honour.

At night, we find Mathieu at a music concert, which he takes in with just as much reverence. But something bothers him. His throat is dry and he coughs. Everyone looks at him.

We move over to Shada. She is walking toward the Bastille market, but in her mind, she is back in Algeria, plagued by memories. When she reaches her husband’s olive and spice stall at the market, she hands him an envelope with an Arabic magazine – it just arrived this morning. The husband is teased by the fellow market sellers, asking when he is going to get a new wife. Through their jokes we find out Shada is unable to have children. In the end it is Shada who makes fun of the men and the husband, then walks away.

In her apartment, Cecile is not feeling well. Her throat is dry, she is thirsty and she drops her bottle of water. Shada comes to help her up and clean the mess.

Somewhere in a dank alley-way, Marie-Elise is making out with her boyfriend. But she is not there. Something is bothering her. She is immeasurably thirsty. She runs home and chugs down some wine – but it makes no difference. She drinks from the tap. And then, something strange happens. A déjà vu. A bird lands on the window-sill and it happens again – but was it a memory of a similar moment once experienced?

Mathieu is walking with a fellow hipster, having a friendly argument. And then it happens to him to – a moment repeats. A déjà vu, a memory, a glitch in his mind? Mathieu asks his friend if he experienced this doubled moment it time as well, but the friend thinks Mathieu must simply be high.

Cecile is sitting by her window, numb. She is staring at a balcony across the street, where a young woman is watering plants and another one is eating candy. Suddenly, a moment repeats for her as well, but Cecile is unable to process it. She closes the curtain and slumps in her chair. Shada wonders if she has family to call who would come to her side. But Cecile is unresponsive. Shada calls the ambulance.

As Cecile is being examined by the paramedics, we move into her iris and realize she is stuck in a memory she is experiencing. In her mind, she is a young woman, driving carefree in an open-top car. The young woman turns into a skeleton with gray hair, blowing in the wind.

We come to Alou. He is taking a bath, enjoying the water. He notices his reflection in the mirror and sees colors. He is full of color! He is calm and open to this. The caption tells us: Do not be afraid.

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 “Epidemiology: a history”

Laurent Hébert-Dufresne, Brendan Tracey

This essay is based on three stories: (i) John Snow and the Cholera outbreak of 1866 in London, (ii) the First World War and the Spanish Flu of 1918, (iii) the relationship of human resistance to Malaria with sickle cell disease. The first sets up the relatively recent creation of epidemiology. The second illustrates our incapacity to forecast and control epidemics. The last hints at the grey areas and complicated relationships in our understanding of diseases.

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CHAPTER TWO: Our characters start experiencing each other’s memories and are affected by them in the present

We open this chapter at a party. Teenagers, some of them of the BMX crowd we met before, have broken into an outdoor pool and are drinking alcohol. Marie-Elise is among them. Suddenly, she sees a moment repeat. A déjà vu? Later when she drunkenly walks home with her friends, she tells them about this. They think she was simply intoxicated and hallucinating, but she is sure it was something else. She could feel everyone around her viscerally. It was unlike anything she ever experienced before. They kick cans and get rowdy by the building and ignore Leroy, who tries to get them to be quiet. When his warnings fall on deaf ears, Leroy calls the cops. Just as they arrive, Mathieu shows up and warns the teens, who run inside with him and hide in his apartment. He feeds them and they watch TV. The kids quiz Mathieu about his lifestyle and religion. He tells them to get lost before he is up in the morning. While they go to sleep, Marie- Elise stays to chat with him, as if looking for someone trustworthy to open up. She asks him about the fringes of his religious garment and Mathieu tells her that once they were blue, but the special dye used to make them no longer exists because the sea creature it was extracted from is extinct.

In the morning, Marie-Elise is ambushed by her mother Sylvie, who is intent on sending her off to a boarding school in Switzerland. Marie-Elise does not want to go and hopes her father will be an ally in this. But to her surprise, he agrees with Sylvie. Hurt, Marie-Elise leaves. In the hallway, she passes by Shada. And from being in Shada’s proximity, Marie-Elise’s mind enters Shada’s past:

We are in Algiers, Algeria, 1993. This sequence has elements of blue in it, to indicate that we have entered a sort of memory or flashback. A group of students and their leader, a university professor, are printing pamphlets about the need to embrace uncertainty. Among the students, we see Marie-Elise (as Shada). She is not wearing a hijab and her clothes are modern and colorful.

Her father, Tahar informs the group that they have run out of the special blue ink they have been using and must switch to something else. Marie-Elise jumps on the back of a motorbike to help distribute the newest pamphlets. But they are intercepted by members of the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria. The pamphlets are destroyed and Marie-Elise is cut up on the stomach by one of them. Injured, crawling, she gets a message – do not come home. When she arrives at her father’s studio, she finds everything turned upside down and her father murdered – his throat slit, with blood everywhere. Marie-Elise screams and hugs her dead father.

We are back to black and white. In her boyfriend’s apartment, Marie-Elise is crying in her sleep. The boyfriend wakes her up, trying to shake her out of a nightmare, but she tells him it was not a dream. She has to go home now. She finds her father alone in the kitchen. She sits with him and reminisces about her childhood, about an injured dog they once found together and nursed back to health. She tells her father she does not want to go to the boarding school. “I’m sorry,” is all he has to say in response.

Upset, Marie-Elise goes into her room and begins packing. She pauses and looks at her reflection in the mirror. Inside her iris, she sees a baby as if suspended in the womb. The color blue returns for a moment.

A floating leaf takes us up to Cecile’s apartment. Shada is cleaning the floors. We move into her iris and come to the same image as we last saw in Cecile’s eyes – a skeleton with billowing hair. But the hair is deep red now. We move right into the iris and into a new world, where Shada is a carefree Parisian woman with deep red hair, riding in an open car in 1950’s Paris. In this strange state, she is having a flashback to Cecile’s past as herself.

This sequence has shades of red in it to indicate a flashback induced by the mysterious organism. We are at a women’s only dance hall, where Shada (as Cecile) is dancing with a beautiful young woman. They run into another ballroom, where they jokingly play with a sword, then drive in an open car to a rural creek. Here, Shada confesses her love to the woman, who rebuffs her, telling Sada that she is still and will forever be in love with her husband who died in the war.

We come back to the black and white world and find Shada, paused on the floor, enraptured by the strange memory of someone else she just experienced. At home, she has a mundane dinner conversation with her husband, discussing olive suppliers and future plans for their stall. When they retire for the night, they make love. But when the husband touches Shada’s scar on her belly, she becomes cold and pulls away. The husband becomes angry and tells her that making love to her is pointless. It is a sin. Shada closes her eyes. After a moment, through the blackness, she witnesses a birth from the point of view of the baby.

Marie-Elise and her boyfriend are watching a right-wing protest march by on the street. Marie- Elise tells him that she wants to have a baby. The boyfriend becomes excited and happy. They have sex in a bathroom stall and as they touch each other, the boyfriend begins to caress her belly, on the same spot where Shada’s scar is. Hints of the color blue appear and with it, we find ourselves in Constantine, in 1996. Hints of the color blue all over this sequence. Marie-Elise is now a woman in a hijab, making love to Shada’s younger-looking husband. He asks her about the scar on her belly but Marie-Elise (as Shada) refuses to tell him anything about it. She does not want to remember, and she feels safe with him. The husband becomes angry. He threatens that he could find out if he wanted to. He tells her that he should have never married her, but she bewitched him. Marie-Elsie (as Shada) goes down on him and he leaves his anger behind.

Marie-Elise (as Shada) walks the streets of Constantine. She comes to a window display and looks at the baby carriages exhibited behind it. In the same reflection, she notices a child running towards her. We come back to present day Paris, back to the black and white world and find Shada standing by a playground, in the exact same position Marie-Elise was in just a panel ago, as the same child who was in the reflection is now seen running to his mother. The mom scoops him up and cuddles him. Shada walks away, sad.

Marie-Elise and her boyfriend visit her family doctor and inquire about getting pregnant. They want to know what she must eat, how she must kick the drugs and what is the best position to get pregnant. The aging, bald doctor warns her that she is too young to be a mother. But Marie-Elise disagrees. She thinks her youth will be an advantage for the child.

We come to Mathieu and find him having beers with a female friend at the hero building’s café. While the friend is talking incessantly, Mathieu is distracted, watching Laurant at a nearby table, talking on the phone and looking concerned. He is mostly listening. Seems he is being told something unpleasant. As we come closer to him, we overhear him thanking the doctor for letting him know. Laurant feels dry in the throat. He reaches for a bottle of water but his hands shake and it falls to the ground, breaking in the process.

We enter into a world with hints of yellow in it, to indicate a form of a flashback. A rainy day in Paris. 1983. A young Sylvie is trying to fix her stalled car while her dapper boyfriend is snoozing in the back. Mathieu (as Laurant) passes by on his bike and offers assistance. The two of them fix the car and have great chemistry. When done, the boyfriend wakes up and invites the roadside mechanic to go out with them at night. They go on a double date, with Mathieu (as Laurant) bringing a female friend along. But he has no interest in her. The entire evening, Sylvie and Mathieu (as Laurant) exchange longing glances. Finally, they sneak off and make out in an alleyway.

The yellow sequence continues and we find Mathieu (as Laurant) in the doctor’s office. He is the same doctor as Marie-Elise was seeing, but much younger here. He tells Laurant that the family is prepared to pay him to abdicate his paternity, but Mathieu (as Laurant) refuses. The doctor warns him that Sylvie’s family is very powerful and his life will not be easy if he choses this path.

A car passes by and reveals Mathieu in the present, in a black and white reality, having just experienced a flashback of Laurant. His female friend is upset with hi for not listening to her. We also notice that a few of the passer bye are grabbing at their throats, thirsty.

A young woman is spread out on the couch of Cecile’s apartment. She is having dinner, watching TV and talking on her cell all at the same time. She gossips about Cecile, whom she was hired to take care of and informs the person on the other side that this is a really easy job because the old lady is in a coma. As she yammers on, she becomes thirsty and guzzles water.

We come to Cecile, lying motionless in her bed. Her eyes are open and she is experiencing visions. They belong to Alou. In her mind, she is playing as a child.

We come to Alou and see him playing in the same way as Cecile was experiencing – with a little red car. He drives the little car on various surfaces in his room and when he comes to the mirror, he stops and watches his own reflection. It is a full color, composite image of Shada, Mathieu, Marie-Elise and Cecile.

Back to black and white and back to the baby about to be born. It passes through darkness and extends its tiny hands towards the light. It is born into a blurry word. We see the new father raptured in joy - but it is a composite face of Mathieu and Laurant. From the baby’s point of view, we see a breast. He is being drawn closer to it and beyond it, the baby sees the blurred image of a face. the shape of a mother drawing it closer. Her face becomes sharper. It is a composite face of Shada and Marie-Elise, smiling at us. Finally, we see the baby’s face. It is a composite of Cecile and Alou. Over this final image, we see patterns on the mysterious organism, patterns of Noli Timere, the bacteria.

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“The microbial world in and around us.”  Jessica Green

Many people believe that microorganisms, including viruses, bacteria, and microscopic fungi, are dirty and dangerous pollutants to be avoided at all costs.  But advances in biotechnology and data science have led scientists to challenge this misperception.  Scientists, and also clinicians, now recognize that many of the microorganisms in, on and around us are critical to our health and well-being.  This essay reviews how scientific understanding of the microbial world has radically shifted since the germ theory of disease was established in the 19th century.  Specifically, the text explores what is currently known about microbial exposure and human health.  First, the world of infectious disease, allergies and asthma are considered, with a focus on how exposure to some microorganisms may actually protect humans from getting sick.  Next is a discussion of how microorganisms are exchanged between the environment (air, surfaces, water) and humans. Finally, the essay highlights new collaborations between biologists and designers, which have the desired outcome of managing microbial exposure through design.  These collaborations include research focused on the following question:  how do the buildings and cities where we live, work and play impact our health through their impact on microbial ecology?

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CHAPTER THREE: Integrated Interlude

This chapter foreshadows and builds mystery for the later essay on beneficial epidemics: the stories represent aspects of behavior and the artistic interpretation visualizes the results of the actual simulated model.

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CHAPTER FOUR / ALOU: the first person short story of an evangeliser

ALOU is a five-year-old child, son of the Senegalese Ambassador to France. He grew up in Paris but in his dreams, he sees images and stories of Dakar, Senegal. He adores going back there and spending time with his traditional grandmother, whose life is vastly different than the Parisian, upper-class lifestyle he experiences through his parents. From a very early age, Alou exhibited curiosity and the character of a peacemaker. He loves to play alone and he is often left alone by his very busy diplomat parents.