Dhungwana 2117: A captivating sci-fi novel: The Dhungwana Chronicles (2117-3451) Part 1 (4 page)

The next morning, when Dayla arrived at the BlueGray Corporation, she immediately went up to the 305th floor to check what had actually happened.

She walked down the corridors and went into the conference room where she thought the bomb had exploded, but she didn’t notice anything strange: the walls were clean and undamaged and the floor didn’t look damaged. Then she went to the office of Daniel Vaures, an executive who should have been present at the meeting the previous day, but found no one.

As she went back to her office she met Anne, Brittons’ secretary.

“Good morning, Anne. Did you happen to see Vaures? I needed some clarification from him.”

“What...? Haven’t you read the infonews? Vaures, and three others I don’t know, have all been promoted and were transferred out yesterday, after that evacuation drill, to North East Dhungwana to open a new BlueGray Corporation business unit. They’ll be working there for at least a year, if all goes well.”

“Damn! I must have missed it... thanks, Anne. See you soon for a coffee… let’s keep in touch!” answered Dayla. She immediately checked the infonews and found confirmation of what Anne had just said.

Dayla was now convinced that it had been a counterterrorism exercise, so she descended to the 304th floor and quietly returned to her office.

On her desk she saw the book Chungle had left her: a copy of
Brave New World
, a science fiction novel by Aldous Huxley, published in 1932.

Dayla began to leaf through its pages. On page 157 she found some letters circled in green, she linked each letter to the corresponding number and got what looked like a code of 8 numbers: 57832004.

She put the book in her bag, promising herself to read the novel since she had no idea what that code could be used for, or if it actually made any sense.

Ian Lonvell was at a working dinner with other molecular biologists, all attending the annual conference of Applied Biotechnology, which was being held at the Hall of Science at the University in District 604.

As he was eating a slice of coffee cake, he noted with distress that his wristsynk was no longer on his wrist.

“What time is it, please?” he asked a colleague who was sitting beside him.

“It’s 10.19 pm” the man replied.

“I have to leave, otherwise it will be too late and the entrances will be blocked!” Ian said, jumping up from his chair.

“What happened, Ian?” his colleague asked, alarmed.

“I must have forgotten my wristsynk at the lab, and I have to make sure that it is still there. If it’s not there, it means that I have lost it or that someone has stolen it!” Ian said, shaking his colleague’s hand.

“Good luck!” shouted the biologist, but Ian was already at the back of the room and about to leave.

Twenty minutes later Ian Lonvell entered his lab at BlueGray Corporation, put his jacket on a chair and began to scan the laboratory with his eyes.

The wristsynk was next to the workstation: relieved, Ian picked it up and put it back on his wrist as he checked that it had not been tampered with.

As he was turning off the lights, he saw the nearby lab was still lit and, curious to know who was working at that time, he went to look.

To his amazement he found Orlando Steiny still at work.

“Orlando! What are you still doing here?” Ian asked.

“I’m working... Why? And you? Did you take a stroll to the lab?”

“I left my wristsynk in the lab. But… are you all right?”

“Yes, of course. Why do you ask, Ian?”

“Because you’re working all hours these days. You don’t get enough rest, Orlando.” replied Ian.

“I really have too much to do, and I’d rather arrive an hour later in the morning and work at night: I am more productive.”

“Be careful, Orlando. Don’t mess with stress, you're not immune. See you tomorrow, good night... and don’t stay up too late!”

“See you tomorrow, Ian. Good night to you, too” said Orlando as he turned back to his work.

In the elevator, Ian thought that the next day he would have to take a hair of Orlando and get it analyzed without his knowledge. In fact, he had noticed Orlando’s dilated pupils and hyperactivity, which could be a sign of drug addiction, and this increased the risk of a body crash in the medium term.

Dayla was already in bed but not yet asleep when Ian arrived at her house; he undressed quickly and without telling her anything about his suspicions about Orlando Steiny, he immediately joined her in bed.

“How was the symposium today?” Dayla asked sleepily.

Ian’s response was to take off her nightshirt and, positioning himself above her on all fours, he started to trace her body with his tongue, starting at her breasts, until he felt her soft lips moving with lust around his foreskin and her tongue then running down his member.

Ian suddenly stopped her, looking into her eyes with concern:

“Honey, don’t you remember that the Health Tutor suggested keeping your pleasure under control? I don’t want your heart to suffer” Ian said, remembering the compulsory adults’ sex education session they had attended at the university.

“I don’t care about that... I want to come, Ian. I don’t give a shit about the Health Tutor... Make me come like never before, and then let yourself go. I want to feel your orgasm rise and flood over me... ”

Ian stood dumbfounded for a moment, then sat down at the edge of the bed, Dayla straddling him, and stood up, holding her back and, without interrupting their rhythm, walked with her to the bathroom. They came together under hot running water in the shower without Dayla ever setting foot on the ground.

Ian had to wait a week before he could carry out the drug test on Orlando Steiny. His colleague had taken five days off to watch his son Matt at a federal swimming competition.

The following Tuesday, while Orlando was on his lunch break, Ian went into the locker room shared by the two laboratories and found a sweater belonging to Steiny from which he took a hair.

Back in his lab, Ian first made sure the hair actually belonged to Orlando; thanks to his position, as Commodore of Health Fleet Research, it wasn’t hard for him to enter the Organization’s database and compare the DNA sample with the information in Orlando’s healthnet file. Then he proceeded to the complete analysis of the hair to verify the accumulation of toxic substances and heavy metals.

Since he knew the screening would take quarter of an hour, he decided to leave the BlueGray Corporation offices and go to his usual bar around the corner from his office, where they served a fabulous clubhouse sandwich.

When Ian found that the bar was closed, he continued down the road to the Red Hook where he could enjoy traditional fish and chips. It wasn’t far.

Ian arrived in front of the Red Hook, but also this restaurant was closed and was being demolished.

‘That’s really strange,’ he thought to himself. ‘I wonder why they closed. It was always full of customers.’

By now he didn’t have much time left, so he decided to go to a supermarket, buy some fruit and eat in his laboratory.

As soon as he returned to BlueGray Corporation, Ian ate quickly and downloaded the results of Orlando’s hair analysis to his wristsynk, and then immediately deleted all the files from his work station that he had used to carry out the analysis without storing anything on the central system.

The test results left him puzzled: the structure of the hair was so healthy, completely free of drugs and heavy metals. It was as if Orlando had lived his whole live in an unpolluted environment, rich in oxygen. This was absolutely impossible.

Orlando Steiny returned to BlueGray Corporation at 8.30 pm and Ian, seeing the lights go on in his laboratory, rushed over to him.

“Hi Orlando, I need to talk to you.” said Ian.

“Please, have a seat. So what has happened?”

“I find you odd, Orlando” said Ian, going straight to the point.

“In what sense?” asked Steiny in surprise.

“Your behavior has changed radically in the last three months. I have to admit I was convinced you had become a drug addict, so I took a hair from one of your sweaters to analyze.”

“How could you do that?” said Steiny angrily.

“As Health Commodore, I have a duty to identify and denounce anything that might contaminate our society, whether they are microorganism pathogens, diseases of any kind, deviant behavior or psychiatric problems… and not only others’ behavior, even my own. I had to do it, Orlando.”

“So, what did you find?” asked Steiny, still agitated, but reluctantly accepting his colleague’s explanation.

“Nothing, but your hair indicates you’re in perfect shape. You have a healthy lifestyle and you live in a non-polluted place full of pure oxygen… which is impossible. In reality, you sleep only a few hours, you work at night, and I noticed that you drink and you eat very little. How did you change your metabolism? What has happened to you, Orlando?”

“Yes, it's true, I feel strange” said Steiny lowering the tone of his voice. “But please, let me explain before you send a note about me to Health Fleet Research. A few months ago, I noticed some small changes: for example, I didn't get thirsty as much and, above all, I lost the desire to eat, then I never got tired and didn’t need to sleep. The same thing was happening to a friend of mine, so I started to carry out some tests on my blood and tissue before going to hospital. I didn’t want to alarm anyone, and I wanted to see the results before involving the operations center at the hospital, and consequently all the various communities connected with it.”

“And how is your friend now?”

“He died ten days ago, apparently of a heart attack. It killed him the day after he told me that he felt strange. We had the same symptoms, those you described. That’s the reason why I didn’t involve anyone in the analysis; he had already checked into the hospital.”

Unfortunately, I told some friends that I felt strange and that, paradoxically, distanced some of the people on my network. Now they are giving me the cold shoulder.

“Do you know someone else in your condition?”

“No, I don’t think so. But perhaps they’re hiding it. I'm afraid of being seriously ill, Ian, even if nothing serious has happened so far. I’ll have to go to hospital, even if I don’t like the idea… sooner or later I could have a heart attack, too.”

“I think you're right, the doctors in the hospital will be able to help. Tomorrow you should apply for medical leave” said Ian.

“I will. Sorry, Ian, but now I have to finish a report... ”

“Yes, of course. Goodnight, Orlando. See you tomorrow.”

“Good night, Ian.”

Ian went back to his laboratory, turned off the lights and left for home.

Dayla had gone to visit her mother that evening, and would come back the next day, so Ian would have to sleep alone.

At 6 am Ian’s wristsynk alarm woke him: the cameras at the entrance showed two men in uniform that had sent their recognition code.

Ian got up, opening the door to the two policemen.

“Good morning, Dr. Lonvell. Sorry about the early hour, but we have to ask you some questions.”

“Come in” said Ian, still not fully awake.

“It’s about Orlando Steiny... The staff of the cleaning company found him half an hour ago in his lab... unfortunately he was dead.”

Ian gasped, he sat down on the sofa, holding his head in his hands.

“Orlando... What happened?”

“The coroner certifies that he died of a brain aneurysm... you were the last person who saw him alive last night. Among other things you are the new Commodore. Did he tell you anything about an illness? Was he under stress? I ask these questions because the insurance department must carefully analyze Steiny’s dossier before compensating his family. The insurance assessor will make his report” said the older cop.

“No, he didn’t seem to be under stress at all. We talked about this and that, our ongoing projects, and the symposium which we had just attended. Poor Orlando! He was so happy with the result of his son at the federal swimming competition.” Ian replied, lying even though he knew the cameras of the laboratory had recorded their meeting. “How long had he been ill?”

The younger cop replied: “He had been treating and monitoring himself for the last five years; at least that’s what his card says at Health Fleet Research Unit n.65. Ok, Dr. Lonvell, so you were unaware of Steiny’s health problems... ”

“That's right. I have just been appointed Commodore, but they only send me record updates and new events. Today they’ll probably inform me of Orlando Steiny’s death. I’m really sorry, I'll offer my condolences to his family. I know his wife and his son personally.”

“Thank you for your cooperation, Dr. Lonvell. We apologize again for waking you up at the crack of dawn. We have to close our part in the procedure so the insurance assessor can begin his work immediately.”

The two policemen shook hands with Ian and left his apartment.

Ian sat back on the couch and ordered a light breakfast of cereal, milk and coffee; he would eat quickly and go straight to the laboratory.

Ian had read Orlando’s healthnet card and there had been no mention of any risk of cerebral hemorrhage. As Commodore, it was his duty to make daily checks on all the health records of the people in his Health Fleet Research unit, and to track any anomaly that could prove hazardous to the related communities; and, since Steiny had become quite strange, Ian had analyzed his card thoroughly.