Just a Couple of Days (15 page)

Influenza is not to be trusted. By changing its face, it seduces its way past our defenses, a vengeful Svengali with an infectious
charisma. In 1918–1919, the virus swept the globe in three successive waves, killing millions, many of them young adults. It asserted itself with such a presence that World War I was nearly canceled due to the difficulty of waging war with everyone sick. In the United States alone, flu casualties outnumbered battle casualties by ten to one. The most modest estimates state that it killed 21.6 million people worldwide, more than twice as many as were killed in all of World War I. Coincidentally or not, the disease faded soon after the signing of the armistice that ended the war.

Influenza and the Dancing Plague, linking and merging, intertwining and recombining. The sum of this union came to be known as the Pied Piper virus, and it was something altogether different from either of its ancestors. It was “a humane weapon capable of contagious incapacitation,” or so said the mission statement. It was a hybrid pattern spliced and tweaked to be chronic, more infectious, and more maddening than either of its predecessors. Its acute symptoms, relapses of gut-yanking hilarity and a mild pulmonary edema, serve to launch billions of copies of the virus into the local atmosphere. What is more, the virus could last up to two days outside of an organism before disintegrating, an impressive achievement given that most viruses dehydrate and break down within hours.

Genetically speaking, the Pied Piper virus was a work of art, though more in the sense of a Jackson Pollock than a Rembrandt. That is, the artist did not want anyone figuring out what it was, though he certainly wanted to leave one hell of an impression. Designed to fool the immune system, it is a Trojan horse virus, hidden within the shifting disguises of influenza. Indeed, the shell of the Pied Piper virus is just as mutative as the
influenza virus, virtually guaranteeing it a perpetual presence after an outbreak and rendering any sort of vaccine all but impossible.

Once in the body, it is nothing more than a very mild chest cold, except in the brain, where it binds with proteins specific to the cell membranes of the neocortex, and in particular Broca's area, the region devoted to the control of symbol and language processing. Via this treacherous manipulation of endocytosis, the Pied Piper virus shoves its way inside and takes over, reproducing itself and rewriting the neurochemical functions of its host cell. Within hours, affected individuals demonstrate a marked linguistic confusion, ultimately resulting in a complete loss of language-processing skills. Acute symptoms persist with decreasing frequency for up to a year or longer, but the electrochemical activities of the neocortex remain permanently altered.

Thus we have the Pied Piper virus, a smart-assed scamp with the wit and the wherewithal to yank communication out from under a society, and yet a pattern of ribonucleic acid so puny that fifty million of its clones could slam-dance on the head of a single pin.

 

52
While I spent my days swimming invigorating laps in the balmy ether of cerebral abstraction, another part of me grew increasingly impatient with my eggheaded shenanigans and highbrow justifications. It was not an unfamiliar facet of my self, a surly-churly, no-bullshit, hands-on worker who stops in to belittle my intellect from time to time. It was a necessary balance, it seems, between mind and body, for while my mind was free to roam, my body was thoroughly discontent with its
imprisonment, cozy though it may have been. As for my soul, well, it barely ever says a word, taking over only when the body and the mind can't work things out for themselves. Mostly it lets them get their kicks while they can.

While my mind was getting off on the venereal delights of its task, a stubborn guilt kept creeping around me, a wounded cretin whose trail of blood, sweat, and tears made for an increasingly slick foundation on which to stand. In retrospect, this must not have gone unnoticed by my soul. Guilt, especially when suppressed, is a destructive presence in one's consciousness, leading very quickly to despair and self-hate.

For a time, however, life was halcyon. There were inconveniences and irritations, to be sure, but they were mild, even amusing. For example, a few days after being incarcerated in the country mansion, I met Miss Sophia Loren. She was a forty-something tobacco heiress and a major benefactor of the CPC. Her given name, she told me, was Mary, but her adoptive parents had it legally changed. Her adoptive father, it seemed, was an avid admirer of the popular Hollywood actress, so he renamed his new daughter after her. Although she wished to be called Miss Sophia, in this narrative I shall refer to her only by her given name, Miss Mary Loren, or Miss Mary, in order to avoid any confusion between her and Blip's wife, as well as the Hollywood actress.

Miss Mary had an evil little dog, whom she called “Tippy,” but whom I called “Ratdog” when Miss Mary wasn't around. Since I have already taken liberties with Miss Mary's appellation, henceforth I shall refer to her dog as “Ratdog” rather than “Tippy.” Ratdog was a miniature pinscher, a diminutive breed that nevertheless acts as if they are full-sized Dobermans. Ratdog
reminded me of Tynee. My dog Meeko, by the way, was inexplicably fond of Ratdog.

Once, while walking Meeko along the grounds of the estate, Ratdog came zipping toward us from around a curve in the path, yipping viciously. Meeko scrambled to meet her, and they set upon sniffing each other immediately.

“Tippy!” Miss Mary's raspy, upper Manhattan, nicotine voice sounded from up ahead. She had just rounded the bend and was greeted by the sight of Meeko gracelessly attempting to mount her hoity-toity pinscher, a hilarious sight given their relative sizes. Be that as it may, both parties seemed agreeable to the situation. Miss Mary, however, was mortified.

“Tippy!” Miss Mary screeched again, then addressed me in haughty disdain. “Don't just stand there! Take your mutt off my Tippy!”

Despite the fact that I didn't approve of my dog's taste in bitches, I found the carnality entertaining. I thus failed to react immediately, and so Miss Mary took it upon herself to separate the copulating canines by hurling her handbag at them. It was ineffective. A falling tree could not have captured their attention. I finally stepped forward, grabbed Meeko's collar, and pulled him off Ratdog. Miss Mary rushed forward and frantically snatched her up. Both dogs were panting heavily.

“How could you let this happen?” Miss Mary wailed. “Dear God, what if she has puppies, what then? Oh my lord, how uncivilized!” She started back along the path, but paused to scold me some more. “You should be ashamed of yourself, Doctor. Ashamed!” She turned to go once again. “I've never seen anything so
horribly
unnatural.”

 

53
On my twenty-eighth day at Valhalla Acres, I was awakened at 5:00 a.m. by Agent Orange, who was leaning over my bed like a malevolent mother, telling me to get dressed immediately. It had been arranged, I was informed, for me to observe the CPC's human subjects. While I was dressing, Tynee poked his head in and asked me if I would mind if he walked Meeko this morning. I agreed groggily. I suspected Tynee just wanted to have an excuse to hang around Miss Mary, so I neglected to tell him that she did not approve of my dog.

My ride to the observation site, along with everyone else at Valhalla Acres, was a forty-foot soundproof security limousine. It was rated for presidential protection, which meant that it could withstand the blast of a grenade. Volt the Waiter and Chef was also Volt the Chauffeur, but whereas before he spoke with a thick French accent, he now greeted me with a southern Italian accent. I questioned General Kiljoy about this as the two of us sat in individual recliners in the far back of the limo, waiting for the others.

“Volt? He's training for a field mission. He'll be working at some of Europe's finest restaurants, where elites are known to frequent.”

“Oh.” I looked out the window, which really wasn't a window at all, but an opaque piece of black, high-density, bulletproof polycarbonate. From the outside, it looked like a dark-tinted window. But when the wall to the front seat was up, the interior of the vehicle was hermetically sealed from any exterior light or sound.

This being the case, I gave a start when one of the front
doors suddenly opened and the bright morning light poured in, along with the flirtatious noises of Ratdog and Meeko, not to mention Tynee and Miss Mary, who were engaged in a mating ritual of their own.

“Allow me, Miss Mary.” Tynee took the squirming Ratdog from her arms as she stepped into the limousine.

“Thank you, Tibor,” she gushed like an oil spill. “You're such a gentleman.” Her seat was at the front, about thirty feet away from General Kiljoy and myself. Tynee followed her with Ratdog, who was kicking at him, and of course Meeko followed Ratdog.

“Are we all settled then?” General Kiljoy asked our assembled group.

Tynee gave a thumbs-up, and Miss Mary, who was fumbling with the plush leather cushions on her recliner, squawked, “I suppose we'll have to be.”

General Kiljoy pointed a remote control toward the front end of the cabin. At the push of a button, the soundproof and lightproof screen separating us from the driver's seat slid open, revealing Volt the Chauffeur, with Agent Orange riding shotgun.

General Kiljoy gave the command for us to be on our way, then hit the button again and the wall slid shut, leaving us ostensibly important people once again in womblike comfort. Within minutes we were humming along at a steady pace, strains of unidentifiable classical music filling the cabin from unseen speakers. The motion was barely perceptible in our ergonomically designed orthopedic leather recliners, save for a gentle vibration that eventually lulled the lot of us to sleep like infants in car seats.

Voluntarily lying down and succumbing to a loss of waking
consciousness has always unsettled me. Despite the inevitability of slumber, I often find myself lying in bed resisting it, kicking awake again and again as soon as I begin to drift off. To sleep, or more to the point, to dream, suspends the control of our ego and whisks whatever portion of us still loitering about to a realm without surety or stability, a realm of shameless fantasy and stupendous absurdity. Dreams may grant us tranquillity, or they may teach us terror. They ridicule the notion of cause and effect, and explore peculiar ramifications of preposterous events with a nonchalance appropriate to sipping weak tea. Indeed, nothing, no matter how devoid of reason, seems to surprise what remains of our faculties in this state. Nothing, that is, except the sudden realization that you are dreaming, the unwelcome intrusion of that conceited know-it-all, the ego. Whatever entity existed to experience the dream state is shoved back into more predictable circumstances, and oddly, we are grateful, relieved by the illusion of control.

For this reason (which is probably best understood as a prideful fear of death itself), I was the last to surrender to a siesta. I shilly-shallied on the cusp for quite some time, flirting with blurry moments of rushing weightlessness before jolting awake again and again. At last I lost all memory of wakefulness, or its significance thereof, and entered into a state of such vivid intensity that I remain as yet unconvinced of its unreality. Call me a heretic, but this could not have been a mere dream, in which recollections are as slippery and elusive as a wet watermelon seed. No, these images have stayed with me in all their visceral fury as if they happened only a moment ago. This dream was a vision of myself, rapturous and disturbing, an epiphany that demanded my heretofore slack attention. Thus,
although I am not without hesitation to strip my subconscious naked, I must record what was both the most fantastic and terrifying dream I have ever had.

It is difficult to say where it began, since it just seemed to be what was already occurring. Hence, the best I can say is that I was already an eagle. Though I was soaring through the atmosphere hundreds of feet high, and perceiving the passing scenery in supernatural detail, it was not at all remarkable at the time. Ecstasy is recognized as such only in retrospect. As I said, it was what was occurring; it was a given. Myopia was utterly forgotten and replaced by a keenness of sight both fantastic and fierce. The outline of every leaf on each passing tree was blazingly apparent, as were the patterns of the veins on their richly textured surfaces. All was green, a verdant spectrum of untold hues—emerald, jade, holly, ivy, kelly, chartreuse, aquamarine, olive, and pea—every conceivable ratio of blue and yellow had been mixed and flecked across the landscape below. Splendid indeed, but this was much more than a celebration of chlorophyll. Shadows cast by the ceaselessly shifting leaves sent darker green channels racing and scattering through the treetops, whispering the wind's intentions to me as I sailed along the air currents. I processed all of this information with less effort than traveling on a freeway, and despite our highways' misdesignation, with considerably more freedom.

Eventually, I spied a narrow river below, meandering its way through the thick forest like a child scurrying through a crowd. I followed its course, studying the synchronous silver streaks dancing in the sparkling stream. They were fish, and if it had suited my fancy, I could have had my choice. But the sun was
setting, and at my altitude I could sense the true nature of the movement in the turning of the Earth. Realizing this, I flew ever west toward the rapidly sinking sun, trying to stay in the light of day and out of the darkness of night. But the shadow behind me was encroaching much faster than I was flying, and soon I could feel the cold winds of darkness tugging at my tail feathers. Within seconds I was yanked from the sight of light and overwhelmed by the night. This aroused substantial panic in me, but before I lost complete control in the tempestuous wind, I arched my back hard and rocketed skyward, aiming to escape through the top of the planet's penumbra. Shuddering, my hollow skeletal structure pulled taut against the buffeting walls of vicious gales. At the breaking point between my being and my environment, I burst at last into the swiftly moving sunset once again, my velocity nearly tripling as I rocketed exultantly into the gently drifting dance of the beatific atmosphere.