The Virus (2 page)

Chapter 4

A blinding cloud of flashing cameras,
hot studio lights, and envious smiles: It was all for Delilah, and
she bathed in it as happily and naturally as if it was the
expensive heated infinity edge pool back at her home. The last
seven to eight months had been the most physically and mentally
exhausting time of Delilah’s entire life, and it had all been for
this. As far as she was concerned, it was well worth it. Her
itinerary was quickly filled with so many interviews; photo shoots
for magazine covers; and meetings for possible book deals, that she
barely had any time to breathe. And she wouldn’t have had it any
other way. With the help of her father, Delilah secured a personal
body guard, and with her new security man-slash-chauffer always
within arm’s reach, she set about the country, staying in only the
most fabulous hotels, milking her time in the limelight for all it
was worth.

Meanwhile, many thousands
of miles away, in the barren recesses of Antarctica, a team of
scientists were being drawn to the observation decks of their
massively-domed research station by what appeared to be the most
awesome display of southern lights any of them had ever seen. It
was the proper season for the southern lights, so a dazzling
display of colors in the open sky was not unusual. What
was
odd was that this
display was predominantly green with some blue interspersed, which
was very rare for the phenomena. To a layperson looking on, this
would’ve been a trivial, if even noticed, deviation in what
the
 
Aurora
Australis usually were, but the scientists watching it just now
recognized the absolute significance of it.

Among these scientists, a
young intern was standing near his superior.

“Wow!” observed the
intern, staring up through the thick, specially-insulated glass
geodesic dome above him, as the heaven bound curtains of vibrant
colors passed by overhead. Antarctica was currently experiencing
one of its polar nights, where the sun does not rise above the
horizon for months at a time, and so, even though it was
mid-morning, the sky was dark enough to render this spectacle even
more fantastic.

The intern’s superior
asked, “Now, did you notice anything
out
of the way
about this display, Geoffrey?”
One of the scientist’s many quirks was that he never said
odd
or
unusual
, but only
out of the way.

“It’s spectacular.”
answered Geoffrey, absently, unable to summon his gaze away from
the brilliant colors. He had read about the phenomena many times,
but actually witnessing it firsthand now…well, the lengthy book
descriptions just didn’t do it justice.

The scientist—his name was
Arnold though he insisted he be addressed as Mr. Reynolds—scoffed
at the intern’s childlike awe. He was an extremely practical person
who prided himself on never being taken off guard for any reason.
He had long forgotten the non-book oriented passion and curiosity
that drew him into the field of astronomy in the first place. His
appearance certainly suggested as much. He had a tall, lanky frame
with long, thin limbs and a face that looked as if it had been
sucked dry by the very vacuum of space which he was paid to study.
His head was covered by a full mane of curly dull, black hair that
matched the simple goatee he kept meticulously trimmed. His eyes
were slightly recessed into his drawn face, but were still as
penetrative as if they were a pair of black binoculars bulging out
of his head. The centerpiece of this facial mosaic was the thick
glasses the scientist wore even though there was absolutely nothing
wrong with his vision. He fancied that they helped him notice
things that perhaps he would not have otherwise.

He was the only black
person stationed at the research facility, and, excluding his young
intern, he was the youngest there at just thirty-nine years old. He
usually assumed an air of snobbery (he would call it
confidence
), as he was
assuming just now, but for all stuck up appearances, he was, in
fact, a brilliant scientist. Already, a chemical nuclear reaction
and a certain type of cosmic radiation that he had discovered, were
named after him, and some believed—most ardently, he, himself—that
it was only a matter of time before he was a proud (in the truest
sense of the word) recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics. He had
been at this particular research station for a total of six months
now, and saw it as a prestigious, albeit
cold
, assignment. He always assumed
that his brilliance had been the deciding factor that earned him
the right to be here, considering that he was a minority and much
younger than the other scientists, but in reality, it was the
simple fact that no one else wanted to deal with the ‘young upstart
who knew everything except how to keep his damn mouth closed’, that
had gotten him here. It was just as well. He would certainly prefer
his own rendition of things anyhow.

The glasses Mr. Reynolds
wore were the modern half rim design that were normally assigned as
prescription glasses. He steadied these upon his semi-flat nose
now, as he scoffed at his youthful assistant. “Yes, I grant it, it
is a worthy sight,” he said, speaking of the curtains of lights in
the sky, though his tone would imply that he was too mature to be
taken aback by such trivial emotions as wonder, “but if you intend
to be any kind of a scientist worth your salt, you’re going to have
to learn to move past the mere aesthetic properties of observation
and teach yourself to find the scientific value, if there be any,
of those observations.”

It was Geoffrey’s turn to
scoff now, though he was not so foolish as to do it loud enough for
his lofty, and unfortunately, influential, mentor to hear. “I
thought that’s what I was here for, so you could teach me to
pinpoint ‘scientific value’ where I would have otherwise missed
it.” observed Geoffrey, still without looking away from the sky
above (it could not be deduced by his tone whether or not he was
being sarcastic, but Mr. Reynolds’s excessive store of pomp was
such that he could fairly well interpret anything as a
well-deserved compliment). The platform where the intern, Mr.
Reynolds, and the other scientists stood, had been raised high into
the huge domed structure for just such observation. In addition,
there were sets of large steps by which a person could elevate
themselves even further into the dome, and telescopes of varying
size and power were scattered strategically for the same
purpose.

With great grandeur, Mr.
Reynolds stepped up two or three of these steps and positioned
himself in front of one of the telescopes. For such a practical
man, it didn’t matter that the southern lights in the sky were so
close that using this or any of the observatory’s telescopes was
completely unnecessary. In Mr. Reynolds’s mind, positioning himself
just so made him look sophisticated.

“Quite right.” He answered
his assistant. “And if you intend to learn anything worth learning,
you’ve come to the right person. But no one, not even I, can
teach
you how to be a
scientist. You have to be born with a special something already in
place. I can only teach you science itself…” It looked as if Mr.
Reynolds was about to open into a lengthy treatise of some sort, as
no doubt he likely would have, had it not been that Geoffrey was
suddenly taken over with an aptly-timed bout of suspiciously
insatiable curiosity.

“Mr. Reynolds, you were
saying that something was strange about these lights. What did you
mean?” interrupted the intern.

“Not strange, Geoffrey,
out of the way.” Corrected the scientist.

“Okay, Mr. Reynolds, out
of the way, but what was it?”

“Come up here, Geoffrey.”
The scientist instructed. Once Geoffrey made it up the steps and
stood beside him, he pointed a finger at one of the predominantly
green curtains that was in the process of waving by. “Now, do you
see that?” he asked. Of course Geoffrey did, but that also didn’t
seem to matter. “Now, I take it that you’ve never seen an aurora
before?” Geoffrey shook his head that he hadn’t. “Well, that is
truly unfortunate, because if you had seen an extensive amount of
them—as I have—then you would know that that greenish hue you’re
seeing now is highly out of the way for auroras. Highly out of the
way…”

Geoffrey worked quickly to
avoid yet another meaningless lecture. “How so? What exactly is…out
of the way about it?” he asked humbly, scratching his head in
intimation that he knew nothing without Mr. Reynolds’s significant
expertise.

The scientist went on to
explain to the decidedly-ignorant Geoffrey that the southern
lights, like their northern counterparts, were the results of great
amounts of radiation from solar winds bathing and interacting with
Earth’s atmosphere. He continued on to explain that the outermost
layers of the atmosphere were sparsely propagated with a much
higher percentage of pure oxygen than was the rest of the layers.
Through a highly-complicated series of cosmic radioactive
interactions, that saturation of oxygen was the catalyst that made
the pure green lights possible. The only problem was that the
reaction should be happening where the oxygen was, on the outermost
layer of Earth’s protective coating, not, as it were, so close and
in plain view.

After this explanation,
Geoffrey asked the question that most non-experts would’ve asked at
this point; namely, what was the difference between that oxygen and
the stuff humans depended on to live every day, to which, Mr.
Reynolds awarded his intern with a look that said clearly, ‘My
poor, ignorant, and totally inept Geoffrey. How very much you have
to learn. Thank God in heaven that you met me’, etc…etc…, before
informing him that oxygen was a highly reactive substance, one of
the most reactive substances in the universe, in fact, and that the
oxygen that caused the green reaction of which he spoke was so pure
that it could actually kill humans from acute oxygen toxicity if
breathed for any extended period of time. So, seeing the southern
lights so green was therefore highly
out
of the way
because it would suggest that a
saturation pure oxygen was in the breathable part of Earth’s
atmosphere…which would mean that shortly, everyone breathing it
would soon be dead.

If Geoffrey hadn’t been
paying attention to such a confusing and complicated explanation,
he was all ears at the mention of the possible demise of all
people.

“But, since none of us
seem to be falling over dead at the moment, I’d say something else
was happening.” said Mr. Reynolds, noticing the alarmed look on his
apprentice’s face.

“
What
else?” asked Geoffrey,
cautiously.

“Well, as scientists,
and
aspiring
scientist, in your case my dear Geoffrey, that’s what we’re
here to find out, isn’t it now?” Mr. Reynolds’s observation had
obviously scared the intern, and he (Mr. Reynolds) was enjoying
every moment of it. Unfortunately for the proud scientist, his
observations were much closer to the truth than he could’ve
imagined: He and everyone else around him were, indeed, breathing
in highly toxic substances. It just wasn’t the kind he had in
mind.

Meanwhile, as the lights
subsided, Geoffrey gazed out onto the unbroken white of compacted
ice that surrounded the station in all directions. Though his eyes
were steady upon the hypnotizing lack of color that was the
Antarctic tundra, his mind was far removed. Even in the short time
that he had known Mr. Reynolds, he knew him to be a consummate
asshole, but he also knew another thing: Mr. Reynolds’s
observations were usually dead on. What bothered Geoffrey was that
in this, Mr. Reynolds’s latest observation,
dead on
may very well be taken
literally. As much as he wanted to, he didn’t press the scientist
to elaborate. He knew he didn’t want to die out here, away from his
family and friends, in this frozen wasteland.

Now, he looked out from the
lightly-tinted glass dome, at the unforgiving habitat surrounding
it, in earnest. Though he tried to block them out, images of his
body dotting an otherwise monotonous ice sheet dominated his
vision. He imagined himself fighting for precious life against some
fucking
oxygen
toxicity
…and losing. He saw himself
gasping for air and being choked to eternal stillness by the very
substance his body needed. He stood, staring at the imagined dots
of him on the frozen surface for so long that he began to believe
he actually saw a dot on the horizon. He shook his head hard to get
rid of the hallucination, but it was still there. He moved up a few
steps to get a better look and to prove to his shaken psyche that
the dot was no more than his unfounded fears preying upon his mind,
but still, the dot remained.

Reluctantly, he called one
of the other scientists in the room to his aid. He tried not to
arouse the attention of Mr. Reynolds, as he was sure he would make
more out of this than was necessary. One of the other scientists
came to find out what was the problem.

Geoffrey pointed into the
distance. “Do you see anything there?” he asked timidly. He hoped
like hell that the scientist didn’t see it so he could assure
himself that it was all in his head, but the other guy
did
see it. The
scientist went to one of the telescopes to get a better look at the
dot. He stood with his face in the goggle mask-like apparatus of
the telescope for a few moments. When Geoffrey next saw his face,
there was a confused and meditative look on it that promised not to
bode well. The scientist returned his face to the telescope’s mask
for a few more long moments, then did the very thing that Geoffrey
least wanted. He called loudly to Mr. Reynolds. Mr. Reynolds and a
few of the other scientists came to see what the fuss was about.
Each in their turn looked out through the telescope and they, too,
shared the same strange look.