The Virus (20 page)

“Yes, sure, Mr. Summons.”
The doctor answered hastily as he waved behind him toward the
corner camera for someone to open the room door…
now
. The locking mechanism unlatched
and he shoved Geoffrey aside before nearly running out of the room.
Geoffrey certainly didn’t like being handled so roughly, but he
fully understood the doctor’s angst. It wasn’t every day that he
found out that someone could read his mind, after all. Now,
unfortunately, Geoffrey had time to be ushered back to the reality
at hand, himself. He had tried to get the doctor to understand that
he needed something, anything, to occupy his mind during his many
solitary hours—especially now that he had foreign voices in his
head—but suddenly, the main concern seemed to be what in the world
would happen to him now that he had become the first professionally
witnessed and soon to be documented mental telepathy. Just as
importantly, what did this mean to Geoffrey himself? He had thought
that perhaps he was going insane before, but now that he knew that
wasn’t the case, he had to decide how
he
felt about his new and unexpected
abilities. Right now, he didn’t know. It wasn’t like he had just
found out that he was good at math, he could hear people’s thoughts
(whether or not he wanted to) for goodness sake. It would
definitely take some time for him to process this new
reality.

Then a completely
unexpected benefit to his freshly-forged telepathy occurred to
Geoffrey. With nothing of interest to look at, no one to talk to
for long periods of time, and no escape in sight, honing this
telepathy thing would definitely give him something to do with his
time, and, surrounded by such an interactively sterile environment,
it should be like studying for an exam (albeit, a very unique exam)
alone in a quiet room. So, he set to the task. Remembering how
urgently the doctor had vacated the room, Geoffrey was fairly
certain that he wouldn’t be seeing him for a while and there was a
good chance he wouldn’t lay eyes upon his assistants for a while
either.

“Well,
since there’s no one to talk to, maybe I can find someone to
listen
to.”
Geoffrey mused as he positioned himself on the far edge of his bed
closest to windowless wall that separated him from the neighboring
corridor, and, unbeknownst to him at the moment, from Delilah’s
room. He massaged his temples in an effort to concentrate. He heard
nothing. “Well, if I don’t have anything else, I have time.” He
observed, and continued his experiment.

Dr. Crangler watched from
the monitors in his office as Geoffrey rubbed his temples and
squinted in deliberate concentration. The doctor shuddered to think
just what his patient was trying to do, but along with that
apprehension was a distinct fascination. Proven telepathy carried
with it a number of profound implications. Perhaps Geoffrey could
somehow connect with the alien intelligence on its own level and
supply the doctor with even more pertinent information than what
Geoffrey had written in the notebooks. Geoffrey’s new abilities
could endow mankind with greater technologies, but more
importantly, it could help mankind develop defenses against further
alien assaults. Maybe it could even result in the development of
advanced weaponry by which mankind could take the offensive against
hostile alien intelligences for a change. Either way, it was too
promising to leave unstudied, but the doctor had no desire to
perform any up-close
study
of his telepathic patient any time soon. It was
too unnerving to be around someone who could read every thought and
there was nothing he could do about it. Nevertheless, he knew that
he would personally have to deal with Geoffrey eventually. This was
not something he could leverage upon his aides indefinitely, and
furthermore, if his superiors ever got wind of this, he was certain
that considerable pressure would be applied to him to document the
full extent his patient’s ability.

The doctor suddenly felt
very tired. He felt like butter that was spread too thin on bread
that was too large, but the excitement, excessive though it may be,
was not to end just yet, or any time soon for that matter. The
doctor decided to take a walk around the outer edges of
facility—the farthest away from Geoffrey’s room—and try to gather
his wits. He had always seen smoking cigarettes as an absurdly
heinous practice, but for the first time in his life, he thought he
might enjoy a good ole’ cancer stick. He roamed the halls in
solitude, muttering to himself, until his legs and feet both
protested, then headed back to his office. He thought that he felt
marginally better until he entered his office and saw on the
monitors that Geoffrey was waving at the camera. The doctor felt
suddenly tired all over again.

“I know someone’s there.”
Geoffrey said, “I need to use the bathroom.” He repeated himself a
few times, until a couple of Dr. Crangler’s aides knocked on his
office door to ask what he wanted done.

The doctor thought for a
moment, and then, heaved a deep sigh. “Escort Mr. Summons to the
restroom and tell him I’ll attend to him shortly.” The assistants
left to obey the directive and Dr. Crangler buried his face in his
hands. It felt like things were closing in on him, suffocating him,
but as is usually the case, the most difficult time is also the
time when it would be the most dangerous to give up.

Chapter 20

By the time Delilah and the
doctor met again, a full week had passed since he had delivered the
devastating announcement that she would have to get pregnant.
Pregnant! Of all things! The very word inspired loathing, disgust,
and outright horror like Delilah had never known before, and she
wasn’t even considering the real complications of pregnancy. She
was thinking more of what it would do to thighs and waistline, and
oh God, it would certainly destroy her gorgeous complexion even
more than these horrible lights already had. The idea of carrying
something foreign, something
living
, in her belly that would make
her look like the latest diet fad gone horribly wrong was just too
much for her delicate constitution. In fact, her mother had told
her more than once that the only reason she had been born was for
‘insurance purposes’, meaning that Delilah’s mother had deemed her
father’s proclamation of undying love insufficient for her
purposes, but marriage and a child…

“Well,” quoted her mother
on those occasions, “you know what they say about a three-fold
chord. And that’s exactly what I never intended to be
again—broke.”

Delilah’s current
situation was definitely not an endearing one as far as she was
concerned, but she began to figure that, like her mother, she could
use pregnancy as a way out, not out of poverty, as it was for the
late Mrs. Hanson, but out of confinement. Perhaps, if she had this
child and saved the world, whatever that meant, she could
leave.

It was the first
comforting thought Delilah had in what felt like a long time, but
still, it was only relatively comforting because the ideas
coalescing in her mind of what pregnancy would entail were still
ugly and heinous to the very extreme. It was in this limbo that she
found herself during the week that she saw nothing of Dr. Crangler,
who was being thrown for a loop of his own. He had locked himself
in his main office for days. This particular office, which was much
larger than the one he normally monitored his two star patients,
was equipped with a small sleeping area and a full bathroom, as
well as a moderately-sized storage closest. The only thing it
lacked was a kitchen because no food was actively prepared in this
part of the underground facility for fear of the as yet untested
effect it may have on the Cleaning Lights. Other than that, the
doctor had virtually everything he needed to remain in his main
office indefinitely. Had it not been for the fact that he needed to
eat, he may’ve likely done just that. During that time, he had been
faithfully locked behind the thick steel door of his office, poring
endlessly over Geoffrey’s notebooks, but the subject that occupied
his mind most viciously was Geoffrey’s newfound telepathy. Its
graveness was awesome beyond the doctor’s ability to fathom, and
though there was much to be gained by this new ability, there was
also much to be lost. For instance, if Geoffrey could read his
fellow humans’ minds, perhaps the aliens could as well, and if that
was the case, there was no hope of ever thwarting their assaults.
How would humanity defeat an enemy that is fully privy to whatever
offensive they may plan against them? Such was the foolishness of
Lucifer and the fallen angels, and if such stories are to be
believed, then the message is crystal clear.

Then again, perhaps
Geoffrey could hone his telepathic ability to actually eavesdrop on
the alien intelligence, light years away. It was an extreme stretch
of the imagination to be sure, but the things that had taken place
already had proven that virtually anything was possible. These and
many other musings plagued Dr. Crangler so thoroughly that he went
without food, water, or a bath, even though such things were at his
fingertips, for three solid days before he at last left the
confines of his messy and smelly (thanks to his recently declined
hygiene) office. Once he did leave, he roamed the halls on his way
to the exit as vacuously as if he wasn’t present at all. A blank
gaze had replaced the scientific sparkle that once characterized
his eyes. His hair was dirty and disheveled, and the thick stubble
shadowing his face was in desperate need of attention as well. He
shuffled along aimlessly through the hall. If there had been
anything in the way, he would’ve certainly made tripped many times
over.

Oddly enough, all this was
part of the plan…sort of. Along with his complete lack of rest, he
was stretched well beyond his limits, but he realized that Geoffrey
may likely be able to read his thoughts even now. Until he could
get a grip on himself and figure out what his next move would be,
he didn’t want that type of intrusion. So, besides the fact that
the doctor was genuinely distraught and worn bare, he employed his
last remaining mental energies to try to avoid any coherent
thought, other than the need for food, to enter his head where
Geoffrey may be probing. Somehow and for some reason, (perhaps it
was a movie he saw) he believed that his thoughts were safe while
he was in his office, protected behind the thick, steel door, but
out here in the open...well, hadn’t Geoffrey heard what his
assistants were thinking while
they
were in the halls? And so, Dr. Crangler was, at
the moment, a man doubly lost, lacking the presence of mind to
gather his wits, and alternately trying
not
to gather his wits. Dr. Crangler
was in a truly wretched predicament indeed, and he certainly looked
the part as he cut his slow, lumbering path through the labyrinth
of well-lit hallways leading to the ground level exit of the
facility. Once he reached the exit and was outside in the open, he
was so enthralled with his literally thoughtless tasks that he
completely failed to notice the cool, late evening breeze washing
in waves across his skin and through his white garb, or the
gorgeous sight of the sun’s rays making its final retreat beyond
the horizon across the way.

It was late evening now
and would be completely night very soon. The doctor welcomed the
impending darkness, but other than that, all the other privileges
of being able to quit his confinement at will—unlike Geoffrey or
Delilah—were completely lost upon him in his distraction. There
were three identical industrial-sized kitchens that serviced the
entire gated and heavily-guarded complex that housed the
underground facilities. These kitchens were scattered at strategic
places across the premises. Dr. Crangler walked to the nearest one,
about fifty feet away, with his head still bowed in anti-thought
and his feet shuffling roughly through the cool grass. It would
seem that his outing had been as equally ruined as Delilah’s. Karma
is usually a slow shuffling bitch, but obviously she can keep in
quick stride when it suits her fancy. The kitchen that the doctor
was approaching, like its sisters scattered across the premises,
didn’t serve chef quality food, but the grub was hot, edible, and
quite tasty once one got used to it. The vast majority of Dr.
Crangler’s professional career had been spent at this facility, so
he had had plenty of time to ‘get used’ to the food, and by this
time, he quite liked it. But not this evening. Once he ordered a
plate from the kitchen’s buffet style set up and found a seat in a
far corner where he could hopefully be alone, he also found that
the food was as good as grey matter in his mouth. His mind was
overwhelmed and would allow for no rival sensations, including
enjoyment. His plate was filled with Salisbury steak, mashed
potatoes, and some mixture of steamed vegetables, all piping hot
from spending more than ample time beneath abusive heat lamps, but
it could’ve been sawdust-flavored steamed rice cakes and Dr.
Crangler wouldn’t have noticed the difference. In fact, the only
thing that tasted as it should, was the generic bottled water that
stood beside the meal tray.

Even so, the doctor forced
himself to finish as much as he could tolerate (he didn’t want to
make another trip out here if he could avoid it), and by the time
he reentered the underground facility, he was as despondent as
ever. Now, replenished with a hearty meal (even if it was
discouragingly tasteless) he managed to bathe and shave. Then, he
returned to the notebooks and his own frustrations. Of the many
things he had deciphered in his feverish marathon study was that
the alien intelligence was, indeed, a global community, a singular
consciousness perpetrated among many entities, and that Geoffrey’s
sudden telepathy was a byproduct of sorts of how this singular
consciousness communicated. The doctor rightly surmised that when
Mr. Reynolds opened Geoffrey’s mind for telepathic communication,
he had also opened his mind for communication with other humans as
well. The telepathy was one-way at the moment, but perhaps his
ability to would spread to others as it had been spread to him.
Only time would tell. One thing was for sure, though, this was how
the alien intelligence communicated. The notebook indicated that
the more the alien consciousness communicated to its host
subordinates, the stronger that communication became. One of many
things that was eerily unsettling was that the aliens shared many
similarities with the human masses of Earth.