The Virus (7 page)

Meanwhile, the doctor hit
a button on the underside of the bed. The astronomer’s ankles were
bound with white leather straps, and his wrists were strapped with
white leather straps to two armrests supporting his arms. He wore
loose white plastic gloves on his hands. Slowly, the bed began to
lift Mr. Reynolds’s head and torso, while lowering his legs and
feet. After a few moments the bed had transformed into something
like a recliner. The armrests tilted as Mr. Reynolds was forced
upright, his mouth still forming soundless words and his eyes still
missing irises.

The doctor grabbed the
stethoscope hanging around his neck—also white—and placed it over
the Mr. Reynolds’s heart. After a few seconds of listening, he
nodded solemnly as doctors usually do, and raised his hand and
gestured. Apparently, he was calling for assistance. Meanwhile, he
hit the bed button again and the recliner now raised Mr. Reynolds’s
torso and midsection upright. The armrests rotated smoothly into a
semi-vertical position along with the transforming divan, until Mr.
Reynolds was positioned nearly erect. A few moments later, two men
entered the room wearing equally-spotless white uniforms and
pushing medical equipment. Even the stainless steel equipment was
draped with what looked like thick, white curtains. The two men
brought the doctor a small rolling cabinet and quickly left.
Lieutenant Dan stood on the other side of the one way glass with
Geoffrey, but he didn’t look nearly as confused as the intern. In
fact, his chiseled face looked as calm as if all this was standard
procedure. Back on the other side of the glass, the doctor worked
his hands in a pair of latex gloves and produced a butterfly
needle, and a small plastic vial from the rolling cabinet. He drew
blood from Mr. Reynolds’s arm into the vial. He then drew another
larger vial full of blood, one that already had some other liquid
in it, and returned them both to the cabinet.

After that, he used the
machines that were brought in to run some simple tests. He hooked
up leads to the scientist’s body from the machines, and situated
goggles over Mr. Reynolds’s eyes. Then, he exited the room. The
scientist seemed oblivious of anything taking place around him.
Geoffrey, on the other hand, was hypnotized by the scene. Moments
ago, he hadn’t even been sure that he could continue to look on but
now, he found himself enthralled with expectation of what could
possibly happen next. Geoffrey was so enthralled, in fact, that the
sound of an opening door in the otherwise deathly silent room
startled him out of the corner Lieutenant Dan had sat him in when
he had taken the wheelchair away sometime earlier.

The doctor he had just
seen with Mr. Reynolds, entered the room. He spoke with Lieutenant
Dan briefly, then turned to Geoffrey. His gaze was intent upon the
intern’s hands as he spoke. “Hello, young man.” He said “How are
you feeling?”

Geoffrey didn’t answer at
first. “I’m doing fine.” he lied, after what felt like a long
while.

“Good.”
The doctor answered, drawing closer, but not
too
close, to
him. His gaze never strayed from Geoffrey’s hands (both of which
were trembling by this time). “Now, I’m going to ask you a few
questions. It is very important,
extremely
important, that you answer
me completely and honestly. Do you understand?”

Geoffrey’s lips trembled
as he answered, “I do understand and I promise I’ll tell you
whatever you want to know.” Lieutenant Dan’s formidable presence
was a powerful motivation to speak the truth.

The doctor continued in
slow, measured words, as if he could afford to take no chance of
his terrified subject mishearing him. “Did you touch the meteorite
fragment?” he asked.

“No, no I did not.”
Geoffrey answered quickly.

“Did you touch that man,”
he pointed to Mr. Reynolds, “
at
all
, after
he
touched the
fragment?”

“I didn’t…I hit him with
the shovel, really hard I think, but only because I didn’t know
what else to do, but I didn’t touch him at all after that.”
Geoffrey answered.

The doctor exhaled slowly.
He seemed to speak with considerably less anxiety after this. He
carefully took Geoffrey’s still trembling hands in his own and
examined them, turning them over, moving them this way and that,
until he was satisfied. He then pulled up a chair and asked
Geoffrey to tell him everything that happened from the moment he
spotted the fragment to the moment that he and the astronomer were
carted off in the chopper.

The doctor leaned close
and looked intently into Geoffrey’s face. “You need to tell me
everything that happened. I warn you to not omit the smallest
detail. I need to know everything.”

Geoffrey obliged, telling
the doctor absolutely everything there was to know, even about the
plot the other astronomers had forged against him. No one in the
room seemed too concerned with the affairs or the hypocrisy of the
other scientists, but as Geoffrey recounted things pertaining to
the fragment and Mr. Reynolds’s subsequent reaction to it all eyes
were intent upon him.

At last, Geoffrey finished
his account. The doctor sat up in the chair and rubbed his lower
lip, absorbed in deep thought. Lieutenant Dan, looming behind him,
frowned as if considering something important. After a while, it
seemed like the both men had completely forgotten that Geoffrey was
in the room. He looked around. It was painfully obvious that he
wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Perhaps, he would never see the
light of the day in the free world again. If he was ever going to
get any answers, it was probably now or never.

“Excuse me,” he said, or,
more accurately, whispered, his voice was so low. He cleared his
throat and tried again, this time a little louder. “Excuse me.”
Lieutenant Dan was the first to break out of his daze.

“Yes, Mr. Summons? What is
it?” asked the lieutenant general.

“Well, actually,” began
Geoffrey, with more than a small measure of cautious reserve “I was
wondering…what’s going on? Obviously, that fragment is more
important than I know, but why?” he wanted to ask more, but as
everything thing else seemed to be tied to this one inquiry, he
waited to see what, if anything, would be answered. Amazingly, the
doctor was yet in his daze. Lieutenant Dan tapped his shoulder and
he started back to reality.

“What is it, Lieutenant?”
the doctor asked.

“Mr. Summons wants to know
what’s going on. What do you think?” Lieutenant Dan didn’t sound
like he was making a genuine inquiry as much as simply jesting. The
doctor, however, must’ve not known that, because the tone in which
he answered was, indeed, sincere.

“My vote is we tell him.”
He answered. Suddenly, Geoffrey wasn’t so sure that he wanted to
know anymore. That didn’t matter of course, because the doctor
continued, “First chance I get, I’m going to call my ex-wife and
estranged daughter. What can it possibly hurt now? Besides, what
information we can get out of him and the comatose astronomer over
there may be of some assistance to us. If so, they may be
responsible for saving billions of lives, not to mention the future
of mankind. Either way, I say let ‘em in on our dirty little
secret.”

Lieutenant Dan looked back
at Geoffrey as if thinking this over. Even lost in thought, his
face was like his jaw: Hard and firmly set. It didn’t look as if
the doctor’s logic was winning out. A terrifying thought entered
Geoffrey’s head. By the looks of things, he was already on the
wrong end of the whole, ‘I could tell you but then I’d have to kill
you’ thing. The doctor had already shared that there was a ‘dirty
little secret’
(one
hell
of a dirty little secret, as
far as Geoffrey could tell), that was carefully guarded by the
government, so Geoffrey had been effectively stripped of all hopes
of maintaining plausible deniability, but he still hadn’t been
given enough information to make such a risky position even
remotely worthwhile. In short, he had been given too much
information for his own good, but not enough for his own
welfare.

The doctor must’ve read
the concern on Geoffrey’s face because he continued to persuade the
lieutenant general, “Listen, Lieutenant Dan—that’s what everyone
around here calls you, right? Well, look, I’m certainly not trying
to tell you how to do your job, as I certainly wouldn’t appreciate
you advising me on how to perform mine, but don’t you think this
kid has a right to at least know? Even in what you do, even in war,
there are rules, aren’t there? I don’t claim to know all the
idiosyncrasies of your chosen profession, but if I’m not mistaken,
I think one of your men told me something like it’s unlawful to
shoot an enemy combatant while they’re parachuting down and can’t
defend themselves.” Lieutenant Dan gave a reluctant grunt
acknowledging that fact.

“Well, if
the
enemy
deserves at least some kind of consideration, doesn’t this
young man?” the doctor asked rhetorically. “Neither he nor the
astronomer in there knew what the hell they were getting into when
they started messing with that fragment. That fragment may be the
very reason he never sees his family and friends, everyone he’s
ever known, alive, again…” Geoffrey’s eyes widened considerably and
he stopped breathing involuntarily at the sound of this
assertion.
Damn, I really should’ve been a
doctor like my dad told me!
he thought to
himself.

The doctor continued, “The
least we can do is tell the poor bastard what’s going on
here.”

Lieutenant Dan looked at
Geoffrey, and for the first time, Geoffrey saw his
frighteningly-cool demeanor give way to something even more
disconcerting; genuine displeasure. Uncomfortable beads of
perspiration presented themselves all across Geoffrey’s forehead
almost instantly. The lieutenant general looked displeased. He
stepped around the doctor toward Geoffrey’s chair, and his
(Geoffrey’s) life flashed before his eyes. One of the lieutenant’s
deathly huge hands lighted upon Geoffrey’s shoulder. With the
slightest clamp of his fingers, he sent a hot jolt of pain through
Geoffrey’s arm, elbow to neck. Geoffrey winced but didn’t budge:
Not from resilience so much as the fact that the lieutenant general
was so strong that he was virtually holding the intern’s entire
torso upright with his single vise-like hold.

Lieutenant Dan narrowed
his eyes and leaned in toward Geoffrey. Geoffrey’s heart beat as if
it would burst from his chest any moment. Lieutenant Dan had a look
on his face as if his body was building up too much pressure and he
planned to release it into Geoffrey’s face. Instead, with a deep
sigh, he abruptly released his painful grip on Geoffrey’s shoulder
and straightened up.

“The
doc’s right, Mr. Summons. That meteorite fragment you found marks
the change of the entire world as you know it. And it
is
very likely
that you’ll never see your family and friends alive
again.”

Lieutenant Dan heaved
another deep sigh and slowly returned to his original position
behind the doctor. Once he got there, he continued his oration.
“This location,” the lieutenant general waved his hand in a wide
arc toward the entire grounds. “is a highly classified and
heavily-guarded fortress. And as with all fortresses, this one was
meant to protect something. Something more important than money,
more important than any high tech computer, and more important that
any one weapon.” He turned and again leveled his guarded gaze upon
Geoffrey, “Knowledge. We have known about alien life in our part of
the universe for decades. We’ve been bringing back primitive alien
life forms from the moon and mars since we got there. What looks
like alien bacteria or fungus, nothing complex but
life
. But nothing ever
lasts long once they get it back home. Everything always dies once
it’s been subjected to our atmosphere. Everything. It always just
turns to dust.”

The lieutenant general’s
voice heightened a note or two as he continued, “Even received some
kind of transmission from the ‘higher functions’, as the science
personnel like to call ‘em. That crowd figures that if alien
intelligence can send a readable signal, then they have to be at
least as smart as humans, and since they’re aliens, it’s probably
best to assume they’re smarter than we are. So, anyway, they
finally receive a transmission from these ‘higher functions’ and
it’s in numbers. It’s been fifteen years, and the guys in the
offices still can’t figure it out. Whole messages written in
numbers.”

“Well,” interposed the
doctor “it does stand to reason that if there is a universal
language, it would be some kind of math, or something like it.
Numbers are the only things that are likely to be the same on other
planets.”

“That’s right. You did say
that you took up some kind of math before you got into medicine in
college.” Lieutenant Dan observed.

“Infinitesimal calculus,” the doctor clarified “and I
only
got
into medicine
as you say, when I got
here fifteen years ago.” He turned his attention back to Geoffrey,
and continued Lieutenant Dan’s narrative, “But even stranger than
that was
how
the
message was sent. It came on a burst of pure energy. Light, Son!”
the doctor nearly yelled, “Nothing can travel faster than light,
not even information, so these foreign intelligences have found a
way to actually use light itself to carry information. Light is of
prime importance in one way or another in many fields, including,
and especially, medicine. With the improvements we could make to
lasers for instance, if we could learn to manipulate them better,
we could possibly perform more complex surgeries with them and
completely disinfect open flesh even while it’s being removed or
repaired. The Cleaning Lights we all passed in the corridor are
just a start of what could be done with the knowledge we’ve already
garnered from these alien intelligences. And that’s just the
tip…”