Time & Space (Short Fiction Collection Vol. 2) (2 page)

So am I, I guess.

It’s in our lungs, they say. In our blood. I don’t seem to have any of the visible lumps most people are developing and I’ve never even once coughed up a mouthful of blood but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time. The government says if we do nothing, we’ll all be dead within a year.  What we need is a miracle, but what the Council has given us is Project Red. Starting tonight, the bug bombs are going to heal us, supposedly. Well, obviously not me. I’ll be sitting this one out. 

The clock read 7:52 p.m. and Tim can’t recall the city ever being this quiet before. Hell, this was Buffalo after all. Morning until night, this city was
always
crazy. Not tonight, though. Nothing was moving around out there and no one was talking. All those desperate people gathered outside and it was as silent as a tomb. It was seriously creeping Tim out. Through the dining room window he could see a mass of blobs down in the park but the thick plastic was distorting his view and he couldn’t make anything out clearly. Probably for the best. If he could see the people outside, his best guess was they’d all be facing the same direction; heads tilted to watch the horizon, waiting to catch their first glimpse of the planes they hoped were coming to save them.

Tim sat down, back against the outside wall and tried to clear that haunting image out of his head but just couldn’t shake it. Then he started to imagine the people a few minutes from now, standing out there covered in the bugs raining from the sky and he nearly lost it. Suddenly light headed and nauseous Tim closed his eyes, grabbed his knees and held on tightly.

How can they do it? How can they just stand there and let…

Tim dashed to the sink to vomit.

It was only after washing his face and thoroughly scrubbing his hands again that he realized he hadn’t sealed the drain in the kitchen sink yet, like he’d planned. He had lots of bottled water and buckets to use for washing himself or going to the bathroom and had already sealed the bathroom tub and sink, but not this one in the kitchen.
Idiot!
The bombs would be dropping any minute and he clearly wasn’t ready. Tim knew the sink had a water trap inside the pipe that would more than likely keep the bugs out but  didn’t want to take any chances so he quickly twisted in the drain plug, filled the sink with water, layered plastic over the top and used the last of the duct tape to seal the edges to the countertop.

He finished just in time to hear the drone of the approaching plane engines and ran to the dining room window even though he couldn’t see outside very well. Seconds later, the blurry crowd below started to cheer and there was even a brief chant of USA…USA… that started up but for the life of him Tim had no idea what they were all so happy about. Desperation and blind faith can do strange things, he guessed.

Fucking people…

Through their collective noise Tim heard the first of several detonations. Maybe it was because he was sealed inside a plastic bubble, but the bombs sounded strangely muffled and farther away then they really were; more of a bass deep
THUMP
than the loud explosions he’d been expecting. Then again, these weren’t missiles smashing into buildings or tearing up the ground; these warheads had been designed to blow up in mid air, to release their payload above the heads of the gratefully cheering crowds.

Tim considered turning on the television set to watch the drama unfolding simultaneously around the globe but his heart just wasn’t into seeing the end of the world in blazing Technicolor right now.
No thanks
. He’d eventually want to check the news feeds to get updates on how things were going, but tonight he was far too depressed to watch the idiotic smiling faces of the reporters on CNN. Instead, Tim turned on the portable air compressor and homemade filtration system and said a little prayer they’d hold out long enough for the air outside to clear. It might be a couple of days; it could take as long as a week. Regardless, he was on his own for a while.

Outside, the sky was turning red.

Project Red  Survival Journal

Entry #2

June 15th, 2039

Project Red is supposed to purify our blood; hence, in my opinion, the rather silly name. To do that, the scientists have developed  these tiny creations called nanobots: microscopic ‘bugs’ that are half living organism and half computerized machine. Crazy stuff straight out of science fiction novels if you ask me, but they’ve been around for a while now and  will be released into the air by the billions and infected people will breath them into their lungs where they can then apparently go to work healing the sick from the inside out. Call me cynical, but I don’t buy it that the scientists have just come up with this wonderful cure. That reeks of bullshit to me. There was too much money in NOT curing cancer, if you know what I mean? Governments keep things from the public all the time and there’s no way of knowing when they actually discovered a possible cure. Probably years ago. Decades maybe. It just took the whole world standing at death’s door before they finally decided to let the rest of us in on the plan.

How inhaling laboratory created bugs can possibly cure cancer is beyond me, but from what I’ve gathered they will use electrical impulses to stop the damaged cells from reproducing uncontrollably, not allowing the cancer to grow and spread as it normally would unchecked. It’s a bit like chemotherapy, but on a microscopic level where the smart bugs can identify and destroy the cancerous cells on a one on one basis instead of just wiping out everything in its path like chemo. If Project Red works as planned, the world should go into remission, the cancer stopped in its tracks from spreading or infecting other organs. Further nanobots may need to be deployed on a regular basis to keep people’s enhanced immune system running properly but no one really knows what the future might bring. At least the smart bugs will give the world a chance, they say.

I’m not buying any of it.

I think it’s a crock of shit. A desperate move made by a handful of controlling desperate men and women. Lies and false hopes given to the people to help keep the masses from panicking too much. Hope is a powerful weapon, and as long as the people have some the authorities will be able to keep the peace. Once it’s gone, though, and the citizens of the world know they’ve been played for fools; that’s when the shit will really hit the fan. I’m afraid that’s where we’re headed.

Anarchy.

The next two days were surprisingly uneventful. Tim sat around the dining room table listening to the radio and occasionally flopping on the living room couch to watch an hour or two of the unending television coverage. There was no end to the parade of scientists and government officials interviewed by the various news media; all of which droned on and on about the apparent success of Project Red and how everyone would start feeling better soon. To Tim, it seemed like they were jumping the gun a little, clapping each other on the back a bit too hard before there was any proof they’d accomplished anything. In fact, if success was so assured as they claimed, why weren’t they showing more live coverage from out in the cities? Where were the interviews with the average citizens of the world who were supposedly out there on the mend? Sure, there were hours of footage from the night the bombs had been dropped, film clips from around the world of the skies changing color and all the happy people dancing in the streets literally covered head to toe in a sticky red substance that, no matter how many times Tim watched the replays, couldn’t stop thinking looked eerily like they were covered in bucket loads of blood.

The following morning, Tim heard a report on the radio that definitive proof had been collected to verify the nanobots were doing their job, stopping the spreading cancer in its tracks. Encouraged, Tim had flipped on CNN to see what they had to say about it, but was shocked to find out all they were showing was a minute long film clip of a bearded man in a white lab coat standing inside some sterile looking lab somewhere. He was pointing to a graph on a blackboard and explaining about the growing number of reported cases of remission throughout the world. That was it. No patient interviews. No eyewitness reports. No tear-filled mothers or wives beaming at the cameras while they hugged their victorious husband or child who’d just been given a new lease on life. It didn’t make any sense, did it? Throughout the day, there were more miraculous newsflashes but they too lacked any real substance. It was all happening too fast for Tim’s liking. All the reports were just that little bit off, not quite ringing true or providing any real proof of anything other than the confident scientists claims. And why should Tim believe what they were saying? It was them, along with the governing officials who’d got everyone into this mess in the first place.

Fucking politicians…

Outside his building, Tim couldn’t see or hear a thing. After the crowds had dispersed from LaSalle Park swarming with their microscopic saviors several nights back, everything had been quiet as a mouse. No one seemed to be moving around and Tim couldn’t even hear the normal yelling and screaming within the paper thin walls of his apartment building. What were they all doing, he wondered? Why was everybody staying inside and being so quiet? Tim had absolutely no idea. All he could go by was what he’d seen and heard on the television and radio – and they weren’t telling him shit.

In the days that followed, things would only get worse. Tim continued his journal entries but outside the world had seemingly ground to a halt and there was never much for him to say. The newscasters and scientists were still spouting their messages of hope and victory but even to Tim’s untrained eyes he could see the men and women on his television screen didn’t appear anywhere near as healthy as their reports claimed. The red lesions and cancerous growths were far more prominent than before, covering huge areas of the broadcaster’s visible bodies. These were examples of the scientist’s success stories? Christ, they looked worse than before the bombs had been dropped. Worse than Tim, even, and he hadn’t showered in over a week now. He quickly stripped and checked again, but Tim still had none of the red growths growing anywhere on his body.

Project Red  Survival Journal

Entry #9

June 23rd, 2039

Something has gone terribly wrong. I don’t have any proof yet but my gut is telling me things are spinning out of control and the government is lying to the public to try and keep us calm. Was lying, I should say. CNN stopped broadcasting this morning at around 9:30 a.m. and they were the last of the television markets still on the air. Now there is nothing but static and white noise on every station, and the radio signals went dead a few days ago.

The last programming I saw was a badly pieced-together documentary explaining how the bio-engineered nanobots had been created using microscopic computer chips fused with genetic DNA from some small creature. I can’t be positive but I don’t think they ever revealed exactly which type of bug they took the DNA from. Not that it matters much, I guess, but at the time I remember wondering if the program had been edited and several minutes of information conveniently removed. It didn’t make much sense but I had a feeling I was right. Why bother, though? What did they have to hide?

After the documentary, things got even weirder. They cut to a live feed from CNN headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia but there was no one in front of the camera. I kept waiting for the producer to cut to a different feed or run some other pre-taped program but nothing happened. Ten seconds went by, then half a minute. It was as if the studio was empty, or maybe everyone had gone home and just left the camera running. After nearly five minutes of dead air, an old grey haired man with small beady eyes shuffled into view and sat down on the corner of the wooden desk to take center stage in the news studio. He was rake thin and practically drowning in his baggy clothes. His exposed head and hands were also covered in numerous red cancerous growths but he had a constant smile plastered on his face that no amount of sickness seemed able to wipe off. Who was this guy? He had a CNN tag on his chest and although it was a little blurry, when I moved closer to the TV I think his name was Jim something. Jim Argen…something; the last part of the man’s name was lost in a fold of his baggy sweater. Whoever he was, surely he wasn’t one of CNN’s newscasters. Couldn’t be. Hell, the old bugger had to be close to eighty years old. Maybe older. He’d walked onstage from behind the angle of the camera though, so for all I knew maybe he was the cameraman; or used to be. Was that even possible, and even if it was why was CNN broadcasting him live to the entire world? I had no way of knowing but I had the feeling that maybe he was the only one left at the studio. Some old diehard who’d worked there his whole life and now, even when the world was falling apart around him, stubbornly refused to go home.

I never did find out. Old Jim just kept sitting there smiling into the camera until the picture cut out and the network went static. After that I had no contact with the outside world at all. No TV, no radio, no noisy neighbors, no nothing.

What the hell is going on?

A couple of days they’d said. Three or four tops. The skies would clear and people could go about their regular lives while the nanobots worked their invisible magic from the inside. Lying bastards. They’ve fucked things up good this time.

Real good.

When Tim woke up the next morning, naked and sweating beneath an old wool blanket, it took him a moment to figure out there was something different about his surroundings. Something had changed and it wasn’t until he got shakily to his feet and walked over to the dining room window that he realized what it was.