Trapped!: The 2031 Journal of Otis Fitzmorgan (8 page)

He looked up as we came in. “Who is he and what's his condition?” he asked.

As we made the Controller comfortable on an extra couch, we told Crockett what we'd found on Level 1.

He gave a grim smile. “My discovery isn't much more hopeful than yours, I'm afraid. I've never seen a bug like this. It's
like everyone with a 'quist has been infected with a computer virus.”

“But how can that be?” Charlotte asked. “Computer viruses make machines sick, not people.”

Crockett shrugged. “In this case, it looks like everyone with a 'quist was redirected to a server. That server instructed
the brain to release a chemical dihydrocarbon-6.”

Lysa said, “And that's bad because…?”

“The chemical caused a sleeping virus to wake up.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “What sleeping virus?”

“It must be something we all breathed in on the Space Station or when we boarded the Climber. I checked while you were on
Level 1, and I have it. And I'm sure you all do, too.”

“Then are we going to get sick?” Yves asked.

Crockett shook his head. “Not as long as our brains don't release that exact amount of dihydrocarbon-6. And, don't worry.
The odds of that happening naturally are about six billion to one.”

“Can't you just turn the virus back off again?”

“I wish I could, Otis. It's started to multiply.”

Charlotte was looking down at her father, who lay on the couch.

“Why did the contacts turn black?”

CROCKETT FIGURED OUT WHY THE CONTACTS TURNED BLACK.

“A 'quist is programmed to shut off if something is harming the user, but for some reason, these 'quists couldn't shut off.
I think the contacts were trying to destroy themselves. That would cut off connection to the 'quists and they wouldn't be
able to cause any more harm.”

“Are the adults' brains okay?”

“Yes, Charlotte. It's just like they've got a really bad infection. I can't tell you everything about it. There's some Kind
of command attached to the virus's DNA that I can't understand. But I haven't told you the worst part yet …”

“You mean it gets worse?” Lysa asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Crockett said. “Much worse. Right now, the bug is happy to live in their bodies. But in a few days, it will move
to their lungs and leave their bodies as they exhale.”

“What art you saying?” Yves asked.

Crockett looked him in the eye. “It's only a matter a time before the virus becomes airborne and kills us all. And when we
get to the bottom of the Elevator and they open the doors…”

His voice trailed off, so I finished his sentence for him. “The virus will rush outside, and everyone on Earth will be infected.”

TEDDY KEEPING WATCH OVER MOM AND DAD

Day 3 of 6
  
  
7:30
PM

This morning, the five of us sat
around the breakfast table in the Common Room. Well, the other four sat. It was hard for me to keep my butt in a chair and
not pace when talking about such a huge problem. I think better on my feet.

The Elevator was traveling thousands of miles a day as it continued its journey to Earth. But, on board, we were making zero
progress.

The night before, we had carefully moved all twenty-six adults to their beds. Crockett had found IV bags in the medical supplies
and attached a bag to an arm of each adult. The intravenous solution would provide nourishment and keep them from getting
dehydrated. Crockett had moved constantly from room to room, checking on the adults and making sure that they were comfortable.

The rest of us had tried to catch a few hours of shut-eye. But, with everything going on, that had been almost impossible.
I had dragged a chair between my parents' beds, where they lay sleeping. They were breathing like birds, their chests rising
and falling a little too quickly, as if their bodies were trying to expel the virus with each breath.

When I had jerked awake this morning, my first thought had been, “Please let Mom and Dad be better.” But I could see there
had been no change. They were still unconscious. I put Teddy on the chair where I had slept.

Stay with them, I told him using Teddy-speak, a bunch of hand commands that only Teddy and I recognized. My journal would
be safe in my jacket pocket without him guarding it for a while.

Teddy blinked at me twice to signal that he understood. If there were any changes, he would find his way to me in the Common
Room.

And that's where we all were now. Lysa's face was puffy as if she'd been crying. Charlotte looked stunned and angry. Yves
appeared sullen, like a spoiled child whose birthday party has been ruined by rain. And Crockett had circles under his eyes,
already showing the strain of trying to care for all the adults.

It wasn't easy to concentrate. Every time someone opened a package of food, a pop-up ad appeared out of the box. I guess when
the bad guy knocked out the communications system on the Climber, he or she had also destroyed the pop-up ad blocker. Now
there wasn't anything to keep these annoying advertisements from bursting out of every package and box of soda that was opened.

For the first few minutes, the room had been filled with dancing bears, rockets blasting off, and other holograms that yammered
jingles like, “Crispy, crunchy and sweet—a taste even aliens can't beat!” and, “The juice! The juice! The juice is on the
loose!” Finally, the ads stopped, and we could yet to work on solving our problems.

THE POP-UP ADS WENT WILD!

Unfortunately, Yves was the first to speak. “What's the point of this meeting?” he demanded as he stretched his bulging muscles.
“We'll get help when the Climber reaches Earth. The ground crew will open the hatch—”

“And we'll release the virus on the planet,” Charlotte interrupted him.

“We can warn them not to open the hatch until they get the situation under control.”

“We might not be able to,” I said.

“Why not?” Yves asked.

“We could be …,” Crockett started, but before he could say “dead,” Lysa let out her familiar gasp. He softened his tone and
said, “We could be too sick—or worst—to warn them somehow.”

But we don't have 'quists,” Charlotte said.

“It doesn't matter,” Crockett told her. “It's like I said before. This buy is going to go airborne in the next few days. And
when it does, we won't be able to escape it. We'll be just as sick as the adults are.”

Lysa slumped in her chair as if all were hopeless. “So what can we do?”

“We can't give up,” I said. “We have to find out where the virus came from and who released it. That person might have the
cure. So we have to solve this crime.”

“You mean act like private detectives?” Yves scoffed, rolling his eyes.

“I mean act like people who want to survive,” I shot back.

“Even if we did want to be detectives,” Charlotte said, “we can't use most of our modern devices to solve the crime with the
Climber's communications system down.”

“It's like we've gone back in time,” Lysa said.

“You've got a good point. Maybe it's time for us to start looting to the past,” I said and thought, Where was Judge Pinkerton
when we needed her?

“What?” Charlotte said.

I hadn't realized that I'd said the last sentence out loud. “I was just thinking about how a family friend would deal with
a situation like this.”

As they all stared at me, I thought about my family's journals, which were safely stored in my hard drive. I scanned through
my memory as though I were flipping through the journals' pages. I thought about how different relatives dealt with solving
their cases. Fitz had been a fingerprinting expert—but we had no prints here. Zeke could crack codes like nobody's business—but
there were no codes to crack. I thought of G. Codd Fitzmorgan—Aha! That's it!

“Dramatic reenactment,” I blurted.

G. CODD FITZMORGAN

“what's dramatic reenactment?” Lysa asked.

“Sounds painful,” Charlotte said, trying to make a joke.

“I have a relative who used it to help find a pilot who disappeared in 1926,” I explained. “In a dramatic reenactment, you
act out the events that lead up to the crime.”

“Which crime? The, attack on the adults? The sabotage of the Elevator? The switching of the statues?”