“Everyone, I do not wish to panic anyone but it would seem that the building is infested with some sort of mold that is coming out of the air ducts,” said Chad, trying not to yell but waving both arms to get the attention of everyone. As he moved along through the floor, he tried to warn as many as he could with a single effort, but people were either ignoring him or thinking that it was some sort of prank he was playing on them.
Most laughed at this. A very few took note of what he had mentioned and saw the mold building up. Around the air ducts, the pulsations it had were irregular, but when those few noticed they started following what Chad was mentioning and left the room in a hurry. Those who remained behind laughed at this as a well-placed publicity stunt.
As Chad saw no one following through with him, he thought of alternatives to get everyone out of the building. Pulling the fire alarm would have been a good way to do this, but the fine they would get from it could potentially mean that his bonus was going goodbye on that simple move.
What occurred to him was contacting 911 for assistance on this matter. While it took him some time to get through to them, he was finally able to get someone on the line.
“911. What’s your emergency?” asked the operator.
“I have an emergency at Cityplace. There is a health hazard to people that have gathered for an event for our company,” said Chad. The operator immediately interrupted Chad from proceeding.
“What is the health hazard, sir?” asked the operator with diligence.
“There is a considerable build-up of some black mold that is coming from the air ducts. It seems to be pulsating,” said Chad. There was a second of silence before the operator continued.
“Sir, you just said there is mold at your location?” asked the operator.
“Yes, there is a very large concentration of mold in the air ducts--” said Chad before being interrupted.
“Sir, this is a line for emergencies. Mold is not considered an emergency, and I would recommend that you contact someone else for the removal of it,” said the operator. While Chad tried to intercede on this, he was immediately disconnected.
--
“Damn,” said Cheryl as she finished her conversation with 911. While she had had better luck when speaking with someone, nonetheless they took it the same way they had with Chad, recommending that she get someone who could assist her and to not bother EMS with something that should be taken care by someone else, like the CDC. “I worked at the CDC and I know what an emergency is when I see it,” Cheryl had said in reply.
She tried contacting some of her former coworkers at the CDC but had no luck in reaching any of them. While she was not much impressed by this, she was worried that no one was taking this with the required seriousness.
Cheryl turned back to the monitor and saw how Chad was still trying to get people out of the room with no additional success than the initial group who had left. She was wondering how to contact him. She looked for additional information on Chad but had arrived late to the meeting and did not catch his last name. Furthermore, the Maraschino Enterprises website did not show any information about Chad, and he was a ghost in social media.
After her search she came back to an alarming sight on the other end. At the banquet, some of the people seemed to have fallen ill and others showed problems breathing. While some were taking action to help the stricken ones, there was a considerable portion of people who were panicking at this sight.
“Everyone calm down. We need to move out of this room and the building and we will be fine,” said Chad as he was trying to assist one of the conference attendees who was wheezing heavily and trying not to pass out.
“One publicity stunt was good, but this is a little too much for good taste. Just let us eat our food in peace for now since you already got what you wanted,” said another one of the conference attendees. There was a complete lack of interest in the situation that continued to develop.
Seeing the lack of interest for their own lives, Chad took the attendee who was having problems breathing outside and to the nearest hospital with the help from his boss, who had to lend him his keys to make sure the person was all right. His boss had helped him with a second attendee who was having some headaches and heart fluttering, which alarmed Chad even more than the first.
As he arrived at the hospital and delivered both men to the ER, Chad gave his information and asked them to put it on the credit card the company had issued him. He could later fix this with his boss and put it on the expenses tab they always talked about, which Chad did not enjoy using.
Once done with this, Chad took a risky move by calling Nikki and telling her about the situation that had happened in the conference room.
“Are you all right? How do you feel?” asked Nikky, but Chad had no sure way to answer back. He was afraid to remove the gloves or the mask and did not want to touch any body part that was exposed, in case it was infectious.
“I am fine so far. I took precautions, but I am not sure if I should be going home just yet. I will check with the doctor and see if I need to stay. Regardless, Nikki, I need you to take the kids out of the area and go with your parents,” said Chad as he took a seat in a waiting room. “Please,” he added.
“Chad, what is wrong?” asked Nikki.
“This is very weird, and I am afraid of another pandemic,” said Chad. Nikki sighed heavily on the other side of the line. There was silence between them. They had discussed this situation many times over and had fought over it. Nikki had told him that if it did indeed happen, it would be a situation they could not control and if they had already survived one, then another would not be a problem.
Chad differed heavily on this line of thought, but he could do nothing about it. Nikki was aware that her life was cut short by her heart problem, but she was willing to risk everything for their children, even if it meant being swept away by a pandemic—“an act of God.” she would always say, “and there is nothing you can do about it.”
But he could and he had already done for her a lot more than she understood. He wished he could do still more about it, but that was a fight he could not even begin.
“I will take the boys to my parents. Please call me once you get out,” said Nikki.
“Yes, honey. I will do that as soon as they tell me it’s--”said Chad before being interrupted by a nurse.
“Chad, right?” asked the nurse. Chad stood up while nodding.
“Yes, that is me,” said Chad so fast he stumbled upon the words coming out of his mouth.
“The doctor is on his way. Please wait for him,” said the nurse. As she was returning to the Emergency Room Chad intercepted her.
“But wait, shouldn’t I be inside with them? I was exposed to the same mold,” said Chad. The nurse laughed at him.
“Sir, you have more protective gear than what we usually wear during a normal situation. If it’s contagious, you will be fine. Just make sure to take a bath when you get home and wash all your clothes before going into contact with anyone, all right?” asked the nurse. As soon as she was finished, she went back to the Emergency Room.
“Well, you heard her. Apparently I have taken far too many precautions,” said Chad as he laughed for a moment, then sat down again. “I will call you once I am out, all right?”
“Please do. I love you,” said Nikki.
“I love you, too, honey. Bye,” said Chad. He stretched back into the uncomfortable waiting chair. He began to panic again at the thought of what he had seen. Suddenly he had vivid memories about other incidents he had seen during the last pandemic. He could not deal with seeing it happen again, when he had to be secluded and then visited the remains of a loved one turned to ashes--not even a last goodbye.
He did not want to go through it again, not when he could be the one turned to ashes and neither Nikki nor the boys could say one last goodbye to him.
Chapter 15
All is Full of Mold
It had all happened too soon for Steve to actually u
nderstand it, but when it all came back to him he felt a sudden rush of being alive and in control of everything in his life. Whatever had happened made him feel that he was the most powerful being ever to step on this godforsaken piece of dirt humanity called home.
He began to put the pieces back together, but while at it he could also see himself being in control of something or someone else. At first he did not fully grasp it, but it was as if he was someone else. The disassociation made him lose his balance for a moment, and the images that he was gathering were confusing. He was not seeing them but rather feeling them or perceiving them through his brain, and they continued crossing so rapidly into his mind that he became disoriented.
“What the hell is going on?” Steve yelled at the top of his lungs as he hung from the towel rack with all his strength, feeling as if the world was about to suck him into some sort of void.
-Prodigious, yet raw. The voice rang inside his head with a confusing mix of accents. He looked around for the source, thinking that someone had come in--a police officer or paramedics--he panicked remembering that the old hag was half-dead on the floor and they were probably going to charge him an arm and a leg for their services.
“Not on my watch” was the first thing that came out of his mouth afterward as he made a titanic effort to push himself up and out of the bathroom, legs trembling with the effort but slowly gaining control again, the images rapidly fading away, then coming back just slightly enough for them to become part of what he thought he was seeing. It seemed as if he was on some sort of buffet or conference room, but as he came back to his senses he was in the apartment.
“What?”
-Stop and listen. For one of the few times in his lifetime, Steve stopped and took a seat on the floor, as disgusting as it was. Now that he remembered the clogged bathroom and the mess he had found, it just came to him that he must have passed out from the fumes produced by all the chemicals he had used. That was a personal note he would have to take if he ever wanted to make it to an age where he could have that island.
Steve tried but as much as he did he could not get his Bluetooth to dial in and get him the information he needed. Pulling out his phone revealed that the device had been completely destroyed from his apparent fall. He cursed at the damn thing. “Why would anyone want to put protection on these pieces of garbage anyway, if they were going to break with the simplest accident?” he thought.
-Steve. That was when it hit him--he was not listening through the Bluetooth. After removing it and checking himself, he noticed blood on the side of his head and immediately assumed he had a concussion. -You are alive because we need you and you need us.
“If this is you, God, I swear I won’t believe a single word that comes out of your mouth. I already had enough of it when I was in school,” Steve said angrily as he pushed himself back into the bathroom to look at himself in the mirror. He saw himself and the bleeding from the side of his head. Then the bleeding seemed to stop and go backwards, as if the blood was going back into his head. Ten seconds later the wound was completely healed up as if nothing had happened--no scars, no signs, nothing at all. Steve was so impressed by this that he had to look himself in the mirror more times than he did on a single day. “At least you are compensating for everything now,” he thought.
-God is a complex subject to discuss, Steve. But I can prepare you to live it. As that last sentence echoed in his head, Steve took a look around. There was Liz on the floor and no one else. The door was locked and his phone was dead, which left him with only two options: either he was indeed listening to a voice in his head, or he was dead, but being dead was not feasible because he could still smell the horrible stench coming from the clogged bathroom, so he had to assume by this deduction that he was well, alive, and still bound to suffering.
“And if I prepare, then what? Do I become one, or how does that work out?” Steve asked and felt as if he had been hit with a hammer on the back of his head. Slowly he tumbled down to the floor, as if he was rolling downstairs and was flooded by an invasion of images, sounds, smells, words, languages that suddenly made sense to him, mathematical equations and algorithms that suddenly were so simple. Concepts that only a few humans in the globe could grasp were now nothing to him. This rush came to him with an exhilarating feeling of being alive and in control of everything.
With this sensorial bombardment came names, faces, numbers, connections that he rapidly made and that came to him as some sort of map. There was that one person who understood the basic concept of quantum mechanics, while another one had decades of experience in civil engineering. Jumping on he felt an army of programmers and IT people with their knowledge gathering up to fill the gaps. Next he was bombarded by concepts of microbiology, chemistry, physics and never-ending streams of mathematics. As it all settled down he felt as if he had learned lifetimes’ worth of knowledge in a single sitting, but as soon as it came to him, it all faded away.
“What? So what good is this if I can’t do anything with it?” Steve asked as he felt watered down from the initial rush. For a moment he thought he heard laughter.
-You cannot create a God in one day, but you can help us reach Godhood together. Soon we can push the mold into every living creature and expand our reach.
“Then what? How does that work for me?” Steve wondered with certain doubt, but he was intrigued to know more and how he could benefit from all this. “What will I gain?” he wanted to know.
-We see in you a great mind that is like us. You do not wish merely to survive like the rest of these creatures. You wish to grow past them and be above them at all times. We can help. I can help.
For the first time, Steve heard something akin to self-identifying. While still doubtful, he liked what he heard. Whatever it was that talked to him had already showed him what it was capable of. Assuming that was just a fraction of its power, it dawned on him that if he would implement his own system and the model that had worked for him so well all this time when doing business, this new partnership could completely benefit him. He was about to close the deal of a lifetime, a deal that even Bill Gates would envy.
“And who are you?” Steve asked with a cocky tone. For a moment he felt as if something was coming out of his throat, and he began to cough heavily. As he did and he recovered from the violent outburst, he noticed there was a collection of black mold on the mirror.
-I am what you see. Mold you would call me, but I rather call ourselves a collective and myself the Mastermind behind it. Those names would fit into your limited comprehension of what I am.
Steve laughed at this and nodded. While the “Mastermind” thought of itself as a Supreme Being, Steve simply scoffed at this, as it tried to make itself more important and powerful than it really was.
“And you need me to help you spread your ‘mold’, right?” Steve asked again with a cocky tone. This time there was no violent outburst of cough, but there was a very uncomfortable feeling of dread building in the back of his head.
-Do not mock us. You think that just because evolution has helped your kind reach to your current point that you can laugh at what we have achieved. We were here before you and will continue to be here after you. You are merely a host and a way for us to reach our objective.
“And that begs the question again, what’s in it for me?” Steve asked, now worried that this mold might have far more control over him than he had initially assumed. Even though he had just lived through a rapture, it also dawned on him that the reason why he was on the floor in the first place might well have been because of the mold.
-Your heart’s desire, everything you have ever wanted, as long as we can spread.
That was the end of it, Steve remained highly suspicious of the mold’s intentions but still was willing to do the eighty-twenty on this one if he could win in the long run.
“All right then, give me the power to control others and it’s a deal,” Steve said, and again he felt as if he was falling down a set of stairs. The images kept
flooding back at him, but this time it was more like a kaleidoscope. Images from apartments, conference rooms, restaurants, a shopping mall and other vicinities all came to him at a single moment. He concentrated hard on one of the images and could see through the eyes of someone else who was sitting down to eat at a restaurant. He could smell the food, taste it, understand the intentions of the person with the selection of the place they were eating, who that person’s relatives were, what they wanted to do afterward, and what they had been doing before.
The sudden grasp of the complete personal life of this single person made Steve go mad with power. As he tried to get more in control of that person, he felt as if the arms were his. He tried to push the fork away from the person’s mouth elsewhere. While he put considerable effort into this, there was no real change except for what the person assumed had been a slight miss on the side of his mouth when eating a bite of meat. As the person again cut another piece, Steve tried to get the knife to move through and onto the other hand. When he failed to achieve this, he tried pulling the knife up and stabbing the person in front of him, but he achieved nothing with this.
Enraged at this, Steve came back to the images and found yet another person, one that was shopping at a mall. He tried to get them to run into a wall. The only thing he succeeded in doing was getting this person to hit the side of a door, which seemed like an accident which happened at the same speed the person had originally been walking in. Without achieving much success, Steve found someone else and tried to get them to drink from a boiling hot coffee cup in one try but was unable to achieve this. There was a slight bump but no permanent damage and only a burnt lip.
As Steve came back to himself, he immediately smacked the mirror into pieces and yelled at the top of his lungs. “You promised me power. This is a joke!”
-You forget our deal. Godhood is not achieved in one day, Prodigious One. While we are slow due to our recent rebirth, we are evergrowing. Those people you see are becoming part of our collective and as we continue to grow, we will become ever more powerful and grasp more and more control over every one and every thing around you. Patience is what you need.
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