“This seems like a load of bullshit to me--” Steve said, then slowly started to choke. As he coughed, trying to breathe, he could do nothing to get more air. The harder he tried, the faster he was slipping out of consciousness, until suddenly it stopped. As he began to breathe again and recover himself, it started again. This time it felt as if his lungs were burning up and he suddenly felt as if his temperature had risen at least twenty degrees in a single go. He tried to get some water but jumped back as he saw a mixture of mold and water coming out of the faucet.
-Do you understand now? We have more power than you could ever imagine. That we are slow does not mean we are foolish, as we have learned much from you and the rest. Be assured that knowledge will be yours if you tap into it and power over others will also be yours as long as you listen to me.
Steve was not sure how to process this, but he knew that he needed to have the upper hand. Since he had been told that he could tap into knowledge, he went back to the feeling of rolling down a set of stairs, but this time it felt more like jumping down to the bottom and into a pool of light. The sudden burst of information made him realize that he had initially seen this the wrong way. This mix of knowledge and power was what would get him to where he wanted to be. Forget about the damn island! It was time for him to become King of the World. This mold was the thing to get him there.
“You have a deal,” Steve said. His voice echoed into this pool of light. With this came an expansion of his own persona that felt as if he was being reborn into becoming a God. All the knowledge the collective had acquired so far was his. Slowly he could start to understand what other people around him were talking about. By peaking into conversations, ideas, and secrets, all this started to build upon him. The notion came to him that humanity was close to extinction and that he was going to help this happen sooner than later. Why not have all the power and be the last human being to walk the Earth? No one would challenge him, and even better, he would be the last and only God left to walk this planet and probably even others now with all the knowledge he was absorbing. He needed more, though. He knew he had considerable missing areas. “Let us work together,” he thought.
-Excellent. I can already see your intentions. The collective is pleased and so am I.
Chapter 16
Pathogenic Awareness
The phone rang. Doctor Sandberg excused himself and tried to grab it but was confused when he saw what the extension was. Hesitantly he took the call and answered.
“Doctor Sandberg,” said the Doctor. For a moment he looked confused at what he was being told, then raised his left hand as if he was trying to stop the person talking to him. “All right. Give me a moment and I will be right there. Do not do anything.”
As he hung up, the Doctor pointed at Jean, who had become highly interested in what had just happened.
“It seems you will get even more evidence. Three patients just came into the ER with symptoms that are not exactly the same, but they are having problems breathing. No heart conditions from what I was told,” said the Doctor as he advanced rapidly into the hallway. Jean followed as they rushed to an elevator on the right side of the building that was labeled STAFF ONLY. “While it is not necessarily implicit that this is contagious, I will ask that you follow the hospital procedures. We have seen enough people infected by this already.”
“Understood,” Jean said and joined the Doctor in the elevator, which took them rapidly to the first floor, where they were delivered to a door that led directly to the ER. A nurse was already waiting for them with a man who looked at the door with both eyes wide open as if he was in shock. His mouth was covered by what seemed to be an N95 mask.
“Can I help you, sir?” asked Doctor Sandberg as he was about to move into the ER. The man looked back at the Doctor and raised both hands, making some gestures that eventually managed to manifest themselves into words.
“I… don’t know what happened. I was giving a conference and suddenly people started feeling weird. Some of them began to act as if they were having a convulsion and all of a sudden they were fine. A couple of them went down very bad and could barely breathe,” said the man and with this message it rang a bell with Jean that this is what she was looking for and what Doctor Sandberg had been mentioning to her. “It’s just the sensors,” the man said.
With that last word the man took a seat in a nearby waiting chair and took a deep breath before continuing, throwing his head back as he kept mumbling.
“God help me,” the man said and closed both eyes. The Doctor rapidly examined him and confirmed that he was alive. The reaction was from the shock of what he had seen at the moment. He kept muttering the same words over and over again: “God help me.”
“Shock. He will be all right. Please keep an eye on him while the nurse and I go check on the rest,” said the Doctor, who proceeded to move into the next room while the nurse gave him a quick update on the situation.
“Excuse me?” asked Jean, trying not to touch the man. Not knowing what had happened meant that this person could be infected with whatever was spreading the black mold they had seen in the X-rays, but it could also be that this person was infected. “May I ask you something?” Jean said.
The man came back to his senses and raised his head to the point where he could have visual contact with Jean.
“Yes?” asked the man as he blinked rapidly, trying to keep up with the light around him.
“Why do you have a mask on?” asked Jean. Her curiosity was valid, but after Covid-19, people with heart and health conditions that affected the lungs carried these with them at all times. The masks were something they would use during extended periods of time during the initial pandemic and even years afterward. It was more common to see people using these, but those with enough money started wearing gas masks. This was an absolute exaggeration, but those who were selling leftover Soviet military gear made an absolute fortune from common fear. “Do you have a health problem?” Jean wanted to know.
“No, no. Force of habit. I carry it with me at all times, but I wore it because sensors from our demo machine started giving out weird readings,” said the man. Jean became curious as to what this man was referring to.
“Sensors, for temperature or humidity?” asked Jean.
“Yes, we use them for a correlation on several algorithms that we have on a new system we were presenting. Some of them require temperature and humidity to assess the room that a user with a condition is in. We also have other sensors that assist us in reading the particles in the air that could be potentially dangerous,” explained the man. Jean was completely fascinated by this. What the man had just mentioned sounded like a tool that could serve the CDC tremendously. The man went on speaking. “Suddenly the humidity rose and we started detecting spores of some sort of mold. At first it was minimal, but the initial alert intrigued us and as minutes passed, it just increased.”
“Was it mold that you were finding in the environment?” asked Jean with curiosity, and the man looked back at her with surprise.
“I would not be able to tell you exactly if it was mold or not, but I would assume so. The amount that was in the air was reaching the thousands per cubic inch. When I tried to warn everyone, they simply laughed at me,” said the man with frustration. Jean was shocked to hear this and suddenly started making connections with the information she had gathered.
“Now look at the poor people,” she thought. “Three of them are inside there clinging to the lives. At least I hope that’s not the case, but it looked like it the moment they started having problems breathing.”
“Do you have the information that you just mentioned?” Her question caught the man by surprise. To say that he found it a shocking request was the least of the current problems.
“Look, young lady, don’t get me wrong, but I think you need to get your priorities straight and start helping those people in there,” the man said, with both eyebrows arched down almost to nose level. Jean produced a badge from her left pock
et and showed it to the man. “The CDC?” he asked.
“I am performing an investigation on what seems to be a new disease that is developing in the vicinity of Dallas,” Jean explained. “The reports we received were enough to get us to look into it and come to investigate what was the root cause. What you just told me matches what the Doctor mentioned to me.”
“Wait, wait...,” said the man as he remembered those conversations his wife had mentioned and what his boss had talked about. It rapidly tied in. “This is about that weird disease that happened just a couple of days ago. Half our office was out of commission because of it.”
“Exactly. And the information you gathered is very helpful to me to prove the point that something is indeed happening here,” said Jean. The man flipped on this thought.
“Wait a second. You said you were here on an investigation,” the man said.
“I am. It is a long story, but without proof of what is happening here I cannot get a team to act on the situation,” said Jean, and the man bounced his head around.
“Look, I have no problem with what you are saying, but this is confidential information you are talking about and I have a non-disclosure agreement. I cannot just give you the data I mentioned,” said the man, but for a moment he stopped and thought about Nikki and the children, Edwin and Alex. If he failed to take action now, they would get to see a pandemic in their lifetime, a second one during his and with the health situation that Nikki had to live through on a daily basis he was not ready to let this one slip. “But look, look,” he started to say.
Chad sighed heavily and considered the following words that were coming out of his mouth.
“I can give you the information, but you must understand that this did not come from me. My job is at risk and I have much to lose,” said Chad. Jean agreed on this and understood his position and the risk he ran. “Good then,” Chad said. “So tell me who I have to give access to.”
“I know someone,” said Jean.
***
Cheryl was shocked at what she was hearing. Just a few minutes ago she had the weird sensation that it would not be the last time she heard from Maraschimo. She was surprised, though, that she would hear back from someone she did not expect to hear from.
“Thanks for the information, kiddo. Are you sure there won’t be any problem with this?” said Cheryl as she observed the smartphone was in speaker mode. She had to take precautions as this could be a corporate setup. It would not be the first time she went through one and not the last time she went out with some bruises and scrapes for free. She had learned her lessons well.
“I am positive. This gentleman…,” Jean said and stopped for a moment. She did not know the name of the one person who might have helped put a stop to a potential global spread. She turned to him. “That was rude of me. I never asked your name.”
“Chad Thompson,” said Chad. For a moment Cheryl assumed this to be a setup, but then had to dismiss it. While she did not agree on what they were doing with their new system and Artificial Intelligence, she had agreed to assist the CDC in any possible way. Pandemics had been a thing of the past for almost a century when Covid-19 hit, and she was not willing to see it become a trend again in human history.
“Hello, Chad. This is Cheryl Ballentine,” said Cheryl. At that point he recognized the name. The hesitation of giving her the information became a true concern as he did not know what her potential reaction would be to seeing the data they had collected. “I understand there may be some concern about me seeing the data you have collected. I can sense it from your silence.”
The silence continued for a moment, but Cheryl decided to break in before Chad said anything.
“I do not intend to do anything else with the information that I am about to see aside from confirming what Jean has asked about,” said Cheryl. Chad sighed and proceeded to give her access to the test platform they had implemented for this presentation and to inform her where she could find the data she needed.
At first Cheryl was surprised at what she saw. The collection capabilities of their platform were incredible, and she could think of many more beneficial uses than what Chad had mentioned during their presentation, but it was not her decision nor her call. The investors clearly had set their intentions on what she say as a more “destructive” purpose.
Going through the data mentioned by Chad, she saw why there was a concern to have an experienced eye looking at the information. If she was reading correctly, the mold they had found in that conference room was spreading rapidly. The rate of growth was something that she had not seen before, since mold could take a considerable amount of time in the right conditions to grow and spread. This one seemed to be spreading as rapidly as the machine had collected the data.
If she had not been told that this had just happened, she would have assumed this was something that had been going for weeks or months, not minutes.
“You also mentioned that some people were affected by this growth, correct?” asked Cheryl as she kept reading through the data. Her assumption at this point was that everyone in that building had to be quarantined, due to the possibility of this being an engineered weapon.
Jean answered. “That is correct. At least three were pushed into the ER, and Doctor Sandberg just informed us that while they are stable there is a considerable build-up of the black mold in their lungs and respiratory system. The concern he has is for the nervous system,” said Jean, who felt as if she had just been dropped into a movie. One minute she was investigating what could be the possible spread of a new virus or disease that could affect a focalized zone or potentially a region. Now she was talking about what could be considered the next reason for a pandemic. “His suspicion is that this mold works its way up through the lungs and respiratory system and then invades the synaptic cortex of the brain,” Jean explained. “He says it could be a far shot, but he would not discard it, seeing the current situation.”
“Until we have more proof of this, we cannot confirm or deny it,” said Cheryl. Then after going through the numbers she became alarmed. The system was still collecting information, and from the reading it would seem that the growth was spreading out of control inside the entire building and potentially spreading from host to host. “You need to quarantine these people immediately, kiddo,” she told Jean. “This building is crawling with this mold.”
“Can you back me up on this? I need to push very hard with my boss on this, and I need solid proof of what is happening,” said Jean with a glint of hope in her voice.
“If he needs confirmation on what I just told you, tell him to call me. As a matter of fact, I will call him directly, but you need to find out where this is coming from inside the building and fast,” said Cheryl, already looking for the number of the Director of the CDC. “Mind you, when I say fast, that means you should hang up and start running.”
“Thank you so much,” said Jean as she disconnected the call and ran to inform Doctor Sandberg of the new development, giving Chad her phone number in case anything developed. She promised him that she would be in contact in case they found anything that could help them. “Chad, can you help me?” she asked him.
“What else do you need from me?” asked Chad. He did not want to sound demanding, but he was curious as to how else he could be of assistance.
“Can those sensors be moved around?” asked Jean. Chad thought about it: the sensors they had built were partially makeshift, but they could certainly be moved around. They were mostly based on some spare Raspberry Pi they had in the office, with sensors built from devices that had been scrapped for other purposes. The engineers at the office loved putting things like this together just for fun, but they got their kicks when someone actually put them to use.
“Sure, that should work, but how would that help you?” asked Chad, which made Jean smile back at him.
Chapter 17
The Source of Sorts
It had been a combined arms effort, but Cheryl was true to her word and spoke
to the Director of the CDC. Jean, on the other hand, had spoken with Julian and explained the entire situation. At first Julian was in disbelief, but he agreed to help push for her in the upper echelons. This effort had given fruit to a call from Terrance, Jean’s boss, to inform her that a Quick Response Team inside Dallas was already on their way to Cityplace to perform an investigation on the matter.
To add to the intensity of the situation, the local and state police had been informed of the current situation. While their initial reaction was to shut everything down in a considerably large area, the CDC had asked them not to do so. If they did, people would immediately panic and flee further away. They had seen this happen with Covid-19 during the harshest period and they were not willing to repeat the mistake of having rogue hosts running around undetected.
The police would serve as escorts in what they would call a “formal investigation on a disturbance” which they could later change to whatever they wanted. The main objective was to give protection in case people started figuring out what was going on and a riot started.
“Who would have thought that we would get to use these more than once in a single day?” said Chad as he picked up the sensor pad. The sensor pad contained sensors for a variety of atmospheric elements. Chad was glad that he brought it with him today at the event. He could link the pad to his phone to send the data back to the MQC for quick analysis. They could review the live information and results from what they had found.
***
-They are coming.
Those words surprised Steve.
“Who is coming?” Steve asked, as he instinctively grabbed his jacket. “The police?”
-See for yourself.
Burning Mold Page 12
