Burning Mold

by Jefferson Nunn

  “Good morning, officers,” Steve said, as he approached them and the four looked back at him. Something that he immediately noticed was that their eyes had become vacant, as if they had no more willpower left in them. They did not, but that was an interesting mental note that he had to share with the collective.

  They were still at a point where the officers needed some discretion, or did they?

  Realizing this, he simply ignored the fact and moved inside, the four officers following him, walking right behind him. Another set of officers noticed this and also joined them to see what was going on.

  -The collective is ready to spread. We are moving. We are becoming one with everyone.

  This pleased Steve. He could feel the mold everywhere around him, even if people could not see it, in the ceiling, the ground, through water faucets and going from hand to hand, from mouth to mouth, lung to lung. This was the perfect place for him to spread the collective’s power around the United States and the world.

  “What’s going on?” said a voice through one of the earpieces of the officers. Steve quickly realized that he had gathered a following of ten police officers, four under his control and six that had joined in to pitch in to whatever was happening. This oversight did not bother him, but he had to act fast.

  “This gentleman forgot his bag inside. We are escorting him to make sure that he gets only what he needs and gets out,” said the four police officers at the same time. The rest of the officers and passersby looked at this in disbelief. Steve had realized that while he had more control, he still had not learned to properly separate himself from the collective for individual action. “We will escort him back and forth.”

  “Shit,” Steve said as he continued walking, trying to make an effort to concentrate on just one of the police officers, but he had a hard time getting to that point.

  -The collective does not look for individuals. We are part of everything. You are the only one that has the power to be himself and I.

  “Hey, stop. What the hell is going on?” asked another one of the officers as they advanced faster and stopped the movement of Steve and his minions. Without having yet achieved the required control of other officers or personnel, he had to evaluate his chances.

  “Look, I made a bet,” Steve said as he raised a pack of bills that he had inside his jacket. “I would give each gentleman a hundred dollars if they all managed to keep talking like they were one. Makes sense?”

  “Are you for real?” asked the same police officer. The four officers behind Steve looked at each other and gathered closer, then started muttering, or Steve made it look as if they were muttering to each other. Then they came back to answer.

  “It’s easy money, why not?” asked the four officers and raised their shoulders. The rest of the police officers found this slightly amusing, but also somewhat disturbing. They seemed to be completely synchronized when they spoke.

  “That’s… well, I gotta say,” said the police officer interrogating them as he wondered what was wrong here. While something felt off, he could also not ignore the fact that it was easy money and they were still doing their job as intended. They could not let anyone back into the airport without some escorting, but then it occurred to him to ask for papers. “Can I see your flight documentation?” he asked Steve.

  At that point Steve knew he was out of luck with pushing the issue from the police officer, who had become suspicious of what was going on. No matter what excuse he made up, they would follow him to the end of the Earth if necessary. Things were about to turn into a very drastic direction, and he was not yet willing to take his chances on doing that.

  -We sense your danger and motives. The collective is ready to act, but we need time.

  As Steve rapidly fell into the Well, he became infuriated.

  “We do not have time? Why aren’t these fools under my control?” Steve asked. For a moment he felt a cold wave running through the back of his spine.

  -The collective acts at its own speed. We are working towards helping you, but you will also have to help yourself with the powers of the collective. You forget that we are all-powerful and your control is growing with every passing moment.

  With those words Steve knew what he had to do. He rapidly became drunk with power and observed the police officers looking at him through the perspective of the other officers. Not a split second had passed since he had connected to the Well. Everything moved relatively slowly when he was inside, which she helped him better assess the situation around him.

  He had his minions take action against the rest of the police officers in what seemed slow motion. The collective did not only achieve taking control of the synaptic interface, but it also made sure to exponentially increase its reaction time and in turn the way the host would behave. With little notice the minions had started taking shots at the rest of the police officers. While one of them rushed to get the doors closed, the actions taken at that time had happened in less than ten seconds, without Steve having to do much for it to happen. The collective also had learned from the hosts that their survival instinct was key for their survival and that therefore they should listen.

  Steve rapidly raised all of the minions in the airport. The mold had done its task faster than he had expected it to do and was already in control of hundreds, if not thousands, inside the airport. While they were all still in varying degrees of takeover, he could feel their minds being absorbed into the Well and their willpower completely destroyed as the mold took them over.

  As he moved around the airport he could see those hundreds or thousands of eyes looking at him in awe. They were all for him to control them and do as he pleased with them. He ordered some to destroy a part of the resting area, while a larger portion was ordered to stampede into the gates and force everyone to drink the water. Those who resisted and became too bothersome were shot without a second consideration.

  This kingdom of madness that Steve created around him was pleasing. These people had never served any true purpose in life other than being an extension of his own life. Solipsism, it was called, in which the rest of what is perceived is an extension of the self and nothing else exists in this world aside from him.

  As his minions continued to take over everything, he heard something that caught his attention immediately. It was a phone call being made to 911, but amidst the chaos he could not identify where this was happening. While still in control, having to jump through hundreds of individuals served him nothing.

  “Where the hell is that phone?” yelled Steve at the top of his lungs as he stood on one of the gate seats. With this reaction he had everyone break their phones, including those of the people they were pushing into the collective. The amount of time it had taken for them to achieve this was long enough for the call to go through and for someone to have picked it up. Steve had to get ready to push airplanes into the sky before anyone arrived.

  Chapter 19

  Slippery Slope

  Jean saw in defeat how the team of the CDC had moved out of the Cityplace area and with that move went her hopes that she could completely prove her point to her bosses. While she had been initially successful to get some action to happen, it was nothing that would get her anywhere.

  “Look, Lady, we’ll get to it once we are back. Nothing seems to be wrong here, and honestly I don’t get paid enough to be dealing with this,” replied one of the responders when Jean prompted for an estimated time in which she could get some sort of response or additional information on what was happening.

  Her failure to get what she needed from the responders came as a very hard blow, especially after she had lost the chance to interrogate the man who could have had more clues about what had happened here. She did not even get his phone number or name, and getting it from public sources would take far too much time.

  “How could you let him go?” Chad said back then. Those words kept ringing in her head as she was going back to the airport. “That guy knew something and you just let him step all o
ver you. Really?”

  “Chad, I am sorry. I was not sure if--” Jean said before being abruptly interrupted by Chad, who was infuriated. In his eyes, there was a fire that kept burning from the bottom of his soul and could not be contained. It was that same fire that burned within him when he realized Nikki was bound to have a heart attack and he knew he had to do something about it.

  “You had the authority to stop him, right then and there, but you just let him go because he talked you down from your position!” said Chad at the top of his lungs as he hit the door on the apartment they had moments ago gone into. “Do you have any damn idea what you have done? Your only lead right now is gone, and how are you going to find him?”

  “Chad, I think--” said Jean, who was again fiercely interrupted by Chad.

  “You think?” asked Chad sarcastically, as he walked a few steps away from her. “You think, really, really, you think, or you thought at some point in your life?”

  With the commotion, the police officers had moved closer and observed Chad. While not empathetic to the cause of either one, they showed some disappointment in their faces as they had been moved from their post to do absolutely nothing but follow the hunch of some girl who thought she was saving the world.

  “Listen to me, Jean, you made a fool of yourself here and I came with the hope that we could find what had been the cause of those people going into an almost catatonic state,” said Chad with more anger building into him, his face turning beet red with every additional word that came out of his mouth. “Whatever it is you think you are doing, you are wrong. You have no idea and you should stop doing it. Leave it to people like these police officers to deal with it.”

  “But they are not--” said Jean before Chad intervened again with yet another barrage of insults and fury.

  “What, they do not have a degree in biology or whatever it is you think is needed to do your job?” asked Chad, while pointing at the police officers around them. “These people risk their lives to save people. They do save people and put themselves on the line in order to ensure that you, I and everyone else around us is safe and we can walk around without some maniac thinking they can start firing a gun without consequence.”

  For a moment there was an unnerving silence that even the police officers felt. It was a realization that just a few days ago another shooting had taken place and some responders had given their all.

  “And when it does happen, they give their lives if necessary,” added Chad as he lowered both hands as if he had been trying to preach to someone. “But here you are, telling me that there is some ‘mold’ that is killing everyone and your only clue is gone. A damn bioweapon or terrorist attack, and you drop it because someone talks mean to you?”

  “Chad--” said Jean as she raised both hands as if trying to defend herself physically from what was happening.

  “People have thrown more things at me and said far worse things. I am pretty sure the officers here have heard and seen it all, but do you think we look down and let them step on us?” asked Chad. There was another silence, but this time Jean had nothing to say back to Chad as his words kept sinking into her head, releasing a tornado of emotions to rush through her body. “You don’t,” Chad continued. “The moment you do, you are dead. Evolution did not put us here by chance. We fought all the way through it and have survived horrible things. If one more horrible thing is bound to happen, I would expect you to have the Goddamn courage to help put a stop to it or at least make a dent, and not let it go past you.”

  As Chad finished, he pointed at the elevator. He did not intend to point at the police officers, but he did anyway, even though it was not their job to put a stop to the man who had walked out on them. He knew they could have, but at the cost of making a scene and with people around, that would not have been ideal. If only Jean had had the courage to push the man, question him, or have the officers act--then this would be a different story.

  Chad did not want to see another pandemic and have his kids live through it. This was the same thought that crossed his mind over and over again.

  “Fix your damn self and figure out what to do with your life,” he told Jean. “You sure as hell ain’t doing much to begin with,” he said as he moved back into the elevator with the sensor pad he had brought with him. When he moved out, so did the police officers, as if they had been waiting to hear the end of it, to have some sort of satisfaction that what they were doing there was worth it, but hearing about this made them disgusted and they showed it as they passed next to Jean, mumbling how they could be doing something else.

  All of this continued to echo through Jean’s head as she headed back to the airport. It was only the first of the treats she had received since this incident had ended, and she was hit even harder when she received a call from Chad’s boss berating her.

  “We did this because you said you had hard evidence, and the response team is telling me there was nothing, just some landlord fixing some problem with a drain and then you are trying to tell me there is a link to all of this with a mold, which I still have to see the evidence you mentioned and see what ‘proof’ it gives to your hypothesis . . . and then the cost of this, Jesus Christ, the damn cost!”

  With that last sentence she was wordless. It was not that he was using the name of Jesus next to a profanity--she had heard enough of that to become accustomed to it--, but the fact that this was something that kept being raised time and time again was enough for her to know that an “evaluation” of her performance was coming and that the budget would not include her.

  She had crossed the line far too hard this time, and she had no idea how to move back time to fix it.

  Even Julian had used her to move his position forward in the CDC, as it was the higher-ups who liked him more and were looking for a reason to put him in a higher position. It turned out that he had talked her boss and the higher-ups to help her, not on a hunch or the evidence that Jean had, but it had happened because Julian had claimed he had figured out the problem and had sent her to further investigate this. He did this by telling them she had gathered hard scientific proof that there was a larger problem to be found in Dallas. This information Julian claimed she had was non-existent, and when she confronted him, he simply ignored it by saying, “It doesn’t matter. You still helped me a lot!”

  To add insult to injury, their first conversation had been so friendly that when he congratulated her on the findings and complimented her, she was too naive to see what was really going on behind the curtains.

  “You can do it, Jean. You are the best!” said Julian. It was not the cocky sound of his voice that bothered her but the fact that she really had assumed Julian had done it with the best of intentions when they had talked about getting some assistance. Now it was her against her boss, co-workers and everyone around her. The only thing she had left to prove what she was talking about was the documentation provided to her by Doctor Sandberg.

  But then it hit her. She opened up her phone and looked at all the pictures she had taken. What she had done by taking all of those pictures was to get herself into trouble and ultimately the CDC. Even when she had said she was there on “official” business, she had never produced any formal documentation. What if this was all in her head and she had jumped the gun?

  “What have I done?” asked Jean as she covered her face with both hands while looking at the phone, her Uber driver silent as Jean thought about deleting everything and delivering her resignation to her boss.

  She raised the device and was selecting all the pictures for deletion when she came to images of the CDC team and Chad moving around the pad.

  “Wait,” said Jean as she looked at those pictures. She had not put enough attention to them, but Chad had walked around with the pad all over the building and he had mentioned he had been taking live data as they moved.

  This was the information she needed to prove she was on the right track.

  --

  “No… I don’t know,” said Chad as he w
as having a conversation on the phone with his boss,. They had both been there when people started dropping to the ground and like true warriors had decided to take the lead and help everyone to the hospital. “The data could prove to be useful, though--some measurement of a mold infestation, if I am not mistaken.”

  “We’ll leave it there and I will have the AI team look at it. Maybe there is something we could indeed rescue from it and use it on our next presentation and make another killer show!” Those words made Chad happy. After everything that had happened, he had still done a great job with the presentation, building considerable momentum for the entire project. Also if he was understanding right from their conversation so far, there could be a considerable bonus showing up for him on the next milestone.

  “I know I do not say this often but thank you for having enough confidence in me to let me go up there and crush it,” said Chad, and they both laughed. Suddenly the phone began to vibrate and he saw a number that he had not registered on his phone. “Do you mind if I take this call? I don’t want to sound rude--”

  “No, no, you have done enough, and if it’s Nikki, then it’s important. You go and do your thing and I will have the team wrap up everything else.” With that, they ended their conversation, but as Chad answered the next caller, his emotions turned sour. It was Jean calling.

  “What do you want now? Haven’t you had enough of my time already?” asked Chad angrily as he took a seat looking at the sensors he had been walking with.

  “Chad, I am sorry, but I need the data you collected,” said Jean and Chad removed his phone from his left ear and looked at it. He was bound to end the call by tapping the large red circle, but something in him told him to give her a chance just this once. “Chad, are you there?”

  “Yes, I am here,” said Chad as he sighed. “Why do you need the data?”

  “I need it to give proof of what I was mentioning: the black mold that Doctor Sandberg was talking about, together with the evidence from the rapid response team, would help prove what happened today and what has been happening all along in the area,” said Jean. With disbelief, Chad answered back.