The Trojan Horse Pandemic

by Veronica Preda

  The phone rang. It was the sponsors. They invited them to their headquarters, again.

  As they entered, they found the same sombre faces waiting for them. The sponsors informed them, with low voices, that, “sadly, the search party found nothing. No capsule reached the surface.” They said they had no choice but to announce the failure and tragic ending of Karides' second expedition. The representatives were “deeply affected” - they said - by the losses they had already had and by the ones they were anticipating. The search had to continue for three more days; afterwards, the Royal Archaeological Institute would organise a commemorative reception in honour of Marion Karides and the expedition members who had died by her side.

  One of the sponsors turned on the TV and invited them to watch the press conference together, which many TV channels were broadcasting at the same time. Various representatives of the organisers were announcing the catastrophe that had occurred, speaking in front of the journalists about the tragic loss of Marion, the other scientists and crew members and the submarine. Timea noticed how they were answering all the questions. No one raised their voice, no one fretted. They re-confirmed the hypothesis of a sudden and unexpected malfunction. The sponsors' representatives didn't deny the idea that, trusting a device controlled exclusively by artificial intelligence with human lives, had turned out to be hasty. They all agreed that it had been a big mistake to test the sub only for such a short period of time. Then, the sponsors announced the commemorative reception, which was to take place, because time was passing by and, they said, the changes of finding survivors were almost zero. As long as no rescue capsule had ascended to the surface, it was becoming evident that a human being could not surface alive from a depth of five thousand meters. They answered “yes” to numerous questions that followed. Yes, the rescue attempts will continue, despite the sombre prognosis; yes, the exhibition would continue as well, and the Trojan Horse was going to New York. It was their “moral duty to Karides' life work” to continue the exhibition. Even more than that, the sponsors were willing to accept huge losses, as, in the loving memory of the defunct scientists, the entrance to the exhibition would be free from now on. They were prepared to cover all expenses.

  ***

  Three days passed with no news. Timea steeled herself and sent the email she had been preparing, to news media. But, just as Ryan had anticipated, her message remained unanswered, as if no one would pay attention or believe her. Nobody contacted her: neither the press, with questions, nor the sponsors, with threats. The evening of the commemorative reception arrived. The dignitaries of Archaeology from all countries came to Burlington House to pay their respects, and Ryan, Timea and Ronnie blended in with the crowd. The attendants shared their opinions in subdued voices regarding what had happened. The two spouses and the young student listened to what the others were saying, their tone of voice. “Shook up”, “inspiration”, “dedication” and “crew's sacrifice”... could be heard in the room. Timea whispered:

  “I can already see the press releases: Organisations and governments around the world committed themselves to warmheartedly support the continuation of the exhibition, as the most suitable and honourable action in memory of the deceased.”

  “Money will not be a problem. Just listen to them...” Ryan whispered back.

  The sponsors, as well as the other organisations involved in the Trojan Horse tour, received repeated assurances of support and financial assistance from colleagues, foreign firms and even nations. Timea thought to herself: This is terrifying! We are too small, too insignificant and too weak to do anything! People will keep dying, but we don’t have the tools or knowledge to change anything. There is nothing left to do but to be grateful that we are alive, and to cope with the idea that we cannot help our fellows who are to become victims. Timea abandoned herself to her thoughts, ignoring the surroundings. Still no answer... Come on, doctor, make an effort! Think objectively! You have three cases of exposure: you, your husband and Ronnie. They all managed to get over it. Two with symptoms, one without. She had to consider the Horse a disease. She would write down all the conditions, all the factors involved. She had been ill and she had recovered. Why? She constructed a chart in her mind. The three of them were normal people. Maybe an impenetrable immune system? There was no reason to consider such a hypothesis. She and Ryan had had colds, in the course of their lives, like everybody. They had had measles, mumps and chickenpox in their youth. In her childhood, she had even had pneumonia once, and Ryan had had a few nasty digestive infections. She asked Ronnie:

  ”Ronnie, do you get often the flu? Did you fall sick in your childhood? Have you had infections or undergone surgery? Do you suffer from allergies?”

  Ryan looked at her. Was his wife performing an anamnesis during the reception?

  “Timea, what are you doing? Are you planning to admit him and get his medical history?”

  Ronnie blinked a few times, but cooperated:

  “I get a cold two or three times a year. I had chickenpox when I was five years old. Once I had a nasty infected wound. I was a child, I fell down from my bike and cut my foot badly, and a really ugly infection formed around the wound. For three weeks, I took antibiotics. What else did you ask me?”

  ”Have you undergone any surgical procedures? Do you currently suffer from any disease? Or do you have an allergy?”

  “Let's see... Surgery... no. I’ve never had an operation. I don't have any disease that I know of. I'm allergic to penicillin.”

  So he's allergic to penicillin. Ryan is allergic to penicillin too. But I'm not allergic to anything. So allergy or the absence of it doesn't seem to be a factor...“ Timea continued to think, undisturbed by the agitation around her. All three of us seem to be clinically healthy. But many others were healthy. That doctor who died was in perfectly good health. So the nurses were saying... they were saying also that he did a lot of physical activity. She didn’t exercise much. She continued to interrogate Ronnie:

  ”Do you exercise often?”

  “I use my bike a lot.”

  Although what was happening seemed more and more like a consultation, Ryan didn’t interfere anymore. He let Timea continue her reasoning. The amount of physical activity isn’t similar either. The two men didn’t smoke, but she was a smoker.

  “Do you consume alcohol?”

  ”Timea, what are you trying to find out?” Ronnie asked.

  “I'm thinking, I'm searching for explanations. Answer my question.”

  “I enjoy the occasional glass of wine.”

  So everyone drank wine from time to time. That didn't mean much. She stated to herself that no explanation was to be found in their conditions at the moment of exposure. The word “exposure” reverberated in her mind. That had happened. They had been exposed, just as one could be exposed to a source of infection. But the microbiological tests had come out negative. The symptoms and the blood test results didn’t match. Perhaps it was due to radiation. But again, the tests contradicted this hypothesis. The same was the case with the chemical composition of the air. What had they been exposed to? She had to continue this outbreak investigation. Her thoughts got interrupted, as Gabriel, with whom she had become acquainted as a representative of the sponsors, approached and greeted them:

  “Thank you all for coming.” he said. “The speeches will start soon. A sponsor representative will speak, followed by a former teacher of Marion, then someone from UNESCO and then we'll need your help, Ronnie.”

  “How may I help you?” the young man asked.

  “Although you were Marion's assistant only for a short time, we'd like you to say a few words about her.”

  ”But... I haven't prepared myself at all! I can't speak in front of so many people. I would stutter terribly.”

  ”Ronnie, I know I took you by surprise. But you see... we need to cover 30 minutes and to have four speakers. We announced this schedule. It wouldn't be good to muddle things up in a moment like this. Things already look very bad; we wouldn't
want to seem even more unorganised than we already do.”

  ”Who was the fourth speaker?” Ryan asked.

  “Obviously, we had invited Mrs Angela Karides, Marion's mother.”

  ”She couldn't come?”

  “God, kids, I'm the one who brings you all the bad news”, Gabriel answered, shaking his head. “Mrs Karides is hospitalised. It looks like the news about the tragic loss of her daughter broke her.”

  Gabriel continued to tell them how, right after the message of the imminent crash had been received, a few of their representatives had been sent to madam Karides to bring her the sad news. Afterwards, they had phoned her, to confirm the sorrowful result of the rescue expedition and to invite her to the commemorative reception. But the old lady had not answered the phone. Then, they had decided to send a few people to Skiathos again. They had found the old lady very ill, and had managed to take her to the hospital at the last moment. It seemed that her heart had not been able to withstand the shock, and she had developed severe heart failure, with acute decompensation.

  Like hell heart failure! Timea answered him in her mind. Since when does heart failure occur from one day to another? Why this reaction? She had no information about the woman's previous condition, and after all, it wasn't quite impossible... she had to admit. She asked about the old lady's status, without insisting regarding the symptoms. Gabriel assured them that she was well taken care of at the best private hospital in Athens and that a famous cardiologist was her physician, together with a highly trained team, and so on...

  When the reception ended, Timea started nudging the other two, telling them that they had to visit Marion's mother. She deployed all the arguments that crossed her mind:

  “Just think for a bit, how is it possible that right after those people visited, she suddenly gets ill? What kind of cardiac failure occurs in one night? Had she had a heart attack before, did she have a previous heart condition? We must find out. Perhaps we’ll manage to learn other information about the Horse. She was the wife of the old archaeologist, the one who had gathered all the evidence; she must know something more.”

  When Timea paused to catch her breath, Ryan asked:

  “How does that help you, going back to Greece?”

  “I thought I was the skeptical one of us! I don't know, I only know that I have to go. Maybe I will succeed to learn something, some piece of information, anything.”

  ”But how do you plan on finding her?”

  “Gabriel has given us all the information we need: which doctor is taking care of her; that she is in a private hospital. A simple online search will tell me where she is.”

  The name of the private hospital appeared on the screen right away.

  ”But Timea, we have to go to work. Maybe we should leave this whole story behind and go on with our lives. Don't you always say that we can’t save everybody?”

  “Ryan, I can't do that. Someone or something intentionally tried to kill me, and you as well. I can't leave things like that, I just can't.”

  “I didn't experience anything.”

  ”That's right. We haven't figured out why, yet. But I don't believe things could and will end like this. Something is telling me that the danger isn't over yet.”

  Ryan gave up discussing with his wife. He remembered he had a friend in New York, who was working at the emergency care unit at the Metropolitan Hospital Center. The Horse was exposed in Manhattan. He made a brief calculation: it was probably afternoon in New York. Ryan called. His colleague answered the phone and started whining. That it was terribly hot in New York, that he was exhausted, that he had just finished his shift but was not allowed to go home.

  ”Why don't they let you leave?”

  “We are overcrowded here. These crazy tourists are staying for hours in line to see that Trojan Horse. You do know about it, right? Then, they bring them to us, dehydrated and exhausted. It's full of them!”

  Ryan didn’t know the American authorities, he had no one else to ask. He looked at Timea and she looked back at him, her eyes speaking a thousand words. He started working. He managed to find plane tickets to Greece and extend his leave. Ronnie had expressed his desire to accompany them, so the two spouses bought a ticket for him as well.

  Arriving in Athens again, they found the clinic where Angela Karides had been hospitalised. They introduced themselves as Karides family's friends and, casually mentioning their profession, they asked for information regarding the old lady's health. The hospital staff seemed attentive and kind to Timea, as they called right away for a doctor who knew the patient's status. He explained that they suspected heart failure because all the symptoms pointed to insufficient brain oxygenation, and the MRI scan had categorically excluded any neurological abnormality. The lungs looked fine, but the old lady was weakened, lethargic and breathing with some difficulty. Fortunately, he added, they were optimistic, because she was still quite well-balanced hemodynamically and, thus, they had reason to hope they would recover normal myocardial function. No, they hadn't established the therapeutic protocol yet, because they wanted to run the cardiac tests one more time. Strangely, the cardiologist mentioned while raising his eyebrows, the ultrasound and the EKG showed no alterations, which made them consider that they had to repeat the procedures. “Practically,” he said, “the symptomatology doesn't match the lab results and we are forced to perform all the tests again and to do supplemental tests as well.” He gave them permission to visit her, asking them not to stay too long, in order not to further tire the patient. He asked them also to try to spare the old lady, who had suffered the shock of losing her only offspring. Then, he went back to his office, but not before saying: “Dear colleagues, please consider you have my full availability, for further information or any kind of support. I promise we'll do everything we humanly can to elucidate this inexplicable weakness”.

  ”Inexplicable weakness”... these two words hit again. Two words that described a symptom. A symptom that could have countless medical causes. Two words that were familiar to Ryan, Timea and Ronnie. Too goddamn familiar! Timea thought, while hurrying the men to visit the old lady. They introduced themselves as friends and colleagues of Marion. Mrs Karides' face was just as white as the bed sheets; she smiled back to them:

  ”Are you archaeologists too, my children?”

  “No, my husband and I are doctors.”

  ”You're married... how sweet. And doctors. You work a lot, probably... Do you have any children?”

  “No, we don't.” Timea answered, smiling.

  “Too bad. Have children. You'll never know true happiness until you have children. My Marion... my poor little Marion... she didn't know happiness. What about you?” she asked Ronnie.

  “I'm studying History, ma'am. I was Marion's assistant.

  ”What? Do you want to become an archaeologist?”

  “Maybe, one day...”

  ”No, my son. Give it up! It's a cursed profession.”

  The three people tried to turn the old lady away from her sad thoughts. They tried to find out who had visited her.

  “Some men visited me. They told me about Marion. That she might have drowned. They asked me if I had spoken to her lately. I told them that she kept asking me about her father. She had called me from there, from the submarine, a few times, to ask me about her dad.

  “What else did those gentlemen say?”

  “Nothing. One of them asked to go to the bathroom. He stayed in there for quite a while. Then he came out in the garden and they left.”

  “What did you tell Marion?”

  “I wanted to tell her about the journal, but I couldn't. I remembered. Her father...”

  The old lady paused, looking at a nurse who had just come in. She asked the visitors to step outside, because she had to prepare the patient for tests. She assured them that they could spend more time with the lady after she returned from computer tomography, but only if she was not too tired.

  In the corridor, Timea said:

  “Am I
the only one who says out loud what you are all thinking? Marion's mother has the same symptoms as I had, and so had Ronnie, and the other tourists, and probably the old archaeologist, a long time ago. It's too obvious! I can't wait to go back in and find out more. About that journal. This damned vehement nurse, she didn't let me say two words!”

  They took a coffee from a coffee machine in the hall and continued to wait, talking about what Angie had said. The journal she had referred to had to be related to her husband, they had no doubt about this. When they had investigated the old archaeologist's apartment in London, they had scrutinised every corner and no notebook had been left unexamined. Where could that journal be? They kept talking. From time to time, they paused, to read the news or check their messages. Ryan had several calls from the hospital where he was working, and Ronnie had a pretty long conversation with an aunt who insisted on reproaching him for not having visited her for a long time. Time passed, and they realised that the nurse had not come to call them back, as she had promised.