by Gord Rollo
How inhaling laboratory created bugs can possibly cure cancer is beyond me, but from what I’ve gathered they will use electrical impulses to stop the damaged cells from reproducing uncontrollably, not allowing the cancer to grow and spread as it normally would unchecked. It’s a bit like chemotherapy, but on a microscopic level where the smart bugs can identify and destroy the cancerous cells on a one on one basis instead of just wiping out everything in its path like chemo. If Project Red works as planned, the world should go into remission, the cancer stopped in its tracks from spreading or infecting other organs. Further nanobots may need to be deployed on a regular basis to keep people’s enhanced immune system running properly but no one really knows what the future might bring. At least the smart bugs will give the world a chance, they say.
I’m not buying any of it.
I think it’s a crock of shit. A desperate move made by a handful of controlling desperate men and women. Lies and false hopes given to the people to help keep the masses from panicking too much. Hope is a powerful weapon, and as long as the people have some the authorities will be able to keep the peace. Once it’s gone, though, and the citizens of the world know they’ve been played for fools; that’s when the shit will really hit the fan. I’m afraid that’s where we’re headed.
Anarchy.
The next two days were surprisingly uneventful. Tim sat around the dining room table listening to the radio and occasionally flopping on the living room couch to watch an hour or two of the unending television coverage. There was no end to the parade of scientists and government officials interviewed by the various news media; all of which droned on and on about the apparent success of Project Red and how everyone would start feeling better soon. To Tim, it seemed like they were jumping the gun a little, clapping each other on the back a bit too hard before there was any proof they’d accomplished anything. In fact, if success was so assured as they claimed, why weren’t they showing more live coverage from out in the cities? Where were the interviews with the average citizens of the world who were supposedly out there on the mend? Sure, there were hours of footage from the night the bombs had been dropped, film clips from around the world of the skies changing color and all the happy people dancing in the streets literally covered head to toe in a sticky red substance that, no matter how many times Tim watched the replays, couldn’t stop thinking looked eerily like they were covered in bucket loads of blood.
The following morning, Tim heard a report on the radio that definitive proof had been collected to verify the nanobots were doing their job, stopping the spreading cancer in its tracks. Encouraged, Tim had flipped on CNN to see what they had to say about it, but was shocked to find out all they were showing was a minute long film clip of a bearded man in a white lab coat standing inside some sterile looking lab somewhere. He was pointing to a graph on a blackboard and explaining about the growing number of reported cases of remission throughout the world. That was it. No patient interviews. No eyewitness reports. No tear-filled mothers or wives beaming at the cameras while they hugged their victorious husband or child who’d just been given a new lease on life. It didn’t make any sense, did it? Throughout the day, there were more miraculous newsflashes but they too lacked any real substance. It was all happening too fast for Tim’s liking. All the reports were just that little bit off, not quite ringing true or providing any real proof of anything other than the confident scientists claims. And why should Tim believe what they were saying? It was them, along with the governing officials who’d got everyone into this mess in the first place.
Fucking politicians…
Outside his building, Tim couldn’t see or hear a thing. After the crowds had dispersed from LaSalle Park swarming with their microscopic saviors several nights back, everything had been quiet as a mouse. No one seemed to be moving around and Tim couldn’t even hear the normal yelling and screaming within the paper thin walls of his apartment building. What were they all doing, he wondered? Why was everybody staying inside and being so quiet? Tim had absolutely no idea. All he could go by was what he’d seen and heard on the television and radio – and they weren’t telling him shit.
In the days that followed, things would only get worse. Tim continued his journal entries but outside the world had seemingly ground to a halt and there was never much for him to say. The newscasters and scientists were still spouting their messages of hope and victory but even to Tim’s untrained eyes he could see the men and women on his television screen didn’t appear anywhere near as healthy as their reports claimed. The red lesions and cancerous growths were far more prominent than before, covering huge areas of the broadcaster’s visible bodies. These were examples of the scientist’s success stories? Christ, they looked worse than before the bombs had been dropped. Worse than Tim, even, and he hadn’t showered in over a week now. He quickly stripped and checked again, but Tim still had none of the red growths growing anywhere on his body.
Project Red Survival Journal
Entry #9
June 23rd, 2039
Something has gone terribly wrong. I don’t have any proof yet but my gut is telling me things are spinning out of control and the government is lying to the public to try and keep us calm. Was lying, I should say. CNN stopped broadcasting this morning at around 9:30 a.m. and they were the last of the television markets still on the air. Now there is nothing but static and white noise on every station, and the radio signals went dead a few days ago.
The last programming I saw was a badly pieced-together documentary explaining how the bio-engineered nanobots had been created using microscopic computer chips fused with genetic DNA from some small creature. I can’t be positive but I don’t think they ever revealed exactly which type of bug they took the DNA from. Not that it matters much, I guess, but at the time I remember wondering if the program had been edited and several minutes of information conveniently removed. It didn’t make much sense but I had a feeling I was right. Why bother, though? What did they have to hide?
After the documentary, things got even weirder. They cut to a live feed from CNN headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia but there was no one in front of the camera. I kept waiting for the producer to cut to a different feed or run some other pre-taped program but nothing happened. Ten seconds went by, then half a minute. It was as if the studio was empty, or maybe everyone had gone home and just left the camera running. After nearly five minutes of dead air, an old grey haired man with small beady eyes shuffled into view and sat down on the corner of the wooden desk to take center stage in the news studio. He was rake thin and practically drowning in his baggy clothes. His exposed head and hands were also covered in numerous red cancerous growths but he had a constant smile plastered on his face that no amount of sickness seemed able to wipe off. Who was this guy? He had a CNN tag on his chest and although it was a little blurry, when I moved closer to the TV I think his name was Jim something. Jim Argen…something; the last part of the man’s name was lost in a fold of his baggy sweater. Whoever he was, surely he wasn’t one of CNN’s newscasters. Couldn’t be. Hell, the old bugger had to be close to eighty years old. Maybe older. He’d walked onstage from behind the angle of the camera though, so for all I knew maybe he was the cameraman; or used to be. Was that even possible, and even if it was why was CNN broadcasting him live to the entire world? I had no way of knowing but I had the feeling that maybe he was the only one left at the studio. Some old diehard who’d worked there his whole life and now, even when the world was falling apart around him, stubbornly refused to go home.
I never did find out. Old Jim just kept sitting there smiling into the camera until the picture cut out and the network went static. After that I had no contact with the outside world at all. No TV, no radio, no noisy neighbors, no nothing.
What the hell is going on?
A couple of days they’d said. Three or four tops. The skies would clear and people could go about their regular lives while the nanobots worked their invisible magic from the inside. Lying bastards.
They’ve fucked things up good this time.
Real good.
When Tim woke up the next morning, naked and sweating beneath an old wool blanket, it took him a moment to figure out there was something different about his surroundings. Something had changed and it wasn’t until he got shakily to his feet and walked over to the dining room window that he realized what it was.
Outside, the sky had turned back to blue.
Incredible as it seemed, it was true. Beyond his plastic sheets, the world seemed to be returning to normal. Maybe the scientist had been right after all. Their time frames had been off a week or so, but still, here was finally the potential proof Tim had been waiting for. Trouble was, he couldn’t really see out the window to see if things were back the way they used to be or not. The thick layer of plastic obscured everything. He couldn’t even tell if anyone was outside in the park.
The urge to tear off the protective sheet was incredible, but Tim stopped himself in time and sat down to think things through first. The last thing he wanted to do was unseal his room too early and contaminate his sanctuary with bugs. In his mind, he could picture millions of microscopic creatures straight out of a science fiction movie hovering outside, just waiting for their chance to get inside and attack him. Even though he was sweating, the thought made him shiver.
Fucking Nanobots…
No way. Opening the window was out of the question. At least until he had more proof than a blue sky to go on. An idea flashed into his mind about how he used to coat the windows of his old apartment with plastic to keep the cold weather out in the winter. Someone had shown him that if you took a hairdryer and blew warm air onto the plastic, it magically stretched tightly onto the window frame and became almost transparent. The plastic on these windows was much thicker than that old stuff he’d used, but there was a chance it might work the same way. Worth a try, at least.
Hurrying to the bathroom, Tim grabbed his old hairdryer from under the sink and ran an extension cable over to the wall plug on the far side of the room to fire it up. Careful not to put the nozzle too close to the surface in case the hot air melted a hole through the plastic, Tim soon had the window stretched taut on the frame and he could finally see outside again for the first time in ten days.
Outside, Lasalle Park looked pretty much like it always had, except there was still a thin dusting of red powder covering the ground. It looked like someone had snuck into the park and coated all the grass and trees with sticky cotton candy. The sky was incredible though, the most amazing crystal clear cloudless sky Tim could remember and staring at it brought a huge grin to his unshaven face. At least until he realized that there was nothing moving in it. He studied the skies for several minutes but never found a thing. No birds, no bees, no airplanes, no nothing.
Turning his attention back to the ground, Tim was convinced there was nothing going to be visible there, either. On first glance he was right. Where were all the people? Surely if they’d all been cooped up the last week and a half like him, they’d be dying to get out there and move around on such a beautiful day. The kids at least would be out bombing around in the park, right? Apparently not.
Then Tim heard a dog bark below him and it was music to his ears. He leaned forward to press his head close to the glass so he could see straight down closer to the side of his building, eager to see at least some sign of normal life.
That was when he screamed.
Project Red Survival Journal
Entry #10
June 24th, 2039
I woke up in Hell this morning.
That’s not me trying to be symbolic or overly dramatic either; I’m being dead serious. Things are worse than I could have ever imagined. Far worse. I don’t know exactly what the scientists have done but I think they’ve destroyed the world and everything in it. The sky had miraculously turned back to blue today and I’d just begun to hope this nightmare was finally over, but then I heard a dog bark and looked out my dining room window for it. I wish I hadn’t, for what I saw outside on the red grass was something I can hardly wrap my mind around, much less describe. It had obviously once been a cute, cuddly pet, but where before its body had been covered in soft shaggy fur it now was sealed within a series of red shell-like plates interlocking like medieval armor. Its head and throat were covered in red sores so thick I wondered how it could still see and breathe. Its withered legs were more like burned sticks and instead of running like any normal dog might, the poor animal could no longer carry its own weight and was pushing itself along the ground on the scaly carapace of its bloated belly.
The dog-creature’s pathetic barks echoed like gunshots in the early morning silence, and unfortunately I wasn’t the only one to hear them. It didn’t take long to draw a crowd. I don’t know if I even want to try describing to you the scene that unfolded below me in the park after that. Seriously, you’re better off not knowing but I think I’d be doing a disservice to whoever eventually reads this if I don’t at least try and make you understand how bad things have become.
Hundreds of people from my apartment building, the surrounding neighborhoods, or wherever began to gather in Lasalle Park again. I call them people but that’s only because I can’t think of any other word to label them. There are no adequate words for what they’ve become. These people, these things who used to be human beings walked, slithered, and crawled out of their homes on long spindly limbs that stuck out from hard red bodies, bloated like gas-filled balloons similar to that of the deformed dog. Most of their heads had large weeping deformities that encased their entire skulls in smooth red domes that from my vantage point above looked like shiny motorcycle helmets.
For a few minutes they simply congregated, communicating in a series of guttural grunts, strange clicks, and high-pitched hisses. I’d never heard anything like it before but they sounded almost alien in nature, like the gibberish dialogue for some bad science fiction movie. When the poor dog-creature started yelping in misery again, the human-things pounced on it and began tearing into its scaly hide with their elongated teeth and razor sharp claws. The masses made short work of the unfortunate animal but once the smell of death was in the air, the creatures who had recently been my friends and neighbors began to turn on each other, their bloodlust ravenously awakened. The fight was relatively short but incredibly violent and gruesome. From above it seemed like there were no allies or teams; it was every creature for itself, biting and tearing at anything within reach until more than half of the original number of creatures lay dead or dying, mutilated on the gore-drenched grassy field.
And then the feeding began.
That part I’m not telling you about. No way. Trust me; some things are better left unsaid.
Tim spent the following few days living in fear, terrified one of those creatures had heard his scream and might come looking for him. When none did, he relaxed a little but still stayed away from the windows during the day and was forced to leave the lights off during the night so no one would know where he was hiding.
On day fifteen, the electricity went out anyway so there were no lights to put on, even if he’d wanted to. His air filtration system was shot too but electricity was the least of Tim’s problems. He was nearly out of food and worse, he only had half a jug of water left to drink. When that was gone, Tim had no idea what he would do.
He wondered if things were this bad all over the world. They probably were. Had to be, really, if he thought about it logically. The world government had coordinated Project Red around the globe and if the scientists had screwed things up here in America, odds were they’d royally fucked up everywhere, right? Of course they did.
Fucking Scientists…
Then Tim was struck with another thought, one so sobering it literally sent chills down his back and forced him to sit down for fear his legs might give out. What if I’m the only one left? The only human? Crazy as the notion was, the more he considered it the less insane it began to sound. I mean, how many other people out there are so bug phobic
they’ve sealed themselves in plastic? Good question. Was there anyone out there on the planet as fucked up as him? He had no way of knowing but he seriously doubted it. Even if there were people who hadn’t stood outside for the bombs like they’d been told (and surely there were many), unless they’d taken extreme precautions like he had, the microscopic nanobots would surely have found their way into their homes and ultimately, their bodies by now.
Was he the last man on earth? Was he? It says in the bible that the meek will inherit the earth, but Tim had never dreamed it would come down to a singular meek, him, Timothy Meek, the good book had been referring to. This thought made Tim burst out laughing, startlingly loud in his silent apartment, and the fact he didn’t care who – or what – might hear him was his first true indication he was losing his mind. He wondered what had taken him so long to finally snap.
Two days later, just as Tim was sitting at the dining room table swallowing his very last gulp of tepid water, he noticed the growth developing on his left forearm. It was red and scaly and hard as rock to the touch. Frantically, Tim jumped to his feet, stripped naked, and checked the rest of his body but there were no other crimson sores to be found.
Not yet.
Tim sat back down at the table and began to cry.
Project Red Survival Journal
Entry #13
July 3, 2039
This will be my final journal entry. I apologize for my last few entries; they were just the scribblings of a bitter, scared man. I’m feeling better today; a little anyway, and I’ll try wrapping this up in a way that makes more sense. I can’t go on any longer. Living, I mean. My food and water are gone and worst of all I have many more large red welts developing on my skin. My left hand is already hooked and withered and basically useless to me trapped within its rigid shell. My writing hand, my right, isn’t much better and I steadfastly refuse to go look in the mirror to see what has become of my face.
