Afterward, he sat down in front of a broad table and a bank of monitors by which he could see both Mr. Summons and Miss Hanson, and dove headfirst (almost literarily) into the notebooks Geoffrey had recently filled. He expected to find great things, and not only would he not be disappointed, but even his loftiest expectations were exceeded by what he eventually found.
Chapter 14
When Dr. Crangler finally lifted his head from his all-consuming studies, he too, looked somehow slightly aged. He didn’t realize it, but he had been completely and totally engrossed in the material for hours. He would’ve gladly remained in his ardent studies if his body hadn’t demanded reprieve. He stood up and stretched. In the process, every inch of his frame groaned with agitation. He decided to take a short walk through the halls of facility, if for nothing else, to allow him to return to studying the notebooks without oversurfeiting his middle-aged body. He hit the button to unlock his door and was startled to find a few of his assistants waiting just outside.
“Dr. Crangler,” one of them spoke hastily, “the Hanson patient wants to see you. She won’t…”
“I don’t have time for Miss Hanson right now.” the doctor interrupted.
“But she…” the assistant tried to resume.
“Give her whatever she wants.” the doctor barked. The assistants turned flabbergasted faces toward each other. Delilah was making some pretty unusual demands—at least by the standards of men who knew little of pampered feminine preferences—and the assistants frowned at one another. To supply her with what she was asking went greatly beyond the bounds of protocol. Besides, it was Dr. Crangler who demanded that she be given only what he authorized. Well, he had just authorized everything, and at the moment, it didn’t look like it would bode well for the person who tried to talk some sense into him. Every one of the assistants had, like the doctor, worked extensively in this facility and had been grilled on the proper chain of command, and in this particular chain, the doctor was the preeminent link. If he said that Delilah Hanson was to have whatever she wanted, then Delilah Hanson was to have whatever she wanted. The unnerved assistants went to fulfill their orders while their withdrawn superior roamed the white halls nearest his office with nothing other than alien symbols and their translated meanings dominating his every thought.
Once he felt that he had walked enough, he returned to his office (and more importantly, to the notebooks) and again, soon lost himself in study. Much of the information in the notebooks dealt with vivid, albeit utterly confusing, truths about the alien intelligence from whose planet the fragment originated. It described the nature of their foreign community as well as space-time in general. It spoke of the composition of stars and the peculiar science of galaxies and though, thanks to Geoffrey, it was in English, Dr. Crangler couldn’t make heads or tails of much of it. There were, however, more than a few observations that the doctor understood. Among these revelations was the fact the fragment was actually an infinitesimally small piece of the alien’s home planet. As it turned out, the aliens that the doctor had been studying were the same species that sent the fragment. Dr. Crangler had speculated that the alien bodies were simply ‘housings’, and he was more correct than he probably knew. According the information in the notebooks, this alien community was comprised of a single super consciousness inhabiting many such ‘housings’. Common knowledge and ability was spread amongst the aliens using light as a vehicle. This, of course, explained how Mr. Reynolds could suddenly be privy to alien secrets just by touching the fragment. The manipulation of light as a way to spread information was simply ingenious. Unfortunately, though, this alien intelligence was trying to use that ingenuity to end all human life on Earth.
If an intelligence wanted to share (or in this case, spread) something to someone that was hundreds, or perhaps millions, of light years away, then the only practical way to do that would be to use light. Since what was being spread was a virus, the best way to spread it efficiently would be to use something native and abundant on the receiving planet by which The Virus could easily propagate: Earth’s oxygen supply. Earth had hosted alien encounters before, not many, but enough to give some merit to the fabulous claims with which the public at large was familiar. Though much about these alien encounters was heavily fabricated, one thing the movies got right was that every attempted invasion by aliens somehow ended in defeat. The fact of the matter, as the aliens apparently learned, was that Earth was a planet abundant in resources, many of which could not be found on any other planet in the universe, but it was also a planet abundant in organisms that subsisted off of those resources. As a result alien entities had no defense against these hostile and unsympathetic organisms. As had been observed by one of the great writers on the subject, man had paid in his own blood, to the tune of billions of lives, for the right to reside among the kaleidoscope spectrum of bacteria and flora, viruses and diseases, plagues and natural disasters, that also called Earth home.
The very thing that man, in all his consorted wisdom, could not overcome, himself—microorganisms and the diseases they inspire—always proved to be the undoing of alien entities, so the aliens regrouped and devised another plan. Earth was simply too valuable to be allowed to languish in the hands of ignorant humans with their trivial pursuits and overinflated senses of self. If the aliens could not invade the blue jewel of the universe directly, then they would annihilate its hordes of mankind with a virus, purge its unforgiving atmosphere, and claim it as their own. According to the notebooks, the virus that was plaguing the planet at present was, by no means, the first. The Black Death was the most well-known (though it was not known that it had been instituted by aliens), and to a lesser extent, the Great Plague, but the mostly-overlooked fact of the matter was that since The Black Death that had eventually claimed over half the population of an entire continent, a catastrophic plague of some kind had been ravaging the planet every ten years or so, right up until relatively modern times. The only reason for this brief cessation of viral hostilities was that those unseen aliens had recognized that man could not be eradicated so easily. Man’s numbers had dwindled dramatically, but still, he somehow survived every invasion, every systematic spread of disease, basically everything that could be thrown at him aside from destroying the entire planet with him on it. It was as if he was the plague and intelligences far exceeding his own could not formulate a cure.
So came the next phase in the war that only an elite few had recently recognized that the planet was even engaged in. Man had apparently earned immunity from eradication by disease, but he was still not invincible. Sure, his body had become expert at killing off diseased cells, even if it meant the sacrifice of his own cells, which he would simply regenerate what he could and adapt to life without the ones he couldn’t. As natural selection clearly showed, where he failed, his offspring would only grow stronger. It was astonishing at first for the extraterrestrials when they discovered that deadly viruses were actually administered by man himself—flu shots, for example—with the result that he only forged a greater immunity, but his profound ability to recoup and regenerate was also his weakness. Just as the most efficient diseases don’t stop at simply killing off cells, but, like cancer, actually manipulated the body into producing more of itself, so the aliens devised a virus that would distort the way man produced his very offspring. This virus didn’t need to kill every man, woman, and child to be effective, it only had to effectively stop them from reproducing.
Once Dr. Crangler took another break from mulling over this and other information, his eyes were red, his face was sullen, and his mind was exhausted. He was a man well used to professional fatigue, but even he had not given so much energy to such unfettered study as this since his med school years fifteen years ago. Much of the information about The Virus he already knew, but with this new, supplemental information, a picture of the reality at hand began to coalesce in his imagination that was even more viscous and appalling than he was prepared for. Even though he had experimented on a
lien bodies extensively, he had never really viewed them as beings capable of feelings and emotions. To him, they were potential foreign invaders, advanced beings with remarkable intelligence, but no other relatable qualities. They were things to be studied and defended against, but certainly not things to be related to. Now, realizing that aliens had been experimenting on humans eons before the reverse was true, he felt suddenly violated. He had never attributed human emotion to these beings, but now he saw them as cruel and evil, affecting the demise of millions, even billions of precious human lives in their relentless pursuit of acquisition.
Then the doctor’s mind began to wander to many of his own studies of other organisms on the planet. Hadn’t he, just like the other doctors and scientists of the world, performed countless experiments upon animals, other organisms, and at times, even people, in order to manipulate their resources for mankind’s own endeavors? Hadn’t man routinely wiped out entire populations of fellow organisms for the sake of its own betterment? If this line of logic was to be followed, then who was to say that the organisms on the planet that were not to man’s liking didn’t deserve to exist more than man himself? After all, many of them had been here long before man. What if what this alien life form was attempting to do was actually poetic justice? Musings like these didn’t sit well with the doctor, so he cast them aside. It was not comfortable imagining that he was the culture in the Petri dish and aliens were, in fact, the dominant species, peering over him, deciding his ultimate fate. Man was the rightful heir to Earth, Dr. Crangler reminded himself, and he resolved to double his efforts to thwart this, the aliens’ latest attempts to forever remove man from his blue marble throne. Mankind would not be subdued on his watch, the doctor told himself. It all sounded really good, but just now, Dr. Crangler felt that he had only enough resolve to do one thing, and that was to lay his head on his desk and rest. He didn’t realize that he hadn’t slept in the last thirty hours, so totally was he enthralled in Geoffrey’s notebooks, but his body did, and it assured him that it would not cooperate any further without a break.
Chapter 15
Geoffrey sat up in his bed and looked around. He had just awakened a few moments earlier and felt more refreshed than he had since he got here. The hypnotic effect of having little to no visual stimuli was both draining and oddly confusing, so the significance was not lost upon Geoffrey that he felt much better in spite of his unchanging surroundings. He wiped his eyes, stretched his limbs, and thought for a moment. He had it! The fact that he had finished with the notebooks was the reason he felt so sublime. Finally getting all of that information out of his head and onto paper was like clearing an insanely crowded fish tank of most of its occupants. He fancied that he thought more clearly, saw more clearly (which wasn’t saying much, since there was only white to see), and even his body was replenished. His appetite had returned as well.
He turned toward the upper corner of the room where he knew the surveillance camera was hidden and motioned that he was hungry. While he waited, he thought over a few things until his mind inevitably found its way to the subject of the late Mr. Reynolds. It struck Geoffrey as odd that he hadn’t thought more of what happened to the astronomer before now, but with the doctor constantly pressuring him to finish the notebooks, it was no wonder he didn’t have much time to think on anything else. Now that he finally had time to think, he wondered what became of the scientist. Oddly enough, though, he wasn’t as alarmed for Mr. Reynolds as he would’ve thought. Somehow, he knew that the scientist was all right, wherever he was, just like he knew that there were three men watching him via the hidden camera, and that Dr. Crangler was sound asleep somewhere in the building. Among the things he didn’t know, however, was just how he knew these things. He thought about how Mr. Reynolds had communicated with him telepathically before being reduced to dust. It was an experience that he couldn’t put into words. Geoffrey imagined that it would be like trying to explain colors to one born blind, or perhaps trying to explain the phenomenon of thought to a vegetable or a rock. When Mr. Reynolds spoke into his mind, he heard the words more clearly than if they were spoken audibly, but he couldn’t hear them, exactly. The images Mr. Reynolds introduced into his mind were more distinctive than if they had been plotted by a great artist, but he didn’t see them, exactly. This was the only discernible explanation he could give, even to himself, of what had taken place in that room.
That was the connection he was looking for. He knew three men were watching him on monitors in the facility, but he didn’t know. Whatever Mr. Reynolds had done to him caused this new ability. Still, he had yet to decide if the change was good or bad. Nearly thirty minutes passed with Geoffrey trying to make some kind of order of everything he’d experienced when he realized via his new extra sensory perception that one of Dr. Crangler’s assistances was coming down the hall with the food he asked for. Sure enough, not a full minute later, the locking mechanism on the door sounded and the door opened, revealing a very nervous assistant with a white Styrofoam tray of food and a matching drink. The assistant stepped halfway across the threshold of the room and, only looking at Geoffrey briefly, set the food items on the floor near the door. Meanwhile, Geoffrey thought he heard someone’s voice. It seemed to be coming from far off in the distance and was too faint for him to distinguish what it was saying, but he was almost certain that it was the voice of a man. When the assistant quickly closed the door behind him, the voice ceased and Geoffrey thought nothing else of it.
He made quick work of the food. There was no trashcan in his room so he put the tray and cup back where the assistant had left them and motioned to the camera for someone to pick them up. Afterward, he sat idly on his bed for a few long moments, before deciding he could use the tray as a diversion until someone came to pick it up. After all, he didn’t yet have a television, a radio, or even a window to look out of, and he had already gotten all the rest he was going to need for some time. First, he poked holes in the tray, then he pinched it at its corners, then, remembering that the doctor had taken the notebooks he had written in, but not the pencil, he retrieved it from the desk drawer and began drawing on the tray. The doctor had left other notebooks but for whatever reason the image in Geoffrey’s head seemed to be searing itself upon Geoffrey’s brain, as if it were too potent to be held in for even a second. There was no time for looking for notebooks. Geoffrey scribbled fiercely on the tray. He felt as if his head would burst if he stopped. After a few moments, he looked at the image he had drawn. It was a hideous thing, an image with a frame and a head but nothing like any animal or human he had ever seen before. He glared at the monstrosity he had drawn for a few seconds and the holes in this side of the tray as well and let the tray fall from his hands with a sigh.
“I really need a television.” He whispered to himself.
Chapter 16
While Geoffrey sat, bored and alone, on the edge of his bed, Delilah reclined on a leather sofa, watching television and nibbling on premium quality chocolate (white chocolate, no less) truffles. A small radio sat on a rolling stand beside the partially eaten box of truffles, as well as a small cup of cold milk. Aside from these additions, the room also now had a three drawer desk that was considerably larger than the desk in Geoffrey’s room, and filled with all manner of designer products. Delilah had certainly not returned to the lap of luxury to which she was accustomed, but, considering the circumstances, she was on her way. She continued nibbling on expensive chocolate confections and watching television until she decided she was bored with whatever program was on. She changed the channel, then changed it again, but was equally disappointed. She changed it a few more times, but with the same result. Frustrated, she stood and yelled at the camera in the upper corner of the room that she needed to use the restroom. A short time later, the locking mechanism in her door unlatched and a light tapping immediately followed the hiss-click.
“Come in.” said Delilah to two of Dr. Crangler’s assistants.
“You need to use the restroom, M
a’am?” one of them asked.
“I do not. But if I did I wouldn’t want men escorting me there.” She scowled at the thought. “I’d appreciate a room with an adjoining bathroom.” It sounded more like a demand than a suggestion. The assistant looked at his fellow assistant with more than a measure of consternation. “Uh…” he faltered, turning back to Delilah.
“Never mind.” She broke in. “I’ll talk to Dr. Crangler. When is he coming?”
“He…will be with you shortly.” The assistant shuffled and seemed to not want to maintain eye contact with Delilah. In the volatile condition in which he had last seen the doctor there was no telling what he would do or when he would be anywhere.
“All right, well just show me to the bathroom,” returned Delilah. The assistants led Delilah to the nearest lavatory. “Could you please not stand right at the door?” Delilah asked not so politely, once she was at the bathroom’s entrance. “Could you possibly stand down there somewhere?” she pointed about twenty feet down the hall. “I am a woman after all, and it’s just not comfortable having a bunch of guys hanging out while I use the bathroom.” She smiled assiduously at the assistants until they slowly backed down the hall to the spot she indicated. While she went into the bathroom, the two conversed amongst themselves in barely audible whispers. “You know we’ll probably be fired for giving in to these crazy demands of hers, don’t you?” one assistant asked the other.
“It’s what Dr. Crangler ordered.” The second assistant answered. “If any trouble comes of all this, it’s not our fault. You know how many times we were told to follow the doctor’s orders to the letter—foremost by him—and that’s what we’re doing. When the shit hits the fan, they can’t blame us for following orders. Besides, from what everyone’s saying, if they can’t find a cure in the girl’s blood to The Virus, then nobody’s gonna be able to have kids anymore, so it’s probably for the best that we keep her comfortable.” The other assistant nodded in solemn agreement. Regardless of what was suddenly ailing Dr. Crangler, it was his shoulders that would bear the brunt of this whole thing and it was he who was responsible for coming up with answers, certainly not his lowly assistants.
The Virus Page 12
