ARIA

by Geoff Nelder

  “Jack, you brought home dinner yesterday. I’ve started a salad for tonight.”

  “I have to be in by six tomorrow,” he told her, pleased he remembered something and blurting it out in case it left him later.

  Sitting at the table, he splattered ketchup over all the food.

  “Aw, Jack. No.”

  “It’ll be overtime rate.”

  “You know I don’t eat ketchup.”

  “Sorry, Reenie. You won’t forget to get me up for the bus, will you?”

  “I’ll have to scrape it all off now. Eddie, don’t stuff it in your mouth like that.”

  He realized his step-daughter was talking to him. “You all right, Jack?”

  “He’s tired. Leave him be, Debbie.”

  “I’m okay, kid. I’ll get the bread and cola.” He stood, then staggered to the sink.

  Irene followed him and gave him a comforting hug. “Are you okay, honey?”

  “Sure—it’s been a funny kinda day.”

  “Damn hot, that’s for certain.”

  “I mean at work. Can’t you get nothing right?”

  “Oh, get you. Don’t take your work stress out on us, you pig.”

  Eddie ran in, disrupting the developing fight. “Jack, you promised to tell me…” It broke the spell.

  “What promise, Ed?”

  “You know—about astronauts and stuff.”

  “Well, Eddie, something different did happen today…what was it. Something to do with aliens.”

  All the family shrieked with laughter. He stomped to the ugly white fridge and grabbed a beer to gulp and sulk till bedtime.

  THURSDAY 16 APRIL 2015

  Jack pushed soggy cereal around his breakfast bowl.

  “You’ll be late for your bus, Jack. It’s half past seven.”

  He knuckled his forehead. Something was missing. He pushed back his chair and strolled to the door. He looked back, still miffed he couldn’t think what was wrong.

  As he paused, Eddie called from watching TV.

  “Hey, Jack, you messing with this case-thing on the news?”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about. And you better not be talking about my work to nobody—do you hear?” Eddie shrank from his stepfather’s outburst.

  “Leave the boy alone, Jack. Just because you’ve got a sore head, you don’t—”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  “Wha...” She didn’t finish. Damn. He knew she was too stunned. He never swore.

  He had to run for the bus—and made it, but the driver was being shouted at by his passengers for departing too early, leaving not-so-fast runners on the sidewalk. Jack heard the driver insist he was right on the current schedule and not the old one. When the fuss died down, Jack settled in his shiny green seat and tried to think about what he did yesterday. His brain didn’t work too well: maybe he’d had an excess of beer after supper. The Activity Log in the lab would tell him, if it still bothered him.

  But he was bothered. He remembered snippets about yesterday, but—last week... What happened last week? It hurt his head trying to work it out.

  He wasn’t alone. He’d never experienced such chaos since that sponsored poker and drinks night when the staff dragged themselves into work the following day, drinking strong coffee and lousing up so much work, it took hours to get back on schedule. He warmed at the memory of how he and his colleagues covered up their misdoings. Maybe that was it. And why could he remember that incident from last year but not what happened last week?

  Off the bus, he wandered down the corridor, heading for some clearing-head air-conditioning but was stopped by a whistle.

  Bret, one of the supervisors caught up with him. “Jack, you’re not one of these damn zombies, are you? Came back from a damn expensive holiday in Vegas last night to see this shift in chaos. What’s going on?”

  “Wish I knew, Bret. Like having a real bad head after a binge night.”

  “And did you? Along with the rest of the shift?”

  “No. I dunno. To be honest, I don’t remember nothing about last night.” Jack didn’t want to confess to his supervisor that he was muddled about all last week, maybe more. His head buzzed again. He had to find a chair.

  “You okay, Jack? Just a quick question, then. I’ve arranged transport to fly that weird suitcase-thing to Goddard. Do you have anything to add to the handling notes? Just stuff you’d noticed. Unusually heavy for the look of it, vibrations, lopsided weight inside, anything?”

  Jack realized he must have looked as if Bret had asked him what sort of cheese the moon was made of.

  “Hell, Jack, I’d give you the day off, but it looks as if the whole shift is the same.”

  Looking down at his shoes, Jack had a gut feeling that they might as well have all been sent home although some wouldn’t be sure where their homes were.

  He loaded the crated suitcase onto the NASA LearJet used for small, urgent transports. Its pilots and crew laughed at Jack’s bewilderment. At least the case was on its way. Just as well. Bret told Jack he was getting a headache too.

  JACK FOUND THE BUS QUEUE was more of a mob than usual. Yet quieter. The confused home-goers were introspective rather than talkative, drooped shoulders not caring that they were in scorching sunshine. The only chattering was between a handful of worn-out cooks from a new burger-bar across the wide dusty road. Jack looked at them, wondering if they were going to have buzzing heads any minute and whether in the morning they’d remember where they worked.

  The driver was new. A rarity for Kern County Buses and his cheerfulness contrasted with, and pained, the passengers. Jack overpaid for his fare because, although he kinda guessed it had gone up, he couldn’t remember by how much. He stood for a while waiting for change then when the driver grinned but offered no money, Jack knew why the driver was so cheerful. Jack shuffled down the aisle to find a seat on the shady side.

  At least it wasn’t his turn to make the dinner, or was it? Just in case, he bought a bag of donuts on the way from the bus stop.

  By seven in the evening, Jack was still alone. He checked the phone then the calendar in case he’d overlooked meeting up with the family at the bowling alley.

  The problem remained over where his folks were, but thank God, the buzz in his head had switched off. He exhaled with relief.

  His face cracked with a smile all the way to the fridge, and clutching an ice-cold Bud, back to a TV chair. Maybe his memory problems had left with the headache, but he resisted testing it out.

  A calendar rested on the coffee table. Jack grimaced at the scribbled birthdays and appointments in front of him—a small comfort in the written word. He looked at the can—ready to drink in celebration—then at the calendar and worked at what happened the day before.

  Damn his head. He couldn’t remember the assignments from work yesterday or the day before and even from last week. He grabbed the calendar, ripped it to shreds, ignored the lager, and went for the whiskey. It didn’t improve any recollections, but it meant he didn’t care.

  FRIDAY 17 APRIL 2015, 10 P.M.

  A thought surfaced later. He was alone in his house, and it should’ve been boisterous. Where were they? What had he forgotten today? He struggled to focus on the conversations that must have taken place at the morning’s breakfast table, but his brain blurred. He fell asleep in the shimmer of TV chat shows.

  He couldn’t believe the time when he woke with a groggy head. Two in the morning. Suppose Irene had taken her kids to her mom’s and he’d forgotten, or she hadn’t wanted to tell him? He’d had enough.

  THE POLICE PRECINCT WAS PACKED with a mob of confused people spilling outside, so Jack drove on by. Rosamond wasn’t a large town, but half of it congregated in one of two places. Jack went first to the Church of Saint Theresa, but it was worse there. Someone told Jack that Father Blah was new to the district, but Jack couldn’t remember his name. In which case, maybe it was true. He remembered stuff from two months back, no problem, but damn it, he couldn’t recall
what he’d had for breakfast or whether he’d had any. With no leader at his church, he turned the Ford around and went to join the crowd at Rosamond Police precinct.

  It didn’t take long to find them. A huddle of three bewildered people were glad to see him.

  Irene beat her children to finding a voice. “Jack.” They enjoyed a group hug. “But where were you, Jack?”

  “I was going to ask that. I was at home, our home.”

  Irene broke down, recovering enough after a few minutes to speak through the tears. “I collected the kids from school to take them for a Big Mac, then we couldn’t remember where the new house was.”

  “Figures. It’s new to you, but I’ve been there three years. Just a minute—what’s with all the rest of these people? They can’t all have new homes they’ve forgotten about.”

  “There’s been a power cut on the east side. They came to find out what’s going on. Come on, let’s go home.”

  Jack’s wife and stepchildren had headaches like he kinda recalled experiencing. As he drove, he tried to think what would happen if the night shift didn’t turn up at the power plant or they forgot new procedures. Maybe it was just one engineer lousing up. It’d happened at the Dryden Labs. One man forgets to pull a switch or set a relay. An overnight burn trial of a prototype engine blew the roof off when the coolant stopped flowing because a since-fired techie threw a Coke can that connected with and then disconnected a switch. It didn’t hit the papers. Suppose it couldn’t—the reporters bought off. But if that could happen then, what the hell could happen now?

  Sunday 19 April 2015:

  London.

  TURNING HIS BACK ON THE MONITOR didn’t make the crisis go away, though Ryder could focus on Teresa instead.

  “You’re wrong about this, Ryder.”

  “If only. I’m worried about my sister, Manny and, damn, it will reach London.”

  “Once again, you overreact.”

  Ryder bristled with her dismissals. “Not just us. Everyone on the planet is in danger.”

  “Ryder, you need to chill.”

  “Is that what Charles the Second said to his physician warning him to leave London when immigrant rats ran ashore with plague-ridden fleas? ‘No, you’re overreacting, go splash vinegar on them.’”

  “Is that what you think is going on over there, Ryder? A memory disease?”

  “Yes.”

  Teresa laughed. “How do you investigate an infectious disease without getting close to a patient?”

  Ryder pointed back at the screen. “Already doing it, aren’t we? Remotely on the web. But we need compelling evidence to persuade people here that we’re not barking.”

  Teresa pointed her coffee at him. “Too late, dear. And your line-manager, Derek, doesn’t want to make waves. Go over his head. Do something bold, Ryder, for Pete’s sake.”

  “Who? Robert Keefo, head of NASA?”

  “Oh yes, he’s going to say thanks for bringing attention to NASA bringing a plague back to Earth. Assuming mere mortals like us can’t talk directly to our Prime Minister, Ryder, who do we know?”

  “Your faculty dean, Maurice Dover. Doesn’t he have friends in high places?”

  “I’ll try him. Hey, Ryder, your sister’s back on.”

  The screen showed Karen’s lab, but the freckled face and shock of red hair belonged to her senior techie, Julia.

  “No, Karen’s not here. Hell, I shouldn’t be here either, Ryder. It’s Sunday, you know.”

  “You working on the case, Julia?”

  “What case? Oh that. I will be later. I’ve been on leave but came in to be presented to some VIPs this afternoon.”

  Ryder’s heart raced now he was talking to someone either not infected or at least remembered her present-day schedule. He briefed her on his fears, expecting her to laugh at him.

  “Funny you should say that, Ryder.”

  “Looks more scary to me.”

  “My colleagues are crazier than usual. Now you’ve given me a reason why. Umm, maybe I should go home. I don’t suppose you’ve any idea how it’s transmitted?”

  “That’s just it, Julia. I don’t, except it’s fast, and I’m afraid it’s quite possible you’ve already…”

  “Gee, thanks for the warning. I’ll—”

  “Hang on, Julia, I have a favour to ask. I’d like you to chat to my fiancée. She’s a biologist and she wants you to do something very important. Wait there…Teresa.”

  Teresa, with a sucking-a-lemon-face, came in to the study, papers in both hands. She hated being disturbed when planning lectures.

  “I’ve got Julia, Karen’s senior techie, on line, just arrived so she’s clean—so far.”

  “Out of the way,” Teresa demanded, pulling Ryder’s arm.

  “Julia, can you get a blood sample from one of your infected colleagues?”

  Ryder clenched his fists. “Oh great, just scare the woman to death.”

  “Haven’t time for niceties, you moron. Either she’s going to help or she isn’t. End of.”

  “Hi, Teresa. I think I can, but I don’t want to hang around here for analysis. Shall I post it you in an airmail bio-sample container?”

  “Good idea.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Ryder said. “It could spread the contamination over here too quickly and—”

  “Idiot, have you any idea how many infected people would have flown to the UK and Europe today?”

  “Even so, it’d be safer to be analysed in the States and the results sent to us. And a postal package might not reach the airport.”

  “I heard all that, you two.” Julia frowned, and yet she stayed cool enough to plan. “I’ll take a sample with me. Jeez, it means I’m infected already. I’ll drive upstate to the isolation lab and set up the auto Mass Spectrometer.”

  “That mightn’t be enough, Julia.”

  “I know, Teresa, but are we going to have time to grow cultures? We have a speed culture setup there. We can also do auto GC, electrophoresis, biochemical, microbiological, and protein characterization. I’ll link it to your PC.”

  “When can you have it set up by? Can I suggest you make a quick reminder note about it now?” asked Ryder, worried she might have forgotten by the time she drove to the isolation lab.

  “You think it’s that quick?” She looked paler. “I’m fucked, aren’t I? It’ll be a couple of hours or so for the linkup. Signing out. And thanks, guys. I think. I’m going then. Catch you both later.”

  Ryder looked at the now-blank screen. He heated with worry but tried to be positive. “Useful.”

  Teresa waved a dismissive hand. “Don’t count on it.”

  “Your glass half-empty again? Hello, Karen’s monitor’s on again. No, it’s the reception at Goddard. A load of people. Didn’t Julia say something about VIPs paying the lab a visit?”

  “Good timing to pick up nasties. Do you recognise any of them? You’re the lucky one who gets to go on all those trips.”

  Teresa brought coffees to help wakefulness while watching the screen.

  Ryder fidgeted in his seat. “Hey, look that’s Doug Reeman, chairman of the Senate’s NASA Acquisition Committee. More cronies…senators, CEOs. My God, they’ll take it back to the White House and—”

  “Isn’t that Manuel?”

  “Looks out of it, poor chap. I’ve got to get on to Faculty Dean Maurice Dover. Get the British Government to take notice.”

  “Not listening, Ryder, were you?”

  “What? You mean about infected people from the States already here? Can’t be that many and we have to do something.”

  “Loads of people must have left the States, mostly by air, some by road to Mexico or Canada.”

  “What? How did they all know?”

  “You’re an imbecile. Why do I stick with you? None of them would’ve heard about infectious amnesia. Just normal trips, but they’re carrying the infection anyway.”

  “So, what are we waiting for? Let’s tell family and friends and get out of here. At l
east we should leave London and head for isolation. Just a minute. This needs careful consideration. We should inform the government. They might be able to activate some contingency plans. You know, isolation bunkers.”

  Teresa threw her hands in the air. “Ryder, the nuclear-war bunkers set up in the 1960s were dismantled years ago. Get real, for God’s sake.”

  “We should make sure somebody other than us knows what’s going down.”

  Teresa threw him a tired look. “I know.”

  “Do you? I’m talking end-of-the-world stuff.”

  “Let’s not get carried away. It’s most likely a case of temporary amnesia for some people.”

  “I wish I had your optimism, Teresa. I’m telling Maurice. Put the onus on him to enlighten people higher up.” He looked straight at her but instead of another defiant, hand-waving gesture, she had a far-away look and walked off. Ryder knew the look. It meant he’d find out about it when she’d accomplished her mission. She loved her little secrets.

  He dismissed the idea of e-mailing Maurice, her boss; better to talk to him face-to-face. As he stood, he glanced at the monitor displaying the US lab. Meandering lost people.

  Monday 20 April 2015:

  Edwards Air Base, Dryden Labs.

  JACK BALIN, ALONG WITH HIS COLLEAGUE, KEN, stood facing the Dryden lab entrance. The morning sun was thwarted by a corrugated metal awning.

  “What’s going on, Jack? Why are there only a few of us coming into work?”

  “Beats me. Your people at home up the creek as well?”

  “I’ve come here to get away from flying crockery.” He rubbed a bruise on his forehead. They were pulling a few more times on their cigarettes before going into the building.

  “Thought I’d lost my whole family last night. Stupid critters forgot where we lived. Wondering if the same will happen tonight,” Jack said, pleased he’d recalled something of the previous night’s chaos though Irene hadn’t slept and had reminded him. He’d forgotten but wasn’t letting on. Maybe he should try going without sleep.