by Geoff Nelder
“Even with us in the cockpit, trying to stop them?”
“Oh, I expect so. They can probably isolate the entire console in here. We’d just be passengers with a front-window view.”
Julia spoke up. “They haven’t though, have they? Look, we are still heading for Boston.”
“Yeah,” said Rogers. “With the transponder turned off, can they still locate us? Surely radar is too far away.”
“From the UK and North America, we are out of normal radar range. But they can find us with other methods if they’ve a mind to. Black boxes transmit data up to satellite relays; they don’t wait for a crash. Come to think about it, there was little point in turning off the transponder, they probably know we’ve turned. What do you want me to do?”
“Shut up for a fucking minute while I think,” Rogers said.
“I think, in the light of what Findley has at last decided to tell us, we should ask permission to return. Pretend we have some emergency—play it by ear,” Julia said while she rubbed her temple as if trying to make a hole to let a demon out.
“Okay, do it.”
JOHNSON SUCKED A PENCIL while watching the screens in front of him, knowing the outcome of the forthcoming radio call. The Dreamliner passengers and crew were under strain, but what was the precise problem? The original captain had a struggle remembering details of the flight, and the flight attendant reported passengers having similar problems. Okay, he was no medic, but he’d never heard of a group of people losing memory like that. Maybe it was one of those mass-hysteria events. And what was London talking about? They’ve had refusals for landing permissions before but always on terrorist alerts not medical. Maybe they knew what was happening on the plane. Maybe it was more than the plane.
With that thought, he punched a single button to call his parents in Idaho.
“Hi, Pop, how ya doing?”
“That you, Billy? Can’t see so well these days. Bren, get my glasses, I can’t see this view screen proper.”
“Pop, it’s me, Billy. You folks okay?”
“Talk to your mother. I can’t understand these contraptions. Bren, it might be Billy, Lord knows.”
“That you, Billy-boy?”
“Yes, Mom. Turn your head so yous can see the view screen, unless you’ve grown eyes through your ears. Heh heh.”
“What’s that? You our Billy-boy?”
“Yes, Mom. I rang to check on yous two?”
“Where are you, Billy-boy? Your supper from last night’s still on the table. You’ve been out all night again with Bernie?”
“Christ, Mom, Bernie left for New Mexico last year and I’m in the Air Force, remember?”
“What’s that, Billy-boy, the Air Force? Hey, Pop, our Billy-boy’s a pilot. Did you know that?”
“No, Mom, I’m a clerk. Say, has Aunt Chrissie’s problem gotten to you folks?”
“I dunno, son. Your mom and pop aren’t feeling too good. When you come home, bring some fresh milk from the store.”
“Jeez, Mom, I’m not due home for another month.”
“A month? Stop fooling, Billy-boy. You’re not too old to get walloped.”
“I am, Mom, I really am. I’ll get home as soon as. Promise. Bye, Pop, bye, Mom.”
He waited, but they didn’t return his farewells, just wandered off out of camera sight. He sought his commander.
“Sir, I need compassionate leave. My folks aren’t well.”
“Johnson, much that I have the utmost respect for your folks, you are the fifth one in the last two days to make such a request. That’s why you, and me, are on double shift. There’s a bug sweeping the States, but consider this: it isn’t here, is it?”
“That might be a good point, sir, but I think my folks have got Alzheimer’s or something like it and need urgent help.”
“Yup, that’s what the others said, but Alzheimer’s ain’t infectious, so rule it out. Anyway, Johnson, I can’t let you go until next week when replacements arrive. Assuming they do.”
“Haven’t you got any folks stateside, sir?” Johnson fidgeted, on edge with the double whammy of having his parents ill and not being able to leave the base. Even if he ran off, where was he? On a small island in the Azores, miles from anywhere. The only airplanes were under USAF and Portuguese control. He had no choice but to go along with his commander and hope for the best.
“Sure I have, Johnson. A mother and sister in Vermont. They chatted normally yesterday. What’s happening to that Dreamliner?”
“Given the clearance to go to Boston, but...”
“I know. If Europe is worried they’re bringing an infectious disease, then why does the US want them, and what about the other twenty-odd flights on their way?”
“I guess the flights already closer to their European destinations will have to land and be quarantined, but are there facilities at Boston?”
“I doubt they’ll be allowed to land. Isolation airfields dot the East coast for quarantine purposes. Keep monitoring them and any other alerts from the US.”
ROGERS AND JULIA JIGGED A RIDICULOUS DANCE in the too-tiny cockpit as Findley looked glum. His conviction that air traffic would never have allowed them to turn without good cause had given him false hope. Yesterday—he thought—he’d been scared stiff for his family after seeing colleagues in the airline he worked for at Kennedy lose their memory. Local radio ran jokes about it, but his father died last year with complications including Alzheimer’s. A cold worm slithered down his back as he recalled the day his father died in utter confusion. Findley hadn’t lost his memory. No more than everyone else forgets the odd bunch of keys.
“Can I go back to my family now?”
“I suppose so,” Rogers said, but Julia disagreed.
“There might be trouble, yet. Let one of his brats come up for a few seconds so he can see they’re still kicking.”
“Yeah. Anyway, Findley, you’re driving, aren’t you?”
“Not really. Like I said, air traffic could fly this plane from the other side of the world.”
Julia frowned. “Any changes you can tell?”
Findley gave her a wry laugh, glanced at the console and then joined her in frowning, “It isn’t going to Boston anymore.”
Rogers went apoplectic. “The frigging liars. They said we could return to the States.”
“We are,” said Findley. “But not Boston. The enATIS indicates CYAW, but I’ve no idea what or where that is.”
“You’ve thirty seconds to find out,” shouted Rogers, baring yellow teeth. Findley reeled back at the stench of his beery breath.
“Will five seconds do?” he said as he tapped CYAW into the console. It returned HALIFAX SHEARWATER.
“But that’s not even America,” shouted Rogers.
“Canada is counted as being in North America,” said Findley, whose sarcasm was rewarded by Rogers hitting him on the head.
“I know about Shearwater,” said another passenger looking aghast at Findley picking himself off the floor. “It’s not used, except by coastguards, because it’s always fogged in. The main Halifax International Airport is fifteen miles up the road.”
“Did you know this, Findley?” Rogers said.
“No. Look, Rogers, I didn’t know we were being diverted until you did. Do you think I’ve done it? God, man, I want to go to London.”
“I don’t trust you, Findley. Why would they want us to go to the back of beyond instead of Boston?”
“It’s obvious,” said Findley, hoping his frankness wasn’t going to get him into more trouble. “They want to quarantine the plane and all of us.”
“But if it is foggy there...”
“Doesn’t matter anymore,” Findley said. “They can land this plane in fog in the middle of the night with no lights. The only weather problem would be high wind.”
“You’re a smart ass, Findley. I want you to stay there in the hot seat, and when we’re twenty miles out, turn us back to Boston.”
“What! You’re kidding. They
’ve certainly taken over all the controls. Look, Rogers, let me lower the landing gear. If I press that button we should hear the nose wheel go down and a green light on the panel there. It has nothing to do with the autopilot unless they’ve taken everything over. Shall I?”
Everyone who could squeeze in tried to watch. Findley pressed the gear-down button. Nothing happened. He tried turning off the autopilot first, but still nothing.
Rogers pushed past and brought his fist down on the inactive panel.
Findley couldn’t help himself. “If you’d let us carry on to London, we would have landed and you could’ve caught the next flight back.” He had another smack in the face for his audacity. As he shook his head, he realized he talked nonsense if other flights were being turned back to other isolated airfields. Would there be enough medical personnel for all the returning flights, considering some would forget to turn up for work? No. So, it would be remnants of confused National Guards looking after them, if anyone. So there would be a chance to slip over to the other airport and get another flight. Maybe he should write it down in case he forgot in the next four hours.
Friday 24 April 2015:
Earth Orbit.
JENA KOCHI, ASTRO-ENGINEER, enjoying her third spaceflight, tried to focus on the specks of light in the black velvet through the porthole while listening to Wagner’s thundering music, The Ride of the Valkyries. She imagined herself in the role of the heroine, Brunhilde, riding war horses to the blood-thumping chorus. Losing herself in the harmony made it easier to forget their problems. Staring harder, she decided the motes of light in the blackness belonged to her own optic nerve.
A sudden knock brought her rest period to an abrupt end and she switched on the dorm light.
“Good, it’s you, Antonio, come in. We have much to discuss about our situation up here.”
The doctor shook his head. “I know what you are going to say, Jena. You want us to depart immediately for Earth, but I think we stay a little longer, per favore?”
“Antonio, yesterday’s supply ship didn’t arrive, and we get no sense out of Houston.”
“We are not going to run out of air, food, or water for weeks, Jena. You are panicking without cause.”
Jena looked at Antonio’s Mediterranean-tanned face. He could have been a film star at a snap of his elegant fingers, not that she went for pretty men.
She tried again. “Fine. You’ve been able to talk to your people with no trouble. They’re in Milan and there’s no trouble there, but you, as a doctor, must be petrified at what’s happening in the States. Our uplink is spasmodic, none of the Mission Control communicators know us. I’m worried, Antonio. We’ve got to convince Dan to let us take the Marimar back down.” She grabbed the doctor’s arms.
“I can give you a sedative, Jena. Oops, scusi, signorina, wrong thing to suggest. I share your worries, really I do. It’s only a matter of time, maybe days, before my family suffer too. Let’s consider the situation as objectively as we can.
“As far we can tell, the memory loss happened after the case was handled at Edwards and again at Goddard when it was sent there. From those two centres, the amnesia infection diffused rapidly. Everyone becomes infected when they are in the same breathable space as an infected person. It must be extraordinarily virulent, maybe over ninety per cent of contacts picking it up. That’s way more than AIDS, SARS, and even the common cold. Di conseguenza, we shouldn’t rush down there.”
She hated losing a debate but brightened with another point. “Isn’t it like the way the common cold infected almost every Native American when the white settlers breathed on them? But many developed a similar immunity to the settlers. Antonio, we should return, while we can, to a remote spot and wait for resistance to the infection to develop.”
He pointed at the console. “We only know what we can pick up from TV broadcasts and the medical staff at Houston who took the trouble to answer us last week with all they knew about ARIA, the memory-eating virus. You are not thinking straight, Jena. We didn’t open the case so we are not immune, just not infected. How could we be of use down there when, after landing, we get infected?”
“You assume we’ll catch it. I don’t, and even if we did, we’ll have our records. This infection affects memory not intelligence. So we use intelligent strategies to cope.”
“First, signorina, we can’t separate intelligence from memory. Forget reasoning techniques and your brain won’t solve problems as well as it did. Secondly, if you don’t keep a diary as habit for years, you could wake up in the morning and forget you started one. Another reason to stay up here is that this ARIA thing will burn itself out. Viruses become less virulent after peaking, before everyone has been touched.”
Jena had always found discussions with Antonio more like a game of chess. She sat heavily on her bunk but realized it gave him a height advantage and stood again. “I thought public-health medics are equipped to look for that and produce antidotes.”
“Ah, Jena. Consider a public-health laboratory down in Houston. Someone is brought in who is not ill except they’re losing their memory. What do you do? Scans, take blood, urine, and biopsy samples. If they find a virus, then what? Every doctor who examines an infected person becomes infected.”
She wagged a finger. “Not in an isolation chamber, but I suppose they wouldn’t consider that unless someone from up here, Doctor, suggests it and quick.”
“I did, Jena, last week. But the medic I spoke to didn’t turn up to work the next day, like most of them. All of them. Bastardi.”
“Well, I’d like to make sure my folks are okay, but I suppose if I can’t raise them, they must be infected by now. I expect our commander will agree with you anyway.”
“He does, Jena. Talk to him yourself. He’ll call us together to review the situation this afternoon. I hope your family have taken themselves somewhere safe. They might be out of cell-phone range.”
“Antonio, what did you disturb my rest period for?”
He walked to her family photo at the farm she’d stuck on the bulkhead wall. He turned and smiled. “Dan and I thought it would do no harm to give ourselves some vitamin and antioxidant boosters as a prophylactic for when we do go back.”
“I suppose this is a ten-day course; another diabolical reason why we can’t return yet. You related to Machiavelli?”
Dr Menzies produced his best bedside-manner wry grimace.
Friday 24 April 2015, evening:
UK motorway, eight days since amnesia started spreading in the US. Most US citizens and some UK citizens have lost up to a year’s worth of memory.
RYDER ALWAYS HAD THE URGE to be a van driver, so he was elated to be driving the latest super-transit, courtesy of his boss, Derek. Paying to use the toll motorway sections of the M1 out of London and M6 towards Wales helped to avoid the worst of the traffic congestion. Teresa’s biology department maintained a field study centre in North Wales. Dubious because of the high tourism factor on the North Wales coast, Ryder spent hours poring over maps and aerial photographs, which helped him change his mind. There was just one road, built by the Romans, more a track skirting a ridge close to the centre. The centre nestled in a mountain-fringed armchair hollow with a track ending at a small lake, Llyn Anafon. He would have preferred more trees for the centre to hide in, but they went centuries ago and kept away by sheep, feral ponies, and rabbits, who all loved tree saplings for breakfast. Since the vast majority of tourists stay within a few minutes of their cars, they’d only have to fend off the few dedicated ramblers.
“Are you sure it has electricity and water?” he asked Teresa, as he slowed behind a Perrier transporter.
“It has its own wind and solar power with a diesel back-up generator, local stream water supply with filters, a large store complete with sheep and bilberries on the hills. What more do you want? Oh, I get it. Yes, it has a great entertainment room and communications centre.”
Ryder looked at her in disbelief. “I was thinking of security arrangements.”<
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“There’s a burglar alarm. Not linked to the police, but I believe a red light might blink at the university maintenance office in London.”
“Great. Has it ever gone off?”
“I set it off when I forgot the code. I know it now, 1828.”
Ryder laughed. “Don’t tell me. The year London University started a biology department. It’s amazing how many institutes have the year of their inauguration for their door codes. Is there an alarmed security fence?”
“You having a laugh? The only fences around there are around trial seed patches to keep the rabbits and sheep out. But we do have Brian.”
“Ah, anagram of Brain, a robotic defence system?”
Teresa braced as Ryder had to abort an overtake. “Sort of. He’s Brian Wagstaff, the centre manager. Lives on site with his wife, Bronwyn, who does catering and repairs. She’d run rings round you on electrics and engines. In fact, although Brian is bloody strong though short, if I was an intruder, I’d be more scared of Bronwyn. She’s a fiery one.”
“Like someone sitting next to me, you mean. Oh my God, two feisty women under one roof.”
“Don’t forget Laurette in the pickup behind us with Gustav. She’s an impenetrable, French, post-grad chief techie for our department and Gustav Schmidt, from Leipzig, her assistant.”
Ryder swerved to avoid a rabbit then said, “Didn’t Gustav tell you Laurette was impenetrable?” He grinned; she laughed.
“It means she has someone to play with when we’re up there for months.”
Ryder heard buzzing. “That yours?”
She checked. “Gustav says they need to stop for fuel and provisions.”
“Hope they remember to use the self-serve fuel and shop. Hey, Derek, wake up. We’re making a pit stop.”
“Why have you brought him along?” she whispered. “You said you couldn’t stand him.”
“He’s a prat as my line manager; most media consultants are. But he’s a bloody marvel at communications. This super-transit came out of his budget and is full of his comms gear as well as provisions.”
