ARIA

by Geoff Nelder

  “No way. It’s no fucking Noah’s Ark.”

  Irene stood, hands on hips. “It’s a military vehicle you’ve stolen from Edwards today, isn’t it?”

  “Okay, she might be useful cooking and stuff. There’s a lot of food and water already on board from the cafeteria at the base.”

  “Good, we’re about ready then. I’m going up to get Debbie.”

  “Yeah,” said Jack, “about time I had a long chat with that girl.”

  Sunday 14 June 2015:

  Banff Commercial Estate. Most people have lost eight years of memory.

  MANUEL HUNG BY HIS FINGERTIPS. With the front entrance blocked by an overturned truck, he had no choice in his mode of entry into Jenkins’ Pharmaceuticals.

  Of course, he had tried the main hospital first. With Jat drifting in and out of a coma, strapped into the passenger seat of the pickup, Manuel had spied on the hospital on Banff’s Lynx Street. Parked near the railway station and behind bushes, he used his binoculars. Desperate to get his hands on neo-Humulin or any kind of insulin, he’d broken his promise to her that he wouldn’t leave the cabin. A complete turnaround: she decided her life had finished but that he shouldn’t put his at risk. But emotions were stronger than logic and so after an uneventful drive to their nearest big city, he found himself behaving like a frontline spy. On the steps of the hospital sat a group of men and a couple of women. When, through the glasses, he detected National Guard olive-green uniforms and firearms, he thought he could take a chance: explain Jat’s need. Caution made him hang back.

  A grey, freezing mist off the river swirled around the pine trees outside the hospital adding to his obscuration from the guards. A group of cyclists passed him, forcing him to duck in his driving seat. He brought his head up to watch the six riders screech to a halt a hundred metres from the hospital. Through the mist, Manuel could see they all wore rucksacks and some bikes had panniers. A mixed-age group, but he guessed most were young twenties. He couldn’t help wonder where they came from and how they were so organised? Suppose, unlike him, they remembered yesterday? There were bound to be some groups isolated in the rural areas who needed supplies and had to risk infection.

  The guards had readied their weapons, which meant waving them in the air and then at the cyclists. One of them strutted out in front and shouted something beyond Manuel’s hearing. He thought about them too. Take one of those soldiers. Assuming they’d been in the army for years, they’d wake up each morning in their barracks. No change there; no hint of what was to follow. Newer squad members might be missing, but after normal morning ablutions, they’d go to fill their bellies. Even if the catering staff had turned up out of habit, lived on site, or had nowhere else to go, they’d have problems. Maybe a well-stocked services base would have a year’s supply of dried and long-life foods but not perishables like milk and eggs. It would only take a conversation or two to get the full impact of what ARIA was doing. Wouldn’t they want to get to their families, like Jat wanted to? Sure, and they might be stopped by their commanders, if they haven’t already gone family hunting themselves. No, the only soldiers left would be those whose families were unreachable or undesirable.

  Mulling over such traumatic possibilities became a penalty for leaving the comfort of the cabin. His throat dried up with concern for those cyclists. Why did they risk travelling into the city unless one of them or a friend back home needed medical help? He could understand them using mountain bikes instead of motor vehicles. To avoid potential roadblocks, they could make use of forestry and mountain tracks and not run out of fuel. That was a principal reason for not driving Jat all the way to her home city of Vancouver. No electricity to work fuel pumps at gas stations and antitheft devices on modern vehicles would make it difficult for him to siphon any from abandoned cars. Whatever the reason for getting to the hospital, they might be regretting it now. One of them put his bike on the ground and his hands in the air while walking to the lead soldier.

  It must be all right. They were laughing, and all the soldiers had lowered their rifles and sat back down on chairs maybe brought from the ER reception. Encouraged, Manuel climbed out of his pickup and walked a few paces forward, keeping the tall pines as cover for a little longer. As his visibility improved, he noted a large number of empty beer cans around the soldiers and many assorted bags. In spite of the cool air, beads of perspiration moistened Manuel’s forehead. Those soldiers couldn’t be there just to prevent the storming of the hospital by desperate addicts. The leading cyclist, who had been chatting to the soldiers, waved the others to join him. Manuel hoped they’d be suspicious, but they moved forward. Maybe it would all work out. He’d become so paranoid; worse each day.

  No. Two of the soldiers, if that was what they were, had circled the cyclists, who had reached the other soldiers at the entrance steps. They’d stopped laughing. Some started waving protesting hands, others threw their rucksacks away or dropped them, and two emptied their pockets. All at gunpoint. No, not a guard duty, just a heist. He didn’t hang around. Maybe he could have found an unguarded entrance.

  Turning to go, his heartbeat doubled as a growl warned him off. Blood-dripping canine teeth poked out through a dark green laurel bush. The head followed as it pushed through the leaves. The dog didn’t want to leave its meal of the day. Manuel had missed the small, bloated body of a child. Its swollen stomach made him think of all those people that must have picked up food poisoning because of the lack of refrigerated and fresh food. He associated Dalmatians with Disney films and middle-class homes, yet here it was scavenging; a dog that had no doubt seen the inside of more canine beauty parlours than Manuel had hairdressers, and it had turned on its provider-species as a more direct source of food. Shuddering, he edged away from the beast. Manuel guessed that as long as he kept his distance, the dog wouldn’t follow. He reached his pickup but heard approaching barking from other hounds.

  Before setting off, he looked again at the once-proud hospital and thought of the infant’s body. Maybe a desperate parent had carried the child so far and, like him, turned back after observing the soldiers. He appreciated the wisdom of using a hospital, with all its stores and equipment as a gang base, wondered at the fate of the patients in there, and after checking Jat’s wavering condition, left. He’d used the web to find the location of all the manufacturers of Humulin in its various forms within a hundred miles of Moraine Lake, and one could be found in amongst a group of industrial small-scale manufacturers on the outskirts of Banff.

  “Well, Jat, I don’t know if you can hear me, but there’s good news and bad news about Jenkin’s Pharmaceuticals. The bad news is that the only entrance is blocked and all the windows are shuttered. The good news is that it means it’s not been tampered with. I just hope I’m in time.” She didn’t reply. Her skin damp, her shallow breath smelt of pear drops, and she made jerky movements.

  Although he awoke each day not knowing this woman in any meaningful way, concern gnawed at him. He’d seen bodies on the sidewalks and gutters. Even ignoring those dying as a direct result of malicious attacks, the lack of antibiotics meant people died of abscesses and simple infections. This was especially the case where they were, away from family or any who could feed them. It only took three or four days without water for kidneys to fail but quicker for all those thousands on dialysis, or who forgot their epilepsy medication and hit their heads while falling. Tetanus used to be the main medieval killer, even on the battlefield. Modern children had the benefit of mass immunisation, as did adults, having boosters after minor injury, but most adults wouldn’t. Not that the bodies he saw would have died from tetanus or lack of antibiotics just yet. Their deaths beckoned from a month or so away. The addicts though—and weren’t we all addicts to something or other? Bad enough to get minor withdrawal symptoms from alcohol, tobacco, or caffeine for those without access to stores, but there were plenty of ill people who needed their daily morphine pain-controlling drugs. Clonic seizures would have incapacitated many, which left Manuel b
eing revolted and upset seeing them prone on the pavement.

  He looked again at the unconscious young woman beside him. Occasionally she stirred, rapid-eye-movement beneath her eyelids indicating dreaming or coming close to waking up. On the few occasions her eyes opened, they were bloodshot and scared. It scared him too. For all he knew, he had fallen in love with this beautiful person and she him. He didn’t think he could have gotten so lucky, but who could predict chemistry? Maybe it was hopeless and he would have to use the spade in the pickup to keep her body from the cadaver-eating packs of dogs and birds he’d seen, but he had to try.

  BEING ONLY A LOW BUILDING, the roof wasn’t difficult to get at with the ladder he’d stolen earlier. The skylight levered open with the aid of a crowbar he’d found in the pickup. The first real problem came when he looked down. Plan A was to pull the ladder up and manipulate it over the roof and through the skylight, but then it would have to be put into reverse, slowing any necessary quick getaway. He couldn’t be bothered with all that. Only one floor height—four metres. Easy. The flashlight picked out boxes beneath. Better if they were mattresses, but he wasn’t breaking into a motel, was he?

  By hanging by his fingers he saved at least two metres of the drop. However, his trembling fingers worried himself into changing his mind about getting the ladder. Better than broken legs. But it was too late, he lacked the strength to pull himself back up and time slipped by.

  The boxes cushioned his fall, but the breaking glass made a noise like a Saturn rocket taking off. He hoped he hadn’t just smashed the very insulin he’d come for. His jeans had protected his skin from serious lacerations, so he fished the flashlight out of the knapsack he had over his shoulder. He went first to the light switches just in case emergency backup electricity was available. No.

  This was more of a bottling plant than a laboratory. Manuel jogged up and down aisles. Bottles he ignored since the Humulin would be past their use-by date with no refrigeration. On the other hand, if he couldn’t find the neo-Humulin patches, he’d look again for phials since he doubted the ambient temperature in the building had risen above fifty for a month. The patches should have been kept in flat boxes in the refrigerated store. He found the store. The door gaped at him and his flashlight picked out opened cold storage cupboards and some boxes on the floor. It meant the place had been raided after all. Though only partially, judging by the many full boxes of patches and tablets. Maybe some responsible worker arranged for the lorry to block the door to stop further thefts. Or a local gang leader did it, intending to return for the rest later. With luck, his amnesia meant he wouldn’t be back in the next half hour or so.

  In desperation, Manuel rummaged through boxes, wishing he had a headband light. He found patches for every ailment he could think of. Smoking, appetite suppressants, heart conditions, cholesterol reduction, high blood pressure, low blood pressure, depression, and many others. So many, he formed a hypothesis that all the patches had the same ingredient just different labels. Suppose he had broken into the main placebo drug manufacturer. At last he found some boxes of neo-Humulin patches. Knowing they were slow release, he looked for at least one phial of Humulin to inject into Jat straight away. In a large walk-in fridge, he finally found some and bagged them too. All he had to do now was to escape.

  Figuring they had to change light bulbs, he found a maintenance section and borrowed a tall stepladder and emerged back onto the roof. Blinded by bright sunshine, which had burnt off the morning river mist, he found his ladder, and with a sigh, reached ground level.

  His pickup had gone. Running in a panic, he covered the empty parking area to the open gate. The industrial estate around held only an eerie silence. Featureless warehouses bordered plain tarmac streets. No houses. No people.

  Drained, he sat with his back leaning against Jenkin’s gate. He thought back to when he climbed out of the pickup, fetched the flashlight and crowbar out of the back, and put his bag over his shoulder. Had he locked the vehicle? He had thought so, knowing the comatose Jat wouldn’t regain consciousness. If she did, she could have unlocked the doors from the inside. Suppose she woke up and wondered where she was and took off? That must be it. In her state, it would be possible to drift in and out of awareness. He hadn’t thought she would be able to make decisions, let alone drive the pickup, but what other solutions were there? Some sneak thief got through the locked door, smashing a window, then hotwiring the very secure vehicles of 2015?

  He groped for the keys that should have been in his pocket. Not there, nor in the knapsack. He’d either left them in the ignition, which meant he hadn’t locked it. Or, they fell out of his pocket when he fell in the factory.

  Starting a long walk in the hope she was randomly driving and he’d find her, tears filled his eyes as he cursed himself. He should have left a note in case she woke up. In the state she would have been in, she wouldn’t have any memory of him or the cabin. She might be frightened. He remembered how belligerent and assertive she was when he found her in Lake Louise. He knew she didn’t need him to protect her. Did she? She’d be all right. If only she had the drugs he had for her survival.

  Tuesday 15 September 2015:

  In orbit.

  EARTH FROM 200 MILES UP FILLED THE PORTHOLE. It was better than watching their library of films, and Jena Kochi could not tire of the spectacular view. She had to admit to harbouring a soft spot for Saturday Night Fever—her weekly Travolta fix. Her reflected blue eyes matched the Pacific Ocean. A white disc of cirrus cloud advanced on Japan. Not that she could detect its movement even though she knew it would have been spinning at over a hundred miles per hour. She watched the ominous beast, with its central eye giving small respite to anyone beneath. She could forecast the dreadful weather for the next few days in southeast Asia, but would anyone down there be alerted to her warning? If there were, they’d already have known from the dedicated weather satellites. Though after losing twenty years of their memory, people are not going to be concerned about wild-wind predictions. She had family down there in the path of that hurricane. Her father was born in Kyoto, and although she rarely saw them, she had many Japanese aunts and uncles.

  Every other hour she’d have been able to gaze at the blue planet below, knowing thousands of brilliant engineers worked day and night double-checking computer feedback links, preparing science, technical, and even tourist expeditions to visit the Space Station. They’d have been monitoring the ISS crew’s health and arranging flights to restock dwindling supplies. A strange detachment gripped her, knowing that only a handful of people knew of their existence. None that could arrange flights to them or fix anything remotely from Earth. Even their families had stopped answering phones and cam links.

  A tear formed when she thought of her Canadian mother, Sarah, on anti-depressants and alcohol years ago. Jena blamed herself since her mother hated airplanes let alone space flights, but the urge overwhelmed Jena to take up her astro-engineering career, and she was damn brilliant at it. Since her first space flight four years ago, Sarah had refused to take Jena’s calls. Nevertheless, Jena wondered how her mother fared in this memory crisis. She dwelt on the ironic possibility of the chance Sarah would lose all the bad head-stuff in a few months’ time. Then, if her father managed to survive, maybe...

  Fat chance. The last time she talked to her father, he’d forgotten his colloquial English and she had to drag up what Japanese she knew. She knew he’d start forgetting where he lived at around the five-week stage, because they’d moved from Boston to Cheyenne. She wouldn’t be surprised to find he’d turned up at his old home and tried to contact police in Boston to no avail. She used a finger to wipe another tear, annoyed with her own frailty. Everyone on the space station had lost contact with their families.

  All the more reason for grasping at the links with Ryder in Wales and Charlotte in Australia. The ISS website, hosted and powered by themselves in space but accessible to anyone who could use the Internet, monitored hits occasionally. Those hits must be other
s who had electricity and the wherewithal to find their web address but too wary to leave their details. The Space Station would run out of life support within a couple of weeks and they would have to use their Marimar craft to return somewhere on Earth. Unless they could extend their stay. Now she had decided her friends and family were beyond help, maybe they should stay up for as long as possible.

  Raised voices in the command module behind her impinged on her rumination and pleasure gazing at the slow movie of rotating Earth, but she should participate in the on-board excitement. The shouting could just be a cooker over-heating Vlad’s rice but then a piercing beeping shook her.

  She yelled down the corridor, “It’s the proximity alarm!”

  “We know,” Dan said, “but none of the cameras show anything closer than an old weather satellite a thousand kilometres away.”

  “The Earth is closer,” said Vlad, tapping a button to turn the brain-damaging noise off. “Jena, you’ve been looking that way for the last hour. See anything?”

  “No, but apart from noting a huge tropical cyclone about to sweep over Japan, I’ve been daydreaming. Sorry, guys.”

  “Non preoccupare. Don’t worry,” Antonio said, “we’ve all been doing that lately.”

  “Excuse me,” Vlad said, “but for all we know, a hastily-thrown-together-supply-ship might be colliding with us.”

  “One with no radio, I suppose,” Dan said. “And maybe pigs flew it out here. It could have been a wiring fault, again.”

  Jena bristled. “I can’t help it. There’s only so much I can do with the engineering in this fairground...”

  “I know,” Dan said.

  “...and there’s precious little wiring as such. It’s all electronic modules...”

  “Jena, I know.”