The Susquehanna Virus Box Set

by Steve McEllistrem

  “But what about human fallibility?” Zora asked. “If we’re not perfect, we won’t get the right answers from your messengers. It’s like the game Telegraph where a message gets passed down the line from person to person and if the chain is long enough, the message that comes out at the end is nothing like the message that started the process.”

  “True,” Devereaux conceded.

  “That doesn’t strike me as perfectly good.”

  “I never claimed to be perfectly good. That is a burden placed on me by those who believe in me because they want my power to be used for good, not evil.”

  “What about the whole worship thing?” Curtik asked. “I mean, I might believe in you, but I don’t know if I could worship you.”

  “I don’t care if you worship me or not.”

  “But religions say we should worship you.”

  “I never asked for that either. But the prophets who started their religions, the ones who spoke to me, who believed in me, could not conceive of me as other than omnipotent, omniscient and all good. So they worshipped me and demanded that their followers worship me too.”

  “So you don’t care if we worship you?”

  “Why should I care? Do you think my ego is so fragile that it requires propping up by the likes of you?”

  Zora said, “You don’t sound like the God of the religions I’ve studied.”

  “That shouldn’t surprise you. Look at how many things those religions have gotten wrong. Intolerance, for example. Why would I care if a few individuals wanted to believe something other than the truth? Why would I care if there were multiple belief systems in place to assist people in arriving at a place of happiness and generosity?”

  “So which religion is correct?” Curtik asked. “Or which one is closest to the truth?”

  “They’re all right and they’re all wrong.”

  “More riddles,” Zora said.

  “More truth. Religions are correct in wanting to uplift the human spirit. They’re correct in preaching love. Religions are wrong in drawing a line to separate themselves from other religions and they’re wrong in claiming that they are the one true religion. Oh, there are a few that don’t claim to be the exclusive path to enlightenment. But all the major religions have gotten it wrong. Is that a better answer?”

  “You’re asking me?” Zora said.

  “Why not? Your opinion counts just as much as the next person’s.”

  “But you’re supposed to be God.”

  “I’m not only supposed to be God. I am God.”

  “Why us?” Curtik asked. “Why me and Zora?”

  “Because one of you wants to believe in me without worshipping me and one of you will never believe in me, no matter what proof I lay before you. You will always suspect it is some kind of trick.”

  Zora said, “We’ll be your greatest challenge?”

  “Not even close. But you two interest me.”

  “Why are you keeping us here against our will?” Zora asked.

  Devereaux shook his head. “I’m not. You are free to leave whenever you wish. You need only express that wish and I will release you.”

  “Hold on a second,” Curtik said. “If we ask to be freed, will we ever get another opportunity to speak with you?”

  “That I cannot answer.”

  “Because you don’t know or because you’re being mysterious?” Zora said.

  “I’m not omniscient,” Devereaux replied. “Nor am I omnipotent. And I’m certainly not all good, either by human standards or any other. I saw an opportunity to speak with you and I took it. I may not get another.”

  “But if you’re God,” Curtik said, “shouldn’t you be able to just think about having us here and make us appear?”

  “That’s the God of the Bible, certainly. And I could do it, but I don’t know that I would want to expend that much energy just to talk with you. Do you wish to leave?”

  “Yes,” Zora said.

  “No,” said Curtik. “Please, Zora. Not yet.”

  Zora looked from Devereaux to Curtik and back. Then she sighed and Curtik knew she would allow them to stay awhile longer.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Now, God, let me ask you this. If you can do pretty much anything, why don’t you stop all the evil in the world?”

  Devereaux smiled. “I have other things to attend to at the moment, but I’ll be back soon. If you would like anything, you need only express a wish for it.”

  “And it will appear?” Curtik asked.

  Devereaux vanished, leaving them alone at the top of the hill.

  “I’m not sure this was a good idea,” said Zora. “Jeremiah and the others will be worried about us.”

  “How many chances do you think we’re going to get to talk to God?” Curtik asked. “In almost all the stories, he appears for a short time, speaks to someone and then disappears. I’m afraid if we leave now, we might never see him again.”

  “I’m not sure that would be a bad thing.” Zora looked out over the garden. “Still, it is pretty.”

  “You think this is the real Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve lived?”

  “Those are just stories, Curtik.”

  “Well, I’m hungry.” Curtik lifted his head and called out. “Could we get something to eat and drink, please?”

  A small table appeared between them. It looked like a snake—its tail against the ground, its body winding around an invisible pole and its open mouth holding the glass top. As Curtik stared at the table, a bowl of apples and two glasses of water appeared on its surface, materializing out of thin air.

  Curtik laughed. This God had a sense of humor.

  Chapter 15

  Jeremiah waited in Lendra and Dr. Poole’s office for some word on Curtik and Zora. Everyone else seemed to be busy studying various screens or their interfaces and Devereaux stood quietly in the center of the room, no doubt accessing more information than all the rest of them combined. But they still had no idea where Curtik and Zora could be.

  He felt like lashing out. Useless, crippled, dying old man. Part of him wanted Devereaux’s fix, the changes that would make him stronger, faster and perhaps even impervious to laser strikes. Even if it was just for a few more years, it would feel amazing to have a body that could respond the way it once had. He’d felt so alive in that brief moment on the Moon after he’d been shot—his body reaching a new plane of existence. Invincible. Immortal. Unstoppable. Yet even as he bathed in the exhilaration of unspeakable power, he’d seen what he might become and that prospect had terrified him.

  He knew people like President Hope and even Lendra would ultimately seek to harness him, control his mind, if he possessed those abilities. They couldn’t afford to have him running around with free will, doing whatever he wanted whenever he wanted, possibly interfering with their plans for the world. And if they knew he was dying, they might put him into a robotic shell like Devereaux. Or they might decide to use him for extremely dangerous missions while they still could, missions of a morally questionable nature. As a sick man, he enjoyed a certain freedom he would not be allowed were he to regain his prowess.

  Jay-Edgar cleared his throat.

  “Yes?” Lendra said.

  “I finished doing a full analysis of the bullet. I don’t know how, but every trace amount of information it accumulated for a thirty-seven-minute period was wiped.”

  “Nothing at all?” Lendra said.

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Major Payne?”

  “I have to agree,” Major Payne said. “I’ve run a second analysis and a deep scan. Nothing. But it couldn’t have gone far. I’ve ordered three squads to run scans of every possible hiding place within a fifteen-mile radius.”

  “How long will that take?” Dr. Poole asked.

  “Without help, eight or ten hours. But I’ve asked t
he local police departments and the FBI to assist. HQ is coordinating the effort. With their assets, I’m hoping we’ll be able to scan all the likely sites in a couple hours.”

  “Professor?” Jeremiah said. “Professor Devereaux?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t help,” said Devereaux. “I can tell you that Edwin Fowler put new computers in place today, unlinked to the outside world.”

  “Who’s he?” Hannah asked.

  “President and CEO of Natural Hybrids Incorporated,” Devereaux replied.

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “He’s the last piece of the puzzle,” Jeremiah said. “The network of corporations that run the world. Food, finance, security, communications and healthcare. We’ve infiltrated all their systems.”

  “But if he just put in new computers unlinked to the outside,” Jay-Edgar said, “how are you going to infiltrate the company?”

  “He bought the computers from a company we wanted him to buy from.”

  “You sabotaged his new computers. How?”

  “The batteries,” Jeremiah said.

  “It was a brilliant idea,” Devereaux said. “Jeremiah actually came up with it. A coating on the batteries allows for infiltration through Fowler’s PlusPhone, although the signal is weak, so data transmission is slow.”

  “Our plan is to determine how much they’re manipulating society and decide whether we should take them down.” Jeremiah shrugged. “Unfortunately, we’re a little sidetracked now with this God situation as well as Curtik and Zora, so he and his friends will have to wait.”

  Dr. Poole said, “We have another problem—the Susquehanna Virus.”

  “What about it?” Lendra asked.

  “We’re beginning to see three strains assert themselves more aggressively—SV12, SV14 and SV17. SV12 and SV14 don’t appear to be fatal—at least not immediately—but they are becoming symptomatic at an increasing rate. And they appear to be mutating rapidly. The only good news is that all the new mutations we’re seeing—with the exception of SV17—are not deadly. And SV17, while fatal, takes a long time to overcome the body’s immune system.”

  “SV12 and SV14,” Devereaux said. He turned to Jeremiah. “As we suspected.”

  “We may have to move more quickly than we hoped.”

  Lendra said, “What are you two talking about?”

  “Edwin Fowler,” said Jeremiah. He turned to Devereaux. “You should explain it, Professor. You’re the one who discovered it.”

  Devereaux nodded, the gesture making him look so human Jeremiah had to remind himself that the great man’s mind was encased in a robotic shell.

  “We’ve known for decades,” said Devereaux, “that certain viruses, parasites and bacteria can alter personality and even intelligence. Parasites like taxoplasma gondii and viruses like red algae are just the start. We think Fowler and his company are experimenting with the Susquehanna Virus, hoping to make it nonlethal but also attempting to alter it so it will act as a delivery mechanism for personality and intelligence changes. And they’re putting it in our food.”

  Dr. Poole said, “To make us more addictive and less intelligent?”

  “As well as more impulse oriented,” Devereaux replied. “And the two strains you mentioned— SV12 and SV14—are the most malleable. A sophisticated scientific team could modify those strains to make them behave more like these natural microbial infections. The right team could even accentuate the effect with only slight adjustments to the virus.”

  Hannah said, “What’s their goal?”

  “Control,” said Jeremiah. “They want to control us completely. They want us to buy their products and remain passive when they engage in behavior that ought to enrage us. They want wealth and power and a world of humans to treat them like gods.”

  Dr. Poole said, “And the other companies you mentioned? They’re involved too?”

  “Only the top people. Most of the employees are simply trying to make tastier food or create better communications equipment or design medical breakthroughs to ease human suffering. Very few are aware of the conspiracy at the top.”

  Major Payne said, “I can have the Elite Ops partner with the police and descend on their corporate headquarters to arrest them all.”

  “We don’t yet have the proof we need,” said Devereaux. “This effort to obtain information from their computers is the first step in bringing them to justice. We hope we’ll get the data we need to prosecute them.”

  “And if you don’t?” Hannah asked.

  Jeremiah shrugged.

  Major Payne said, “I don’t want to sound like I’m going rogue again, but the Elite Ops could take them out.”

  “That’s a last resort option,” said Jeremiah. “Until we know who all is part of the conspiracy, we don’t want to move. And given your history with Richard Carlton in Minnesota, I wouldn’t dare ask you to get involved. If we chose that route, it would have to be a more covert operation.”

  “Can we warn people?” Lendra asked.

  Dr. Poole said, “Aren’t there scientists studying this? What about the FDA? Shouldn’t they have caught the infiltration of the virus into our food?”

  “There are ways around the FDA,” said Devereaux. “And it’s not just food. Variants of SV12 and SV14 are in the water and air now. That’s part of the problem. It’s difficult to prove where these modified strains originated. They can always claim it was accidental—that their facilities were contaminated without their knowledge or that they were somehow hacked and as a result unwittingly infected us.”

  “And a few researchers have been warning about the virus for years,” Jeremiah added. “Several scientists have come forward with evidence of greater infiltration than the mainstream community has acknowledged.”

  “I’ve heard them,” Lendra said, “but they’ve always been dismissed as quacks.”

  “That’s where the media outlets come into play,” said Devereaux. “They control the messages we receive. Every time one of these people comes forward with a warning, a dozen scientists on the other side dismiss it as hyperbole. It brings to mind the dismissal of global warming at the beginning of the century, when science was usurped by politics, faith and corporate interests.”

  “But most scientists are honest,” Dr. Poole said.

  “You’re right.” Devereaux shrugged, another human gesture. “But many are paid by large corporations to do studies that promote the companies’ viewpoints, and the results of those studies make the media far more often. Those are the stories that catch the public’s attention because the large companies have figured out the precise metrics for getting their messages across—the right blend of fear and greed.”

  “And most of the scientific community,” Jeremiah added, “has been focused on larger problems, like the deadly nature of most of the strains. The timing was perfect. If we didn’t have to deal with such a serious disease, there would have been much more attention paid to this problem.”

  “So what’s our next step?” Lendra said. “Data collection and monitoring?”

  “I’m afraid so,” said Devereaux. “Until we get something more definitive, we can’t arrest anyone.”

  Jay-Edgar cleared his throat and said, “What if Lendra and I hacked their systems? I realize you’re probably better at it than we are, but we did hack the Las-cannons. We could give it a try, see if we can come up with something, if it’s all right with Lendra.”

  Lendra nodded and said, “Maybe. I’m guessing they’ve been very careful to keep these conversations off their systems. Probably lots of face-to-face meetings.”

  “Yes, but they likely had meetings at places with security systems. If we could hack into those systems, we might be able to download vid or audio of their conversations.”

  “It’s worth a try,” said Jeremiah. “However, they’re in cahoots with White Knight
Security as well, and Devereaux found it difficult to hack into their network. Meanwhile, we need to focus on getting Curtik and Zora back.”

  “We’re doing everything we can,” Lendra said. “You’re just going to have to be patient.”

  “When we do find them,” said Dr. Poole, “we may have to break them out. Will you be able to help with that given your condition? And what happens if we have to go after Fowler and the rest?”

  They all turned to look at him. Jeremiah saw the questions on every face, even Devereaux’s. Amazing how Devereaux had created a robotic face so similar to his old one that Jeremiah couldn’t tell the difference. He knew what they were all thinking. How could he not maximize his abilities to assist them? How could he stand here and let others fight his battles for him? Didn’t he care?

  “No,” he said. “I don’t want the cure, whatever it is. We’ll find another way.”

  Their faces sagged. He knew they only wanted what was best for him. He knew they thought he was choosing pain over happiness, but they couldn’t see what his last few years would be like if he became the creature they wanted him to be. Better to suffer a free man than live in comfort as a slave.

  Chapter 16

  Aspen led the cadets to the bridge of the ship, where Xinliu and Mei-Xing stood—the two “female” robots looking nearly identical. Aspen could tell them apart now by the way they held themselves: Xinliu always that little bit hunched over, as if the weight of command, such as it was, were pushing down on her; and Mei-Xing with her chin pushed forward slightly, mirroring her aggressive attitude.

  The bridge needed no one to man the controls, for the ship ran itself, but a command chair sat in the center of the space and there were several chairs at stations around the room, all empty.

  On the forward screen Aspen saw an image of stars she didn’t recognize, but she knew it wasn’t real. It was the image the ship wanted them to see. They were still somewhere in the solar system.

  “You’re here about the Chescala,” Xinliu said, adopting Shiloh’s term for their adversaries.