Burning Mold

by Jefferson Nunn

  “In the end this technology will truly push for a better life and let us know more about ourselves than ever. Imagine the possibilities of identifying the probability of a degenerative disease developing in the upcoming years or if it will be inherited by your children,” said Chad, trying to avoid tearing up as he brought up all these items. There were also important considerations in his life that he had crunched through other models and had properly assessed the fact that with his current life condition he could potentially reach to be age seventy-six and Nikki sixty-eight.

  Those last numbers never pleased him, but he was aware that even with all the technology in the world there was only so much that they could push their own life and years. They were mere mortals and eternity was reserved only for heroes and gods.

  “But I am moving away from the question. To go back to the important point, yes, we are taking considerations and other models and possibilities through live feed and data. We are limiting the interaction from our Artificial Intelligence Model with the rest of the living peers inside the MQC range and progressing forward as we see that the Model takes the appropriate actions,” said Chad as he went back to the “Thank you” slide.

  “We know there are many areas of opportunities and we have not discarded them. We are working to improve and provide the best type of technology and with it the next generation of human-to-technology interaction to the point where it will become completely invisible,” said Chad as he examined the list of questions. There were none left, and all the attendees had completely vanished into the buffet area.

  “I hope to have answered all your questions and I thank you for your participation in our Q & A section,” said Chad. As the conference ended Cheryl felt that there was something terribly amiss on the scope of this project, but she would have to dig considerably into it to fully understand more about the initial intentions and investors.

  Chapter 12

  The Truth behind the Outbreak

  Dallas, Texas

  Her Lyft had left her at a hospital just four blocks away from the Cityplace square. From her current location she could understand why her driver insisted on taking a different route and, while not sure to agree with such a demanding request from a person she had never met, she agreed and had arrived in half the originally proposed time.

  She also thought about that man who had taken a ride with her. It was by mere chance that they had shared a flight, but also to have shared the same ride made her think that there was something that could have happened there. Aries seemed like a fitting name. Then she cleared her mind about those thoughts and went back to the delicate situation at hand.

  She walked into the lobby and was surprised at how empty it was. The only person there was the receptionist behind the main desk, who promptly interrupted her from doing anything else.

  “Can I help you, ma’am?” said the receptionist with curiosity and a demanding tone of voice, as if she should not be there. Jean felt slightly uncomfortable about the situation but was resolute in getting the information she needed.

  “I am Jean Callahan with the CDC. I have an interview with one of the doctors here and would like to confirm if he’s currently at his office?” asked Jean. The receptionist looked slightly confused at her request.

  “The CDC?” she asked, and Jean nodded.

  “Yes, I called in advance and confirmed that the doctor was here,” Jean said and saw the receptionist reach out for a phone at her side, dialing without taking her sight from Jean. “Do you want me to wait?”

  “Please stay there while I confirm,” said the receptionist as the phone rang. As soon as someone picked it up, she interrupted the person. “We have someone from the CDC here about an interview.”

  There was an awkward silence which Jean could not properly assess. Why there was such secrecy or so many questions about her presence was something that was raising suspicions that something was going on at the hospital and that they had probably been waiting for someone to come.

  “Let her in. Please close the front door,” said the male voice with booming command on the other end of the phone. The receptionist quickly complied with this order. She rapidly proceeded to a door to the left of the reception desk, which was opened with an RFID tag hanging from a collar around her neck.

  “Go down the hall to your left, to the third floor. Once you are out of the elevator it will be to your right, three doors down. You can’t miss it,” said the receptionist as she held the door open. Jean did not ask anything else and moved rapidly through the hallway. The hospital seemed empty, and most of the rooms had no signs of anyone using them.

  Once at the elevator she went up to the third floor and proceeded to the office of Doctor Matthew Sandberg, one of the figures who was the most prominent in the reports she had read so far. With more than eighty cases reported from his office, Jean was sure he would be the right candidate to provide her with more information on the matter.

  As she arrived at the office, she knocked lightly on the door, which immediately sprung open. A large man received her and promptly pulled her into the office. Then making sure the door was closed, he sighed and looked back at Jean.

  “From the CDC, correct?” asked Doctor Sandberg as he sat down in his chair and sighed. His larger-than-life figure slightly disgusted Jean, but she kept it to herself while staying composed as she heard this man breathing heavily. “I knew someone was going to come. I was not sure if it was going to be you or the NSA, to be quite honest.”

  “The NSA?” Jean asked in disbelief while she slowly sat down in the chair right in front of the doctor. “What is going on?”

  “In the last three days I have attended more than eighty patients. Most of them show the same signs: bleeding through the mouth, nose and anal cavity. Some of them reported diarrhea, muscular pain and in some cases fever that could be mild or severe.” As the doctor continued describing the problem, Jean promptly stopped him.

  “Bleeding from the mouth. There is no--” The doctor stopped her as promptly as she had stopped him.

  “This is not like Ebola. The bleeding is produced from the vomiting effort, but I thought that would be clear from my current description. The same from the anal cavity, which is a consequence of the severe diarrhea in some of the cases I saw,” said the doctor and produced a set of medical records from the computer in front of him.

  “But you need to understand that while we could not find anything in the usual tests we performed that would allow us to properly assess the origin or type of pathogen, I am positive that there is a relation between all of the patients I have been seeing during the last days,” the doctor continued as flipped through multiple records.

  “You mentioned the usual tests. Is there something else that was taken into consideration?” Jean asked, and the doctor nodded as he zoomed into one of the records breaking all privacy of the data of their patients and risking a larger legal problem if someone ever figured out that this information was being shared with someone who had not been properly identified.

  “I did perform more complete tests with some of my older patients. While most of these came back clean, there was one that caught my eye.” The doctor zoomed into the file in front of her. “Elizabeth Palmer, born May 5th, 1964. She came in to be treated for polyps and the operation went completely smoothly. The only thing that we found later was that she was having a considerable amount of pain after she came back to her senses.”

  “How is this related to the rest of your patients?” asked Jean as she saw Doctor Sandberg open up some of the files and put them to the side. He had his sharp green eyes set on finding something in the documentation he was going through.

  “After this happened to her, she began presenting symptoms akin to those whom I had consulted previously. She told me this after she called me to consult about the pain,” said the doctor as he stopped for a moment to look at Jean. “How odd is it that we have been working with patients all day long with the same symptoms and one that comes in for a
completely different case apparently goes out with the same condition?”

  “What about the type of transmission? It must be airborne if this is the case,” said Jean, and Doctor Sandberg sighed at this as he nodded.

  “Potentially, since I did not have contact with her. It was Doctor Sandberg who took care of the polyps, which leads me to the following question. When we did tests on most of our patients, we did ignore one detail, and this was only because the symptoms were not severe enough to have an X-ray performed on them,” said Doctor Sandberg as he slowly pulled out the X-ray results and showed them to Jean. He took a pen and pointed at the dark shadows on the sides of the lungs. “This is mold.”

  “What?” Jean said, as she examined the X-ray plate closer. As Doctor Sandberg pointed out, there were build- ups of what looked like black mold on the edges of the lungs, which would jump out even if someone without medical knowledge looked at it. “This is impossible.”

  “I know. The build-up is considerable, which would make me believe it has been months or years that she has been living in a condition that would grant her this state, but that would be impossible, as I have never before seen her present any symptoms related to mold building up in her respiratory system,” said Doctor Sandberg. He stopped for a moment, put the pen to the side and pointed to the esophagus with his finger and tapped at it. “Mold.”

  “Mold does not build up in the esophagus,” said Jean as he saw the doctor slowly moving his hand towards the stomach area. The top of the stomach wall showed small signs the same as the ones in the lungs. “Or the stomach area?”

  Jean was shocked at what she was seeing. Doctor Sandberg swiped the X-ray aside and extended both hands towards her. Speechless, he could only raise both shoulders and stutter for a moment before building up to where he intended to go.

  “You had to drink this, period,” said Doctor Sandberg, who remained silent as he observed the plate again and sighed. “The thing is that in order to have such a build-up, she would have had to drink it for an extended period of time or….”

  “Or?” asked Jean, knowing where the Doctor was going, but she needed to hear it coming out of his mouth. Yet her willingness to wait for his action had run thin and spoke for her. “This is not mold. This is some biological agent.”

  “To be fairly honest, that’s a very far shot, but the United States has enough enemies around the world, both domestic and foreign, so to assume this is not very far from the truth,” said Doctor Sandberg as he lay back on the chair and expressed surprise. “What a time to be alive. We just had a pandemic a few years ago and now there is a biological agent set loose.”

  “Do you have any additional evidence to do a correlation?” As Jean asked this, Doctor Sandberg took a box from below his desk and placed it on the desk.

  “You have fifteen minutes. Take any pictures you need and make sure that this does not go outside of you, me, or anyone else at the CDC that needs to look at this information,” said Doctor Sandberg as he stood up and walked towards the door. “I’m getting a coffee. Want one?”

  “I am good,” answered Jean with a knot in her throat. As the doctor left the room, she slowly sat down at the computer was shocked at the amount of medical records. For a moment she hesitated about taking any of the information, but she needed hard evidence. Otherwise they would not take her seriously when she came back and declared that biological warfare had been undertaken

  .

  She moved as fast as she could through the files. Most of these patients had no relation to one another. Their symptoms were the same, and for a moment she could take quick looks at the documentation, which gave her a glance at additional commentary from doctors who were also mentioning the same concerns that Doctor Sandberg had brought up. One of them went as far as indicating that this could be related potentially to the drinking water supply of Dallas.

  For a moment she stood still, almost frozen. The water supply of Dallas was suffering through the same problems as the rest of the United States, with all the cuts in funding in public infrastructure.

  This made it far too obvious. Someone knew this information and had made the right guess about potentially poisoning the water supply with a mold that could not be detected with the current technology and could not be cleared out properly without the proper treatment and chemicals. The blood was on the wall.

  As she finished collecting all the evidence, Doctor Sandberg returned with his coffee. “Have everything you need?”

  “This is very good hard evidence. I need to make a quick call, if you do not mind,” said Jean. Doctor Sandberg pointed to his extension.

  “Dial zero, then five. That should let you call wherever you need to,” said Doctor Sandberg as he slowly sipped on his coffee, then made a face of disgust. “Been sitting in that machine for days. Damn, can’t even have someone change the coffee every day.”

  “I was about to ask about this,” Jean said as she sat down, but before dialing back to the CDC. “Where is everyone?”

  “Most are home. As you may understand, we take enough precautions to prevent the spread of any disease in this hospital. Due to our high handling of high-risk patients, this is important,” said Doctor Sandberg as he sipped again on the coffee and made another face of disgust. “I need more sugar for this.”

  As Doctor Sandberg left, Jean made a face of disappointment and disgust. Being a doctor, he should take more care of himself, but she could not judge him too harshly, since he was the only one who had the courage to allow an interview and give her what she needed.

  Once the doctor was far away, Jean dialed from her smartphone. Asking for a phone had just been a distraction to get some privacy, since she was not sure yet how much she could trust him.

  It took her some time, but she was able to get ahold of the CDC Director and explain the situation to him. At first he seemed very comprehensive of the situation, but as Jean continued to explain it and the potential implications of a foreign or domestic actor, Stephen had to push hard on the brakes.

  “Look, Jean, I understand your concern about this, but we are jumping to conclusions. Without more evidence, what you just mentioned is a very hard sell to anyone,” said Stephen as he clicked on a pen he carried with him at all times. “We need more evidence to sustain this and so far you have not provided anything that could indicate this. Sure, it could be that the water supply may need inspecting, but the numbers are far too low to consider a biological act of war.”

  “Sir, with all due respect, the evidence is very clear that there is an external influence on this and while it could be possible to think about this as a hard sell, we must not ignore the evidence,” said Jean as she steered the conversation back to the evidence provided to her. But Stephen would not have any of it.

  “Jean, if I go and tell anyone about this, with the current evidence this will only put us in a very complicated situation. You do understand our current budget constraints,” said Stephen. Jean sighed at this reminder. At every turn when something important was happening, they would bring this item up but even considering that, Jean continued to push through and find ways to help deal with this pressure and put more and more into automation and models that could help them cut expenses.

  “I understand, sir, but this is important. There is something happening here in Dallas and we could be talking about the ground zero of another pandemic,” said Jean. Stephen began to click faster on his pen.

  “Under my office there will not be talks about another pandemic unless we are one hundred percent sure of this, and that is final. What you have told me about right now are the delusional and paranoid assumptions of a doctor, combined with your own need to find something to put yourself up on a pedestal for everyone to see,” said Stephen with notable anger in his way of expressing herself. For a moment Jean thought about what had happened and why this was suddenly an issue when she had intended only to help.

  “This is enough. You will return to your station and drop this immediately. I want to s
ee the expenses of this project of yours immediately delivered to me. I cannot have a rogue agent going around spending money on a hunch,” said Stephen before disconnecting the call.

  Jean had not noticed that he hung up. She tried to talk to Stephen about why she was doing this investigation. Finding no reply, she saw that the call had ended a considerable time before.

  “Sounds like you are finding yourself against a very large wall,” said Doctor Sandberg, who had managed to finish his coffee and was just listening from the doorway.

  “I have to get someone to take action. Maybe Homeland Security or the FBI?” asked Jean as she pushed herself back into the office chair and looked at her smartphone. “Maybe the WHO could get involved.”

  “Whichever it is, I recommend you think carefully about what your intentions are. You may get yourself some unwanted attention from this,” said Doctor Sandberg.

  Chapter 13

  Plumbing Dreams

  “Damn it,” said Steve as he began to flush the concoction he had built onto the bathtub and was then flashed by the smell of chemicals that were eating away at whatever was on the drain. For a moment he absorbed so much of it that he felt as if he were about to pass out. Without thinking too much about it he rapidly went out and stood next to the window as he coughed heavily from the intake. “God damn instructions didn’t say anything about this,” he muttered to himself.

  As he asked for Siri to reread the instructions, he noticed they ended halfway through. When Steve asked again for the information, the same thing happened. With a grunt, he went through the information himself, just to see that the page had been vandalized. He figured at this point that whatever chemicals he might have used could have been right or wrong.