Blockbuster

by Lisa von Biela

  The 554 pulled up and opened its door. Sylvia palmed the next swab in her purse and stepped just inside the bus as she broke open the seal and trailed her gloved hand along the door, rail, and paypoint surfaces.

  “Does this bus stop at Spring and Walnut?”

  “No, ma’am. The 214 does, though. It’s right behind me.”

  “Thanks.”

  She turned and struggled to get past the passengers jamming the door to board the bus. She made sure to touch a couple of people’s backpacks as she went past them. Then she disposed of the swab in the trash on her way back to sit and wait on the bench.

  Her stomach clenched as she noticed the bus had filled and two of the passengers were turned away. They returned to the bench and sat on her left.

  One of them grumbled, “They’ve got to add another bus to this route. Damned thing fills up all the time. I hate having to wait for the next one.”

  The other one nodded. “Me, too. Third time this week I had to wait for the next one.”

  The pair continued to complain to each other about lousy bus service as Sylvia fought off panic and tried to think of what to do next. They would expect her to get on the next bus. The last thing she needed was to get stuck actually taking the damned bus downtown and having to make her way back to her car here at the park and ride. But she’d look suspicious if she didn’t.

  Two buses was just going to have to be enough. She averted her face from the other two people, who, for the moment, were still engaged in their lively bitchfest about poor bus service, and palmed a third swab. She broke it open and rubbed it along as much of the bus bench surface as she dared, then stood, quickly dumped it in the trash can, and returned to her car.

  CHAPTER 29

  Emily Lewis was having a bad day. It had started from the moment she woke up that morning. Her stomach had been a little, well, off. Not quite bad enough to call in sick, but her morning coffee didn’t seem to sit right, either.

  She’d only recently started her job at the coffee shop, so she didn’t have any sick leave built up. So, trooper that she was, she downed a little peppermint tea in hopes it would settle her stomach and headed in to work.

  The coffee shop was a small, mom-and-pop sort of place near the University District, so her job responsibilities were broad and business was brisk. She greeted people as they came in, took them to their tables, and handed them their menus. She took orders from those who sat at the old-fashioned lunch counter and even handled all the customers’ payments on their way out. Most days she felt she had to be in several places simultaneously. Most days, she had the energy to handle it, but not today.

  About midway through the morning, she asked a coworker if the heat had been set too high. After receiving an odd look in response, she figured the problem was with her, not the thermostat. She stood at the counter and fanned herself with a menu as the last of the morning customers finished their food and paid their bills.

  By mid-day, she started feeling much worse. Her throat rather suddenly became scratchy and painful. Swallowing felt like she was gargling with broken glass. Her nose started to itch and run. Emily hadn’t planned for any of this, and so didn’t have tissues handy. She had to keep dashing into the bathroom to get some TP to blow her nose. And it just kept getting worse.

  Finally, she asked a coworker to take over the counter crowd and her other duties so she could just handle the payments. Feeling too ill to stand, she pulled up a stool and slumped onto it. She mechanically took patrons’ credit cards and cash, and hoped none of them were grossed out by the rashes that had developed on the backs of her hands.

  Emily told herself to buck up, because in just a few more hours she could go home and go to bed. After all, she was a trooper. Troopers don’t call in sick for just a little flu. They tough it out and earn their pay.

  CHAPTER 30

  Sylvia leaned back in her chair. She preferred the quiet and isolation of the lab, despite the necessary hassle of wearing her hazmat suit. The limbo-like environment fit well with her mood these days.

  Several weeks had passed since she’d released the pathogen onto the buses, and there had been no dramatic announcement in the news to reflect it. This could mean one of two things. Either her plan had failed utterly, or it was working perfectly. She’d spent many hours in the interim wondering which was the case.

  Unless and until the new disease became fairly widespread, it would likely be passed off by victims and health providers alike as just another vague flu-like illness. At least at first. At some point, if the disease spread adequately, it would become apparent it had its own fingerprint. At least, that was the plan.

  Meanwhile, all they could do was wait. Jerry had withdrawn even further—if that was possible—and spent most of his time alone in his ResearchStation pod, doing some research or other. So she sat alone in the lab each day and wondered if she had managed to singlehandedly turn a new pathogen loose on the population. She made a wry face. What a great thing for the résumé.

  Anxious to do something other than just sit and wait, Sylvia took a petri dish from the Pathosym’s incubator and placed a sample of the pathogen on a glass microscope slide. She returned the dish to its slot and took the slide to the microscope. She clipped the slide onto the microscope’s stage and turned on the light.

  Idly she gazed through the lens at what, for better or worse, was a sort of progeny. It featured the chain-like structure of spheres typical of a staphylococcus, just like its ancestors, the original MRSA and the more recent, more deadly, MRSA-II. She watched as several strands wriggled across her field of vision.

  But then something caught her eye that she didn’t expect, and had never seen before. Two of the chains approached each other in a seemingly deliberate manner. Then they intertwined with each other. In a matter of moments, they completely merged. Bacteria normally reproduce by splitting, but these had merged together, clear as day.

  She stared into the scope, barely breathing. What did it mean? After several minutes, she saw the merged pair redivide. She’d never seen bacteria behave in that way. Stranger still, the two newly divided bacteria moved differently than the others. They seemed somehow more…purposeful.

  Sylvia quickly grabbed a glass micropipette and guided it toward the new organisms as she watched through the scope’s lens. She picked them up and deposited them in a fresh glass petri dish, which she then slid into one of the Pathosym’s slots. She quickly tapped the control panel to order a complete analysis of these newly emerged specimens.

  Something didn’t sit right with her, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. She decided to keep it to herself until the Pathosym reported its findings.

  CHAPTER 31

  Todd Barrett stood at the podium in front of his 1L Civil Procedure class and wondered what to do next. Granted, the students’ energy and interest levels typically waned shortly into the spring semester, but this was ridiculous. The room was half-empty, and those who were present looked like zombies.

  He decided to try a cold call to liven things up. “Mr. Anderson, what does the Celotex case tell us about the standard for summary judgment?”

  His victim snapped to attention, or tried to. His mouth hung open like a fish out of water struggling to breathe. He cleared his throat. “Summary judgment?”

  “Yes, you’ve heard of it, haven’t you? Have you read today’s cases?”

  “Yes, Professor. I did.” He drew the back of his hand across his forehead. “I just…can’t quite remember…I’m not feeling well today.”

  “Then why aren’t you home in bed?”

  “Afraid to miss class and get behind.”

  “I see. Volunteers? What’s the standard?”

  Not a single hand went up. Eyes darted in every direction except the front of the room, as if by doing so, they could make themselves invisible and therefore immune from the dreaded cold call.

  Todd glanced at the time displayed on the wall in glowing green digits. Still a half hour left of class, but h
e was getting nowhere fast with this crew. “Are you all not feeling well today?”

  Heads nodded silently.

  “All right. Class dismissed. Get home to bed; get to Student Health. Do what you need to do to get better—and try not to spread this around any more than you already have. Be ready to discuss today’s cases next time class meets. Take care, everyone.”

  His students gathered up their things and shuffled out of the room before he could change his mind. As he watched them go, he realized this was the tail end of the flu season, and he’d never before had a class hit so hard by it. He shook his head and headed back to his office. He hoped if any of them visited him during his office hours that he didn’t catch whatever they had.

  CHAPTER 32

  Anxious to see what the analysis revealed, Sylvia drew her chair close to the Pathosym console and tapped an icon to request the results. In a moment, the screen displayed the complete report.

  She scrutinized the information, at first noting nothing surprising. The sample showed the organism remained pathogenic, yet sensitive to their antibiotic compound. The transmission mode remained the same, as did the profile of symptoms the organism would trigger in its victims.

  The overall profile looked quite similar to that of the organism she and Jerry had designed. But that pairing and splitting behavior! It was too unusual not to reflect in some way. She had to be missing something.

  Sylvia tapped another icon to display the two sets of results side by side with a delta analysis. She studied the report closely, looking for those data points where there was a difference between the two samples. Nothing. She continued down the list, finally encountering the only significant delta.

  Tendency to mutate.

  Her breath caught as she realized the significance of her finding and compared the contrasting measurements. The organism—as designed—demonstrated nearly no tendency to mutate. But the specimens that she saw spontaneously commingle and divide showed an extremely high tendency to mutate. Was this a one-off lab aberration—or could this have also occurred in the specimens she had released into the population?

  Sylvia stood and stepped away from the Pathosym, as if putting physical distance between herself and the display would help her think clearly and calmly about what it had just told her. It didn’t. Trembling, she pressed the button on her PortiComm through her hazmat suit, called Jerry, and asked him to come to the lab to discuss an important new development.

  Two words ran through her mind as she waited for him.

  What if?

  Jerry arrived in the lab some minutes later after donning his protective gear and passing through the double doors.

  “What is it?” He spoke in a clipped, cold tone, as if he didn’t want to be in her presence a second longer than absolutely necessary.

  “Jerry, we may have a problem.”

  He folded his arms. “With what?”

  Sylvia explained what she’d seen under the microscope and what the Pathosym had told her in the delta analysis. Jerry just glared at her as she spoke.

  “And what do you want me to do about it? That’s the risk you take when you deliberately distribute a pathogen.” He waved a hand toward the Pathosym. “Sure, we ran all the available tests, and our equipment is highly accurate. But given time, any organism can mutate. Looks like this one is capable of creating a version of itself that is exceptionally susceptible to mutation. I’d say all bets are off.”

  Feeling weak in the knees, Sylvia lowered herself into a chair. “Well, mutation doesn’t have to be in the direction of increased virulence. No. It doesn’t. And it doesn’t have to be a major change. It could be more incremental. We deliberately used a mild pathogen in creating this organism.” She looked up at Jerry, hoping he’d agree with her or say something to quell her gut-level fear of the worst possible scenario. She couldn’t help but think now that she should have listened to her superstitious feelings before she’d taken those irrevocable steps to spread the disease.

  “Yeah, we spliced a mild pathogen with an incredibly deadly one that killed an impressive number of people in a pretty short time before Denali came up with the cure. Come on, we need to let Phil know about this.”

  * * *

  After explaining what they had just discovered, Sylvia looked almost physically ill, and Jerry sat with his arms folded and jaw clenched tight. As he grasped the implications of what they’d told him, Phil wished he’d never authorized the project in the first place. God knew what would happen now.

  He pressed his fingers to his temples as the beginnings of a headache stirred inside his skull. “So, this particular strain mutated in the lab, right? We don’t know for a fact that it’s happened elsewhere?”

  “No, we don’t know that. I just happened to see what I saw under the microscope when I was doing some follow-up studies. I have no way to know if this has occurred outside the lab, or even if it’s happened in any of the other colonies in the lab.” Sylvia drew a trembling hand across her forehead as if she felt feverish.

  Grimacing with sudden sharp pain, Phil leaned his head to one side to ease a spasming neck muscle. “So this could be a one-time thing or it could be a development of the gravest kind—we just don’t know.”

  Sylvia nodded and stared into her lap.

  Jerry spoke up. “I’m not sure what we can do with this information. It’s not like we can recall what’s been distributed. We don’t even know yet how much or how far it’s spread in the population.”

  Sylvia shot Jerry a vicious glare, then stood and faced Phil. “There is something we can do.” She began to pace with increasing momentum as she spoke. “Let’s say the organism is establishing itself and spreading out there. We engineered it to be highly contagious but to only cause a relatively mild illness. So the early…victims…are probably just self-treating for the symptoms. That’s why we’re not hearing about it yet. But knowing what we know now, that’s dangerous.”

  She stopped pacing and faced Phil again. “We have to take whatever steps are necessary to make sure those who contract it are quarantined until the disease runs its course—or until they are cured, once the companion antibiotic is released. If people treat this like a mild illness, it’s going to spread like…well, like we planned. Given the potential danger of it mutating to something deadly with no cure, we can’t allow people to self-treat without quarantine.”

  “We can’t do that.”

  “Why not, Phil? It’s the only way!”

  “For one thing, the disease hasn’t yet been officially recognized, so how would you identify victims? And even once it is recognized, no one’s going to submit to quarantine when all they have is a little flu-like illness, with maybe an upset stomach and a mild rash. That wouldn’t even pass the laugh test. No medical professional would agree to that, and imagine the public’s reaction. No way.” He waved his hand to dismiss the crazy idea.

  “Phil’s right. The only way to convince the public or the medical profession that quarantine was appropriate would be to tell them what we found out today—and why it’s a problem.” Jerry didn’t even look at Sylvia as he spoke.

  “Which would mean admitting that we designed the organism and released it in the first place.” Phil let out a slow breath. “I can’t even count the ways that would bring the company down. Unacceptable. You’d better study the hell out of that mutation and try to figure out what we’re really facing here.” He stared down at his desktop. “It had better not mutate in the population—at least, not until we get a better grip on how to deal with it.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Todd speared a mouthful of green beans onto his fork and held it up in the air. “What’s with all the vegetables tonight? It’s like you’re trying to load me full of vitamins or something.”

  Sylvia cast him a sharp glance. “What do you mean? We usually have vegetables with dinner.”

  “But beans and broccoli, too, tonight? They’re good, it’s just that we usually have one, not two.”

  �
��You don’t have to eat them if you don’t want to.” She stabbed at her beans with more vigor than seemed warranted.

  Since the topic of vegetables inspired wrath for some reason, Todd decided to change the subject. “I had to end a class early today. Never had to do that before.”

  Sylvia sawed at her steak with single-minded fury. “Why?”

  “Well, half the class was out, and the rest were unprepared when I called on them because they were sick.”

  She forgot about her steak and stared at him. “Sick? Sick how?”

  “I didn’t get into the intimate details with them, but they all raised their hands when I asked if they were sick. They looked pretty pale and out of it.” He chuckled. “Of course, the first-years tend to flag about this time in the second semester anyway.”

  “Your whole class is sick? How many is that?” She dropped her fork and leaned forward.

  “Oh, about sixty, I’d say.” He speared a piece of broccoli. “Why are you so interested?”

  “It’s really irresponsible of them to come to class and expose everyone to their disease.” She eyed him closely. “Did you get near any of them?”

  Todd put down his silverware and raised his hands, palms out. “Whoa, chill, will you? This happens every year. It’s just worse than usual this time. The law school’s great about sending mixed messages. On the one hand, Student Health sends out notices about staying home and not spreading germs. But at the same time, there’s constant competition, and there’s plenty of pressure from that. The students are afraid to miss something and somehow disadvantage themselves later on exams.”