by Spencer Wolf
Meg’s glance came back down to the front of the yard, the gate, and the children oblivious in play. She sidestepped toward her side of the wall, and with a quick climb up, hopped over.
Ceeborn let go of the bars and ran along the front of the wall. By the time he turned its corner, Meg was already far ahead and moving fast toward the adobe brick village. She slipped through a green frond curtain and was gone.
He glanced back at the spiral garden and heard the Chokebot’s search pattern, the clatter of their claw nails on stone. His choice was easy. He ran after Meg and pushed his way through the sway of the green frond curtain.
Meg skipped into a hunched-over run through an alley. She passed through a courtyard of rounded cages, but no animals had been denned in there yet. “Wait up,” he called, but she didn’t turn back. She was tireless.
She leapt onto a wooden boardwalk that ran over fallen branches and tangled roots covered with moss. The boardwalk itself was darkened from the saturation of water, its handrails dripping with sweat. The path led to a grandiose cage twice the height of the school. She bunched aside the vertical netting that was strung for its door.
He followed her inside. Branches and high-slung perches formed a glorious, manicured world, an aviary waiting to be filled. He tilted his head back and breathed. Spindly vines had not yet fully grown through the roof. Rows of water misters triggered and hissed, keeping all the greens pure and glistening with rain. He drew in a cooled, moistened breath. His face was kissed by the touch of water and he loved it all.
Meg ran from the rear of the cage.
His three Chokebot pursuers clacked their way forward in their line. Each raised or lowered their rectangular body segments as they approached, searching roughshod over the habitat ground. Their six black legs connected to the sides of their body in a row of lockable joints. As they kept up their steady gait, their claws pierced and broke nutrient-rich stems into tears of milk. A monarch scattered to flight.
Out back of the cage, Ceeborn splashed through a puddle spilled from the end of a coiled hose. He climbed an embankment to its ridgeline and passed through a single line of trees to a courtyard below.
Meg was running, perfectly fit.
The courtyard was surrounded by gated stalls, each draped with fruits and flowers over bone-white walls. A dirt floor arena was trampled from hoofs and shoes, with each layer raked over, then paraded through again.
She exited at the other end of the courtyard and split to the right. She was headed for a domed building with a portico over its door. She looked back with a knowing grin, exhaled her breath, and entered the hospital of the empty zoo.
He kept low in the domed building’s antechamber. Ahead was a pass-through window, beneath which he could hide or rise for a peek into the dome’s main room. It was a lab and he was outside of Meg’s view, but in earshot. It was more like a classroom of sorts with three black tables aligned in rows and an exam table at the front of the room.
The ceiling was painted light blue, a calming contrast to the white adobe walls. A waist-high shelf wrapped around the room and had a single, traveling stool. Terrariums were spaced equidistant along the shelf and had desk space in between them for writing.
Meg turned herself around at the front exam table, steadied her palms to its edge, and hopped up to be seated. He ducked beneath the antechamber wall.
Robin entered through a rear door by the table and passed in front of Meg. She collected a stethoscope from the exam table’s drawer and draped it around her neck. Then she took out a handheld instrument. It looked like the two of them had done this before.
Robin fixed her handheld’s calibration on Meg’s outstretched arms before passing it back and forth over her chest. It registered as some kind of scanner and the colored walls and ceiling of the lab transformed with the live image projection of the inside of Meg’s body. Four distinct red rings glowed from within the center left of her chest.
He crept closer up at the pass-through to see. Her chest’s red rings projected and reflected all around the dome of the lab.
Robin retrieved a vial from a drawer of the table. She gave it a few shakes and uncapped it. She pressed her index and middle fingers atop its depressor, held her thumb beneath the vial for support, and placed it under Meg’s nose.
“You ready?” Robin asked.
“Okay, but turn off the show,” Meg said. Robin went ahead and pressed on the vial.
Meg reeled her head back and away as the nasal spray took its course. Robin held Meg’s hand as she squeezed. The projected show on the walls and ceiling pulsed with the glow of particles rushing through her bloodstream. It hurt. She must have been tougher than he knew.
She stayed seated as she recovered and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Mom, I told you—turn off the show.”
The four reddened rings over her heart shifted to a reassuring blue.
“Honey, there’s nobody here,” Robin said as she swiped a finger across the handheld scanner’s control.
The four distinct rings glowed beneath Meg’s shirt. She reached up and covered her chest with one palm, then the next to hide the embarrassment of a defect.
“Oh, stop. It’s just me,” Robin said as she pulled Meg’s hands away.
“Still, I hate it.”
“Hate what? A sharper mind or better circulation to your skin? Better complexion? What do you hate about the pump of oxygen through your blood?” Robin asked as she set the scanner on the table.
“I don’t need it anymore, I’m fine now,” Meg said. “I’m not even sick.”
Robin moved around to the rear of the table. He ducked. She lifted the back of Meg’s shirt and reached up with her stethoscope like a clinician with a project. “Excellent circulation already,” Robin said. “Even warm to the touch.”
Meg arched away from the cold contact of the stethoscope plate. “Mom, stop. Can I be done? I’m fine.”
Robin lowered the ear tubes of the headset to the back of her neck. “And that’s because you’ve got the strongest heart on the ship.”
That was enough. He stood, exposed.
Meg was startled at first, but then her smile came around—pure beauty upon blushed, warmed skin.
He entered.
“Two hearts,” Meg said. “I have two. The weak one I had from birth and another clamped onto it. But maybe not as tight as the patrol that will soon be onto you.”
Robin stepped around to the front of Meg’s table. Ceeborn moved closer along the periphery shelf, avoiding her stare by a sidelong inspection of the terrariums.
The reassuring blue light of the four rings faded in Meg’s chest, but the rose of her cheeks stayed.
“How could you have two hearts?” he asked.
“She was born with no valves or chambers in her heart,” Robin said. “Essentially, she was born without a heart. And with the graft, now she has two.”
“That’s right,” Meg said as she hopped down from the table. “I’m fixed now with two. Redundancy is better. No single point of failure.”
Robin’s lab was familiar, somehow calming.
“You know, I met you once when you were three,” Robin said. “Your father brought you here to the clinic. He was so proud of you, Cessini.”
He recoiled, unfamiliar. “It’s Ceeborn. I haven’t been called Cessini since I was little, and I hated it, with a C and an E, pronounced Cessini. And don’t say was, either, because he’s still so proud of me.”
“I know he is,” Robin said as he avoided her stare and explored the middle table of the three with its vials and compounds. “Your father’s happy there where you live. Dr. Luegner lets him work on whatever he wants. And he has you to help him.”
He saw something of interest on the shelf against the outer wall. A small terrarium looked like it had fine sand on one side, a shallow pool in the middle, and a dampened log to its right. He looked closer. A rivulus poked its head out of a hollow in the wood. He looked through the glass. “Where did you get this?”
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“I found him in our fountain,” Meg said. She stood at his side and looked, too. “He was dying so I brought him here. Funny thing is, it turns out he also has two hearts. Like me.”
“Its primordium didn’t fuse,” Robin said, “so it developed two double-chambered hearts instead of one.”
“You should see it under the show,” Meg said, pointing up to the ceiling. “Put together, the two primordium look like the four-chambered heart of a human.”
Ceeborn reached in with one arm bent over the top of the tank, then looked at Meg for approval. She nodded and he cupped the thumb-sized rivulus into his hand.
“Do you want him?” she asked.
Robin opened a drawer at the end of the table, took out a small tan case, and handed it to Meg.
“He’ll like it in here,” Meg said as she set the case down next to a glass tank filled with aquatic plants. She tore a tuft of moss, dribbled water from a dropper to create a moist sponge, and tucked the bedding into the lining of the case. “Keep it moist. Look after him, okay?” She held the case and he tilted his fingers like a slide. The rivulus scurried in.
“I will,” he said and smiled at Meg. “He’s just like me. In and out of the water.”
Meg closed the case and returned his smile. The rose of her cheeks still stayed. He turned and confronted Robin. “Wait. You gave Meg a spray? What was it?”
“I gave her a natural activator. Nothing to do with the spray that’s making people sick outside,” Robin said.
“You think it’s the spray that’s making people sick?” he asked.
“Oh, I know so,” Robin said. She reached over the middle table and pulled closer a block of white adobe sitting on a cutting board. “I’ll show you. I pretreated this block with a catalyst so we can see the long-term effects of the spray speeded up.” She picked up a wire with wooden handles on either side and pressed it through the brick to carve off a slice. Tiny blue veins pulsed within the slice but didn’t bleed out from its surface.
“Periodic booster sprays were always enough,” Robin said as she quartered the slice and the veins replicated in each of the four smaller chips. Meg picked up a smaller chip between the pinch of two fingers.
“Boosters are designed to keep us healthy,” Robin said. “Without them—”
“Ever seen ashes float away from a fire?” Meg asked.
Robin drew a syringe from a brown bottle on the table. “But then Dr. Luegner introduced the fifth-generation spray. No more boosters; one dose is all you need.” She squeezed out a drop onto the chip in Meg’s hand. “But the fifth-generation spray is far too strong. And anyone with certain rare preexisting conditions gets a devastating compounded effect. My precondition was pre-natal. I had my spray before I had Meg. PluralVaXine5 destroyed her heart.”
Meg stayed composed, but he caught the scare in her eyes. She crossed an “X” over her heart with her finger.
“Remember, I pretreated the brick with the catalyst, so Meg won’t be hurt,” Robin said as the veins of the chip in Meg’s hand reacted to the drop and turned from blue to red. The white adobe flesh turned a deathly black, oozed, and separated, then curled and withered. Meg lifted her hand and Robin blew on it. The deadened, ash-like particles scattered from Meg’s hand as if weightless and fell up to the domed ceiling of the lab. They circulated in eddies along the rounded walls, then descended and flushed into vents at the baseboards of the room.
“The long-term effects are definitely not unknown,” Robin said. “Horrible paranoia in people. And an eventual, agonizing death.”
“So, then, Meg and I, when we were here, we had . . .?” he asked.
“Yes, you both were no different. You and Meg met when you were three and you both received Dr. Luegner’s fifth-generation spray. PluralVaXine5.”
The walls of the lab flickered back to their whitewashed form. He lowered his eyes in despair. In comparison to the tools at Daniel’s disposal, Robin’s supplies and solutions on the shelf around the confines of the room were all so basic, biological, and soft.
“I’m okay, though, so far,” Meg said. “How about you?”
He nodded, but he wasn’t so sure anymore. “How many people are sick so far?”
“One hundred twenty-one have already died,” Robin said. “Old and young.”
“Like a strange reaction to the skin that you’re in,” Meg said. “A person gets progressively sicker, or worse.”
“Does Luegner know his spray caused the sickness?”
“Luegner doesn’t care. Luegner wants to take credit for the cure,” Robin said.
“But it’s your clinic,” he said. “If you find the cure, you would get the credit for saving—”
“I own the clinic,” Robin said. “But Luegner owns everything in it.”
“That can’t be right. Maybe my father can help.”
Robin withdrew a full-sized red key from her shirt pocket and used it to unlock the table’s drawer. She slid the drawer open and pulled out a lab record book.
“What is that?” he asked as Robin opened her lab book and skimmed from places at random. The shelves against the wall of the room had stacks of books in the spaces tucked away for writing. The more he looked, the more he saw. Every crevice of the room was filled with a treasure trove of files and pages.
“In some, the sickness creates this constant queasiness, while others feel overwhelming fear,” she read aloud. She looked nauseated herself.
He looked over her shoulder as her fingers skimmed and her hand began to shake as she turned the book’s pages, each filled with handwritten notes and beautiful penciled-in sketches; it was a botany book of physical trials. “Tests showed PluralVaXine5 was only supposed to affect point oh-oh-three percent of the population,” she read aloud. “Even if it were a susceptible population of ten thousand, that would still be only zero point three people. That’s less than a person, or not a person, and therefore not likely to affect anyone at all. Luegner figured the risk was worth it. But it seems to have affected everyone, instead.”
“Everyone’s afraid now,” Meg said. “The world is changing. It’s irrational, I know. But this is the only home we’ve ever known. Everyone affected could die.”
“Maybe you and my father can work together to solve it. What tools do you have?” he asked.
“I’ll show you,” Robin said. She closed her book with a trembling hand and placed it back into the drawer. “Luegner knows how to hide the truth,” she said, and then whispered, “but so do I.” She slipped the red key back into her pocket. She was scared. She moved to the first table. It had a trio of organizer containers, one yellow, one red, and one blue.
Each container was divided like a large egg carton into eight rows and columns, a total of sixty-four organized bins filled with various specimens or clippings of animal and plant life.
He pinched into the topmost right bin of the yellow container and pulled out what looked like an acorn cap. “Are you kidding? You’re trying to find the cure from this?”
“Absolutely,” Robin said. “I think what I’m looking for is a combination of two parts animal, one part plant. I just got through testing fish oil and frog toxin, with the venom from a plant. It didn’t work, but you try. Pick a combination.”
“Hey,” Meg snickered. “I got one for you. You know how the dark magnetocytes in us automatically shut off and expel?”
“I don’t know. How?” he asked.
“The cytes release their bonds and come out like meconium,” she said. “The first black stuff out of a baby, we learned it in school. Gross, huh?” She laughed. “Thick, dark, olive-colored goo. Sticky like tar. First couple days only, though.”
“I don’t get it,” he said and tossed the acorn cap back into the yellow box. “Why is that funny?”
“Don’t worry, it’s perfectly natural, and doesn’t smell,” Robin said as she took a fresh vial chest from the drawer of the table. “Now let’s find the cure. Are you game? Sixty-four bins per box, three boxes. That
makes 262,144 possible combinations. Add a choice of histamine blockers, and that makes millions of promising combinations to try.”
“We’ve narrowed the combinations down, though,” Meg said as she pulled up a stool.
“To how many?” he asked.
“Your three,” Meg said as she bumped his shoulder with hers. Then, with her eyes, she directed him back to the yellow container.
He shook his head, then picked from the intersection of row four, column four. He lifted out a green dandelion petal. It was marked with a tag: “C-11.”
Robin put the petal into the fresh vial from the drawer. “Good one,” she said. “Keep going.”
He reached for the red container and closed his eyes. He selected row four, column four again. He pinched up the tag of a thin strip of tape connected to a black-spotted beetle wing, marked: “E-101.”
Robin smiled at Meg and held out the vial for its keep. “Looks like you’ve done this before.”
“It’s ridiculous,” he said. “What could these possibly do? You should see what my dad’s got in his lab.”
“Don’t be so quick. It’s a placebo at worst, cure at best, go on,” Robin said. “Pick another.”
He changed his tack for the last, blue container. Rather than another fourth column or row, he closed his eyes in mockery and felt along the edges of the container for its bottom right corner. It was row and column eight. He pulled out a fish scale. Its label was at the end of a string: “S-10011.”
He dropped the scale into the vial, all a joke of a cure. “Worthless,” he said, and pushed the blue container away.
“C-11, E-101, S-10011,” Meg said.
“And that’s supposed to mean something to me?” he asked.
“It almost spells your name,” Meg said. “C,E,S-“
“I told you,” he said as a faint sound grew louder outside. “That’s not my name. Wait. Shh—”
Then he heard it again: nails clicking on stone. He rushed toward the wall of the lab. The clacking moved along the outside of the dome and he followed along the wall.
“Wait. Stay here where we can talk to you,” Meg said. “Don’t go back out there.”