by Mark Goode
“The troops were not doing much better. A few broke away and inexplicably beelined to enemy lines, running across the equivalent of a minefield in the Kill Zone. Others soon followed, with an almost herd mentality, running out into the Kill Zone, where they were killed by the lasers. Soldiers from both sides did this — I could see Federalists being disintegrated in roughly the same numbers in the Kill Zone as our people — and it wasn’t long before the central corridor was littered with bodies.”
“Oh my goodness.” Maia was shocked but still taking notes.
“We were able to establish a direct line of communication with the Federalists,” Jack continued, “and both sides mutually agreed to a ceasefire and to disable the lasers in the Kill Zone.
“Nobody knew what was going on. Service members were mostly silent — until they would jump up at make a run for the Kill Zone, almost on automatic pilot. It was beyond bizarre. A great number of others were simply frozen or rapidly pivoting back and forth from foot to foot but remained at their posts. Conversations were superficial, and they appeared to be disconnected from the situation or absent, for lack of a better term.
“Suddenly, without warning, some would simply take their sidearm out and summarily shoot themselves in the head. They weren’t really violent toward one another. Just toward themselves.”
Maia paused in her note taking and looked up at Jack. He leaned wearily on the open tailgate of a troop carrier and shook his head. His eyes looked vacant.
He continued. “A few men seemed unaffected, remained composed, and were trying to talk everybody off the ledge, so to speak, and get them to surrender their weapons. I grabbed a megaphone and was running around the battlefield trying to reach out to those soldiers who were still in command of their faculties.
“I thought it’d be helpful to get the men out of their posts and get them into the open and organize them into a march. I wanted to get them focused on saving themselves.”
“Was there anything unusual in the battlefield?” Maia asked. “Presence of a nerve gas, sounds, smells, or potential toxins or poisoning? What is your assessment?”
“Both sides, we were always experimenting with various techniques of psychological warfare such as white noise and some subsonic frequencies. There was some subliminal video being broadcast by both sides. I was personally experiencing a lot of déjà vu feelings, and I found myself replaying the deaths of my grandfather and father in my mind. There was also a subtle smell, and no doubt the animals were tuned into that, especially the dogs.”
“What happened next?” asked Maia.
“We were trying to transport injured to the field hospital and provide whatever first aid we could. We were simultaneously trying to establish a core response team of those still in command of their faculties. To prevent additional loss of life, we organized into small groups and tried to get everyone talking, to convince them that we were somehow under attack and that we needed to band together and protect one another.
“It was getting dark. We built fires and set up lights. The soldiers grew quieter and no one seemed to be hungry or even thirsty. Despite our best efforts, there were spontaneous self-inflicted gunshot wounds all night long. We were desperate.
“One of the men used pepper spray on a soldier who had taken out his weapon to shoot himself. The immediate pain and burning of the eyes, nose, throat, and difficulty breathing derailed most attempts. Once recognized effective at stopping suicide attempts, we gave orders to use it as needed. At least we had a weapon, ironically, to use on ourselves.
“I got into a struggle with a soldier attempting to shoot himself. Wrestling for the weapon, I pulled out my Taser and gave him a jolt. It saved his life, and we started using them as well. We continued efforts to find and get soldiers to join groups that were marching. I don’t know what possessed me to do this, but I composed a chant: ‘we must all rise up together’ It helped us.
“We recited it repeatedly. I gradually added more words as we marched through the night. There was something about the rhythmic activity that kept service members focused and in control of their minds. We actually marched across enemy lines. Everyone was waving white flags, handkerchiefs, socks, pillowcases, and anything we could find to declare surrender and a truce. Our people embraced theirs and everyone joined in the marching and chanting.”
Jack stood up straight and scrubbed his hands across his face a few times, rubbing out the exhaustion and concern.
“It was a night from hell,” he said, again shaking his head slowly, “like a black hole of death sucking the life out of everything. Finally, the sun came up. It was so horrific that we felt it was best that we march out of there. We took medications to enhance wakefulness and marched out of the mountains.” Jack broke down and started sobbing. Exhausted and sleep-deprived, he could no longer continue.
Maia prepared her report.
Chapter 15
The Aftermath
The drones came in like a swarm of bees. The military tried to restrict access to no avail. The 24-hour news media was in full force. The planet was connected with low Earth orbit satellites providing internet and real-time video. The battlefield was in the foothills, within a hundred kilometers of major cities.
The first objective was to assess the situation and the risk of sending in backup forces. The surviving troops — approximately one out of four had survived — attempted to organize a response; however, the burden would fall upon the reinforcements yet to arrive and disaster relief organizations
Pockets of survivors had, for whatever reason, managed to escape the carnage. Led by ordinary soldiers, platoon leaders, medics, and chaplains, it took them a few days to march out of the foothills.
Upon arrival at the outskirts of the city, they saw for the first time the destruction caused by the plasma wave. The infrastructure was crippled, transportation was largely disrupted by the earthquake, people were doing their best to cope. Everyone helped everyone as they walked to hospitals, stadiums, gymnasiums, and event centers where they could receive first aid, food, shelter, and water.
Investigative reporters were hot on the trail of the story and much to the dismay of the military they were able to reach the soldiers emerging from the mountainous canyons. As they interviewed more and more soldiers, the truth of the events emerged.
The world quickly learned of the disaster as the video footage went viral. Transportation of the casualties out of the battlefield wasn’t possible. The decomposing bodies were quickly become a secondary hazard and threat to public health and safety. Aid workers searched among the corpses for survivors, which were few. The dead soldiers were identified by their embedded electronic chips. They were scanned and photographed. Blood and tissue samples were obtained. The bodies were temporarily placed in bags and moved to the periphery of the battlefield so as to facilitate the processing of the dead. Later they would be incinerated and their ashes placed in sealed containers in hopes of returning them to their families.
Teams of scientists, physicians, and forensic specialists descended on the battlefield to assess what had happened. Whatever it was, it seemed to have indiscriminately affected both sides of the conflict. The war had ended instantly. The survivors had ceased all hostility and quickly bonded together in the quest for survival. Command on both sides of the conflict denied the use of nerve gas, germ warfare, or any new form of psychological warfare.
Chapter 16
All the Plants Died and
the Region Turned Brown
After a few weeks, while the battle’s postmortem continued, there were no living things left in the region. All the plants, ground cover, shrubs, and trees turned brown and died.
Angela, as one of the foremost plant physiologists in the world, was consulted. She immediately requested plant specimens for study. The analysis would consist of a detailed study, from the gross appearance down to the molecular level. Sh
e did what Angela does, subjecting the specimens to repeated mechanical grinding, chemical extraction, and centrifugation, separating out progressively smaller and smaller organelles, proteins, lipids, and DNA molecules. She looked for toxins and potential infectious agents, bacterial, fungal, and viral. The process took time. Scouring over electron microscopy images, Angela became suspicious of a viral infection. She knew just who to talk to, and she and Emma were going out for a run together over the noon hour anyway.
While the semester was in session, a running group on campus tried to get together monthly. Angela, Emma, and a few students would run together along the campus bike path and then out on a course that snaked up into the foothills and back down, approximately a 10-kilometer round trip. As they got closer to Horsetail Reservoir, portions of the path were disrupted.
It was a somber moment when they were forced to turn around at kilometer five, where the trail was closed because it had collapsed into a sinkhole caused by the plasma wave a few months earlier. They gave thanks that they had escaped unharmed. On the jog home, Angela informed Emma of her suspicions of a viral infection of the plant material taken from the battlefield. Emma agreed to examine the specimens and give an opinion on whether a virus was implicated.
The next morning, Angela obtained permission to visit the battlefield to collect further specimens. Although she had a security clearance, she was accompanied by a security detail.
The visit included a trip to the field laboratory that had been set up to support the investigations. Once a hospital that had cared for the injured, it was now a storage facility housing their remains. Angela’s specimens shared space in a liquid nitrogen freezer with tissue samples taken from deceased soldiers.
When Angela returned to her lab and was transferring the specimens to her storage unit, she found a vial labeled brain tissue. She called the field hospital lab and acknowledged that she must have taken the tissue specimen by mistake. The lab seemed not overly concerned but requested that she return it.
Before she did, Angela’s curiosity got the better of her. She took a small portion of the sample for further study.
She analyzed a few brain cells from the specimen and was astonished to discover the absence of ribosomes in the human tissue. She didn’t know exactly what to think about this and so told no one, not even Emma.
The following day, as Angela was sitting at her desk still puzzling over the situation, staring at her notes as encrypted doodles in her notebook, an administrative assistant walked into her office with a sympathy card and asked if she wanted to sign it.
“I don’t remember him very well,” replied Angela, scrawling her name in the card. “Didn’t he work for security?”
“Yes, he was a nighttime security guard for the laboratory.”
“What happened to him?” Angela asked.
“Well, we’re not sure. He was found dead at home, but the family has not given us much information.”
“Oh, I remember now, but seems like that was a long time ago.”
“Yes, regrettably, it was almost six months ago. His death was overshadowed by all of the world events. It hasn’t been a very good year around here, that’s for sure. We lost another employee in housekeeping around the same time, but his death was ruled as self-inflicted.”
“Wow,” Angela replied, “life can be very difficult these days. My heart goes out to their families.”
—
Emma called Arnold’s number and, getting no answer, left a message. “Hi, sweetheart. Need to talk to you! Call me a soon as you get a chance.”
Shortly later, he returned her call. “Hi, honey, what’s going on?” he asked.
“Angela suspects the presence of the mosaic virus in the plant specimens she obtained from the battlefield,” Emma blurted out frantically. “She asked me to help her investigate. It’s only a matter of time until she discovers that the virus contains chloroplast DNA!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, babe. Calm down. It’ll be all right. I think you should help her, like she asked. This will buy us time to analyze things. I’ll have to report this to Command, and they’ll know how we should respond.”
“I know, honey, but Angela is a force to be reckoned with. She is so smart it scares me,” Emma said.
“Remember,” Arnold reassured her, “the use of herbicides in war is not technically illegal. The idea was conceived as a means to end the war, as a matter of fact, which it did. It was a battle tactic, honey, and it worked. You played your part professionally, so you have nothing to worry about.”
—
Angela was deeply concerned about her recent discoveries and implications of potential irregularities at the laboratory.
She spent a sleepless night when she couldn’t stop thinking about it and decided she needed tissue specimens from the two laboratory staff who had died recently. In the morning, she called a friend who worked in the human anatomy department to inquire about the university’s relationship with the county coroner’s office. She knew that occasionally his department received a cadaver who had “donated their body to science” and hoped this might provide the access she needed, so she asked him to refer her to the person in charge of that process.
Before her appointment at the coroner’s office, she searched the public records and found the death certificates of the security guard and the housekeeping technician. Cause of death for both was listed as suicide: one from a gunshot wound, the other from a fatal fall. The deputy coroner was very helpful and showed her around the facility.
Angela inquired as to whether the coroner’s office did histologic examination of tissue on all cases they processed. She was referred to the coroner himself, who was a pathologist. After identifying herself as a member of the Global Recarbon Laboratory, where the two deceased had worked, and presenting the case file numbers, she asked whether she could review any pathologic slides related to the cases.
The coroner said that she would first need consent from the families. But Angela made the case that these deaths were ruled suicides and that she really preferred not to add insult to injury by disturbing the grieving families. Would he make an exception? He agreed and gave her some of the duplicate slides. Grateful, she promised to return them.
She rushed back to her lab and prepared the tissues for examination, including electron microscopy. Angela was shocked when she was unable to find any ribosomes in the tissues of the two dead lab employees; it should’ve been packed with them. Of course, the implication was that they were all replaced by quantum ribosomes that were invisible. If her reasoning was correct, this established that these two men had been exposed to chloroplast DNA. Somewhere and somehow, it had found its way into their bodies.
She went to the director of custodial services to learn more about building access privileges of the housekeeping staff. The director assured her that all employees underwent a thorough vetting process, with a background check, and were granted clearances depending on their training and skill sets. Also, security personnel monitored, but did not otherwise accompany, workers in the lab. The system of badges and keypad entry devices was monitored and recorded.
Continuing to investigate, she next went to visit the security director. She inquired about any suspicious activity in the weeks preceding the deaths of the two men. Interestingly, she found record of when security was summoned to investigate a glass break sensor that was alarming at the rear of the building in the hallway leading to the loading dock. The security guard on duty found broken glass and clear fluid on the floor; the housekeeping technician responded to clean up the spill. From the report, she immediately recognized the names of the guard and the housekeeper as the two deceased men. This established the presence of both men at the same location and time.
She also noticed that Emma had worked a lot that week, including evenings, and was still signed in to the building when the alarm went off.
Ah, the life of an assistant professor, Angela recalled, and then noticed that the security log documented that the door to the loading dock farther down the hallway had a broken window and was unlocked from the inside. A more thorough search of the area had revealed nothing missing, and so the incident had been closed.
Puzzled, Angela returned to her lab and checked her freezers again. Staring into the misty depths of the cold storage, she tried to recall if she had observed any of her specimens disturbed six months ago. Nothing came to mind. The security logs from the night when the glass break sensor alarmed revealed that everyone who had entered the building that day and night was legitimate. Who had spilled a glass vial and not stuck around to have it cleaned up? Who broke a window and let themselves in by the loading dock?
—
Angela struggled to understand what had happened on the battlefield and how to reconcile the information she had collected. This was a long stretch even for her hyperactive imagination. Her work on apoptosis seemed to indicate that plants passing through the cell cycle to completion would experience programmed cell death, or apoptosis, the regulation of which appeared to involve chloroplast DNA and what she called quantum ribosomes.
In many ways, the bigger question was, How did chloroplast DNA find its way into humans, and how did it cause them to commit suicide? Answers to both were unknown; however, the truly groundbreaking discovery would be the mechanism whereby a complex human behavior such as suicide could result from introduction of plant DNA. Was it simply toxic? Probably not, she reasoned, as the victims were not acting as if they had been poisoned by a metabolic toxin.