by Ryk Brown
“Tell us a bit about yourself,” Arielle began, “where you’ve worked, what stories you’ve worked on, that sort of thing.”
“It’s all in my resume,” the man told her.
His voice was rough, and he sounded like he wasn’t interested in talking with either of them.
“I just thought you might like an opportunity to expand upon your resume,” Arielle explained, “maybe tell us a few things that your resume doesn’t.”
Graham’s eyebrows raised slightly and his facial expression soured as he shifted in his chair. “Look, I need a gig and you need a videographer. Now, since I’m more than qualified for the kind of work you’re doing, you must be wondering why someone like me is applying to work for someone like you.”
Message; Arielle: Whoa, nice attitude. As usual, Arielle did not respond.
“Someone like us?” Arielle wondered aloud.
“You’re both pushing thirty, and you have yet to land the dream job you both probably talked about since secondary school. You haven’t taken any pop-news gigs either, which means you’re holding out for something respectable… for whatever misguided reasons you might have. You only have four applicants because, no disrespect intended, you don’t have a lot to offer a videographer worth a shit. Luckily for you, I don’t need much in the way of compensation. I’m basically just bored.”
Message; Arielle: This jerk has a lot of nerve.
Reply: Quiet!
“Yet, the question still remains, Mister Barnett,” Arielle replied. “Why would someone with your experience have to seek employment with two small-time operators like us?”
Hanna never ceased to be impressed at her friend’s ability to remain calm and confident in the face of people like Graham Barnett. Message; Arielle: I bet I can answer that question.
Reply: Enough, Hanna!
“I suspect were I to dig a bit deeper into your employment history, I would find my answer,” Arielle continued. “I just thought I might like to hear your side of things.”
Graham smiled. “Well, let’s just say I’m not the easiest person to get along with, and leave it at that.”
Message; Arielle: I find that so hard to believe.
“I would like to add, however, that I always do get the shot… even if I am a bit of an ass at times.”
“I see,” Arielle said.
Message; Arielle: Please tell me you saved little Alex Nielan’s resume.
“Oh, and one more thing,” Graham continued, “I have all my own gear.”
Arielle’s left eyebrow raised. “Legally?”
Graham smiled. “Yes, legally. Bought and paid for. Receipts and all. Touché, by the way.”
Arielle smiled back. “FI?”
“Targon 1200 series. Back stacked, twenty-four units, four separate POVs. Better than being there, they say.”
Hanna glanced at her friend to see if she was drooling. She looked back at Graham, who had a satisfied look on his face. He knew that such equipment was out of their leasing budget.
“But don’t worry, I’m not going to charge you FI rates. I don’t need the money. Like I said, I’m just bored.”
“I thought videographers always retired to the tropics?” Hanna said.
“Tried that,” Graham admitted. “Sucked.”
“Thank you for your honesty, Mister Barnett,” Arielle said. “We’ll let you know our decision later today.”
“Actually, you’re going to hire me now,” Graham told her. “You see, the first two guys you interviewed have already accepted other gigs, and didn’t bother to tell you. And that kid Alex, well, let’s just say you’d be lucky if he didn’t break your leased gear. Of course, I don’t mind sitting here for a few minutes while you two talk about it amongst yourselves.” He looked around the room a moment, smiling broadly at things Hanna and Arielle couldn’t see.
The message Audio: Participant 3: Suspended, flashed in Hanna’s visual space. She turned to her friend, still seeing her sitting in the chair next to her in the virtual meeting space instead of in the mag-lev train. “You can’t seriously be thinking about hiring this guy?”
“You got any better ideas?” Arielle replied.
“The guy is an ass.”
“An ass with Targon 1200 series Full Immersion rig. That kind of quality, combined with a few good stories, might be just what we need, Hanna.”
Hanna looked at Graham, who was wiggling about in his chair as if dancing to some unheard music, smiling in all directions and making strange, happy facial expressions. “Look at him, Ari. Christ, I think he chose a titty-bar as his virtual meeting space.”
Arielle looked at Graham as well, and sighed. “Well, at least I won’t have to worry about you sleeping with him.”
* * *
Hanna sat in the epidemiologist’s office next to Arielle, scanning the net in her personal visual space as she prepared for her interview. Everything she could find showed that Doctor Benarro was one of the top epidemiologists on North America, and had served multiple terms as chairman of the Global Disease Control Organization. Finding little of interest in his bio, she instead turned to reading more about the Klaria virus. However, everywhere she looked revealed the same, rather useless and uninteresting information. Transmission vectors and rates, mortality rates, outbreak patterns and locations, all the usual stuff that one might find when researching any average outbreak. The only thing that she could find that was unique to the Klaria virus was that, as of yet, no one could figure out how it was moving from place to place. There had been several mutations over the past year, since the first case was reported in the small Slovenian village for which it was named. Yet not once had they identified the method of transmission. Airborne, bodily fluids, even vector transmission; all had been tested each time the virus had appeared, but never had the results been the same. The method of transmission seemed to change at random, which made positive identification and outbreak control very challenging tasks.
Hanna called up a map. The world map filled her visual space. It was covered with small red dots appearing at various cities around the world. She checked the legend on the map, which read ‘Locations of reported cases of Twister Virus.’ She remembered that she had last used the map to display the locations at which the Twister virus had struck, in preparation for her last interview with Professor Dantmore.
Using her mind, she commanded the map to display the locations of all the reported outbreaks of the Klaria virus. The dots shifted to their new locations a split second later. However, many of them did not. She checked the legend again, noting that it read ‘Locations of Confirmed Outbreaks of the Klaria Virus.’ She commanded the map to return to the display of the Twister virus locations, watching as the dots shifted back to their original locations. Again she commanded the map to display the locations of the Klaria virus outbreaks, however, this time, she commanded it to include all suspected Klaria outbreaks as well. Even fewer of the dots shifted this time. She then commanded the map to overlay the locations of the Twister virus using green dots. The result was a world map covered with dots. Some red, some green, and some, where both the Twister and the Klaria viruses had appeared, were yellow. What surprised her most was that more than half of the dots were yellow.
Message; Arielle: Hey, look at this, she commanded, assembling a quick animation of the merging of the two maps and sending it to her friend. Message: Could this be something? Hanna watched her friend’s face as she studied the changing maps in her own visual space.
Reply: Yes. It’s called a coincidence.
Message: That’s got to be at least sixty percent, if not seventy, Hanna argued. That’s one hell of a coincidence.
Reply: Perhaps, but it’s still just a coincidence.
Another version of the same world map appeared in Hanna’s visual space, sent to her b
y Arielle. In addition to the green, red, and yellow dots already on the map, dots in blue, orange, lavender, and magenta also appeared, one by one, making the map nearly unreadable.
From; Arielle: Outbreaks of biological viruses in the last twelve months. The Larken virus; the Pellar virus; and two different varieties of Occella. Maybe Twister caused them as well?
Message: Maybe. Hanna replied. Maybe there is something there? Maybe they’re all connected.
Reply: Hanna, that’s ridiculous.
Message: I’m not so sure. What about our implants? They’re connected to our brain, right? Could there be some kind of side-effect?
Reply: Don’t you think they would’ve thought of that, Hanna? Besides, implants have been in use for centuries now, and never with any side-effects.
Message: What about all the fatigue cases? The separation and differentiation problems?
Reply: Not the same thing, and a far cry from a virus.
Message: What about our health nanites? Hanna asked, refusing to give up on the idea. Our implants control those now as well, don’t they? Could they be causing the Klaria virus?
Arielle cast a disapproving glance at Hanna from across the small waiting area.
Reply: The health nanites repair tissue, Hanna. They don’t create diseases. You’re reaching, looking for a sensational headline. Stop it.
Hanna cast a stubborn expression back at her friend. Message: But what if I’m right?
Reply: If you’re right, then we’d all be sick. You, me, and the other eighty percent of the Earth’s population that have implants and health nanites. Hell, Hanna, the entire sector uses health nanites, even the fringe worlds. If your theory were correct, it would have swept over the face of the Earth in hours, maybe even minutes. It wouldn’t be a bunch of isolated outbreaks. Besides, the village of Klaria isn’t even connected to the net, remember? They’re technophobes, remember? All about tradition and simple lives and such.
Hanna sat thinking for a moment, refusing to give up her argument. If she were right, she would be breaking the biggest story in history, bigger even than when the first FTL probes had confirmed hospitable, Earth-like worlds in the Tau Ceti system more than four hundred years ago.
Reply: Besides, Arielle continued, don’t you think someone at World Health has already considered and rejected that idea? If you’d started your pre-interview research more than fifteen minutes before your interview, you probably would have found the same report that I did. They rejected that idea months ago, only a few weeks after Klaria first showed up.
Hanna squinted. Message: Are you sure?
Arielle’s expression remained unchanged. She was a master at controlling her composure even while in the midst of a mental messaging debate. It was a skill that Hanna had never mastered. Reply: Yes, I’m sure. I did my research last night, like you should have. Arielle’s eyes peered up from the e-mag she had been perusing during the entire exchange, her eyes locking briefly on Hanna’s, her left eyebrow slightly raised.
The door from the corridor opened, and Graham Barnett entered the lobby.
Hanna’s eyes shifted from Arielle toward Graham. Message: Well, I guess that rules out my ‘just woke up’ theory.
Reply: Be nice.
Graham was wearing clothing very similar to what he had worn during the interview the day before, and he sported the same disheveled hair style. His vid-kit control panel was hanging on his back from a shoulder strap, and he was dragging the wheeled docking base behind him.
“Mister Barnett,” Arielle greeted, extending her hand as he approached. “It’s a pleasure to meet you in person.”
“Let’s hope you still feel that way after a few assignments,” he replied as he shook her hand. “Miss Bohl,” he said, reaching for her hand as well.
“Hanna,” she replied.
“Guess you two should call me Graham then.”
“I’m Arielle, but people call me Ari.”
“Great.”
“Do you need to get set up?”
“Nope. I’ve got eight orbs prepped and ready. I figure limited space in his office, so two POVs and double-long shot should be enough. If not, it’ll only take me a minute to spin up additional orbs and views.”
“Whatever you say,” Arielle agreed.
“Miss Bohl?” the receptionist called. “The doctor will see you now.”
Hanna, being the face of the team and the one that would be conducting the interview, was always the first to meet the interview subject, and thus, was the first to enter Doctor Benarro’s office.
The office was larger than expected, with several large padded chairs facing the doctor’s desk, as well as a sofa and two more sitting chairs to one side of the room. Like most offices, there was a large window behind him that looked out over one of the many greenbelts that had been incorporated into the city of Boston, just as they had in most of the major cities of Earth since the big migration that occurred centuries earlier after the core worlds had been opened up for colonization.
“Doctor Benarro,” Hanna greeted, a smile on her face and her hand extended politely. “It is such a great pleasure to meet you. I am such a fan of your research.”
“Really?” the elderly man replied, somewhat surprised.
“I’m Hanna Bohl,” she continued, shaking his hand. She turned to face Arielle. “This is my producer, Arielle Dugah, and our videographer, Graham Barnett.”
“We’re going to need to do something about that window,” Graham mumbled to Arielle. “Too much backlight.”
“A pleasure to meet you, Doctor Benarro,” Arielle greeted, also shaking the doctor’s hand.
“Likewise. I can turn it off… the window, I mean. It’s not real, it’s just a viewer.”
“That would be great,” Graham replied politely.
Arielle noticed that Graham was actually behaving quite well in front of the subject.
“A viewer?” Hanna wondered.
“Yes. We handle communicable diseases here in our research, so we’re not allowed to have real windows within the secondary quarantine zone. I can put anything you like on it.”
“Setting it to the same pattern as the wallpaper will be fine, Doctor,” Graham instructed, as he brought his control pad around so that it hung in front of him at his waist. He pressed a button, and eight small orbs popped up out of the top of his wheeled case, rising up into the air and spreading out, taking up positions around the office at geometrically precise points, above, even with, and below Doctor Benarro’s and Hanna’s lines of sight. He tied his own visual space into the vid-kit’s image output in order to see the final product of the full immersion recording he was about to create. He looked about the room, fading the immersion feed from the vid-kit’s image output in and out several times, comparing what he saw with his own eyes with what the full immersion recording processors were recreating for him. After a few adjustments, he was satisfied. “Wanna peek?” he asked Arielle as his mind commanded the view from the vid-kit to shrink to a small square in the upper right corner of his personal visual space.
“Why not?” Arielle replied, trying to appear somewhat disinterested. The truth was, neither she nor Hanna had ever had the opportunity to compare a full immersion shot to the real thing, and in real time.
An incoming FI feed alert flashed in Arielle’s visual space. She commanded the communication circuits in her neuro-digital implant to accept the incoming feed and the image faded into view, replacing what her eyes were seeing. “Whoa,” she said, more shocked by the quality than she had expected. “Other than a slight shift to the left, I don’t know that I could tell the difference.”
“Move half a meter to your left,” Graham instructed, “then take your image capacity down to about forty percent and turn right a touch to line up.”
Arielle fol
lowed Graham’s instructions moving left and turning her head until she could no longer distinguish between what her eyes were seeing and what the full immersion system was showing her. “I think I got it,” she announced. She began fading back and forth between the FI feed and her natural eyesight. “Wow,” she whispered.
Graham smiled. “Pretty freaky, huh?”
“Very,” Arielle agreed. She looked at Graham. “You’re pretty good with this stuff.”
“It’s all in how you arrange your balls, baby.”
“So, after the introduction, I thought we would start with you giving us a bit of background about the Klaria virus,” Hanna began, trying to distract the doctor from the exchange between her producer and their new videographer. “After that, I’ll start asking more detailed questions about the virus, how it’s spread, it’s mortality rate… the usual stuff. I imagine you’ve done this kind of thing dozens of times, right?”
“A few,” the doctor agreed.
“Okay, whenever you two are ready,” Hanna announced.
“Right,” Graham replied. “Just a second.”
Arielle stepped aside, moving back behind Graham so as to remain out of the shot as much as possible. The FI processing algorithms would remove her and Graham from the final images, as well as the orbs and any shadows they cast. The further away she was, the easier it would be for the system to fill in the space that she had occupied.
Three of the orbs left their positions and flew about the perimeter of the room, recording the images of all the walls and decor in order to provide the software with enough data to fill in what it needed later. Once the three orbs returned to their positions, Graham started recording. “We’re hot,” he announced. “Synch tones in three……two……one……”