Yocto

by Timothy Jon Reynolds

  * * *

  It was September 3 and the D.O.N. (Director of Nursing), Stephanie Gamboa, was handling the safety procedures of the Chinese stewardess with precision. They were treating this as if it was an airborne pathogen, and the CDC had things running by the numbers, as she did with all her nurses. Although N5H1 had never transferred from human to human, that didn’t mean it couldn’t mutate and start.

  The woman in question, Hoang Ngo, had been doing great and was on the road to a speedy recovery, but she developed pneumonia the night before, and they were currently trying to get all of the fluid out of her lungs. The situation was very troubling for Stephanie, as she had been watching very closely and this patient was seemingly recovering.

  Her office phone rang, and the information given was of the worst kind. The second stewardess was now showing symptoms of the flu. This news was distressing because those two had come into contact with more than a hundred people on that plane, who in return came into contact with thousands of people spreading out all over the world. But she also knew that the second stewardess had had direct fluid contact with Hoang Ngo, and all they could hope and pray for now was that this pathogen never mutated into the airborne variety.

  Stephanie was thinking that the situation could not get any worse when the cardiac arrest alarm sounded, and she realized that her patient had stopped breathing. The Code Blue team converged and they went to work on her for over thirty minutes, but at 11:32 in the morning, Chinese stewardess and citizen, Hoang Ngo succumbed to the H5N1 strain of the avian flu.

  * * *

  The Manager looked at the ticket employee in total disbelief. In fifty plus years of being in Southern California, there had never been a day when the amusement park had been open that there wasn’t at least a handful of guests in front of the ticket booth, even though the original booths were long ago removed. Granted they had over half of their staff call in sick, but still, they were going to carry on. Apparently the incident of bird flu in San Francisco, coupled with the die-offs of the animals was enough to keep every single person in their home. Fear had gripped the land of happiness, and there would be no joy found here today.

  * * *

  The flu dominated the news, of course, and fear of it had begun to creep across America. Long gone were the naysayers appearing on the news proclaiming that they didn’t care about some old bug, they had to get to Walmart. Nowadays, the stores were empty. Kill some pigs and you’ll get some of the population to listen, but kill their three main staples of protein and people will pay attention. Couple that with the two stewardesses in San Francisco and people were just outright scared beyond all reason and staying put, which is actually what President Kessel told them all to do until the authorities could get a handle on what was going on.

  This flu epidemic was causing a recession worldwide—unless one was one of the ultra-rich, of course; then it was more profits than ever. President Kessel told the country the truth, recommending that the best thing for everyone to do was to hunker down. “If you feel like you have the flu, treat yourself at home for now. Don’t go to the ER unless it is life threatening.” He set up national broadcasts on every channel that gave flu advice, and finally, triage centers were being set up in every major city. Once in place, they would give people somewhere to go if they thought they had the flu.

  The people of New York had been holding it together very well—until the death of the chickens coupled with the San Francisco news finally sent them over the edge. Jack watched the TV from their lunchroom; no one was going out for lunch anymore, lunch was being brought in.

  It was evident from the news that the local natives were getting restless and looking for a target to vent on. As could be expected, some were not taking the President’s advice. In response, there were now “patriots” watching every county and government facility in the valley. The watchdogging had started. One of these days, in the not so distant future, someone was going to take a shot and start a range war with the U.S. Government. He was sure of it.

  Jack took a bite of his turkey sandwich and watched as an unbelievable scene unfolded in Midtown Manhattan where the NYC natives were also out against the President’s wishes. Someone had set fire to the lower floor of a high-rent apartment complex and thousands had been evacuated, only to find the fire was just a smoke producer—a contained fire that had been set for a reason. It turned out that there were four fires in all, each set inside a 55-gallon drum, each producing thick clouds of smoke because they were grease fires.

  After the fire department had evacuated all the tenants and then made sure that this arsonist act had not damaged the structure of the building, the occupants were allowed back inside after about four hours. Considering no one had died and many of the tenants had direct connections to the Mayor and Governor’s offices, the process was expedited.

  When the tenants returned, however, they made a startling discovery. Apparently, a large gang was on the roof when the fire started, and after the building was evacuated, they came down and went to work. Paintings were left alone, as was jewelry; no cash was reported stolen, either. But each and every one of the top seven floors had their food stores cleaned out completely.

  Once the smoke cleared, it was evident that the fires were just a diversion—the real goal was to get food. Food was now the greatest trading commodity on the planet. Overnight, all the fast food industries were left scrambling to stay afloat during this nightmare, as no one was patronizing. Same with restaurants, hotels, airlines—no one had any business. The world was coming to a standstill as Trans-Atlantic Flight 2480 fed into everyone’s fearful imagination.

  Pandora’s Box had been opened. If it turned out that the second stewardess had contracted this deadly virus from another human, then very soon the dominoes were going to fall, and they were going to keep falling until they gripped the world in a pandemic that only the era of jet-travel could have created.

  Out of nowhere Jack slammed the lunchroom table with both hands, startling his co-workers. He was a little embarrassed, but he just quantified the thought that had been bothering him so. There was no way the die-offs were the same as the developing flu cases, and Jack now seriously wondered if this whole flu thing was not just God’s cruel joke to throw out a confusing ailment to mankind just when they didn’t need it.

  Jack was hoping God wouldn’t be of the Old Testament, “Fire and Brimstone God.” Jack thought of God looking down on mankind as a felled fighter trying to gain his feet and hoped that God was in the, “Don’t kick a man while he’s down” frame of mind. Jack mused, that is sure a lame saying, as, kicking a man when he’s down is the perfect time to kick him, and now civilization would be put to its first modern global test of this nature.

  Before Jack could focus on that subject for more analysis, the television brought another reality into the room. Jack had been trying to stay away from the news while he thought things out, as globally, there was a breaking news story every hour. This one was out of Pennsylvania, and the reporter was talking to a hunter with a roll of cash that had to be thousands of dollars.

  The man claimed that he offered a service. He would go and hunt a deer and deliver it—for a price. The reporter asked the man, “What’s the price?” That’s when the hunter pulled out the wad of one hundred dollar bills and said, “If you have to ask that, then you can’t afford it.” Jack was thunderstruck, as these last two developments could be game changers.

  The wealthy had to eat, but the poor knew how to get food off the land better than most. Couple that with the New York story, and Jack could feel it starting, a shift of true power, as money couldn’t buy food in an empty store. Even if one could acquire food and store it in one’s castle, holding onto it was a different story altogether.

  Jack started to get anxiety, but felt better upon realizing that his family was with Christy and she was safe, although that started a fresh apprehension of its own, he realized. Dimitri called and assured him that his family in Greece was fine, which allow
ed him to focus on the matters at hand at least.

  Jack was about to head back to his desk, as he had to check over the redistribution of the West Coast inspectors. Losing all the animals that had previously taken a majority of their manpower meant they could now focus more personnel on the existing livestock and food processing. Right now, it looked as if turkey was going to become the great American meat. Before he could pull himself away from the lunch table, the newscast went to the White House where a summit was taking place between the heads of all the pertinent departments.

  Right before his eyes, Jack saw David Ho exiting the helicopter, looking the part, Jack noted, as he was all business. Then they panned out to the crowd that had long ago formed outside of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Washington had already had one food riot after a FEMA truck had run out of supplies, and the people outside became hostile.

  Jack could read a few of the handmade signs. There was, “We know you did this to us,” and “I saw Soylent Green and I’m not eating people!” One was so eloquent as to just have, “FUCK YOU,” written in red letters. A small blonde woman was holding that one, and she was wearing those circular hippie-type glasses that he knew Christy to wear sometimes. Jack wondered, what was next?

  The next news story was on how Synanto was going to save us all, because they had the means to protect our crops no matter what. And now that the U.S. Military was taking no chances, their CEO was out in full stride, talking about all the amazing grain and nut options there were to red meat.

  For the first time since this mess started, he finally found someone with a motive, and chemical engineering was something he knew a thing or two about. But would a company, no, COULD a company become that wicked? He got up with a purpose, and decided it was time to see just how much Synanto had prospered off of this. Maybe they were just in the right place at the right time to help their country, or maybe they had a hand in all this to begin with.

  Just like that, Jack’s second suspect came to mind, and that was any corporation that owned the DNA of the deceased animals. Jack had seen the stock market reports of such companies doing well, but what if one of them were culpable for this?

  Dammit, this was a horrible time for David to be gone, as his brain has been on lock since all this started, and now that his brain working again, he was alone with no senior staff to work with and bounce ideas off of. But damn if this doesn’t make sense.

  Jack recalled what it was that the Russian scientists were working on—radio wave spikes. So how does a major chemical manufacturer make a drug that kills all the animals at once, yet is undetectable? And how does that tie into the radio waves? Then Jack had a thought. He remembered an experiment he’d read about in a journal once. It described how now doctors could break gold up into tiny flecks and then inject those particles into tumors. Once injected, the flecks were heated through ultrasonic waves to the point they were able to kill the tumor from the inside.

  Jack considered, what if someone were to make such an ultrasonic weapon and then loaded the animals with the conductors ingested through food or drinks? Or both . . .

  As he turned to leave, he went into very deep thought; he was on the verge of a mental breakthrough. He could sense it. When Jack was focused on something, he tended to block out all other sounds and people, which was why he was oblivious to the fact that others in the room were intent on watching the television now. Jack had turned to leave and his back was to the screen, so he missed the fact that the newscast was back at the White House, and the news was bad.

  Someone in the room asked, “Do you think it was the President?” That got Jack’s attention so he turned to see the report. Apparently, someone in the crowd shot at a helicopter as it was taking off. That gave Jack anxiety about David, not the President. But he had just seen David land, so it couldn’t have been him. Then Jack realized the time difference and got a lump in his throat; that video bite of David had been taken hours before.

  The bullet apparently hit the tail of the craft, causing it to spin out of control and crash into a ball of fire on the White House lawn, killing everyone on board. Most of the free world was relieved to hear that the President was not on board. Even if Walter Kessel’s ratings were low before all this started, he had been guiding the ship with a steady hand through this crisis. Yes, most of the country was relieved to hear the President was alive, but Jack was too shocked to rejoice. He had to deal with the fact that David Ho and all of their senior scientists were now dead.

  Jack sat stunned. His desk faced David’s office and he was trying desperately not to look at it. A shaken Sharon Keller, David’s secretary, broke his malaise when she told him that the Secretary of Agriculture, Ben Copeland, was on the phone for him.

  Still in shock from the revelation of who was now calling him, Jack went to David’s office and took the call. Everyone in the office was watching, not even pretending to do otherwise. “This is Jack Zarifis.”

  “Jack, Ben Copeland here, how are you holding up?”

  “Truthfully, not too good, Sir. I don’t know if you knew, but David and I were close; he recruited me and I will always feel a debt of gratitude to him that I would have never been able to repay, even if he had lived. But it’s more than that, Sir. Jeff Woolfall just got married, his wife Debbie is expecting in May. Who’s going to break this news to her? Douglas Mayfield was going to retire at the end of this year. These people were not just my friends and co-workers, they were the greatest minds I’ve ever known. Jan Reyes taught me almost as much as David, and now we have neither.”

  “I know this is hard, Son, and trust me, as the President and I spoke on this not minutes ago, we know David would have never left you alone for even a day if he were not sure you were the man for the job.”

  Jack took a breath and tried to control his anxiety, “Did the summit yield anything, Sir, any new information that will lead us to a discovery?”

  A small silence filled the air before the Secretary said, “No, we are basically back where we started. We have no idea what is causing these episodes.”

  Jack replied, “I have been thinking some things through, Sir, but they are far-fetched, I must admit.”

  The air of authority came out when Ben spoke next, “Son, that’s all we got now, dammit. It’s one damn theory after another, and not a one of them make any sense to me except the Russians; so what do you have?”

  Jack explained his idea, and Secretary Copeland gave it credence, explaining to him, “It’s similar to this Dr. Dernov’s theory, Jack. I heard the Russian scientist explain his theory during the meeting today, as we had him on video conference from the Space Station. He simplified it by saying these events were the equivalent of a remote bomb. And that someone is setting these things off from who knows where. Space is my guess.”

  “I thought that out, Sir, and if they had this technology, then an alien invasion would be focused on us. It makes no sense that this is coming from Space, unless, of course, it is being boomeranged back to Earth using something up in Space to rebound the waves. Then theoretically, this whole madness could be coming from a very small country or the world’s largest; whomever figured this weapon out.”

  There was a pause for thought, and then Secretary Copeland let Jack in on some positive information, “Jack Zarifis, that is the best theory I have heard to date, but for obvious reasons, we are going to keep you there and not fly you out here. We can video conference, but under no circumstances are you to travel anymore, Jack. We just lost three quarters of the scientific minds we had working on this and we can’t afford to lose you, too.

  “Jack, in my humble opinion, you have the scariest job in the whole world, being a microbiologist. Right now, you and your colleagues are our only real soldiers we have in this war against who knows what? I tell you now, Jack, from this point on, if you need it, you got it. I will spare no expense to get you whatever it is you need.

  “I know the boys from CDC and DARPA are camped out there. And I have to tell you, I got off the phone
with my old friend, Sid Langston, just a little while ago and it’s been decided that as of now those boys directly report to you. You will receive all information and reports before they are sent up their respective chains, and that comes straight from the top. The President wants one leader on this. We don’t have time for inter-agency bumbling; plus you are a scientist and this is no time for egos.”

  Jack had been trying to take in Secretary Copeland’s words, but didn’t really believe they could be true. How did he get bumped up to the top? Albeit no senior staff was here, there was plenty of more senior staff in those mobile command units outside.

  Jack could just see that asshole, Paul Jeffers, at CDC, or his control freak cohort, Curt Anderson, over at DARPA, getting word that they were now to report directly to him. He sure wished he could be a fly on the wall of that conversation, as Anderson was over twice his age. He thought of Secretary Copeland’s choice of words when he said “My old friend, Sid Langston.” I guess it pays to have old friends, Jack thought.

  Jack croaked out, “I understand, Sir.”

  “Well, see that you do, Son, as I stuck my neck out based on what David told me about you. I never knew David Ho to be wrong, Son, and he was convinced you would have his chair one day.” Jack winced at David’s name, but he also knew those words were true because David had said them to him on the day he hired him.

  Jack was told before the call ended that some special I.T. (Information Technology Department) people would be showing up imminently to train him on some new login procedures, as well as how to link into the two other agencies that were now at his disposal. Whatever projects they were working on were his now. By the time they hung up the phone, Jack had lost the stunned demeanor, and was now on board with the fact that two of the biggest assholes he’d ever known were now leading separate investigation teams that he now controlled.

  His first thought was that he could investigate the new lines of suspects he had come up with, an action just a few minutes before was not even possible. He would call his new subordinates into a meeting and unleash them on shaking some leads loose. Synanto and a few select others were going to be getting some much needed attention that they had not received previously.