by Linda Taimre
The weather today, Harriet was pleased to see, was mild and clear, with a light breeze wafting through and taking away the harshness of the sun. Cool and clean enough to step outside and breathe the air for long periods of time. The atmosphere was what made the protectorate worth paying for. This was what the people outside craved.
When Harriet was close enough to GrowForth that she could see her building looming just three blocks away, she heard a car beep steadily four times. She glanced in her mirrors and caught sight of Kiah behind her. Kiah jerked her head to the right and Harriet nodded, flicking to manual controls and turning off into a side street. She pulled over next to a newsblock, swiftly skipped inside and wandered to the back corner to look at niche magazines, a rare occurrence of synthetic paper-based literature. Harriet heard the ding of the bell indicating the door had been opened – how different to outside the protectorate, where everything had its hiss and suck of sealing and expulsion of polluted air, where nothing was left to chance. Kiah came up behind her and breathed eerily on her neck. Harriet giggled and hit her away.
“So much for our deep cover!” said Harriet.
“Oh yes. Because the act of meeting in a newsblock three streets from our work was such an impenetrable subterfuge to begin with.” Kiah smiled as she spoke, revealing uneven teeth. Harriet smiled in return as she saw her friend’s brown skin already slightly shiny from the day’s sweat. They hugged briefly in greeting, their curly hair mixing up in a confusion of black and gold.
“How’s Katherine?”
“The same.”
“Not worse?”
“The same.”
Harriet hated talking about Katherine’s illness aloud, in case anyone heard and surmised what was wrong. It would only be a matter of time, then, until the quarantine officers would come and vanish her away into a pit of sickness.
Kiah nodded. “Good, good. So I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve called you here today…”
“More wondering how you managed to be behind me – have you been stalking me again?”
“Only a bit, on Fridays, you know that’s allowed.”
“Right. So?” asked Harriet.
Kiah’s brown eyes darted around the store. The blockkeepers were chatting at the front. Oblivious, or at least very good at assuming the guise of it.
“I’ve had a look into that report you mentioned the other day.”
“Huh?”
“That report you mentioned you wouldn’t mind reading. I had a look into it.” Kiah tilted her head slightly as she spoke.
“What report?”
Kiah widened her eyes at Harriet. “Oh for God’s sake I was trying to be subtle. I’ve found a report. One that… may be interesting to you.”
“What does it concern?”
“Well, actually it’s handily quite a legitimate area for you. It’s about Paralytic Joe.”
“Kiah, that is literally my area of work. Are you telling me we could have forgone this whole pantomime and you could have just walked up to my desk and handed it over?” The steel in Kiah’s eyes stopped Harriet. “I mean, thank you, beautiful friend. Where is it?”
“Where is what?” Kiah grinned and flounced away from Harriet, a skip in her step. Just as she got to the door of the shop, Kiah turned and called in her best outback voice.
“I forgot to say, this month’s Horse Lovers is really great, you should get yourself a copy. Treat yourself to a nice tea break later today.”
Harriet rolled her eyes and laughed as Kiah give a wink to the blockkeepers. She turned away and cast about for Horse Lovers. Ugh. She really knows how to get under my skin. Seeing the cursive writing on the cover, Harriet picked up the magazine and mimed flicking through it with interest. There, three-quarters of the way through, a thin, filmy disc had been slipped into the section titled ‘Horses for Courses: Not your usual bridle’. Kiah had managed to put it there throughout their chat together. Probably when we were hugging? Kiah always was a light-fingered delight to work with. Harriet grinned. She must have been a terror to her parents. Harriet took the disc and started to walk away.
“Oi love, you not going to buy Horse Lovers? Your friend told us how much you liked it.”
“Yeah, you got yourself a couple of thoroughbreds in a wildlife centre, I hear? A real horse aficionado.”
Grumbling, Harriet slowed. “Oh yeah, real fan of horses. Love them with all their teeth and their hooves and neighing.”
“Right you are love. That’ll be $25.50.”
The most expensive magazine in existence! This had better be worth it.
“Alive?”
“Alive.”
“In what sense?”
“In the sense that it is conscious. It has a consciousness.”
Belliscoe took a few paces back and stared at the small dish on the salver, while Dr. Kitt stared in turn at Belliscoe, at his sagging skin and darting eyes. Belliscoe harrumphed and widened his stance, processing the news. He glanced up from the dish and saw her looking at him as if she wanted to pin his brain under a microscope and slice away the layers. She was clear-eyed. She didn’t seem to be unstable, merely excited and nervous.
“So. Tell me, right from the start, how you managed to discover this… sentience. And is this the sole location?” asked Belliscoe.
Leena breathed in silently. He believes me. Or at least he doesn’t think I’m utterly bonkers, which is as good a place as any to start.
“Truthfully, I have no idea. There could be pockets of this stuff anywhere and everywhere. There could be none, there could be thousands. My theory is that a critical mass of BX59 molecules is required to initiate the mutation. Crucially, due to my somewhat limited facilities…”
Leena gestured to the tired grey of the machines, highlighted by the occasional click coming from the overhead lights.
“…I had to store a lot of the samples in the same containment unit. I don’t have the luxury of storing merely five samples per unit. I cram them up to the maximum safety limit of 20 samples. That’s 20 samples of BX59 biopsy skin – and the rest, teeth, bone, marrow – all in a single unit. I think this close proximity is what prevented absolute freezing and allowed BX59 to flourish in a cool environment. Strangely…” Leena paused and tensed her fingers. “Strangely, the BX59 molecules amalgamated into one single dish. Dish 20.”
Belliscoe slowly turned his ring around and around his finger. “Someone mixed the samples?” he asked.
“No,” said Leena. “It seems to have happened organically.”
“Are you telling me that the containment measures are insufficient?” asked Belliscoe.
“No, no! Yes, the dishes are safe. Thousands of hours of extreme pressure tests tell us that they are perfectly safe to house BX59 without any fear of leakage. Except, clearly, they’re not.”
Belliscoe started to shake. Leena was still. “So far I have not fallen ill, Lord Belliscoe.”
The Lord turned away from the freezeplate. Dr. Kitt continued speaking, her voice echoing in the lab. “I checked the new samples. They were all clean. All traces of BX59 were gone. Eventually, Dish 20 became strong enough that even opening the storage unit around other samples somehow drew the virus into it. I couldn’t risk being caught in that transfer, and I couldn’t risk any trace of Paralytic Joe staying in the lab and not being amalgamated into Dish 20, so I stopped all orders of any new samples. That was six days ago.”
Belliscoe shuddered and held his hand tightly over his ring. “And… the sentience?”
Leena knew this question was coming. It was the most crucial question that could be asked. This is where it gets weird. Well, weirder . Her shoes squeaked as she walked to the filing cabinet at the other end of the lab. She pulled out an infoslide carefully, given its battered state.
You can see why she’s desperate for more funding , thought Belliscoe. She can’t even afford new infoslides . Belliscoe had long fought for extra financing of scientific pursuits that most people dismissed as useless. Another re
ason, no doubt, that Dr. Kitt thought it wise to come to me. How misguided of her.
Leena swiped a set of photos into view, displaying pictures of the rippling patterns that peppered the bright blue brain sample of Dish 20, followed by a list of the alphabet with small, hand-drawn versions of the patterns next to each letter. “It seems that BX59, in this new mutation, responds to rhythm, vibrations. And it responds to the world as well! To its surroundings – different environments, heating, cooling, blowing air, all prompted different patterns – and eventually I tested enough differences, and enough similarities, to boil the patterns down to a language. A morphed, unusual language at first, which then shifted in its coding to essentially become… English.” Leena ended this explanation with a shrug.
Belliscoe raised his eyebrows and lowered his chin, looking directly at the doctor. “BX59 speaks English.”
“Yes. At least this portion of it does,” she replied. “Within the communication patterns, there was something that cropped up again and again. A repeated word.”
“What word, Dr. Kitt?”
Leena’s heart pounded as she remembered the fear of confirming the code to be true, her manic calls to Roger in the Turing Department, could she possibly be wrong? Could this be interpreted as anything else? The calm confirmation from Roger received in sweet, West Country England tones. You’re right, Leena, you always have been right. Dr. Kitt now straightened her back. This is an incredibly important discovery, Leena. You have a right to be proud. You have a right to stand up straight. You have a right to be afraid.
“Dr. Kitt?” repeated Belliscoe.
“Hunger. The word was hunger.”
Atoms shook in the spaceless place. They burred against one another, building in rhythms that spanned distances unable to be measured except in terms of what they meant for the one living being in the void, which was its entirety, its everything, vibrating, filling the void with something, taking up space within the spaceless and flickering electric rhythms back and forth, and back, and forth, seeking, seeking, seeking.
HUNGRY
HUNGER
HUNGER
HUNGRY
ALONE
Katherine woke up sharply, sweating. The nightmare had been thoroughly terrifying. She lay stock-still in the darkness, willing her curtains to open with her mind. Nope. Not developed mind-powers yet, Katherine, you’re going to have to move this time. Slowly, so the nightmare demons wouldn’t get her, she moved her arm underneath the cover, working her hand up to the edge of the duvet. Woman, surely you’re beyond this , Katherine thought. And yet, the terror still held, the same as it had been at four years old, at 12 years old, at 18 years old. And now, again, at 24. Right. There’s nothing for it. Quietly, quickly, turn the lamp on. Now. Go now. NOW. Katherine’s hand flew out and searched for the lamp switch. For one blind moment of panic, she thought she couldn’t find it. Then, she hit the spot and there was light once more in the bedroom she shared with Harriet.
Trembling softly – whether from the dream or from the fevered vomiting, Katherine wasn’t sure – she made her way to the window and slowly opened the curtains to reveal the drab, though strangely reassuring, view of the communal courtyard. Small, grey-green scrubs ringed the bricked space, a useless addition to the apartment complex given Brisbane’s thick, almost-unbreathable air. Katherine stood silently, calming her thumping heart.
The nightmare had always been the same. It was how Katherine knew she was really ill. It was sometimes a different setup, the background colours weren’t consistent and the objects changed. Sometimes she didn’t even know what the object was. But the feeling was constant. The feeling of being in a space that was larger than she could possibly conceive. The feeling that this space stretched on literally forever and she was utterly alone, minuscule, in the gaping and endless void. The terror that she knew that something impossibly large – was it a monster? A planet? A boulder? – something terrifyingly enormous was bounding towards her at speeds that were inconceivable to her small mind, but that she knew were overwhelming. The massiveness was coming towards her, it was coming for her, and it was going to continue at such speeds that she could not comprehend until it got to her. And there was nothing for her to do but run.
Her mind always presented this cinematically, stretching the space, the rush of a gaping void between her and this gargantua, a din representing its impossible speed, light changing with unknowable colours as she ran and it followed her, or she stood still and only it moved, it wasn’t always easy to tell.
She’d only had it three times before in her lifetime. Since contracting The Fading, she’d had it every night. Katherine was exhausted. Her usually pale face was translucent grey. She had lost weight and her eyes looked sunken. Skelletor . Katherine focused on her reflection in the window for a moment, then tottered towards the dresser, unwilling to see herself too clearly. She avoided her own gaze in the mirror as she tied up her thick hair. Stretching, moving slowly into the kitchen, Katherine wondered for the first time that day what it was going to be like to die. Whether the agony would be bearable. Whether it would break her spirit before her body had disappeared. Whether she would die with dignity or whether that even mattered. She knew that it would be soon. Or perhaps that’s just me pulling reason out of a hat. I have no idea when it will happen. Maybe in four weeks. Maybe now . She froze, hand on the tap handle as she considered the possibility of her death occurring now. No, this wouldn’t be the right moment. She needed Harriet with her. She needed Harriet to tell her it was all going to be alright, to lie beautifully and hold her hand while she still had a hand to hold.
Katherine thought of The Fading as a pregnancy. That the coming of the final moment would announce itself with a prolonged labour, that there would be plenty of time to call Harriet to come home. Of course, this could be utter bullshit. Laughing at herself, she turned the tap on and filled the kettle with just enough for her. Coffee in hand, Katherine sat down in front of her laptop and started reading the news.
Pope says this is not the Rapture
Experts say infection rate is exponential
Evil is in the air
Mayor Agno: The F is spread through evil thought
Ha . Katherine giggled at the idiocy of that – the mayor trying to monitor people’s thoughts, threatening The Fading on anyone who strayed from the proper path. What a jerk. She copied the link to forward to Harriet and started to write a scathing message that she tried to make funny, wanting to make Harriet smile. As she was writing, she was stopped by the feeling that, despite the seeming idiocy, the mayor could be right. Anyone could be right. This disease was anyone’s game.
Without warning, her arms began to shake. Her legs, her torso, her neck followed suit. She stumbled over to the couch and lay on her side, trying to stay calm despite the dread coursing through her being. This can’t be it, nonononono. Pain shot through her limbs, starting from the base of her skull and travelling through her body, spreading infinitely fast to her extremities, her skin stretching, her very skin hurt, it burned without flame and her bones ached. Every muscle in her body contracted. Katherine wanted to scream, but she couldn’t release her throat enough to make any noise beyond a ridiculous squeak. Oh God please let that not be my last sound on Earth. Her back was arching and her fingers almost bent backwards with the force of the fit. Suddenly, Katherine’s throat relaxed as her muscles were let go. She gasped, so happy with relief that she rolled off the couch and started laughing. The feeling of being pain-free was intoxicating, she revelled in it. This was not it. This was not the moment of her death.
Hunger. Hunger.
This is.
Empty. Empty. This is. Empty. This is.
Scared. This is. This is. This is. This is.
This is.
I am.
Harriet locked her car in the underground carpark of GrowForth. Strolling to the lift, she noticed Michael was there, waiting.
“Michael, morning. You’re here early.”
“Harrie, how’s it going? Yes, early rise this morning.”
They smiled at each other. They weren’t friends, exactly, but Michael worked with Kiah, so Harriet made an effort to chat. He had this air of being perpetually bewildered by his situation, of being confused that he even had a job. His expression was starkly contrasted to his sharp suit and short shaved hair. It was as if someone had told him how HR assistants were meant to dress and act and he had followed their instructions precisely. Except for the part about the eyes. Less crazy eyes, more calm and assured eyes, Mick.
They rode the lift up and parted ways as Mick left on level eight, and Harriet continued to level 16. She walked through the glass doors to her GrowForth desk, housed alongside all those responsible for cleansing the areas contaminated with Paralytic Joe and ensuring the rehabilitation was on track. The floor was open plan, a few offices with doors situated at the very end to house the floor managers. Nathalie, Jim, Rahul. Not Harriet’s favourite people these days given their potential to notice her investigating on the side. And have me court-martialled for it. Wait, what does court-martialled mean? Sued. No. I think I just mean arrested.
Harriet debated with herself about the meaning of court-martialled as she walked to her low-walled, open-ended cubicle. It wasn’t a bad spot she’d managed to get, facing the river, with a couple of desks between her and the window. No one was in yet, except for maybe Nathalie, her light bleeding through under her office door. Harriet started to work quickly. Best to get Kiah’s information out of the way before there was a possibility of anyone else looking over her shoulder. She switched her computer on and inserted the disc. Swiping through options on the screen, she opened it in a sightless window, one that technically no one else should be able to monitor. An email popped up.