However, there were still many people in the CDC besides the director who refused to support my research. The slights that only used to seem like normal workplace personality conflicts now felt more personal and sinister. Birthday parties for coworkers that once involved everyone were now cordoned off like a Berlin Wall checkpoint, depending upon “whose side” you represented. Expenses that were once granted freely were suddenly rationed and reserved for those now favored. I was subjected to three audits within two months, involving me attesting under penalty of perjury that my expenses were correct. It took me hours of my own time to comb through reports to make sure they had not been tampered with before I signed off. The CDC then began installing cameras at various points in the building. In fact, the assistant director attempted to institute a policy of installing cameras in each individual office. I fought back against this as a violation of reasonable expectation of privacy: I was sometimes required to change clothes in my office before going to the lab. I won that battle and the cameras were removed. But that didn’t stop the CDC from instituting a program that retrieved and scanned all emails and phone calls originating from within the building.
The Gloamings were powerful in their desire to cease all government research into the virus. It didn’t help my research that many in the CDC thought any research into the virus was a waste of time given that it was something permissively taken by humans to change themselves. It wasn’t a disease that we were trying to prevent. But that’s exactly how I viewed it. The battle lines were drawn and I was almost alone in this big bureaucracy where a memo or directive could kill your funding in an instant. It didn’t help my cause that my efforts were riddled with failures and miscalculations in the early months.
Obviously, the first action I took was to sequence the NOBI virus—specifically, complete viral RNA genome sequencing of at least 50 percent of the available samples. Easier said than done, though, with this virus. After months and months of stops and starts, I finished a partial sequence and submitted my findings, but then I was horrified to find—after running another computer sequencing check—that the samples I had used had been degraded by partial exposure to the sun, which altered the specimen in a way that would not yield an accurate RNA of the stable virus.
I could already see the CDC’s official narrative taking shape: Dr. Scott’s research has reached its logical conclusion and there is no cure to be found. It’s time to allocate our money elsewhere…
After reprimanding myself, the first thought in my head was How could I have been so irresponsible? Maybe I was becoming too obsessed and didn’t have the patience. Maybe I just couldn’t see the finer details while haunting myself with finding something to destroy this virus. But I knew, with certainty, that I was never that irresponsible or haphazard with my studies. It had to have been some effort at sabotage. A simple exposure of the sample to a full spectrum bulb would have accomplished it. But sabotage by whom? Someone inside the agency was my only guess at this point in time. But I was playing the long game and this wasn’t going to stop me from complete understanding of the NOBI virus. And finding a cure.
Of course, I could hear my sister’s voice in my head the entire time: “This will end in tears…” Yes, fair enough. Especially when work issues take a back seat to family matters. And that always meant my sister. Jennifer was pretty consistent about communicating with me, at least every other day. Of course, this was always on her terms. With great embarrassment, I was forced to sign up for every social media site you could think of: Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram…Jennifer demanded this, as she preferred to communicate through these means as opposed to a simple phone call. Not that I was the talking type to begin with, which fed into my sister’s argument that I was more intelligent than emotional.
At least she was consistent in sending me messages every few days, using Snapchat as her latest method of communication. But I hadn’t heard from her in a week. This was after I’d sent her numerous messages on every social media site she subscribed to. I was always looking for one more thing to worry about, and this was next up on the menu. Then, following one more argument with my research director, already near tears, I finally received a Snap from her directing me to a YouTube page URL. Okay…I clicked Play and on the screen was Jennifer grooving to the beat at the Tomorrowland EDM festival in Boom, Belgium. Blue skies and green grass completed the picture. She looked peaceful, happy, swaying her body to the beats with her eyes half closed.
I remember being that free—all so long ago; maybe the last time was in college? Summers on a beach in Wisconsin, dancing and beats and brats with friends, never a worry about the next day.
But there Jenny was, on the video, and I knew what was coming next before she even said it. It was all over her smiling, hopeful face. “Hey, Lauren! Guess what? That’s right! I met the most incredible man! He’s a filmmaker and I’m helping him with his next documentary film, which is going to be so…”
Switch the names and the occupations, and I’d heard this same story many times before.
This would be the first time I heard this particular name, though: Mael Roux.
Roux was born in Sainte-Féréole, located in central France, to middle-class socialist schoolteacher parents, although the exact year is under dispute, as Roux has been known to give different dates of birth to different interviewers. After college, he worked as a freelance journalist for Le Monde, scouring for assignments in various war zones, from Iraq to Afghanistan to Darfur, where he gained a reputation as someone willing to dive into dangerous environments to cover a story—and also someone willing to tell anyone who listened about how dangerous it was but how deeply he felt about the risk.
Mael soon acquired an interest in video documentation. He took a video camera with him wherever he went and self-published these reports on different visual outlets, including PBS and Vice. A half year and only three recordings in, Mael announced his need to “break free” from the constriction of normal documentaries. He decided to try his hand at fiction filmmaking, soon establishing a filmmaking co-op he dubbed the French Resistance. It consisted of a group of renegade filmmakers dedicated to withholding the use of any special effects or “elaborate maneuvers,” in order to purify filmmaking. In a sense, what was put on the screen was actually felt and experienced by the actors. The co-op was disbanded after an actor on a production was recorded being stabbed with a knife and hospitalized. Another acquired an STD from filming a sex scene in an Ohio State University frat house. Unsurprisingly, the clip of the stabbing went viral.
Mael left the movement, dropping his friends and now-tainted collaborators in order to concentrate on documentaries, where he felt the intent and the images were “of value.” His ethos—which appeared to change with the circumstances or day of the week—was that the documentary director should act as an educational arbiter instead of hiding in the background. His ego seemed quite absurd.
Mael’s new venture was documenting and attempting to capture the emotional, agnostic spirituality—that was the exact quote—and physical sensations involved in attending EDM music festivals. I’m not usually one to dismiss things out of hand, but I might make an exception in this case. I mean, who says there are no more worthy causes? Roux also told Jennifer that he wanted to be a “social media influencer.” That bounced around in my head for a few days without a resolution.
Every other day, Jennifer would post a new video on her page, and with every passing day, I couldn’t wait to see what she posted next. It seemed exciting, surprising, and alive. Her life was something that I could never have, though I’m not sure it would’ve been enough for me.
Jennifer looked so different at this point in her life. Her hair was more natural—long, curly, and windblown—as if she hadn’t had a haircut in weeks. Every new video revealed another part of my sister that I hadn’t seen in such a long time. She seemed more optimistic and positive. Her smile was wide and her voice was strong, and those smile lines crowding her eyes seemed to glow in the sunlig
ht.
“Okay, Lauren,” she said, pointing at me through the camera with her eyes squinting mischievously, “we’ve hooked up over five hundred—yes, five hundred—8K Oculus Rift cameras all over the festival and even on many of the participants. There will be no dialogue or narration—only images and sound. No soundtrack—natural sounds from the festivals. It will be mind-blowing.”
With every new video, even I got caught up in her excitement for the project. Maybe it would be something sensational. Yet as my work inevitably found its way in, this excitement was short-lived. Two weeks into Jennifer’s return to social media, I entered the lab, as I did about three days out of the week, and was processed through the decontamination and disinfectant spray process. I walked into the adjacent changing room, and as I lifted the positive pressure suit from its rack, I decided to inspect it for a moment. I don’t really know why I did that; the transition from distraction to focus can trigger things.
As I smoothed my hands over the suit, my eyes immediately focused on a rip in the seam near the faceplate. It was a shocking sight, staring at me there, almost hidden. Like a mole or wrinkle on your face that hasn’t been there previously or you may not have noticed until something in it draws your attention. The suits were inspected on a biweekly basis by our support staff, who were trained in procedures related to maintaining level four suits. It could not have been an accidental symptom of erosion or overuse—that would have been caught in even the most cursory exam. This was unthinkable within the context of our procedures. The results and consequences could have been devastating to my health. My mind instantly crawled toward sabotage, and that idea built a home in my brain and it wasn’t leaving anytime soon. From then on, my safety procedures in the lab veered toward an extreme form of OCD.
I didn’t have long to consider my options when Jennifer sent me a message saying that she was going to be in New York City at the same time as me: she wanted to meet up. Finally, a pleasant distraction to get my mind into! Unfortunately, Hector was on call that week and wouldn’t be able to make it. I really did want him to come, but at least it would give Jennifer and me some alone time, which we hadn’t had in years. I could barely wait to see her and I rushed through my presentation at the UN Committee on Infectious Diseases. This sounds grandiose but the conference was actually a smaller gathering of scientists, mostly focusing on the sharing of data within a new database being implemented for our shared servers—nothing too substantial.
With my report finished, I sprinted out of the UN building without attending the after-meeting social that usually made its way from the East River to the Hilton bar, across the street. I took a Lyft to the address Jennifer had given me. I was in front of a pawnshop that looked stuck in time, all faded neon and pastel shades. I double-checked the address and texted Jennifer, and she assured me the restaurant was inside. At least the name was correct: Beauty and Essex.
I walked into the barely lit room, so elegant and different from the outside. Tables and banquettes lined the floor, and I saw Jenny sprinting toward me. We fell into each other with hugs and kisses. Jennifer was positively glowing. She was winning at life, finally. We talked through the past half year of our lives before we even sat down at a table. Jennifer and I ordered identical tomato soup dumplings and were rewinding the last few months with laughter and rapid conversation when her phone buzzed. She smiled as her eyes scanned the screen and I knew it had to be her new man—those types of smiles are reserved for very few. She placed the phone back on the table and turned to me. “He’s coming,” she said; her voice went higher as she spoke. She didn’t need to tell me—anyone could have figured that one out. I thought she might float into the air with happiness.
“That’s great—” Before I could say another word, Jennifer jumped up and into the arms of who I could only assume was Mael Roux. He was handsome, rough, and thin, with messy hair, in a journalist-filmmaker type of way. The expensive clothing was just rumpled enough to lend an air of faux apathy. After a few minutes of kissing and outwardly massaging each other’s tongues, they finally flopped down in the chair across from me, with Jennifer sitting on his lap.
“It is my pleasure to meet you, Dr. Scott,” Mael said with his French-accented English as he shook my hand.
“Please call me Lauren.”
From that point, we ate poke tacos and gulped strong drinks, all as Mael and Jennifer talked eagerly about their work. It would be transmitted to Oculus Rift systems everywhere, creating one giant collective rave. I tried to keep an open mind. It seemed different, at least.
“There’s only one thing keeping it from being truly comprehensive,” Mael said as he shook his empty drink, as if more Scotch would magically appear.
“What is that?” I asked.
He raised his hands. “We don’t have the technical capabilities to involve the Gloamings in this project.”
I shrugged. “That’s not surprising. It’s the holy grail for every tech company and camera manufacturer. Soon, though. Every major tech company is working on it, and spending billions to do so.”
“Maybe when this project is done I would do a documentary, or at least an interview, with you about your research,” Mael said as he rubbed Jennifer’s hand.
I didn’t expect this, and he wasn’t going to like my answer, but maybe the alcohol would soften the blow. “Well, you’ll have to clear it with our media affairs department, but it’s probably not so likely. They’re pretty strict on those kinds of things.”
“Maybe later this year,” Jennifer added, with a look into my eyes that told me she wanted to impart some hope of it happening.
Before I could answer, Mael asked another question. “How do you feel about the research that you do?”
I felt a tingle ripple down my back. “What do you mean?”
“It seems to me as though you’re looking for a cure for the NOBI virus. That would be very close to a form of, how do you say, eugenics, would it not?” Mael sat back with his arm around Jennifer and his eyes focused on mine.
“It seems that way to me also,” Jennifer interjected with a stern look on her face.
I was taken aback by the sudden change of tone in the conversation, and my sputtering only made me feel more uncertain. It felt so planned and I felt so unprepared. “Well, I mean, to me it’s more that we can use our technological advances to enrich other research, including preventative medicines.”
Mael leaned forward, his brow creased in concentration. “But you’re trying to prevent a segment of this society from, say, reproducing. One that is to be normal and productive by any measure. It would be like you are trying to change an embryo to prevent a certain race or sexual orientation. Eugenics. Controlled breeding of the humans.”
“Now wait a minute,” I replied, arching my back and answering probably too loudly even for this boisterous restaurant. “My research is nothing like that. I’m trying to learn about a particular virus. And the Gloamings are hardly a marginalized segment of the population.”
Jennifer stared at me with a confused look on her face. “Well, what happens if sometime down the line NOBI can be passed through normal selection such as procreation? Will the research continue? Will you still be looking for a so-called cure?”
I felt ambushed and angry and I lashed out before even thinking. “Absolutely.”
Everything was silent for a moment amid the chaos around us. The conversation then continued, somewhat less hostilely, about the new cell phones coming out, and would the Warriors win a fifth title in a row, and we left with hugs and kisses that felt more perfunctory than endearing. I tried not to think about it and concentrated on how good it was to see Jennifer again. But two days later, I felt slapped in the face by a repeat of the evening: a new article in Wired, with my picture front and center, entitled “The New Era of Eugenics at the CDC.”
What followed was an article debating the merits of my research into the NOBI virus; it seemed in essence like a rehash of previous articles, which didn’t bother me
. What did bother me was the accompanying video: Mael had recorded our entire dinner conversation in New York City. It made me look like a complete fool, without concern for the ethical considerations of my research. I never really had the most television-friendly mannerisms, and I knew it was my anger that had pushed me in that direction, in spite of my true moral considerations. It certainly wouldn’t be long before my supervisors heard about the video from the directors, and it would then come back down to me. I couldn’t blame this one on some treachery in the CDC, but I felt ambushed and betrayed nonetheless.
I barely had time to process the article and video before the CDC, among other agencies and businesses, was hit by the “This Town Needs an Enema” ransomware attack—complete with a picture of “The Joker” wearing a huge smile. This DDoS barrage on the CDC servers only affected them minimally, as they were somewhat protected against such attacks. However, some idiot tech placed a few of my research files on a temporary unsecured server while he or she ran “tests.” The files were erased. So much for “protected.”
After that incident, I couldn’t shake the notion that my work was being undermined by forces inside and outside the CDC. As a result, I began to upload copies of my research to a private Dropbox account, knowing full well that this was specifically prohibited by agency regulations as well as federal law. I couldn’t take a chance on losing any more of my research, though, or having my findings altered in some way. I couldn’t say much for certain, but I could say that this was only the beginning and I had to prepare for more.
The research itself divided people to a certain extent: loyalties ranging from appreciating aspects of the research to personal familiarity simmered underneath the genteel behavior of the public health governmental agencies. I had already grown tired navigating the Montagues and Capulets of the CDC. But it was an interagency directive for a proposed memorandum of action that ignited the dynamite and floated the opinions and beliefs to the surface. In association with the National Institutes of Health [NIH], the CDC issued a proposed comprehensive program for the prevention of the NOBI virus. Among the more controversial suggestions were understanding safety among Gloamings you are not familiar with in relation to relative feeding habits and determining the self-control tendencies of certain Gloamings.
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