The Schrödinger Enigma

by Greg Krojac

  In Washington DC, Administrator Healey and dozens of NASA staff were rushed to various city hospitals, all suffering from the same severe headaches and presenting with strange red marks on their skin. The condition of each of them deteriorated rapidly as their bodies began to rebel against them, evacuating bodily fluids at their leisure.

  Deputy Administrator Nelson stayed at NASA HQ, although he wished that he could have gone to the hospital with his friend Tony, to offer moral support if nothing else. But somebody had to take charge while the Administrator was incapacitated. He knew things looked bad, but he hoped and prayed that Tony would recover and that they would soon be back together trying to solve the enigma that was Voyager One.

  At 1:30 pm precisely, his office phone rang. He picked up the receiver, fearing the worst.

  “Deputy Administrator Nelson, speaking.”

  “Sir, This is the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. I’m sorry but I have some bad news for you. I’m afraid Administrator Healey passed away thirty minutes ago. We tried to make his last few hours as comfortable as possible.”

  Roger Nelson leaned forward in his chair, unwilling to believe what he had just been told. He had been expecting such a call, but nothing prepares a man for the news that his best friend has died.

  “Thank you for letting me know. Has his family been informed?”

  “Yes. They were the first to be told.”

  The Deputy silently admonished himself for asking such a foolish question. Of course Tony’s family would have been told first. The voice continued.

  “I’m afraid we’ve lost most of the other members of your staff who were hospitalized too.”

  The Deputy Administrator put the receiver down on his desk and sat ashen-faced looking into space until he suddenly became aware of a tiny voice trying to attract his attention. He returned the receiver to his ear.

  “I’m sorry. I needed a few seconds to take in what you just told me. Do you have any idea what killed him? I mean, with the others dying as well – it has to be some kind of infection, doesn’t it?”

  “Of course, sir. I understand. We’ve called the CDC and they’re sending over a team of infectious disease specialists as we speak. They should arrive soon. In the meantime, I’m afraid you’re going to have to put the establishment on lockdown. Nobody in and nobody out. Except the CDC team of course.”

  “Understood. Thank you for telling me.”

  “I just wish that I could have given you better news, sir. I’ll say goodbye now. Don’t forget the lockdown.”

  As soon as the phone call was over, the lockdown was put in place. Everybody was nervous, but did as they were ordered and took the sudden imprisonment pretty well. There were far worse places to be locked in than NASA HQ.

  DAY NINE

  2 May– Infected 1,043,750 Dead 163

  Acting Administrator Nelson sat behind his desk, the desk that Tony Healey had occupied until the previous day, his head in his hands. What was he to do? What was humanity to do? Was this to be the final act of mankind’s appearance on the cosmic stage? His investigators had come up with nothing to explain Voyager’s presence on the planet, and it wasn’t for the want of trying. They’d been over the vehicle with a fine forensic toothcomb, but to no avail, finding only Jonas Wade’s DNA. With the lack of empirical evidence, the best available metaphysical minds were set to work in the hunt for an explanation. Any and all suggestions were considered, no matter how absurd or outlandish they appeared. In the absence of any other convincing explanation the seemingly absurd extra-terrestrial interference conclusion had become acceptable. The search for extra-terrestrial intelligence had been ongoing since the invention of the radio back in the 1900s; could this be first contact? Could it be first and last contact? How else could it all be explained? All the pieces fitted together. It had always been anticipated that any alien being that came into contact with either of the two Voyagers, would be far in advance of where humanity was when the probes were launched. It was perfectly feasible that an alien might have teleportation technology, even though that was way beyond human ability at the moment. Nothing in the laws of physics forbade the transportation of large objects - even humans - but in contemporary practice it was an almost impossible feat. An atom had been transported three metres in 2014, but that was as far as research had got. And that didn’t explain the continued existence of Voyager One out in interstellar space. Just trying to wrap one’s head around the concepts was enough to cause a headache.

  Suddenly David Bowie singing the first few lines of ‘Space Oddity’ brought Roger back to the real world. He accepted his cell phone’s call.

  “Deputy Administrator Nelson.”

  The voice at the other end of the phone identified herself as Dr Jeanette Whitty, from the laboratory where the space probe was being examined.

  “Deputy - I mean Acting Administrator Nelson. I think you should come here, to the lab, as soon as possible.”

  “Can’t you just tell me what’s happened?”

  “I really think you should see for yourself, sir.”

  Roger Nelson wasn’t really in the mood to go anywhere - the weight of the world’s problems was sitting heavily on his shoulders, but he also knew that this was part of his job now. He reluctantly boarded a helicopter which took him straight to the secret location.

  A few hours later he and Dr Whitty were making their way, down a corridor leading to the space probe’s temporary home, He was quite looking forward to his first physical glimpse of what was ostensibly Voyager One.

  “So, doctor. What will I be looking at?”

  Jeanette Whitty sidestepped the question.

  “I think it’s best that you see for yourself.”

  Three minutes later, the pair were donning NASA Augmented protective suits before passing through the airlock and entering the large chamber where Voyager One was being examined. Roger Nelson tipped his head back and closed his eyes for a few seconds, before opening them again to confirm what he was looking at. He thought he must be dreaming, but couldn’t pinch himself through the protective covering of his protective splash-suit. It was a few more seconds before he was able to speak.

  “Where is it?”

  Professor Whitty looked at the empty space before them, a space that had, until nearly an hour earlier, been occupied by Voyager One.

  “We have no idea. One minute it was there, the next it was gone. Disappeared. It’s just lucky that nobody was on it when it vanished.”

  Roger Nelson moved to the middle of the room. He should have collided with the spacecraft, but there was no longer a spacecraft to collide with.

  “Things don’t just disappear. Not in real life. It’s not Vegas. It’s not a David Blaine illusion. This is NASA. We’re scientists not magicians.”

  Roger stopped talking, realising that he was in danger of babbling, but surely the sudden disappearance of a space probe was justification for a babble or two. Professor Whitty touched his arm.

  “That’s why I thought it important that you see for yourself, Sir. It’s impossible, but it’s happened. Voyager One has disappeared into thin air.”

  Roger needed some space and time to think; his best friend had died the previous day and he’d been thrust unexpectedly into the highest position at NASA. It wasn’t that he wasn’t capable of doing the job – he’d stood in for Administrator Healey on numerous occasions – but now the buck stopped at his desk. He decided to catch a couple of hours of light sleep to recharge his batteries as he’d be no good to anyone if he were too exhausted to think straight. His mind and body obviously needed a break, and he’d left instructions to call him if there were any new developments, so he didn’t feel guilty for trying to take a brief nap. However, he’d hardly slept at all the previous night and the need for a more substantial sleep caught up with him, sending him into deep slumber for several hours.

  Suddenly his bedside phone rang loudly. He picked up the receiver, only to hear a very anxious voice at the other end
.

  “Hello? Acting Administrator Nelson?”

  “Speaking.”

  The voice echoed Professor Whitty’s initial request.

  “I think you should come to Voyager Mission control, Sir.”

  Roger Nelson was definitely not in the mood to go anywhere else now.

  “Just tell me.”

  The voice audibly gulped.

  “Voyager One - the one that’s still out there - it’s gone offline. It’s disappeared.”

  “What do you mean it’s gone offline?”

  The voice took a deep breath.

  “Well, it takes approximately seventeen hours to receive a message from Voyager One, to confirm that the space probe is still active. It appears to have stopped sending coordinates.”

  Roger Nelson’s heart sunk. as he realised the ramifications of this latest piece of news; both Voyager Ones had disappeared. This couldn’t be a coincidence.

  At the White House, the President of the United States was standing in the Oval Office, discussing policy with his Vice-President and the Secretary of State, when suddenly a searing pain shot through his head like a thunderbolt, finally coming to rest behind his right eye and pounding on the rear of his eyeball. He became visibly unsteady on his feet and was forced to sink back down into the large leather executive chair that sat behind the Resolute desk. The Vice-President rushed forward to offer support if needed.

  “Mr President, are you OK?”

  The President held his right hand to cover his throbbing eye and motioned with his left hand.

  “A sudden headache, Andrew. I’m sure it will pass.”

  The Secretary of State was unconvinced.

  “Perhaps we should call a doctor, Mr President.”

  “No need for that. Robert. It’s improving already.”

  The pain subsided and the President meant to take just a sip of water but found himself drinking the whole glassful. He stood up again, an act that concerned the two politicians; they thought that he should stay seated, at least. The President adjusted his tie and went to speak. Without warning, another shard of pain pierced his brain, worse than the first one, and he collapsed to the floor. The Secretary of State wasted no time in summoning the White House Medical Unit. Within a couple of minutes a medic was at the President’s side. He turned to the two senior members of the Administration.

  “I can’t tell what’s caused this collapse here. We need to get him to the Urgent Care Center.”

  Two more medics arrived with a gurney and the President was quickly placed on board and whisked away to the White House Medical Suite, leaving the Vice-President and the Secretary of State alone in the Oval Office, neither man wishing to voice what they were both thinking. The death toll from the disease outbreak had risen to four hundred and twenty-six during the morning and showed no sign of abating. The Secretary of State spoke first.

  “Do you think…?”

  The Vice-President shook his head.

  “I’m sure it’s not.”

  “But are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m not sure. But I don’t want to think about it.”

  “But you – we – have to think about it. We can’t ignore it.”

  “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “I think we’re going to have to cross that bridge. And sooner than we want to.”

  The Vice-President knew exactly what bridge the Secretary of State was referring to. If this sudden illness of the President was the portent of something worse, that the President’s condition worsened, perhaps to the point where he could no longer perform his official duties, the 25th Amendment would be invoked and the Vice-President would be expected to serve as acting president until such time as the President was able to resume his duties. He wanted to go to the medical suite to see how the country’s leader was doing but he also knew that he needed to be available to help the rest of the administration deal with the situation.

  The President did not improve. The medical staff and facilities at the White House were the best that the nation could provide, but when the red wheals began to start showing on his body, everybody realized that the President would not recover. Although most of the cases were to be found in the United States, similar cases were beginning to show up in dozens of diverse locations around the world. The disease, whatever it was, appeared to have an incubation period of seven days when it was highly infectious but those infected showed no symptoms of illness. In fact, paradoxically, many felt healthier than they had felt for a long time. Those seven days had been critical to the spread of the disease. People had criss-crossed the globe, innocent and unwitting harbingers of death, Even those who would be found immune from the disease acted as carriers for its fatal payload.

  The Vice-President was sworn in as soon as it was confirmed that the President was dying. There was no point in waiting until he had breathed his last breath; he would never lead the nation again. The first thing the new President did was to declare a State of Emergency, which closed the borders and blocked both domestic and international air travel. In conjunction with the World Health Organisation, identical measures were taken by those nations that had suffered deaths through similar circumstances.

  Of course these emergency measures were not without consequences. Suddenly thousands of US citizens found themselves trapped in foreign lands. US Embassy switchboards and internet servers collapsed under the strain of panicking Americans trying to get help, and that help was limited. Urgent messages could be sent to families and friends back in the United States, funds to help the stranded citizens could be transferred and even subsistence loans given if necessary. But, due to legal restrictions, the U.S. Department of State couldn’t provide private U.S. citizens with food, water, medications, supplies, or medical treatment.

  The President of the United States of America was the six hundred and seventy-sixth victim of the disease to die, and the numbers were still rising.

  DAY TEN

  3 May– Infected 5,218,658 Dead 817

  As the clock struck midnight, the number of dead rose to eight hundred and seventeen, the majority of the fatalities being in the Seattle and Washington DC areas, although there was now a steady stream of reports from all over the country of fatalities and people presenting at hospitals and clinics with the same symptoms. Nobody had any idea of how many people had been infected with the disease, although the authorities believed that the number could stretch into millions. This was a number hidden from the public; it would only serve to exacerbate the problem, magnifying the fear in an already panicking population.

  At the crack of dawn, Seattle and DC began to witness looting and violence, as hordes of people broke into pharmacies and supermarkets, searching for any medication that could possibly provide protection against or maybe even cure the disease. Shop shelves were stripped of their wares by desperate people determined to stockpile food and water in an effort to survive while sitting the emergency out. When pharmacies could no longer provide medications, the looters moved on to stealing them from clinics, hospitals, and veterinary practices.

  Roads in and out of the cities were congested as the tarmac arteries filled up with cars trying to leave their homes. An irrational belief spread through communities that they could outrun the disease, but all their actions did was to make the situation worse, as the fleeing families carried the virus with them. Ambulances and emergency vehicles were unable to get to and from hospitals and many people died from causes totally unrelated to the pandemic, simply because they didn’t receive medical attention in time.

  A computer program data mined all relevant information and concluded that Ground zero was Dutch Harbor, and, more specifically, the crew of the F/V Alaskan Mermaid. The Unalaska City Council had acted promptly and taken the correct measures in quarantining the town, but unfortunately the precautions were too late – the disease had already been allowed to escape. There had been nothing that anyone could have done to prevent this pandemic; nobody had even felt ill
until seven days after the virus had infected them.

  Anybody who had been on the Alaskan Mermaid on that fateful night had been infected, and a digital search was made to confirm the status of the crew of both the trawler and the helicopter that had retrieved Voyager One. As expected, everybody had fallen prey to the disease and died – except one. Doctor Sitara Khan.

  Sitara was just about to start eating her lunch, when two dark-suited men approached her table in the cafeteria at NASA HQ in Washington DC. She had wanted to go back to her own lab at JPL back in Pasadena, but was now under orders to remain in Washington DC. One of the men took a document from his inside jacket pocket.

  “Miss Khan? Miss Sitara Khan?”

  Sitara put her cutlery back on the table.

  “Doctor Sitara Khan. Yes, that’s me. How can I help you?”

  The Secret Service agent unfolded the document.

  “Doctor Sitara Khan, the President of the United States of America hereby authorises your Federal isolation and quarantine under section 361 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S. Code §264). You need to accompany us to the National Institute of Health Special Clinical Studies Unit in the city of Bethesda, Maryland. Will you please come with us:”