The Virus

by Janelle Diller

  He thought for a moment. “No. I’d probably ask my sister to move her wedding date.” He clicked his chopsticks together a couple times and grabbed a piece of chicken. “She can get married any time. How many first dates does a guy get with someone like Kai?”

  “Good. So you’re not mad at me.” I smiled.

  He smiled, too.

  “You owe me one, now. You know that.” I smiled again.

  We ate in silence for a few minutes. The distraction of the matchmaking took some of the edge off my own bad situation.

  “So what do you think I should do?” I finally asked.

  Apparently, the matchmaking had distracted Michael even more. He gave me a blank look.

  “About traveling,” I said.

  He nodded. I wasn’t sure if he was truly back in the conversation, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

  “I can’t do the commute between here and Colorado Springs anymore. When I leave this time, I won’t be coming back.”

  Michael groaned and leaned back in his chair. “Surely we can figure out something.” He tapped his chopsticks against his plate.

  “Michael, we both know my heart hasn’t been in this for months. Yesterday was just the last straw. I’m not going to get re-vaccinated.”

  “Maybe you can get an apartment out here. You wouldn’t have to commute as often.”

  I actually laughed, probably the first time in two days. “You must be kidding. I can hardly tolerate the travel as it is. You think I’d give up even more time with Eddy just to keep working for this ... this ... ” I didn’t have a word for Zaan that I could say out loud.

  “This fucked-up company?” Michael said it for me.

  “That would be the one.” I ate a few spoonfuls of curry and rice. “You know we’re a major player behind all the RFID stuff.”

  Michael shrugged his shoulders. “If it wouldn’t be us, it’d be somebody else. That’s not a reason to leave.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  He looked a little startled.

  “Where’s the integrity in that? I don’t care if somebody else might do it if Zaan didn’t. Zaan is making all this possible. I don’t want to be here anymore. Travel or no.”

  He leaned toward me across the table. “So what are you going to do? Quit?”

  I rubbed my forehead. If I knew the answer to that, I’d already be out of here. “I don’t know. Probably.” I looked back at him, and it came to me. “Or maybe call in my chit. You owe me one.” I smiled and tilted my head towards Kai, who was chatting with customers a couple of tables over, her eyes a little more animated than usual. “A big one.”

  He sighed. It fell somewhere between blissful and painful. “So what’s the favor?”

  “I want to meet with Sanjeev again.”

  “No,” Michael said immediately. “He’ll never meet with you—with us—again. He made it clear we were sticking our noses where they didn’t belong.”

  “But he’s our best source.”

  “Ours? How did this get to be my problem?”

  “Michael.” I probably sounded huffier than I should have. “Are you living in this country? Aren’t you totally freaked out by all of this?”

  He didn’t answer.

  "You think just because you haven’t been detained this past week or because you don’t have to travel this month that this isn’t your problem. Can’t you see where this is headed? Once most people have the vaccination, the sky is the limit.” I lowered my voiced to a near whisper. “Where will the government stop?”

  I glanced around the room. No one seemed to be paying any attention to us. “Tonight you spend a little time exploring some of the links Eddy has on his website about RFIDs. Take a look at all the possibilities. Europe is testing RFIDs in their Euros. The excuse is that they’ll be able to track bank robbers and counterfeiters. But, oh by the way, they’ll also be able to track what you do with the cash you withdraw from your ATM.”

  “Does it matter?” Michael asked but not very convincingly.

  “I don’t know? Does it? Isn’t that the whole excuse the government gives about every Big Brother move? If you don’t have anything to hide, why should it matter?”

  “Look, I know it’s creepy, but again, why would I care? I leave the airport, go to the hotel, go back to the airport, and go back home. They can pull up my credit card receipts and find out pretty much the same thing.”

  “Michael, that’s just it. We’re like that tired old cliché of the frog in boiling water. The frog swims around in a pot of water. You gradually turn up the heat on the pot. The water temperature creeps up, up, up until the frog literally boils alive because it never sensed when it was too hot. That’s us. If you’d told us thirty years ago that the government would track every phone call we make and every email we write and then embed little radio tags in everyone’s arm, the whole country would have freaked out and stormed the White House to throw the bum out. Instead, we’ve become so accustomed to losing our privacy and identity that we can live with just about anything because ‘we’re not doing anything wrong, so why should we care?’”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Unfortunately, I do. Until it somehow infringes on my activities, it’s not worth getting into a frenzy over. Well here’s the deal. The government decided it didn’t like the fact that my friend Tina Bastante wasn’t following the rules to a T. So now she’s sitting in a federal penitentiary—no lawyer, no trial, no rights. Is that really the kind of country you want to live in?”

  I didn’t know how irritated he was at me by now, but I didn’t care, either. “The most horrific violation of our civil rights just brings a shrug and an ‘oh well, at least we’re safe from terrorists.’ What’s next? A brand on the forehead so people can see at once if we’re terrorists—make that potential terrorists?”

  “It’s wrong. I know it’s wrong. But there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  His eyes shifted around the room. He lowered his voice. “Look, I know you can’t begin to identify with me on this, but even though I’m a naturalized citizen, if I do something or get involved in something, the government can put me on the next plane back to the Philippines. No trial, no lawyer, no suitcase even. They just call me an undesirable, and I can never come back.” Michael waved his chopsticks at me like a father lecturing a child. “Your friend Tina and her lost constitutional rights? That applies to everyone who wasn’t born on this soil.”

  “What are you talking about? You’re here legally. How can they ship you off?”

  “Sanjeev’s probably even more vulnerable than I am. He’s probably just here on a green card. He can’t even get many unpaid parking tickets, or they’ll send him packing. It’s the homeland security stuff. It’s been growing ever since 9/11.”

  “You really believe they’d deport you?”

  “I know they’d do that to me. My dad knows this guy from Penang who’s been here for twenty years. He has a kid who’s twenty-two, maybe twenty-three. The kid got caught with an ounce of marijuana and they sent him back to Malaysia.”

  “They sent him back to a country he left when he was two-years old? That’s absurd.” It wasn’t that I didn’t believe Michael, but it truly was, for want of a better word, absurd.

  “No kidding. Not only that, the guy’s attorney said that he could have been born here and they could have sent him back to Malaysia. It doesn’t happen very often, but it has happened.”

  “And it only has to happen once and you make lots of believers.”

  “Word like that flies through immigrant communities. You think there’s a Malaysian in California who doesn’t know that story? I’ll guarantee you that there wasn’t a Malaysian in the state who smoked dope for a month following that.” He actually laughed a little. “Or a Filipino.”

  “So you’re saying that Sanjeev will refuse to help no matter what.”

  “Think about it. He’s married, has a couple of kids, a
house. Half his family and in-laws are living here now. What’s he willing to risk?” He drummed his fingers lightly on the table. “What would you be willing to risk?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Where’s your friend Tina from originally?” He said it kindly, in case it hadn’t already occurred to me what he meant.

  “El Salvador. Her family escaped the war down there.” Tina had been five at the time. Only a few gruesome bits and pieces of her story had bubbled out into conversation in the two years we’d known her, all of them eased to the surface only after a couple glasses of wine.

  “Illegals?”

  “At the time. They got their citizenship during one of those amnesty times. They’re legal now.”

  “She took a huge risk doing what she did,” Michael said softly. “Maybe they’re holding her in a federal penitentiary. Maybe she’s already back in El Salvador.”

  I shook my head, not sure what would be the better of the two. “If she’d been deported, surely they would have let her contact her husband.”

  Michael glanced around the room, then looked me in the eye. “If she were in a situation to call him.”

  “What do you mean?” My heart rate picked up a couple beats.

  He shook his head. “You Americans are so naïve.”

  “What do you mean, ‘you Americans’? You’re an American, too.”

  He shifted his eyes slightly. “Here we’ve just been having this conversation about what the government does under the guise of a vaccination, and you still want to believe they play fair in everything else they do. You know all the stuff that came out about Guantanamo Bay. The US would never get its hands dirty by torturing. Oh no. That’s barbaric. But they don’t have any trouble doing ‘enhanced interrogation' or putting those poor detainees on a plane to Afghanistan or Iraq or one of those places where they don’t have any scruples about it. Some place where the US probably trained them in the latest technique of squeezing the last shred of information out of a brain before their pulse finally stops. Same end, just easier press conferences.”

  My throat felt thick. I couldn’t think about Tina. Pretty, smart, vivacious Tina.

  “Even the military feels sheepish about how many ‘heart attacks’ detainees have died from.” He looked grim.

  “Look.” My voice caught. I paused and tried to push back the fear. “All I know is that the one person who can help us is Sanjeev. He knows what Zaan did there. He knows who did the software development. He knows the Achilles heel.”

  “What if there isn’t an Achilles heel?”

  “Michael,” I laughed. “It’s software. Some of it’s nothing but heels. It’ll have one. We just have to get to the right person.”

  “Sanjeev won’t help.”

  “Try anyway.”

  Kai arrived at that moment with our ticket and her address and phone number. She’d circled “Saturday at 7:00” in red. “You looked a little distracted, so I wrote everything down.” She smiled, no doubt distracting him further.

  “I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

  CHAPTER

  29

  WHEN I GOT BACK TO MY COMPUTER, I SAW I HAD A MESSAGE—which turned out to be four instant messages—flashing from Eddy. I knew without looking that at least one of the messages would be a little (well-deserved) kick in the shins for leaving my computer running unattended for an hour. Habits die hard when inconvenience is the price for changing.

  EddytheWebMan: hey mz m.

  EddytheWebMan: u there?

  EddytheWebMan: ping me when you get back

  And sure enough, the little kick in the shins:

  EddytheWebMan: and a plague on your project for leaving your computer unattended this long.

  MRiderZAAN: Hey.

  EddytheWebMan: where were you and why didnt you sign off?

  MRiderZAAN: Stepped away for 5 minutes and it turned into lunch with Michael. My bad.

  And not exactly true, either.

  MRiderZAAN: What’s the latest on Tina?

  EddytheWebMan: not a whole lot more than what we knew last night ... pete’s ready to buy a gun

  My fingers fumbled on the keyboard just thinking about where Tina could be at the moment. And what could be happening to her. This wasn’t the moment to tell Eddy.

  MRiderZAAN: So he hasn’t been able to even see her yet?

  EddytheWebMan: no contact at all ... still not even sure where she’s being held ... all he knows is what he managed to drag out of the clerk at the police station last night ... and that little chick with the loose lips is probably looking for a job today

  MRiderZAAN: So what’s Pete doing to get some answers?

  EddytheWebMan: calling in all his cards ... he’s been the car man for too long in this town ... knows too many fender bender stories and protected some serious butt over the years

  MRiderZAAN: Lucky for him he has some leverage.

  EddytheWebMan: here’s the other thing ...

  MRiderZAAN: Yeah?

  EddytheWebMan: i’m getting megahits to the website these days.

  MRiderZAAN: Even more than usual???? What were you up to? 14M?

  EddytheWebMan: 14.8m ... but who’s counting? the two stories on the front page are getting big attention ... the today show, good morning America, fox ... even cnn finally woke up.

  MRiderZAAN: And???

  EddytheWebMan: they want interviews ... i be the man

  MRiderZAAN: Whoohoo!!! You are the man! That’s incredible!!!!!

  MRiderZAAN: Except for that nasty little staying under the radar business.

  EddytheWebMan: i know i know ... thought of that too ... but hey i’m hardly under it now either

  MRiderZAAN: ... and it is a cool, cool opportunity.

  EddytheWebMan: it gives huge visibility to tina’s situation too... maybe it’s worth it

  MRiderZAAN: Promise you’ll think about it more before leaping.

  EddytheWebMan: will do

  MRiderZAAN: When’s this happening?

  EddytheWebMan: tomorrow for gma or today show ... both want an exclusive first ... fox will pick up the crumbs tomorrow pm or thursday

  MRiderZAAN: uh ... not much time to think ... Maybe you can put a plug in for my plight, too. I still don’t know how I’m getting home.

  EddytheWebMan: i know mz m. i haven’t forgotten that or u ... tina’s trip to the big house just seemed to trump everything.

  MRiderZAAN: As it should.

  EddytheWebMan: gotta run.

  MRiderZAAN: Me too.

  EddytheWebMan: xoxo

  MRiderZAAN: u2

  CHAPTER

  30

  EDDY NEEDED AN AGENT OR AT LEAST SOMEONE who could give some sage advice about what to negotiate for, what to expect, and what to avoid. Barring that, he could have at least used twenty-four hours to think about a TV interview instead of twelve. In the end, he went with Good Morning America.

  His segment ran in the first hour, and then they repeated clips of it in the second hour news segments, so they must have snagged some mega response with the first showing.

  I’d assumed the segment would be just a straight interview with Eddy about his website and the attention it was garnering with this latest report about Tina Bastante. Instead, GMA had lined up a spokesman for the CDC who joined Eddy in a split screen for a point counterpoint sparring. Of course Eddy won. Even if I weren’t eternally and totally devoted to him, I would believe that. The CDC sent in the B-team, no doubt because they foolishly assumed Eddy would either be a fringe conspiracy fanatic or a twenty-something funky web designer that would start every sentence with “Dude.” They were completely wrong on both counts.

  The CDC spokesman, Paul Wilder, was ten years Eddy’s senior and slightly overweight. He looked like someone found him a tie at the last minute and someone who had never met the first someone found him a jacket right after that. In contrast, Eddy had dressed all by himself. Whether it was intentional or not, Eddy went for more of an Ozzie and Harriet look�
�crisp, cream shirt unbuttoned at the top with the rust colored cashmere cardigan I’d given him for Christmas. That combined with his blue eyes, innocent smile, and the crinkles around his eyes when he laughed gave him a deceptively simple, everyday-Joe look. That part was pretty much true. He also looked relaxed, which I knew he wasn’t.

  The CDC guy made the mistake of trying to rattle Eddy by belittling him for not only having these far-fetched conspiracy theories, but posting them to his website so everyone could see them. Eddy looked surprised and puzzled from the get go. “Conspiracy theory?” he asked in response to Paul Wilder’s first volley. “What part of smallpoxscare.com isn’t grounded in fact?”

  Here’s where the CDC man should have done his homework. Nowhere on Eddy’s website was there something that wasn’t factual. There was no link to a Conspiracy Theories page. He didn’t even actually refer to the government unless the department played a role somewhere. So he had posted lots of CDC’s own press releases right beside tiny but contradictory, questioning news items from The New York Times or the Washington Post that had been buried back on section B, page 32, right next to the ad for Bali bras. Even the accounts of Tina’s and my Monday in hell were written as straight news rather than editorial tirades.

  I have a thing for men with restraint.

  The cumulative effect, however, pulsed with a more sinister undertone. After all, at least a month before he knew for sure they were connected, he had raised the specter of radio frequency identification tags. So the CDC man may have been on the right track, but technically, he didn’t have a single specific example to use. In the few seconds of fumbling that followed, Eddy took the offensive.

  “Perhaps you’d be willing to explain what happened to Dr. Bastante,” Eddy began. “She was handcuffed and led out of her office. Her office searched as though she were a criminal. Yet she hasn’t been able to contact a lawyer or even her husband. He has no idea where she’s being held or why. Is this the new future for law-abiding citizens?”