Wincing at Light

<– Chapter 18 / Chapter 20 –>

The medical bay was in chaos.

Members of the crew lay in idle pockets on the floor, some staring around with vacant or horrified expressions, others howling. Liston rushed from bed to cot to, in some cases, pallets which had been assembled on the cold tile floor. The bay was filled to its capacity and considerably beyond. As he went. Liston would pause long enough to peel back a sleeve, select a vein and make a quick jab with an auto-injector primed with a thick amber fluid that Brett suspected was not an antibiotic.

Brett stood in the door, unnoticed, then saw Ashburn as well. The sec-o was completely occupied with a set of nylon straps and the form of a man who twisted against his grip with ferocity. He yanked hard on the free end of the strap and sprung the line taut. Brett couldn’t see the crewman’s face, didn’t know who it was. From all about them came groans, outright screams and in more than one case, harsh and gibbering laughter. Brett felt as though he had stumbled into an asylum.

“Oh, my God,” Djen said, raising her hand to her mouth.

Liston rose from the administration of a shot. He turned half around, possibly looking for someone he might have missed, and noticed them. He waved them toward him.

“What happened?” Brett demanded.

“Early this morning, Ashburn received a security report from Cassandra detailing the absences from yesterday’s duty roster. He said it made him nervous to see so many names, so he decided to make a quick check. This is the result of his follow up. Twelve of the absences were locked inside their rooms. Four were comatose when he found them; five of the others are in various stages of delusion.” Liston flicked his eyes away, spun his gaze about the room. “Three are dead. Samuels or someone else decided to remove his left eye with a dinner fork. He bled to death shortly after. Roman and Telyssa somehow breached the second level hatch early this morning and made for the surface. They did not take e-suits, and their bodies have yet to be recovered.”

Djen grimaced at the news.

Brett did his own grim survey of the room, studied faces he knew. Jaekel, Simms, Merriman. He saw Rician, who had been in the mech prog lab just yesterday morning. And beside Ashburn, who had finally gotten the straps secured, Micah.

Liston nodded gravely at Brett. “Micah was the last to arrive. I sent Ashburn to get him as the patients began to arrive. I knew I’d need his help.”

“Where are the others? The ones who were here yesterday?”

“Dead. All except Ritter. I found them after returning from our meeting last night.” Liston frowned apologetically, as though he was somehow to blame. “I’ve made some discoveries you should know about.”

Brett shook his head. “Not here.”

“What can we do to help?” Djen asked.

Liston shrugged. “Nothing of consequence. I’ve just finished administering some heavy sedatives to the patients. They’ll calm down shortly.”

It was already happening. The screamers had slipped into asthmatic sounding wails. The laughter was just a susurrus of breath. Micah arched his back a final time, stretching against the cord across his chest, then fell back. The expression of frenzy softened, and he lay still. Ashburn watched him go, then stepped back. He ran a hand across his forehead to catch the sweat before it ran into his eyes.

“I’ve got Vernon and Ilam banging on the last half-dozen or so doors that I didn’t get to,” Ashburn said. “Those folks didn’t show up on the absence list, so they should be functional, but I didn’t want to take the chance that we’d miss somebody that needed help.”

“Twelve today,” Djen said, her voice quiet. “Plus ten from yesterday and the day before. Christ, Markus, that’s most of the crew!”

But Brett ignored her. He spoke to Liston, “You asked for another day. What do you think now?”

“I can do without. We don’t really have a choice, not with the speed at which they’re moving.”

“Have you done a thorough analysis of Ilam’s fluids?”

“As much as I can without peeking at the brain itself. It still looks clean, but I haven’t had any time to review his protocol. We’ll be injecting blindly. There’s still a considerable risk.”

“I’ll accept it. It’s worse than we suspected,” Brett said. “I just got off the comm with Malibu. The whole station is gone. Total infestation. Everyone is dead.”

He hoped Liston would not ask him to elaborate, and he was thankful when the doctor only lifted his head in acknowledgement. “Do we involve the rest of the crew in this decision?”

“No. The four of us who know, Ashburn and Vernon because they suspect. Everyone else will go along because they’re too scared to do anything else. I don’t want to have to debate the science or the legality any more than we have already, and especially with people bound to be more than a little hysterical.”

“Understood. Come into the office.” Liston started toward the door in the back corner of the room, weaving around cots and pallets as he went. “We can page Ilam and Vernon from my terminal.”

Brett passed him and took the seat behind the desk. Liston and Djen occupied the chairs opposite him, while Ashburn set his back against the wall to the right. Brett punched his login and passcode on the keyboard.

“Is this terminal set up for oral command? I’d like to get Cassandra in on this.”

Liston said it was and Brett entered a new series of commands enabling the room’s audio sensors.

“Cassandra, are you receiving?”

“I am now monitoring this channel, Markus.”

“I need you to locate crewmembers Ilam and Vernon. Have them report to this location at once.”

“Your request has been processed.” Brett waited for a few moments, and then she said, “Ilam and Vernon have been located on the fifth sublevel. Crewman Ilam has acknowledged the summons and reports they will arrive shortly.”

“Have you had an opportunity to review the latest data regarding the unauthorized personnel?”

“Yes. The findings of Specialists Riley and Fortens are interesting. I have correlated that data with information provided by Dr. Liston.”

Brett nodded. “Good. Are you aware of this morning’s events?”

“I have recently updated the behavioral profile program per your specifications. Would you like to hear the results?”

“I think I already know what you’re going to say. File your reports for now.”

Cassandra paused. “As you wish, Markus.”

The door sprang open and Ilam stumbled in, followed closely by Vernon. Their faces were both flushed and their breathing rapid, as though they’d been running.

“You rang?” Vernon said.

“We thought it might be an emergency,” Ilam explained.

“Of course, we thought the sec-o’s mission was an emergency, too. All we got out of that was a candid booty shot of Attler in her underwear.” Vernon grinned at Ashburn, then added, “And for that, I’m eternally grateful. Don’t get me wrong.”

“The others seemed hale enough,” Ilam said. “Frightened, but sound. Though there weren’t as many of them as I had expected. I didn’t think well enough about the math, I suppose.”

Brett pointed them to positions against the wall. “Let’s talk about the math, then. We’ve got nineteen confirmed casualties among the crew in less than four days. The rest of us are probably infected, though not yet showing symptoms. In the last hour, I made radio contact with Malibu. Their entire crew is a loss, probably over a period of no more than five days. Does anyone need for me to impress upon them further the gravity of our situation?”

No one spoke. Brett took a few minutes to brief Ashburn and Vernon on the extent of their knowledge. Ashburn watched him, his face set in stoic lines. Vernon, for possibly the first time in Brett’s experience, had neither a glib nor lecherous comment to contribute.

Brett concluded by saying, “We have a course of action open to us. The downside is that this solution has not been tested. Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean not adequately tested. I mean not at all, not in this situation. Not after the infestation has already occurred.”

Ashburn frowned. “But it’s still better than the certain outcome.”

“We don’t know that it will work,” Liston cautioned him. “It could very well fail. It could do more than fail and kill us in the process.”

One by one, they all turned their eyes to Brett, waiting for him to speak.

“I intend to take this course,” he said. “I don’t see any way around it. We won’t go in completely blind, though. We know that we don’t have the medical capacity to revive those who have already fallen sick. We’ll use them to test the hypothesis in general and the programming specifically. Does anyone have a problem with that?”

Not even Liston protested, but Brett bored into them with all the intensity of perception he could muster. If there was any weakness in their resolve, any miniscule taint that would cause any one of them to falter, it would come now. What he was suggesting–experimentation on helpless, human subjects–would have him imprisoned and executed for human rights crimes in every system between here and Earth. By going along with it, they all became culpable. The violations of the Turning Convention were ethical bumps in comparison to the mountain he was asking them to climb.

But Malibu was dead. Nineteen of their own were gone. For all they knew, the survivors of Persia were the last living humans on the planet. That changed everything.

“Cassandra?”

“I’m following, Markus.”

“What do you have to say about this?”

“It is against Earth Forces Terraform Command regulations to willingly harm or kill station personnel. It is also a violation of regulations to perform unauthorized nanomech augmentation which violates the letter of the Turning Convention.”

“Unless the nanomech therapy is a medical procedure,” Brett prompted.

“Dr. Liston must certify that the medical procedure is warranted to preserve the health, safety or mental stability of the patients in question.”

Brett arched an eyebrow at Liston. The doctor cleared his throat. “It’s necessary, Cassandra, but highly experimental.”

“Thank you, Dr. Liston. Your prognosis has been logged.”

Brett continued, “Cassandra, how many authorized personnel are currently in the station?”

“Ten active personnel are present, Markus.”

“And unauthorized personnel?”

She hesitated, calculated. Finally, she said, “Would you like an exact count?”

“Ballpark it.”

“Very many.”

It wasn’t the point he was trying to establish. He needed her to see what he was showing her, needed her to store the information he offered with the precise slant he gave it.

Brett tried again. “Cassandra, reference the file of Biological Specialist Micah Fortens.”

“Referenced.”

“Please locate his current position.”

“Biological Specialist Fortens is not present in Persia Station.”

“Please list the authorization status of all individuals and entities in the medical bay. Don’t include this office in the definition of medical bay.”

The speakers chirped as Cassandra slogged through sensor data. “Markus, the medical bay contains only unauthorized personnel. Please inform Security Officer Ashburn of possible security breach.”

Brett cast his eyes around the office. He made certain that the significance of what had just been said did not escape them. It was a modicum of legal coverage. In the event that other stations remained, that Earth Forces Terraform Command still had an authority structure in place on Archae Stoddard, Cassandra would not report what they were preparing to do. Neither the nanomechanical insertion or the test runs on other crewmembers would register as violations of EFTC regulations as she understood them.

No truth would emanate from Persia except that which they chose to transmit. Reality would be what they defined it to be, and nothing else.

He spoke to Cassandra. “Have you completed the routine to cross-reference the latest imaging files for all Persia Station crew with the most current verified microencephalograph scans?”

Cassandra answered in the affirmative.

Brett turned to Liston. “Doctor, I’m assuming that we haven’t made any progress on the MEG mapping for the healthy crew we discussed last night?”

“No.”

“Scrap it, then. As of now, we assume everybody is infected. I don’t want to miss a pocket of these bastards because of a questionable MEG reading, and I sure as hell don’t want to program the nanomechs based on readings that might already be skewed by infestation. All it would take is missing just one and we’d be back at square one, or worse–they could go dormant, and sit in there waiting for us to return to Earth where people wouldn’t know how to defend themselves.

“You see my point,” Brett concluded. “We’ll use what Cassandra’s got in storage from the first of the month. Better all the way around.”

Djen objected, “Then we risk losing the synaptic connections made since our last imagings. That’s almost two weeks, Markus.”

“Long enough,” Ashburn said, “that everything we know right now about the bacterial threat could be erased. You realize that, right? We could wake up from this procedure–assuming we wake up, that is–to find the crew dead, Malibu gone and no fucking idea what happened.”

Djen caught his attention, drew it to her. “We could lose the memories of everything that’s happened. Everything could vanish, as though it never happened. Are you willing to make that sacrifice?”

He understood what she meant. He would forget the pleasure of her touch. He would lose the firm and willing warmth of her embrace, the smell of her on his skin. He would forget everything she had become to him. But would it, he thought, be too great a sacrifice to make if he didn’t ever remember making it in the first place? Over a loss they didn’t know they had suffered?

The answer was obvious. It also couldn’t be helped. Brett tried to reassure her with a half-smile, but he had nothing else to offer her.

“You will lose it,” Ilam said seriously. He pulled away from the wall. “I did, but of course I had the luxury of planning my insertions. I lost days in some cases, hours in others. It can’t be helped. But you won’t be allowed to forget the threat. I’ll remember for all of you. I won’t need the procedure because I’m already clean. And I should stay that way, luck holding, as long as my mechs continue to operate. Cassandra can corroborate me enough that when you awake to find a grinning idiot standing above a mound of dead and dying Persians, I won’t get locked away as some sort of war criminal.”

“Good,” Brett said. He tried not to look at Djen. Ilam’s pronouncement had the edge of finality. It was beyond doubt in a way that he couldn’t allow himself to contemplate, not yet. Not when there were things that had to be done to save them all.

“What else?” he asked. “Other contingencies or problems we’ve missed?”

“I have something,” Liston said. “I mentioned I had made a further discovery.”

“Instead of sleeping, as ordered,” Brett said, scowling.

Liston only shrugged. “I told you last night that I had begun to review the data on the behavioral models passed along by Cassandra yesterday. There were several hundred pages of documentation. She is, to say the least, a thorough processing and analytic tool. Because of the time constraints of dealing with the patients themselves and attempting to finalize my findings for the presentation, I skipped over many of the details in her report.

“Before Ashburn directed the invasion of the medical bay this morning, it occurred to me that I would be remiss if I continued to neglect her carefully gathered materials. I think I have stumbled across some preliminary findings which will be of interest to all of us. I believe I’ve identified an explanation for the bizarre behaviors and aberrant psychological traits some of the subjects have demonstrated.”

Liston leaned back in his chair, assuming a relaxed pose. Brett noted that the doctor appeared more awake and alert now than he had hours before, though he hadn’t slept. Liston’s eyes were bright, his gestures animated. It occurred to Brett that he was trained for this type of exercise, had been hardened to long periods without sleep through the boot camp atmosphere of medical internship. He was at his best in the midst of a crisis.

Either that or he had determined to jack up on stim for the duration.

“I focused specifically on those cases in which the patient exhibited significant behavioral deviance prior to collapse. Fortunately, I had Crewmen Ekers and Rian–Cassandra’s specific examples from her report–available for a complete and detailed study. I also had the benefit of my analysis of Sievers’s infection and decline for comparison.”

Someone in the room uttered a low and threatening growl, but Brett could not tell who it was. Liston pursed his lips in consternation.

“I’m finished begging for forgiveness. I grieve the same as the rest over the loss of our companions and colleagues, but my duty is clear. I will be grateful for the opportunities that are presented if they save the lives of the remainder.”

“We understand,” Djen said, glancing around her for support. “But it isn’t easy for us.”

“Go on,” Brett said. The topic was closed.

“Prior to the manifestation of any obvious symptoms, both Rian and Ekers suffered noticeable psychotic episodes. This is a curious phenomenon. I judge that they had no symptoms because the crew was well educated by the commander’s instructions regarding spinal meningitis, and we saw from the rapid response to the antibiotic administration that they were down to the individual hyperaware of their own physical conditions. I’m convinced that both of these cases would have immediately given themselves over to medical treatment if they suspected anything was amiss.

“It is only reasonable to draw one of two conclusions as a consequence. Either the patients who have demonstrated psychotic episodes did not exhibit any of the recognized symptoms prior to those episodes, or the onset of the episodes prevented them from recognizing that they were displaying symptoms.

“You will remember that it was my conclusion from Sievers’s case that the organism tends to migrate toward regions of the brain in which healthy neural networks already exist, and that the vast majority of the communities were entrenched in the right hemisphere. Upon review of Ekers and Rian’s brain matter, what I discovered were–comparative to comatose examples–massive neural networks. They each had at least one instance of a significant complex of extremely active related neurons, and it was within this network that the majority of the organisms resided. Do you understand the difference?”

Ilam answered first. “One mode of infestation is a gradual saturation of active neural systems. The gradual approach results in coma. In the other, there is a localized electrochemical reaction significant enough to throw them off their beam, so to speak.”

“That’s assuming they prefer to have the victims comatose,” Djen said.

“Which may not be the case,” Liston finished. “If we are correct in our belief that the organism draws both energy and sustenance from the sodium/potassium ion transfer of an action potential, the community stands to benefit more by allowing the host to continue to mentally function on its own. The cognitive activity of the waking brain would generate a more than adequate supply of free energy, as it were. The organism may prod the host in a given direction, encourage action potentials along the route that will increase electrochemical reaction through the occupied neural network, but it only makes sense that it would be counterproductive to willingly decrease the supply of free energy. Otherwise, of course, the organism is required to expend the energy of its own members to achieve the same end. And I cannot believe that the unassisted action of the organism is as potent as the action of the host.”

Brett thought hard for several seconds. “You think the comas are accidents? Accidents or failures?”

“I believe the choice of coma or apparent psychosis has more to do with the individualized topography of the brain. The organism, shall we say, reacts to the environment which is presented. Understanding, of course, that the coma stage is inevitable after a certain threshold of infestation.”

Ashburn cleared his throat. He looked distinctly uncomfortable with the conversation. “So what exactly does all of that mean?”

Ilam spoke, his voice low and serious. “Primarily, it means that those who have these enlarged neural networks will continue to function for a definite period after they’ve been infected. Those with more generalized networks succumb rather quickly. If anyone still doubts they might be infected, here is the final, damning proof.”

Vernon cast a sharp glance from Ilam to Liston. “Is that true?”

“Almost certainly,” Liston said. “But I must admit I hadn’t placed that much significance on my conclusions. I’ve suspected for some time that we were all infected.”

Brett knew he had to move them along, before the shock paralyzed them. “Then tell us what you thought was more important.”

“I am intrigued by the selection of the networks. To an extent, if we’re to be completely honest, we must realize that most of us are scientists. We are left-brain oriented. We’re logical, rigorous, verbal in our orientation. All of the patients I’ve analyzed have demonstrated significant left hemispheric cortical development. But the organism largely eschews the left portion of the brain. Instead, it draws its harvest from the right hemisphere and the pre-frontal cortex specifically, which would seem counter-intuitive if we are correctly understanding what it is that the organism draws from us. After all, the electrochemical reactions are the same on either side. The raw materials are the same.

“This was the critical point, for me. And I discovered this–though we use our left hemispheres more frequently, it is the right hemispheres that relate all of our perception and cognition to the less developed, more ancient portions of our brains. The pre-frontal cortex of the right hemisphere stores our autobiographical memories, our mechanisms for accessing emotions, and current theory suggests, our concept of self-definition . It makes us who we are, while the left hemisphere allows us to coherently express those things. In the absence of expression, the right hemisphere still functions. In the absence of active cogitation, the right hemisphere continues to process independently. It is a constant and intense generator.”

Liston’s eyes seemed to brighten with excitement. “Through this, I came to understand the nature of the relationship between ourselves and the organism. It attacks the most potent source of electrochemical energy. That source is, in Rian, in Ekers, in Ritter, the object of our memories or our associations or our preoccupation with which we are most consumed, be it actual or total fantasy. If the synaptic connections are strong and the memories fresh or frequently engaged–if the system is healthy–the organism has the effect of magnifying that preoccupation until the whole of our reality is filtered through it. Our thoughts are consumed by that one track, then new associations are added to it until eventually, finally, what we perceive is a total and complete fantasy.”

In his mind, Brett heard the voice of Michael Stepson. He said it made everyone feel like they had an itch they couldn’t scratch. It made sense, and Dr. Isaiah from Malibu Station had unconsciously understood it all, even if he didn’t manage to live long enough to prove it. The organism haunted them with itches they couldn’t scratch.

Like Ritter and a last, catastrophic card game with an image of doom he simply couldn’t shake, no matter how many times he imagined he was dealing the cards.

Like Rian haunted by a secret guilt for which there was no absolution, and a lost child from whom she could win no forgiveness.

“This also explains the theta wave increases we’ve discussed and the similarity to REM sleep in not just the psychotic cases, but the comatose cases as well. Current cognitive theory holds that the value of REM phase, peak theta wave activity, is an assimilation of memory and mental processed data into a cohesive understanding. Everything that we know and have known is correlated and catalogued and analyzed for its positioning in our perceptions of the way the universe works and the way we relate to it. The organism’s stimulation of our neural network and consequent inducement of a state of constant memory retrieval leads our brain to assume that this is data to be interpreted in a theta wave environment.”

Brett waited for Liston to finish, then tossed the issue back to the group. “Problems? Anyone see where he may have made errors?”

Djen wrinkled her brow. “If the hypothesis is accurate, we have to confront the issue that we’ve all been fiercely activating our left-hemispheric functions over the last few days. That means our reasoning could be suspect. We could be making illogical associations induced by the organism.”

“Except that none of the subjects have shown any left brain infestation of significance,” Liston argued. “The ‘why’ is a mystery to me. The fact is undisputed.”

“Next?” Brett prompted.

No one complained, though he was certain at least Ashburn and Vernon said nothing simply because they were at as much or more of a loss concerning the mechanics of neurobiology than he was. It would have been good to have had Micah’s knowledgeable, if annoying, objectivity.

Brett said, “Cassandra, are you still monitoring?”

“Yes, Markus.”

“What’s your assessment of the doctor’s explanation?”

“Dr. Liston’s hypothesis conforms to the data as reported. His assessment of the samples obtained from crewmembers Rian and Ekers, as discussed, is insightful.”

He nodded to himself. It was good enough. “Theory makes for interesting conversation, but what’s the practical value? How does it help with the treatment protocol?”

“We know where they live,” Ilam suggested. “We can target specific areas more accurately–the temporal lobe, the pre-frontal cortex. It will save resources.”

Vernon snorted. “Like we don’t have two gazillion of the little bastards on hand.”

“Good point,” Ilam said in return. “It will save time in treatment, though. Less seeking, more destroying.”

“All right,” Brett said. “You and Liston can come up with other refinements as they present themselves. That’s your task for today. Give me a time frame.”

Liston looked to Ilam, who chewed his lower lip. “Design, analysis, program testing. . .tomorrow afternoon at the earliest.”

“Tomorrow morning,” Brett said. “No later. If you get stuck, get Cassandra’s help. She knows as much about this as we do. You’ll need her for permutation development of your basic program, anyway.”

Ilam frowned. “What permutation?”

“Individualized tweaks of the programming. I like you, Ilam, but I don’t want the mechs operating under the assumption they’re crafting my brain to look and act just like yours.”

Vernon laughed. No one else found it humorous.

Brett continued, “Ashburn, take Djen and locate the remaining healthy members of the crew. Let them know what’s going on without upsetting them, if possible. Make sure they know we’re working on it, we have a solution, that sort of thing. Keep them close and supervised.”

“What about me?” Vernon asked. “What’s my job?”

“You get to watch the medical bay while the good doctor is saving the station.”

“And what about you?” Djen asked gently.

“I have some admin details left to iron out,” he said. When that didn’t gather any nods of understanding, he added. “Last check of the hull integrity? Atmospheric readings? Problem reports? In case you haven’t noticed, between fear, preoccupation and downright dereliction, we’ve been on autopilot for a couple of days. There are things that haven’t been monitored as they should–most of them things we normally wouldn’t let slide because our lives depend on them. Any other questions?”

It didn’t earn him a collective gasp, but something close enough for his satisfaction. They comprehended the risk, at least. Brett grinned and shooed them toward the door.

“Let’s get moving, folks. We’re running out of time.”

<– Chapter 18 / Chapter 20 –>

Filed under: From the Hands of Hostile Gods | Tagged: blook, Darren Hawkins, From the Hands of Hostile Gods, science fiction