staying.cool
Saying a lot, saying a little… who cares?
part 4: the man who ran
Aug 26th
Posted by SEV in staying.fiction
Feet pounded the road below. Arms pumped. Sweat streamed. Gasps for air.
He ran.
The world was blurring: buildings, houses, roads, grass, manhole covers, cars, doors… all becoming a mishmash, a mosaic of barely seen images, sights, sounds he did not have time to notice.
And yet the shouting never seemed to cease. Imagined or otherwise.
A weary arm broke rhythm momentarily to brush beads of sweat from tired eyes, eyes that were drooping ever so slightly.. tiredness, sleeplessness, fatigue, call it what you will… was taking its toll on a body that was protesting unheard.
He did not have time.
He shot around the next bend in the road and dived into a ditch, a cover… imagined protection of some kind.. any kind. It had been 3 days now, and the running and dodging seemed ever more irrational by the minute. Anyone and everyone.. people he barely knew, people he didn’t, faceless people from the shadows; they were all against him. No matter where he turned, it seemed a new enemy had cropped up.
How long could he keep it up, really?
It was a matter of time. At some point he would have to stop to recover. He would doubtless be caught within minutes, turned over to the shady Powers-That-Be, and that would be it. He had no idea what was in store for him: all he knew was he did not want it to be in store for him.
His head, which had been steadily tilting backwards, hit the wall behind him. Momentarily, it seemed as though that was all the pillowing that was needed… all the comfort he could ever want was in leaning against that wall and dropping off into a comforting netherworld of dreams. Shoulders relaxed, arms un-stiffened ever so slightly.. it seemed the toll of ceaseless pursuit was finally being paid.
Just as suddenly, his neck snapped back, body tensed… and within microseconds he was on his feet, staring wildly about himself. Something had struck a nerve, a deep-seated nerve ever on the alert for something out of the ordinary. He inched around the cover and risked the quick glance.
Nothing.
He collapsed back against the support he had propelled away from minutes earlier. His hands were shaking from the adrenaline rush, the crash of which was starting to take effect now.
Nothing.
But the shouting had never ceased. He could still hear it, sense it.. feel it drilling into his brain with its unremitting echo…
Imagined or otherwise.
**************************
“Subject appears to suffer from disturbed sleep patterns, as per corroborated observations since initial sedation. Phase 3 to be commenced shortly.” — Journal entry, Patient #H4359874
Part 4 of a serialized story: The Man Who Was
drained
Aug 3rd
Posted by SEV in staying.in.my.head
I feel drained.
There’s the deadline. The extension to the deadline. The paper. The second paper. The paper you are writing in parallel to the other two. Other people’s papers. Other people’s papers that you are trying to beat to the punch. Old papers that you want to get a handle on, but seem like you never will have the time to. Future papers that are pending. Papers that are pending, but appear dead. Trying to revive dead papers.
The experiment. The results. The meaning of experiment and the experiment’s results. Follow-up experiments. Comprehensive validation experiments for the results. The code that underlies it all. Waiting on that code to run. Making that code faster. New experiments. Novel extensions to the experiments. Writing, summarizing and explaining the experiments. The theory of the experiment. Writing the paper about the experiments. Rewriting. Proof-reading. Going through 10 drafts of the same paper until you are sick of it.
Then there’s the lab. The small bits and pieces of mundane lab life that you involve yourself in. Maintaining things within the lab that at some point you became responsible for. Remembering tiny nuggets of related information that somehow only you became privy to. Retaining and producing them at the opportune moment.
At some point, you go back home.
You bask in not having to think of things such as papers and experiments. (thanks.. of course.. to a certain Mrs., who is awesome)
(Unless there’s a deadline. In which case, that’s all you think about)
Then you remember all the other things you have to remember.
At some point, the random thought about whether there is a point in the day when you will not look at a screen of some kind. They seem to be everywhere. The computer. The TV. The PSP. The phone. The laptop. Then you shrug and decide you have to live with such wonderings in the world you are in.
Then you try to keep up with what is happening in the world around. In different spheres of the world around you. In your own personal world. In your interests.
Then you go to bed. Planning what to do the next day. Trying to note down things you remember you have not done that day.
You try to get up the next day, full of zest and life, completely not drained at all.
Such is life.
And I really want to do this for the rest of mine.
Didn’t see that coming.
skip week
As much as I’m sure you are all waiting with bated breath for the next instalment (and I’m sure no-one is breathing, given the deafening silence my last 3 posts have generated).. this week is a skip week.
Unlike all the “cool” blog novelists, its not because of Comic-Con.. other, more esoteric deadlines beckon.
Maybe two small instalments next week. We’ll see what I can come up with.
part 3: the man who didn’t
Jul 25th
Posted by SEV in staying.fiction
Another day, another hour. Another minute, another patient.
It was his thirty-two-thousandth, four hundred and ninety-sixth patient today. Well.. it felt like somewhere in that ballpark, anyway. Give or take a few hundred.
That the apparently unceasing stream of patients would actually never end was much more than just a feeling now. It was a certainty. The number of the infected were going up, regardless of the numbers that were being released by the Powers-That-Be. It was a rare day that they found more than 20 possible survivors out of the hundreds that turned up. Today, there was maybe one so far.
He checked his watch yet again. Not that much time had passed. He still had another hour or so to go before his break.
He looked up from the chart when the next one entered the room. Female, mildly attractive, mid-30s(?), probably a size… um, well… not truly relevant to the task in hand. Did she look like she might die? Definitely, if she spat like it. Hell, she probably would die anyway. He was pretty convinced that every living thing on the planet, including him, was bound to die. Everyone on the damn planet. Everyone.
He extended the digital analyzer spittoon for the thirty-two-thousandth, four hundred and ninety-seventh time. Or whatever. Looked closer at her. No, definitely only mildly attractive, even if his per-patient report didn’t have an entry for such details. Some doctors he knew had started making deals with the prettier ones (that they first diagnosed as clean), asking for “payments” to certify them as clean.
Some even made such deals with men.
Even if he was going to try that stunt, this female was not worth it. Hell, his own wife looked better than she did.
“Next!” A smile, a nod, and the sound of the door closing. And opening again.
Male.
Ehhh…
The man seemed genuinely puzzled about what to do next. He was silently motioned to fill out his own chart. By the time the previous report had been filed by the doctor, the newly completed one was ready. The doctor had no idea why these forms were bothered with… maybe it was to ensure that the doctors had a little breathing time between patients. He pushed a spittoon across while scanning the form on auto-pilot, and looked up to see the man quizzically examining it.
“Spit.”
The new entry pushed the spittoon back. “Do I get a letter of some kind?”
“When you step out, you’ll be notified.” Thank god for setting up that procedure. The initial set of patients couldn’t handle what was bound to happen to them, and at least ten doctors had to go on the wrong side of the Wall.
Now the doctors themselves didn’t know what the outcome was; the spittoons were transported outside the staging area once the samples had been collected. The most significant test was run while it was being transported, which at least told the soldiers waiting outside whether the patient was a potential survivor or not. The remaining tests took longer, and were usually run in batch jobs. Jobs which were obviously on a backlog; there were only so much money that people were willing to invest in a testing facility. Even if said facility could be responsible for the survival of the planet. It was just one of those things.
“Is that all?”
The doctor looked back up from the chart. “Yes, they’ll talk to you outside now. Thank you.” He went back to looking at the chart. Something had struck him… name, age, address, location, standard questions about hanging out with the infected… something…
He looked back up. The patient was still standing there, apparently disoriented. Warning sign of infection. “Sir, you have to go outside now.” His hand snaked towards the buzzer underneath the desk, he realized that it was shaking ever so slightly. Stories came rushing back into his head, unbidden, of patients spitting on doctors for no apparent reason… of violent breaks with reality which were quickly “handled”. No-one knew why they happened, least of all the doctor involved. Who was also the one person who definitely did not survive; to be replaced by the next scapegoat.
If only he had managed to get his wife and parents someplace they were safe from the Powers-That-Be… if only that was even possible…
The man leaned heavily on the table, clearly about to do something. The doctor slowly shifted slightly off to the right: if he was going to be the target of spit, he could at least try to avoid it. A crystal-clear fact materialized: no-one was ever kept on the right side of the Wall if they had been anywhere near an infected (or possibly infected) person who had been spitting. The isolation masks and procedures were fine, but no risks were being taken. His finger was nearly on the buzzer…
“I… I’m from H_____”
The doctor’s fingers depressed the buzzer, the sound of which immediately reverberated in the room. On cue, he pushed himself back, away from the table.. away from who was surely Death. He twisted sideways out of the chair, and then rolled behind it, cowering.. hopefully outside the range of spit… “Please don’t do anything, please, I beg you, I’m really trying to help… I’m just a doctor, I don’t know why they risk us, we know nothing…” The patient’s eyes widened in shock as the buzz penetrated his skull. He stood upright, wavering ever so slightly.
The doctor’s babbling was interrupted by the slam of the door, as the room was burst into by an Isolation Team. The table was kicked over, the spittoon sent flying.. spit and all.. the patient roughly knocked to the floor and tasered. Two members of the Team bound him and started dragging him to the door. The Leader of the Team now turned to where the doctor was hiding behind the chair.
The spittoon lay inches away from him, remnants of sputum adhering to the bottom.
The rest of it was on the doctor’s gown.
“I’m sorry, sir” The Leader advanced, taser at ready. “You know the procedure, I would appreciate not having to use this on you.”
The doctor’s eyes darted towards the taser, and then back at his gown as he rose from the ground. “No, I’m sterilized.. it won’t do anything, I assure you, let me go through the sanitation chamber. Please…” His eyes widened in horror on seeing the splatter across the front of his body. There was no hope.. none… He backed away from the Leader, his leg nudging the spittoon. Reflexively, he lashed out… but somehow the spittoon had sealed up and clattered harmlessly against the upturned table. The rest of the Team moved as far away from it as possible.
“Sir, please.”
The doctor collapsed on his knees sobbing. The Leader moved decisively towards him, taser in one hand… bindings in the other. “My wife, my parents… please…” A chop to the head to knock him onto his front, and the bindings were strapped on. The rest of the team were around him with the bodybag.. it wasn’t time to kill him.. but it was the safest way. The Leader depressed his communicator. “Sterilization. Testing Room 201.” He motioned to the Team.
The spittoon beeped. It’s preliminary tests had been run on whatever had been within.
Green.
The Teams’ eyes were on the indicator.
“But he was from H_____! That means I’m…” A scream from the doctor cut off mid-sentence.
The taser had been deployed by one of the Team before the Leader had the time to give an order. Auto-pilot. The doctor flailed inhumanly, and then lay still.
The Leader’s eyes went to the automatically updated screening chart on the far wall, scanning.. scanning..
One of the Team said it out loud before he even reached the entry.
“Impossible, no-one from H____ has been found uninfected.”
The Leader stared at the door through which the patient had been dragged. “Yet.”
Part 3 of a serialized story: The Man Who Was
part 2: the world that was
Jul 16th
Posted by SEV in staying.fiction
The onset of the epidemic had nothing to do with the weather. It also had nothing to do with the supposed degeneration of society, disrespect to any one of a million faiths (or any of the divine reasons they had been founded), or even hypothetical recent advances in cloning or archaeological studies.
The earth was still spinning on its axis. Water flowed, winds blew, storms broke, volcanoes simmered. Gravity still existed and electromagnetism still worked. All of these phenomena continued just as they always had.
In the meantime, though, the epidemic had reared its ugly head, and was spreading. Fast.
In the corner of the globe that was incubating it, when or where the current situation had first come to pass had already started fading in memory. The numbers of the dead and the dying apparently increased on a daily basis; as such, the times when there were only rumors of human extinction in some remote area seemed impossible, almost unreal.
Rumor had it that scientists, as well as doctors, had examined a settlement whose every resident had been found dead. Whether a comet had crashed, whether a revolution was involved, or whether bloody ritualistic sacrifices had been performed was unknown. No-one quite knew who had found them that way, or even how or when they had died. The police force had started an investigation as well, with a complete lack of detail to guide them. They then held the mandatory press conference, which was mostly ignored by the media.
They all returned to their lives.
And, almost immediately, death seemed to be everywhere.
The first researchers who had died only barely managed to log their research. A second set of researchers succumbed a few days later, trying to work out these very logs. A reporter got hold of a vague statement, put one set of dead bodies together with another… and soon enough, everybody around knew that something was very wrong. That was still all they knew, no-one quite knew what was reality. “The disease has spread to Australia, but there are currently no fatalities.” “No humans currently survive in the Americas, most animals dead as well. Fate of insects unknown.” The realization that an epidemic does not go global all at once was lacking. There is an incubation period, a time when a small region battles rampant disease spread using every possible measure: quarantines, pre-emptive slaughter, isolation chambers, gas chambers, mayhem, chaos, anarchy, religion. The world, meanwhile, continues revolving around the sun, largely oblivious to what is going on. Other than to ensure barriers were erected around that region that were tall enough to ensure nothing could get out.
Currently though, every single living human in this corner of the globe was trying their damnedest to cut themselves off from their local civilization. To get out if they could.
Not realizing that this would probably lead to a global epidemic.
Somehow the reasoning of a few prevailed over the mad panic of others. These few, perhaps foolishly, hoped that they could somehow isolate the epidemic… somehow ensure the planet would not be affected. That they could contain the disease, develop a cure and solve all the world’s problems in one fell swoop. Rudimentary screening clinics were attempted to segregate diseased carriers. The initial forays into setting up such clinics were quickly de-staffed by fatalities due to improper isolation procedures. Very little was known about the disease, but with experience, sputum became a major screening factor. As screening intensified, with concomitant isolation, it appeared that the spread of the disease was slowing. Who could tell? People could still be dying undiscovered; everyone knew that they might always be one step behind the epidemic.
After all, they did not even know what had caused it.
Were they seriously hoping that they could survive? Could they hold off the mind-numbing fear of death, that had driven so many others over the brink of sanity, long enough? “The sound of inevitability“, as somebody once put it: the deathly silence that pervades your every fiber… waiting, watching. Knowing that you were going to die and that there was nothing you could do about it.
One such clinic, though, would soon hold a key to the survival of humanity.
They did not know this either.
Part 2 of a serialized story: The Man Who Was
part 1: the man who wasn’t
Jul 9th
Posted by SEV in staying.fiction
Dark clouds gathered in the horizon. The kind of dark clouds that can prove ominous. The next step is a disastrous event, with grandiose destruction of all and sundry.
However, the rare exception does exist where they may be harbingers of happiness… such as for parched equatorial plants, or even residents of a small settlement nestled in the middle of plains; your every crop season reliant on a fickle monsoon.
One such settlement nestled in the middle of scorched plains is where it all began… a settlement eagerly awaiting thunder, lightning, and the accompanying rains to provide some relief from a scorching hot summer.
***********
He staggered into the settlement.. seemingly physically unmarked. A glance at his face told a different story – it was a terrible expression, haunted with an inhuman fear. Eyes, wild with panic, darted around the clearing near the center of the settlement looking for someone, anyone, even as he himself reeled in search of support. His entrance did not go unnoticed for long: it was a small area and staggering men in a relatively empty clearing are hard to miss.
His voice started low, ascending to a scream as he described death, and corpses of animals, and no apparent reason for such fatalities. The bodies were apparently lying not too far from the entrance. A crowd started milling around asking questions in that morbid fascination of death that occupies mankind’s thoughts. He spoke of how he had gone down to the river as he did every day. How, while washing, he had felt a certain unnatural stillness all around him. How he had stumbled upon animals lying near the water in apparent agony.
All very dead.
He did not talk about going nearer, about examining each animal closely. Or of anything else that happened before he had come running back, without stopping to finish his ablutions.
The hubbub that had started with this breathless exposition was full-blown pandemonium by the time he ended it. People started clustering into groups as his yells died away. The questions started:
Where was it? “I don’t know.” “Do you?” “1 km away” “20 feet from the entrance” Who saw it? “Not me.”"Him.”"No, it was the other guy.”"I was told of it today morning by…” Aren’t dead animals bad omens? “The rain is never going to come”"We will have to do that thing, the one that..”"Are those clouds?”
The questions stopped as suddenly as they had begun; answers were noticeably absent. They turned back to him, him in the center, the cause of all this uproar.
***********
He was not to be seen. At first.
But yet he was right there. Near the center of the gathering. He lay still, collapsed just where he had first started yelling, less than ten minutes ago.
With a loud clap, thunder sounded from dark clouds. The self-same clouds that had gathered in the horizon, had crept in on them while they panicked.
The first drops of rain fell in an empty square in which his corpse lay still, eyes still frozen in fear.
Part 1 of a serialized story: The Man Who Was
