And Bananas for All - Part Two

And Bananas for All is a story told in six episodes, posted serially by me, your extraordinarily rendered host, Cheeseburger Brown.

Chapters: 1|2|3|4|5|6

Related reading: Night Flight Mike, The Reaper's Coleslaw

Warning: This week's installment touches on some unpleasant subject matter which may be disturbing to sensitive readers. Discretion is advised.

Our tale continues:


2/6

Mike's sessions of interrogation with the salivating jackals of Allied Intelligence were, in a word, disheartening.

The jackals had been tossed so little for such a long time. They were hungry and restless. Before his capture Mike had noticed them sometimes, keeping to themselves, eating in a private huddle on the furthest edge of the clearing where the troops choked back their emergency rations. They wore no badges for company or platoon, no emblems identifying their branch of service. They were clean-shaven, low-talking, expressionless aliens buzzing sullenly on the periphery of camp life.

The British handed him over to the jackals who housed him in the makeshift plastic prison Mike himself had helped to erect. The cell smelled like poo. The walls were thin, and he could hear his captors brief his keepers. It was otherwise quiet, because Mike was the only person locked up. He heard one of the jackals say, "Rest assured, he'll get our full attention."

Mike steeled himself. He knew his eventual exoneration was inevitable, and he was prepared to undergo some discomfort along the way. He was a team player. He knew the jackals were just doing their jobs. They were guardians of the West, like them all.

"Lieutenant Michael Zhang Cuthbertson?"

"Sir."

"Do they call you Mike?"

"Yessir."

Mike stood at the lip of the little plastic bench he'd been hunkering on. The jackal stood in the doorway, two grim military police flanking his back in the corridor. "My name is John," he said, slipping a polished flask from his breast pocket. "Are you thirsty, Mike?"

Mike drained the flask gratefully. "Thank you."

John tucked it back into his pocket, then buffed his fingernails absently against his lapel. His face was smooth and clean, his blonde hair oiled and neat, his uniformed unrumpled. "You know, son, this is some fairly serious business."

"Yessir," agreed Mike miserably. "What's going to happen now?"

"You're going to have to answer some questions for us."

"I'll do anything I can to cooperate, sir."

John's hard, moss-grey eyes rested on Mike for a long moment. "That's good, Mike. That's very good to hear indeed. It really would be best if we could clear this mess up straight away, without any nonsense."

"Yessir."

"This is what's going to happen, Mike. I'm going to go out there and tell them you're willing to come clean. I'm going to remind them that you're one of our boys. And you, in turn, are going to expend every possible effort to make this as simple as possible for everyone involved. Are we agreed on that, Mike?"

Mike nodded. "Yessir. Absolutely, sir."

John offered him a wan smile that did not crinkle the skin beyond his neat, thin-lipped mouth. "Let me see to those manacles," he said. Mike held out his cuffed hands and John touched a contact on a palm-sized device strapped to his belt. The cuffs clicked twice and then snapped open, dropping to the plywood floor. Mike rubbed the welts on his wrists, wincing.

"I'm afraid that not all of this will be pleasant, Mike. I do feel I need to tell you that. We have to be sure, you must appreciate."

"I know, sir," replied Mike, looking up. He swallowed. "I know you have to do it, sir. I'm sorry, sir."

Again came the wan, isolated smile. John knelt down to collect the discarded cuffs. "Someone will be with you presently," he said, straightened, and left.

Mike felt they were off to a good start.

He was further buoyed when his next visitor turned out to be Nurse Phelps from Philadelphia with whom Mike quite got on. She and Mike liked to kid around when they bumped into each other. She always told Mike what a pity it was that he wore a wedding ring, and though it was only harmless flirting it made Mike feel warm. For his part, Mike had a series of recurring jokes with her asking after the Kwanzaa holidays. "Is it Kwanzaa yet? Are the generals airdropping in wax so we can make some candles? What's the inside word, Nurse Phelps?"

Nurse Phelps would smile: a band of tall white teeth blazing from her dark face. "You're belittling my racial dignity, Cuth. There's a form for that, you know."

But when Nurse Phelps entered his cell in the plastic prison Mike didn't joke and she didn't smile. "Roll up your right sleeve," she said, eyes on her instruments.

"Hi," said Mike.

"Arm," said Nurse Phelps. She took his blood pressure, made a note, then pressed a cold stethoscope into his shirt. "Deep breath in, deep breath out," she commanded.

"Nurse Phelps?"

"I can't talk to you," she whispered harshly, making another note and then shining a light into each of Mike's eyes.

"Okay," conceded Mike, blinking away the afterimages. "Why the check-up?"

Nurse Phelps took her own turn at a deep breath. Her brown eyes flicked up to meet Mike's very briefly, quivering. "They need a baseline," she said crisply, looking away.

"A baseline?"

"So they know how far they can take it."

"Take what?"

Nurse Phelps dropped her instruments back into her bag, then tucked her clipboard under her arm. Mike could see the taut muscles in her neck, working at choking something back as she straightened and briefly faced him again. Her lips twitched. She hissed, "They're going to hurt you, Mike."

"But I don't have anything to hide," he breathed.

She gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head. "Doesn't matter," she murmured, then slipped out the door.

As the day aged it became very hot inside the cell. Mike took off his shirt, which made his skin stick to the plastic walls when he slumped against them. In the distance he could hear the muffled strains of rock'n'roll mixed with the keening or banging of tools at work toward the ongoing recovery efforts after the Axis attack. He tried to make out which songs were playing, but the mutters that reached him were too mushy. His mind played tricks on him, and so it seemed that when he could identify a brief passage of melody it was unfailingly a song about being trapped.

At twilight an emergency ration envelope was stuffed through a one-way slot in the door, followed by a transparent sac of tawny, speckled water. Shortly thereafter the buzzing fluorescent lamp inside a wire cage on the ceiling blinked out.

Mike ate in the dark, then curled up on the short plastic bench, trying ineffectually to use his elbow as a pillow...

A short but fuzzy time later the light stuttered on again. Mike blinked, furrowing his brow. The door banged open and a tall, stern-faced man stepped into the cell carrying a folding chair. He kicked the door closed behind him, and then unfolded the chair and planted it in the centre of the cell facing Mike. "Get your arse in this chair," barked the man. His accent was Australian.

Mike stumbled off the bench and shuffled over to the chair. He cast an uncertain look up at the grim man and then put his back to him to sit down. He rubbed his eyes, trying to squeeze the sleep away.

He suddenly found himself spilled to the floor, grunting as he jammed his shoulder painfully. He squinted back at the Australian, who appeared to have yanked the chair out from under him. He now righted it gingerly, then stepped back. "Get your arse in the chair," he repeated.

Mike hesitated, then hauled himself up and sat down in the seat once more. The man kicked the chair out from beneath him immediately, sending Mike sprawling toward the bench. He fell rudely, bouncing his forehead against the bench's rounded plastic edge. His nose started to bleed.

"My nose is bleeding," he said.

"Get your arse in that chair," said the Australian.

"Why?" growled Mike. "What's the point if you keep knocking me off?" he challenged, the sight of his own blood on his fingers causing a spurt of adrenalin to waft through him. He didn't wait to cringe, and this was appropriate because the Australian's response was to gallop forward with a terrifyingly decisive vigour and club Mike repeatedly about the ears with his balled fists.

When Mike fell to his knees the Australian stepped back again. He took a moment to dust off his polished boots, then straightened and flexed his hands methodically. He looked at Mike. "Get your arse in this chair, soldier."

It was a game. It was a dark game, because there was no way to win. The game was a matter of processing, of preparation, of framing the situation just so. It was a trial to be endured and Mike endured it. He closed his eyes and thought of Christmas. This jackal could hit him, but he couldn't touch Mike's mind.

Or so Mike thought. In thinking this he had perhaps underestimated the wear and tear of the ongoing trial, the unbroken cycles of obedience and abuse, obedience and abuse. Time unspun, and the night became endless. Something inside of Mike became desperate and craven, and his heart was squeezed by storms of emotion that moved inexorably further away from anything tied to dignity.

Mike dragged himself up on the chair again, a dime-sized drop of blood landing between his shaking hands. "Please don't kick me over," he whispered hoarsely. "Please don't do it again."

The Australian hooked his thumbs into his belt. "You like that chair, huh?"

"Yessir."

"You want to keep sitting in it, is that right?"

"Yessir. I'll answer anything. I'm not trying to make this hard."

"It is a pretty good chair," said the Australian with a philosophical air, examining the wall idly. He turned back to Mike, his eyes dark and inhuman. "But I don't think you love that chair enough yet. No, not quite enough."

"I love this chair," claimed Mike. He really, really did.

"Not yet you don't."

Mike was sent careening into the wall. The chair was righted. He crawled back aboard, then was spilled roughly to the floor. He crawled back in position to sit again even before the Australian had righted it this time. He waited until the Australian had stepped back, then climbed on.

After a moment he looked up again. The Australian crossed his arms. "Okay, here's the deal, pally: if you want to sit in this chair, you have to keep sitting. I'm going to go have a little something for breaky. When I come back, I'd better find your arse nailed to that chair or there'll be some hell to pay. You got that?"

Mike did. A thousand horses couldn't drag him from his beloved seat.

The Australian left. Mike cried.

He was left alone for a long time. He had not previously appreciated how painful something like sitting on a hard chair could become until the fourth or fifth hour when his thighs, buttocks and lower-back burned with constant embers of hurt. A ration envelope was slipped through the slot, but Mike didn't dare move to touch it. His throat became dry and cottony, and then it became hard to swallow. Still, Mike would not give up his perch to retrieve the drink sac. He was determined to prove to the jackals whose side he was on.

Come noon perspiration was running off Mike's body like rain. His head sagged. He was desperate to slip off the chair and snatch up the dirty water. His dry tongue rasped as it passed ineffectually over his cracking lips.

John entered the cell. He tugged on the pleats of his trousers and squatted down beside Mike's chair. "Here now, son," he said, nudging Mike with the polished flask.

"John," gasped Mike after he'd drained the flask again. "John, he hasn't even asked me anything."

"I know, Mike," said John, straightening. "He says you're fighting him."

"I'm not, I swear. I just want to get this over with. I just want to help."

John nodded slowly. "I think you're telling the truth, Mike, I do. And, candidly, I think my colleague is off the mark with you. I think this all boils down to a stupid mistake compounded by a big misunderstanding. Is that right, Mike?"

Mike nodded, his eyes locked on John's. He felt as if John were the last sane man left on Earth.

John offered him his curious smile, then stood up straight and sighed. "How long have you been in that chair?"

"I don't know. A long time."

"You must be starting to feel the pinch by now."

Mike nodded.

John appeared to hesitate, then cleared his throat and said, "Well, I think whatever point my colleague was illustrating here has already been amply made. You're released from the chair, Mike. Go lie down on the bench. I'll go have a word with him and see if we can't expedite things a bit. How does that sound?"

Mike gratefully collapsed on the plastic bench, his muscles twitching and his pelvis numb. He looked over when he heard the cell door open and close, his heart skipping a beat when he saw that his latest visitor was the Australian. His face was pulled into a tight, sour expression.

"I gave you one simple thing to do, soldier," he said slowly. "And this is how you handle it? By giving it up as soon as my back is turned?"

"I'm sorry," stammered Mike. "John said --"

The Australian snapped, "Who the devil is John?"

Mike stared back blankly. "Your colleague, John, said he would talk to you..."

"There's no John here. You're playing games with me, pally."

"I'm not, I'm not -- I'm really not. I'm sorry."

The Australian sniffed, then took a quiet step backward around to the far side of the folding chair. He put his hands behind his back and looked up. "Get your arse in this chair," he said.

And so it begun again.

When it was all over, and Mike had proven beyond any doubt his dedication to keeping his seat, the Australian brought a second folding chair and set it up directly opposite Mike. He sat down, then straightened his shirt and brushed dust from his thighs. "Name?" he asked flatly, not looking up.

"Michael Zhang Cuthbertson."

"Serial number?" Mike recited it. "Date of birth?" Mike recited it. "Date of enlistment?" Mike supplied it. "Rank and function?" Mike answered quickly, a strange, giddy feeling of relief washing over him as they proceeded through each question and answer set without Mike ending up punched or tossed to the ground. He felt buoyant and he fought not to smile. A warm ripple of delight rose up his spine and tingled out through every hair on his head. "Where were you trained?"

"CFB Petawawa."

"When did you first make contact with the enemy scout?"

"Three weeks ago."

"What were the circumstances?"

"I found a sentence carved into a baobab tree. It said, Is the whole world crazy? So I carved in an answer underneath. I'm not sure what made me do it."

"What was your answer?"

"I said, Yes, it is."

"Then what happened?"

"We started exchanging notes."

"What did the notes say?"

"Nothing, really. He complained about their beds, I complained about our food. Neither one of us wanted to get in trouble. But we just sort of became friends, I guess."

"So you admit you formed a relationship with an enemy soldier?"

"I felt bad for him. One time he said his gums hurt and he thought he was malnourished, so I left a package of vitamins inside the tree for him to find."

"Where did you get the vitamins?"

"They were mine. From breakfast. I just felt sorry for him. It's so shitty out here for all of us."

"You pitied the enemy?"

"I guess I was relieved not to have to treat him as an enemy. I guess I was relieved that I didn't feel like I had to kill him. We'll all stranded out here together, kind of in the same boat, in a way. I was...I was just being nice because it felt so good when he was nice to me."

"Are you homosexual?"

"No. I'm married. Um, to a woman."

Mike's euphoria waned as the hours passed and the questions merely changed order, never discovering an answer that would put any of them to rest. The Australian pestered Mike over the same topics over and over in an uninflected monotone. There were clots of micro-questions probing to the depths of the most irrelevant detail, but only vague, brief queries about things Mike could securely disavow knowledge of, like Axis secrets and the conspiracy to distract, disarm and destroy the Allied camp while the Axis boats made a run for the harbour.

Any time Mike said, "I don't know," the Australian changed tack and directed his questions back at something they could agree upon, like the GPS coordinates of the baobab tree or from which direction Mike saw the first Axis fighter crash. "I don't know," was a poison phrase that drew Mike further from his goal of advancing the investigation.

"How many non-rigid structures are there in the Allied camp?"

"I've never counted. I'm not sure. Eight?"

"What access to potable water does the Axis camp have?"

"I don't know."

"Describe your footwear at the time of your arrest: size, style, condition."

When the Australian left John came to visit. He offered his flask as usual and opened the ration envelopes because Mike's hands were shaking too badly, then helped Mike hobble over to the plastic bench. "How are you holding up, son?" he asked.

"How long have I been here?"

"I can't tell you that."

"Are you giving me drugs that screw with my sense of time?"

"You know I can't discuss it, Mike. There's a war on. Our very way of life is at stake. Our methods must remain secret."

"I feel really weird."

"You're a good lad, Mike. You're going to get through this. Tell them everything. Don't leave anything out. Don't try to decide for them -- they know what's important. Give yourself up to that, Mike."

"I'm trying to, John. I really, really am."

Mike awoke when the Australian returned. The Australian was outraged to discover Mike off his chair, so he beat the crap out of him. Mike lay on the plywood floor and drooled. After he heard the door close he crawled over to the chair and pulled himself up onto it. He lay his cheek upon the seat, which was the best he could do.

The next series of interviews with the Australian were wearying, maddening, unrelenting. There were traps in the questions but Mike was determined to be consistent, to be truthful, to represent his innocence as completely as he was able. The nerves in his brain burned with the effort. He felt like a living bruise.

When he became too good at it the Australian changed the rules: now Mike had to supply a satisfying answer within a count of five or he'd be doused in a splash of ice-water from a series of pails the Australian wheeled in on a steel cart. Incorrect answers included, "I don't know," and "I'm not sure," and "How could I know that?"

Soon Mike was shivering, his lips blue, his teeth clanking together. His legs became numb, and he slipped off the chair and crumpled at the Australian's feet. The Australian turned away in disgust, slamming the cell door behind him. A few minutes or hours or days later John returned.

Mike looked up at him from the floor. "John," he wheezed. "Oh God, John. I'm so glad you came back. Please, John, please help me. Please make it stop. I can't...I just can't..."

"Come come," said John soothingly. "There there now, Mike. Here, have some warm tea." Mike drank. "You trust me, don't you, Mike?"

"The Australian says you're not real. But I think you're real. I think he's just trying to make me crazy."

John nodded. He knelt down on the floor next to Mike. "Mike, give me your hand."

Mike put his right hand in John's left without hesitation. John turned it over slowly, as if evaluating the need for a manicure. "I want to be able to help you here, Mike. But my colleague says we're not making the progress we should be."

"What can I do? Just tell me and I'll do it. I'll do it for you, John."

John nodded again. "I know, Mike. But, to be candid, all of these delays are making things difficult for me. I want to be able to go out there and tell them we've gotten somewhere substantial, you understand? I want to be able to go out there and give them some good news."

"How can we do that? What should I say?"

"I need your assurance that you're being entirely forthcoming."

"I am, John, I really, really am."

"Yes," he agreed quietly. "I believe you. But I'm not sure the others do." He held Mike's hand gently, his own skin warm and soft against Mike's. "We have to be sure. You can appreciate that, can't you? These are life and death times we're living in. The West could be destroyed, and then we'd certainly regret having given an inch, wouldn't we?"

"I know."

"So, this time, you're going to answer a few questions for me rather than for my colleague. How would that strike you, Mike?"

"It sounds really good, John. Ask me anything."

John drew a slow breath, looked Mike in the eye, and then took a hold of his pinky and snapped the bone with a decisive twist. Mike screamed. "Look at me, Mike," commanded John. Mike's eyes moved down to his hand. John barked his command a second time, and Mike's gaze rose to him like a magnet, his lips quivering.

"Why..."

John snapped his ring finger. "Look at me, Mike," he repeated. "Just keep looking at me. And then when we get to the last finger, you can start telling me things."

"No," begged Mike. "No, John, don't."

"I have to, Mike. I'm sorry." He broke Mike's middle finger.

"John, I love you John!" Mike heard himself screech, immediately ashamed of his inexplicable confession, lost in a wash of self-loathing.

John didn't laugh or shout. "I know," he said quietly. "I know. Just two more to go, Mike. Stay steady." Mike's index finger crunched loudly as it fractured.

Mike was blubbering. Tears ran down his cheeks. He felt as if his heart were being torn from his chest. He wanted to hug John, to tell he was sorry, to make everything somehow alright again. He hungered in a bottomless, desperate way for the final digit to be snapped, so he could start talking again.

His thumb was bent over backward, strained until the skin turned white, and then at last released with a satisfying gush of red hot pain. Mike didn't even hear the crack. His hand felt giant-sized and distant, a part of someone else.

"There," smiled John. "You passed, Mike."

Mike couldn't speak.

"I never even had to restrain you. You didn't once try to pull your hand away. Now I know you really do trust me."

Mike nodded dumbly.

"Alright then," pronounced John, gently releasing Mike's mangled limb. He cleared his throat. "Now -- let's talk."

Mike talked. When he ran out of things to say he made new ones up. When these didn't earn him any progress he embellished his inventions, his words falling out on top of one another in an eager stream, the lies becoming increasingly broad until he heard himself confessing to a secret double life as an Axis spy, recruited before the war, brainwashed by undetectable harmonics in pop music. He repented aloud his every sin, from the time he stole five dollars from his mother's purse to his dedication to overthrowing the West from the inside out. He wept openly when he told John about hitting a dog with his car, and he tried to apply the same convincing drama when he lamented his role as an Allied Judas.

He began to wonder if it were true. He began to wonder if he had been brainwashed and that perhaps John and the Australian's cruelties were in fact designing to help him snap out of it. He began to think of his confessions as cathartic acts of deprogramming. "I stole the Prime Minister!" he wailed. "I poisoned all the babies at the nursery! I helped Santa Claus attack Baron Toys!"

"What else?" asked John, his voice hypnotic and syrupy.

In the morning Mike was seen by Nurse Phelps again. She avoided his eyes. "Is it Kwanzaa yet?" asked Mike blearily, then cackled. "It's going to be Kwanzaa soon and then they'll let me go home."

But it wasn't Kwanzaa. When the Australian came again he kicked the chair out from under Mike, who yelped miserably as his splint-fingered right hand glanced off the floor. "Get your arse on that chair," pronounced the Australian with apparent relish.

"Not this again," begged Mike. "Can't we move on? I've told you so much."

The Australian shook his head. "Not enough, pally. Not nearly enough."

Something inside of Mike failed. It was clear to him that there was nothing he could do to advance his cause, no words he could say that would bring him freedom. The jackals, left so long with no plaything, might have no objectives for him to reach rather than helping them pass the time until the next supply plane made it through. They were sick, all of them: John, the Australian, even Nurse Phelps whose fickle mercy didn't extend to him any longer.

All will to cooperate evaporated. Mike became limp. He was determined never speak to another human being so long as he lived.

His eyes became windows through which he looked out indifferently, a passenger observing the world's scenery. He saw the Australian beat him, and watched with detachment as John's lips moved saying some twisted or teasing something. Periods of heat and cold alternated. Someone tried to heave him into the chair again, but Mike slid off liquidly. The Australian and John argued over him, in the same room together at last.

"You gave him too much. He's bloody catatonic, James! Where else do you expect to go?"

"The plane's not coming until the sixth, John. Let's see if we can't shock a reaction out of him. Get Phelps to set up some electrodes."

"She won't do it. She was friendly with him outside."

"Good. Let her refuse, and then we'll get her in a cell as well. It's been a long time since I worked on a female."

The worst part was that Mike knew he didn't remember the worst parts. He had scars and tenderness he could not explain, and cringe-inducing quasi-recalled flashes that filled him with fear. Nightmare and experience had become mutually indistinguishable. The only thing to do was to stop thinking at all, to drift along with the current like a loose pebble or a piece of trash.

One day he was wordlessly fitted with a black hood. He was manacled at the wrists and then dragged outside, shoved up the cargo gangway of a thrumming aircraft. He was pushed into a metal stall whose floor rang hollowly under his stumbling feet, then he was strapped much too tightly to a thin-cushioned seat. Doors were slammed and metal latches clanged as they were dogged fast for the trip. The engines revved louder, exhausts screeching.

Mike's stomach lurched as the airplane began to move. He was on his way somewhere, but he didn't care.

It was cold in the air. He wondered if he were expected to freeze to death. Perhaps he wasn't being transported but merely discarded. Who could know the minds of monsters? Mike slipped deeper into himself, living in a veil of scintillating darkness and thoughtless oblivion...

He was roused when the plane banked sharply. The engines rose in pitch, then the plane banked the other way, tossing Mike against the sides of his hold, the straps biting into him. A distant thumping resolved into the crisp stutter of machine gun fire. The plane bucked -- evasive manoeuvres.

The next volley of fire shook the craft, punctuated by a series of loud bangs followed by the scream of new winds. The cabin was depressurizing. Mike heard the pilots yell. Seconds later the plane dipped into a steep dive.

Mike recognized that they had been shot down, and that he was experiencing his last few moments of life, shaken like a ragdoll strapped to a seat in a rolling and pitching metal box falling out of the sky.

Mike felt a certain freedom knowing he wouldn't have to answer any more questions.

Metal shrieked as it tore, and then Mike began spinning more rapidly. The plane was coming apart. Fields of hallucinatory colour washed over the darkness inside his hood. He saw stars, and he dreamed he was plummeting through outer space.

He admired the nebulae.

Interlude III

Dear all,

I regret the interruption in storytelling. I've been beaten down by a wicked combination of a chest cold, an extremely heavy workload at the day-job, and a toddler who's convinced he's nocturnal. We'll return to our normally scheduled programming this coming Monday, 29 October 2007.

I took the day off sick yesterday, and I did some thinking (which was all I could do, because my wife forbade me to do work of any kind). Here are the results of my ruminations:

And Bananas for All will continue run over the course of November. There will then be a one week hiatus, followed by a three episode Christmas story for December. To maintain this blog's theme of fantastical and speculative adventures, this year's Christmas story will take place in outer space. Working title: One Small Step for Santa.

Following another one week hiatus, we launch into the eagerly anticipated novelette The Secret Mathematic, detailing the circumstances of Mr. Mississauga's "Event Zero" and Dr. Zoran's discovery of active numbers science. This should be a doozy and I hope you all remember to tune in for it, starting on New Year's Day 2008.

And then we come to a change in tack.

Beginning Monday, 4 February 2008 will be a new on-line novel, serialized through this weblog as each chapter is written in a return to the Simon of Space format from 2005. While there are several reasons behind this change, the principal one is that I've found it far too easy to procrastinate about moving ahead on this work -- when there are many projects vying for my attention, the one without a fixed deadline just keeps getting shoved to the backburner. Therefore, to assure this new novel's progress I have decided to perform it live.

As with Simon of Space, I'll be counting on you readers out there to keep me on my feet, and to call out my blunders in the commentary section. Fueled by your encouragement and your critiques, I have confidence that we can all take a ride even more fun than Simon's exploits over the course of next winter and spring.

The working title is currently Pilot of the Flying Dollar.

Are you excited? I'm excited. Again, apologies for the delay, and our current tale will resume next week.

Love,
Cheeseburger Brown

And Bananas for All - Part One

And Bananas for All is a story told in six episodes, posted serially by me, your veteran host, Cheeseburger Brown.

Chapters: 1|2|3|4|5|6

Related reading: Night Flight Mike, The Reaper's Coleslaw

Our tale begins:


1/6

The war, in a word, sucked.

Lieutenant Michael Zhang Cuthbertson craned his head to track a flock of Australian ornithopters as they rose in a chattering pack from the camp's crude airstrip and buzzed out over the Indian Ocean, their wings locking in to glide on the highways of wind beneath the cloud deck. The sun winked off their gun turrets. Like vultures, they circled.

Mike sighed. His ears pounded in unwilling sympathy with the wash of hard, thrashing electric music that routinely blanketed the Allied base: Nine Inch Nails, Towers of London, Cherry Nuk-Nuk, The Apocalyptoid Rebellion. Only in the brief dip between songs did the native tapestry of Madagascar's birds, frogs and monkeys shine through the wall of rock. Mike winced, then adjusted his ear-plugs.

He took another bite of something crumbly and sour whose label claimed it was a field ration. Mike had his doubts.

He sat on a milk-crate. The world around him stank of unwashed bodies, gasoline, marijuana and excrement in roughly equal proportions. The aroma was repellent but familiar, somehow less offensive to him than the sour crumbs rattling around the bottom of his ration envelope whose scent was, to his mind, distinctly fungal.

One of the younger recruits grimaced. He was a skinny Australian kid who didn't look old enough to drive. "I think my ration's gone off," he whined.

"Shut up, virgin!" bellowed the nutritions officer.

"But it's all hairy --"

"I will shoot you. Look into my eyes. Am I joking?"

The nutritions officer stomped off. The young recruit tracked his progress with wide eyes. Mike tapped him on the shoulder. "The first rule of field rations: never look. Just reach in, take a hunk, and put it in your mouth."

"But it's disgusting, mate."

Mike nodded philosophically and pressed another wad between his teeth. "It sure is," he agreed, chewing. "Welcome to the Allied Forces."

Most of the diners didn't speak. It was difficult to discern the men from the women. Everyone wore the same shapeless, mud-stained camouflage fatigues, the same worn boots, the same sun-burned, dazed and dour expressions of people who had anticipated the worst, met it, and resigned themselves to more. Some of them were bandaged. Many were scarred. Nobody smiled.

One man keeled over and started vomiting violently into the mud. The nutritions officer spared him a glance. "Medic!" he called mechanically, then strolled on.

"Uh, sir..." ventured Mike.

"What is it, Cuthbertson?" he snapped.

"That is the medic, sir."

The nutritions officer frowned. "Bloody hell."

The only respite Madagascar offered Mike were his forays into dense woodlands infested with armed and desperate enemies. Both the Axis and Allied lines of material communication had been cut, and neither side was comfortable. Mike was a scout. His job was to ply the forest separating the two stranded camps of soldiers to make sure the Axis wasn't about to launch a raid against the Allies. From either side of a narrow ridge of foothills both camps were bent to the purpose of making sure neither side made use of Antsiranana Bay to gain new supplies. At the mouth of the bay the broken remains of Antsiranana City smoldered, ribbons of smoke torn free by the fierce ocean winds to trail dozens of kilometers north-east toward Arabia.

Despite the danger of his missions Mike enjoyed his time away from camp. He nosed his way cautiously through the brush, prodding aside leaves with the barrel of his Mini-Mitrailleuse, pausing to listen to the hidden animals hoot or chirp or squeal.

He knew the trails well. He himself had stomped them flat. He was supposed to be mindful not to leave trails, but after five weeks making the same rounds through the same tangled, leafy gullies he saw no practical way to avoid it. In fact, he frequently crossed the trails of his Axis counterpart. They were scouting the same no man's land, after all.

The trails converged by a massive old baobab tree.

There was a hollow in the tree, and Mike reached unflinchingly inside and removed a carefully wrapped package of soft, brown bananas and one sad-looking apple. He'd have given anything to know where the Axis camp was getting fresh-like fruit from. The accompanying note said:

Dear pal,
Make eat thise in good health. Dou you think rainey season come early? I smell waters on the winds.
Your friend.

Mike grinned. He gingerly peeled one of the bananas and then scooped out the discoloured pulp with his fingers. He licked them clean, then attacked the apple which he enjoyed thoroughly, worms and all. When he was done he removed a cloth-wrapped package from his backpack and added a folded note before shoving it deep inside the baobab's hollow. His note said:

My friend,
I don't know how your guys are doing malaria-wise, but here is some extra permethrin to use against the mosquitos. I hope the rainy season does come soon because our water tastes awful!
Your pal.

Mike straightened. He took a careful look around, cocked his head to listen, and then proceeded along the trail as he peeled his second limp banana. It fell apart in his fingers but he jammed what he could of the brown, seedy paste into his mouth. He wiped his face on a leaf and then wound his way back toward the Allied camp.

He was just close enough to detect the first strains of rock'n'roll when he became aware of another sound: the hum of aircraft. He blinked as a brace of shadows flashed overhead, blocking the shafts of sunshine streaming down through the forest canopy. The tone of the aircraft engines ramped up in pitch as they accelerated.

Where the devil did the Axis camp get planes?

Mike accelerated, too. He barreled through the last fringes of forest and burst out into the clearing around the camp just in time to see a string of bombs drop from the two Axis fighters. The concussions from the first explosions knocked him off his feet, sending him tumbling backward down into the shallow valley through which he'd just trudged.

He was stunned. His ears were ringing. Bits of smoking debris dropped all around him, tearing holes in the leaves with a series of hisses.

Mike clambered to his feet, checked himself for damage, and then struggled to climb out of the valley again. Beyond the clearing the base was burning, great angry clouds of black smoke billowing upward from half a dozen locations. Sirens were wailing, and people were screaming. Anti-aircraft guns stuttered and barked, bursts of flak peppering the sky.

"Medic!"

A flock of ornithopters swooped in from the coast, engines buzzing and guns blazing. Mike ignored them as he sprinted across the clearing. He tossed his gun aside and dropped to the mud beside the first person he saw, ripping off the bottom of his pant-leg and pressing it against a bloody, black-edged wound. "It's gonna be okay," claimed Mike, looking into the soldier's panicked eyes.

A badly burned arm reached out to him from a pile of what Mike had taken to be inanimate debris. Mike took hold of the proffered glove and squeezed it. "Don't worry!" he shouted. "Help is coming!"

The only response was an anguished gurgle.

Mike flinched as a horrendous bang signalled the destruction of one of the Axis planes, its fuselage crumbling as it tumbled out of the sky. It struck the ground to the west of the Allied camp with an earth-shaking thump. A riot of birds burst out of the forest in alarm, and were seconds later cut down into a mist of disconnected feathers and spatters as they crossed a vector of anti-aircraft ordnance.

Ragged strips of sandgrouse, crested ibis and grey-headed lovebird rained down, smacking Mike's helmet. He covered his face with his arms. The lumps of meat smelled like roast chicken and fireworks. A surreal snow of shredded feathers followed.

Covered in blood and feathers, Mike got to his feet and ran deeper into the camp, dodging to avoid other soldiers as they loomed out of the thick, roiling smoke. Their faces were black with soot, their eyes bulging with horror. He skirted the flaming infirmary and then skidded to a halt as the veil parted and afforded him a momentarily unobstructed view out over the water.

The long grey hull of an Axis aircraft carrier was cutting the waves, moving into Antsiranana Bay, another fighter lifting off from its deck with an air-splitting shriek. The massive vessel was flanked by two smaller warships, their turrets swivelling to train on the Allied camp. "Warships!" screamed Mike, his own voice lost in the din.

Infantry was already pounding across the beach to man the big guns. Mike jogged up to the forward bunker on the ridge overlooking the beach to help three other soldiers lift a fallen timber off the satellite communications gear. They tossed it aside with a grunt and then an American with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth grabbed the microphone. "I need a pulse!" he yelled. "I need a pulse now!"

The warship's turrets flashed. Shells struck the beach with geysers of surf and sand, boot and face, metal and flesh. Mike saw a dozen die in a span of seconds. Allied mortars boomed in response.

Beside Mike, the American hooted as the screen on his lap illuminated with a satellite image of the bay, the Axis ships grey smudges in the surf. The American fixed the crosshairs with a practiced twist of the dials. His thumb twitched over the contact. "We're aligned and ready to fire! Major?"

"The major's dead!"

The American nodded to himself curtly, then dragged on his cigarette. He stabbed the trigger and growled through clenched teeth: "Avada kedavra, motherfuckers."

The air over the bay crackled as a hundred kilometers above the Allied Satellite Network found its mark and engaged. A split second later the aircraft carrier and its flanking warships turned bright red and then exploded, throwing up a ten-meter-high shockwave of salt water that surged away from the epicentre. The shattered remains of the ships and a few metric tonnes of ocean were then boiled away into fumes by a second ignition of the orbital laser-pulse weapon.

The noise was horrendous, a quadruple thunderclap of unholy proportions. The blasts of hot air knocked those standing off their feet, the soldiers on the beach tumbling in sequence like dominos. Mike found himself tangled in a litter of tree branches and torn canvas, his body aching, the breath torn from his lungs.

The echoes died away into a silence more profound than it should have been. The crackling fires were mute.

The men on the beach stood up, threw their arms into the air and appeared to cheer. The surf turned dark with the bodies of a thousand flash-fried fish.

Mike crawled out into the clear again, rubbing his head and wondering where his helmet went. He was startled when someone clapped him on the shoulder. He spun around. The American grinned around his blackened and splayed cigarette stub. He said, "America -- fuck yeah!"

"I can't hear anything," said Mike, gesturing to his ears and shrugging.

"What?"

"What are you saying?"

"What?"

The latrine had exploded. There was broiled crap everywhere. A new infirmary was improvised in the officer's mess hall, partly because it was still relatively intact but mostly because it was the tent furthest away from the potentially infectious poo. It still smelled terrible, though. Mike volunteered there until he could no longer stand, and then he slept in an overturned rain-barrel until he was awakened by a sergeant with an eye-patch who tried to drink him.

"Where's the goddamn water?" asked the startled sergeant.

"I don't know," mumbled Mike, blinking against the morning light. He stumbled into the bushes and peed on a fern. He stepped on something that crackled and looked down to discover that it was a human hand. It wasn't connected to anyone, so Mike just left it there in the underbrush.

There was no rock'n'roll that day.

None the less, Mike was grateful to be sent on patrol. Trudging through the forest was considerably less like a living nightmare than the mop-up efforts at the ravaged base. Birds chirped, monkeys howled. Mike could come within spitting distance of forgetting where he was, or what the weapon slung over his shoulder was for. Simply getting away from the smell of burning was invaluable.

He splashed through a brook and then up the embankment toward his baobab tree, his boots crunching on twigs and dried patties of moss. As he approached the tree he started fishing through his pack for the meagre offering of saltines he planned to stash inside the hollow for his friend.

He stopped short. Flies buzzed.

There was a body beside the baobab tree. It was a young Axis soldier with brown skin. The top of his head had been spread into a wide, chunky spray that glistened in the sunlight as it was crisscrossed by streams of ants. "Oh no," whispered Mike.

Mike's friend was dead. And though Mike had seen a lot of death over the weeks, and then quite a bit more over the past day and night, it was this particular loss that caused his knees to turn to jelly. He dropped to his haunches beside the dead soldier and blubbered. He clutched his hair. He struggled to take a breath deep enough to ease his feeling of suffocation.

He wanted to look into his friend's face, to know what he looked like at last, but he couldn't bear to let his sight stray over the grotesque injury. Instead he tugged forlornly on the soldier's pants. "Oh, my friend..." he sighed, his own body feeling monstrous and heavy and dumb.

Something clicked. Mike looked up sharply.

He was surrounded by a platoon of British soldiers, the oil-streaked muzzles of their SA80 assault rifles trained on Mike's head. "Hands up!" they shouted. Mike put his hands up. "Freeze!" they shouted. Mike froze.

"I'm Allied," he offered feebly. "I'm Canadian."

One of the British toggled his radio. "We have him," he said, cold eyes fixed on Mike. "I repeat: we've captured the traitor."

The Taste of Blue - Part Two

The Taste of Blue is a story told in two episodes, posted serially by me, your lucid host, Cheeseburger Brown.

Chapters: 1|2

News: Have you ordered your copy of Sensible Flying Shoes: Collected Stories Volume II yet?

Meanwhile, our story concludes:


2/2

The detective limped as quietly as he could on his artificial legs as he and Dr. Hollister entered Room A among the sleeping patients. A white noise generator whispered over every bed, punctuated by the slow respiration of the sleepers. The lights were dim and amber.

"This is it," whispered Dr. Hollister. "And this is her."

"Patient Zero?"

"That's right."

"This is her artwork?"

Dr. Hollister nodded. Together they surveyed the array of childish paintings taped over the girl's bed. They were signed CASSANDRA and several of them were annotated in a curly hand. One said, THE BROKEN LIGHTS and another said THE UPSTAIRS GO DOWN. All were dominated by blue, and many featured the bloated form of an angry man reaching out.

Mr. Mississauga turned away from the nightmare gallery abruptly. "It's interesting that what you render as Stop it, him she renders as Stop Tim, as if it's a proper name."

Dr. Hollister shrugged. "Slurring words together is common. These notes are often made immediately upon waking, when the patient is still disoriented. The other patients all differentiate the words more discretely: Stop it, him."

The girl moaned and fussed in her sleep. Dr. Hollister glanced at the monitor, then indicated that they should leave. She followed as Mr. Mississauga stumped out into the corridor. She clicked the door closed.

"Your notion that it could be a specific name is even more far-fetched," she said, her eyes watering from the bright gleam of the corridor's fluorescents. "Even if I could accept that a sequence of narrative could be implied with a carefully engineered set of non-verbal cues, how could a name be transmitted?"

"I don't know," admitted Mr. Mississauga. "But micro-gestures, including twitches of the lips and throat muscles, might convey audio information if the target were sufficiently receptive."

"You believe the dream impels the patient to twitch their throats at people?"

"No. Vivid dreams have their own vector of transmission -- we tell one another about them. Dreams that are not retold are quickly forgotten, but dreams described to someone else take a hold in memory. What I'm proposing is that when this dream is retold, there is a second layer of information -- a parasitical message that transmits the self-replicating payload. It could be in modulations of the voice, flicks of the eye, gestures with the hand, or any complex combination."

Dr. Hollister paused outside her office. "But why, Detective? Why would someone want to send information that way?"

"Let me ask you this, Doctor: what does DNA want?"

"What?"

"Deoxyribonucleic acid is a self-replicating organic molecule. Why does it replicate itself?"

Dr. Hollister crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the jamb. "Well, of course there isn't a real why to it at all. It replicates in an appropriate medium due to its chemical properties. It's ultimately just a geometric pattern of molecules. It replicates because that's how it is shaped."

"And so too perhaps this insidious idea. Maybe it propagates because it is shaped for propagation -- shaped by chance plus change: an emergent property of the mix of random ideas."

"The odds against it are astronomical."

"Yes," agreed Mr. Mississauga. "As if probability itself were warped."

She raised a brow appraisingly. "Is that what you really think?"

Mr. Mississauga compressed his mouth into a tight line, but said nothing.

Dr. Hollister pushed open the door and regained her seat behind the desk. Mr. Mississauga lowered himself into the guest chair, then slipped out his cigarette case again. Dr. Hollister grimaced. "You do appreciate that the university has a very strict anti-tobacco policy, don't you? The custodian's going to smell that in the morning and file a report."

"I'm native," said Mr. Mississauga, lighting his smoke. "Anti-tobacco policies don't apply to me."

"You've got to be joking."

"Yes," he said. He blew out a puff of fume. "I'm not very funny, am I?"

Dr. Hollister smiled despite herself. She sipped ineffectually from her empty cup and then plugged in the kettle again. "Why did you come to me, Detective?"

"Everyone I've interviewed has ended up here."

"Whom have you interviewed?"

"Gerald Robinson, Maxwell Reuben, Cynthia Ghetty."

"They never mentioned anything."

"I asked them not to."

"What did they tell you?"

"The dream," he said somberly. "They recounted the dream. It begins in a familiar place -- a childhood home or another comfortable space -- but a sense of foreboding grips them when they find the light switches don't work."

Dr. Hollister swallows. "...That's right," she says vaguely.

"They feel compelled to move upward, to get to a room with windows and sun. They move about the space to find stairs to climb, but every stairwell leads only down. Even stairs that look like they go up turn out to descend when they put their feet upon them. No matter where they run they go lower, deeper, into progressively darker hallways and chambers."

"Yes," breathes Dr. Hollister, her forehead now glistening with sweat.

"They panic. They flee. They crash into unseen objects in the dark as they frenetically quest for a way out. They scratch gouges in the walls, they clutch stairway railings to fight against the relentlessly dropping risers. Every downward step makes their stomachs leap, their hearts pound against the backs of their throats."

"Yes..."

"They are being pursued. They can hear his heavy, unhurried feet behind them. The faster they run the less traction their own feet get, the world turning syrupy, slippery and blue. They skid and slide and fall, and over their shoulders they catch glimpses of the awful thing bearing down on them -- corpulent, wrathful, reaching out to seize them out of a halo of blood."

"Stop it, him," she mutters under her breath.

"It's a maze of blue shadows, a twisting tunnel, and even though the distance is so bright it hurts their eyes the immediate environment remains oppressively black. He's right behind them now. Nothing can stop him from getting closer."

"He's an enemy."

"He's hunting them. He won't give up. He is not desperate, but determined. He only has eyes for his prey. His footsteps never accelerate but never the less he gains. He gains. He gains."

Dr. Hollister's eyes went wide, her mouth barely moving as she spoke in a disconnected, distant way. "If only we could read the writing on the wall..."

"We can," insisted Mr. Mississauga, the pace of his narrative accelerating. "They're numbers. One, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, sixteen, seventeen, nineteen..."

"They're primes."

"No, sixteen is not prime. It's a string of primes interrupted by a pattern of non-primes. Twenty-three, twenty-nine, thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-seven, forty-one, forty-two, forty-three, forty-seven..." Mr. Mississauga trailed off, his eyes darting randomly as if in REM sleep, his features strangely slack.

Dr. Hollister stared at him for a moment. "Detective?" she prompted.

He jerked, then blinked. He shook his head, licked his lips and continued speaking as if there had been no interruption: "Have you ever turned around, Doctor? Have you ever turned away from the blue tunnel to see what's behind you? To see what's behind him?"

Dr. Hollister sat back and folded her hands on the blotter. "I haven't had the dream, Detective. My knowledge comes from the patients' accounts."

Mr. Mississauga shook his head firmly. "You're fooling yourself. You're having the dream every night."

"I've never experienced it, I tell you," she snapped, surprised at her own sudden hostility.

Mr. Mississauga was unfazed. "You've never remembered the experience, you mean," he declared. "Most dreams live beyond the realm of recall, as you well know, Doctor. But you're not immune. The dream is living inside you, executing each night, doing its work on your mind, changing your thoughts, drawing you into obsession."

Dr. Hollister pursed her lips dubiously. She was so tired. The entire conversation was starting to feel surreal. "Alright, I'll bite: what's behind the dreamer, Detective?" she ventured.

"Red."

"Red?"

"As blue as the tunnel ahead, the world collapses into red darkness behind."

"What does that mean to you?"

"Do you know what redshift is?"

"No."

"The further astronomers look into space the greater the attenuation of electromagnetic wavelengths. Simplistically, the expansion of the universe draws out the light and shifts it along the spectrum. The further away an object is the more redshifted it appears. Thus, in a very real way, the colour of the past is red."

She raised her brow, chin in her hand, as the kettle began to shriek. She tended to it and then swivelled back to face her patiently waiting guest. "I think I follow you, Detective. If red is the past, you believe blue is..."

"The future."

Dr. Hollister scratched at the side of her jaw pensively, inhaling tea steam. The bag had broken, and an irregular smear of leaves was sticking to the bottom of the mug. She looked up. "You think the dream is about the future?"

"To be quite precise, I believe it is a message from the future."

She smirked sceptically. "Time travel is not possible."

"Not for matter, perhaps. But for information the same bounds may not apply."

She shrugged. "I'm no physicist."

"Nor am I. But the dream seems to me to be a warning, and warnings concern events yet to come."

"You're reading an awful lot into the imagery. What happened to a spontaneous evolution from a pool of interacting brains?"

Mr. Mississauga drew on his cigarette. "I admit that it is not my chief theory," he said. "It is, instead, the easiest to digest."

"Why pass it on, then?"

"Because I require your credence," he replied, releasing a bloom of smoke. "We're agreed that a memetic pathogen is at work, and that's what's essential. My speculations on its origin are beside the point, entirely secondary to what we must accomplish here tonight."

"But you do think it is an engineered thing, and not an evolved thing, is that right? That's what you really think?"

Mr. Mississauga's deep brown eyes were open and unevasive. He cleared his throat and said, "That is my supposition, yes. I believe the pattern was introduced via modulation in the lightning that struck Cassandra -- that struck Patient Zero. That is where my investigation began, with the weather. It's been strange lately, you'll have to admit."

Thunder rumbled, closer now. "I'm no meterologist," said Dr. Hollister.

"Nor am I. But I hesitate to go into too much detail for fear of eroding what capital in trust I may have earned with you up until this point."

Dr. Hollister leaned forward. "Risk it. I want to hear," she said. "If I'm to accept a strange man into my lab in the middle of the night, I might as well hear why. In for a penny, in for a pound."

Mr. Mississauga hesitated, the end of his cigarette pinched between the lifeless fingers of his gloved hand. "There is an event coming," he said heavily, "an event that will disrupt the very nature of probability. The ramifications of this effect will propagate backward in time with a plottable geometric decrease in amplitude." He pushed the cigarette stub against his silver case, smothering it. "It is my belief that certain forces are determined to exploit this hiccough in the laws of physics to their own ends. And one of those ends is to transmit a message designed to alter future history."

"That's pretty wild, Detective. You should write pulps." She chuckled hollowly. "And no doubt your pursuit of the truth in this matter is being hampered by the forces of evil?"

Mr. Mississauga narrowed his eyes. "Has someone else approached you?"

"I was only joking, Detective..." she trailed off, her attention caught by the sound of a car drawing into the parking lot. She swivelled in her chair and put a dent in the Venetian blinds with her index finger. "Someone's here."

Mr. Mississauga did not stir from his seat. "White sport utility vehicle?"

"That's...right."

"Florida plates?"

Dr. Hollister opened a wider gap in the blinds and squinted past her reflection in the glass. "Yes." She swivelled back to face him. "Someone you know?"

"Yes."

"Who is it?"

"The forces of evil."

Dr. Hollister fixed Mr. Mississauga with a frankly appraising look. "Would it be untoward at this point for me to ask after your mental health history?"

"My mind is unusual but stable."

"Unusual how?"

"Narcoleptic somnianimus conscientia and Pavor nocturnus conscientia."

Dr. Hollister blinked. "Somnianimus conscientia?" She shook her head. "There's only been a single documented case of persistent Somnianimus conscientia in medical history." Her speech slowed as her eyes widened. "An aboriginal boy with congenital phocomelia studied by Dr. Ananthan in the late sixties..."

Mr. Mississauga was poker-faced. "Yes," he said at last. "Dr. Ananthan was a nice man. He used to bring me caramel apples."

"Good Lord!" cried Dr. Hollister. "You -- you're Patient Lambda Eight?"

"Yes."

"I can't believe it. I can't believe I'm here talking to you. You're the reason I got into sleep research in the first place!"

Mr. Mississauga shrugged as he slipped out a fresh cigarette. "Small world," he mumbled around it.

"You're one of the most remarkable cases on record, Detective. You may well be the only man alive who retains awareness throughout the sleep cycle. Most experts believe it's impossible to survive that way on the long-term, at least not without serious psychosis. My thesis advisor at York assumed you were dead."

"I've come close," admitted Mr. Mississauga, lighting up. "But I manage."

They were both startled as a pounding sounded at the front door. "What should I do?" gasped Dr. Hollister. "Should I let them in?"

"No," said Mr. Mississauga firmly.

"What do they want?"

"To ask you questions, as I have. Unlike me, however, they are prepared to coerce you if required."

"But who are they?"

Lightning flashed through the blinds. "Hubbardians," he said. Thunder boomed. "We have to get moving, Doctor. We don't have much time left."

Footfalls crunched in the gravel outside. Dr. Hollister glanced between the blinds again. Lightning flashed. She withdrew her head quickly. "I think they're peeking in the windows," she said, thoroughly chilled. "And what the devil is a Hubbardian?"

The footfalls came closer. "Get down," advised Mr. Mississauga.

They faced one another afresh beneath Dr. Hollister's desk, each holding their breath. The window thumped quietly as someone pressed their face to the glass, squinting through gaps in the blinds to search out the room. "Lights are on, but I don't see anybody," came a muffled call. A moment later the footfalls retreated.

The pounding on the front door resumed. Dr. Hollister flinched against the sound, drawing her labcoat more tightly around her shoulders as she crouched on the floor. "Time for what?" she whispered. "What is it you think we have to do so urgently?"

Mr. Mississauga's head brushed the underside of the desk as he turned to her. "The only reasonable course of action should be clear: we must contain the contagion. Whether engineered or evolved, the pathogen must be stopped here and now before more people end up like Cassandra out there."

"How do you propose we do that?"

"Electroshock therapy, Doctor. You must disrupt the dream with an induced seizure, to break up the active pattern. If necessary, you must administer subsequent treatments until you've successfully interfered with the stored components enough to break the replication mechanism."

She bumped her head on the bottom of the desk. "Are you mad?"

"You must do it now, before more people are exposed. You must start tonight."

She pressed her hand to her scalp, wincing ruefully. "Detective Mississauga, I can't simply start shocking people willy-nilly. This isn't the nineteen-forties! There's such a thing as informed consent, and the need to demonstrate a sound basis for my practices."

The windows shook with the next peal of thunder. Again someone pounded on the front door. Mr. Mississauga appeared undisturbed, but his chocolate brown eyes bore into Dr. Hollister with razor-sharp intensity. "Carolyn, you could be stopping a global plague of the mind. Think about that."

She kept looking to the corridor, toward the source of the banging. "I should call campus security," she said, crawling out from under the desk and straightening with a weary grunt. She reached for the telephone.

"No," barked Mr. Mississauga, still crouching low. "We need to be left alone. We must begin the electroshock treatments before the storm gets here. Nothing else is more important -- nothing."

Dr. Hollister slammed her fist down on the desk. "Get this through your head: I categorically refuse to endanger my patients' well-being in such a way, Detective Mississauga. Do you understand me? It's unethical and it's preposterous! I won't do it."

"You must, Carolyn. Consider what may be at stake."

"Granted, you've given me a lot to think about here tonight, Detective, and granted, your...unusual condition may lend you a special perspective on this problem. Never the less, I refuse to rush ahead. I can promise you this much: I will study the problem in light of what you've said."

Mr. Mississauga got to his feet, glaring down at her. "That's not good enough."

"It will have to be," she said icily, chin high.

They stared at each other over the desk. The pounding on the front door continued. Rain began to dribble against the window, at first softly and then quickly building to a feverish, wind-whipped pitch.

Mr. Mississauga sighed, his shoulders dropping. "If you won't do it for them, Carolyn...please, I'm begging you: do it for me."

Dr. Hollister blinked. "What?"

"The taste of blue," croaked Mr. Mississauga, the tendons in his neck quivering. "I can taste it. And I can barely think of anything else. It's consuming me, bending me into a babbling fountain of contagion. It's taking every reserve I possess to continue speaking to you coherently." He staggered closer. "I can't manage it. Not any longer. It's relentless, and it's rotting me."

Dr. Hollister said nothing, but after a moment she gave him a tight, single nod.


*


"This is insane," she mumbled as she helped Mr. Mississauga up onto the treatment bed. She took his overcoat and hung it on the rack, its heavy pockets swaying. Mr. Mississauga watched her quietly. "You'll have to remove your limbs, I'm afraid."

He nodded gruffly. "I'll...need your help."

She helped him strip. It was a strangely intimate experience to uncouple the tall native's four artificial limbs. Here, in the electroshock room, they were insulated from the noise of the storm and the knocking on the front door. The only sound came from the steady buzz of the fluorescents and Dr. Hollister's progress as she unbuckled the leather harnesses around Mr. Mississauga's upper thighs. The skin beneath was callused and hard. The stubby flippers the detective had instead of legs were pale and covered in a fine peach-fuzz of hair.

Dr. Hollister tested her syringe and then injected a muscle relaxant. "You'll be disoriented for an hour or two," she warned. "I hope you're not planning to drive anywhere."

"I take taxis."

She strapped him down, then proffered a rubber bite-plate for his mouth to protect the tongue. Before passing it to him she hesitated. "I could lose my license," she said.

"This is important," he said evenly, looking into her eyes.

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because, unlike you and your patients, I have the ability to roam the dream at will, with full lucidity. And all that I have seen has convinced me of one thing."

"What's that?"

"Blue Tim is not the enemy," he pronounced carefully. "The dreamer is."

For some reason Dr. Hollister shivered. She hugged her shoulders, the bite-plate hanging loose from her fingers. "How do you know?"

"Because the fat man is not the only pursuer. I have seen past him, and there are others." He paused, licking his lips again. "And I'm one of them."

Dr. Hollister almost dropped the bite-plate. "What?"

"I can navigate the dream at will," he reiterated seriously. "And I have seen myself there. Not as I appear here now, true, but it is I none the less. In armour, masqued, sprinting after the pursuit like a gazelle."

She gazed down sadly at his feckless flippers. "That sounds like wishful thinking."

"My dreams don't have the power to fool me," said Mr. Mississauga fiercely, his voice hard. "I know them too well. I know them more than any man should know the underside of his own mind. I live in nightmare, Carolyn: it is my language." He paused, looking up at her with an expression open and helpless. "And I can feel it all slipping away from me, occluded by the dream's obsession. Blue, blue -- the taste of blue. Please, Carolyn. I need peace. I need it to stop...or I need to die."

She swallowed, then nodded. "Okay," she said. "Okay."

She inserted the bite-plate into his mouth, then gently touched his forehead before sticking on the electrodes. "Do you want a sedative?" she asked. He shook his head. "Okay," she said again, backing away from him toward the controls...

The monitor crawled with the readout from the electroencephalograph. Mr. Mississauga closed his eyes. Like a flipped switch, his brain-waves changed. In less than two minutes he had reached the dream and she watched its influence dance through his mind. Her hand hovered over the controls.

"Stop it, him," Mr. Mississauga murmured around the bite-plate.

Dr. Hollister twisted the dial.


*


Mr. Mississauga tugged his overcoat over his shoulders by alternating jerks of his mobile right hand, then slipped it inside the pocket and removed his silver cigarette case. He offered it to Dr. Hollister, who watched herself withdraw a hand-rolled smoke and felt herself plug it into her mouth. "I haven't smoked since I was a teenager," she said.

"A cigarette every few decades won't hurt you," he said, his voice dry and tired but somehow less somber than it had been.

He lit them up. Dr. Hollister coughed.

"I'll probably be fired tomorrow," she croaked philosophically.

"Save the world or take home a paycheque," agreed Mr. Mississauga with a nod. He drew on his cigarette, then blew out a cloud of fume that looked, briefly, like a bird. "It's a choice I've made before."

"How do you feel?"

"Clear," said Mr. Mississauga. "Quite clear. Suddenly, blue is just a colour."

Dr. Hollister's eyes were watering. She looked at the cigarette in her hand accusatorially, then put it to her mouth and drew on it. "Do you think we eradicated the pattern?"

Mr. Mississauga exhaled. "Yes. Whatever remains in memory I can take care of myself, now that I know what I'm dealing with."

Dr. Hollister cocked her head. "How can you do that?"

"I've learned some techniques in my travels. I spent my teens in Tampa, my twenties in Braj." He dropped off the treatment table and wobbled slightly as his artificial feet his the floor.

"That's in India?"

"Yes."

Dr. Hollister whistled, leaning against the electroshock controls. "You are a singularly fascinating man, Detective Mississauga. I'm quite sure I've never met anyone like you. I'd love to study you."

He shook his head. "I'm done with that."

"I..." she started, then fell silent. He continued to look at her, his eyes gentle and uncluttered. "I'd like it if maybe we could just be friends, then."

"I have to move on," he said, looking away. "This case is a part of something larger, and that something has been calling me since I was a kid. I must proceed toward Event Zero, the event that begins it all. It hasn't happened yet but when it does...I'll be there to see it."

"You'll be leaving Sudbury straight away?"

"By breakfast."

Dr. Hollister shot the cuff of her labcoat and looked at her watch. "That, arguably, could be any time now. The sun should be coming up. Do you think your Humpitarian friends are still outside?"

"Hubbardians. No, likely not. They'll return. Tell them nothing. Do not see them alone. Accept no invitations." Mr. Mississauga reached for the door. Then, seemingly as an afterthought, he mumbled, "Thank you."

"Wait," said Dr. Hollister.

He paused and looked back over his shoulder at her.

She said, "Before you go, I need you to do me a favour." He said nothing, so she continued, gesturing with a shaking hand at the electroshock treatment bed. "I need you to do me." She hugged her shoulders, then rubbed her temples in slow circles. "Okay?"

Mr. Mississauga gave her a small, tight smile. "Show me how to work the controls," he said quietly.

Dr. Hollister shrugged off her labcoat and nodded.


*


Come morning the grad students took care of the patients. Someone closed the door to Dr. Hollister's office all the way, unwilling to risk anything disturbing the deep, peaceful sleep which she advertised with a careless snore, splayed out in her swivel chair. She had a childish grin on her lips and the place smelled like cigarettes.

The grad students decided that Dr. Hollister had somehow, inexplicably, gotten laid.

A crude dream-catcher made of twisted strips of bond paper hung over her head, swaying in time to her breath.

The Taste of Blue - Part One

The Taste of Blue is a story told in two episodes, posted serially by me, your rapid eye moving host, Cheeseburger Brown.

Chapters: 1|2

News: I'm pleased to announce the immediate availability of Sensible Flying Shoes: Collected Stories Volume II, the follow-up to Hot Buttered Something, featuring newly edited versions of 2007's stories with original illustrations by yours truly. Order your copy today!

Meanwhile, our freshest story begins:


1/2

It was midnight, and the patients were asleep.

Dr. Hollister squeezed a teabag against the side of her cup with a spoon, watching the whorls of dark brew roil with brownian carelessness to colour the water and, hopefully, to lend her some measure of respite from the leaden exhaustion that weighed her down like a wet wool coat.

She closed her aching eyes and sniffed the steam.

Thunder rumbled again. Tonight the weather was an ominous tease, a stuffy stillness constantly threatening to open up into something wild. There was no wind, but the air smelled like rain. Like Dr. Hollister, the sky stood in wait, biding its time before flying off the rails.

The overhead fluorescents guttered, a hiccup in the buzz. Somewhere, far away, lightning was striking the grid.

Dr. Hollister yawned desperately. She turned the page to pore over the next chart.

The grad students could sense the tension. Their trivial complaints were, for once, kept to themselves. Dr. Hollister could hear their whispers and sense their flickering glances through the sliver of space between her office door and the wall, her reluctant and minimal concession to the university's "open door policy."

Behind her eyelids the phantasmagoric interplay of afterimage blobs drifted and billowed in her vision. A blurry artifact of her teacup blended into a tunnel of blue rings, through which her perspective unwillingly progressed. Deeper, bluer, further...

Her eyes snapped open.

She bit the inside of her cheek until it threatened to bleed. Left wanting by this stimulus, she next dealt herself a couple of harsh slaps across the face. Her cheeks prickled and her ears rang.

"Dr. Hollister?"

She looked up to see a pair of grad student eyes peeking through the sliver at the door. "I'm fine, thank you," said Dr. Hollister, her own eyes on the papers as she shuffled them importantly. "Just a little tired. Have you checked the back-ups for Room B?"

"I was just on my way out, actually. They should be fine."

"Should won't do," she snapped. "We're getting some brown-outs and I don't want gaps in my data. Do you understand?"

"I'll double-check them right now, Doctor," said the student quickly, slipping away.

Laurentian University had cut her funding mercilessly. Dr. Hollister knew that when the last student went home for the night, she would be left alone to monitor the patients herself until sunrise. She wondered how she would make it through. She mashed the last vestiges of tea from the teabag and then sipped. Hot and bitter. Sharp, but not nearly sharp enough.

A bank of computer displays hung on the wall across from her desk, their faces illuminated with slowly scrolling graphs charting blood pressure, heart rate, respiration, electro-dermal activity and brain waves. The displays were reflected in the glass wall behind her, a one-way window looking out upon the six beds of Room A. Inside each bed a patient slept, ensnared in a battery of wires and leads.

The patients did not sleep peacefully, but never the less Dr. Hollister envied them. They tossed. They turned. They grunted. Some muttered the words that haunted her, as they muttered them night after night: "I can taste it...the taste of blue...so bright, so bright -- please save me from him."

Dr. Hollister did not know from whom the patients wished to be saved, but she knew what he looked like. In an accordion folder on her desk were the pictures they drew during the day -- each idiosyncratic and unique in some ways, but each converging upon a common image: the blue man, the fat man, the one reaching for their throats like an enraged buddha, tearing them out of the blue tunnel that promised so much peace.

Fourteen patients, all drawing the same phantasm. Fourteen patients, all experiencing the same nightmare. Every night.

"The taste of blue...I can taste it."

Dr. Hollister shivered, then sipped more bitter tea.


*


She let out a little yelp as her head sprung up off her desk blotter, knocking over the teacup and nearly tumbling from her chair. She blinked and knuckled her eyes, then scanned the computer displays for an alarm code. There was none.

Her heart was hammering. She sank back into her chair and tried to catch her breath. Tea dripped on the floor. She looked at the mess helplessly.

A loud knocking sounded. It was vaguely familiar -- her sluggish memory suggested it was a sequel: the first knocks had probably been what awakened her. Someone was pounding on the front door.

Dr. Hollister smoothed down her labcoat as she passed out of her office and shuffled wearily down the long, polished linoleum corridor to the front door. As she drew near it was pounded upon again, the bangs echoing through the deserted building.

"Hang on, hang on," she called grumpily, putting her eye to the peep-hole. "The building opens at six," she called.

A shadow stood on the stoop. "Dr. Carolyn Hollister?"

"Six," she repeated. "Come back at six."

"I must speak with you urgently."

His voice was low and calm despite his insistence. She blinked, attempting fruitlessly to focus through the fish-eye distortion of the peep-hole. "Laurentian policy is we don't open the door until six, okay? It'll have to wait until morning."

"I'm afraid this can't wait."

"It's going to have to. Are you one of my students? You can make an appointment with my secretary." Dr. Hollister began to turn away from the door, wondering whether she would have to call security.

"No, I'm not a student," said the tall shadow outside. "I'm a detective."

Dr. Hollister paused. "A detective?"

"Listen to me, Dr. Hollister. I know about the nightmare. I know what's been happening. And I know that everything -- everything -- hinges on your seeing me tonight."

"I'm sorry?"

She heard the stranger sigh on the other side of the door. "The taste of blue," he said quietly. "I can taste it. Can't you?"

Thunder rumbled. Dr. Hollister unbolted the door.


*


With her office desk safely between them Dr. Hollister studied her guest. He lowered himself into the chair opposite her carefully, one black gloved hand gripping the arm. Once settled he manually crossed his legs by picking up one thigh and arranging it over the other. He then deposited a business card on the edge of the desk.

Dr. Hollister picked it up. It said: S. MISSISSAUGA, INVESTIGATIVE SERVICES and below that was a printed telephone number that had been crossed out and replaced by one jotted in by hand. She looked up.

He was native. His hair was a salt and pepper crewcut. He had dark, sad pouches beneath his eyes, though the eyes themselves were bright and alive, wide and chocolate brown like a puppy or a colt. His expression was dour. Aside from his eyes he looked twice as tired as Dr. Hollister felt.

"South Mississauga?" she asked. "Down by Toronto?"

"Mississauga is my name."

"You're not with the police."

"No," he agreed.

Dr. Hollister straightened her labcoat and crossed her arms. "It's unlikely I will be able to be of much assistance. It is not this institution's policy to release information willy-nilly. We are under no compunction to cooperate with any private agency."

The detective nodded, then uncrossed his leg and began to methodically straighten his body again. He straightened his overcoat with a stiff left arm. "I'll see myself out," he said, rising.

Dr. Hollister sighed. "Wait a minute." She shook her head, lips pursed. "Please sit down, detective. I don't mean to be...so abrupt. We're working on very little sleep here."

The detective settled in his chair again. "Yes," he said.

Dr. Hollister turned over her spilled teacup. "Can I offer you some tea?"

"Yes."

She plugged in the kettle on the file cabinet behind her, rubbed her eyes, then swivelled around to face the detective with what she hoped was a better approximation of professional composure. She pulled a tissue from the box and mopped up the spilled tea. "So," she said, "what do you know about the dream, detective?"

He tucked into his coat and removed a silver cigarette case. "Do you mind if I smoke in here?" he asked.

"I mind very much, yes."

"Okay," agreed the detective, clicking open the case. "I'll only have one, then."

Dr. Hollister did not object further, hypnotized by the elaborate but practiced process by which the detective inserted a hand-rolled cigarette into his mouth and lit it, transferring items between his hands. The right glove hummed with tiny motorworks as it moved; the left glove was stiff as a mannequin. She wondered if the damage were neurological. "You're handicapped," she said.

"No," said Mr. Mississauga. "I have four artificial limbs."

"Most people would count that as a handicap."

Mr. Mississauga ignored that, his eyes fixed on Dr. Hollister earnestly. He dragged on his cigarette, then took out a small, bright blue notebook with Japanese robots on it. He knocked a pencil out of its spine and unfolded the notebook on his thigh. "It's contagious."

Dr. Hollister frowned, shrinking back. "Pardon me?"

"The dream, doctor. The dream is contagious. You asked me what I know, and I know that for certain. Everything else is conjecture."

"How do you know that?"

Mr. Mississauga exhaled smoke. "Tell me about the first patient."

"I don't think I can share those details with you."

"I don't care about names."

The kettle whistled. Dr. Hollister swivelled in her chair and began to dole out two teabags but Mr. Mississauga cleared his throat to interrupt, then leaned across the desk to offer a teabag of his own. "You carry your own tea?" she asked, brow arched.

"Yes," he said simply.

She paused, looking at him, but he did not elaborate. She accepted the teabag. He sat back again, releasing a faint perfume of photographic fixer and beef soup. She returned her attention to the tea and revolved to a forward orientation a moment later with two steaming blue and orange mugs with Laurentian logos on them. They each sipped from their cups. "Congenital phocomelia?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Judging by your age I'm going to guess in utero thalidomide poisoning."

"Yes."

Dr. Hollister smirked. "Not chatty are you, Mississauga?"

"No," he agreed. "I listen."

She sniffed, the best approximation of a chuckle she could muster. "Hah. I suppose that's my cue to start talking, isn't it? Well, I think I can safely tell you a thing or two, Detective. For starters, you're right -- it's contagious. Patient Zero reported first experiencing the dream five weeks ago, we've been able to connect the subsequent cases to contact with her."

"She's female," muttered Mr. Mississauga, making a note. "Age?"

"Pubescent," she replied crisply. "Caucasian; no signs of prior adverse health; very bright; minor social-behavioural issues."

"Was there any event that seemed to precipitate the onset of the dream?"

"She was struck by lightning," said Dr. Hollister. "The physical damage was quite mild, but with the sleep disturbances there arose some concern that there may be neurological damage. Her parents -- they're alumni -- brought her here so we could check her nocturnal brain-wave activity and take some fMRI scans. The waiting list at the hospital runs about three months, you see."

The lights guttered briefly. A moment later thunder rolled.

"The storm's getting closer," noted Dr. Hollister.

"Yes," said Mr. Mississauga. "We're running out of time."

"What do you mean?"

Mr. Mississauga crossed his leg again, then rearranged his little blue notebook. "Was anything revealed in the tomography?"

"Nothing significantly abnormal, no, beyond slightly elevated levels of activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which isn't entirely off the map in terms of patients experiencing chronic night terrors -- which, really, we don't expect to see in pubescent girls unless they've suffered a serious psychological trauma like violent abuse."

"There is no evidence of abuse?"

"No. Dr. Amroliwallah's had several interviews with her. He says she's borderline depressive and a mildly narcissistic, but again, this isn't entirely uncommon for early adolescent mood swings."

"Does she menstruate?"

"First mens was just over eight months ago, yes." Dr. Hollister cocked her head. "Exactly what kind of a detective are you, anyway?"

"I specialize in the inexplicable."

"Do you have a degree?"

"No."

"How does one qualify for such a position then?"

"I am myself slightly inexplicable," he replied with a small, tight smile. "It lends me a certain insight." He glanced down at his notebook. "Who acquired the dream next?"

Dr. Hollister took a breath. "The mother. At first we assumed she was simply obsessing over her daughter's dream imagery, but then her co-worker began describing the same visions, including details that had not been discussed between them. The custodian from the girl's school was next, and then his brother. They're all here now, sleeping in our labs."

"And they all dream the same dream?"

"And complain of the same secondary symptoms, yes."

"What secondary symptoms have you seen?"

"Waking fixations on the dream elements, becoming progressively more pronounced. Patient Zero, in fact, is scheduled to be transferred up to the Lakehead Psychiatric Hospital tomorrow. She's become virtually monomaniacal -- all she will discuss is the dream. It's neurotic."

"And the other patients are converging on a similar state?"

"I believe so, yes, but at this point the official diagnosis is hysterical pseudo-contagion among the others. It doesn't make sense, but Dr. Yedelman is a stubborn man. I'm trying to get my data together to make a new argument to him. He simply must see it: the pattern of transmission is classic. We just don't have any clue what the means of transmission is."

Mr. Mississauga sat back in his seat and regarded her levelly. "No clue? Dr. Hollister, consider it: what we're dealing with here is a memetic pathogen -- a self-replicating body of ideas. And there are established ways of transmitting ideas from one brain to another."

Dr. Hollister shoved her empty cup aside. "Like what?"

Mr. Mississauga ground out the end of his cigarette in his empty cup, then placed it on the desk. "We're doing it now, you and I. We are having thoughts, encoding them into speech, expression and movement, and broadcasting them through the air and the light in this office. You hear me speak, you watch me talk, and you glean my meaning: the idea from my brain is now available for consideration in yours."

"That's a cute model, Detective," replied Dr. Hollister with an indulgent smile, "but I'm talking about a concrete vector of transmission. These patients aren't being inspired by each other's ideas -- that's what Yedelman thinks -- they're dreaming the same dream, with identical narrative sequences and imagery."

"The fat blue man."

"The fat blue man, exactly. He's an enemy, and we must stop him."

Mr. Mississauga looked up sharply. "Say that again, Doctor?"

Dr. Hollister blinked, then pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. "I'm sorry -- like I told you, I'm personally exhausted. Babbling nonsense." She opened her eyes again. "What I'm saying is, how do you transmit the idea of a malevolent blue fat man without describing a malevolent blue fat man? Patient Zero's mother never told her colleague what was in the dream, only that it was recurring and unpleasant, a dream about being pursued and torn away from something sweet."

"The taste of blue."

"The sweet, sweet taste of blue -- so long and so warm, so forever and so much a kind of hug for your heart. Don't let him get me. Stop it, him. Stop it, him." Dr. Hollister blinked again, cleared her throat. Mr. Mississauga was watching her closely. "Um, yes," she went on, flustered. "And that's what they all say -- whether they've heard it from one another or not. How could it possibly get from, as you put it, one brain to another without having heard the phrases themselves?"

"Not all communication is verbal, Doctor, as I'm sure you appreciate. Much information is passed between people via non-verbal means, such as body language, skin response, and even smell."

"Are you proposing that the dream hops brains by smell?"

"I suggest only that it may be unwise to underestimate the power of implication. To imply a message can be to broadcast everything except the message itself, a kind of negative image or reverse mold of the original. If implication were a science, such complex messages might be engineered."

Dr. Hollister sniffed sceptically. "You think somebody made this?"

"I don't know. It could as well have arisen spontaneously out of the ocean of memetic, information-based constructs our civilization shunts to and fro every day. In a way, it was bound to happen eventually."

"What was?"

"Self-replication," he said heavily. "Consider: melodies are weakly self-replicating when they're catchy. People find themselves whistling them, and thereby transmit them to others. Is it really too large a leap to imagine ideas doing that by form instead of fancy? If self-replicating genetics could evolve from a pool of interacting organic molecules, why not self-replicating memetics from a pool of an interacting brains?"

Dr. Hollister sat back in her squeaky chair and rubbed her forehead. "Like I said before, Detective, the model has appeal. The question is, how does it help us?"

Mr. Mississauga leaned forward eagerly, his chocolate brown eyes locked on Dr. Hollister. "It helps us because it frames the terms of our response: if an information-based pathogen is out there in the wild, it must be contained. We cannot let it loose in the ecosystem of our civilization to continue to evolve and possibly do incredible damage. You said it yourself: Patient Zero's going to a rubber room. What would happen if that were the fate of millions?"

A shiver ran across Dr. Hollister's shoulders. "God," she said.

Mr. Mississauga nodded. "Or rather, the Devil."