The Eternity Prize - Chapter 3
Enemies of the State
JOE
Earth date: April 20, 2080
Biblis Patera Hospital, Colony 5, Mars
The rusty Martian shower blasted Joe’s face, but he barely noticed, he was so deep in thought. What did Granger mean by “Deja you”. Had they met before?
Reluctantly, he opened Facebook to search for Granger’s page. The minute he blinked on the app, his visor was clogged with comments from Khoury’s, all expressing the desire to kick Joe's ass. Enough was enough — with a few quick eye-swipes, he blocked the President of Mars and the Generalissimo of the Lebanese Space Force.
Finally, Granger's page came into view, headed by his last selfie, standing at the edge of the Borealis with a fishing pole in one hand and a buggy-eyed fish in another. He reminded Joe of Ed Reidel – same fishing obsession, same fish. The only difference – the purple-grey Martian skies. And the wife and two kids smiling beside him. Damn. Hands shaking with guilt, Joe could barely button his shirt.
He took the slow staff elevator to the waiting room, steeling himself to deal with the family's tears. Or worse, resigned silence. Brushing his still-wet hair from his forehead, he eye-scrolled through his email. 450. No, wait. Only 350. Mail was glitching again.
Still, it was too much. Hundreds of emails reminded him of hundreds of others he'd missed. He cc.d Karman and told him to take him off the lists.
As the elevator descended, he scanned the day’s news with his Hopeless Optimist filter. 12,253 items rejected, 2 chosen.
#1 - NASA probes found a new form of life under Ganymede's icy surface – methane breathers that looked like squid. Interesting.
#2 - On Earth, they'd found the remains of Major Tom Davies, a pilot who had crashed his space plane during a secret test flight in 1943. They were calling Davies the first astronaut. Joe hummed 'Ground control to Major Tom' as he shared it.
The elevator doors opened. Dust vents wheezed as Joe stepped into the hallway. The location monitor slapped against his ankle as he walked through curved hallways, past light sensors that were calibrated to determine the mood of each passerby and give them an emotional lift. His depressed peripheral vision was bathed in happy yellow.
The hospital was one of the most expensive buildings in Colony 4, built when Khoury and his investors thought Mars would become the ultimate adventure resort. But after the Biowars, the only people left on Earth with money and power were Comintern bureaucrats, the least adventurous people in the Galaxy. Bibs stayed empty until Earth decided to use Mars as a dumping ground for Enemies of the State -- like Joe.
Another Optimist article popped up: Grace Park announced her team’s breakthrough in miniaturized Quantum Data storage. Their Q-drive could process more data than Bibs' whole server farm, but it was smaller than a stick of gum. "You go, Grace", he said as he slammed into something real and hard. The lunch cart. The orderly pushing it rolled his eyes as Joe switched his view back to RL and mumbled "sorry, sorry, 'scuse me'." He took a few steps back, blinked, and realized he was standing near the morgue elevator. Back where he started.
'Deja you’ still played in his head. Why did Granger say that? Joe sighed. When he was young, his brain retrieved memories at lightspeed. Now it shuffled like an old librarian.
A blue dot at the edge of his vision pinged him -- a message from Khoury, demanding a response. Enough again. Joe deleted him from his contacts.
Khoury had been bullying Joe since he'd first set foot on Mars. Back in 2074, when he first arrived on the planet, Joe spent his first two weeks in hotel quarantine vomiting from the effects of Mars’ lighter gravity. The locals called it ‘Space Lag’. Joe called it hell.
Despite Joe’s protests, Khoury insisted on a ‘formal reception’ for his arrival at the hospital. When the rover dropped him off at Bibs, Joe took two steps over the whining vacuum vents, stumbled past Khoury and his tinny three-man band and collapsed into a waiting-room chair. Khoury tossed a handful of confetti his way. Joe vomited into a garbage pail.
Khoury sent the band home and sat beside Joe. “That’s Mars, kid.” he said, “It’ll put fizz in your brain and spice in your gut.” He patted Joe’s knee. “I’ll get you a wheelchair, roll you to your new lab.”
Joe shook his head. He’d prepared a long list of reasons why he should never enter a lab again: primary among them, the fact that his M-2 nanobots almost wiped out all life on Earth. But when he opened his mouth, queasy burps silenced him.
Khoury sat back down with an angry thud. "Karman said you want out of the research game. Well, my answer is NO. You’re NOT a doctor, you’re a lab geek. I brought you here to find Eternity. That's the deal." He shifted his muscular ass cheeks on the plastic chair. "If it wasn't for me, your organs would be for sale in the Yonkers Wet Market. You know how Human Resources deals with dissidents. First, they rape you to death. Then they skin you. Then, they cut out your organs and sell them. And if they like you... "
"…they'll do it in that order." Joe burped.
"I hate those bureaucratic shits." Khoury continued. "They're... what's that word? Necrotic. Earth needs apoptosis."
Joe wanted to point out that if Eternity succeeded, those bureaucratic shits would be running things forever, but a caustic eruption in his esophagus silenced him. All he could do was sit back and take in the misery around him, so many sick kids in ragged clothes. On Earth, life was relentlessly safe, but hardly anyone had kids. Mars was fraught with disease, danger — and children. Why did they bring them into this dangerous world?
"The last thing I need is another overworked ER doc.” Khoury roared “No one would trust you anyway. We don't censor the media here, everyone on Mars has heard about your man-eating Nano-blob. They won't trust Young Frankenstein to cure a hangnail."
"Then you shouldn't trust me in a lab." Joe coughed "Dangerous... materials."
The billionaire’s mood shifted like a flag in a thunderstorm. "True dat!" he laughed. "You think Eternity is a crazy idea."
Joe nodded. "Your friend Ed Reidel said... "
Khoury snorted. "We’re not friends.”
"Umm... well, he has a point. We still don't have a scientific definition of consciousness …"
Khoury's red-rimmed eyes bulged as he leaned towards Joe. "That's where you're wrong, kid. Consciousness is the thing that is you. Know what I mean?”
Joe blinked. “Maybe.”
“It’s the voice that vibrates in your head. Like, on the Quantum level, everything from the universe to the smallest amoeba runs on vibrations. Light, colors, and sounds vibrate at frequencies, they power our cells, they fire up our brains. Your consciousness is your frequency. Awareness is a beam of light."
"Like … a photon?"
"Yeah."
Joe was so intrigued he forgot the ache in his bones. "Have you ever heard of — Travelers?"
Khoury didn't answer, he was distracted by a pumpkin-faced kid running towards them with a coloring book. "President Rick" the kid said. "Can I have your autograph?"
The billionaire's voice got soft. It even cracked a little. "Sure." he said. Tears welled in his eyes. Joe could guess why — the kid was the same age as Rick's son Mitchell was when he was murdered. He even had the same broad smile. Joe clutched his stomach, overwhelmed by the pain around him. Kids with swollen faces. Bloodshot eyes. Lesions.
"What's your name?" Khoury asked the pumpkin child.
"Louie. Louie Granger."
The pockmarked chin. The lesions. "Deja... you." Granger was in the hospital on the day the Dassak Strain came to Mars.
Khoury handed the crayon back to little Granger and turned to Joe. "This is all your fault. Your cancer cure convinced me Eternity was possible – you solved a problem they said was unsolvable, you ignored the ‘experts’ and their crap pseudoscience. You went back to the old books. Real medicine. Your nano-blob formula has promise too if you can work out the kinks. With your tech and Everlast's new Biobots ..."
Joe nodded, but he wasn't listening, he was remembering... swollen faces. Bloodshot, teary eyes. The quarantine camp at the edge of the Kalahari. "My... God." he gasped.
"Well, ok, Everlast's bots don't have the best reputation, but Hudson's are wayy worse ..."
Joe staggered to his feet. "You're going to die."
"Yeah, that's what I'm trying to avoid."
“You're all going to die — in a week! Thirteen days at most." Joe waved to the room full of children. “The rash, the facial swelling, the pink eye..."
Khoury frowned “Doc Broeksmit says it's conjunction-i-tis. A seasonal thing."
"Your doctors wouldn't know about Dassak. The media covered it up."
"Covered … what up?"
"A lab leak — in Botswana."
Khoury wiped sweat from his brow. "Shit."
"Yes, bad shit. A deer virus CRISPRed into a coronavirus with HPV, chicken pox and God knows what else."
"Yes, bad shit. A deer virus CRISPRed into a coronavirus with HPV, chicken pox and God knows what else."
“Goddamn” the billionaire growled. “Earth sends their worst up here — Jihadis, Nazis, Malthusians. It was just a matter of time before they sent a bioweapon. What does it do?"
"At first, it’s like an allergy. Red eyes, stuffy nose, a rash on your chin.” With a shaking hand, Khoury touched his reddened chin. “In a week, the heart palpitations start. Lesions grow into pustules. In a few days, boils cover your face. Your groin and armpits swell up. It’s like the plague, on steroids. They called me into Botswana to help. M-1 can clear cancer-related viruses like HPV and Hepatitis."
Khoury's face brightened. "You’re alive. So, it worked."
Joe shook his head, remembering fields littered with dead cows, coffins stacked up outside muddy quarantine tents, the rank smell of blood and disinfectant. The rash that soon covered his face despite his protective gear. Laying on the pus-stained cot, knowing in a few days he'd be like the man beside him, dying in screaming agony. The nurse's face appearing above him, an angel of compassion with a bright, mask-free smile. He told her to get away, Dassak was highly virulent. She laughed and told him she'd had it and recovered. Something her grandma cooked up.
"A local doctor put a treatment together." Joe told Khoury "A cocktail of anti-parasitics, aspirin and lemon juice. But it didn't work for the elderly or people whose immune systems weren't strong. So, I figured, why not combine the two? And it did work – sort of. If we caught it before the heart palpitations start."
They both turned to young Louie Granger, who was breathing heavily. Joe reached for his arm. "I need to check your heart rate."
The boy backed away.
"It's okay" Khoury said "Joe's a doctor. And a damned good one".
Joe gazed at his now-deceased patient's photo. If he'd just remembered who Granger was, he would have known about his weakened heart. But he didn't remember because he was not a good doctor. Wrong again, Khoury.