The Virus (15 page)

About fifteen minutes passed, but it
felt like a verifiable eternity since no one could see what, if
anything, was taking place in Mr. Reynolds’s room. Dr. Crangler was
not about to step foot in the room’s suddenly dark recesses and he
knew that none of his assistants would either, no matter how stern
the directive. Everyone just remained where they were, too
astonished to speak, too astonished to stir, too astonished to draw
much breath. Eventually, the lights in the room re-illumined, which
was noteworthy of itself. The lights in the facility were not like
normal lights: Complex physical and chemical reactions fueled by
electrical currents that could be stopped and reinstituted at will.
As the doctor already mentioned, these lights were actually
physical presences simply housed in containment units, so for them
to go out and come back on wasn’t like a normal light responding to
a simple power outage. It was more like water leaking from a
container and suddenly reappearing back in its place a few moments
later. This did not escape Dr. Crangler’s notice, but it was not
something worthy of his full attention at the present.

What was worth Dr. Crangler’s notice,
however, was the fact that when the lights returned, they showed a
room with only one person in it. Geoffrey was sprawled full length
on the floor, eyes closed and unmoving, with the notebook clutched
tightly to his chest. His newly-telepathic associate, however, was
no more. The only thing left of him was a thin coating of dust,
lining the wheelchair in the same orientation as his cloth-like
flesh was mere moments earlier. The monitors kicked back into life,
and after a few moments, Dr. Crangler turned his attention to
Geoffrey. He stared intently at Mr. Summons on the monitor nearest
him.

“Thank goodness, he’s breathing!” he
exclaimed, watching the young man’s chest rise and fall with some
regularity. Dr. Crangler was an extremely professional man. It
wasn’t often that he got so excited over the welfare of a patient.
He wasn’t necessarily excited that Geoffrey survived whatever had
just taken place, for his own sake, he was glad that the young man
had survived because that meant that there was yet a chance for him
to pick his brain and possibly immerse himself in extra-terrestrial
knowledge the likes of which he never would’ve garnered from his
physical experiments on the aliens. Dr. Crangler was also excited
that possibly Geoffrey’s mind now contained information that may
show him how The Virus could be successfully combated.

The doctor didn’t need to worry over
potential information, for, in the three notebooks that Geoffrey
had filled in his writing frenzy, were many more answers than could
possibly be understood in a single lifetime by any one man. The
books held apocryphal answers, answers that were never intended to
be discovered by the likes of human kind.

Chapter 13

Once the initially paralyzing awe of
what Dr. Crangler later dubbed the ‘Arnold Reynolds incident’ had
subsided, the doctor entered the room Mr. Reynolds’s room and
retrieved Geoffrey. It was only after the doctor had entered the
room and remained alive for a long while that any of his assistants
would venture in to help him. They placed Geoffrey in one of the
special wheelchairs and carted him back to his room where he was
monitored closely. He was unconscious for nearly four days. During
this time, Dr. Crangler spent almost every waking moment poring
over what Geoffrey had written in the notebooks, but for all his
concerted efforts, he could make no sense of any of it. It didn’t
look like any kind of language native to Earth—once the doctor had
time to think it over, he supposed that he should’ve expected as
much—but rather a strange dialect of symbols and seemingly random
lines.

When Geoffrey finally
returned to consciousness, Dr. Crangler’s was the first face he
saw. Before that, the doctor had been waiting anxiously by one of
his observatory monitors, alternately watching Geoffrey sleep, and
combing through alien symbols struggling to make some sense of them
all. As soon as the monitor showed his patient stirring for the
first time in four days, he wanted to rush in and inundate him with
all types of questions. The irony was not lost upon him that
now
he
was the
one with all the ‘pressing inquires’, and had it not been that he
knew the eyes of his colleagues were upon him, he likely would
have. In fact, he found it nerve wracking just maintaining a
professionally slow stride on his way to Geoffrey’s room. Even
though in the presence of his staff, he made an official decision
to ascertain Geoffrey’s state before asking him to remember what
had happened, he made his way down the hall with all three
notebooks neatly tucked under his arm. In truth, he didn’t remember
taking them along. He had spent so much time with them over the
last few days that they were like a part of him now. When he
entered the room, Geoffrey was looking around blankly as if he had
just arrived at the facility for the first time. He didn’t seem to
notice the doctor’s presence, so Dr. Crangler took the opportunity
to place the notebooks out of sight in the bottom drawer of
Geoffrey’s desk.

“How are you feeling, Mr. Summons?”
Dr. Crangler asked, careful not to raise his voice or make any
sudden movements. Geoffrey opened his mouth but nothing came out.
He cleared his throat harshly.

“Thirsty…and hungry, I think,” he
finally answered.

Dr. Crangler was so excited to see
that Mr. Summons had not only survived the ordeal, but appeared to
be fully functional, that he could hardly contain himself. Almost
instinctively, he began to reach for the notebooks in the desk
drawer, but caught himself. “Do you remember anything, Mr.
Summons?” he asked with equal caution.

“Thirsty…and hungry.” was the repeated
response.

Dr. Crangler rose and stepped out of
the room briefly. “All right, Mr. Summons, food is on the way. Now,
do you remember anything?” He asked upon his return. His ill
contained pleas were met with the same response. It became clear to
the anxious doctor that no information would be gained from Mr.
Summons until he had been given some sustenance. Quite agitated
now, the doctor left the room again and returned some time later
with a large container of food and another of drink. Geoffrey
finished it in record time and demanded more. A second helping was
produced and, after Geoffrey likewise demolished this round, he was
satisfied. He pushed the empty container away and the doctor
couldn’t help but notice that he indeed looked better than when he
first awakened.

“Thank you. Thank you very
much.” Geoffrey answered. “I felt like I was gonna die of
thirst
and
starvation.” Dr. Crangler opened his mouth, but Geoffrey
interrupted, “Look, I know what you want, and I’ll tell you
everything, but not right now. I don’t know what Mr. Reynolds did
to me, but I feel like my head may explode if I try to think any
more. I need to lie down and get some rest. After that, I’m sure
I’ll feel better and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.” If
Dr. Crangler intended to respond now, Geoffrey didn’t notice
because he was already lying back down on his bed. The doctor
reluctantly gathered the notebooks from the desk drawer and tucked
them back under his arm, then he cleaned up the empty food and
drink containers. Under normal circumstances, he would’ve had
someone else do such menial work, but he wanted no one in this room
interacting Mr. Summons until he could get every bit of information
possible out of him. Afterward, he returned to the notebooks, but
with the same futile results. After a few hours, he decided to get
some rest himself. The only thing that helped him quell his
internal anxiousness was that he knew that he needed to be fully
alert if his subsequent interview with Mr. Summons was going to be
a success, and he certainly needed for it to be a success. This was
a once in a millennia—more than that, once in human
history
—opportunity.
Until now, he could only study the physical properties of alien
life forms, but before him loomed the possibility of studying
the
mind
of far
advanced intelligences. He felt as if he could burst.

Apparently, he was more tired than he
realized, because when one of his assistants woke him to inform him
that Geoffrey was awake and was calling for him, nearly six hours
had passed. He rushed to Mr. Summons’s room, notebooks in tow. When
he entered, he found Geoffrey sitting up on his bed. He looked
refreshed but somehow aged, though just barely. Otherwise, he
looked like his old self.

“Hello, Mr. Summons.” greeted Dr.
Crangler amiably.

“Hello, Dr. Crangler.” answered
Geoffrey, “I see you haven’t let those notebooks get far from
you.”

The doctor peered down at the
notebooks, “No, I haven’t it would seem…how are you
feeling?”

“Much better, much better indeed. That
food and rest really did wonders. Say, how long was I out before I
woke up the first time? I vaguely remember blacking out back there
with Mr. Reynolds, but after that, everything’s fuzzy.”

“Are you saying that you remember
something after you fainted?” asked Dr. Crangler.

“Yeah. Must’ve been some kind of dream
or something. Mr. Reynolds was there and I think he was trying to
teach me something or something like that. I don’t remember much
else. After then, I woke up and all I can remember was being very
thirsty and very hungry.”

“Interesting.” The doctor mused aloud.
He took a seat and placed the notebooks in his lap.

“So, how long had I been out? A few
hours?” Geoffrey persisted.

“A few hours!” exclaimed the doctor.
“You were unconscious for four days.”

“Four days?” apparently, it
was Geoffrey’s turn to make an exclamation, “Are you
sure
? It didn’t seem
like that long at all.”

“Of course I’m sure. I monitored you
personally every day…” the doctor would’ve continued, but he
refrained. Not only did he not want Geoffrey to know how frantic he
had become concerning these latest developments, but protocol
required that he not draw any attention to the fact that his
patients were being monitored every second of the day, at least not
in their presence anyway. It wasn’t like anyone expected that they
didn’t know, the powers that be just thought it best that they not
dwell on that fact too often, and with difficult, temper tantrum
throwing patients like Delilah, no one questioned the logic. “Yes,
Son, you were unconscious for four days.” The doctor finished
simply.

“Wow!” was the only response Geoffrey
could muster.

The doctor gave Geoffrey a moment to
calibrate himself before resuming, “Do you remember anything of
what Mr. Reynolds was saying in this dream you
mentioned?”

“Not really. That’s how my dreams
always are. When I wake up, I usually can’t remember much about
them.”

The doctor opened one of the notebooks
in his lap and presented it to Geoffrey, “These are the symbols you
wrote when you were in the room with Mr. Reynolds, just before you
lost consciousness. Do you have any idea what they represent?” The
doctor’s voice was tense. Geoffrey looked down into the open leaves
of the notebook. At first there wasn’t a sign of recognition on his
face as if he was reading something somebody else had written.
Then, the next moment, his eyes lit up with
recollection.

“I’m sorry Dr.” he began. The doctor
began to pull the notebook back, when Geoffrey snatched it from his
hands. He looked at it more closely. “Yes! Yes, I do know what
these symbols mean!” The violence of Geoffrey’s sudden movement
caused the doctor to leap on his bed, startled. “This is what Mr.
Reynolds was teaching me. I remember it now. He was teaching me how
to read these symbols. When I was with him in the room, he told me
to write something down, then he showed me all these symbols, and
when I was asleep, he taught me how to read them.”

“He
told
you to write?” asked Dr.
Crangler, “In your
head
?”

“Yeah, don’t ask me what that was
about, ‘cuz I couldn’t describe it to you if I tried, but he spoke
to me in my mind. He made me hear and see things that were more
clear than what I’m hearing and seeing right now.”

“So you can translate this?” Dr.
Crangler was nearly overwhelmed himself.

“Sure, if you get me some more
notebooks, I can write it all down right now.”

Dr. Crangler snapped his fingers
impatiently toward a corner of the room. As soon as the notebooks
and pens were produced, the doctor shoved as many into Geoffrey’s
hands as he could hold. Geoffrey began scribbling in them as
furiously as he had done back in the late Mr. Reynolds’s room, but
now that he was not being infused by whatever physic energy Mr.
Reynolds had been emitting, he found that he needed to rest after
filling the first two notebooks to capacity. Dr. Crangler wanted
desperately to press him on, to have him finish the entire
translation as soon as humanely possible, but common sense warned
him that if he pressed too hard, he may foul up this whole
endeavor, and that was a risk he simply could not afford. He
advised Geoffrey (albeit unwillingly), to take as many rest breaks
as he deemed necessary, but to finish recording what he knew as
quickly as possible.