Tag: V

Chapter Ten – Passage Five

“Very well,” Coleman says, “all that is well and good.  But out with it.”  He looks straight at Alan.

“Why are we here?  Why’d you ask for us back?”

Alan shifts around uncomfortably in his seat, it feels to me like he’s wrestling with how to express himself properly in convincing fashion.  Our encounter so far hasn’t exactly been inspiring utmost confidence.

“I’ve been looking at the data,” Alan finally says.  “And I think we have a chance to change things.”

“To change what, exactly?” Deepak asks, his voice skeptical.  “And why?”

“Don’t you care?” asks Shu.  “Don’t you want to see the people behind the greatest genocide in human history held accountable?”

“Accountable for what?  They had a vaccine ready,” says Deepak.  “They vaccinated who they wanted to save –people like us– and let the rest die in a Russian Roulette-style extermination.  Besides, being vaccinated isn’t some slam dunk either– it’s just helps.  There was randomness and an element of chance.  Anyone of us could’ve still all died, you know.  You’ve seen the movie.  Balance in all things.“

“Oh my God, I can’t believe you,” Shu exclaims.  “How about the rest of the world?  Europe, Africa, the Americas?  The virus has killed tens of millions!”

“You’re going to blame the rest of the world for not being ready?”

“China had a cure that it didn’t share!”

“Since when is it China’s responsibility to care about the world?”

“It needs to care when it causes the problem!”

Now it’s Deepak’s turn to look incredulous.  He stands up.  He’s had a few drinks at this point and I suddenly remember that for the nine months we were holed away in that monastery in the land of the Dali Lama and Tibetan enlightenment that he’d been pouring over research and studies that entire time.

“You know what’s a problem?” Deepak exclaims, swinging his drink around wildly and some rum spills out.  “Overpopulation!  Environmental degradation!  Climate change!  Polar ice caps melting!

“In the past nine months, after they shut down all vehicular traffic in Beijing, after just month again, the Chinese saw something they haven’t seen in over a century– a clear blue sky.  This winter, for the first time ever, polar bears aren’t going to have their home incinerated–“

“People are dying by the tens of millions and you care about polar bears?“

“It’s not just about polar bears and penguins!  If the polar ice caps completely flood, sea levels will rise!  All coastal areas will flood!  New York, San Francisco, and the entirety of Japan?  Gone.“

I’m watching this exchange degenerate in real-time.  Shu was tending to Alan but now she’s forgotten all about him and is fuming.  In fact, she’s grown so angry that I’m afraid she’s going to punch Deepak instead.

“Alright, guys, hold on.  Before someone get another blackeye.”  I turn to Alan.  “Finish what you were saying.”  I glare at both Deepak and Shu.  “We’ll leave aside the moment the question of blame.  Just tell us.”

Shu and Deepak glare at each but manage to stay silent and Alan takes that as his cue.

“Right,” Alan sighs, “so here’s what I found out.  Generally, epidemiology is tough.  In the early days, you’ve got people coming in from all over reporting all kinds of symptoms.  Much of it is just your run-of-the-mill common cold or flu.  Headaches, nausea, etc.  The truth is much of the time, we don’t even know we have a pandemic on our hands until it’s arrived.”

Alan taps several keys and a holo-projection pops up.  It’s a time-lapse of the past nine months and how COVID-59 had spread.  At first brush, it’s exactly what you would expect.  There was a red bubble around Urumqi which had slowly metastasized.

“But, what’s interesting about COVID-59 is that it possesses one unique trait far more rarely observed– early infected patients– no matter what background; age, gender, race, or geographic background– always reported one consistent symptom– the sudden disappearance of one’s sense of smell– anosmia.“

“We already tried looking at this,” Kristen says, shaking her head.  “Trying to identify the etiology of the disease by narrowing by symptoms.  It didn’t yield any additional insight.”

“Ah, but did you run it with internal Chinese state hospitalization data?” Alan says.  “Our other set of books?”

He taps another few keys and a new map pops up on the holo-projection over the coffee table.  This one is different.  Interestingly, it shows that the virus did not originate in Urumqi.  But rather, there was another place before that which had red dots.

Kristen stares at the holo-map, dazed.  “This… this is extraordinary.”

“Yes, but isolating the cases of anosmia in the country around the start of COVID-59, you see that there were already several growing hotspots in China, namely Guangzhou.”

Guangzhou is the gateway between Hong Kong and China– second to Xinjiang, it was previously the most contested and riotous autonomous region in China.

“This is crazy,” Deepak says, throwing up his hands in a huff.  “I’m not gallivanting off to some other far-off corner of China to pursue something that I honestly don’t believe is a problem.  Honestly, the whole lot of you are delusional!  If anything, you should be thanking the CCP!  They’ve averted global famine, or at least postponed the End of Days for several decades!”

With that Deepak storms out of Alan’s apartment, slamming the door behind him.

I’ve been around the block enough times to have seen this act before.  Someone always needs to be talked off the ledge at some point.

Kristen starts to rise off the sofa to go after Deepak but I wave her off and get up instead.

“I’ve got this, I’ll go talk to him,” I say.

“You know he’s not entirely wrong,” she says quietly.  “He’s just saying what we’re all thinking.”

“I know.”

Chapter Six – Passage Six

Vigor and youth are honestly wasted on the young.  I reflect to myself, shaking my head.  But even the curmudgeon in me can’t help but marvel at this antiquated world that has been meticulously maintained around us.  All modern cities at some point face a dilemma with their central transit systems: How much history and tradition to preserve?  How much of the future to embrace?  And most places end up compromising.  The gaudy Americans embraced it all, of course.  And this is why you see flatscreen LCD displays at a place like Grand Central or Union Station.  New Yorkers apparently believe putting some museum exhibit enclosed in a glass case next to the bleeding-edge technology somehow classes up the joint.

But here, at Northlight Station, Xi’an’s main HSR hub, other than the futuristic maglev trains that we rode in on, everything else appears to have been frozen in time.  No compromise of any sort here.  From our wooden platform I spy horse-drawn carriages outside of the marble archways.  Additionally, for the poorer folk, rickshaws pulled by humans on both foot and bicycle are also available for service.

I don’t see a single automobile anywhere.

There is something enormously strange, impossible to describe with mere words, about being suddenly transported nearly two centuries back in time.  Most of my days, I move through the world brimming with confidence.  I’ve spent a lifetime studying and acquiring skills.  I know things.  Additionally, I’ve watched my countrymen put a man on the moon.  I’ve watched us drop the atomic bomb.  I’ve seen the full might and potential of the human species come to bear.  But abruptly arriving here at Northlight Station, where I don’t anywhere see a single smartphone, tablet, computer, or automobile– this evokes an entirely differently combination of emotions that I’ve not felt in a long time.

A sense of humility and awe. 

Suddenly, I feel incredibly, incredibly small.  A feeling washes over me all at once that there’s a wondrous force much larger than imaginable which is at work.  Words and logic fail to describe this sensation but it’s an acute and sharp feeling that undoubtedly exists.  Like a feeling that you’ve known always true but is so horribly inconvenient that you’ve simply shoved away in the deepest recesses of your brain, suddenly surfacing and finding air once more.

Beside me, Coleman takes out his smartphone to snap a few photos but Deepak snatches it from him, faster than I’d expect.

“Don’t!”

“Hey!  What the hell?”

Coleman’s phone in his hand, not yet on, Deepak explains:  “They’ve set up a constant EMP sphere here in Xi’an.  You turn on anything electronic, a cellphone, computer, anything— and the device will be instantly fried.  The only things that run electric here are the incoming HSR lines.”

Deepak hands Coleman back his phone.  “Be careful.”

Coleman can only stare, jaw agape.  No Spotify, music, or earmuffs for this young man today.

“C’mon, guys!” calls Alan from the marble steps leading out of the station foyer.  His shout interrupts our ad-hoc lesson and I see that he’s already several yards ahead of us, a dozen steps up, blazing ahead like the consummate scout leader he is. “Places to be and people to meet!” He grins and opens his arms expansively back at us, suddenly a theatrical showman.

“Welcome to Xi’an.”

Vibrant, fluorescent lights flicker on overhead and my eyes take a moment to adjust.  When they do, I’m looking at a gigantic miniature city on a massive stainless steel table that’s laid out before me.  The mini-city and the table it’s on is positively gigantic, maybe the size of sixteen ping-pong tables arranged 4×4.  It takes a minute and I need to blink a few times, but then I realize what’s odd.

The city’s in motion.

And by motion, I mean that the little miniature people and cars in the city are all moving around.  Miniature pedestrians are walking along sidewalks and little delivery trucks, sedans, vans, and school buses are driving up and down the city streets, halting and going at stoplights, dropping off kids, the whole nine yards.

“What in fresh hell is this?” says Coleman, bewildered.  “Some kinda model train set on steroids?”

“Please don’t touch anything,” Vanessa says wearily. “But feel free to take a look around. Though please do be careful.”

Her tone makes it sound like she’s a parent chaperoning a school dance who’d really much rather just be at home nursing a pint of scotch.

I take a step closer to the miniature city to get a better look.  The details on the tiny models are amazingly intricate and lifelike.  One of the skyscrapers even has little window-washing men cleaning the building’s glass façade, dangling from steel cables to do their work.  Upon inspection, I see that the entire mini-city’s actually in fact enclosed under a thin glass dome.  Clearly, whoever slaved away on the model didn’t want anyone touching anything, a sentiment I can most definitely understand.  I search for familiar landmarks in the model but don’t see anything I immediately recognize.

“This is impressive,” I begin, “how did you guys–“

“Good god.  You lunatics actually built it.”

I turn and see Katherine’s half a step behind me.  Her face has paled, drained of all color, and she looks like she could suddenly faint so I reach out to help but she just swats my arm away.  She pushes past me, walks up to the miniature city, and puts her hands and face right up against its plexiglass enclosure, like a kid looking into a candy store from the outside.

“Hey!” snaps Vanessa.  “No touching!”

Katherine just ignores her.  A moment of awkward silence passes and the rest of us just look at each other.  Whenever you’re in a group of adults and someone outright transgresses, blithely deciding to simply not follow rules, it always gets weird.  Like, no one ever knows what to do. Is someone supposed to tackle her?  Reprimand her sternly?  The protocol’s honestly unclear.

Finally, it’s Chopra who speaks up. “You recognize it, don’t you?” he says softly.  “You know what this is.”

Katherine gives a short, bitter snort.  “I damn well should.  After all, I designed it.“