Effected Intent, page 27
“Who was that, Miller? Haven’t seen her before.”
“An old friend, haven’t seen her in ten years.”
“Hopefully she’ll come around more, generally the view around here is filled with trailer trash and crack whores.”
Bill chuckled and floated back to his cell for the night. When he woke in the morning his heart was still light from Dana’s visit. The coffee tasted better, the office seemed brighter and Bill was whistling in his chair, thinking about what he was going to say in his email to Dana. He heard some commotion from the other side of the office and saw Kathy coming over, a somber look on her face.
“What’s up Mom? Rough weekend? You’ll never guess who came to see me yesterday.”
“Hopefully it wasn’t someone who’s been to Korea recently.”
“Korea? Did I miss a joke?”
“It’s not a joke, there’s been a smallpox outbreak in Korea, hundreds of people are dead. According to CNN, this is a new strain that isn’t protected by the vaccines we got as kids. My kids weren’t even vaccinated, smallpox was thought to be eliminated from the world.”
Bill couldn’t focus on what she was saying, his world slipping away. “That’s unbelievable, is there any sign of it outside Korea?”
“Not yet but hundreds of flights went all over the world. Seems like it was spread by putting the virus into a batch of Coke that was bottled in Seoul, the South Korean government thinks that it was only distributed to local grocery stores, not the airport or any hotels. A North Korean group is claiming responsibility but the government says they have no knowledge or evidence of it. There is a lot of talk that this is reminiscent to the Taliban in Afghanistan.” She was shaking her head as she walked to the kitchen, leaving Bill sitting there staring in to space, so far away from his daydream world of Dana.
Bill logged on to CNN, where there were pictures of some of the infected people, bodies being carried out of houses and even eerie scenes showing the quarantine zones, the people as dead looking as holocaust death camp prisoners. Despite all of the death, there was some encouraging news and additional information that made it seem like they’d contained it to the country. The death toll in Korea was expected to stay under one thousand and the government estimated that containment is approaching ninety five percent. Bill’s mouth was dry but his forehead was wet with sweat, it was freaking him out to have the reality of the situation smack him in the face. People have died and he may have been able to prevent that by coming forward sooner. Between the confusion over Dana’s visit and the disaster in Korea, Bill felt himself slipping away. He heard Don’s voice from across the office and thought “oh shit”, it wasn’t going to be easy for him to hide or focus on The Cause. He wondered if he should just open up to Don and tell him everything, which immediately seemed like a dumb idea. It wasn’t even nine in the morning and his world was unraveling, needed to hold it together. He opened his purchasing project to make him appear busy if anyone walked by and decided that he better not wait to find out what was going on with The Cause.
The chemist hadn’t been doing much online other than some basic Foundation Chemical company work and a few visits to the Vietnam veteran forums. It wasn’t until Sunday afternoon when the interesting traffic hit the computer, between emails from Robert and an update to the website. The email talked about the victory in Korea and how the operative had escaped without infection. It then directed the members of the group to log on to the website and to quit using email to communicate, implying that the government would be watching a lot more carefully now that there was an outbreak and imminent threat to America’s safety. Bill was trying to keep it together and hoped that he wasn’t too late.
The website didn’t look much different at first, sending Bill into a panic. He noticed the new button, innocuous in appearance, which simply stated ‘action’. Clicking it, he was transported to a new page that showed some of the pictures he’d seen on CNN along with pages of text, all written by Robert. The rollercoaster continued for Bill as he read the chilling words on the screen, the hair on the back of his neck up and his arms turned to gooseflesh at the hate spewing from the site. The crux of the text was how the United States government was going to pay for its past sins and provided a detailed articulation of a plan that Steve had come up with to surgically remove the government from the American population. By infecting the government after the American population had been vaccinated, we would be rid of the scum and be able to start anew. The military would be left intact except for those highest in the government in order to insure safety during the transition. Robert called it America 2.0 and wondered if he’d be able to apply for a trademark. Bill read on, disgusted and intrigued by the intricate plan, which would imbed the virus into a type of time bomb that would sit in the bodies of all government officials at the federal and state level and even to the local level where possible.
The government was already scrambling to find a vaccine for the new strain and had uncovered the ‘project’ that the CDC had on record, along with the novel work that Steve and Robert had been doing around vaccination using the bioresorbable polymers. This was still top secret but it was known across most of the three letter agencies in Washington and all were clamoring for access to the vaccine, not caring if it had been tested or not. The plan was coming together perfectly, they were to meet Monday and pack for a field trip to D.C., where they would work with the CDC to get the vaccine administered, starting with the Oval office and moving to the House of Representatives and Senate. There was enough contaminated material to administer to thousands of recipients and they had plenty of the actual vaccine, enough to protect hundreds of thousands of Americans. The plan was to continue production of the real vaccine and travel with the smallpox to make sure those who deserved it were given it. They would have a three week window and then government employees would start dropping like flies. By then the majority of Americans would be protected and those that weren’t would be deserving of the fate that went before them. Robert closed the note by telling the team that their bravery made them heroes and that they needed to stay focused for the next few weeks and that he was tempted to stay behind to watch everything fall apart. Bill was cold by the time he reached the end of the note but knew he needed to go on, had to get this information to Darren.
He copied all of the contents of the website to his computer and then went through his detailed network diagram and removed access and logs from all systems within Foundation, leaving little trace that he’d ever been there, knowing that with some normal use of the systems all traces would be gone very shortly. Only some of the router and firewall logs would have any evidence, it was impossible to remove everything. Once he removed everything he signed off, hoping that he had eliminated all trails, knowing that Homeland Security was going to be all over the company by this afternoon, probably shutting them down and freezing everything to review the logs.
The chemist’s computer was online, so Darren removed the spyware program and all traces and deleted them as best he could. It was likely that they might be found so he put an NSA level disk formatting program on the computer and ran it, making it unlikely that anyone would be able to trace anything after that level of scrubbing was done. He was disconnected from the computer as the process started and he wondered if Steve would go running to Robert and cause an alarm to go off.
There were only three things left to do, the first was to update the website for Darren. Bill pasted in all of the information he had, which included the location of the production site because Robert had provided it to those who needed to travel and help with production of the vaccine. He logged on to the Nigeria site and left a message for Darren in the chat box on the website, telling him that this was all he had and wishing him luck in capturing those responsible before true terror hit our soil. Bill nuked the Nigeria site and ran a timed batch program that would cause the Czechoslovakian site to remove itself and the virtual machine it was installed on in twenty four hours, which would give Darren enough time to get the information but not enough to get court orders to track down who had been using it. Bill sent Darren an anonymous email through the remailing program to let him know the website was updated and then closed all non-work related programs, including his web browser. His heart was beating so fast it felt like it was going to jump out of his chest and he was lucky that Don hadn’t come over to catch up.
Chapter 27
Last Minute Planning and Go Dark
Steve and Claire had spent a quiet weekend, reminiscing about their recent trip to Niagara on the Lake, sleeping in and going shopping. They decided to stay in Sunday afternoon and catch up on some reading. Steve stayed in the family room with Claire, ignoring his laptop, trying not to think about what was coming. He couldn’t concentrate on the book in his lap so he flipped on the television and turned on the news. All of the news channels were showing Korea, each with red headlines scrolling on the bottom of the screen talking about the smallpox outbreak. He watched with rapt attention and didn’t even notice when Claire looked up and asked what was going on. Before long both of them were locked to the screen, the graphic images of the dead being carried out of homes and loaded into ambulances hitting both of them hard, Steve more than he could say.
He thought about the death that he had created in the lab, the grains of smallpox inside the small spheres that he’d carefully walked through construction of with Jay. Even though he had purposely not made them he couldn’t help but feel the full weight of responsibility squarely on his shoulders.
“This is incredible Steve, have they said anything about America?”
“Not yet, seems like it’s only in Seoul right now.” He tried to maintain his composure as he thought about leaving her and what she’d think when she knew the truth. Claire was starting to tear up and the guilt consumed the chemist. He walked over and sat next to her on the couch, taking her hand in his. She was squeezing it hard, eyes glued to the television. There wasn’t much to say at this point and all of the channels were running through the same information every ten minutes or so, followed by an interview with some “expert” who gave their opinion of what was happening and what Americans should be concerned about. All of the networks were putting out an open call on behalf of the government to anyone who had come back from or through Korea in the past week, which was tens of thousands of people. They all needed to be placed under observation and the Center for Disease Control was working with the Red Cross to set up centers around the country for those who had been in or through the city of Seoul. A while later, both numb, the anchorwoman announced that the cause had been discovered and it appeared to be tied to a batch of Coke that was bottled locally in Seoul and distributed only to grocery stores around the city, it didn’t appear that any of the affected bottles made it to the airport or any major hotels, which caused a huge amount of relief to the current expert on Fox News. “We’ve probably dodged the proverbial bullet this time Jane but this new strain is in the wild and the United States government had better be working on a vaccination before the country collapses from panic.” The anchorwoman stared into the camera with that patented vacant look and repeated the final words the expert had said as they broke to commercial.
Claire was visibly shaken by all of this and Steve knew it was time to talk to her about it. He shut off the television and looked into her eyes. “Please don’t worry Claire, we need to talk though.”
She cocked her head, couldn’t remember the last time he’d said that to her. It was always her who started the conversation. She was going to ask him what he wanted to talk about but he continued unprompted.
“I’ve been working on a top secret government project that is developing a vaccine for this new strain of smallpox using the bioresorbable spheres. Sorry I couldn’t tell you before, but we didn’t think there would be a breakout of the virus before we finished our preparation. We’ve done some testing and we’re working with the CDC to validate the vaccine is safe for humans but I took it a few weeks ago and haven’t had any major side effects. Remember when I was sick? That was due to the vaccine, it gives some of the symptoms of smallpox.”
“I thought something was going on but couldn’t figure it out. This is the first time you haven’t been telling me about what you’re working on. It makes sense now, at one point I thought it was another woman.”
He put his arms around her. “Nothing like that, I just couldn’t talk about it. Nobody at Foundation knows what I’ve been working on, just that it was a matter of national security. Now that there’s been an outbreak, we’ll probably have to proceed with giving the vaccine without full testing, it’s better than taking the chance of an outbreak here in the U.S.”
“How did the government find out about this?”
“I’m not even sure, only been told the minimum needed to do the job. Haven’t ever met anyone from the CDC, been working through the CIA, which is where the lead came from that there was a new strain of smallpox out there and some noise that there might be an attack in Asia somewhere. I guess we know where now.”
She hugged him and held him very close, nearly smothering him with her enormous breasts. “I am so proud of you, your invention is going to save millions of lives. You’re a hero Steven.”
He froze, thinking that she’s not going to feel like this for long. “I don’t know about that Claire but hopefully everything will go fine when we start vaccinating. I’m going to have to go to D.C. tomorrow based on what’s happening in Korea but I want to vaccinate you before I leave. I don’t know what I’d do if you got infected.”
“Can you give me the vaccine in the morning? I don’t want to get sick before you leave for D.C. Need to give my hero some loving tonight.” She pushed his head gently to her chest and purred. Steve hoped he could perform with the knowledge of what he’d done and the fact that he was leaving in his head. They turned the television back on and watched for updates, but there wasn’t anything of significance in terms of new information.
They ordered Chinese food delivery for dinner and Claire was upbeat despite the dire circumstances of the smallpox outbreak, locked in the notion that her introvert of a husband was a hero. Steve sat there thinking this was the last supper, the last time they’d ever eat together, after all of these years he was going to be a bachelor again. A felon, alone in the world, trying to hide and maybe create a new life.
After dinner they talked on the front porch, watching the young families stroll by, kids in tow on cycles, tricycles and on foot. Many waved and a few said hello, going on with their lives in spite of the possibility of epidemic. Steve was glad they didn’t have kids, would have compounded everything. Maybe he’d write Claire a letter from D.C., tell her everything so that she’d understand a little more. They had some ice cream sundaes and looked for something other than the news to watch. They watched a couple of programs, flipping through the news channels during commercials. The news was a bit encouraging, the Korean government has isolated the source of the virus to a local Coke plant and all of the infected bottles appeared to have been sold in the city of Seoul, so the breakout was most likely localized to the city itself. Most of the contaminated lots had been returned and the anchorman thanked the world for computers.
Claire and Steve made love that night and she fell asleep, leaving him staring at the ceiling in the dark. The hours passed but sleep would not come. He thought about getting up but wanted to spend as much time as possible with Claire. Steve dozed off at some point and woke in the pre dawn light to prepare for his trip. He packed quickly, taking a couple of outfits for different climate types and packing some of the small personal items he didn’t want to leave behind, including several photos of Claire.
She woke up when he was loading his bags into the car. “Coffee is ready, let’s have breakfast.” They ate together but didn’t say much and before long it was time for Steve to leave. He had the syringe on the living room table. Claire picked it up and looked at it in the light. “So these dots are little spheres?”
“Yes, the vaccine requires multiple boosters to be effective so each one is wrapped inside those little spheres and will release over the next few days. It saves the complication of tracking down people to give them a series of shots.” He checked for bubbles and then gave her the shot in her shoulder, Claire barely flinching.
“Even though it seems safe in the U.S. now, I’m glad that you gave me the vaccine now. My hero.” She kissed him and held him tight. “I’m going to miss you, hurry back from D.C. so we can take another trip. I’ve got something in mind that I’ll book for later this summer, in case it takes you longer than you think.”
Steve felt like the world’s biggest heel at that moment, looking down into his wife’s blue eyes, which were welled up with tears. She was so proud of him and he was so ashamed at that moment. He tried like hell to keep some sense of composure, hugging her close so she wouldn’t see him screwing his facial muscles around to stop the tears from coming. Had to leave now. “I’ve got to go Claire, Robert’s going to have a fit if I’m late.”
They hugged again and he promised to call later, either on the road to D.C. or when he got there. She was waving as he pulled out of the driveway and he wished he could have a picture of that moment. Steve was as sad as he’s ever been on that drive, knowing he’ll probably never see her again and even if he could she’ll not want anything to do with him. He couldn’t shake it but needed to compose himself as he pulled into the project site, surprised to see a few cars already in the lot.
