Backteria and Other Improbable Tales (2 page)

By a distressing turn of events, BU-1, as we called it, began to spread in an alarming fashion, very soon taking on the threat of, first, an epidemic, then a pandemic. Newspaper and magazines were inundated with articles about the dire situation, most of them filled with conjecturing – most of it ridiculous – as to the possible meaning of the disappearance aspect.

One particularly mystifying element to the entire enigma was the remarkable fact that many of the BU-1 victims – approximately thirty-five percent did not disappear at all but suffered a few days of elevated temperature and, on occasion, a minor attack of mental disorientation before eliminating the bacteria from their system.

The remaining sixty-five percent vanished without a trace.

Explanations failed to elucidate, in any way, the uncanny vanishments. (An ungrammatical labeling of the vanishings by the press.)

The answer – such as it was – came to my attention, seven weeks from the outset of
The Goodbye Plague
as it was now called. This in the guise of Colonel Ula Vanderloop. Commandant of
The Royal Dutch Retreat Corps
. Colonel Vanderloop, in addition to his military status was a well-known medium and faith healer, having achieved his spiritual eminence mainly through his well-known psychic communications with Jack the Ripper who denied all culpability with the White Chapel atrocities, claiming that on all those occasions he was attending Christian Science lectures in Dover.

Herewith, the details of my meeting with said Colonel Vanderloop. take it or leave it.

“Doctor Wilson,” he began in a stentorian voice. Actually, he referred to me as “Docta Vilson” but we’ll let that go. Any attempt to literalize his speech would be counter-productive.

He introduced himself as per my words, presenting his varied qualifications, both military and spiritual, in a high resonant manner.

I waited for some cessation in his discourse, then asked him, politely of course, the reason for his visit. I wanted to ask why he was intruding on my busy afternoon but, again, politesse prevailed.

At which, the Colonel imparted to me the reason for his visit. An impartation (if there is such a word; if not, there should be) which gave me a literal shock. To be truthful, it jolted me in my chair.

“I have been in contact with Mr. Israel Kenshaw,” was what he told me.

“You have –” I muttered incompletely. It was all I could say.

“– been in contact with him, yes,” the Colonel completed. “You know about the man?”

My lips stirred without sound. Then I managed, “I do.”

“For how long?” he asked.

“Long?” I said. I mumbled. “I never knew the man at all, only about him from Dr. Barenbaum.”

“What I mean,” continued Vanderloop, “what period of time were you acquainted with this man before he passed?”

“Passed,” I said. Sounding like a numbskull kindergartener. I felt like one.

Obviously, the Colonel’s regard for me was equally low. “Yes,
passes
,” he said. “Passed on.” He waited for some sign of comprehension in my face. Not forthcoming. His porcine features stiffened. “
Died
,” he stated, obviously using a word anathema to him.

My mouth positively fell open. “I didn’t know he had,” I told him. This was casting an entirely new light on the BU-1 mystery. The first evidence of fatality.

Now Vanderloop’s look became one of amusement. “How droll,” he said. “Your Mr. Kenshaw was of an equal mind.”

“Sir?” I asked.

“He insisted that he didn’t know either.”

“Know?” I said.

“
That he’d passed on, man
!” The Colonel cried.

“What did he
think
happened to him?” I asked. I really wondered.

Vanderloop sighed audibly. I could sense that he was not accustomed to this variety of Q and A exchange. He was the sort of man who was used to holding forth, to explaining measuredly, in a word, pontificating.

No point in my noting the bulk of our lengthy conversation. It went in circles, frustrating both of us.

What finally did become established was that we had no idea whatever about the spiritual status of Israel Kenshaw. Was he a surviving disincarnate communicating with the living? Or was he living himself, intent on explaining what had ensued following his unforeseen disappearance?

According to Kenshaw, he had traveled back in time to the year when he was ten years old, a particularly rewarding time of his life. His father was a forest ranger in Sequoia National Park and Kenshaw had been his dedicated “helper.” The home he lived in was forest enclosed. He was an only child. He had never been more content.

Imagine his reaction then when, infected by BU-1, he vanished from his bathroom and found himself returned to that idyllic period of his childhood. Naturally there was the complication of his ten-year-old duplicate and his parents.

Understandable consternation. But these drawbacks seemed of little import to Kenshaw. He seemed overwhelmed with joy, asked to be remembered to Bianca, his wife of nine years and his few friends, extending his wish that they, too, become infected with BU-1 and return to some longed-for time of their lives.

I must add that all this information – coming especially from the lips of Colonel Ulu Vanderloop – took me off balance and made me more than dubious. For instance, if Kenshaw’s back in 1956 how in the name of all that’s holy, could he be contacting Vanderloop – and, of course, me – in 2011? His explanation that time is
flexible
failed to convince me.

Still, that it was Kenshaw was undeniable. As were the undeniable identities of so many other BU-1 victims whose account all bore the same points.
One
– that they
were
infected.
Two
– that they had disappeared – once almost fatally, as she was driving to work.
Thrice
– they had returned in time to happily recalled periods of their lives.
Four
– that they were very much enjoying their return in time.

In some cases, it was not to childhood. One elderly man “chose” (one assumes that choice was involved in all these peculiar transpositions) to return to the year he was Captain of a Navy Minesweeper in World War Two. Another aging beldame returned to the days when she was a chorus girl in a long-running Broadway Musical. And many more. The effect was state and worldwide. Consider the case of Bjorn Lutefisk who chose to return to his Uncle Olaf’s herring factory as the floor manager. Unhappily, the smell reduced Mr. Lutefisk to a gibbering segment of his former self. Consequently, he ended up in an asylum. Uncle Olaf began to drink again since he had to contend with two versions of his nephew.

Strangely enough – or, perhaps understandably – a number of BU-1 victims went nowhere. They suffered their mild temperature elevation for a few days and, on occasion, a limited period of mental disorientation. From this, one is drawn to the conclusion that either the infection was not severe enough, or the victim involved had no particular spot in the past they yearned for.

None of which convinced me especially. Notably, the idea of time being flexible. Perhaps so but I was from Missouri on that point. Still, the evidence was there, irrefutable in every detail.

The ongoing and increasing – enigma was not clarified when some media wag in a
National Enquirer
type article defined it as the PUZZLE OF BACKTERIA. Ignoring the facts of the “puzzle,” he claimed that all its victims went back to a time to a more genial environment. That this was not statistically accurate was shunted aside. So
Bacteria Unknown-1
became, permanently labeled as BACKTERIA.

Not being a professional historian, I will make no attempt to enlarge on the subject. Suffice to say that the number of Backteria victims increased in the hundreds then, in a matter of months, to the thousands and, ultimately ten thousands. The increase, in other words, was geometric. This over the scope of every continent and island in the known world, including the Arctic zones. Not that every victim, as indicated, vanished. Many of them did however, a few of them “reporting in” – as one journalist expressed it – “via the medium of mediums.”

Why this method was utilized was probably self-evident. There was, simply put, no other means of communication available, as obscure as the method proved to be. There was no other way to let those “left behind” know where their vanishing relatives or friends had gone. Especially perplexed by the process – although perfectly willing to “cash in” on it, was the multiple array of mediums throughout the world. Vanderloop alone became so well-to-do that he made a formal bid to purchase Holland in whole or in parts. I will not enumerate the many other mediums who acquired wealth through their intercessions. Most of them never really knew whether their “communications” were alive or dead. Not that it mattered to them.

The most uniquely peculiar occurrence in this
Panoply of Plaguaries
, as they came to be called, was the incident of Dimitri R. Mupphinsky of Vladivostok. (Middle name Raga) His medium (name unintelligible) reported that Comrade Mupphinsky vanished from his place of business at the end of March. When he communicated with his Uncle Vanya in June, it was to state that he had gone back to his fathers’ farm only to discover that his memory had erred and that life there was intolerable. Which established the conundrum that memory was, perhaps, fragile and not essentially reliable. However, if this “Backfire,” as it came to be known, was in effect in other plague victims, I never found out.

My ill-advised participation in the Backteria Mystery took place approximately thirteen months following inception. By then, the disease (we felt obliged to term it so) was widespread. Every country on the globe suffered its share of the bizarre affliction.
The Svennington Laboratory
was deluged with involvement. That we had no more explanation for the dilemma than any other source didn’t seem to matter. We were the first to be engaged in the “Vanishing Chaos” as it also came to be called and that was enough.

My own enmeshment was typical. My marriage was faltering. I felt scant attachment to Brenda and her regard for me was similar. The two girls were on their own, both married, with girls of their own. Work at the lab was increasingly unrewarding – especially as any attempt to achieve technological BU-1 explanation was invalid.

It was at that frustrating point that I made my decision.

It was simple to acquire a sample of BU-1. I had made up my mind not to take the haphazard course of seeing if I could “catch” the Backteria since it was easily available to me.

The main problem was to ascertain what period of my life I most aspired to. It never even occurred to me that I might be one of those infected victims who would not disappear but only be exposed to a few days of elevated temperature and perhaps, a brief period of mental disorientation. Far from it. I went all the way.

There was not a plentiful collection of choices to be made. My childhood was a possibility. Mother was a good-natured soul. Father drank some, but by and large was a passable sire. But nothing outstanding. My teenage years were unacceptable. An unhappy array of failed female liaisons and repetitive skin disorders.

My best bet, I decided at length, was the year 1950, Webster College, Miriam Gilford and, vividly in recollection, Professor Andrew Vaughn and Egyptology. With what graphic verbiage that man described the search for various Royal tombs such as Tutankhamen’s.

Which is what brought me to this unpleasant situation, you see. How could I have known that my subconscious was so imbued with Andrew Vaughn’s coercive descriptions that they filled my mind to the spilling point. For here I am in Egypt in the year 1922. No way of letting Brenda know my plight. Vanderloop is beyond my reach; that is for certain.

So who am I residing with? Mr. Howard Carter, as cranky and demanding a man as I have ever run across. Each day in
his
tomb – he will permit no credit otherwise – is a lasting travail. I made the blunder of commenting on his feeling for Lord Carnavon’s daughter – which comment displeased him greatly. The fact that I know he never will consummate his lingering desire for her only makes my state of mind more untenable. My only consolation is the fact that I will not be confronted by my younger self. But
damn
it’s hot! I mean
hot
!

And in the early morning when he had just about managed to fall into a troubled sleep—Lucy woke him up.

He was all curled up like a fetus in one corner of their bed. He jumped when she touched him. He jumped as if he’d been stabbed. He stared at her in terror. He wanted to shout at her—Don’t you dare come near me! She was used to his nerves and she didn’t know it was more than nerves now. She said—Breakfast—and she went out of the bedroom.

He lay back on the pillow and looked at the ceiling with hopeless resignation. He looked until his heart slowed down and his hands stopped shaking. He looked out of the window at the gray silence of another morning. Another day. Another collection of wracking hours.

The process began. His brain had hardly dragged itself from darkness. But it started to leave him. He couldn’t control it. It thought everything he didn’t want it to think.

There was the ceiling and there were the walls. Look at that crack in the ceiling. Suppose the roof gave. Suppose the attic with its dusty forgotten contents showered down on him. Suppose he were crushed as he lay there, the stored away relics breaking every bone.

Maybe the house would catch fire. Lucy was in the kitchen. She gets careless. A flame shoots out from the stove. Ignition. Conflagration.

He dressed and he was afraid. He might catch a germ from the clothes. The tie, the shirt, the coat might get caught in some machinery somewhere—who knew where. It might twist his flesh and cut off his breath, make his veins and arteries stand out in stark relief like pulsing tubes of blue spaghetti. His shoes might force a nail to grow back in. There might be poisoning in his system, blood rotting at the edges and flowing deep in congested waves.