The Virus (11 page)

The shower was unlike any normal
shower Geoffrey had ever seen. He expected as much: This whole
fiasco was like a crazy dream and a normal shower would’ve been too
close to reality to be properly at home in this dream. The room the
doctor led him into was, for all appearances, just like the others,
except that the light was of a much different and lesser quality
than the rest of the facility. The lights were regular lights and
it was amazing how dull and dirty they looked now that Geoffrey’s
eyes had grown accustomed to the Cleaning Lights. The difference
was so profound that it was almost like stepping out of the noon
day sun into relative darkness. When Geoffrey’s eyes adjusted to
the gloom, he saw the other obvious difference in the room. The
walls and the ceiling, even the floor were all permeated with
small, shallow grooves. Geoffrey looked at them closely. He didn’t
think they were cameras, but he couldn’t tell what they
were.

“All right, Son,” said the doctor,
“You will only be in here for about fifteen minutes. Shortly after
I leave, you will hear instructions on what you’re supposed to do.
I will meet you afterward. I have another patient to attend to.”
Geoffrey had the distinct feeling the doctor wasn’t talking about
Mr. Reynolds. Before he could ask any further questions, the doctor
had closed the door behind him and was gone.

“Right.” Geoffrey whispered to
himself. “And so, the fun continues.”

“Geoffrey Summons?” a voice that
sounded amazingly close, asked, just then. Geoffrey nearly leapt
out of his skin.

“Yes?” he answered tentatively, once
he could steady his breathing.

“Disrobe, please.” the
voice said blandly. Geoffrey couldn’t tell if it was a woman’s
voice, a man’s, or computer generated for that matter. Either way,
it sounded devoid of any particular interest. Geoffrey mused to
himself that this was probably for his benefit. With the unexpected
voice reminding him that he was being watched, he was glad that the
person using it wasn’t giving the impression that he, she, or it
was enjoying this little moment of voyeurism (especially since he
couldn’t tell with any certainty whether or not it was a
woman’s
voice). Even as
he disrobed, he was still uncomfortable. This seemed to be just
another link in the chain of unusual things that he had been
involved in lately. Geoffrey took off his shoes, then his shirt,
with the unassailable hesitation of man undressing in front of an
audience of strangers for the very first time.

Then, he thought about the
aliens the doctor had mentioned studying. How must they feel, being
monitored and probed, as Geoffrey was sure they were? Did they feel
as humiliated as he did now? Were they able to
feel
humiliated at all? What
did
they feel, being in
the hands of absurdly foreign entities as human beings
(certainly
humans
were the aliens to them) and that, being endlessly tested
upon and perhaps even vivisected, for the sake of furthering
knowledge?

“Would you
completely
disrobe,
please?” the voice said, startling Geoffrey a second time. He had
been so lost in his own train of thought that he stopped
undressing. He looked down. His fingers hovered, frozen, over the
buttons of his pants. He finished unbuttoning his pants, slowly
lowered them to the floor, then stepped out of them. It was truly
unnerving to undress before an audience for the first time, even if
that audience was well hidden behind camera lenses
somewhere.

He wedged his thumbs into the
waistband of his briefs as he had done countless times before and
again, he hesitated. He was painfully aware that this was his final
article of clothing.

“I assure you, Mr. Summons, that the
staff here has no interest in making a peepshow of you. This is
nothing more than a necessary procedure and the sooner we begin,
the sooner we can finish.” Geoffrey recognized the wisdom of the
androgynous voice. It was right, the sooner he got on with this,
the sooner it would be over with. The fact that it was confirmed
that multiple people were watching didn’t help much, but he
couldn’t just stand here forever.

He dropped his briefs and stepped out
of them. Slowly. The worst part was over. From behind him, Geoffrey
heard a faint whirring of a machine gearing up somewhere behind the
walls. He turned toward the sound and saw a small drawer moving
away from the wall. The box section extended in increments until it
came out about a foot and a half.

“Place your clothing in the receptacle
please.” The voice beckoned. Geoffrey dutifully obeyed. Completely
naked, he gathered his things up and placed them in the drawer.
“Step back please.” Geoffrey did so.

Once he was about twelve
feet from the white box, the entire thing slid back into the wall.
It was amazing. The movement of the compartment was smoother than
anything Geoffrey had ever seen, and once it was flush to the wall,
it was virtually impossible to tell that it had ever been there. As
Geoffrey gazed on at the spot where the phantom box had been, two
things suggested that it had not been a figment of his imagination:
The absence of his clothes (which was
certainly
not just in his head), and
the strange transformation that began to take place right before
his eyes. The full outer face of the box, now level with the wall,
became clear.

The entire side of the compartment
facing Geoffrey gradually became transparent, like a white mist
dissipating into the open air. Soon, Geoffrey saw his jumbled
clothes again in the walled cubicle. Once the area was completely
clear—so much so in fact, that it looked like Geoffrey could reach
right in and pull his clothes back out if he wanted to—he saw a
faint movement at the base of the drawer. His clothes began to move
as if they were being agitated from below. A bright white-purple
flame, also unlike anything Geoffrey had ever seen before, gathered
steadily at the base of the box and then, in a startling instance,
rose up and instantaneously reduced his clothes to nothingness. In
a flash, the odd flame engulfed the pile of clothes and left
nothing, not even ashes, in its wake. Then the wall quickly turned
to opaque, and to completely white, just it had been
before.

To Geoffrey’s stunned eyes
it all happened so fast.
Had it even ever
been there in the first place?
Geoffrey
asked himself. Was his mind finally cracking? As he contemplated
this possibility, there arose a faint hiss that seemed to come from
everywhere in the room and at the same time, mists of water shot
out toward Geoffrey from every angle. The mists were so fine and
warm that Geoffrey didn’t immediately register he was even getting
wet. He was rubbing contemplative circles in his chin when he
noticed that his hands felt moist. He pulled his hand away from his
face and found small beads of water building steadily on his skin
like he was sweating. He felt his face and looked at the rest of
his naked body. He found that indeed his entire body was ‘sweating’
as well.

“Okay, maybe I
am
cracking up.” He
whispered absently.

“No, Mr. Summons, you are perfectly
sane.” The voice from before asserted. The involuntary jump that
Geoffrey gave, jolted more than a few beads of ‘sweat’ from his
body. This was the third time whoever was on the other end of this
intercom system had startled him nearly senseless.

“Would you stop doing that, please!”
he yelled in the heat of his suddenly-risen blood
pressure.

“Terribly sorry,” answered the voice
“…Is that better?” asked the voice, much slower, and at a
considerably lowered volume.

“Yeah, I guess so,” returned Geoffrey,
after breathing deep in an effort to re-steady his heart
rate.

“Good. We want nothing more but for
this transition to be as comfortable as possible.” Geoffrey thought
that if someone were, in fact, trying to make this transition
comfortable, they were doing a terrible job, but he kept it to
himself. “The moisture you feel,” the voice continued, “is purified
water. It’s quite harmless, I assure you. It will open the pores of
your skin and prepare it for the sterilization shower.”

What kind of shower am I
taking, that I need water to prepare me for it?
Geoffrey wanted to ask, but again, kept it to
himself.

“If you will look behind you and to
your far left, you will see a pair of pumice stones. In about five
minutes, the water will stop and the room will fill with a chemical
mist that may feel a little…disconcerting at first. Please don’t
panic. It is a completely safe agent and will not harm you. Once
this agent fills the room, you are to use one of the pumice stones
to lightly scrub your head, scalp included, and torso. Then you are
to use the second stone to scrub your bottom half. I will tell you
when to stop and give you further instructions afterward. Before
you begin, remember to scrub gently. It is imperative that you do
not scrub too harshly. Do you understand what you are to do, Mr.
Summons?” the voice concluded.

“I do.” Geoffrey answered. He turned
to where the voice indicated and found the two pumice stones. They
seemed to be floating in mid-air at the opposite side of the room.
He stepped toward them, gliding unclothed through the airborne mist
of purified water, and saw that they weren’t floating, as they
appeared, but were sitting on a thin, white tray that was jutting
away from the wall. With all this white everywhere, Geoffrey felt
like he was experiencing snow blindness. He grabbed one of the
stones and waited for the mist to subside. It did after a few
minutes, and just as the voice had stipulated a colorless and
tasteless mist soon rose in its place. This mist was actually
vaguely white, but in a white room, he didn’t notice it. The mist
was certainly not painless, however. In fact, a few moments had
passed since the water dissipation and Geoffrey was just about to
ask the faceless voice if something was wrong, when his skin began
to tingle as if a thousand small spiders were crawling all over
it.

An alarming warmth pervaded
him as well. He rightly assumed that this was the sterilization
agent that had been spoken of, except that it was a little more
than simply
disconcerting.
It was downright scary. The tingling grew more
profound, but the scary part was the heat. If it felt like a
thousand spiders were trekking his skin, then the increasing heat
was like each spider had a microscopic incinerator attached to each
of their legs. It was not like heat from the sun on a hot day or
mechanical heater that had been turned up too high. It felt more
like completely separate heaters had been implanted in every
exposed inch of his flesh, and were being gradually turned higher
with each passing moment.

He grabbed a stone and went
to work. The sooner he got this over with the better. In his haste,
however, he did exactly what the voice had ardently advised against
and scrubbed too hard, and it only took a single swipe to remind
him, because with that single swipe, which happened to be on his
upper left arm, the flesh involved screamed—no,
roared
—its disapproval. It took
every ounce of his strength not to buckle to his knees in agony.
The harrowing sensation had now found raw flesh, and it was
exciting times, to say the least.

“Please, Mr. Summons, gently.” The
voice admonished, but Geoffrey needed no reminder now. After this
little mishap, he rubbed the stones across his body with much
greater care. In the process, he saw something, dirt perhaps, rise
from is skin like steam as he lightly rubbed it, and dissipate into
the invisible mist. Once he was finished, a large section of the
wall slid into itself, and provided an entranceway to an adjoining
room. The voice instructed him to enter, and in the room, he found
a fresh pair of clothes—everything white, of course.

“Please, just wait where you are, Mr.
Summons.” said the voice after he had dressed “Dr. Crangler will be
with you shortly.”

“Crangler…so that’s the doctor’s name.
With a name like that, guess I wouldn’t tell anyone either.”
Geoffrey whispered to himself. After about twenty minutes had
passed, Geoffrey began to think that he had been forgotten.
“Hello...Hello?” he asked into the air. The voice didn’t answer.
“Hello…Hello?” he repeated. Again, no answer. After another twenty
minutes passed, Geoffrey decided that he had, indeed, been
forgotten. The room he was in was the same as the others except
that there were no windows.

“Well, at least there’s a door.” He
mused aloud. He walked to it and turned the white knob, certain
that it wouldn’t open. Much to his surprise, it opened into a white
hallway—big surprise. Geoffrey traveled the hallway, passing the
windows of one or two empty rooms, until he came to an inhabited
room. In this room, about ten people were sitting in a semicircle,
watching a large monitor recessed into the wall.

On the large monitor, in
bright vibrant colors, a disturbing scene was taking place. There
was a woman on an operating table, and by the looks of things, she
was suffering greatly, because she was screaming and thrashing
violently. That wasn’t the most troubling thing on the screen: The
woman’s belly was swollen to epic proportions. Though Geoffrey
father was a doctor, he didn’t need that to know that something was
horribly wrong with this woman. The woman’s abdomen was stretched
to the size of an exercise ball, and if that wasn’t enough, it
looked like the ball was
moving
. The skin covering the
irregularly shaped thing, whatever it was, was shiny and large,
superficial tears, like hideous stretch marks clearly showed the
broken dermis underneath. Blood droplets surfaced into the gashes
like a gorged sponge forced to rid itself of too much fluid. The
blood droplets flew this way and that with the sheer violence of
the woman’s agitation.