Virus-72 Hours to Live (15 page)

"Nial, what options do we have?

"Well sir, we don't have many. I still have
a couple of planes available; aside from shooting it down we can't
redirect it because the entire en route system is having
problems."

The Vice President moved himself to a
position where the Admiral could see him and said, "Admiral, this
is the Vice President."

"Yes, sir."

"What was its destination and does the
current flight path take it over any populated areas?"

"Sir, it was a non-stop from London to New
York. Right now, it's over the eastern part of Maine and the
current flight path will take it along the coast but not over any
population centers."

"Let's face it; shooting down an airliner
isn't going to make anyone safer. Let's let it continue and keep me
up on its status. Let me know if it changes course or makes any
maneuver that indicates someone is flying it."

"Yes, Mr. President."

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

"Mr. President I have the CDC online."

"Thanks, Judy, Paul please give me some good
news."

"I'm sorry sir, but I'm afraid I don't have
any. Our quarantine centers are having a ton of problems holding
together. They have been totally overrun and even though we're
still trying to set up more centers, we aren't keeping up. We don't
have any indication how to control this virus. It seems to have a
two-pronged attack. It causes the human body to fight itself, but
also there is a viral discharge, which is discharged through
sneezing or even breathing. The two issues don't seem to be related
but somehow they are. The virus is spread by contact, sneezing or
any exhalation. The scariest news we've found is 10% of the cases
seem to just start on their own. Those start without any external
factors. People in that group have had no exposure and are
developing symptoms and dying. Sir, I can't begin to explain
it."

"Is there any chance for a vaccine?"

"No sir..., I'm afraid not."

"I'm also sorry to say our quarantine
centers aren't getting the needed supplies fast enough and the case
load is doubling every couple of hours. In many areas, we have run
out of supplies and there is none available. I'm afraid we have
gone beyond the point of getting it under control. We can only hope
it burns itself out in some manner and..., some of us survive."

"Thanks, Paul..., please continue what you
can and pass our prayers to everyone there working on this. We know
they are doing everything possible."

"Yes, sir."

After Paul had terminated the transmission,
everyone remained quiet. They sat in silence for a few moments. The
silence was uncomfortable, yet they felt some solace. After a few
minutes and without any fanfare they left the room, leaving the
president by himself. He didn't like being alone in the Oval Office
it reminded him of his futility and lack of control. He walked to
his study and felt very alone. So far, millions, if not billions,
of people had died worldwide. His family was gone and even though
he was president of the United States, he may end up with no one to
lead. The government was collapsing around him and he had never
felt so alone in his entire life.

What a cruel twist of fate for him to live
and everyone around him to die. Losing Abby, and Beth and Dave,
twisted the inside of him in such a way that pain was always eating
at him. It was hard to concentrate and at times he felt that
anything he could do was useless and the human race was doomed.

Such a huge world, so many people, so many
governments, and many of which no longer exist. Now there was
almost nothing. Nothing left, no military to order, no legion of
workers to make things happen and solve problems; nothing.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

"Mr. President, Admiral Hagerly is
calling."

"Thanks, Judy."

"Yes Admiral, what is it now?"

"Sir, I just wanted to update you on that
airliner which penetrated our airspace this morning. It never
descended, but ran out of fuel east of Savana Georgia. It never
made any contact and we know nothing about how many were onboard.
Radar has been a little intermittent, but it descended off the
coast and didn't threaten any population centers. I thought you
should know."

"Thanks, Nial. I'm sorry I snapped at you.
It's been hard on all of us."

"Yes, sir. Mr. President?"

"Mr. President, I'm sorry to hear about your
family. I wish something could have been done. Abby and your
children didn't deserve that."

"I know Nial; no one deserved what has
happened to them."

"Sir, is there anything I can do?"

"No, Nial. There isn't."

"Sir, I'm in the area. I'm coming by and
we're going to have a pizza together. I hope there is a frozen one
in your kitchen. I don't think you're eating and you need to talk
to someone. By the way, Mr. President, this isn't a request. I'll
be there in 10 minutes."

"Thanks, Nial, I'll leave the door
unlocked."

Date – 2051.51815 (6:59 AM)

It was Sunday and SIMPOC knew that it wasn't
a typical workday for Termen, but everything was changing. The data
connections painted a dismal picture and SIMPOC was starting to
feel isolated. Termen had told him not to interact with any of the
sources and it became almost intolerable just listening and
monitoring.

“Termen…are you there?” SIMPOC asked hoping
for a response.

Being lonely made SIMPOC uncomfortable. Most
of his existence was interacting with a human and now that he
didn't have that connection, loneliness was having an effect. He
enjoyed working with humans and just listening to them didn't feel
complete.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Eddy finally got all of the president's
staff on their electronic connections and Arnold Patterson noticed
how quiet and uncomfortable they looked. When the connections were
complete, Eddy took the lead and said, "Mr. President, your entire
staff wants to pass our sincere condolences to you for the loss of
your wife and children. We've all worked with her and we loved your
children. This has been a terrible time for you and we are here to
support you."

"Thank-you, I know you've all lost loved
ones. I wish I had some answers, but I'm afraid all we can do is to
continue doing what we are doing."

Once the unease was broken, Eddy continued,
"Mr. President, nothing good has happened since your briefing late
last night. There are riots breaking out in most of the
metropolitan areas. Unfortunately, the local police departments are
far from fully staffed and many of them have shut down operations.
The rioters have overrun numerous stations and they've seized
weapons and supplies. The few stations that took any precautions
before shutting down went so far as to dump their weapons into
local rivers or lakes. Regardless the riots are spreading."

"Mr. President, as you are aware most of the
states have called up their National Guards. Those states, which we
have been able to talk with, were told about the nationalization of
the military and national guards. Unfortunately, they are dealing
with the same problems as the police departments. Some of them are
still functioning but many of the units have lost contact with
their command structures and we fear they have either succumbed or
have been isolated and are no longer effective. We've had a couple
of incidents where guard units have taken the local law into their
own hands and set up strongholds.

"Sir, we have been unable to contact any of
the world's financial markets. After they had closed Friday, none
of them made a commitment to open tomorrow. We don't know their
status because we can't talk with any of the points of contact. We
can assume they won't open. It appears their liquidity has dried up
and there are no buyers remaining."

"Just about all of our government services
have ceased operating. I don't think any of them have the staffing
to open tomorrow. Those services that run 24 hours per day have
stopped operating in many of the cities. There aren't many people,
who know much, we can contact. We're getting very little
information regarding their status."

"Much of the nation's power structure is
still operating. There have been sporadic outages in many of the
cities, but the automatic power load balancing systems have done
their job and shifted the power from other sources. Over time that
will deteriorate as the power sources fall off line. The White
House and Camp David have independent power systems which have
enough fuel to run for a month."

"The banking infrastructure appears to be
operating; many of the systems are on automatic and are attempting
to update their transactions, even though almost all companies and
retail outlets are closed. Unless there is a concerted effort to
turn off the automated systems, they will continue operating for
the near term. Most of them have power back-ups which either have
turned on or will turn-on as the power grid fluctuates."

"Admiral Hagerly, please move any military
units which are operational into the urban areas and aid any
civilian forces they encounter. Please, pay attention to the
weapons systems and arms storage areas. If necessary, and to be
prudent, have the units destroy the stockpiles. I don't want a
bunch of heavily armed idiots killing each other."

"Yes, Mr. President."

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Joan and Tom were just waking from a fitful
night's sleep on Oasis. Even though they had confined themselves to
their quarters, work still needed to be done. Most of the station's
status could be routed through the network to Joan's quarters. She
had been up since 5:00 AM looking at the Oasis heat transfer
control system or TCS.

Oasis was mostly made from composites and
advanced coatings; she didn't have the same problems as other
previous stations had, with one side of the station being too hot
while the other was too cold. Like a typical consortium design, if
you build a box to have five items in it, they'll try to put in
eight. The station design was no different. If the station had been
designed for optimum heat dissipation, it would have worked great.
The heat created inside needed to be dumped into space, in a
conservative design that heat could be taken care of. However, the
consortium installed more heat generating systems inside the
station trying to make more money. The manufacturing centers were
huge heat sources and they had to be well separated from the
pharmaceutical process centers. The heat generated inside had to be
moved to the outside and radiated into space. The additional
systems inside the station put a large strain on the TCS system.
Without it, she would have to shut down many of the internal
systems.

As the station rotated, its axis of rotation
remained fixed with respect to the Earth's surface. When the sun
emerged behind the Earth's disc, it would hit the station's top
with its full force. That was the point of maximum energy
differential between the top of the station and the bottom. During
the orbit, the angle with the sun would lessen and again as the sun
was approaching the Earth's disc the sun would be full force on the
bottom of the station. During these two points in the orbit, the
heating differential was the maximum between the top and bottom;
those were the points where the systems had to perform at their
maximum. Each zone on the station had active TCS, which transferred
heat from the internal heat sources and the hot side of the station
to the cooler opposite side.

The systems were relatively simple, but they
did have numerous valves, sensors, and filters. Their efficiency
tended to decay over time and if periodic maintenance wasn't
performed on the filters then the temperature within the zone would
increase. If each of the zones were working correctly, then the
station stayed nice and comfortable and the effect on the internal
systems was minimized. Oasis was broken into 24 zones and each one
of them needed to work efficiently or the effect became cumulative.
If one zone wasn't working well then, it put additional load on the
zone next to it.

A couple of Oasis' zones' weren't working
too well and Joan was considering the option of shutting down some
of the automated manufacturing process centers. That would solve
the problem in the short term but if zones continued deteriorating
then she might have to change the angle of Oasis with respect to
the Earth. That change would provide only one heating period as the
sun passed over the station at mid-point in the orbit.

Changing rotation axis of the station was no
small matter. The station was a huge spinning top and the motion
created tremendous forces, which were constantly being adjusted by
rotation thrusters and axis thrusters. Changing the rotation axis
would take hours, a tremendous amount of fuel and there were risks.
The forces could break any of the guy-wires, which hold it together
and if they weren't fixed the entire station could come apart. She
would resort to changing the rotation axis only as a last
resort.

Shutting down the important process centers
on the station was like a restaurant shutting down its kitchen and
not serving food. It was the reason they were there and she didn't
want to do it without authorization from the Space Consortium. That
obviously posed a dilemma, there wasn't anyone on the ground
talking to them and the consortium might not exist anymore. She
smiled as the answer became clear, if they didn't talk to her, she
would take care of the station first.

When her communicator came to life, it
startled her, "Commander Herl, this is Dr. Chevesky."

"Yes Dr., go ahead."

"Joan, I'm sorry to say this but Bernard
just passed away a few minutes ago."

There was silence between them, not just for
the loss of a crew member but also for the implications, it had for
everyone else.