Myth Gods Tech - Omnibus Edition: Science Fiction Meets Greek Mythology In The God Complex Universe (36 page)

She
showed me a piece of paper with diagrams. “This is the algorithm,
pretty much all you need to know is on this piece of
paper.”

I sat
down on the bed and read it thoroughly.

Zoe
pulled up my sleeve and held a needle on the other hand.

“
Whoa!”

She
rubbed a cotton ball moist with alcohol on my arm and prepped the
injection. “What? We are going into a positive rabies infected
population. You are required to get a shot.”

“
Yeah, I know, but…”

“
Oh come on! Don’t tell me you are one of those stupid
anti-vaxxers!” She stood up and paced around the room menacingly
with the needle in hand. “You know, people underestimate rabies
because it’s curable. But it’s still deadly. You need one of these
babies within 48 hours or you are dead.” Then she was rambling.
“Sure, you can get it at any hospital pretty much everywhere, but
you still have a better chance if you have been vaccinated in the
last 5 years.”

I
coughed and tilt my head down. “Yeah, it’s not that. I’m afraid of
needles.”

She
laughed.

“
Men.” She came to my side again, rubbed the skin with alcohol
and plunged the needle. I winced and stood still, looking out the
window at a suddenly interesting light pole.

“
Ouch!”

“
Shuddup.”

Chapter
13

We were
dressed in casual black. Zoe pretty much was always dressed like
that, and I guess I subconsciously didn’t want to break the
pattern.

We drove
up to the house and knocked on the door.

A woman
opened, tired and weary. It was Tina Foinos, the girl’s
mother.

“
Hello.”

“
Hello madam, we are CDI, from the Hellenic Centre for Disease
Control and Prevention,” Zoe said and presented her card. I held up
mine a bit too proudly, and she slapped my hand down.

Miss
Foinos tucked her nightie in a defensive gesture and crossed her
arms. “This is not a good time. Leave.”

She shut
the door to our face.

Chapter
14

Neighbour’s report #1

I saw,
well, yes I saw.

Well,
the gel was quiet. Well, good gel. Always playin’ with her doggie
in the yard. Good doggie. Not one of them sceery ones. A good
doggie. Oh gawd, maybe it’as the doggie?

No?

Ow Kay
then. Well, if it ain’t the doggie, then it must ha’e been the
rabbits.

I seen a
rabbit.

No? They
don’t?

Ow Kay
then. Well, if it ain’t the rabbit, mebbe it’as Spiro’s ol’
dankey.

Wha?
Can’t hear you. Wha?

Did it bite any’ne?

Dunno.
Guess it didn’t.

Ow Kay
then. Well, if it ain’t the dankey, Spiro’ll be glad. Be
glad.

Good ol’
dankey.

Chapter
15

“
Now
what?”

“
Now we talk to the doctor, the girl’s teachers. We’ll try the
mother tomorrow.”

Doctor
Gounaris required an appointment. So we asked for one, and his
assistant put us on the next day. We went to the school.

It was
filled with screaming monsters. People call them “kids”, but no,
when lots of them are placed in the same yard its like all bets are
off and whoever screams the loudest wins.

You’d
think giving them smartphones would quieten the thing down a bit,
but all it did was to provide another reason for fussing between
them and one more source of ear-shattering noise.

We found
the principal’s office. I dodged a melted chocolate. At least I
hope it was chocolate.

“
What a nice young couple. Are you coming to sign up your
child to school?” the man said.

Zoe
froze. She was twenty-five, and never imagined anyone mistaking her
for a mother. She looked at me and I held down a laugh. Back in
Athens, no one expected you to be married with child before thirty.
Here in the country, you were obliged to have at least two by
then.

“
Ohi,” I said and presented my CDI card with contained
enthusiasm. The principal took it and read it with some effort,
while holding his glasses in front of him. “I’m Polybios Nicomidis,
this is my partner Zoe Vasilidou. We are here to investigate the
case of Emma Foinos.”

The
principal exhaled and gave me my card back. “Yes, I see.” He was
the kind of man who instilled fear in 10-year olds. Not a
remarkable feat, in retrospect. “It’s for the best if we all
cooperate. What do you need?”

Zoe
said, “First of all, a word with Ms. Foinos would be nice. I
understand she is devastated but we need to talk to her. This is a
small town, I’m sure you know her personally?”

“
Yes, I do. I’ll see what I can do about it. Let me call the
poor girl’s teacher too, she’s in recess for now.” He picked up the
phone and called internally. “What else?”

“
It would be nice if you could spare us an hour to educate the
students. Your whole area has had rabies cases before, and quite a
lot of them spend time in farms.”

“
Rabies?” The principal thought about it for a while. “We’ll
see. Write down your number and we’ll call you,” he said, with the
tone of someone not really meaning to call.

“
We’ll be here for two more days, it’s important that you fit
it into your busy schedule,” Zoe said with venom in her words, and
I had to pull her arm and thank the principal for his
time.

Out in
the corridor the screams had ceased. All the kids were wrangled in
classrooms. A woman was walking towards us.

“
That fucker!” Zoe made stabbing motions towards the
door.

“
Chill out, he is helping us.”

“
Helping us my ass. He thinks a school hour is more important
than rabies prevention education in a
rural-fucking-rabies-hotspot.” She lit up a cigarette.

The
teacher reached up to us, and said firmly, “You can’t smoke in
here!”

Zoe
stomped on the cigarette and forced a big smile at her. “Let’s go
somewhere we can then.”

Chapter
16

Schoolteacher’s Report

Agni A.

I hate
the little brats. This is confidential, right? All you care about
is the facts, right?

Well I
hate them. It’s their parent’s fault really. Buying them
smartphones at age seven and getting them unlimited data plans
cause, “The kids need their social media to develop social
skills.”

Bullshit
I say.

In order
to develop social skills you actually have to talk to people. Their
parents just drop them at school and think, “Oh, there’s a bunch of
kids there, have fun, here’s lunch money” and afterwards, when they
actually take some time off to check up on them, six months have
gone by and they find out their kid beats up its little cousins on
the family gathering.

So no,
it wasn’t that weird that little Emma kept coming to me with cuts
and bloody sleeves all the time.

I
thought it was just some bullying, I scolded the usual suspects and
went on to making people out of the little shits.

I have
thirty kids in the class. Thirty snotty, ruthless, foul-mouthed,
Youtube uploading kolopaida.

My ass
has been uploaded more times than I myself have looked at it on the
mirror.

I come
home with wrecked nerves every day and ruined two perfectly good
relationships. It’s taken me as far away from the idea of having
kids myself as possible.

Yes,
sorry, lets talk about that.

I guess
it began from Mr. Athanasiou, the science teacher. He taught the
kids a few stuff about our blood.

You
know, blood cells, veins, oxygenation and things like that. I bet
most of them never gave a crap. Emma asked me some questions about
it, I pointed her to a book in the library appropriate to her age.
Naturally, she asked me how to get it online while waving her phone
around and I told her that maybe no one bothered to scan it. The
concept was as foreign to her as VHS cassettes. The book was an old
cartoon educational series “Once upon a time… Life,” that explained
various processes to the kids. In Greece it was translated as “My
Body.” To be honest, everything that I remember about biology has
stuck with me through that cartoon. The accompanying videotapes
were in the library as well, but I was sure that we couldn’t find
anything to play them on.

When I
explained her about the tapes, she asked me, “But Mrs Agni, why
couldn’t they put the cartoon files next to the books?”

I
admitted my poor grasp of computers and deftly changed the topic by
coughing out dust from the bookshelves.

Emma was
delighted to check out a book from the library. All I thought at
the time was, one down, twenty-nine to go. It’s a neverending
job.

A few
weeks later (at a 25th March parade) her parents told me about how
delighted they were that little Emma was showing an interest in
biology. They thanked me for educating their kid and mentioned that
they bought her a microscope as a present.

Silly
parents. Everyone thinks their kid is sooo clever and advanced. I
mean, their daughter was barely 9 years old and they were bragging
as she had made it to medical school!

Anyway,
that was it for those days. I didn’t notice anything strange until
days later, when Emma came to me with a rather nasty cut in her
arm. I disinfected and bandaged it as usual. No, it wasn’t weird.
Kids get cuts and bruises all the time!

When I
asked her how she got it though, she said, “I needed to see the
oxygen bubbles on the red blood cells.”

Chapter
17

Back at the
hotel, I showered, got dressed and leaned down on my side of the
bed. Zoe had already picked her side, the right one. She was
leaning on both pillows and checking out her phone.

“
Oh, here,” she said and gave me my pillow back. She got
comfortable face-down, giving me an ample view of her illuminated
breasts.

This was
gonna be a tough arrangement.

I fished
out my book and started reading to relax.

“
Whatcha reading?” she asked, not taking her eyes of the phone
to actually glance at the cover.

“
History,” I said casually, knowing that it never got me any
girls and never would.

“
Oh.. Interesting. What part of history?”

“
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War. It’s about the
Plague of Athens.”

“
Light reading then. Why. The hell. Are you reading
that?”

“
I’m a historian!”

“
Figures,” she snorted and put the phone down. She turned the
right way around and leaned over to peek at the book.

“
It seemed the best of both worlds, what with me training to
become a CDI. Thucydides gives an objective description of the
epidemic.”

Zoe lit
up a smoke. “Huh. No wonder you were unemployed. Don’t you know
historians have the worst time finding a job?”

“
I didn’t care. I love history.”

“
You do care now!”

I
laughed. “Nai. Now its hard. Still no regrets, to be
honest.”

“
So, what did CDI Thucydides have to say about the
plague?”

“
Well, he was sceptical about the superstitions of the cause
of the plague from a prophecy, that said Gods favoured Sparta. He
believed in the prevailing medical theory of his day, which was the
Hippocratic theory, and gathered evidence through direct
observation.”

“
Smart man!”

“
He noted, that birds and animals that ate plague-infested
carcasses died as a result, so he concluded that the disease had a
natural rather than supernatural cause.”

“
Do you sweet-talk like this all the girls who climb on your
bed?”

“
Just the clever ones,” I said.

Zoe
squinted a bit and pointed with her cigarette. “Good
answer.”

I
calculated that by statistical equilibrium the next thing coming
out of my mouth would be a bad choice, so I just smiled and said
nothing.

“
Lets sleep. We have lots to do tomorrow, we’ll start
early.”