The Viral Epiphany (10 page)

           
Boon-mee rolled off the bed and fell to the floor in horror.
 
“Suchin!
 
Help me!”

           
Suchin couldn’t move, she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
 
“This must be a dream.” She heard herself mutter, “A dream.”
 
From somewhere a voice called her. It seemed to come from a thousand miles away, “Suchin!! Help me!!”

           
Meanwhile, as midnight softly approached in Tokyo, and the crescent of a new moon cast a thin light upon the elephant hut at the zoo, Stephen Itagaki stood gaping, unable to speak.
 
The baby mammoth, the embodied spirit of a long extinguished life that he had so brilliantly rekindled, had died only moments ago in a pool of darkening red blood.

Eleven

           
“Tommy” Lim Pai Seng was a genius.
 
Everyone knew it; which was why he was alone at his desk today.
 
Everyone else from the Thai Department of Disease Control was at the international bird flu conference at the Sheraton Bangkok.
 
Tommy had been excused from attending because of the growing concern about the recent, and very deadly, outbreak of dengue hemorrhagic fever in the city. He stopped typing for a moment and looked up from his computer screen. For a few moments he simply gazed at the empty desks around him.
 
I love this,
he thought,
perfect isolation.
 
No people, no noise, no idle chitchat from the wannabes – just me by myself.
 
He took a deep breath, held it, and then exhaled slowly and luxuriously; then he started typing again.

He didn’t have a private office but the small enclosure he had erected around his desk kept prying eyes away from his computer screen.
 
This was the computer that had established his superiority in the office.
 
Now, under his direction, and, indeed, often with his active participation, teams of data gatherers accompanied the medical treatment teams that went into areas where sudden outbreaks of diseases such as malaria, dengue, or typhoid would occur.
 
He and his team collected as much data as possible about every aspect of the diseases and their spread and then, upon returning to Bangkok, they input the information into the analysis programs – the analysis programs that he alone had created.

 
The results had been astonishingly successful in many ways. Tommy’s programs pinpointed hitherto unknown locations where malarial mosquitoes were breeding.
 
They had tracked down the source of tainted bootleg alcohol that killed over twenty people two months ago, and only last week his software had helped to locate the farmer whose chickens were the source of a bird flu outbreak near Chiang Mai.

Tommy looked at the three-dimensional, color-coded plots on the screen and frowned. The results were obvious but also perplexing. Most of the victims lived in areas that didn’t historically have much of a mosquito problem.
 
Even more puzzling was that the victims didn’t all come from a single area, as he had assumed. In fact the first known victim of this new outbreak wasn’t even from Thailand; he had been a young man visiting from Japan.
 
The
Disease Source Location
program, a program he had written and which had never failed, was not converging to a solution.
 
What will I tell them?
he thought
.
 
How are we supposed to eradicate the mosquitoes if we don’t know where they are?

           
He turned away from the computer screen and gazed out the window.
 
It was, as usual, partially covered with condensation due to the air-conditioning.
 
It was already hot outside, perhaps ninety-three degrees or more, but inside he felt comfortable in the slightly clammy, eighty-degree air.
 
An occasional drop of water dripped from the air-conditioning vent and fell noiselessly to the carpet.
 
He glanced up toward the vent and saw the black traces of mildew around the edges. He knew that spores were being blown from the vent into the room. It was part of life, that’s all.
 
It was how this particular life form propagated.

           
Suddenly, a flash of inspiration illuminated his mind, and he sat up straight in his chair.
 
It’s not mosquitoes,
he thought,
it can’t be.
 
He began to quickly type commands into his computer.
We were using the wrong program! This thing doesn’t have a single source vector location. That’s not how it propagates.

He called up a more recent, experimental program he had written and began to access the database of information that had been gleaned by interviewing the families and friends of the victims of the current outbreak.
 
Within fifteen minutes he had his answer.

I knew it!
he said to himself,
of course it’s not mosquitoes! It’s spreading by human-to-human contact. We were all wrong,
this isn’t dengue at all - this is something new, different. This is something horrible!
 

He pushed himself back from his desk and recalled the interviews he had personally conducted when he went out with his team of investigators. He had spent most of the past month interviewing their families and friends, co-workers, pimps, anyone who might have known where the victims may have gone to encounter mosquitoes. No one who had contracted the disease had survived.
 

Suddenly he thought,
I wonder how many of the people we interviewed have contracted the disease?
 
He typed a few commands into the computer and held his breath.
 
A few seconds later the computer displayed the result and he felt his pulse quicken. More than half of those interviewed had already died from the disease.

“Half of them already dead?” he said aloud. “Half?”
 
The blood began to drain from his already pale face.

He sat and stared at the screen, unmoving, thinking, but he only had one thought,
I might have it too!
  

His mind raced as panic began to set in. Then,
No – wait.
 
Half are still alive, right? Maybe I’m still OK.
 
Tommy took a deep breath and calmed slightly. He thought about the situation for a few minutes. This was a serious situation he was in, no doubt about it, but there might be hope.
 
Yes, there’s maybe some hope,
he thought,
but not if I stay here,
he looked around the empty room,
not if I stay here…

           
Within half an hour he had typed up a report to the head of the Department of Disease Control.
 
He also made copies for the director of the CDC International Emerging Infections Program office and the UNAPS liaison office that were located nearby on the other side of
Thevaves
Road.
 
He addressed the envelopes and marked each of them “SENSITIVE –TO BE OPENED BY ADDRESSEE ONLY”.
 

It was almost exactly noon. He thought a moment about what he should do now.
 
Then he knew.
 
They’ll all be at the bird flu conference all day, and they probably won’t be back in their offices until five or even six – if they even come back. I’ll be OK.
 
That’s plenty of time.
He walked quickly over to the offices and left the reports in the in-boxes.
 
Then he ran to his car.

As he drove south on the highway Tommy kept going over the computer results in his mind. The more he thought about it the more frightened he became.
I’ll just have to
wait and see if any symptoms develop,
he told himself.
 
There’s nothing I can do anyway; no point being afraid.
It didn’t matter what he told himself, he knew he was scared, very scared.
  
He had seen the photos of the victims.

Nearly six hours later he saw the
Bukit Kayu Hitam
checkpoint between Thailand and Malaysia a mile ahead.
 
Calm down,
he scolded himself,
calm down. You can’t
show fear – not now.
 
It’ll only be another fifteen minutes, then on through to safety in Malaysia… No, wait… That won’t be enough.
 
I’ll keep going, and, in another day or two, I’ll be in Singapore.
 
Yes, that should help… The more separation, the better now.
 
There’s nothing else that can be done…

He stopped at the guard booth and rolled down his window. The fresh air felt wonderful.
 
He reached for his passport, gave it to the Thai border inspector and waited, trying to look unconcerned, while the guard checked his passport. Although he had worked in Thailand for ten years now, he was still a Malaysian citizen.
 
He felt better about that.
 
There shouldn’t be too much trouble crossing the border with a Malaysian passport.
 

If they only knew,
he said to himself.
 
They were all connected, all of them!
he thought again while he waited for the truck in front of him to move. The Thai border guard gave him back his passport and waved him on.
 
He slowly accelerated while he recalled the computer display yet again.
 
It had been unequivocal; all of the cases he had input had been linked in some way.
 
Every single one,
he thought.
Almost two hundred dead last week alone, and all of them connected – and I’m the only one who knows…for now.

           
He looked at his watch again.
 
At least one of them will probably read the report soon,
he thought a little nervously.
 
The drive from Bangkok had taken longer than he thought it would.
Relax, we’ll be in Malaysia in a few minutes,
he told himself as he approached the next checkpoint at the Malaysian side of the border.

           
A produce delivery truck from Bangkok was ahead of him. It was piled high with wooden crates and covered with a large green tarpaulin.
 
The Malaysian border guard stepped out of his booth and began a slow walk around the vehicle, looking under the frame as he went.
 
He stopped at the rear of the truck and checked the registration plate against the number printed on the registration certificate; then he went back and spoke to the driver.
 
Tommy waited for him to signal the driver to go ahead, but he didn’t.
 
Instead he slowly walked back to his booth and picked up the phone.

           
Tommy checked his watch again.
 
Almost six o’clock. He waited and watched.
 
The Malaysian border guard didn’t seem to be in a hurry.
 
Five minutes went by, then ten. He looked in his rear view mirror.
 
Traffic had backed up far beyond the Thai checkpoint.
 
They must be reading it now.
 
They’re probably trying to contact me.
He looked at his mobile phone and resisted the urge to turn it on.
 
How long before they close the border?
he wondered.

           
The guard in the Malaysian booth was now talking with another Malaysian border guard.
 
Tommy watched him as he talked behind the glass pane.
 
He couldn’t hear him so he tried to read the expression on his face. Nothing.
 
After another minute the guard opened the booth door and came out. He handed the truck driver his passport and waved him through; then he turned toward Tommy and waved him forward.

           
He handed his Malaysian passport to the guard and said, “
Selamat petang.
”
 
He was trying very hard not to appear nervous, but he felt a small trickle of sweat run down his cheek. He quickly brushed it aside. “Hot, isn’t it?” he said.

           
The guard didn’t reply as he studied the passport. “Registration?” he asked holding out his hand. It seemed to Tommy that the guard was looking at him a little too carefully.
 
He reached over and retrieved the document and handed it to the inspector. He hoped the inspector hadn’t noticed the slight tremor in his hand. Tommy looked in his rearview mirror to take his mind off the guard.
 
The gates at the Thai side of the border were closing. He could see the Thai border guards telling people to turn around.

           
Damn!
he thought.