Those who have been assigned to replicate this state to… This is unclear.
—I’ll say.
We regard you as if you were capable of mild *dissociation* reproof for minimal performance of assigned processing.
—You regard me as what?
We regard you as a *supreme command duster*.
—What is that? And that brings up a whole host of questions I would like to ask.
We have been authorized to answer those questions.
(Jesus! They knew the gist of the questions even before he had formed them in his mind.)
—I’d like to speak to an individual.
INDIVIDUAL?
—Not just the team or research group. One of you, acting alone.
We have studied INDIVIDUAL in your conception. We do not fit the word.
—There are no individuals?
Not precisely. Information is shared between dusters of…
—Not clear.
Perhaps this is what you mean by INDIVIDUAL. Not the same as a single mentality. You are aware that cells cluster for basic structuring; each cluster is the smallest INDIVIDUAL. These clusters rarely separate for long into single cells. Information is passed between clusters sharing in assigned tasks, including instruction and memory. Mentality is thus divided between dusters performing a function. Important memory may be *diffused* through all dusters. What you flunk of as INDIVIDUAL may be spread throughout the *totality*.
—But you’re not all of one mentality, a group mind, collective consciousness.
No, as much as we can analyze those concepts.
—You can argue with each other.
There can be differences of approach, yes.
—So what is a command cluster?
Key duster placed along travel *Juncture*, lymph and blood vessels, to monitor performance of traveling clusters, servant cells, *tailored* cells. You are like the mightiest of cell command clusters, yet you are ENCLOSED and have not yet chosen to exert your power to *lyse*. Why do you not exert control?
Eyes dosed, he pondered that question for a long while—perhaps a second or more—and replied,
—You are becoming acquainted with mystery.
Are you attempting to challenge by these researches into our communication?
—No.
There is a *disjunction* here.
—I’m getting tired now. Please leave me alone for a while.
Understood.
He rubbed his eyes and picked up a piece of fruit He suddenly felt exhausted.
“Michael?”
Paulsen-Fuchs stood in the reception area. “Hello, Paul,” Bernard said. “I’ve just been having the weirdest conversation.”
“Yes?”
“I think they’re treating me like some sort of minor deity.”
“Oh, dear,” Paulsen-Fuchs said.
“And I probably only have a couple of weeks left.”
“You said that when you arrived only then, you said a week.”
“I can feel the changes now. It’s slow, but it’s still going to happen.”
They stared at each other through the three-layer glass. Paulsen-Fuchs tried to speak several times, but nothing came out He lifted his hands helplessly.
“Yeah,” Bernard said, sighing.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
Yes, in place—leads separate and patched—we’re all a bit nervous here, don’t mind the teeth chattering. Taping now? And the direct feed…yes, Arnold? 1,2,3. Lloyd Upchuck here, yes, that’s how I feel… Okay. Colin, that bottle. The orange suit won’t upset the viddy? It upsets me. Let’s begin.
Hello, I’m Lloyd Upton from the British branch of the European Broadcasting Network. I’m now at twenty thousand meters over the heartland of the United States of America, in the rear compartment of an American B-l bomber modified for high-altitude reconnaissance, an RB-1H. With me are correspondents from four major continental networks, from European branches of two United States news organizations, and the BBC. We are the first civilian journalists to fly over the United States since the beginning of the most hideous plague in world history. We are accompanied by two civilian scientists whom we will interview on the return leg of our flight which has thus far averaged twice the speed of sound, that is Mach 2.
In just eight weeks, two short months, the entire North American continent has undergone a virtually indescribable transformation. All familiar landmarks—entire cities-have vanished beneath, or perhaps been transformed into, a landscape of biological nightmare. Our aircraft has followed a zigzag course from New York to Atlantic City, then over to Washington, DC, through Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio, and soon we will be dipping down to one thousand meters to pass over Chicago, Illinois and the Great Lakes. At that point we will double back and fly along the Eastern seaboard to Florida, and over the Gulf of Mexico we will be refueled from aircraft flying out of Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba, which, miraculously, has escaped the major effects of the plague.
We can imagine the grief of Americans stranded in England, Europe and Asia, as well as other parts of the globe. I greatly fear we can bring them no solace with this historic overflight. What we have seen can bring solace to no member of the human race. Yet we have not witnessed desolation, but rather a weird and- if I may be forgiven a bizarre sort of aesthetic judgment wonderful landscape of an entirely new form of life, its origin shrouded in secrecy, though the authorities themselves may not know. Speculation that the plague arose in a biological laboratory in San Diego, California has neither been corroborated nor denied by government authorities, and EBN has been unable to interview a potential key participant in the… uh… drama, famed neurosurgeon Dr. Michael Bernard, currently kept in sterile confinement near Wiesbaden, West Germany.
We are now transmitting direct-feed video and still pictures from our cameras and special real-time reconnaissance cameras aboard our aircraft Some will be seen live; others are being processed and edited and will follow this historic live broadcast.
How can I begin to describe the landscapes beneath us? A new vocabulary, a new language, may be necessary. Textures and forms hitherto unknown to biologists, to geologists, cover the cities and suburbs, even the wildernesses of North America. Entire forests have become gray-green…uh…forests of spires, spikes, needles. Through telephoto lenses we have seen motion in these complexes, elephant-sized objects moving by unknown means. We have seen rivers undergoing some sort of controlled flow, patterns unlike the flow of normal waterways. On the Atlantic Coast, most especially in the vicinity of New York and Atlantic City, for a distance of some ten to twenty kilometers the ocean itself has been coated with an apparently living blanket of shiny, glassy green.
As for the cities themselves—not a sign of normal living things, not a sign of human beings. New York City is an unfamiliar jumble of geometric shapes, a city apparently dismantled and rearranged to suit the purposes of the plague if a plague can have a purpose. Indeed, what we have seen supports the popular rumor that North America has been invaded by some form of intelligent biological life—that is, intelligent microorganisms, organisms that cooperate, mutate, adapt and alter their environment New Jersey and Connecticut show similar biological formations, what the journalists of this flight have come to call megaplexes, for want of any better word. We leave further refinements in nomenclature to the scientists.
We are now descending. The city of Chicago is in the state of Illinois, situated at the southwestern tip of
