house.
No lights were on. I don’t know if Sandy Kirk was sleeping or not home.
We unloaded the sheet-wrapped corpses and piled them at his front door.
As we drove away, Bobby said, “Remember when we came up here as kids — to watch Sandy’s dad at work?”
“Yeah.”
“Imagine if one night we’d found something like that on his doorstep.”
“Cool.”
There were days of cleanup and repairs to be undertaken at Bobby’s place, but we weren’t ready to bend to that task. We went to Sasha’s house and passed the rest of the night in her kitchen, clearing our heads with more beer and going through my father’s account of the origins of our new world, our new life.
My mother had dreamed up a revolutionary new approach to the engineering of retroviruses for the purpose of ferrying genes into the cells of patients — or experimental subjects. In the secret facility at Wyvern, a world-class team of big brows had realized her vision. These new microbe delivery boys were more spectacularly successful and selective than anyone had hoped.
“Then comes Godzilla,” as Bobby said.
The new retroviruses, though crippled, proved to be so clever that they were able not merely to deliver their package of genetic material but to select a package from the patient’s — or lab animal’s — DNA to replace what they had delivered. Thus they became a two-way messenger, carrying genetic material in
They also proved capable of capturing other viruses naturally present in a subject’s body, selecting from those organisms’ traits, and remaking themselves. They mutated more radically and faster than any microbe had ever mutated before. Wildly they mutated, becoming something new within hours. They had also become able to reproduce in spite of having been crippled.
Before anyone at Wyvern grasped what was happening, Mom’s new bugs were ferrying as much genetic material out of the experimental animals as into them — and transferring that material not only among the different animals but among the scientists and other workers in the labs. Contamination is not solely by contact with bodily fluids. Skin contact alone is sufficient to effect the transfer of these bugs if you have even the tiniest wound or sore: a paper cut, a nick from shaving.
In the years ahead, as each of us is contaminated, he or she will take on a load of new DNA different from the one that anybody else receives. The effect will be singular in every case. Some of us will not change appreciably at all, because we will receive so many bits and pieces from so many sources that there will be no
To paraphrase James Joyce: It will darkle, tinct-tint, all this our funanimal world. Darkle with strange variety.
We know not if the change will accelerate, the effects become more widely visible, the secret be exposed by the sheer momentum of the retrovirus’s work — or whether it will be a process that remains subtle for decades or centuries. We can only wait. And see.
Dad seemed to think the problem didn’t arise entirely because of a flaw in the theory. He believed the people at Wyvern — who tested my mother’s theories and developed them until actual organisms could be produced — were more at fault than she, because they deviated from her vision in ways that may have seemed subtle at the time but proved calamitous in the end.
However you look at it, my mom destroyed the world as we know it — but, for all that, she’s still my mom. On one level, she did what she did for love, out of the hope that my life could be saved. I love her as much as ever — and marvel that she was able to hide her terror and anguish from me during the last years of her life, after she realized what kind of new world was coming.
My father was less than half-convinced that she killed herself, but in his notes, he admits the possibility. He felt that murder was more likely. Although the plague had spread too far — too fast — to be contained, Mom finally had wanted to go public with the story. Maybe she was silenced. Whether she killed herself or tried to stand up to the military and government doesn’t matter; she’s gone in either case.
Now that I understand my mother better, I know where I get the strength — or the obsessive will — to repress my own emotions when I find them too hard to deal with. I’m going to try to change that about myself. I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to do it. After all, that’s what the world is now about: change. Relentless change.
Although some hate me for being my mother’s son, I’m permitted to live. Even my father wasn’t sure why I should be granted this dispensation, considering the savage nature of some of my enemies. He suspected, however, that my mother used fragments of my genetic material to engineer this apocalyptic retrovirus; perhaps, therefore, the key to undoing or at least limiting the scope of the calamity will eventually be found in my genes. My blood is drawn each month not, as I’ve been told, for reasons related to my XP but for study at Wyvern. Perhaps I am a walking laboratory: containing the potential for immunity to this plague — or containing a clue as to the ultimate destruction and terror it will cause. As long as I keep the secret of Moonlight Bay and live by the rules of the infected, I will most likely remain alive and free. On the other hand, if I attempt to tell the world, I will no doubt live out my days in a dark room in some subterranean chamber under the fields and hills of Fort Wyvern.
Indeed, Dad was afraid that they would take me anyway, sooner or later, to imprison me and thus ensure a continuing supply of blood samples. I’ll have to deal with that threat if and when it comes.
Sunday morning and early afternoon, as the storm passed over Moonlight Bay, we slept — and of the four of us, only Sasha didn’t wake from a nightmare.
After four hours in the sack, I went down to Sasha’s kitchen and sat with the blinds drawn. For a while, in the dim light, I studied the words Mystery Train on my cap, wondering how they related to my mother’s work. Although I couldn’t guess their significance, I felt that Moonlight Bay isn’t merely on a roller-coaster ride to Hell, as Stevenson had claimed. We’re on a journey to a mysterious destination that we can’t entirely envision: maybe something wondrous — or maybe something far worse than the tortures of Hell.
Later, using a pen and tablet, I wrote by candlelight. I intend to record all that happens in the days that remain to me.
I don’t expect ever to see this work published. Those who wish the truth of Wyvern to remain unrevealed will never permit me to spread the word. Anyway, Stevenson was right: It’s too late to save the world. In fact, that’s the same message Bobby’s been giving me throughout most of our long friendship.
Although I don’t write for publication anymore, it’s important to have a record of this catastrophe. The world as we know it should not pass away without the explanation of its passing preserved for the future. We are an arrogant species, full of terrible potential, but we also have a great capacity for love, friendship, generosity, kindness, faith, hope, and joy. How we perished by our own hand may be more important than how we came into existence in the first place — which is a mystery that we will now never solve.
I might diligently record all that happens in Moonlight Bay and, by extension, in the rest of the world as the contamination spreads — but record it to no avail, because there might one day be no one left to read my words or no one capable of reading them. I’ll take my chances. If I were a betting man, I’d bet that some species will arise from the chaos to replace us, to be masters of the earth as we were. Indeed, if I were a betting man, I’d put my money on the dogs.
Sunday night, the sky was as deep as the face of God, and the stars were as pure as tears. The four of us went to the beach. Fourteen-foot, fully macking, glassy monoliths pumped ceaselessly out of far Tahiti. It was epic. It was so live.
