Parasite

watching me. I still somehow didn’t expect him to be quite so open about admitting it. “But…”

“Please listen to me very carefully, because it’s important to me that you understand: the sleepwalking sickness is the result of a different parasitic infection.”

“What?”

“It’s my fault. I pioneered the idea that parasites were our friends, that they could somehow be tamed and turned from enemies into allies, and I caused this. People stopped being as careful as they needed to be.” Dr. Banks raked a hand through his hair, mussing the normally perfect strands still further. “It’s funny, in a horrible way. We were trying to prove the hygiene hypothesis was something that could be beaten. What we didn’t anticipate was people turning ‘nothing in nature can hurt you’ into a gospel.”

I was still staring. The words I needed to question him just weren’t there.

Apparently, Dr. Banks had been waiting for a willing audience, because he kept on going. “Off-brand parasites have become an increasing problem recently. They’re all black market, of course—I’m not too proud to admit that we’ve greased the wheels at the FDA to keep any competitors to the implant from seeing the light of day—but they’re still out there. People are messing with the genome of anything they think might turn a profit. And because there’s a sucker born every minute, those profits can be substantial.”

“Chave didn’t pick up any off-brand parasites.”

“No, she didn’t. She was a company woman, through and through, and I miss her more than you can possibly know. You saw her when you deigned to visit us—oh, don’t look so shocked, Sally. I know you hate coming here. It’s why I was so surprised to see you today—but I saw her every day. She managed my schedule. She knew everything about me, and she didn’t judge me for any of it. Now, if you really think I have a treatment, can you think of any possible reason that I would have refused to share it with Chave?” He shook his head. “I’m not a monster, Sally. This might be easier if I were. This might be easier on everyone.”

“So the sleepwalking sickness is parasitic, but it’s not a SymboGen parasite?”

“Now you’re catching on. We think that whoever created the parasite that causes it wanted to make something small—something that wouldn’t catch the attention of the implants. They’re very territorial, you know, and they won’t tolerate the presence of a competing parasite. So these unknown engineers started with a protozoa parasite, and worked their way up from there. The trouble is, protozoa can be transmitted in water. And most modern filtration systems haven’t been constructed to filter out parasites. It would be a waste of money.”

The chain of transmission he was proposing made sense. People ingest illegal, black market parasites for some reason—and let’s face it, there are always people willing to do things that seem stupid if they think they’re going to get something out of it—and then those parasites find their way into shower drains and sinks as their new host’s body adjusts to their presence. Once they got into the water, the parasites would be able to sail right into the body of another host, with no one the wiser. I wasn’t sure how big protozoa were, but they’d have to be pretty small if they were designed not to attract the attention of the implants.

“Wouldn’t the protozoa be territorial?” I asked.

“Not in the same way,” he said, sounding more confident now, like I’d finally ventured onto territory he knew how to manage. “Tapeworms are generally solitary, because they have to be; very few hosts can support two healthy adult tapeworms without dying. Even so, in nature, it’s not unusual for people to have multiple tapeworms, because they’re hermaphrodites, and sometimes their babies just don’t go looking for places of their own.”

The fact that he was making jokes, even terrible ones, made me want to claw his eyes out. I forced myself to remain still. “So these protozoa, they’d come in groups? And that way, if some of them got out of the body, there would still be protozoa in their original hosts?”

“Yes, exactly. We believe that what’s happening—the most reasonable chain of transmission—is fools looking for a magic bullet ingesting the generation one, or G1, protozoa. Once their infection is established, they start shedding excess parasites into the water supply, where they reproduce, creating generation two, or G2, protozoa. From there, the G2 protozoa make their way into faucets and showers, and gradually spread the infection.” Dr. Banks shook his head. “What’s truly tragic about this is that it seems likely that the people who started this whole mess are the only ones not getting sick. Having a pre-established G1 colony is likely to protect them from the encroaching G2 colony, and it seems likely that only the G2 protozoa are actually causing their hosts to succumb to the sleepwalking sickness.”

“Oh.” My head was starting to spin from all the scientific jargon he was spouting. I desperately wished that Nathan was there. He’d have been able to tell me how much of this was real and how much was carefully created spin doctoring, using possibilities and potentials to craft a story that sounded almost plausible. “So how much of this do you know? I mean, you keep saying ‘we think’ and ‘we guess,’ but you haven’t said very much ‘we know.’ How much have you proven?”

“Enough,” said Dr. Banks, with sudden vagueness. “I’m so sorry that you’ve been walking around thinking that our test meant we had a treatment. Until we know for sure what’s attacking these people, we can’t put forth a viable course of antiparasitics, and we don’t want to risk a mass panic.”

“Why not? Are you afraid that it would hurt your stock prices?”

“No, Sally, we’re afraid that it would hurt everyone who trusts our brand enough to have one of our implants. The SymboGen Intestinal Bodyguard was created to mitigate the worst effects of the hygiene hypothesis. It allowed us to undo, in a single step, literally decades of excessive sterilization and reduced microbial diversity. Since then, the implants have become responsible for everything from maintaining insulin levels in diabetics to controlling issues with human brain chemistry and secreting natural birth control. They represent millions of dollars saved in pharmacological costs annually. That doesn’t even take into account the savings they naturally cause in the areas of preventative medicine and allergy control. They’ve changed the face of medicine.”

“And?” I asked.

“And if you take all that away, even assuming that every single host was able to survive the course of antibiotics necessary to flush both the implant and the unknown protozoa from their system, what infrastructure is going to be there to step up and take care of all these people’s medical needs? Who is going to be standing by with the pills no one is in the habit of taking anymore, the shots no one wants to give themselves? What happens to the women who live in regions where birth control is unfairly restricted, but have been getting around that by buying their implants out of state? Suddenly they’re back in the bad old position of needing to find a way to convince their doctors they’re not immoral whores just because they want to be allowed to control their own reproduction. Take away the implants, and the medical system of this country crumbles.” There was a strange new light in Dr. Banks’s eyes. He sounded appropriately solemn as he was speaking, but something about his expression was almost… proud. “That’s just America. D. symbogenesis is a global phenomenon. What do you say to the people who are finally able to control their own medical destinies? How do you convince them to throw away their miracle because they might, potentially, come into contact with another type of parasite someday, and it could hurt them?”

“Oh.” I bit my lip, worrying it between my teeth before asking, “But how does that excuse not sharing the test with the authorities? I mean, you could tell them everything, just the way you told me, and then show them how to check for the bad parasites, and they’d be able to… I don’t know, quarantine people when they started getting sick. Maybe then, no one would get hurt just because they got too close to someone who was already going to die.” I thought of Devi, who’d only wanted to be sure that her wife was okay. Would putting Katherine under quarantine as soon as she tested positive have made any difference? Probably not. But we would never know, would we?

“We could also trigger a panic, leading to millions of people overdosing on antiparasitics as they become convinced that D. symbogenesis is somehow connected to the outbreaks. We’re already starting to see resource hoarding in some areas where the sleepwalkers have been especially active.” Dr. Banks shook his head. “We set out to become the first name in parasites. Well, we achieved it. Now we have to be careful, or the sins of an entire biological genus will be heaped upon our heads.”

“You mean your head,” I said.

Dr. Banks blinked. Apparently, declarative statements were more surprising than bewildered questions. “What do you mean?”

“I mean Dr. Jablonsky is dead, and Dr. Cale is missing, so any blame is going to fall on you. Is that why you look so tired?” I tried to sound sympathetic. I wasn’t sure that it was working.