Distress

entire thing into being. Only if you manufacture every last centimeter of it, on your way down.

'I don't believe that honesty leads to madness. I don't believe we need delusions to stay sane. I don't believe the truth is strewn with booby-traps, waiting to swallow up anyone who thinks too much. There is nowhere to fall—not unless you stand there digging the hole.'

I said, 'You fell, didn't you? When you lost your faith.'

'Yes—but how far? What have I become? A serial killer? A torturer?'

'I sincerely hope not. But you lost a lot more than 'childish things,' didn't you? What about all those stirring sermons on kindness, charity and love?'

Michael laughed softly. 'And the least of these is faith. What makes you think I've lost anything? I've stopped pretending that the things I value are locked up in some magical vault called 'God'—outside the universe, outside time, outside myself. That's all. I don't need beautiful lies anymore, just to make the decisions I want to make, to try to live a life I think is good. If the truth had taken those things away… I could never really have had them in the first place.

'And I still clean up your shit, don't I? I still tell you stories at three in the morning. If you want greater miracles than that, you're out of luck.'

Whether it was genuine autobiography, or just a slick piece of ad hoc therapy, Michael's story began to undermine my panic and claustrophobia. His arguments made too much sense to me; they sliced through my self-pity like a hot wire. If the universe itself wasn't a cultural construct, the gray terror I felt from seeing myself as a part of it certainly was. I'd never had the honesty to embrace the molecular nature of my own existence—but then, the whole society I'd inhabited had been equally coy. The reality had always been glossed over, censored, ignored. I'd spent thirty-six years in a world still infested with lingering dualism, with tacit dumb spirituality—where every movie, every song, still wailed about the immortal soul… while everyone swallowed designer drugs predicated on pure materialism. No wonder the truth had come as a shock.

The abyss—like everything else—was understandable. I lost interest in digging myself a hole.

Vibrio cholerae declined to follow my example.

I lay curled on my side, my notepad propped up against an extra pillow, while Sisyphus showed me what was happening inside me.

'The В subunit of the choleragen molecule binds to the surface of the intestinal mucosal cell; the A subunit detaches and traverses the membrane. This catalyzes increased adenylate cyclase activity, which in turn raises the level of cyclic AMP, stimulating the secretion of sodium ions. The ordinary concentration gradient is reversed, and fluid is pumped in the wrong direction: out into the intestinal space.'

I watched the molecules interlocking, I watched the merciless random dance. This was what I was—whether it gave me any comfort to understand it, or not. The same physics which had kept me alive for thirty-six years might or might not casually destroy me—but if I couldn't accept that simple, obvious truth, I had no business explaining the world to anyone. Solace and redemption could screw themselves. I'd been tempted by the Ignorance Cults—and maybe I half understood what drove them, now—but what did they have to offer, in the end? Alienation from reality. The universe as an unspeakable horror to be endlessly denied, shrouded in saccharine artificial mysteries, every truth subjugated to doublethink and fairy tales.

Fuck that. I was sick from too little honesty, not too much. Too many myths about the H-word, not too few. I would have been better prepared for the whole ordeal by a lifetime spent calmly facing the truth, than a lifetime spent rehearsing the most seductive denials.

I watched a schematic of the worst-case scenario. 'If antibiotic-resistant, Mexico City V. cholerae succeed in crossing the blood-brain barrier, immunosuppressants can limit the fever—but bacterial toxins themselves are likely to cause irreversible damage.'

Mutant choleragen molecules fused with neural membranes. The cells collapsed like punctured balloons.

I still feared death as much as ever—but the truth had lost its sting. If the TOE had taken me in its fist and squeezed… at least it had proved that there was solid ground beneath me: the final law, the simplest pattern, holding up the world in all its strangeness.

I'd hit bottom. Once you'd touched the bedrock of the underworld, the foundations of the universe, there was nowhere else to fall.

I said, 'That's enough. Now find something to cheer me up.'

'How about the Beat poets?'

I smiled. 'Perfect.'

Sisyphus ransacked the libraries, and played them reading their own works. Ginsberg howling 'Moloch! Moloch!' Burroughs rasping 'A Junkie's Christmas'—all severed limbs in suitcases, and scoring the immaculate fix.

And best of all, Kerouac himself, wild and melodic, stoned and innocent: 'What If The Three Stooges Were Real?'

Afternoon sunlight slanted across the ward and brushed the side of my face, bridging distance, energy, scale, complexity. This was not a reason for terror. It was not a reason for awe. It was the most ordinary thing imaginable.

I was as ready as I'd ever be. I closed my eyes.

Someone prodded my shoulder, and said for the fourth or fifth time, 'Wake up, please.'

I'd lost all choice in the matter. I opened my eyes.

A young woman stood beside me, no one I'd seen before. She had serious, dark brown eyes. Olive skin, long black hair. She spoke with a German accent.

'Drink this.' She held out a small vial of clear liquid.

'I can't keep anything down. Didn't they tell you?'

'This, you will.'

I was past caring; vomiting was as natural to me as breathing. I took the vial and tipped the contents down my throat. My esophagus spasmed, and acid hit the roof of my mouth—but nothing more.

I coughed. 'Why didn't someone offer me that sooner?'

'It only just arrived.'

'From where?'

'You don't want to know.'

I blinked at her. My head cleared slightly. 'Arrived? What kind of drug wouldn't be in stock already?'

'What do you think?'

The flesh at the base of my spine went cold. 'Am I dreaming? Or am I dead?'

'Akili had samples of your blood smuggled out to… a certain country, and analyzed by friends. You just swallowed a set of magic bullets for every stage of the weapon. You'll be on your feet in a matter of hours.'

My head throbbed. The weapon. My worst fear had just been confirmed and banished in the same sentence; it was disorienting. 'Every stage? What would have come next? What have I missed out on?'

'You don't want to know.'

'I think you're right.' I still wasn't convinced that any of this was happening. 'Why? Why did Akili go to all that trouble just to save me?'

'We had to find out exactly what you were carrying. Violet Mosala might still be at risk, even though she's showing no symptoms. We had to have a cure for her, ready, here on the island.'

I absorbed that. At least she hadn't said: We don't care who is or isn't the Keystone. We're all prepared to risk our lives to protect just about anyone.

'So what was I carrying? And why did it detonate prematurely?'

The young AC frowned solemnly. 'We still haven't worked out all the details—but the timing fell apart. It looks like the bacteria generated confused internal signals, due to a disparity between intracellular molecular clocks and the host's biochemical cues. The melatonin receptors were choked, saturated—' She stopped, alarmed. 'I don't understand. Why are you laughing?'

By the time I left the hospital, on Tuesday morning, I had my strength back—and I was enraged. The conference was half over, but TOEs were no longer the story—and if Sarah Knight, for whatever unfathomable reasons, had abandoned the war over Mosala to sit by Yasuko Nishide's bedside, incommunicado… I'd finally have