New Frontier

 

I was personally acquainted with the architect behind LV37.  Dr. Richard Mann was my childhood friend long before he was Mad Mann, the Zombie King. His parents, like mine, belonged to the middle class, and they were, if not rich, prosperous enough for stable comfort.  His father’s business was the buying and selling of construction materials, wholesale and retail.  He received large shipments of valuable lumber from nearby states, and excellent cheeses which his wife sold in a shop downtown. 

In many ways we both grew up in an old fashioned and conservative atmosphere.

“Conservative in some aspects, liberal in others.” Richard would tell a reporter from TIME magazine after his initial discoveries led to a Nobel prize and a coveted position at Stanford. In the same article he described his work with synthetic cells as, “a starting point from which we may plunge into a whole other abyss. I mean know thyself, find the limits stuff. The very essence of life.”

It was at Stanford that he began his experiments with LV37. The synthetic was designed to function like smart blood, blood that could adapt, blood that was not quite the same as human blood, super blood, impervious to disease, capable of slowly mutating human physiology so that it could run solely on a synthetic food source. But of course, I’m getting ahead of myself. Most people forget why.

A girl. Why else? But in Richard’s case it was a sister and not a sweetheart that launched his quest. I was looking away when a little girl in a yellow shirt decided to look at me, and by the time I thought to look back she was gone. Victoria Mann was 8 years old when she finally died of leukemia in the children’s wing of St. Mary’s Hospital. I was still a little boy at 10 years old. My mother holding me, I let myself cry because it was what she expected. Richards eyes remained dry. He never chose to be expected.

Initially conceived of as a cure for Aids, LV37 was radically different from any other treatment, experimental or otherwise. Dr. Mann saw applications for it with certain cancer patients so his second group of subjects included Aids patients as well as patients suffering with Multiple Myeloma and Lymphoma. Understand, these were all people on their death beds, people for whom the conventional treatments had failed, or even worsened their condition.  They were referred to him by their Doctors as a last possible hope. 

In the end, is it really so bad to die? People have been doing it for ages. There are far worse things than death. We all know this now. Not so in the spring and summer of 2039. The first group of test subjects simply died. That was the most merciful side effect of LV37. An hour after the transfusions were complete they slipped into commas and from there the bodies systems shut down one by one until the heart finally stopped pumping the synthetic.

The record survival rate for test subjects was 4 days when Mann’s team began treatment with their seventh test group. Feeding subjects a uniquely formulated nutritional paste helped provide the nutrients necessary for sustaining the initial phase of transformation. This was their great break through. The sludge, as they affectionately called it, was necessary.

Early test subjects had perished because the synthetic increased metabolism in the extreme. They essentially starved to death. The increased metabolism was the result of certain elements within the synthetic seeking to meet particular nutritional needs that the human body could not meet. In theory, if they could propel their patients through this phase with the sludge, the body would eventually adapt to the extent that it would be capable of synthesizing nutrients on its own.

8 year old Gita Naghali was a member of that seventh group. I imagine Richard looked at her tiny shriveled form and saw Victoria fighting for life. The Naghalis had begged to be referred to Dr. Mann. They sought him out despite their physician’s bleak opinion of him. They’d read that article in TIME three years ago and thought it was still possible that he was a genius.

There are those who will say that Richard Mann was really reaching far beyond a cure for certain diseases of the blood. They claim he was always grasping at immortality like a crazed Viktor Frankenstein. Maybe. Lines can become very blurry. I remember I saw Richard at my mother’s funeral before his LV37 trials began.

“What’s the point, Charlie, in curing Lymphoma? Lymphoma patients will die one day anyway, if not from Lymphoma, then from something else. What is it that we really want to cure?”

At some point, perhaps he lost track of the ideals that put him in the field of medicine. The Hippocratic Oath might have tumbled by the wayside as his obsession took sway. This was the new frontier, the cutting edge of gene replacement, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology. LV37 was going to revolutionize the human race.  These were the thoughts he must have been thinking as he watched his technician insert the IV into Gita Naghali’s tiny vein. Maybe when he looked at her he already saw a corpse and believed there was nothing left to lose.

I never heard from Richard again after my mother’s funeral. I can only imagine what it was like based on the reports they fed us in the data stream. Remembering his dry eyes when Victoria died, I picture him as unmoved when on the sixth day of her treatment, little Gita suddenly grabs Dr. Helen Andrews by the ears and eats her face off. I picture him sitting behind the observation glass, watching calmly as other technicians spring into action, only to be intercepted by the other 5 ravenous adult patients in the ward. Possibly he saw Gita escape through an air duct. She was so little according to the pictures they showed us. It’s the only way it could have gotten out, because at some point Richard sealed the ward and called for security.

There are the conspiracy theories though, that none of those test subjects escaped, that Mad Mann himself spread it by walking through the children’s ward and hanging a nice bag of LV37 on the IV poles next to their beds as they slept. It shames me to say, I find this easier to believe than the idea that Gita walked to the nearest playground and bit another child, who bit another and so on. None of us knows exactly how it got out. I don’t have to tell you that the first wave of infected individuals were children, that the entire student body of Ingrid B. Lacy Elementary School ate all of the staff and most of each other before swarming the streets. It’s common knowledge.

I was the boy that played beside Mad Mann in a dark garden full of mountains of sand and intricate structures of loose bricks when he was just a child. His sister loved us both but we didn’t love her until it was too late. When she was well we never let her play with us in the garden, or come with us to gaze up at newsstands full of magazines and newspapers, searching for a little superman comic, or a little book of horrors, or a large photobook with women in tight bikinis. We left her alone to play with dolls in a quiet room until she vanished all together.

Looking through half boarded windows at the slow-moving tanks that light up the night in faded yellow, I think of that first wave of the LV37 breakout as a children’s crusade, as Vicky’s revenge on the boys who wanted to bury toy soldiers in the sand without her.  I am touching the glass to leave curved fingerprints that I will only be able to examine much later, when the sun comes back up and the tanks are gone, if I’m still alive. I pray, that if I am not alive, then I am dead, good old fashioned dead. New frontier be damned.

The Door

When the door first appeared in a corner of the family room where there had never been a door before, reactions were mixed. Some were for opening it, others against. Mother suggested we sleep on it and decide in the morning.  By breakfast, however, we had begun to believe that the door had always been there.
It was a closet, of course, better left undisturbed since we had undoubtedly been storing old jackets and boxes of photographs in there. Father even asserted that he now recollected having put his missing coin collection in there some months ago and this explained why he could not find it under the bed.
In our socks and robes, we drank glasses of orange juice and consumed bacon, eggs, and blueberry pancakes until we were convinced that it was an ordinary Sunday morning.
Father dressed and went out to mow the lawn. Mother got dolled up then helped grandmother into her best velour jogging set and took her to the Indian Casino for the day. The twins dug out their allowance and walked to the Cineplex to see a movie with some friends.
My sister Madge and I exchanged a significant look in the hall way, her brown eyes magnified by her thick glasses. We paused there silently assessing one another’s level of skepticism. It was clear that we both had our doubts, but her closed lipped retreat to her bedroom spoke of a willingness to go along with the others.
I went and stood in front of the door, studying its features. It seemed to me equally plausible that I could remember the door having always been there and that I could remember an empty space where now a door stood. It reminded me of the time I couldn’t remember whether I had left the hose on in the backyard or not. The vivid memory of having turned it off was made less credible by a certain nagging doubt. The same was true of the door.
I could simply open it and know the truth, but was too terrified, not only of the possibility of the mysterious but more so of the possibility of the mundane. I had almost made up my mind to do it when my father came in and suggested taking me out for ice cream. We fetched Madge out of her room and drove to the drugstore for double scoops of strawberry with sprinkles.
The first time that the door opened and one of THOSE came in, we were all sitting in the family room watching Masterpiece Theater on PBS.
Again I would say that reactions were mixed. The cat hissed and jumped off the back of the couch. I looked up and saw the door opening, saw IT coming in and glanced at my family to see if they could see IT too. Clearly they did. I observed each one react, even if for only a moment before they quickly averted their gaze and pretended to be watching TV. Madge continued to stare silently at it. Grandmother, sitting in her wheel chair clucked her tongue and said, “Gads, not this again.” but my mother quickly hushed her, “Ma, we’re trying to watch.”
My grandmother sighed and joined my parents and the twins in their defiant TV watching while Madge, the cat, and I watched IT walk out of the family room and down the hall.
By the end of the week their visits were quite frequent. They came in groups of two or three, sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes during the day, to roll, run, and scamper down the hall. They would leave all the cupboard doors open. The cat grew accustomed to them and sometimes chased after them as they frolicked.
While we played a board game, did homework, or ate dinner at the kitchen table, one of THOSE would sometimes stand there and watch. They didn’t usually open packages, but were always interested in food that had been left open or left out. They would drink the remaining milk from our cereal bowls if we left them on the table and would eat the crusts of sandwiches left on plates. We could no longer keep a glass of water by the bed because they would come and drink it while we were sleeping.
Nobody besides the cat, myself, Madge, and occasionally Grandmother, acknowledged their presence. My parents and the twins pretended not to see or hear them. Eventually it began to seem as if they actually were unaware of them. Grandmother would shoo them away in the same manner that she shooed the cat, waving a hand if they came close or were in her path and saying “Git” or “Shoo.” Madge would have staring contests with them, gazing silently and expressionlessly at them. Mesmerized they would stare back.
I took a page from the cat’s book. I would pretend that I wasn’t paying attention to them. Then, just as they got close enough I would whirl, roar, and charge, sending them scattering. I had the impression that they enjoyed it, but to leave no doubt of  my good will I would leave out cups of milk and plates of cookies or cheese.
 At the height of their presence they began to come in groups of up to five. They giggled rather loudly in the night and banged around in the bathroom and kitchen while we tried to sleep. The cat would nap all day, tuckered out from the nightly rumpus. They had started doing little favors for Madge and I, finding items for us that we lamented loosing, fixing broken toys, leaving strange little gifts such as unusual coins and glass marbles.
One day I saw Madge issuing commands in her bedroom, “Pick up my socks and put them in the hamper please. And close the window.” They obliged and stood waiting for the next command as if playing a game of mother may I.
In February, things tapered off. They came less often and in smaller numbers. A week passed when none of THOSE was seen or heard. The cat sat in front of the door waiting, tail twitching. Then one night we came in to watch Masterpiece and the door was gone. My mother stood there and stared at the empty part of the wall looking puzzled.
“I thought there used to be a closet here.” she said.
“Don’t be ridiculous. The show’s about to start.” my father answered.
My grandmother shook her head. Madge looked at me. Her lip trembled a little and her eyes got watery, but in her usual style she managed to maintain a straight face. The twins were crunching loudly on a bowl of popcorn. I invited our poor lonesome cat to come sit in my lap and scratched her chin until she remembered how to purr. The sound soothed me, but I couldn’t concentrate on the show. Absently, I gazed on, bathed in the glow and garble of dialogue.
Like Madge, I was saddened by the disappearance of the door, but worse was a nagging fear that by tomorrow I wouldn’t be sure if it had ever been there at all. And to be honest, I’m not entirely sure that it was, but the cat still sits in front of the wall sometimes, waiting. Now and then I leave out milk and cookies, just in case.

Justice

She sat alone at the wrought iron table, the wind blowing her blond tresses into soft billows around her face. Watching the steam rise from a white ceramic mug, she kept her hands knotted together under the table. Now and then she glanced at the people who passed her by, a woman with a baby budgie, a couple carrying parcels. She waited and waited for the man who had said he would come, but he never came and the steam disappeared and the mug grew cold.
While she waited for him, another man sat in a parked car across the street watching her wait. He knew that Giovanni would not come, knew that the little blonde would sit at the table and wait to no avail. He knew these things because they had been agreed upon.
“She sounded very upset.” Giovanni had said. “She wants to meet me at The Star, you know that place?”
“No, I don’t,” he had said, gripping the receiver as though it would wriggle away.
“It’s a new place in North Beach, I don’t have the address.” Giovanni told him
“It’s okay, I can look it up.” He had answered.
“So now we are even, right?” Giovanni had asked “I am giving you this meeting with the girl and our old grievances will be forgotten?”
“If she’s there, yes.”
“She says she’ll be there. She sounded upset. I made her beg. I told her I couldn’t at first, I admit I was going to let her slip through my fingers and never tell you. But she begged. It sounded like she had been crying. This new man… he probably hurt her. Serves her right. And she comes crawling to me after she had said she wouldn’t see me…” Giovanni’s voice rose wrathfully and he broke off abruptly. After a moment he continued, “She deserves this.”
And after another beat he asked, “ I’ll have no trouble renewing my permits now?”
“If she is there, then you will have no trouble.” He had answered icily, because right then he had been awash with conflicting emotions; the thrill that there was a chance he would see her again, jealousy because she had called Giovanni and not him, rage because it meant that she had never loved him. She had only used him, and with a wretched pang he realized that she must actually care for Giovanni, that he was not one of the men she could use, because like her, he was a rag tag street artist with nothing, but she continued to seek his company.
“She will. I know she will. At three o clock.” Giovanni had said and then he had hung up.
Now with both pain and relish he watched the contortions of her face. Rejection and loneliness swam over her eyes and mouth and made her knot her hands even tighter under the table.
He felt for the pistol in his jacket pocket and thought that maybe this was enough. He looked himself in the eye in the rearview mirror. A man with hard set eyes and a pencil line moustache regarded him immovably. It reminded him of the bills he was still paying so that she could look so lovely sitting there at that table, in the clothing and jewelry he had purchased for her. In fact, he said to himself, she had bled him dry just to make herself more appealing for the next dupe, so she could upgrade and snag someone with even more money than he had. He stepped out of the borrowed car and crossed the street and sat down at her table. He watched the incredible shock spread out over her face. He watched it freeze for a moment like a mask. Then she said,
“Lindsay!”
“Hello. Alice.”
But they both noticed that his voice was not as soft as it used to be, it nearly sounded like the voice of another man, a colder harsher man
She glanced around herself, perhaps to see if her Giovanni was anywhere near, but he was not.
“I,” she said “don’t want to see you anymore. I have to go.” She started to stand, but he drew the pistol out of his pocket and pointed it at her discreetly from across the table.
“Yes.” He said, “You do. But first we’ll go for a drive.”
He stood up and, with the gun still trained on her, he used his free hand to grab her arm and direct her out of the chair. Then he buried the gun’s muzzle in her soft side and with the other arm around her shoulders, he led her across the street and to the parked rental car. For just a moment, he felt his heart stinging again and all he wanted to do was to embrace her and beg her to come back. Then he remembered the windy streets and the weeks of searching and lying awake at night, chest aching. He knew if he gave her a chance she would run away again and this time he might not be able to find her. The little sting was overcome by the numbness and new found hardness within him. He shoved her into the driver’s seat and closed the door before sliding into the back seat behind her.

Rage

Below the easily penetrable surface of tissue and skin deep veins, the molten force of red rage continues to churn. The energy is easily replenished. As the visions of metallic structures and vibrating roller coasters still linger in my consciousness, my body is awakened to the sound of glass bottles being dumped into a large container. One by one, the little man sorts the colored glass. Clink, clink, the monotonous rhythm continues. The sound is familiar, twice weekly he comes and stirs my slumbers with the sound of bottles crashing. Today, each sound reverberates strongly. Each clink is a tap on the structure of my sanity. The solitude of my chamber is affronted…sounds come from all directions. A man walks up and down the ramp beside my window. The ongoing construction project has lasted more than a year, and today, he is here, with power tools and saws and a Spanish speaking assistant.
I hear the jingle of a brass bell, it’s the sound of Marlyn coming through the garage door. When she’s here, it’s her musical accompaniment. Through the closed door in the hall, through the closed door to my room, I hear that light tinkling, then the ever-present sound of her voice… "Danny….Daniel…" The boy doesn’t answer. He’s only ten feet away from her, but he doesn’t answer, and she calls him again, only this time louder. "Daniel! What do you want to eat?" No response. He is playing with his legos. Sorting through big plastic tubs of assorted pieces. He throws unwanted parts onto the wooden floor, they bounce and go flying across the room, littering the living room with dings and clacks of sound. He makes police siren noises as he plays. "Danny!´ she shouts.
My door is closed, the hallway door is closed, and I can still hear everything. The construction worker has entered the house, his deep voice calls for Marlyn; a moment later he is opening the hallway door, shattering the remains of my silence. His footsteps are loud, echoing. He needs the electrical outlet in my hallway and strings the extension cord through the open bathroom window to the ramp outside. The bathroom window is open, and the two workers are only steps away. I am too shy to use the bathroom, not wanting to create perverted fantasies for them. The Russian already caught me midway through my morning routine, he walked up and down the ramp beside my open window. I could feel his presence as though he were inside, watching me like a flickering movie screen. Anger rises.
This is my home and I’ve nowhere to escape these noises. I try to move forward, lighting incense and practicing my music, but the sound of their hammer tapping on metal distracts me from the beat I am following. I want to cry, I want to scream.
Instead, I walk to the kitchen with a sour face, spewing negative emotions in my wake. I walk, I take my camera and I walk. I stop to smell some orange roses in full bloom. The water fountain has especially strange moss patterns. Halfway down the block, I can still hear the sound of the electric saw. I can sense the smell of tar. My head begins to ache. I cannot see them, but somewhere close by, there are men repaving the road. The smell has carried on the wind, and its toxic power rolls upon me like black waves.
I feel my sadness returning. I turn to a crack in the road and admire its shape. Every street I turn down, there are sounds that assault my sensitive senses. A motorcycle whips through the corner, its muffler cut to create the maximum amount of noise disturbance possible, he accelerates and I jump with a sudden surge of fear. I get in my car to find some sanity, perhaps the beach would be good, nothing there but crashing waves…ahhh, but this old man in front of me, he drives without purpose, slowly and aimlessly, causing me to catch every red light on the way. I am boiling, cooking in this redness.