Paradeisia: Origin of Paradise (17 page)

Cameras followed him everywhere, he was called upon for constant interviews, and he was even placed in ribbon-cutting ceremonies for grand public projects and other events.

Thus, the solemn, unassuming Doctor Ming-Zhen ultimately found himself in the nearly unbearable conditions of the Antarctic, sent there as his country's unwitting hero.

Paradeisia
Poseidon's Platter

After they had returned to the surface with the wretch Jinkins had called “Andrews,” Jinkins had insisted they all go to the restaurant where he would explain.  Andrews was left at the island's hospital.

Despite the circumstances, the restaurant awed them.  It consisted of many tiers of t
ables centered around a circular stone grill where flames licked the food that four chefs cooked.  A giant glass wall offered an incredible view of an aquarium full of sea creatures.  The semi-circular wall that surrounded the rest of the interior featured coral reefs with bubbles blowing upwards, clams that opened and shut, and fish that peeked out from crevices.  The ceiling looked like the underside of the surface of the sea and it undulated and shined as if waves were passing across.

“We need know what's really going on here, Jinkins.  And we
need to know now,” Henry said.  He was no longer angry: now he sounded tense, uneasy.  They were all sitting around a large flat table shaped like a giant shell half.  The kinkajou was wandering from plate to plate, sampling everyone's sweetest foods.

Jinkins said, “Andr
ews will be fine, and I do mean,” he nodded as if to convince himself, “fully recovered.  Our hospital here is state-of-the-art.”

“Jinkins!” Lady Shrewsbury said, slapping her hand down on the table.  “At this juncture we do not care about the state-of-the-art facilities!  We care about what happened to that poor devil!  Will you
please elucidate, for heaven's sake?”

Jinkins hesitated.

“Now wouldn't be a moment too soon!”

Jinkins looked down at his plate and took a long breath.  “He was part of the first group that went down after we built the
portal.  They landed and did a little exploration, was supposed to be just for an hour or so.  They were very careful.  Took samples of the air, the water, that kind of thing.  Scientific data.  But when it was time to go back up, he….”

“He what?”

“He was gone.  They looked and called for him, did everything they could.  There was no sign of him.  So they went back down over and over again, searched everywhere.  It became a monument effort.

“He was a real explorer, Andrews. 
We decided he had wandered off on his own to do his own research.  He would come back, we thought....”  Jinkins sighed, “That was three years ago.  I suppose he finally did come back.”

After a long silence at the table, one of the board members spoke, “Well it doesn't sound that serious to me.  The man wandered off, probably ate something that didn't agree with him.  Been wandering around the last three years and finally spotted somebody.”

Jinkins said enthusiastically, “Precisely!  See?  It's very sad of course, but nothing like what you all had been thinking.  And now the story has ended better than I thought.  He's alive and will likely recover!”

Henry interrupted Jinkins' joviality, “Recover or not, how did he survive down there for
three
years all by himself?  Is there really anything to eat?”

“There are fish,” Jinkins said.  “He could have eaten fish.”

Lady Shrewsbury said, “The man doesn't even know his own name, for goodness sake.  How could he possibly have had the discipline to catch fish, especially if he'd eaten something toxic already?”

“Are there any edible plants?” someone asked.

“We've found yellow tomato plants.  And they're gigantic, too.  Over thirty feet high with hundreds of tomatoes each.”

“Now
that's
very interesting.” another of the board contributed.  “Do you know what's causing them to grow that way?”

“Well, Doctor Pearce analyzed the tomato's genes, and it turns out they
are very unlike what we eat here on the surface.  They are very old; a very ancient breed unpolluted by modern science.  Since tomatoes back when Columbus arrived were actually very small and yellow, our scientists have theorized that the increased carbon dioxide and atmospheric pressure accounts for their huge size.  Some day we think it's possible we could feed the island from things grown down there.”

“Now, when were we originally scheduled to open?” Henry asked.

“Ah!  Well, actually we would be scheduled to open before long, and I do very mean soon,” Jinkins said, twiddling his thumbs.

“When, precisely, is '
very soon?'”

Suddenly, Jinkins' phone rang.  He looked relieved at the distraction.  Answering, he listened to the voice on the other end briefly.  Then he hung up, saying, “Doctor Pearce insists I go see him at the hospital at once.  It's about Andrews.”

Henry stood, “I'll go as well.  The rest of you may turn in if you wish; it's getting late.”

Jinkins added, “Yes, turn in, or you can go take a turn around Atlantis Bay.  It's very pleasant in the evenings."

Henry said, “Aubrey.”

Taken t
otally by surprise, she replied, “Huh?”

“Get my things ready for the morning.”

CDC

Everyone was staring at Doctor Giordano in expectation.  He knew his idea was radical.  Intuitively, he knew the virus was incredibly dangerous.  The fact that it was an RNA virus and would mutate so quickly; the structure of its protective layer, or capsid; the evidence that it had been transferred through various pathways already...

It was the perfect virus.

So perfect, in fact, that he wondered if it had been
engineered
that way...

So he proposed his idea, “The virus causes the immune system to attack the thyroid gland in most women and some men.  Thyroid storm starts, and in less than an hour the person is dead.  So why don't we treat the thyroid storm before it starts?”

“How?”

“Iodine.”

“Radioactive iodine?”

“Yes.  We kill the thyroid gland even before the virus has a chance to attack it.”

“Why not just give out PTU
[4]
or Tapazole pills?”

“Because they
wouldn’t can cause agranulocytosis
[5]
: the virus would run amok.  At this point, killing the thyroid gland would present zero risk.”

“But we would have to know exactly whom the virus would strike next.”

“I think it's safe to say it will attack
everyone
next.  Anyone in the Baltimore area should be treated.”

“You want to put two million people on hormones for the rest of their lives?” Karen exclaimed.

“Yes,” Doctor Giordano said.  “I do.”

“I want to
cure
this virus,” she swore, “not throw up our hands in defeat!”

“But think of what this could become...  If it gets away from us, which I think it very well might do, consider the stakes.  How can we possibly work on containing it if we're busy digging mass graves?  I just...have
a gut feeling that this will totally overwhelm us—and fast.  Sure, we gotta find the cure, but right now we have the chance to save two million lives.  We cannot blink at the chance.”

“
Digging mass graves?
” Karen repeated his words dubiously.  “Guy, I think you've had a little less sleep than you're used to.  We're nowhere near that point.  I agree, proactively treating with iodine could be a solution if it gets out of control, but not now.  We have to be rational.”

“We should tell the people what's happening and let them choose.”

Karen started shaking her head, “No, noooo—“

“We need to give them the option.”

“No, Guy, no.  Just be calm, let's find the cure, and stop it dead.  That's it.”  She sighed, “With Towson under quarantine, we'll control it.”

Towson, Maryland

Wesley's mother was still under observation at the hospital.  Wesley was at the grocery store to pick up a couple puddings and comfort foods she liked, as well as a sandwich for himself.

When he had arrived at the store, it had been nearly empty.  Now, as he waited for the woman at the deli to finish wrapping his sandwich, he saw an increasing number of people running up the aisles.  The lady handed him the sandwich and he said, “Thanks.”  When he turned around to grip his cart, a frantic man pushed it out of his hands and ran away with it.  Wesley shouted at the man at first, shocked, but then gaped in disbelief as he saw that the canned goods aisle directly adjacent from him had filled with people who were feverishly emptying the shelves.  He looked back at the lady at the deli, “Are you guys having a sale?”

She shrugged
incredulously.

Almost in a haze, Wesley walked from the deli towards the dairy section.  He asked a woman who shoved past him what was going on, but she didn't respond.  When he reached dairy, he noticed that the refrigerators that held the milk were empty.  Every last bottle of every kind of milk had been taken.

An older man jogged up beside him, his arms full of goods.  He swore in aggravation, “The milk's gone already?”

Wesley said, “Yeah...  Can you tell me what's going on?”

“You haven't heard?” the man panted.

“No.”

“Towson is being quarantined.  Nobody in or out.”  He nodded, “Makes you wish you had stocked up like those doomsday wackos, doesn't it?”  He said, “Good luck, my friend.”  And with that he took off.

Antarctica

A giant dome that allowed light in but kept the wind out had taken shape over the site, an inhospitable glacier far inland.  If nothing else, the effort would produce strides in making Antarctica habitable—habitable being a very broad term.

In the 1970’s, the lowest temperature on earth had been measured nearby, a mind-numbing -128.6 degrees Fahrenheit, and the dome did not succeed in warming the place much: it was more useful at keeping the sudden, furious winds at bay.

Passing him with an electric hum was a bus-like vehicle laden with ea
ger, camera-snapping passengers; another load of the press.  They had been summoned from all over the world to witness this.  The camera crew for the government’s reality show had followed him around for two years now.  It was a necessary evil, just like the physical maladies he had suffered since his arrival.

He
had been daily afflicted by bloody and chapped lips, chafing dry skin, eye twitches, and nose bleeds.  But he was grateful for those paltry annoyances: in the beginning, it had been much worse.

For the first few weeks, he had lost his appetite, he couldn't sleep, he frequently vomited, his joints ached, and his ears hurt.  He had lost about eight pounds since he came. 
But the astonishing thing was, his symptoms were no worse than for anyone else new to this part of the Antarctic.  Mankind was not meant to come here.

The site on the glacier was at a high elevation, so, to his body, oxygen was scarce.  Even now, almost a month into his residence, he breathed heavily as he walked towards the dome exit. 

When he was inside the dome like he was now, he wore gloves, boots, and a snowsuit complete with a hood.

The door of the dome was the size of a highway tunnel entrance, and as he approached the air
became crisper, dryer.  The sky was a brilliant, cloudless blue, and he could see the speck which he knew to be a thirty-foot twin propeller plane as it approached.

He walked out to the strip, his boots crunching the packed snow beneath them.  Then he waited for the turboprop to land, taking in the horizon's distant craggy peaks which never failed to inspire awe no matter how many times he saw them.

The plane finally bounced down on its skis.  They never shut off the propellers when they landed.  Instead, it was as brief a stay as possible, then a quick takeoff; otherwise the engines would freeze.  It took some time for the crew to open the hatch and a stair to be driven up, but, finally, the people he was waiting for emerged.

He had found Antarctica to be surprisingly mountainous, and beautiful.  He vividly recollected his first helicopter flight from a ship flotilla to China's coastal research station, named Zhongshan.  The pilot had steered them directly through a magnificent archway over the deep navy of the churning sea.  It was a giant monument created by the collapsing glacier, with warm orange sunlight glistening off one side while contrasting blue dimly glowed in the shadow of the other.

Ahead, he could see the waves crashing against the white shore where the myriad of tiny penguins endlessly waddled up and down in front of giant ice-cliffs.  There were sea lions, too, basking in the sun or sliding do
wn icebergs, trying to catch one of the swimming penguins.