Whoever says they understand today's economy is fooling you...you only win or lose...the best thing I learned from my teacher
is that fear sells.
Max Brooks
"Maybe no one remembered what real fear is, typical fears like the flu, obesity, ugly and old are seen daily in this hospital, we are government workers, modest pay, poor benefits and all you can steal without getting caught. My job gives me everything: scares and lots of laughs. Today we were laughing our heads off because a lady came in vomiting uncontrollably because of her remedy for high cholesterol: a horse poop shake... maybe the last laughs in a long time.
As I left the shift I noticed the aroma permeating every street and every street and every advertisement. There is a lot of government work and most of the unemployed from the bankrupt companies now have their name on the state payroll; they should be happy, but no, their particular job prevents them.... Collecting dead animals in the street is not a job that excites me at all, the amount of corpses is terrifying, not only of the few wild specimens like pigeons, dogs or cats, any kind of pets and vermin were on floors and roofs, nobody knew what happened but we do know that there is a finger that randomly points at us and kills us without knowing the damned.
Today when I arrived at the ward I noticed the fear in the air. It is a lot and very strong: it smells of urine and something alkaline; there are more than 30 patients getting worse by the second, nothing is detected. There are only kidneys that give up and take the patients between their legs. We have let nothing through, from blood to level two biopsies (not very accurate but that is all the government allocates for our dues) the blood is infected with dead leukocytes and lymphocytes, all pudding in the veins; there is nothing but hatred feeding organs that collapse; the antibodies kill what carries the food and that quickly and surely destroys the host, the only thing we can offer to the lucky few that arrive, is to do a plasmapheresis, a wild and archaic method to remove the blood from the patient, it is separated and filtered to remove harmful material, then returned to the person, but there are few apheresis machines and most are occupied by elderly people; it is a very painful treatment and is only useful if the organs are not very necrotic, but most do not know and are already affected; they suffer pain and most attribute it to the lack of their medicines to work, now they will die before they notice it after a paralysis from which they are not saved.
Not even two months have passed and little by little I see more and more doses of food in the lunches: they are the rations sent by the government; we eat them because they are nutritious, since we don't have good food. I resigned myself. I no longer see my burritos or hamburgers, no fresh meat, no tacos, nothing but this horrible stuff that tastes like meat paste; you can cook it, you can do anything as long as you don't add water to it... how ironic. Today we see everyone drinking prepared drinks with undefined flavor (courtesy of the government) that we drink because there is nothing else to drink, water is killing us slowly and surely, that is what the hospital told us, that is what the government warns us... but nobody believed them; neither when the animals died nor when we ran out of plants, why should we? We all, to a greater or lesser extent, distrust the authorities, I have a warehouse full of bottled water... well, I had it because I only have a few liters left and then what...?
In pathology they discovered the problem, a new species of toxin that accumulated in our bodies for who knows how long. We are at the mortal limits, there is no filter that can take it away from us (except for the one I mentioned) the kidneys passively absorb it, turning blood into our enemy; Suddenly we discover that we cannot move, we slowly lose consciousness and believe me, I have seen it, one ends up paralyzed with terrible pain and mute, only the eyes show the agony, eyes that look comical in animals but cure constipation in humans.
I don't understand, how can we survive? Nobody tells us anything. There are police everywhere and we still don't know if it is good to buy the filters that the companies sell, at the hospital they say no... but I want to drink water, I can't stand the dryness in my throat; of course they give us something to drink, we would die dehydrated otherwise, every day we receive half a liter of serum but it is a sticky and brown liquid that tastes like a blow to the face, we drink it because we know perfectly well that when drinking water from the tap or contained in any drink we are signing our death warrant.
The suppliers recently came, apparently this liquid is also running out. They need more chemical specialists and assistants, my family recently left, they were all very healthy and ate organic vegetables... Some damn vegetables killed my family! And now just this. Looking to live for them, Leticia and Miranda, two women who agreed to live part of my existence, my wives, when the second one told me yes, that with my position the three of us could survive, it was the best day of my life... I worked so many days in the hospital based on medical serums and supplements that I could not die with; Nobody told me in the hospital, but I heard her jokes and comments, the worst was the closest: "she killed herself so that they could live and now the one who is alive is someone else.
"I know there is not much left to do, all the patients who arrive are terminal, their bodies give up and we simply make them as comfortable as possible... I do not understand how it was plausible to kill more than 90% of the plant and animal population, we have no left more than technology. We agonize and wait for a pill to get us out drinking in a couple of days… the pinnacle of the industry in the dead minds of my people.
After many attempts, today they accepted me to help in research to prevent the extinction of men. Madre Natura is the name of this new company, they all failed to filter out the toxin, no one could give anything purified, they made fun of all the filters and all chemicals, I don't know how but they even sneaked into the distillation processes, my interest is find her; I am a geneticist, I don't know how I will help but there are very few to do so. This factory welcomes me with a hopeless emptiness, there are not many specialists, in fact my profession is very far from what is necessary, machines and machines, security androids, heat detection weapons; It is a fortress of solitude.
I have been working here for three months now on the project assigned by Mother Nature, the mechanoids bring me food, the "delicious" snacks provided by the government are manufactured here: they are dried remains of dead animals without liquids, zooilems (someone at the hospital said that It was because in a movie from the past, "When Fate Catches Up With Us", they were made with chlorophyll and human flesh) made from animals and supplemented with vitamins and that's what it tastes like. A glass and four cookies are the only thing that gives me the strength to observe under the microscope.
When I arrived my orders were in the terminal: "develop peritoneal cells and fuse them with muscle tissue, we need them flexible and distended", they gave me some samples. With the equipment of these laboratories it is almost automated work, since they are development programs oriented to events, I only have to calculate protein levels of each culture and they measure temperature, nutrients and incubation time, at this step I have already achieved an elastic tissue that It lasts more than 20 years, maintained by the nutrients contained in the liquid we drink; which I was able to analyze because I had it in greater quantity. Truth be told, since they commissioned the project that was my goal, I just wanted to know more about the toxin and our livelihood, in a few words, I fell in love with the authors of the toxin, they were based here, their commission was such an ambitious project as despicable.
When I found out I finally understood why my father hated this civilization so much. He was a piece-rate programmer; a simple guy who used clean code and tried to instill it in me as a second career. Now, thanks to it I can see in the commands; In his commented lines I saw his hopes for an increase; It was the opportunity to achieve something, right father? A toxin that would reproduce everywhere, that would make a mockery of the plagues of the last millennium, the best business opportunity for deluded people to please their owners, idiots.
There they were, I imagine the scientists hunched over and I see the results of their tests in the security videos; The bacteria is his masterpiece: it poisons the blood and kills the body. But it is not found in the blood! This is only full of killer antibodies and necrotic red blood cells, which eliminate any possibility if a total blood cleansing is not carried out in the first two hours of ingestion; It also causes death in plant cells. I don't quite understand how they did it, but this toxin is stored in the cell walls and turns them into a death trap. Then the saviors arrived, people like me searching, in their case for a cure. In mine, a way to alleviate the disease, all motivated by managers who wanted one last big profit before sending everything to hell. They are millionaires and they wanted more money. Who understands them?
I already have everything compiled, my research and that of my
predecessors, there were more than a thousand specialists, money is a powerful magnet, although I don't think it will serve for long; These people have thought of everything, the liquid they sell is finite. They need more living beings to process it and unfortunately they underestimated the spread of this monster and it is in everything that people could drink or consume. Outside of what they sell, I don't think I have a chance of making people last long enough, it's not supposed to be that difficult, but it will change our structure a little. I know it will work, I try to get up from my seat and I realize... although I assumed that they would not let me, I never imagined that they would give me the toxin once they saw that my work is about to be finished, it's like they said: you feel numb and it hurts, it hurts a lot but no matter how much I push the air through my mouth nothing comes out, I don't see anything, I no longer do anything but immerse myself in a cold ink of oblivion.
I always felt that people who talked about phantom limbs were gullible and incapable of facing their loss, now I can only observe and use nerve endings to move hooks that are my arms. I'm in a huge harvest line; I am a meat boiler inside a container connected to my nervous system, that's how I have been since I woke up; I can't speak, only moan, two tones like the others (I can't help but think of 0 and 1 as the communication I have left) like the scientists responsible for the cure and the poison, like the construction staff, like those who they assembled the droids that poisoned and drugged me; Even those who supplied surgical material, thanks to my invention I can see swollen abdomens full of the precious liquid, everyone moans in code, everyone laments their fate... before falling I managed to pass the codes to a few gangsters related to my first wife. I know they won't let me down.
I'm still practicing with these little twelve centimeter hands that are used to manipulate and regulate a compact version of an apheresis, I don't know how they made it; most likely it is the responsibility of one of those in the back row who suffer the most. I have paralyzed my pain system, the hardware connected to my nervous system stimulates me to produce endorphins that make it bearable to know that my life is limited and the only thing I can do is measure the limits of my arms (which generations lack previous) drink from the tube, swell my belly and be drained so that the townspeople have water (or the closest thing to it).
The explosion knocked me out of my niche. I feel my skin tear and I see how the lights go out, by the silhouettes I recognize the action troops, "the tough ones", as Lety affectionately called them. They come for the plans; they know where they are because I told them and I also warned them where the owners were, the fact that the battle mechanoids are immobile (controlled by mental orders from arrogant people) and only the automatic detectors work, proof that no matter how rich they were they miss a blow to the head. I start to move away from the others milked, I roll slowly but surely, thanks to knowing the assembly system I was able to make my machine a little different, with a connection out of my world, I told them what they had to do using binary and how to share this that keeps humanity alive. I am their cylinder-shaped Prometheus, but I also gave them one last instruction, as I get lost in the darkness I hear the flamethrowers and a sequence of moans that I translate as thank you, I wanted to die too but I promised my wives and I survived, I killed some idiots and I found a better solution to our problem... not bad for the son of a programmer.