The Chant of the Sibyl
Nov. 2nd, 2007 10:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crowsIt did not become apparent what degree of a miracle it was that I made it home alive until the anxious rattle of my telephone startled me out of a shallow state of unconsciousness. I was still dressed, sprawled in the tangle of my bedsheets, half-smothered by the cat, which had appointed himself the majority of my pillow. I fumbled for the receiver, collapsing onto my back with barely enough awareness to croak my name.
"Hello, Ivan? Sorry to wake you." On the other end of the phone, Isolde's linen-cool and musical tones drifted, sounding far away.
"Yes? No, I have to be up anyway, it's fine." I rubbed my eyes... my skin felt oily and sleep-slick.
"Listen, I got some new data from the medical center in Bruges that I think you should really take a look at as soon as possible. I'm having them sent down to Mater Dei to your attention right now."
"You've been spying on my social calendar again." I grunted, rolling out of bed post displacing an equally groggy feline. "I've got a date with Sally first thing."
"You'll look for it right away, won't you?" Urgency threaded through Isolde's impeccably proper British accent, making my pause.
"Yes, yes Isolde yes. I'll find it as soon as I get in."
"OK. I've got to go, let me know what you make of it."
"Sure..." The line went dead on the other end, leaving me alone and engulfed in the silence of my apartment. Hungry, Lobster bashed into my leg.
MDRA awake was certainly more inviting than the building's nightly dormancy. Faces - familiar and otherwise - smiled and greeted me as I shrugged into my lab coat while juggling a travel tumbler of coffee. The data that Isolde had sent me an hour earlier was flagged with high importance and, thusly, found its way to my hands very quickly once my badge started being picked up by the scanners posted at every door to the building. I took the diskette downstairs and slipped it into my workstation, the drafting table's surface instantly brightening to a touch-screen that would allow me to quickly page through the information bundled therein.
"Parse." I said flatly to the air, watching the motes of information coalesce into the particular kind of contact-trace that Isolde and I had been working in tandem with, half a world away from one another. They weren't quite what I'd had on paper - I still liked working with the vellum because it helped me organize my thoughts substantially, and gave me a third dimension of tools to work with while I was analyzing. Secondly, I found that when it came time to present things to other people, high-tech and flashy could get less information across because folks get so distracted with the effects that the message loses clarity. This, however, I hadn't had the privilege of ruining anyone's life with yet.
My throat made an unbidden noise of constriction as the data began to come into focus. This was a different pattern than the one's weed been seeing... in Bruges, in Sarnia, in Madagascar... anywhere.
This was a more conventional trace. A pattern I recognized, with a nucleus beginning to congeal in a tight knot of infection toward the center. Without thinking, I punched my accusing fingertip down into the center of the dog-pile as if I could snuff out the little hell-mouth like one would a hapless, exhausted insect. Responding to the programmed command, rather than my ire, the screen blew up the the cluster to give me a clearer view of the data points contained therein. Most of these were new, incomplete... people whose infection status Isolde didn't know for sure.
My finger was still on the screen, and it was zooming me ever toward the nucleus of the little tempest. As if head to head with a train, I was heading directly for the core of the issue. It would be one big, red spot that signified the center, the beginning, of the sickness in Bruges that had already claimed almost a score of lives.
The tiny ding from the table's on-board speaker was like a slap to the face. There was a name there, swimming in that pool of red light. Isolde knew who he was.
Like a man possessed, I was striding at full-steam through the corridors of the Association, heading up to Saltarello's room with the diskette clutched in my fingers, as if somehow he would slip away from me since I'd taken my eyes off of the scrap of information I had toward his identity. Compulsively, I pulled the door shut behind me when I realized the small chamber was empty.
"Doctor Roque." Saltarello's unerringly pleasant female voice greeted me; she knew who I was from my badge, without my having to show my face to the visport.
"We found something, Sal." I breathed, slipping her the disk. "I need you to find somebody for me. Err, find out things. About them."
"What kind of things, Doctor?" She beamed helpfully.
"Anything. Anything at all."
[There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza dear Liza...]
"So how long have you known Doctor Lindman?" Alexander's voice was calculatedly cool behind me as I swung my jacket on. I turned to regard him sidelong, hanging up my lab coat with the rest of the sterile, argent phantoms of doctors.
"Since we were students... she was my high school prom date." I smirked at that memory. "Microbiology lab partner. I guess that's how we've stayed in touch all these years... we've always been in the field."
"I see..." He replied, feigning nonchalance.
I stopped in my tracks, fixing him with a hard look. This was more to do with the clash of words we'd had earlier than my history with Doctor Lindman. As if I were having some kind of hallucination, I could see something resolving on the other man's fine-featured face. As if the words were written there, I was beginning to understand.
"You're going to stop us from telling the authorities in Bruges."
"There's no sense in it, Ivan." He swept a powerful step toward me, and I found myself falling back. I was taller than Alex Maze, but he had an intensity about his person that was so tangible it made my skin ache. The glare of his eyes - glacier blue, made even more severe by the slick frame of shoulder-length black hair - was heavy on my own. "It's only going to make your work harder. They'll want to take it out of your hands."
I was dumb-struck, struggling for words like the drowning struggle for air. "I... it has to be done... people have to know now that we're beginning to have the answers."
"Ivan," I winced as he repeated my name, backing away another step. "You're one of the top minds in epidemiology, in the world. I know how long you've been studying this. I recognize your dedication.
"I'm not sure what you're getting at."
"Isn't this the break you've been waiting your whole life for? As a doctor, as a head in major science in the world? A case like this... doesn't even come once in a lifetime, Ivan."
Once again I found my mouth cottony as I moved my tongue around and tried to speak.
"Alexander... this is not my dream. It's my nightmare... people are dying out there... it goes beyond us both."
He was advancing on me now, and I was retreating toward the door. Feeling the coldness that radiated through it behind me, as if the darkness had reached a beckoning finger in to tug my sleeve and cue my exit, I turned to push the door open and end this conversation. Maze shouted after me a moment later.
"I will not let you plunge this corporation into total anarchy!" His voice died on the pavement behind me as I walked briskly to my car, shut myself in, and locked the doors before starting the engine to drown the echo of his voice in my ears. He was a powerful man, I told myself. I was right to fear him.
Word count as of November 2: 4,093
"Hello, Ivan? Sorry to wake you." On the other end of the phone, Isolde's linen-cool and musical tones drifted, sounding far away.
"Yes? No, I have to be up anyway, it's fine." I rubbed my eyes... my skin felt oily and sleep-slick.
"Listen, I got some new data from the medical center in Bruges that I think you should really take a look at as soon as possible. I'm having them sent down to Mater Dei to your attention right now."
"You've been spying on my social calendar again." I grunted, rolling out of bed post displacing an equally groggy feline. "I've got a date with Sally first thing."
"You'll look for it right away, won't you?" Urgency threaded through Isolde's impeccably proper British accent, making my pause.
"Yes, yes Isolde yes. I'll find it as soon as I get in."
"OK. I've got to go, let me know what you make of it."
"Sure..." The line went dead on the other end, leaving me alone and engulfed in the silence of my apartment. Hungry, Lobster bashed into my leg.
MDRA awake was certainly more inviting than the building's nightly dormancy. Faces - familiar and otherwise - smiled and greeted me as I shrugged into my lab coat while juggling a travel tumbler of coffee. The data that Isolde had sent me an hour earlier was flagged with high importance and, thusly, found its way to my hands very quickly once my badge started being picked up by the scanners posted at every door to the building. I took the diskette downstairs and slipped it into my workstation, the drafting table's surface instantly brightening to a touch-screen that would allow me to quickly page through the information bundled therein.
"Parse." I said flatly to the air, watching the motes of information coalesce into the particular kind of contact-trace that Isolde and I had been working in tandem with, half a world away from one another. They weren't quite what I'd had on paper - I still liked working with the vellum because it helped me organize my thoughts substantially, and gave me a third dimension of tools to work with while I was analyzing. Secondly, I found that when it came time to present things to other people, high-tech and flashy could get less information across because folks get so distracted with the effects that the message loses clarity. This, however, I hadn't had the privilege of ruining anyone's life with yet.
My throat made an unbidden noise of constriction as the data began to come into focus. This was a different pattern than the one's weed been seeing... in Bruges, in Sarnia, in Madagascar... anywhere.
This was a more conventional trace. A pattern I recognized, with a nucleus beginning to congeal in a tight knot of infection toward the center. Without thinking, I punched my accusing fingertip down into the center of the dog-pile as if I could snuff out the little hell-mouth like one would a hapless, exhausted insect. Responding to the programmed command, rather than my ire, the screen blew up the the cluster to give me a clearer view of the data points contained therein. Most of these were new, incomplete... people whose infection status Isolde didn't know for sure.
My finger was still on the screen, and it was zooming me ever toward the nucleus of the little tempest. As if head to head with a train, I was heading directly for the core of the issue. It would be one big, red spot that signified the center, the beginning, of the sickness in Bruges that had already claimed almost a score of lives.
The tiny ding from the table's on-board speaker was like a slap to the face. There was a name there, swimming in that pool of red light. Isolde knew who he was.
Like a man possessed, I was striding at full-steam through the corridors of the Association, heading up to Saltarello's room with the diskette clutched in my fingers, as if somehow he would slip away from me since I'd taken my eyes off of the scrap of information I had toward his identity. Compulsively, I pulled the door shut behind me when I realized the small chamber was empty.
"Doctor Roque." Saltarello's unerringly pleasant female voice greeted me; she knew who I was from my badge, without my having to show my face to the visport.
"We found something, Sal." I breathed, slipping her the disk. "I need you to find somebody for me. Err, find out things. About them."
"What kind of things, Doctor?" She beamed helpfully.
"Anything. Anything at all."
[There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza dear Liza...]
"So how long have you known Doctor Lindman?" Alexander's voice was calculatedly cool behind me as I swung my jacket on. I turned to regard him sidelong, hanging up my lab coat with the rest of the sterile, argent phantoms of doctors.
"Since we were students... she was my high school prom date." I smirked at that memory. "Microbiology lab partner. I guess that's how we've stayed in touch all these years... we've always been in the field."
"I see..." He replied, feigning nonchalance.
I stopped in my tracks, fixing him with a hard look. This was more to do with the clash of words we'd had earlier than my history with Doctor Lindman. As if I were having some kind of hallucination, I could see something resolving on the other man's fine-featured face. As if the words were written there, I was beginning to understand.
"You're going to stop us from telling the authorities in Bruges."
"There's no sense in it, Ivan." He swept a powerful step toward me, and I found myself falling back. I was taller than Alex Maze, but he had an intensity about his person that was so tangible it made my skin ache. The glare of his eyes - glacier blue, made even more severe by the slick frame of shoulder-length black hair - was heavy on my own. "It's only going to make your work harder. They'll want to take it out of your hands."
I was dumb-struck, struggling for words like the drowning struggle for air. "I... it has to be done... people have to know now that we're beginning to have the answers."
"Ivan," I winced as he repeated my name, backing away another step. "You're one of the top minds in epidemiology, in the world. I know how long you've been studying this. I recognize your dedication.
"I'm not sure what you're getting at."
"Isn't this the break you've been waiting your whole life for? As a doctor, as a head in major science in the world? A case like this... doesn't even come once in a lifetime, Ivan."
Once again I found my mouth cottony as I moved my tongue around and tried to speak.
"Alexander... this is not my dream. It's my nightmare... people are dying out there... it goes beyond us both."
He was advancing on me now, and I was retreating toward the door. Feeling the coldness that radiated through it behind me, as if the darkness had reached a beckoning finger in to tug my sleeve and cue my exit, I turned to push the door open and end this conversation. Maze shouted after me a moment later.
"I will not let you plunge this corporation into total anarchy!" His voice died on the pavement behind me as I walked briskly to my car, shut myself in, and locked the doors before starting the engine to drown the echo of his voice in my ears. He was a powerful man, I told myself. I was right to fear him.
Word count as of November 2: 4,093