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The Chant of the Sibyl
My palms were cold and sweaty as I broke from Saltarello's room and walked briskly down the hall to the elevators. I was overtaken with suspicion, even paranoia, for no reason I could finger except, perhaps, the basic sleep deprivation that had been plaguing me for days. The tracks through the MDRA building felt like miles as they swam by me.
Once I'd pinned myself back down in my office, I rushed for the phone, dialing Isolde with a stutter in my fingers. My heart sank when I finally reached her recording, and when I opened my mouth I didn't have much to say.
“Isolde... it's Ivan. I... ah... I received the file.” I began cautiously, rolling my eyes to the blank, slate-colored wall of the room as I leaned heavily on my drafting table. I could easily imagine myself looking (and sounding) like something of a madman. “Saltarello is running the information... I'll let you know what she turns up. Listen... how did you find out who this man was? It's the kind of break I can't help but worry about. Be careful. Call me back. Um, please. Thanks. Ah, goodbye.” The silence that punctuated that brief phone call was of that immense, deafening variety that is packaged exclusively with the sensation that your racing thoughts exceed your cramped and tired head space.
I sank into my chair and clutched at my temples, and responding to where the pressure of my elbows happened to be placed, the semi-intelligent screen of my drafting table lit softly, ready for my command. I stared down into the pool of light and tried to clear my head. Adrian James. The name meant absolutely nothing to me... other than the implications it had to my trained eye on paper (or, more appropriately, on screen). Still, it absolutely filled me with dread... regardless to the fact that this was a huge break in the investigation that we'd been performing for six weeks.
Alexander Maze had telephoned me a month and a half ago, cold. I'd been introduced to the man on business, invited down to the Association a few years prior when I received international honors for work I did concerning the ravaging aftermath of a misfired biological weapon in southeast Asia after the war ended. They made it their business – and now I knew why – to have functioning professional relationships with the 'top minds' in most branches of science, although MDRA's specialty was deeper into the development of artificial intelligence than any other group in the world. When I questioned him about that, he smiled at me and put it simply: Ante Branimir had given the machine a mind, but someone had to teach it.
When I'd recognized his voice on my recorder requesting that I get in touch with him immediately about an important work opportunity, I figured they were breeding a a microbiologist and it made me laugh that I'd probably be assisting in eliminating the need for my own profession among men. When I'd called, however, I got a substantially different story.
A small hospital in Ireland had turned up a patient with an infection that they'd never seen before. The physicians there could identify literally nothing about the pathogen. The director, an old friend of Maze's, had contacted the Mater Dei Research Association immediately, in the thought that they were the only facility that had the kind of funding and collective brainpower with all their spidering connections (like me, and there I was) to potentially be able to handle it.
That was before other people had started turning up with the infection. In Ireland, and elsewhere... the cases were developing in a bizarrely alinear fashion, not starting with a person or event, but blistering up on the face of the earth like some kind of macabre rash on the face of humanity.
I couldn't say no. It was obviously too important.
[One, two, buckle my shoe...]
“Who is Adrian James, Doctor Roque?” Saltarello asked as soon as I came into view of her visport, pressing my hand flat to the unfeeling side of the cabinet. Really, for a machine so unbelievably powerful, the technology used to house it wasn't very big... Saltarello had a room of her own because she was good at diagnosis. A patient could step into a hypersensitive chamber in the other side and be monitored full on... brain scans, blood pressure, breathing, heart rate, x-rays... Sally could do it all.
“He is a man,” I began, unsure of what to tell of our story and how to tell it, just now. “And honestly, Sal, beyond what you've told me about him...” My words were broken by a nervous sigh as I slid the disk Branimir had given me into the drive to transfer her. Not download, that didn't work. I was taking the program entirely. “We're going to Belgium to find out.” Bringing my eyes up to the screen, I smiled. “Goodnight.”
Saltarello's visport went dark. She hadn't answered me... I hoped obliquely that she wasn't angry with me. Remembering that she didn't really have the capability for anger didn't make me feel any more right about what I was doing, but the decision was made. I had to get on the move.
I had to pace my steps very carefully as I left the building to keep from breaking into a run. One foot in front of the other, my gait straining against my racing heartbeat. I unlocked my car, got in, keyed the ignition and rolled out of the parking lot like a perfectly calm, perfectly sane man who'd just been working a lot of late nights just like this one. Once I pulled out of sight of the angular facade of the MDRA building, I raced down the highway like Satan himself were on my rear bumper, white knuckled on the wheel.
There were no second thoughts. No heed to any kind of minor consequences to my credit or reputation as I flew into the studio that I knew I was never going to see again. My duffel was packed with the bare necessities, as it were, and I was quick to locate Lobster's mass in the small space. Snatching up the heavy feline by the scruff of the neck, I negotiated him into the soft carrier that I could take onto the long flight to Brugge. As I sealed him in, he let out one evil sounding howl that promised later retribution, and together we barreled away from there, never to return.
The frenetic mash through the airport security strainer and subsequent chain of flights from one hemisphere to the other, every mile bringing me closer to the nests of faceless disease and the promise of redemption that lay solely incarnated by Isolde Lindman, was more surreal than a Duchamp painting in a a hall of mirrors. I saw the faces of the condemned mingled with the faces of the men who would eventually be persuing me reflected in every single set of eyes that I met and, thusly, I avoided them. I knew that my stubborn attachment to the patterns on the floor, my apparent distraction and my dishevelled manner couldn't be doing anything but making me look highly suspicious, so that if anyone were to come asking after me anyone who'd had to process my journey could easily point the finger but my only concern was getting to Germany with myself and Lobster in tact. Evasive maneuvers could commence at that time, when I had Isolde and the rest of my brainpower to work with.
Lobster pretended to be good. I could feel him growling in the pit of his deep gut... much like me, he didn't sleep even for a minute, though I imagined we had different reasons for our seething restlessness. Maybe the unattractive cat had some concept of what his master and sole compatriot was up against? No, Lobster had never been high on the scale of compassionate. Sometimes, I even thought he harbored a secret, bemused loathing for the human race. It always entertained rather than offended me... obnoxious though he was, he was a canny thing. Some days, I thought, that maybe – if my suspicions of his unspoken reverie were correct – he was right.
My other precious cargo was in the breast pocket of my jacket... I was unreasonably aware of the light, rigid shape of the disk and, during the moments when I got very far away from the canned air, the persistent roar of the jet, I sometimes caught the equally fleeting and disturbing sensation that it had a heartbeat to mirror my own, one that was stronger and slower, cool and even like a swinging pendulum or sleeping empress.
The taxi cab spilled us out onto rain slicked streets outside of Isolde's Munich high-rise. I shrugged under the weight of my duffel bag... it was 2 o'clock in the morning, and I felt awful for keeping her up, or waking her, at this hour to let us in but it was the only set of flights I could get short notice. The pristine building with its clean, geometric styling was well-lit even in the rain, making it glow like some kind of glossy grail. My heart lifted slightly even as I reminded myself that this temporary oasis was not my final destination and I ascended the stairs to ring her flat.
“Come on up.” The woman's soft voice said, thinly, through the speaker. The click to signify that the door was ready for me was subtle but audible, and I nearly fell through it . Eighth floor, number 817... She was waiting for me outside the door to her apartment, leaning in without greeting to shoulder the weight of my duffel and pull me in.
In the center of the small, tidy room two sofas faced one another across a narrow table about the height of my knees. She sat on one and gestured at the other, the both of us separate knots of anxiety.
“Isolde, I'm so sorry, I had no where else to go...” I muttered to myself, and she waved her hand to stop me.
“I'd expect that you go nowhere else, Ivan. Are you alright?” Her eyes fell to the cat carrier in my lap, and I realized I should probably release my prisoner. Once I had worked the zipper about two thirds of the way around, Lobster erupted and fled from me. I went after him.
“Lobster, Lobster no! Here kitty! Come here, Lobster!” He circled Isolde's seat and evaded me as I went to my knees to catch him. Giving up after a moment, I slithered back in retreat and found Isolde laughing at me, probably rightly so.
“I've been made an exile by my own family.” I said petulantly, meeting Lobster's glare from around the far corner of the sofa. “And it's a family of one, external to myself!” When he was convinced I was no longer giving chase – how easily I had given up – he came a little further around and allowed Isolde to collect him up onto her lap, where he purred at an obnoxiously deliberate volume. The next part of my tirade was directed at the cat. “This is not fair to do to me! I thought we were in this together!”
“Be kind, Ivan, he's had as hard a trip as you have.” Isolde babied that demon, completely innocent to his devious was. I sighed and let my shoulders drop, abruptly feeling the full weight of my exhaustion.
“Thank you, so much, for this... you have no idea... I don't... I don't even know what I would have done.”
It was her turn to sigh, burying her fingertips in the deep fur around Lobster's grey throat. “I'm more concerned about what we're going to do now, because I still don't have any ideas. That cabinet that doctor Branimir sent is here... but I think I'm going to have to run it down at our building, or maybe in a lockout somewhere.”
“That would be best.” I said. “I can make the arrangements tomorrow.” Commencing evasive maneuvers. I didn't want to lead them straight to Isolde's home, if they were going to somehow be able to trace Saltarello's signature from a world away. It was unlikely, but I was despairingly conscious of the fact that I probably didn't have any concept of the full extent of MDRA's capabilities.
Wordcount as of November 3: 6167 (I barely made it tonight)
Once I'd pinned myself back down in my office, I rushed for the phone, dialing Isolde with a stutter in my fingers. My heart sank when I finally reached her recording, and when I opened my mouth I didn't have much to say.
“Isolde... it's Ivan. I... ah... I received the file.” I began cautiously, rolling my eyes to the blank, slate-colored wall of the room as I leaned heavily on my drafting table. I could easily imagine myself looking (and sounding) like something of a madman. “Saltarello is running the information... I'll let you know what she turns up. Listen... how did you find out who this man was? It's the kind of break I can't help but worry about. Be careful. Call me back. Um, please. Thanks. Ah, goodbye.” The silence that punctuated that brief phone call was of that immense, deafening variety that is packaged exclusively with the sensation that your racing thoughts exceed your cramped and tired head space.
I sank into my chair and clutched at my temples, and responding to where the pressure of my elbows happened to be placed, the semi-intelligent screen of my drafting table lit softly, ready for my command. I stared down into the pool of light and tried to clear my head. Adrian James. The name meant absolutely nothing to me... other than the implications it had to my trained eye on paper (or, more appropriately, on screen). Still, it absolutely filled me with dread... regardless to the fact that this was a huge break in the investigation that we'd been performing for six weeks.
Alexander Maze had telephoned me a month and a half ago, cold. I'd been introduced to the man on business, invited down to the Association a few years prior when I received international honors for work I did concerning the ravaging aftermath of a misfired biological weapon in southeast Asia after the war ended. They made it their business – and now I knew why – to have functioning professional relationships with the 'top minds' in most branches of science, although MDRA's specialty was deeper into the development of artificial intelligence than any other group in the world. When I questioned him about that, he smiled at me and put it simply: Ante Branimir had given the machine a mind, but someone had to teach it.
When I'd recognized his voice on my recorder requesting that I get in touch with him immediately about an important work opportunity, I figured they were breeding a a microbiologist and it made me laugh that I'd probably be assisting in eliminating the need for my own profession among men. When I'd called, however, I got a substantially different story.
A small hospital in Ireland had turned up a patient with an infection that they'd never seen before. The physicians there could identify literally nothing about the pathogen. The director, an old friend of Maze's, had contacted the Mater Dei Research Association immediately, in the thought that they were the only facility that had the kind of funding and collective brainpower with all their spidering connections (like me, and there I was) to potentially be able to handle it.
That was before other people had started turning up with the infection. In Ireland, and elsewhere... the cases were developing in a bizarrely alinear fashion, not starting with a person or event, but blistering up on the face of the earth like some kind of macabre rash on the face of humanity.
I couldn't say no. It was obviously too important.
[One, two, buckle my shoe...]
“Who is Adrian James, Doctor Roque?” Saltarello asked as soon as I came into view of her visport, pressing my hand flat to the unfeeling side of the cabinet. Really, for a machine so unbelievably powerful, the technology used to house it wasn't very big... Saltarello had a room of her own because she was good at diagnosis. A patient could step into a hypersensitive chamber in the other side and be monitored full on... brain scans, blood pressure, breathing, heart rate, x-rays... Sally could do it all.
“He is a man,” I began, unsure of what to tell of our story and how to tell it, just now. “And honestly, Sal, beyond what you've told me about him...” My words were broken by a nervous sigh as I slid the disk Branimir had given me into the drive to transfer her. Not download, that didn't work. I was taking the program entirely. “We're going to Belgium to find out.” Bringing my eyes up to the screen, I smiled. “Goodnight.”
Saltarello's visport went dark. She hadn't answered me... I hoped obliquely that she wasn't angry with me. Remembering that she didn't really have the capability for anger didn't make me feel any more right about what I was doing, but the decision was made. I had to get on the move.
I had to pace my steps very carefully as I left the building to keep from breaking into a run. One foot in front of the other, my gait straining against my racing heartbeat. I unlocked my car, got in, keyed the ignition and rolled out of the parking lot like a perfectly calm, perfectly sane man who'd just been working a lot of late nights just like this one. Once I pulled out of sight of the angular facade of the MDRA building, I raced down the highway like Satan himself were on my rear bumper, white knuckled on the wheel.
There were no second thoughts. No heed to any kind of minor consequences to my credit or reputation as I flew into the studio that I knew I was never going to see again. My duffel was packed with the bare necessities, as it were, and I was quick to locate Lobster's mass in the small space. Snatching up the heavy feline by the scruff of the neck, I negotiated him into the soft carrier that I could take onto the long flight to Brugge. As I sealed him in, he let out one evil sounding howl that promised later retribution, and together we barreled away from there, never to return.
The frenetic mash through the airport security strainer and subsequent chain of flights from one hemisphere to the other, every mile bringing me closer to the nests of faceless disease and the promise of redemption that lay solely incarnated by Isolde Lindman, was more surreal than a Duchamp painting in a a hall of mirrors. I saw the faces of the condemned mingled with the faces of the men who would eventually be persuing me reflected in every single set of eyes that I met and, thusly, I avoided them. I knew that my stubborn attachment to the patterns on the floor, my apparent distraction and my dishevelled manner couldn't be doing anything but making me look highly suspicious, so that if anyone were to come asking after me anyone who'd had to process my journey could easily point the finger but my only concern was getting to Germany with myself and Lobster in tact. Evasive maneuvers could commence at that time, when I had Isolde and the rest of my brainpower to work with.
Lobster pretended to be good. I could feel him growling in the pit of his deep gut... much like me, he didn't sleep even for a minute, though I imagined we had different reasons for our seething restlessness. Maybe the unattractive cat had some concept of what his master and sole compatriot was up against? No, Lobster had never been high on the scale of compassionate. Sometimes, I even thought he harbored a secret, bemused loathing for the human race. It always entertained rather than offended me... obnoxious though he was, he was a canny thing. Some days, I thought, that maybe – if my suspicions of his unspoken reverie were correct – he was right.
My other precious cargo was in the breast pocket of my jacket... I was unreasonably aware of the light, rigid shape of the disk and, during the moments when I got very far away from the canned air, the persistent roar of the jet, I sometimes caught the equally fleeting and disturbing sensation that it had a heartbeat to mirror my own, one that was stronger and slower, cool and even like a swinging pendulum or sleeping empress.
The taxi cab spilled us out onto rain slicked streets outside of Isolde's Munich high-rise. I shrugged under the weight of my duffel bag... it was 2 o'clock in the morning, and I felt awful for keeping her up, or waking her, at this hour to let us in but it was the only set of flights I could get short notice. The pristine building with its clean, geometric styling was well-lit even in the rain, making it glow like some kind of glossy grail. My heart lifted slightly even as I reminded myself that this temporary oasis was not my final destination and I ascended the stairs to ring her flat.
“Come on up.” The woman's soft voice said, thinly, through the speaker. The click to signify that the door was ready for me was subtle but audible, and I nearly fell through it . Eighth floor, number 817... She was waiting for me outside the door to her apartment, leaning in without greeting to shoulder the weight of my duffel and pull me in.
In the center of the small, tidy room two sofas faced one another across a narrow table about the height of my knees. She sat on one and gestured at the other, the both of us separate knots of anxiety.
“Isolde, I'm so sorry, I had no where else to go...” I muttered to myself, and she waved her hand to stop me.
“I'd expect that you go nowhere else, Ivan. Are you alright?” Her eyes fell to the cat carrier in my lap, and I realized I should probably release my prisoner. Once I had worked the zipper about two thirds of the way around, Lobster erupted and fled from me. I went after him.
“Lobster, Lobster no! Here kitty! Come here, Lobster!” He circled Isolde's seat and evaded me as I went to my knees to catch him. Giving up after a moment, I slithered back in retreat and found Isolde laughing at me, probably rightly so.
“I've been made an exile by my own family.” I said petulantly, meeting Lobster's glare from around the far corner of the sofa. “And it's a family of one, external to myself!” When he was convinced I was no longer giving chase – how easily I had given up – he came a little further around and allowed Isolde to collect him up onto her lap, where he purred at an obnoxiously deliberate volume. The next part of my tirade was directed at the cat. “This is not fair to do to me! I thought we were in this together!”
“Be kind, Ivan, he's had as hard a trip as you have.” Isolde babied that demon, completely innocent to his devious was. I sighed and let my shoulders drop, abruptly feeling the full weight of my exhaustion.
“Thank you, so much, for this... you have no idea... I don't... I don't even know what I would have done.”
It was her turn to sigh, burying her fingertips in the deep fur around Lobster's grey throat. “I'm more concerned about what we're going to do now, because I still don't have any ideas. That cabinet that doctor Branimir sent is here... but I think I'm going to have to run it down at our building, or maybe in a lockout somewhere.”
“That would be best.” I said. “I can make the arrangements tomorrow.” Commencing evasive maneuvers. I didn't want to lead them straight to Isolde's home, if they were going to somehow be able to trace Saltarello's signature from a world away. It was unlikely, but I was despairingly conscious of the fact that I probably didn't have any concept of the full extent of MDRA's capabilities.
Wordcount as of November 3: 6167 (I barely made it tonight)