Post-everything

The first mutation came from the election night viewing party at the Navy Mess.

The secretary of housing and urban development put out a press release that he was fine after being the 3rd person from the party to test positive. He was exhibiting no worrying symptoms that made it necessary for hospital confinement. He was isolating at home and his wife, results still pending, was doing the same in their other home in Long Island. At a press conference, a reporter mentioned that generally, the second week may bring more troubling symptoms but the spokesperson, a tall blonde in a tight cream pant-suit with a slight midwestern twang ignored the comment and even rolled her eyes. She wasn’t being paid enough for this bullshit. She had looked forward to this- your time to shine, her mother always told her- but she was only fronting the press because the one with a higher rank than her was unavailable, and so was the person higher than that person and going all the way up tp Miss K The Mighty One.

Miss K was safely ensconced in her 6 mil modern Tudor manse in Spring Valley. Probably touching up her hair (and face) with an army of hairdressers and stylists who were only recently asked to wear masks. She hadn't been seen in the premises the day after the election when everyone woke up to find that the other guy had clawed himself out of oblivion and was now president-elect. Nobody really believed the boss’s ranting about fraud, cheating and dead people voting. They all knew. She did too. it was all everyone could talk about weeks before the election, even if you had to be very careful about who you discussed it with. She was honestly surprised that the public didn’t even pick up on it the moment the boss started building the narrative of illegal ballots. It was all planned because they knew it was going to be close, and it was. At the end of the day, they couldn’t close the gap and all hell broke loose.

When she got the memo telling her that she might front the press because so and so was away somewhere, she initially felt euphoric and then later, deflated. There was no opportunity in this at all- just 15 minutes and mainly covering health updates regarding the election night party where three attendees including the sec of housing had tested positive. She squirmed at the thought- she almost went to the viewing party when Ms-Higher-Up-Than-Her rang & asking her to come over to discuss something. All the main players were there including the boss’s campaign manager. This was her chance to show them that there was more to her than just being a former Ms Kansas USA title-holder.

But she didn’t even get inside. Ms-Higher-Up-Than-Her was outside the closed door on her phone and when she saw her approach, held out a finger for her to stop. She babbled on for about 10 minutes. Someone inside yelled Ohio. When she was done, she motioned for her to come closer and she was instructed about what was possibly going to happen in the next 48 hours. She crinkled her nose ever so slightly- Ms-Higher-Up-Than-Her’s breath smelled of cigarettes, wine (rose??) mixed with Chanel.

‘You’ll get a memo of course, in case you forget’ Ms-Higher-Up-Than-Her said, dismissing her with a wave before taking out her phone to make a call.

When she did get a memo three days and three positive cases later, she also got a confidential email from Ms-Higher-Up-Than-Her telling her that she WASN’T (this was typed all-caps) really at the party. That she never went inside. That she waited outside the door talking to someone on the phone until she had arrived, had their discussion, made another phone-call and left for the night. Uh-okay, she thought. Whatever. She was honestly over this whole virus thing. Mexico, she thought. Somewhere really warm. Is there travel to Mexico? Of course; she remembered the Mexican president’s visit and how friendly he was to the boss.

‘Is Mr. C concerned that in most cases, the onset of more dangerous symptoms happen in the 2nd week’, some guy from the Post asked. Didn't she already sort of answer this question, that Mr. C was fine and on his way to recovery?? And she wasn’t a doctor for Christ’s sake. Someone sort of asked another question (it wasn’t for her) so she just ignored the guy from the post and said yes, putting on that dazzling veneered smile that won her the title of Ms Kansas USA. Five more minutes of this & everything was going to be just fine.

(But it wasn’t. By Wednesday, the sec of housing & urban development started to cough persistently and violently and it wouldn’t stop so he rang 911. The reports after that were not clear, swept aside by a tide of fear and panic that arrived quickly and brutally. But the pattern was the same; the patient would go into an extended bout of paroxysmal coughing triggering cardiac arrest. Then about 10 to 15 minutes later, what was presumably a non-beating heart roars back to life. But the patient is neither conscious it seems nor really alive in the true sense of the word. The condition was feral and the body’s state in the first 48 hours could only be described as hyper-human regardless of the age or condition of the body. It was also contagious, passed on by bites. The driver of the ambulance that brought the sec of housing was oblivious of what was happening in the back; by the time they arrived at Walter Reed hospital, it disgorged a gaggle of contagion that quickly enveloped the greater Washington area within 24 hours.

It didn't help that the boss’ advisers- still tiptoeing around him- thought it was another piece of ghastly news spread by the fake media and put into effect a news blackout. By the time they realised that it was real - a livestream of a far-right rally in Virginia suddenly engulfed in hordes of infected ferals was broadcast on Fox- the infection had spread to North Carolina, New Jersey & New York.

The secret service flew the president-elect to a secret bunker on the West Coast as a hastily assembled cabinet grimly worked on the urgent task to formulate a plan of attack.

The boss, by now reeling with events that seemed even stranger than his election loss, managed to finally get on a chopper with his secret service agents and ordered his staff to go to his resort in Florida against their wishes. It’s fortified like Fort Knox and big, he screamed. We’ll be safe there! What he didn’t know was that in the midst of clearing out guests and non-essential workers, the mostly Cuban-American staff hid family members in the grounds for safety; two of them would later become infected).

Would you like another glass? She was nodding on & off, feeling perfectly content. Yes, please she replied to the stewardess who handed her a flute of champagne. She looked out the window, the horizon a very pale band of yellow. She couldn’t even remember what time she’d be arriving in Puerto Vallarta; she had left in a blur. Filing for leave was easier than she thought it would be; everyone was in a state of both panic and suspension that HR approved it without much thought. She was glad to leave all of that unpleasantness behind. I need to decompress, she told herself, to find some inner peace.

She had switched off her devices and vowed not to look at the news- she was done wth the goddamned news; her plane on its 40 hour plus course had left by the time the news blackout was lifted.

A new day, she thought looking out at the sunrise & tipping the glass to her lips. The champagne was beautifully crisp & cold..ahh the life..and then something seemed to catch, like there was a tiny, sharp prick to her throat. She coughed. The prick was now a stab and taken aback, the pain searing, she clutched at the back rest in front of her. Her eyes watering, her vision swimming there was only one primal thought- she needed to get rid of whatever was clutching at the inside of her throat. She coughed and coughed and for a second, she thought she found relief. But it was only the blankness of death. The worse was yet to come, but mercifully for Miss Kansas USA, she wouldn’t know any of it really.

Day 8: Lockdown (Writing Exercise: turn the following email exchange into some kind of story)

Ryan checks his watch- 9:30am and smiles realising he still had a full hour before the car comes to pick him up. Six – make it a full eight as Sarah has said, and that will be plenty of time. The helicopter- a CH-47F Chinook, the fastest in the world with maximum speeds of 310km/h- will be waiting in that hidden clearing in Awhitu.

Even without traffic, this will still be at over an hour’s drive. And the flight to Spirits Bay at top speed would be according to Ned, exactly an hour at full throttle. Coughing yet? Feverish even when you’ve had your favourite glass of 80-year old Scottish whiskey? This is the running joke with Ned, a hulking 6 foot 5 Irish-Samoan with the gentle disposition of his island forbears, but with a love of the drink inherited from his Irish father. Ned has been on the red circuit for a full 72 hours- red is when you’ve logged nearly 64,000kms with only two hour rests (if any) squeezed in there somewhere, stealthily shuffling members of the Faction between continents and within the European union. So far, none of the Faction leaders have been infected with the virus and if the communique was to be believed, the consequences if this happened would be swift and severe.

But for the lowly rank and file like themselves- and even if Ned was probably one of the best pilots in the world as well as a genius with an IQ of 170- who knew what the Faction would do. The virus was rewriting every rule in the book and he wonders how he would fare- a middle-aged Asian guy of modest if not average talents, put in charge of an isolated country in the Pacific with a population of less than 6 million.

He accepted the ruthlessness of this reality and of his fate because he knew that the end game was survival, at all costs, and the Faction was there to ensure that when everything that the public knows is there to protect them fails, they won’t. He could see his daughter’s face, his family’s in the Philippines, his friends…Camille? Failure is not an option.

He must have been musing far too long because his watch reminds him with an urgent alert that there is 15 more minutes before the driver arrives. He goes to the kitchen and in swift, precise movements unwraps the corned beef, puts it in the slow-cooker, drops golden syrup, cloves, onions (thank God there were leftover diced ones in the fridge) and vinegar as per Sarah’s instructions.

By the time he walks down the driveway dressed in cargo shorts and a black hoodie, the driver – in a bullet-proofed black Merc with diplomatic license plates- pulls up. They drive out in silence with only an occasional beep from the GPS tracker indicating that the local authorities have been informed why this imposing vehicle is going at least 20kph higher than the limit. The highway isn’t completely deserted-typical Kiwis, he thinks, though really, the situation isn’t as dire as the US or Italy. But he can’t really think this way, not yet. Hopefully, this rendezvous in Spirits Bay would be just as he is expecting it to be, an assessment and reassurance from the Faction that all was well in this isolated part of the Pacific. That life will go back to normal.

Arriving in Awhitu, he spies Ned waiting outside the chopper clad head to toe in leather that seems to have been poured over his body, his muscles rippling underneath the taut material. On his vape with no visible smoke coming out (who knew if the virus can be carried by vape smoke?), Ned gives him a big grin which he returns in kind; for once Ryan is relieved that their normal hugs is not possible. Ned’s hugs always feel like you were being swallowed alive by a really firm mattress.

‘Still alive big boy?’ Ryan calls out to him, wondering with a note of envy that Ned didn’t look at all like he had been flying all over the world for the past 72 hours. Ahh, youth! Ned is only 24 to his 44. Only four hours ago, Ned was in Australia touching base with Faction contacts in Sydney. Not really a talker, ‘all good mate’ is all Ned drawls out before effortlessly swinging his massive frame onto the pilot’s seat.

The chopper ascends almost noiselessly and quickly above the peninsula and even if he has seen this hundreds of times, the stunning beauty of New Zealand’s landscapes, one of the very few in the world left virtually unspoilt by man, never fails to make him wish that it would always stay this way. Let this country be safe, he prays.

True to Ned’s word, they reach Spirits Bay in exactly an hour. An isolated bay at the end of the Aupouri Peninsula near the northern tip of the North Island, Piwhane as the Maoris call it, is a sacred place and according to local legend, is the location where spirits of the dead gather to depart from this world to travel to their ancestral home or afterlife from a large old pōhutukawa tree above the bay.

There are hardly any blooming pōhutukawa trees there that he could see, but a large red object was easy to spot and for a moment, Ryan thinks he is hallucinating. Normally unperturbed by anything, Ned looks over to him, his eyes wide with fear; ahh youth, he was too young to know about Peregrine except in stories. But Ryan knows. He has seen this once- back in 2003 during the SARS outbreak. He had met Peregrine in the small Thai island of Koh Tarutao and it seemed mind-boggling how an aircraft could have landed on what was essentially a large sand-bar. But Peregrine was neither a person nor a craft; it was the Faction’s dreaded messenger system designed to deliver very urgent, and often catastrophic news. The craft that he saw in Thailand was a stealth and could hover and land vertically. The technology since 2003 has evolved and this one in the shape of something resembling a bat in flight definitely has all the bells and whistles, but one thing has remained the same- the red colour. No one knows for sure why the Faction picked red, but everyone knew it was deliberate. Red was the colour of death.

Ryan wills himself to step off the helicopter and in leaden steps, walks towards the Peregrine where the Messenger is already waiting- a young slender man with long blonde hair dressed in an expensive suit and dark glasses. Approaching him, Ryan sees that the Messenger couldn’t have been more than 17. Dramatic much, he thinks trying to make light of a moment that already feels as though it is a waking nightmare. In Koh Tarutao, the Messenger was an old Asian lady probably in her 70s and dressed in a silver cheongsam.

No words are exchanged as the Messenger hands him a black tablet with long thin fingers and walks back into the Peregrine. In no more than a minute, the Peregrine’s engines hum to life and Ryan has to step back as the thrusters push it up, expelling hot, invisible gas. It glistens for a moment above them, an angry slash of red against the blue sky before it pivots nose up and careens out of sight.

He turns the tablet face up and puts his thumb on the biometric reader. It opens and a sliver of laser light scans his eyes; he starts to read the document.

He doesn’t know how long he stands there on the grassy clearing until a huge hand gently on his shoulder nudges him out of his reverie. In the distance, he could hear the surf break and just around him, the song of birds. He looks at Ned’s face and doesn’t see the face of a physically imposing man who flies every manner of aircraft and could speak 4 languages fluently; he sees the face of one who has yet to see horror the likes of which he could only imagine. They thought they had ended this in 2003, that SARS was safely vanquished in a test tube in a secure facility in Asia. But they were wrong.

Ned didn’t have to ask him about what the message was. He begins to tell him everything and his voice is calm- as if he is already dead.

“It seems that the virus with the current death toll at 47,240 is not the real threat. Classified reports have reached the Faction that a cluster of infection, a family of 7 who recovered a month ago, have suddenly, inexplicably experienced a relapse. Three of those seven were at a medical facility for plasma donation studies when they started having convulsions. Death and paralysis happened almost instantaneously after that. Two minutes later, they were re-animated and according to the surveillance footage obtained remotely, had superhuman physical strength and aggression. They attacked and killed all but one of the 14 staff at the facility. It would seem that the virus which lies dormant and evading current testing hid its true nature- anabiosis; reanimation after death. The 13 staff were reanimated and the entire facility has been in a questionable status until more information is gathered on how to contain this. The complication however is this- four of the other family members who reside in other countries have all gone back home just before borders were closed two weeks ago. One has gone back to London, one to Germany and one to Japan..’Ryan pauses looking at Ned in the eye before continuing.

‘The fourth infected person arrived in New Zealand March 14..’

Currently Reading: Jesus' Son and a missing (American) president

Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson is as far removed from the Christian tradition as anything. It’s a collection of short-stories linked by a troubled narrator who is an addict. In one story, the narrator hitches a ride in a car he somehow knew before-hand was going to crash- supernatural prescience? Too much drugs?

There was a time in the 90s and all the way to the early 2000s when all I looked forward to on Christmas eve was to drink alcohol at friend’s houses. I started on my street and finished off at my best friend Eric’s before staggering back home and putting out the food 30 minutes before mid-night. Things changed when we all became adults. My parents had always been a team- left to their own devices, they would have coped happily whispering sweet-nothings to each other without having to worry about keeping up tradition for their adult children. Alcohol and the company of friends made the night more bearable.

But things swung back to how they were when the kids started to come- there was Matt and several years of Christmases when all the gifts under the tree were his; then Yanna but all too briefly because Al & Binky already lived abroad; then Toni and Jay’s kids.

Christmas is really about the children, no doubt about it. When Chini grows up, I think finally, I can have that Christmas I’ve always only recently, been thinking of having- to be alone, somewhere cold (or hot it wouldn't really matter), happily coping with just memories, and drinking tons of alcohol because this time, I’m actually happy at the thought that the holidays- unburdened by glossy memories of the past- is finally mine and mine alone..(does this make sense?).

THE PRESIDENT IS MISSING, by Bill Clinton and James Patterson. I remember one Christmas break when I read The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy and it affected me so deeply that I was in some weird funk for weeks. So never again, and this time, something you’d read with a popcorn in hand. I think this is the first novel of James Patterson’s that I’ve read- everything else I’ve probably watched as a movie. This is the kind of fiction that has brought this man over $750 million.

Repost: Where were you when the rapture happened?

September 4th, 2011
Remember Google+??? I remember wasting half a day at work, sneaking between open browser pages, looking up for a way to get invited. I eventually got an invite from my best friend and again spent half a day at work building it up.

So much fun, like being asked to spruce up an entire empty floor of some building with your, well, crap. Of course it was crap. What else could it possibly be, just a bunch of cutesy posed pictures (made up some faces on my Mac and edited out my jowl lines, my tired, baggy computer screen scarred eyes) random video links (wohoo! Hollywood Tuna)  and ephemeral flotsam and jetsam. Just the digitized short-hand really of the generation. 

A generation that's gone and disappeared.

And I certainly played well into the night when I got home. It was Cindy's mother's birthday and I had a very handy and dignified excuse- who the hell got drunk on a Monday???? I loaded a box of lemon-cheesecake cupcakes that my daughter Chloe baked for her grand-nana into Cindy's battered Holden.

'Put real lemon there dad, like they did on Top Chef.' Chloe just turned 9 and was trying to run away from her childhood faster than her stints at her school's cross-country races. "I'm sure your grand-nana would appreciate the lemon better on her gin and tonic sweetie..'

'Oh dad!' Mock adult disgust and falling over me for a kiss, her lips bitingly cold on my cheek. 'Where's your jacket hun, it's gonna get real cold.' And out of nowhere, she whips out my worn leather bomber jacket which she puts over some top and leggings on semi-adult legs. And it's my turn for mock-anger, 'oi!' I grunt before Cindy steps in as she's wont to, the only true time it seems for genuine affection, lightning quick snatches of it, before everything falls into the abyss of second mortgages, an immature job as she has always called it and too much Facebook instead of getting our freaks on. 

Like can we do it now, right here on the driveway as she sidles up to me, locking her hips against mine, my hands settling comfortably on the rise of her buttocks.

'Yeah, tell Elaine you're down with the flu, really down with it' I bite her lower lip gently and she bites back, her face a blur, the scent of something richly sweet like dark chocolate on her breath. 

'Uhmm..when we come back, promise...promise..'

Those were my wife's last words to me.

They pause down the driveway just before plunging into the darkened street as a light, misty rain falls. The car's interior light opens and I see Chloe, rummaging for her stuff at the back as usual. She tries to see me through the window, squeezes her eyes into slits, probably couldn't but waves nonetheless at what she believes to be her father still watching her drive away.

I was and it is the last and most painful memory of my daughter.

How it happened, I really don't know. There was no rumbling, no fireworks in the sky, no choir of angels announcing the ascension of the blessed and the eternal isolation of the damned.

I went back to my Google + account and thought, what a refreshing change. Empty; just me and digital quietude. I puttered around in the kitchen, made chapati and cumin meatballs in a Japanese curry sauce. 

I think it was about 10:30 pm but I'm just guessing. I remember looking out the lounge sliding doors, through the smear of condensation and the fog outside. The street lamp just outside the gate was on and it looked to me 'sadly luminous'. I remember that description, sadly luminous and I did feel, like a sudden cascade of cold water had fallen over me and a seemingly infinite, weepy sort of sadness.

And the funny thing was that I never did know what I was sad about at that moment....

(he sends a text message that remains unsent, sitting in his draftbox. There is no mobile service, just a slight, unnerving humming at the end of the line. Television services stop at 3am, radio follows soon after. And yet there is still power even as public lights burn on throughout the day and night. The internet still functions to some degree and when he checks for some clues online, one thing is chillingly clear- status updates on Facebook have ceased just before 10:30pm, GMT. He doesn't sleep for 48 hours straight and walks all the way to his mother in law's house in the suburb of St. Heliers, marveling at a cityscape captured frozen in its tracks even as the day rolls by. Cars are packed at Elaine's expansive driveway. Inside Cindy's Holden is his bomber jacket and he cries and cries clutching it, because it smells of him and not of Chloe..)

Snapchat

When Chini was little, she was fascinated with the app. Each time he came to visit and by the time he left, there would be a cache of photos of the two of them- all funny and endearing in that way that one looks at photos two or three decades later and thinking, 'my, how life had changed, how kids have grown'. And all of them- over 15,000 and taken with predictable regularity- preserved on the Cloud probably forever and ever. And of course, Chini clever as she was, soon learned on her own to take photos of herself without help and without prompting. Every child did, such were the days.

And then the technology leap-frogged in a way people didn't expect. One day, the app inventor thought that maybe it was time to take it to the next level. People had been flirting with hyper-realistic and enhanced images all the time that two-dimensionality had become boring and banal. 

Step out of the frame, the app inventor said, and at first, it was like a baby giraffe struggling to get up on its long, spindly legs. The materials that passed for skin either didn't have enough coagulation or enough adhesion. And the colours and textures- suede was easy enough (3,000 shades!), but crocodile skin with its lattice of armour-like osteoderms, or the smooth firmness of watermelon with the familiar flat styrations of green- how to replicate an endless variety as limitless as one's imagination?

The answer was the Cellular Codex that was secretly being used by the Chinese for the good part of a decade to 3D print practically anything they wanted. 

All it took was the threat of outing the Chinese government for printing agricultural and livestock products passed off as traditionally grown and reared to feed nearly half its population to acquire the technology- the app inventor assured them that he wasn't interested in using it to create stuff that could be eaten (there was virtually no research anyway on how safe it was, but it was probably proof enough that 900 million people eating the damned stuff were still up and about). The app inventor just wanted to create stuff that people could wear in a different way.

He remembered the year the beta came out, two weeks before Halloween. The costume shops were abandoned. Racks upon racks of latex masks, cardboard witches hats and superhero costumes were left unsold at department store aisles. All it took was choosing what you wanted to be, putting your head inside what looked like a vintage salon hard dryer and pressing the button on the app.

Looking back, the first generation of the app now seemed crude; the kooky disguises, the cartoon faces, the fantastical facial accoutrements of mythical creatures and beasts. It had quickly evolved of course into something else once people got bored of the mundane and the app inventor couldn't agree more. At this point, he was the richest person on earth and was building a home on the moon and couldn't care less about the raging social debates or the millions of electronic clucking that his people filtered and monitored every day. 

And so it came to be that governments had to regulate and legislate. No using the app when passing through airports and borders. CCTV had to evolve and be equipped with sensors that looked into and identified people on a DNA level. A black market sprung up (with the Chinese leading the pack) where the printing was bio-regenerating and it wasn't even that expensive. He got sick once and it was his kidney. The doctor's words were inoperable, acute and dialysis. But the doctor was also a mate and whispered 3BR (3D Bio-Regeneration). Sure, it would cancel his insurance permanently, but it was either believing traditional medicine and facing less than satisfactory results, or choosing this technological miracle- there seemed to be no other more appropriate word for it. 

Besides, he was never traditional to begin with. No family. Nothing to lose. 

And that was 30 years ago when he was 51. Today on some days, he could believe that he was 81. He would close his eyes for a few minutes and let his mind wander down the long dark corridors of the past, his path lit up by memories that were probably the only real things he had. Awake and looking at the mirror he sometimes struggled to believe the reflection; it was his face at 43 (which even then, could pass for 35 and a good one at that) and that's where it stayed. Indefinitely. 

Some people had gone too far and suffered horrific consequences; like you can't regenerate the entirety of your skin for example, or that brain cells were tricky, but that didn't stop people from trying. True beauty is on the inside he would remind himself and he stuck to this, as internal organs were regenerated keeping him at least in a state of statis. The science wasn't sure- it was too far mired in a social and ethical maelstrom as large (and permanent) as Jupiter's red spot.

But he couldn't care less as he had deliberately shied away from the internet and finally could say he had found the peace and rhythm he wanted- the (very) long ebb and flow of days spent reading, writing and drawing. He was 14 or 15 again, without a care in the world or a friend to his name and the truth was that you don't miss what you've never known or experienced. At least this was the state of his mind- most friends and family were either truly old or dead anyway.

He was alone and in this aloneness, the world seemed as clear and crisp as a sunny winter's day.

He dreaded it though when Chini came to visit and she always did with the regularity and devotion of his visits when she was a child. He dreaded it because he came face to face with the reminder that he could have chosen differently, and that now, looking at his reflection, he no longer had the heart nor the courage to change it. But Chini didn't judge, even as she was an Organic- untouched by the app, raised well by her parents who wisely resisted the technology, and now at 40, looking like them in every way, an amalgam of his sister's and brother-in-law's fine features as well as bearing the patina of her own journey in life as an architect and a mother to four accomplished children.

And yes, they go through their photos on some days- all 15,000 of them- with a glass of wine each and catching up on gossip, with updates on every one in the family.

But they have never taken another picture of them together.

That was the past and that man in the photos was no more.