Besides, the Sweepers did not seem to be of use to anyone, beyond the
task they performed. And after
working a full shift, they were not even of use to themselves. Sometimes
she was so mentally and
physically spent that she would barely make it through the evening
recalibration before falling asleep --
only to wake up feverish a few hours later. Tonight was no exception.
It hurt so much to breathe, let alone
cough or yawn. She had trained herself to take short, even breaths,
because any sudden or deep intake
sent a stabbing sensation throughout her chest. She couldn't even remember
the last time she felt healthy.
It was certainly sometime before she received that notice on her monitor:
The Federal Medical
Management and Research Association has identified a particular segment
of your DNA
that indicates immunity to BH-247XN30. This immunity merits a rarity of
5 on
the Milton Scale,
and has been identified in only .000014% of the population. Less than 5%
of
the same have
been randomly selected to participate in Tour 598E that begins
1645/28/07/2048…
She had only vaguely heard of these Tours up until that point. They
were of the vicious rumor variety,
much like the perpetual threat of a comet-Earth collision. After she
received the notice, she accessed the
information site for the Tours. The laws governing them had been implemented
1022/03/05/2045, almost
three years earlier. When she checked her voting account, she discovered
that she had even submitted her
approval for the laws. That was the problem with having every referendum
presented on the display --
sometimes she felt too lazy to read the attached files, and just touched
the Accept code for anything that
seemed remotely benign.
Now that she was actually involved in a Tour, she suspected that many
people did the same thing. It was
hard to guess at individual motivations or behaviors anymore, with
everyone in their own chamber and
very little human interaction. That might explain why the horrible
Tours went unnoticed. Based on her
calculations, only 240 people out of over 350 million had been selected
for this particular Tour. With the
lack of physical contact between people, one hundred times that many
people could just disappear without
anyone noticing. Who knew, maybe some of the people she had been "communicating"
with did not really
exist, or maybe they were compilations of several different people.
Reality had become virtual reality, not
the other way around, and she was starting to doubt all of her previous
conceptions of fact. Certainly
working on the Tour could skew your mental process. Along with all
of your physical functioning, she
thought wryly, as she tried to stifle a cough.
She was pretty ill, but she was better off than most people were. Especially
Duro, who did not look like he
would last through the end of the week. She passed him on her way to
the Recalibration Room, where
everyone was required to endure a complete exam and have all of their
fluids and chemical levels adjusted
twice each day. That is when they were also given several strips to
place at certain pressure points. She
was quite sure that drugs were being administered through these strips,
but the possibility that they might
be painkillers made her too scared not to use them. If Prozac4 had
been available, she certainly would
have taken that as well. Tonight she dutifully placed the strips in
the slots of her worksuit and began to
weave her way through the people lying on the ground who were too tired
or too sick to make it to their
vault. After she reached hers, she barely had time to crawl in the
cavity before she fell asleep.
Morning arrived with the usual sensation of her body being rotated into
an upright position. Then she
changed into a fresh worksuit and reported to the Recalibration Room.
She was assigned to a particular
area of the zone, along with several other people. It would not be
accurate to say that they were a team
because they only worked in the same proximity without ever really
interacting. They were all called
Sweepers, a name whose origins mystified her, but it seemed to fit
because of all of the dust.
Today she was in Zone L5, which was particularly difficult. She noticed
that all of the people assigned to
this zone were the healthiest members of the Tour. With as poorly as
she felt, it was ironic that she was
considered a member of this group. She was beginning to wonder if anyone
really was immune to the
biohazard. Maybe their DNA only represented the closest possibility
of immunity for BH-247XN30, or
whatever it was. She wasn't even sure if the biohazard was the grey
dust or the organisms that they spent
so much time cultivating.
******
She had completed her Tour more than a year ago, but she could still
taste the dust and she was far more
vulnerable to viruses. Ever since she came back, she had not known
what to make of the whole situation.
It was a miracle that she actually survived. The greater miracle was
that no one really cared. No one cared
that she was back, and no one cared that she had endured something
terrible. At least, those were the
responses she received through her display. Nothing was believable,
and she did not know what was
genuine anymore. Not that she ever did, apparently. She had worked
as a Sweeper for one hundred and
sixteen days before she discovered what the Tour was really about.
By that time, her health had deteriorated further. Duro had expired
a few days earlier, and several more
people who were working in L5 were reassigned to less densely polluted
zones. Each day she was
transported to L5 with fewer people, until there were only seven that
were regularly assigned there. She
began to recognize these few people, and even knew some of their names.
Mer seemed to be the most
aggressive of the seven. He actually spoke a few times, although he
never looked at anyone directly.
Evidently, he knew something about the organisms and the dust. The
organisms were officially called
BIO76, but the Sweepers called them Pods. They were shaped like a tripod
and stood only a few
decimeters tall. She wasn't exactly sure if they were plant or animal,
but they seemed to generate this dust
at an alarming rate. Otherwise, they appeared fairly inactive, so she
did not fear walking among them.
That lack of fear, combined with her health, led her too close one time.
She had been coughing a lot that
morning and her fever began several hours earlier than normal. Work
was becoming exhausting and she
was not paying attention to where she was wandering. Almost before
she stepped directly into a Pod, Mer
grabbed her arm.
"You know, these things are dangerous," he said roughly. "Always stay a meter away from the Pods."
After she recovered from the shock of another person speaking to her,
she asked him why they were so
dangerous.
"Because they are not natural," he said. "And the dust is more potent closer to the Pods."
"What do you mean, have they been created by people?" she asked him.
"Not exactly. They are created of people," he answered. "The government
has been working on alternate
forms of technology ever since the Silicon Plateau -- when the silicon
chips were saturated and technology
could progress no further."
"So they turned to humans? How does that work? And why are they tripods?"
"I'm not sure. It has something to do with nerve tissue. I volunteered
for the Tour because I wanted to
find out more about it. I work for FirstTECH. We had proposed a similar
technology, although we had
never intended to use humans. The Department of Technological Advancement
denied our proposal.
Shortly afterward, we found out the government was working on such
a project, only with humans.
Evidently the byproduct of these Pods is so hazardous that only a small
percentage of the population has a
minimal chance of surviving exposure. My company tested absolutely
everyone, including our support
staff, and I was the only one who had this potential immunity. So we
'arranged' for me to be selected."
"Lucky you. I received a notice on my display and was not given a chance
to decline. If I had any idea
what this would involve, I certainly would not have volunteered like
you did."
"There are ways to make it more bearable," he said. "My company gave
me some medicine before I came
here. It was developed on short notice, but it helps keep me healthier
than most people. I will bring some
for you tomorrow. Now we should get back to work."
She was so grateful that she had actually talked to someone, and knew
more about the Tour. She had
become addicted to information through her display, and all of the
secrecy surrounding the Tour was
almost impossible to endure. At the evening recalibration, he brought
her the medicine as promised, and he
told her a little more about what the government planned to do with
the Pods.
She was not sure if it was because of the human interaction or the medicine
he gave her, but the next
morning she felt a lot better and had hopes for surviving the Tour.
She looked forward to seeing Mer and
learning more about the technology. After her recalibration, she waited
with the others to be assigned to a
zone. She knew, of course, that she would be in L5, along with Mer.
However, Mer was assigned to L6 --
a zone that had not existed the day before. That was the last she ever
saw of him.
******
Now that she had completed the Tour, she ran several searches for FirstTECH,
and came up with
nothing. The information site for the Tours no longer existed, either.
And when she checked her voting
account, she had been an active member of the democracy for the past
five months -- approving every
referendum that came across the monitor.