would be a Tourist Information Centre, something with detailed maps of the city.… Of course, they don’t make maps to help you find those places, but eventually I came across a signpost pointing to one – Rot only partially obscuring the letters. It was deserted inside, as far as I could tell, and I found what I was looking for quickly, tucking a dozen or so into my backpack – I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have spares in case any of them should fall to pieces.
The map told me my next port of call was on the east side of town, a straight line from the Tourist Information – so I just had to keep heading in that direction to hit it. I was about halfway there when I felt the now familiar rumblings of the earth – followed by a building collapse maybe a few streets away. It urged me on to my destination – to get what I needed as quickly as possible – assuming that was still standing, of course.
It was. The library, being an old building that had already stood the test of time, would probably still be standing when everything else had crumbled around it… I hoped. There were none of the Rotten inside here, either, which was a sad testament to how things were before; the fact fewer and fewer people were going to them, how many were shutting down. But I still didn’t want to hang around, so I set to work looking for the section I needed: the sciences. Now, I’ve never been one for studying – not really. A lot of what I learned to be a pilot was a necessity, but the skills were already there. Didn’t mean I couldn’t learn, though – I’m not stupid by any stretch of the imagination. Nevertheless, some of that stuff made my head hurt, seriously.
I grabbed what I considered essential and got out of there as fast as possible – heading back to the outskirts of the city, up onto those hills where I knew I’d be relatively safe. That was where I flipped through those books, studying information about how things are made up, about genetics and cell structure and diseases – lots of things I’ve already forgotten about. Was no mystery what put me to sleep the following night, that’s all I’m saying.
What the books seemed to be telling me about establishing the nature of viruses, was that I had to study a range of samples from different sources under a microscope. Any school worth their salt would have dozens of those – but to examine anything at the magnification I needed, I’d have to visit a hospital or university. I’d have to take that risk.
St August’s was on the far side of town, apparently, so I skirted round and came at it from the back. Had to be in the day this time, because I couldn’t rely on finding a working electron microscope or the power being on – and an optical one would require light. As luck would have it I was wrong on both counts about the electron. Trust me, I wasn’t complaining. Like the library, St August’s was pretty much empty; I guess nobody was in a rush to head to a hospital, either voluntarily or in great numbers. I did spot a few of the Rotten outside, hanging around as if they didn’t really know what to do with themselves, but they didn’t stay long before wandering off again.
Under the microscope, I scrutinised my samples: the first, metal from an abandoned scooter; the second, a scraping from the side of a building; and the third, part of a weed growing by the side of the road. All proved without a shadow of a doubt what I’d been thinking: that the material – organic or inorganic – was breaking down, and at different rates. The same thing was attacking what was holding each of them together, causing them to lose their coherence. In the case of the weed’s cells, the structure was shifting even as I watched, some sort of bacteria breaking through the protective membrane. By the time I came to take it out again, it had already pretty much rotted away.
Time to look at a human sample… from one of the Rotten. It was the only way to know exactly what
The map told me my next port of call was on the east side of town, a straight line from the Tourist Information – so I just had to keep heading in that direction to hit it. I was about halfway there when I felt the now familiar rumblings of the earth – followed by a building collapse maybe a few streets away. It urged me on to my destination – to get what I needed as quickly as possible – assuming that was still standing, of course.
It was. The library, being an old building that had already stood the test of time, would probably still be standing when everything else had crumbled around it… I hoped. There were none of the Rotten inside here, either, which was a sad testament to how things were before; the fact fewer and fewer people were going to them, how many were shutting down. But I still didn’t want to hang around, so I set to work looking for the section I needed: the sciences. Now, I’ve never been one for studying – not really. A lot of what I learned to be a pilot was a necessity, but the skills were already there. Didn’t mean I couldn’t learn, though – I’m not stupid by any stretch of the imagination. Nevertheless, some of that stuff made my head hurt, seriously.
I grabbed what I considered essential and got out of there as fast as possible – heading back to the outskirts of the city, up onto those hills where I knew I’d be relatively safe. That was where I flipped through those books, studying information about how things are made up, about genetics and cell structure and diseases – lots of things I’ve already forgotten about. Was no mystery what put me to sleep the following night, that’s all I’m saying.
What the books seemed to be telling me about establishing the nature of viruses, was that I had to study a range of samples from different sources under a microscope. Any school worth their salt would have dozens of those – but to examine anything at the magnification I needed, I’d have to visit a hospital or university. I’d have to take that risk.
St August’s was on the far side of town, apparently, so I skirted round and came at it from the back. Had to be in the day this time, because I couldn’t rely on finding a working electron microscope or the power being on – and an optical one would require light. As luck would have it I was wrong on both counts about the electron. Trust me, I wasn’t complaining. Like the library, St August’s was pretty much empty; I guess nobody was in a rush to head to a hospital, either voluntarily or in great numbers. I did spot a few of the Rotten outside, hanging around as if they didn’t really know what to do with themselves, but they didn’t stay long before wandering off again.
Under the microscope, I scrutinised my samples: the first, metal from an abandoned scooter; the second, a scraping from the side of a building; and the third, part of a weed growing by the side of the road. All proved without a shadow of a doubt what I’d been thinking: that the material – organic or inorganic – was breaking down, and at different rates. The same thing was attacking what was holding each of them together, causing them to lose their coherence. In the case of the weed’s cells, the structure was shifting even as I watched, some sort of bacteria breaking through the protective membrane. By the time I came to take it out again, it had already pretty much rotted away.
Time to look at a human sample… from one of the Rotten. It was the only way to know exactly what
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