Humid, p.5
Humid, page 5
Wendy was staring at a perfect photo of the exact type of algae that she had discovered with her dissecting scope only an hour previously. The caption of the photograph read, “This is a photograph of an as yet unnamed diatom obtained in an upper stratospheric sampling. It is the only specimen found to date of a living organism recovered from the absolute edge of space.”
9
General Neels sat at his large wooden desk, gently smoothing his thick, black mustache. It was a habit he had picked up over the course of a decades-long military career. The psychiatrist he was forced to speak with once a year called it a “self-soothing” technique. He wasn’t sure about that. The only thing he was sure of was that a stray mustache hair tickled like crazy when it curled up inside one of his nostrils.
His thick body was leaning over the most recent satellite images that they had been able to capture from over the center of the country. He was tapping his pen at the spot just outside of St Louis where one of his manned weather stations was located. On the photo, he was touching was the center of a giant blob of green stretching to the western side of Missouri and nearly halfway across Indiana, roughly in a circle.
Two quick knocks on his door alerted him to the presence of a guest. Neels pushed the small button under his desk and the door unlocked with a clunk. A member of his staff walked stiffly into the room.
The general turned his tired eyes to the man. “Were you able to…” but the man cut him off with a brisk shake of his head, answering in the negative the question he obviously expected.
“General Neels, I was able to locate the husband of the civilian controlling WS 1821, as you requested.”
The general’s eyebrows rose. He was surprised by that. He knew that Wendy’s husband was around the base somewhere, but he was mixed in with a general population of over 50,000 people spread over a base nearly as big as the state of Rhode Island.
“Excellent. Please send him in. Oh, and continue the attempts to make contact. We need to know the situation, ASAP.”
“Of course, sir,” the man said before turning on his heel and briskly walking through the doorway.
Neels heard a faint “Thank you” from somewhere out in the hall.
“Come on in, we need to talk,” Neels said in his usual brusque tone.
Henry walked into the room looking like a man with a purpose. He was slightly taller than average and very lean, wearing a thin cotton t-shirt and cargo shorts. Even at approaching fifty years old, he still looked fit. He was built like a long-distance runner, and that activity was exactly how he enjoyed spending his free time. He seemed very self-assured as he approached the general’s imposing desk, and that was a quality that the general always appreciated but could never admit within the structure of the military. Neels knew that meek people were rarely good for much.
Neels extended his hand for a shake, knowing that the civilian is not required to salute, nor do they usually know how to do it properly in the first place. “Glad to meet you. I’m General Peter Neels.”
“It’s an honor to meet you, sir. I’m Henry Makani, but you probably already knew that.” The taller man said. “I’m guessing you asked me here because of Wendy?”
“I did indeed ask you here because of Ms. Makani. Please have a seat.” He motioned to one of the large chairs in front of his desk. Henry sat down stiffly, his back straight and his muscles tense. The general remained standing and smoothed down his mustache several times while he chose his words.
“Mr. Makani, we have lost contact with your wife.” Henry’s eyes went wide as the words were processed, but the general quickly clarified. “I don’t mean to alarm you. We have lost contact with her entire region. We have no reason to believe anything has happened to her personally, but if her location has lost power we desperately need to get it back up and running.”
“Of course,” the man said confusedly. “What can I do to help?”
“Well, we need a little background information on her, simple stuff really, but it will determine what sort of force we send in to try to fix the problem, and help us establish a timetable.”
It was obvious Henry was still confused, but he nodded his head anyway.
“Mr. Makani, as you know, we’re stretched incredibly thin. Hell, most of our functioning government is out here in this godforsaken desert. Many of our planes aren’t operational due to rust issues within the engines and…”
Henry interrupted the man. “How long have you been out of contact?”
Neels paused and glared slightly at the man. He was very unaccustomed to being interrupted while speaking. He tried to remember that this man was not only a civilian, but was probably very worried about his wife. He looked down at his watch and answered, “It’s been nearly an hour now since we’ve been able to contact anyone in that whole area of the Midwest.”
Henry exhaled loudly, the look of worry slowly melting off his face. “An hour? Couldn’t that just be a power glitch or something? Maybe a broken com satellite?”
“It could. It could.” The general went back to smoothing down his dark black mustache. “The problem is that just before we lost coms, she reportedly harvested a great number of a certain kind of algae that was growing in the air.” The general sat down in his chair as he began telling the story.
“We’ve had some of the science guys look at the image she provided and they identified the algae in question.” His brow furrowed as he tapped the satellite images still on his desk. “It’s a peculiar variety of algae, that’s why I need some answers from you. It’s been such a short amount of time that it’s highly likely that she doesn’t even realize the com lines are out. We’re hoping to pilot a drone over her and then drop an aid package with the tools she might need to fix the issue.”
“Ahh. You know general, you really front-loaded that story. You just want to know how capable Wendy is? In ways not on her official resume? Is that it?”
Neels was fully aware of how much he wasn’t telling the man before him, but, as was the military’s way, he thought Henry simply didn’t need to know all the details.
“Yes, that’s right, Mr. Makani. So, if we could begin?”
Henry nodded as he leaned back in his chair, finally allowing himself to relax slightly.
10
Wendy was staring at the screen before her in the main room. She had sent the same email three separate times, and each time it just bounced back with an error message saying it could not resolve a host. Wendy was kicking herself for never spending any real time trying to figure out how the internet actually worked. Truly, she was unsure what the hell the host even was.
In her year of being at the station alone, she had never before realized just how solitary she actually was out there. She didn’t have tech support to fix the problem; it was just her. She had to find a way to get this news out.
Wendy pulled her long, thin hair back in a ponytail and started running through a mental checklist. It was obvious that the system had power. The email program could function because she was able to write the message with no problem. The issue occurred when she hit send.
Oh, how she wished cell phones, or even landlines, were still operational. The country learned that, as it turns out, the backup generators to power cell phone towers only had a very small amount of diesel fuel in them. Once the power was gone, all the pretty little bars on the phones went away. Wendy found it slightly amusing since for the past decade cell phones had been used decreasingly as actually phones, and more so as computers and cameras. The fact that they stopped functioning as phones seemed almost like a natural progression to her.
As for the landlines, well, the power wasn’t their problem, but phone lines require maintenance. Some of the trees and branches were dead long before the change in the atmosphere and as those began to shed limbs onto the lines there was no one around to fix the damage. It didn’t take long for the nation to no longer have wired phone connections. It had been easy for everyone to forget how a devastating a broken phone line could be if no one was there to fix it.
But the internet always worked! It was spread far and wide through thousands if not millions of servers with redundant server farms all over the place. She didn’t rely on phone lines to transmit data because she had the satellite dish. Sure, maybe Etsy and Facebook were gone, but military email connections were supposed to be rock solid.
Wendy had resorted to just tapping monitors hoping to jiggle something back into place before realizing one of the last things she could check. The computer used the satellites to relay info back and forth, so she needed to go check the dish outside. Wendy smiled widely when she realized the simplicity of the most likely problem. The dish on the antennae tower was probably just covered with algae the same way the solar panels were.
Usually, this wouldn’t be a problem. That’s why she had never bothered to clean off the dish. Those things functioned though snow and even wet leaves, but the algae must have finally gotten too thick.
With new resolve, Wendy stood up and prepared herself to go back outside into the thick, soupy environment.
00000
The air outside seemed even more oppressive than usual. She was used to it being “the air you wear.” Her father used to joke that the more humid it got, the tighter Mother Nature was hugging you; it was just her way to show love to all the people that lived there.
This didn’t feel like love. Wendy had never had asthma, but now she was having a very hard time breathing as she walked to the tower. She had started running at first, but that led to a coughing fit that almost put her on an even keel with Henry.
Also, although she couldn’t be certain, the air seemed greener today, and the sky looked darker than it should have been for this time of day. It was afternoon, though, and she rarely came out here at this time of day because it was when the humidity typically peaked.
She was looking around, trying to figure that out as she rounded the corner of the building and the tower came into view. It was around eighty feet tall, and Wendy could clearly make out the five-inch-long steel pegs running up the side of the north facing leg. That wasn’t a climb she particularly wanted to make, but she had had to climb plenty of weather towers over the years, and heights didn’t frighten her.
She couldn’t see anything built up on the surface of the dish, but she was so far below it that she couldn’t be certain. She cursed herself, wishing that she’d had the foresight to bring a pair of binoculars. She thought about going back to retrieve a pair, just to be sure before making the climb. As she turned around to do just that, she realized that thought was just a way to put off the inevitable. She would have to climb that tower no matter what. Her binoculars weren’t powerful enough for her to be certain of anything she saw.
Wendy lifted the bottom of her t-shirt and wiped the sweat from her brow just before another coughing fit racked her lungs. Suddenly, she felt terribly out of breath. It felt as if she was coughing all her air out, but was unable to take in more. She became acutely aware of the sweat pouring down her face again, and she unexpectedly felt trapped.
Wendy desperately reached into her pocket for a piece of candy or something, anything to ease her throat. She had a rescue inhaler just in case she ever developed asthma symptoms, but she never carried it around because she hadn’t experienced any breathing issues. After all, it wasn’t like she ever really left the station. As the coughing stopped, the wheezing began. She tried to suck in more air but each time she attempted to swallow a great gulp of air, her chest would wheeze and then revolt, turning the breath into another thunderous cough.
She could feel her face turning red and heating up as her heart began to beat inside her ears. Wendy abandoned her quest to find something in her pocket and absently scratched at her neck, hoping to will her throat into relaxing. She thought back to all the times Henry had panic attacks and she had told him to calm down and breathe regularly. She knew that was good advice; she’d simply had no idea how difficult it was to actually act on that advice.
What a fool she had been. It made her love her husband more for never once lashing out at her or berating her for doling out advice for a situation she couldn’t possibly comprehend.
Then it happened. She tried to suck in another great gulp of air, and it was as if the air just hit a wall. No wheezing. No anything. Her throat ached and her lungs burned but it was as if her throat was stuck in mid-swallow.
Wendy felt her knees get weak. It felt like her eyes were going to bug out of her head as her own incredibly rapid heartbeat thrummed away. Suddenly, she realized she was on the ground but didn’t remember falling down. She could see the film of algae covering the ground and could feel the sliminess against the side of her cheek. It was an odd feeling, death.
Just as her eyes closed, she saw a form approaching from behind the antennae tower. She knew she had to be dreaming because the person reminded her exactly of an old action figure she used to play with as a kid. It was one of the bad guys from the He-Man cartoon, named Mossman. Then the darkness swallowed her and the shotgun beating of her heart in her ears carried her off like the sound of an old lawnmower in summer.
11
Wendy woke up slowly, as if it was a leisurely Sunday morning. She half expected, upon opening her eyes, to see at least one of her boys waiting at the foot of her bed, eager for a breakfast sandwich. Instead, her eyes revealed the same gray wall that she had slept against for nearly a full year.
Oddly, she felt good. She couldn’t quite remember what had happened or even how long ago she had lain down, but her body felt full of energy and raring to go. She wasn’t accustomed to a great night’s sleep, certainly not for a very long time anyway, but that is what she felt like she’d had.
She rolled over, expecting to at least see Curly waiting for her to wake up, but of course he wasn’t there anymore. Tossing her legs over the side of the bed, she noticed that even her joints felt strong. Wendy was pushing forty-five years old and hadn’t exactly been kind to her body over the years, especially during her adventurous youth. Even after a restful sleep she would normally wake up to slightly creaky joints.
Once standing, she removed her sleep shirt and immediately noticed that she wasn’t sweaty. With the current level of humidity, even inside the facility, her clothes would usually become damp while she slept.
Just as she pulled a new shirt over her head, she remembered falling to the ground and gasping for air. Her heart rate doubled as the memories flooded over her. She had been about to die. She thought she did die. That much was very clear. How had she made it into her bed?
She had heard stories of people passing out during a panic attack and waking up rested. Once the body shut down, the panic slid away and the brain basically shut down for a bit while it cleared out the various chemicals it had just flushed into the bloodstream.
She had experienced far more than a panic attack. She assumed it was a severe asthma attack, but she clearly remembered the distinct impression of drowning, just before passing out. Had that been some kind of hallucination, brought on by her fear and lack of oxygen?
Wendy hurriedly put on her clothes, suddenly feeling very exposed. Perhaps she had sleepwalked into bed. She had an issue with sleepwalking in college. Sometimes her roommates would find her in odd places throughout the house. Strange things would happen when they would try to wake her up. It had usually only happened during times of high stress.
It had gotten so bad during a finals week in her junior year that the other girls had left fully loaded squirt guns all over the house in case someone caught her sleepwalking. They could just spray her with a little water from a distance until she woke up instead of trying to yell or shake her awake. It was puppy training applied to a human, but it had worked well.
That hadn’t been a problem for decades, though. As far as she knew, it had all stopped during college. Henry had certainly never mentioned finding her sleepwalking through the house. Neither had either of the kids, since she knew they would never be able to keep their mouths shut about something like that.
As she walked out of her sleeping quarters, she vaguely remembered seeing a figure that reminded her of something from her childhood. She began looking around and saw movement over by the panel of monitors. For a split second she thought it was Greg, but then realized that couldn’t possibly be true. She wondered if the military had sent a team back.
Wendy immediately stopped moving. Slowly, the chair spun around and she could see the…the man…sitting in it. There could be no mistaking it; his skin was light green. It hadn’t been some kind of a trick of the light. Other than that he appeared normal. Although he was sitting down, she could tell he was tall, much taller than average. He had very short hair, also green, with a solid receding hair line.
He had a long goatee, the kind that you frequently saw on bikers or musicians. It hung several inches below his chin. It was also green, a darker green than his skin. It appeared to be the same shade of green as the algae she had grown so used to scraping off the solar panels.
“Ahh…good, you’re awake.” The man smiled at her. His voice was deep, but well within the normal range. She was even more confused.
“Can I help you?” she said. Wendy stood up straighter, pushing aside her initial shock. She was in charge of this facility and never in her life had she been any kind of meek individual. “What are you doing inside my station?”
The man slowly raised both hands. “Easy, now. I come in peace.” His eyes squinted at her, like she was supposed to understand something, and then relaxed. “I’m the one that’s hoping to help you.”
“I don’t need any help. Why is your skin green?” Wendy decided to cut right to the first question that she had.
The man lowered his arms and glanced at the backs of his hands. He shrugged ever so slightly. “I had hoped that would be gone by the time you woke. I’ll explain it, but please try to remember that I found you out there, lying on the ground. You were basically past the onset of respiratory failure. My skin may be a little green, but your lips were blue.”
