“How do you feel about the girl? What do you think of her as—is she human enough? Are you afraid of her?”
“I kissed her…”
“That is a bit more than I expected,” Noah says as he laughs. “But, then again you were always a good guy in high school—I had hoped that you hadn’t changed. I’m sorry for the act—but it was necessary. I needed someone that I could trust.”
“Act…?” I ask as I watch as he pulls open a hatch from beneath the carpet. “What do you mean someone you could trust? You don’t remember me from high school.”
“Where to even begin,” Noah says as he beckons me to follow him down into the exposed ladder.
I peer down as he pulls a string and a light comes on. I cautiously make my way down the ladder. A large room exists beneath the floor. All around me are printed stories taped to the concrete wall, pieces of different colored threads tie them together—photos of places, people, and things I don’t recognize fill the wall, each color coded with a different colored piece of tape.
“This is the reason you are here.”
A computer sits at the far wall. It is much newer than the one upstairs. A maze of wires run from it and up into the ceiling. A large chest rests against the far wall, I spot a few boxes of bullets on a metal shelf full of computer parts and other various items—more bottles of water line another corner. “What is this?”
“The truth,” Noah says as he begins to point at a piece of printed computer paper taped to the wall. This is the day the virus hit. A number of different colored lines stretch out from that central point and fill the entire wall. “This here is where it begins, and it spreads out to the truth, and the terrible ending that C-Shapes is planning.”
“Is this more of your conspiracy theories?”
“Look here,” Noah says as he points to a picture of an older man with his wife and four adult children. “This is Thomas Manning—one of the founders of C-Shapes. This is a current photo of his family… those look like pretty good odds, how many people do you know that lost someone on V-Day? Seems a little more than luck doesn’t it?”
“The President and the First Lady lost their son…”
“I’m not saying for sure that the government is in on it—but C-Shapes definitely either knew about it, or they are hiding something relevant to how it works… that’s not the important part anyway. Maybe it is luck—or maybe they have a real cure. I don’t know.”
“Are you saying that you faked your own… becoming Unstable?”
“I had to,” Noah says as he pauses for a moment. “I know that we lost contact—so you probably don’t know that I had a wife, and a son. I lost both of them. The depression is real… the incoherency is an act. I’m sorry I deceived you, but it was a necessity. You know how they found me?”
“How…?”
“I was barbequing my neighbor’s flowers on a grill in my front yard… naked,” Noah says as he continues to point at another piece of paper, it has a list of names, next to each name is their position… chemist, tech, researcher, and evaluator… All of the names sound foreign. “These are my contacts on the inside—a lot of them aren’t happy with what is going on because they know the truth.
“You were a local paper writer, you covered new movies and local events… you don’t have contacts.”
“Just hear me out,” Noah says as he shakes his head. “I went through evaluation, I was there for a month—I figured out who I could trust and I asked the right questions. At great risk, I had to get the story.”
“So why now, why today…?”
“I was contacted by one of my chemist contacts—this new pill next month is not any better. The cure promised by the end of the year is not a cure at all, it will kill every single one of the Unstables over the course of a few months.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I say as I shake my head. This is all too much for me—I already dislike getting involved in theories and politics… this is all way over my head.
“C-Alysium does not cure Aggro, or even put it off… early C-Shapes researchers found out that all of the Unstables are linked—through the virus or something. They found a way to trigger them to go Aggro on purpose.”
“Why?”
“Fear… of course,” Noah says as he points to a few articles he has printed off from the internet. “Some of the cases go Aggro on their own… it is just a sad fact of the virus—however, look at where most of the newer Aggro cases take place—it is never in high end places, where the rich live. It is never close to the C-Shapes area or the Capital a few miles away. They trigger attacks at certain times to keep people afraid, they do it all over the country so that the states and the governments continue to pay up out of fear of a full on attack. Those first few years where people in specific areas would all go Aggro at once, that was all orchestrated so that when C-Alysium was introduced it would be embraced. For over six years C-Shapes has milked the entire world, letting itself become the richest company in the world. It’s no longer about oil, or gold, it’s about C-Alysium… which does basically nothing but make them worse off, it effects their memory, worsens their symptoms, and causes them to sleep all day on Sundays.”
“If it is all about money then why are they planning on killing them?”
“Because countries are getting tired of paying—tired of caring for their Unstables. C-Shapes thought they could get at least ten more years out of it—however, with states seceding and countries starting to kill them on their own… C-Shapes is beginning to realize that it is losing its grip. It is losing power. The C-Alysium next month is the same pill as always. Just they are going to lower the instances that they trigger Aggro events. Then in less than a year they will release this cure and everyone will buy in one last time… all the Unstables will die, and it will just called a bad reaction—governments aren’t going to care, their problems will be solved. From there C-Shapes can start to rebuild America the way it wants to. They may not have started the virus—but they are profiting from discovering a way to control it.”
“This is too much for me, Noah,” I say as I place my hand upon my forehead and let out a heavy sigh. “I know you think that this is all real, but you… this could all be in your head.”
“You know they are the ones that destroyed the Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha…”
“If there are so many people on the inside from countries that are being affected then why haven’t they stopped this?” I ask, growing more frustrated.
“I had to gather all the info—all my contacts know now. That was what I was working on Friday… that is why I made you leave.”
“What if they use this info for the wrong reason?”
“Wrong reason…?”
“If they can hit a switch and make people go Aggro, then why hasn’t a South Korean scientist triggered a North Korean mass Aggro event around Pyongyang…?”
“Because that would be inhumane,” Noah says as though the thought never even crossed his mind. “These are just scientists and chemists… they didn’t realize the terrible things they were working on—until now, they thought they were working for the greater good.”
“I’m just trying to get you to see that you might be wrong,” I say as I collapse against a wall and shake my head. “I know you think you’re lucid…”
“I got you into the program,” Noah interrupts. “I know that you lied to attempt to get in… hell, they even know that you lied on your application—I got you paired up with Cherie, and myself. Think about it Ethan, a wait list? When they need and take pretty much anyone that applies.
“Why Cherie…?” I ask. I feel suddenly ill. How could he possibly know that I lied in order to get into the C-Shapes program? Maybe… somehow, he knows something. I just can’t bring myself to believe that all this pain and suffering is over money.