Most of the scratchings were pathetic—the sort a normal person might scrawl if kept in solitude, constantly abused and prodded by remote, capricious powers.
One page was different, though. The message was clearly, if hurriedly, printed. In clear block letters it read:
WHO ARE YOU?
DO YOU KNOW ENGLISH?
WE WISH YOU NO HARM!
PLEASE REPLY SLOWL
The note ended abruptly. Hunter explained that a nurse, concerned that the patient’s bedding had not been changed in two days, had intervened, destroying the last sentence.
The others looked from Hunter to me, perplexed.
“Don’t you see?” I cried out in frustration. “This fellow is obviously intelligent and patient. With extraordinary resourcefulness he has tried to cram a brief message into what must have been, to him, barely an instant, in order to communicate with the all-powerful invisible beings who are holding him prisoner! We move too fast, from his point of view, even to be seen! He thinks we’re extraterrestrials, perhaps. How else could he rationalize what’s happening to him?”
“One moment he’s walking down the street. Then, in a blur, he suddenly finds himself in a hospital bed, pummeled and poked every few seconds, his limbs arbitrarily rearranged for him, and his every movement thwarted!”
One elderly pandemicist scratched his head. “Are you saying that these catatonic individuals aren’t really sick at all? That they are competent, if tremendously slowed?”
I looked at Hunter in despair. This was just what we had been trying to tell them for two weeks.
Hunter interrupted. I suppose she wanted to make certain I didn’t louse things up with my temper.
“Yes,” she said. “And this leads us to the conclusion that this epidemic is not a medical problem at all, but one calling for the expertise of physical scientists… and perhaps psychics and holy men. Maybe even sci-fi writers, as well.”
I grimaced at that, but kept my trap shut.
She could tell that this was coming a bit too thick and fast for the venerable physicians present, so she hurried on to the sugar coating.
“It has also occurred to us, ladies and gentlemen, that this offers a fine way out of the crisis we are fast approaching… that of too few hospital beds and overworked medical staff. The idea, once you get used to it, is quite appealing…”
She was right, of course, on all counts. The immediate problem of care and maintenance would be solved soon. Just in time, as a matter of fact. For while we debated, the second whammy had already struck.
The new phenomenon began, a month after the onset of the ComaSlow epidemic, with a series of very strange deaths—or rather “disappearances.” People simply vanished. Poof.
And no sooner was the first vanishing noticed than the practical jokes began.
Barking dogs appeared, as if instantaneously teleported, on the desks of stuffy senior executives. Men and women walking down the street suddenly found their clothes gone, as if vaporized in the wink of an eye. Burglar alarms went off all over town and food vanished from plates in every fancy restaurant.
Some atrocities occurred. The worst was when a jetliner crashed. Someone apparently lassoed its landing gear with a steel cable when it was ten feet into the air on takeoff. Nobody saw it happen, or even glimpsed the culprit.
A number of famous and beautiful women disappeared from public places, to be found minutes later, at points across town, somewhat bruised and disheveled, with no recollection of anything but a chaotic blur.
Some people who had been enemies of certain “vanishers” met gruesome ends, as did several politicians and the head of nearly every organized-crime family.
But in light of the theory we were developing, we were surprised at how little damage was being done… considering what the Vanishers were capable of, and their growing numbers.
The burglar alarms, for instance, often led to the discovery that someone had simply been “poking around.” Little of value was taken. Normal criminals often found themselves “teleported” directly to prison. At least that’s how it appeared to the dazed police.
Will I be forgiven a slight understatement if I say that the average citizen did not need this aggravation, in addition to the fear over being the next ComaSlow victim?
The man on the street, subject at any moment to the whim of some entity who might stick itching powder down his back or a garter snake down his pants, began to take on the same helpless, panicky look we had become accustomed to seeing on our patients at Johns Hopkins.
We brought in the physicists, all right. And the psychics and mystics and “sci-fi” writers, as well. They just about killed each other, screaming for Zeitgeist priority, but finally they all agreed on one thing. We were experiencing a profound and irksome muckup in time.
Great. Hunter and I had already figured that out.
To everyone’s immense relief, our suggestion on how to solve the ComaSlow problem appeared to work, at least. Instead of treating the victims as sick people, we simply turned them loose and let them run the hospitals themselves.
Soon there were whole villages set aside for their use. MPs guarded the perimeters and inspectors dropped by once every week or two to check on things and to deliver food. Otherwise, the ComaSlow soon were coping quite well.
The Slow towns were eerie places, for all of that. Those permitted to visit them felt as if they had come upon a place where some mad, prolific sculptor had run amuck, leaving utterly lifelike renderings of people going about their business: cooking meals, eating them… someone coming back a week later might see the same statue washing the dishes.
If only the problem of the Vanishers had been as easy to solve.
Hunter and I dragged a card table and typewriter to a spot beneath the most prominent billboard in town. We hired two signpainters noted for their speed, and gave them a message to write.
When we d had the idea, we realized that there wasn’t a moment to lose. A minute wasted was a day to the Vanishers. Still and all, I was glad I’d spent the moment it took to grab a bottle of scotch on our way out of my apartment. Sitting there beneath the billboard, I took a healthy belt, then passed the bottle to Hunter as we watched the painters write:
VANISHERS! PLEASE CONTACT US!
No sooner was the line finished than Hunter, the signpainters, and I suddenly felt our clothes disappear. I experienced a burning sensation, as if very fine sandpaper had been quickly rubbed against my arms and legs. Hunter jumped up and cried out.
This wasn’t what we’d had in mind as “contact,” but it was a beginning.
I had warned the signpainters what to expect. I was proud of those guys. They jumped briefly in surprise then grimly went back to work, painting our message in their birthday suits.
The next line went:
TALK! BE KIND! WE’RE KIND TO THE COMASLOW! WE’RE READY TO
They didn’t finish the line before another flurry of activity hit us. In an instant my head was shaved bare. Dr. Hunter’s beautiful mammeries were painted a brilliant blue, as were… ahem… parts of my own anatomy. And a maelstrom of scrawled notes rose from the stack of paper next to my typewriter. The messages jammed and flurried in front of my face, holding still barely long enough for me to catch a flavor of derision.
Then, in two seconds, the paper storm was interrupted. I had the briefest glimpse of one, no two, unconscious men lying on the sidewalk. They vanished quickly, and in the same instant my limbs were jerked about and I found myself back in my clothes.
The cyclone of paper resumed, a little slower and apparently more conciliatory in tone. I guessed that we had been rescued from the first bunch of Vanishers by a second, more responsible group.